#i hate death and the maidens but this would be very well applied to that scene at the end

[katyspersonal]

Katyyyyy where are you, new way to hate gehrman just dropped. Basically now he disrespected maria because doll is a levelup maiden that helps hunters during the hunt despite the fact she hated the hunt.

He is even at fault for not doing enough to prevent it in case it was moon presence doing. Its that absurd

fdsjhfh Hrrrrg sorry anon, I've been taking a break from the internet for health reasons (and still need more of it). But, damn, this sounds so... forced? Honestly, I do not understand such a strong hate-boner for a sad man in a wheelchair some people in this fandom have. I can't really think of any benefit of the doubt to spare here, it just feels like some people are unable to enjoy any piece of media without pulling real life problems, grudges and extremely unsympathetic judgement into it, especially towards characters and stories where they do not apply.

ANYWAYS, TWO-PARTER!

1) "Maria hated the hunt"

I think an important point to make here is that Maria's disdain for the hunt was, first and foremost, rooted in personal reasons! She was that strong, capable hunter of beasts (and undead Pthumerians of the Chalice Dungeons, for all we know!) but slaughtering the fish "monsters" that could still speak and think and pray was what broke her and made her unable to kill any longer. The way I see it, it was a trauma, and damaged self-image. She could not stand herself as that horrible killer, SHE was the real monster and it was plain to see!

If the point here is that making the Doll, a creation to immortalise Maria('s softer side), help Dreaming Hunters to become stronger and carry on the night, I don't.... understand it? Maria was no longer willing to hunt herself, and in the end, it was very likely that guilt that driven her to su1cide. We don't know that, though. It could've been losing Adeline, it could've been that Cainhurst massacre happened while she was still alive and she hated feeling like a traitor of the sinking ship, it could've been madness and misery of patients rubbing onto her, or all at once, or something else.

But let's say, dreading her past as the hunter was the core thing. I believe this as well, because in the Nightmare part focused on tormenting her, we can see a Chalice and a picture from Abandoned Old Workshop. This is very telling about what she does not want to remember the most:

The problem with the hunt and the beasts though? Beasts attack and eat people. Maria maybe never wanted to draw a blade again, but we can't say she would be opposed to helping the hunters. If nobody hunts the beasts, while they are growing in numbers, they will just... eat people? It actually reminds me of a misconception about Djura hating the hunters in general! He specifically asks to not attack the beasts of Old Yharnam, for the reason of them not being able to harm anyone unprovoked! Meanwhile, he encourages the Paleblood Hunter to go and hunt beasts out there, that can and will just attack humans! I think that Maria must be similarly rational: she can't fight anymore, but she can't deny that if no one else fights as well, beasts will just overcome people, and there will be no one.

If anything, Maria spent the rest of her life, after having revoked her hunter status, to help in the walls of the Research Hall. Research Hall was laboratory of the Healing Church, who were having and governing the hunters by proxy, even if their own type (the Holy Blades) and not Gehrman's type (the Old Hunters)! I would not say that her helping to sustain the hunt past death is so alien to her! The Hunter's Dream was Laurence's plan, and very likely the purpose of it is so that the Dreaming Hunters are able to sustain the full-moon nights with their power and immortality - all so Healing Church has more time and resources for research on ascension. In conclusion, Maria resorted to the role of passive helper, the support, rather than fighting force, even in life. Doll, in a twisted way, continues that quest.

P.S. Just because Maria hating all hunt and hunters as concept would be irrational, it doesn't mean that it can't be! It is still possible that she went 'may Chaos take the world' and spiralled into thinking that maybe humans of Yharnam had to pay the price for messing with things beyond their comprehension by simply perishing. Just.. not only I think this doesn't work so well for the character, but also in this case, Gehrman's "disrespect" would only be charitable! As in, 'Maria lost all sympathy and hope for humanity in life, but she might be her real caring self once more, in this new form', you feel? Not disrespect, but feeling like he must carry on the image of her true self when she no longer could.

For the next part though, let's assume that Maria would not want to ever help the hunters with no other ways around it, and that Gehrman was aware of it, to cut to the main points!

2) "Gehrman did not do enough"

Moon Presence is a literal God that owns the Hunter's Dream, I strongly doubt that Gehrman would be able to have much of a say in this...? If it was Flora's intent to animate the Doll, she might just do what she sees fit regardless of his wish. Or, more twisted yet: even if Gehrman asked her to please leave the Doll out of the hunt to honor Maria's wishes, Flora could read in his heart that he was miserable and lonely so still chose to give him a company. Great Ones might not understand the complexities of humans, such as the conflict between "selfish" needs and their integrity! Whereas for us it is a known thing to understand we must not want what we want, and we must do what we should, for her it was just that the host of the Dream was sad and missed a dear friend that looked just like that doll thing over there!

+ Moon Presence is only able to be defied with a large amount of insight and ascension-potential gained from consuming Umbilical Cords that Gehrman most likely didn't consume. I think it's worth pointing out as one of the reasons why he couldn't even "fight it" if he wanted!

This also made me think of another possibility I discarded long ago, I guess time to blow the dust from it!

Doll's face notably has these cracks on it, and at first I wondered if maybe, it was Gehrman himself who was trying to either beat the influence of Moon Presence from her, or simply destroy her. And yet, every time, she rose back to life, as eery and unfeeling as ever, until he gave up trying over and over... What if he did not want Moon Presence and the Hunters to tarnish precious memory of Maria, to the point of trying to break the Doll to stop mocking him. To stop mocking Maria. And although Doll always assembled back, something was still always off, as the evidence of his attempts - these cracks!

...in the end, I've personally decided it worked better as manufacturing mistake because his hands were shaking at Maria's face part. But like, imagine: Moon Presence cannot be reasoned with, and the next option, to attack the Doll itself, as much as it hurts to hit something Maria-shaped, doesn't work either. It is possible that he did not quite have a choice here, and Doll was animated regardless of his will. Could be for the sake of the Hunter's Dream, could be Flora's twisted "gift" for him that she would not take back... could be a coincidence, too.

Not only it is strongly implied that Maria was buried near the Old Hunters Workshop, since Old Hunter's Bone is found at the same grave Doll prays to and that leads to Hunter's Nightmare, but Doll also has two-to-three confirmed belongings of Maria herself in her design! It could be not Moon Presence's choice and not Gehrman's, but Maria's soul simply dwelled in this body on instinct because of all the odds that attracted her! Maria's soul could be split between Nightmare and Dream, since the two have spiritual connection (Doll remarks that she felt at ease after we kill Maria), Doll sometimes sleeps and we find Maria sleeping too, they have the same voice although Doll's body has no vocal cords (she is a doll, not a robot!) and we know Maria cared about Gehrman at least at some point.

It could be the odds not even a God would have the power over, let alone a man!

+ The cut lines of dialogue offer to her NOT hating the hunt entirely too. She literally tells you that "you will not find your enemies here", and since she seems to know you are a hunter under Gehrman, it makes sense to think she is referring to actual beasts to hunt that would slaughter people in the waking world... So, yeah, her "hating the hunt" isn't outright stated nor supported by both canon and cut content, but can still be a headcanon.

But what if Gehrman did it himself?

I will admit though, there is a potential for an idea! After all.. I love this take a lot. That maybe, initially, Doll was not animated, and Gehrman was the host of the Hunter's Dream all alone by himself. But his sanity was giving up from carrying the Dream by himself and being completely devoid of company. He was losing it, he could no longer trust his own restraint, he needed to keep his distance from the Dreaming Hunters for their own safety. After all, as we can see from one of the endings, if he allows a Dreaming Hunter to kill him, he will be free and the Dreaming Hunter will take his place. The freedom from endless solitude, nightmares and torment of the wait, always so close....

( x ) for translation of his lyrics. Also I want this to be written in the protocol that I hate listening to Gehrman's theme and it makes me cry every time even these three years later fsdhfhdsds

It might have been a sad necessity. To perform some sort of ritual to bring the Doll to life, so someone could take the duties off his shoulders while he is not stable. Because he could not trust the power of his will any longer. Why not direct this to someone that could not feel the loneliness and the pain? Even at the cost of tarnishing his precious memory of a special person?

In this case, sure, he is "guilty". "Guilty" for burying her near this place when she did not want to be a hunter, sure. Again, we don't know the extent of Maria's disdain for the concept, only that she personally did not wish to draw a blade again! And "guilty" for being a human being with human limitations. I think that if someone still wishes to hate him despite it, over their own misuse of the "explanation does not equal excuse" sentiment, this is just the same overly judgemental attitude I actively oppose and I can't approve of this even as much as I want to give a chance to every interpretation. I just recently made a post digging into how the way people treat certain "problematic" characters can reflect their morality towards real people ( x ), and this brings my point again. So, person had every single reason to do the thing, and basically no other choice in the situation, but they are "still guilty"? Context matters a lot, and still willing to hate someone when they had no choice but to do the thing is inhumane, I think. It reeks of pure desperation of excluding and exiling a person "touched by sin" even if it was not their fault, and this very specific sort of superfluous judgement had rotted the society, let alone media analysis!

________________

Alright, I've gotten quite emotional in the last part for someone simply disagreeing with a take on a fictional character, but every other time no matter what reason to hate this guy is touched upon I can't find any explanation but general lack of sympathy and understanding. Heck.. I guess Gehrman was written SO, so brilliantly, that the way people treat him is a great vibe-check? Any character can be disliked, including him, but people's reasoning for why the character is disliked can give away ignorance at least, cruelty and judgemental attitude at worst!

I just hope that I've made my stance on the take clear! Admittedly, it is a more interesting discussion than "misogynist creep" discourse that has been debunked 5000 times now! I think in this case, it is harder to find a final word, and I just offered mine. A lot of this depends on how one perceives Maria and Gehrman, there is no The One True interpretation and I've just suggested my thought process and what I think is more reasonable to assume. Taking away Gehrman's complexity and potential for sympathy for the sake of 'just another man that disrespected a woman' is a pet peeve for me but I am open for surprises. You just said that people "hate" on him yet again, and it just gets old.

#bloodborne #gehrman the first hunter #lady maria of the astral clocktower #plain doll #ask replies #bloodborne headcanons #bloodborne observation #disco horse #back to the bed i crawl #I leave for 2 days and Gehrman is everyone's punching bag again what is going on fshhfdfsd #maria doesn't need your gehrman-hating to preserve her integrity and complexity she had her own demons to fight (and lose against)

[leeminuwu]

MY HAPPY MARRIAGE | Gojo Satoru

—In which the disgraced older daughter of a small clan gets an offer from the strongest sorcerer in the world, an offer she can't refuse, an unusual prospect of marriage.

Author's Note: Hello, this is my first ever fanfiction. I might make some errors but I will do my best to make this reading experience as amazing as possible. This story is very close to my heart and was inspired by a manga of the same name. Please give Chihaya and Gojo lots of love. I will be uploading on Wattpad and ao3 as well !

TW : domestic violence, physical abuse, suicidal ideation, suicide, self harm, 18+ themes | minors dni

pairs : gojo satoru x fem!oc, slight!geto suguru x fem!oc and slight!sukuna x fem!oc

CHAPTER ONE : THE TALENTLESS MAIDEN

WHEN THE NEWS of her mother's demise reached Chihaya Furukawa, she was returning from work, stumbling through the office hours crowds of Chiba station. It was just another Wednesday for her. Yet the news had turned her very mundane day upside down. Her knees wobbled as the weight of her handbag seemed to weigh her down. Strange. She wondered. She never thought, she would be affected by the demise of the woman who claimed to never have loved her.

Yet, she persisted. Returning to her quaint flat, she cleaned her room thrice over the course of four hours, claiming that it would bring her the very peace of mind she needed. However peace had always been unkind and fleeting for the eldest daughter of the Furukawa clan.

It was her brother's hoarse voice that plagued her. She is gone. Mother is dead. That is what Makoto Furukawa had only told. There were no explanations regarding the nature of her death, no illness. The lady of the house was known to be a fierce woman of sheer fortitude. Her bloodline was from the prestriged Machi clan of the Jujutsu World. She seldom suffered from illnesses. Then how?. Then how did mother pass? The rational part of her brain mulled. But for Furukawa, despite her unyielding curiosity, an air of uneasiness seemed to surround her very being. Hence, that evening she spent lying on her bed, looking at th the starless sky through the window beside her bed, hoping to see traces of her mother's pleasent memory. However, there seemed to be none.

Chihaya Furukawa wanted to grieve that day but she didn't know how.

_______

SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO

The Furukawa household lived in traditional Japanese houses, while a significant of their wealth, the walls were too thin to contained the cries of a child. Hence, Chihaya had learnt the ways of suppressing her cries in order to spare her tiny hands from becoming the canvas of her father's wrathful showerings. As if she hadn't gone through countless punishments from him already.

Haruto Furukawa hated wailing children more than he hated weaklings. A self made Jujutsu Sorcerer, he had single handedly uplifted his rather downtrodden clan's glory in his generation, especially among the council of elders. For a man like him who had slain countless screeching courses, cries of children seemed like a deterrent to his focus, and his hard earned peace.

Hence, when a ten year old Furukawa sat with cane marks littered all across her petite arms. Her mother wordlessly, applied ointments on them.

In her eyes, there was no love or hate.

Patching up her wounded child, was just another segment of her duty that she would fulfill as the lady of the house.

"If only you weren't so talentless, father would be much kinder to you" Young Makoto, who was two years her junior quipped from her another corner of the room. "He only disciplines you because you can't even perform a basic curse technique even at this age" He snickered, giggling in his joy of being the prodigy of the family. A true Furukawa. Who would carry the fire manipulation technique of the family foreword.

Tears had formed in the young girl's eyes, as the pain of her wounded hands seemed to seep through the barrage she had created in her mind for all the terrible memories.

A tear drop rolled down her cheek and fell on her arm.

"Crying won't make you useful, Chihaya. Only those who are dutiful or strong get their respects" Her said in a voice loud enough only for the young girl to hear, tighning the bandage on her wrist. "You are weak, hence, you must be dutiful. It is the only way you will ever be respected by others. Jujutsu is not the only way to carry on your family's legacy. Being a proper lady and a good wife in the future is a great duty to shoulder for us women as well"

Chihaya could merely stare at her mother with glassy eyes, her lips parted in disbelief. She cry, scream, throw her arms and legs around—just to let her mother know about the pain she'd been harbouring since the past couple of years.

When Lady Furukawa spoke, the dying sunlight of the waning dusk seemed to illuminate her face through the window. In that light she looked like a divine being of great knowledge of the world. In that light Chihaya could see the tirednes that had dawned on her eyes. In that light, the eldest Furukawa daughter realised—that even if she cried her lungs out, her mother wouldn't care.

____________

PRESENT DAY

Despite the baleful and uncharacteristic news of death she'd received the previous day, Chihaya had arrived to work the next morning. Wearing her usual smile for her co-workers and her students. As a kindergarten teacher, she felt a sense of duty to not let the children experience residues of the mishaps in her life. However that task seemed to become excruciatingly difficult for the young woman as her head throbbed due to lack of sleep.

"It is quite odd isn't it" Aoi commented, as the duo continued with the final touch ups of the playroom before the kids arrived. Aoi Higuchi had been a faithful ally to Chihaya during her short career at the kindergarten. Perhaps the only friend she had left now.

"What is it Higuchi San?" Chihaya asked, turning to see that her co-worker looking wistfully at the open windows.

"I don't know if it's the weather or not, but usually at this time, we have more birds around don't we?" It was an odd observation, but a poignant one. The kindergarten was located in the suburbs and around a plethora of trees. It was not uncommon to have birds chirp away through the morning. Yet that day, there was hardly a sound.

It was an uncharacteristically peaceful morning.

"Perhaps it is the terrible weather" Chihaya chuckled, "I read somewhere that climate change has had quite an impact on the local birds of Japan, let alone the migratory ones" she thought out loud, with a finger on her chin.

Aoi sighed, "Yeah, you're perhaps right" the brunette haired coworker shrieked as she looked at the large clock ticking to 10am, "Oh boy, I am late again—i gotta get the kids from the assembly hall. Can you finish up stacking these colouring books for me?"

"I got this" Chihaya reassured with a smile, "you can go get the kids"

"You're the best Chihaya Chan!"

The young woman giggled at her friend's compliment as she moved to pick up the colouring books left scattered around the room from the previous day's activities. She hummed a tune of the song she'd heard at the subway so often, a song she forgot to seek out the name of. Perhaps once I go home, I'll Google the lyrics I remember? She wondered, trying to push away the gloomy thoughts from her mind. I should probably ask Aoi San for her Spotify playlist, I think I'll surely find it there. She does hav—

BA DUM!

BA DUM!

Her head throbbed, as her knees felt heavy. Chihaya could feel a certain nausea bubbling up her chest as dizziness took over.

What the —

Images passed by her vision of a time unknown. It was as if a book of memories had been reopened. She could see her dainty classroom full of children, bustling with joy and clamour of young child. She observed, through her mind's eye a scene, as one of the young children named Akito dropped his water bottle as her drank from it, soaking the floor. She watched as the water water spread throughout the back of the class, whilst she and Higuchi were looking away in the scene playing out. She watched as the water reached the feet of an overzealous child and as he fell after slipping on the growing puddle. Cries erupted as the child cried whilst rolling on the floor, catching both the teacher's attention.

And then the scene ended.

It was like a premonition. A waking dream. A phenomenon she had never encountered. Perhaps it's the caffeine. She thought to herself, shaking her head in disbelief. For a second, Chihaya felt like she was on some terrible LSD trip. The girl then concluded that tiredness seemed to have gotten the best of her, and that she would take a leave for the rest of the week in order to return home and pay her final respects to her dearly departed mother. I need that closure to be same again.

Chihaya looked at the colouring books that she had stacked up, lying scattered on the floor yet again. Her knees had given away and she'd ended up sitting down with folded legs, as her arm supported her tired form. Her breathing was heavy, and sweat dripped from her brow.

There goes my makeup.

Looking at the clock that stood at only 10:04am, Chihaya wondered if it was only her who felt like her daydreaming had taken forever to end. While in reality it had hardly been four minutes since Aoi had left to fetch the children. Four minutes. Shit. They'll be here any minute.

The woman picked up each book gingerly, placing them one on top of the other roll number wise, as she continued to final preparations for her classes to begin.

Just when she slid the last box onto the playroom shelves, she heard the door slide open, and a cacophony of voices followed suit. Young children with blue hats and yellow bags huddled into the classroom with big smiles on the face, while some had glassy eyes due to crying before coming to school. Chihaya smiled, as she stood up to take her position by the front of the class, her hands clasped to her lap, a bright smile on her face.

"Good morning everyone!" She beamed, while the kids to their seats on the little desks.

"Good morning miss Furukawa!"

"Good morning!"

"Good morning sensei!"

Greetings poured in as the class filled up to it's full capacity. Chihaya's heart often swelled with pride as she would see the children under her care develope a comely nature with good manners. She felt like her duty to the next generation was fulfilled in a way. Despite it's hardships, she loved being a teacher. It was all she ever wanted to be, and even though she dream was realised later in her life, she was glad that she could live with certain contentment atleast.

"Please settle down" she chided the kids who were still jumping on their chairs around at the back of the class, as Higuchi caught then by their uniforms and tried to call them down.

"Woah there Akira, you will hurt yourself if you keep jumping around like that" Higuchi told the young boy, keeping a close eye on him as he took is seat with a mischievous glint in his eyes, "sorry sensei" he giggled. He was totally going to jump on his chair again.

"Let's finish the colouring we started yesterday okay?" Chihaya clapped to draw in their attention, "and today, we will learn how to draw and colour the rainbow!"

"I love rainbows sensei!"

"Mee too"

"So do I"

"No; they are my favourite"

The woman chuckled as she tuck the stray strands of her hair behind her ear. "Well I love rainbows too Mirai Chan" she went around the desk of the girl who had exclaimed first in delight, "Rainbows appear once the skies clear after rain"

"Mom says, rainbows signify hope and new beginnings" young Mirai added on enthusiastically, "Is that true sensei?"

The woman could only smile.

Hope.

Chihaya Furukawa could scoff mentally. She would give anything to be hopeful again. Hope to her were the dying embers of joy in her mothers eyes. Her hopes seemed to have died in her youth, and her mother's death seemed to make her new beginnings in Chiba seem like an uncertain path.

"Your mother is absolutely correct" Chihaya forced a smile, breaking away from her thoughts. The children shouldn't sense my grief. It would not be fair to them. Turning her back. Her pretended to write on the whiteboard. Her free arm balled into a fist by her side as she gritted her teeth and took a deep breath and faced the children, "Now, let us begin the class"

__________

Half of the day had gone by and at 12:00pm, during the lunch break the children played around in the classroom as Chihaya decided to spend her free time keeping her eye on the boys of the class, wary of her daydream. No child is getting injured on my watch.

"You aren't gonna eat?" Higuchi propped herself beside the younger woman, with her arm resting on her face.

"I'll eat later" Chihaya reassured with a small smile. Turning back to monitor the children.

"If you don't mind me saying Chihaya chan, something about you doesn't feel quite right" The Furukawa girl was startled by the sudden comment about her disposition from her friend. Higuchi had been perceptive certainly, however Chihaya was also a very suppressive person. It was difficult to read her poker face, let alone know what was going on in her mind. Or so she believed.

Her lips parted in surprise. Clearing her throat she looked away from the older woman, "You are a worry wart Higuchi San, I am completely fine"

"You always lie when you don't meet my eyes"

Chihaya turned to look the woman deep in her embony eyes, "I am fine. Trust me"

Silence. Aoi Higuchi was no fool Chihaya envisioned her to be.

"You know you could talk to me anytime right?" She mumbled, sensing the younger woman's discomfort as she hummed in response. "I hope your ex finance is not troubling you again"

Chihaya could choke at the unwarranted comment, as she coughed her water out of her wind pipe. "You still are the same, senpai. Your lack of tact is impeccable" she laughed nervously, wiping the water that had dropped on her trousers.

"If Naoya San was troubling me, I would have left Chiba long back" Chihaya chuckled half heartedly.

Higuchi stood up swiftly, and grabbed hold of chihaya's hands, earning a yelp from the younger girl, "If that bastard happens to pop in here, you have nothing to fear, my brother knows the local delinquents quite well! He will handle that man well"

Chihaya couldn't control her laugh. Oh senpai, delinquents would be target practice for that bastard.

"I am serious, Chihaya Chan! You don't worry"

"I could never, I know for a fact that I am in perfectly good hands" the woman smiled.

Chihaya saw the half empty water bottle on her table, as her head throbbed in realisation. Her daydream. She'd forgotten to keep an eye on the children, getting up from her seat, she scanned the entire room, to check if anyone was injured. To her cruel surprise Akito had dropped his water bottle by the door and was struggling to clean up his wet pants.

Chihaya rushed to help the younger boy. Her almost super human speed surprised Higuchi.

"Hey, hey, hey little guy. Are you okay?" She asked, soothing his back as he looked like he was about to cry. Before she could listen to his replies, she saw her daydream mimic itself in real life as Akira jumped around the water puddle on the verge of danger.

Hence, Chihaya ran again to the other child and swifty scooped him up in her arms before he could slip on the puddle.

"Akira, how many times I've told you not to jump around the class?" The woman scolded the young boy, as she placed him on the dry floor.

Tears formed in his eyes as he huffed with a pout.

"I was playin" he sniffled.

"I know but you have to be careful—"

BA DUM!

Her head throbbed yet again, as a stabbing pain pierced through her forehead to the back of head, compelling her to hold her head in pain.

"Sensei? Are you okay?" The child asked, fearful of her changed expression.

"Fine" Chihaya gritted her teeth, slowly removing herself from the the young boy, her instincts compelling her to run away from the room full of children. Yet the girl could barely move.

Soon the noise of the classroom was overpowered by the voices that rang in her ear.

Voices rang through her head, as memories flowed like an endless river infront of her eyes,"You'll never be a daughter to me" her father's eyes darkened as he raised his cane for another on of his punishments.

"Just marry her off to the highest bidding clan" she'd overhead her brother speaking with his father after her graduation.

"You're so talentless that you'd be better off dead" she remembered how the children of the high born Jujutsu families laughed at her inability to see curses at a young age.

"You're as pitiful as a dove with a broken wing. I don't know if I pity you or care for you" she remembered her first love, a man who had turned to darkness, his long dark hair wavering in the wind as his eyes dimmed of kindness.

What is happening to me? She could only think as memories flooded her being. A nauseating panic rising in her throat, as she felt that she was trapped inside a box being forced to relive every time she'd experienced pain.

The pain coupled with the haunting memories made the woman clasp her ears in a feeble attempt to salvage her sanity. The images of her dreary life flashed one after the other. Until at the end she saw her mother's comely face, and a scream erupted from her mouth coupled with uncontrollable tears. "Go to Chiba, and stay as far from this world as you can, hear me girl? I will arrange a job for you next semester in Hokkaido. To then, don't come back to Tokyo" Those were the last words she'd heard from her mother before she left home at the beginning of the semester.

Warmth engulfed her body, as Chihaya lost the track of time and space. The throbbing pain seemed to be getting worse along with the nausea and the dizziness and before she knew, the sights of her past darkened into her vision, as the unbearable pain sent her body into a shock.

And soon, Chihaya passed out.

________________

THREE DAYS LATER

Chihaya Furukawa hardly ever had a dreamless sleep. Her dreams would be ridden with imageries of the past and her greatest desires. However the girl often wised to have a dreamless sleep. Hence, when she woke up after her "episode" she was shocked and frankly terrified to find herself on a hospital bed with minimal clothes on.

Her vision was still not clear after the whole episode, as she rubbed them vigorously to focus on her surroundings. It couldn't be. Not after all these years. Is it a dream? It has to be a dream right? A myriad of thoughts ran through her mind as she realised her position. She was in a deep soup. Panic began to rise up her throat, as the uncanny familiarity of the pristine white hospital room reminded her of the last place she'd want to be—

Tokyo Metropolitan Cursed Technique college. Her old highschool.

In her feeble attempt, Chihaya endeavoured to run away. Carefully examining the room she found her clothes neatly folded on one of the empty couches, she slowly removed herself from the bedside, clutching onto the blanket to save the residues of her modesty as she tiptoed to her clothes and belongings.

I can't be here.

The young woman did not know what had transpired or how she'd managed to end up in Tokyo of all places. But in her gut she knew that it was her High school that she'd ended up at. There was no way she could forget the place. She remembered it at the back of her hand. However, a tinge of worry regarding her students and Higuchi remained. What happened? How did I end up here?

"Going somewhere?" A rather masculine voice broke her trance, as she froze on her path. Fuck. She should have known. They would have left some rando to look after her.

Chihaya let out a nervous chuckle, slowly turning to meet the man "I was just getting my clo—AH"

The girl shrieked as a tuft of white hair overwhelmed her sight. Her lips parted in sheer surprise, as horror dawned on her expression.

"Gojo Satoru"

"Hello, Chiyo chan" he said with the same old shit eating grin on his face, "Long time no see"

"What are you doing here?" She asked firmly, rather too firmly, almost as if she was reprimanding him for existing.

"Is that how you'd treat your knight in shining armour?" He faked a pout, and a hurt hand to his heart. "After all that I went through for you!"

Obnoxious as ever. Had Chihaya not been in such a sensitive situation, she would definitely roll her eyes.

However at the same time the girl hoped it was a bad dream, a terrible nightmare she would soon wake from. Yet alas, those prayers were futile as Gojo Satoru was standing in flesh infront of her eyes, and she could feel his gaze burrowing into her despite the bandages over his eyes. She knew that fate would bring her at crossroads with those she abandoned all those years ago. However she'd hoped it would be limited to her old close friends Shoko and Utahime. They would have been much easier to deal with albeit she did owe a lot of explanation to everyone. But not in a thousand years did she expect Gojo to be the first one to confront her after eleven years since she last saw him. Let alone when she was practically naked. She tightened the grip around her blanket, her cheeks growing flushed in embarassment.

When the young woman stood transfixed in sheer shock Gojo could only laugh at her state, running his hands through his hair. He walked towards the girl peering down at her, his face much closer to her's.

Chihaya wanted to combust as she felt his breath fanning her cheek, which had warmed into a deep scarlet hue.While her brain unable to process what in the hell was going on.

"Cat caught your tongue, Chiyo chan?" Gojo smiled, as she felt him studying her face intently, "Its a shame, I have to wait till our wedding to see you this flustered" He let out a hearty chuckle.

Wait a minute.

OUR wedding?

Gojo and Me?

Me and THE Gojo Satoru?

Chihaya swore her brain had short circuited with that information. However her lips moved almost instinctively to that information.

"No way in hell am I marrying you" Chihaya spat with the meager courage she had left in her, talking a step away from the much larger man.

Gojo let out a dry laugh. He was amused.

"We'll see about that"

In a matter of seconds, Gojo's finger was positioned on her forehead as she watched him murmur a technique and before she could even realise, Chihaya had dropped unconscious in his arms.

Part 2

Thank you for reading this story, do reblog to support me! I am still learning to use Tumblr so apologies in advance for any mistakes I make! I am open to being guided through comments and dms! Thanks ☺️

#gojo headcanons #gojo sensei #gojo fanfic #gojo fluff #gojo saturo #jjk gojo #gojo satoru x oc #jujutsu kaisen #geto suguru #nanami kento #jjk fanfic #jujutsu kaisen imagines #jujutsu kaisen fluff #gojo smut #sukuna x oc #gojo x reader #gojo satoru x you #gojo satoru x y/n

[ikeromantic]

Mad Dogs

A Mitsuhide Akechi fanfiction. This scene occurs at the start of Ch. 12 in the romantic route! Approx. 2600 words.

First: Mitsuhide and the Maiden

Previous: Keeping Secrets

Mitsuhide sat beside his little mouse, sharing space at the desk in their rooms. A packet of letters sat open in front of him, missives from Kyubei and his distant intelligence network. They were closing in on the shogun’s location. Ashikaga’s hiding spot was down to two holes he might have crawled into. Both had features to recommend them.

Nearness to reliable roads, distance from well-maintained lands. Space to accommodate his collected forces. Mitsuhide closed his eyes in thought.

“I’ll ask for some tea,” his little one said, and gave him a gentle kiss on the cheek.

“I thought I was the mindreader,” he smiled. 

She laughed softly. “Another skill I learned from you, hm?”

Mitsuhide felt a burst of warmth, and would have pulled her into his arms had he not caught the soft chime of bells on the stairs below. His smile turned sharp as he stood, placing himself between the door and his beloved.

“What -” she started to ask, interrupted by the door sliding open and the sound of a harsh, wild laugh.

“Motonari works fast,” Mitsuhide muttered. “This will be our next ally.” He hoped. This meeting was an even bigger risk than Mouri had been.

He heard her whisper under her breath. “I hope we get a cleric. Someone with a lawful alignment, at least.” It was an odd thing to say, but strangely accurate, considering.

“Special delivery,” Motonari called out as he entered the room and presented the figure behind him.

“I assume you’ve called me here to perform your last rites, Mitsuhide Akechi.” Kennyo’s voice was low and smooth. Like an underground river, steadily dissolving the stone. Unstoppable, unchanging. He was as solid as ever, his wide shoulders filled the doorway. His mouth was set in a grim line, and his eyes were twin fires, giving heat but no light.

Mitsuhide met his gaze, acknowledging the shared history of violence between them. “Welcome, Abbot. I have been looking forward to this meeting.”

The chatelaine’s eyes went from Kennyo to Motonari, clearly trying to weigh the greater threat. She lingered on the monk, her eyebrows rising with a flash of recognition.

Mitsuhide wondered what she was thinking. Was it only surprise at seeing the man in person after all the rumors and stories she’d heard about the Abbot? Or did she have yet another secret she hadn’t shared with him? The need to know was a dangerous distraction and he worked to force his attention back to the immediate problem. “My dear, you should wait next door.” 

She stubbornly shook her head. “I’m staying right here.”

He wanted to argue with her but Mouri dismissed the problem of her presence. “Forget the girl, kitsune. Let’s get to business, savvy?”

Kennyo’s glare rolled from Mitsuhide to Motonari. “I am not here for business.” He pulled his prayer staff apart, revealing the slim, sharp blade hidden within. 

Mitsuhide pulled his own sword the second he caught the reflected lamplight in its metallic sheen. It was a good thing he did as he only barely managed to block the Abbot’s strike. “What a very sensible weapon.” He gave the monk a tight smile.

“I am not here to listen to you talk,” Kennyo growled. “I am here to send you to hell where you belong!” His advance was like a boulder coming down the side of a mountain. Inexorable. 

The monk brought the blunt end of his staff up. Mitsuhide caught the blow on the flat of his blade, but the force of it shivered up his arm and left him open. Open to the glistening tip of Kennyo’s sword as it swept toward his throat.

The chatelaine lurched forward, her hands flying up as if to stop the monk’s sword. 

Mitsuhide moved back and the strike that would have killed him only left a small pearl of blood at his throat. His attention wasn’t on the wound or even his near-death blow. It was on his little one, who stood awkwardly in the midst of drawn blades, her hands still extended. “Get back, now,” he shouted, his voice cracking with panic held barely in check.

If she was hurt . . . if . . . he couldn’t finish the thought. His little mouse turned her head to look at him but didn’t follow his order. Mitsuhide grabbed her arm and pulled her behind him and into a corner. With a wall on two sides, leaving him a smaller area to guard.

Kennyo’s scar pulled at his face, twisting the grim smile he now wore. “You are afraid, Akechi. Good. May your death bring a measure of peace to your victims.” The Abbot prepared for another strike. 

Motonari’s shrill laugh split the tense air. “Come on! Yer not tryin’ ta leave me outta the fun, are ya?” He pulled his sword in one hand and his pistol in the other. His grin was manic and feral as he looked between possible targets.

Mitsuhide felt sick with anxiety. Against one madman, he was sure he could keep his little one safe. Against two? And one armed with a pistol? He would need to disarm or kill Mouri first. Kennyo was a deadly opponent, but predictable. The move would leave him open to the monk, but made it less likely that his beloved would be hurt. He shifted his stance, readying himself.

“Thanks fer gettin’ the party started.” Motonari laughed again. “I was feelin’ lonely over here.”

Mitsuhide leapt at Mouri, giving the pirate no time to move into a better position. But Kennyo wasn’t going to wait for his turn. 

The Abbot stepped between Motonari and Mitsuhide, shoving the kitsune warlord back. “I will not be cheated of your death!”

Mouri struck at the monk, forcing Kennyo to turn and block his blade. 

Mitsuhide took advantage of the distraction, knocking the pistol from Motonari’s grip. The sharp edge of his sword left the skin of Mouri’s hand split open and weeping redly. He chanced a look back at his beloved. She hadn’t budged from her spot in the corner. “Run!” Mitsuhide kicked Mouri’s pistol further from him. “Run while you can!”

The pirate laughed even louder, moving as quick as an eel to dodge Kennyo and turn his aggression toward Mitsuhide. 

The chatelaine shook herself from her shock and darted around the edge of the fray. Mitsuhide felt a spike of worry but in a moment she’d reach the door, and safety. But before she was out of danger, she stopped, turned.

Mitsuhide recognized the expression on her face. Naive resolve. That stubborn streak he loved and hated. 

Instead of running, she shoved herself into the middle of the combat. “STOP! Stop fighting this instant!”

Motonari’s cackle rose in volume and pitch as he laughed at her bold - and foolish - move. But Kennyo’s sword armed dropped. 

“That’s right! You heard me! Cut it out!” 

That was perhaps not the best choice of words, Mitsuhide thought. But it seemed to work. At least, it brought a moment of calm as the monk and the pirate watched her. He calculated his next move should they resume the attack. At this distance, he could easily get his little one out the door, though it would leave him painfully open. Worth it, but he’d take a wound or two. Probably not enough to kill him. Not quickly. Plenty of time to take them both down . . .

The chatelaine put her fists to her hips, staring them down. Even Mouri felt the weight of her disapproval. His laughter died off. “You. Are acting like children. I thought this was a meeting of men.” One hand rose, finger extended like a weapon toward the Abbot. “And you! Aren’t you a monk? Attacking your host?” Her voice was hot with outrage. “Where are your manners?”

Kennyo took a step back, his eyes wide. “Are you . . . rebuking me?”

Her lips were set in a firm line, cheeks red with anger. Hot eyes swept Mitsuhide and Mouri up together. “And you! Don’t think this doesn’t apply to you. Did you want help? Or not?”

Had they not had an audience - and a deadly one at that - Mitsuhide would have kissed her. Battle-lust still sang in his veins and all that energy needed an outlet. He could imagine crushing her against the wall, his lips taking hers while his hands tore open that kimono to . . . he coughed. His little one was . . . entirely . . . too distracting.

She seemed oblivious to his thoughts as she crossed her arms. “Well? You have about three seconds to put up your weapons and prove to me that you are men. Otherwise I’ll - I’ll turn this party right around!”

Motonari’s lips turned up in a muted smile, unusual for him. Mitsuhide did not like the light in Mouri’s eyes as he regarded the chatelain. After a long moment of silence, the pirate sheathed his sword and picked his pistol up. 

He put his own blade away and heard Kennyo do the same. He chuckled as she watched them obey her order. “To think, after everything it is you that now lectures me.” He bowed to her and then to his guests.

“Perfect,” she chirped, flashing the three men a tight smile. “I’ll get some tea.”

Mitsuhide could tell by the way she stepped toward the door that she was a breath away from falling over. Her firmness was an act. Convincing, but short-lived. He caught her by the elbow and helped her to the door. 

She leaned against him taking strength from his closeness.

He kissed her cheek and whispered. “I am sorry to put you in danger like that. It seems I - I lost my cool.”

“It’s because of me, isn’t it? You never let anything disturb you before.” Her troubled expression broke his heart.

“No,” he shook his head. “I don’t want you to think about that. My actions are mine alone. Only I bear any blame.” He bit at his lip before continuing. “I couldn’t handle seeing someone pull a weapon so close to you.”

Behind them, Kennyo cleared his throat. “Who is this young girl, Akechi?”

Mitsuhide turned, his arm still around his little mouse. “She is a princess of the Oda, the chatelaine of Azuchi castle and my - my fiancee.”

“Your . . .” The Abbot’s expression was one of surprise. His hard eyes focused on the chatelaine. “Young lady. I have a question for you.”

Motonari leaned back on the wall, looking as if this had been the outcome he wanted all along. “Finally ready to talk, eh?”

“Quiet. I’m not speaking to you.” Kennyo’s gaze did not waver. “Why are you here, girl? With Mitsuhide Akechi on the dawn of his march against the shogun?”

With a deep breath, the chatelaine stood up straight, removing herself from the warmth and support Mitsuhide offered. She met the Abbot’s eyes without flinching. “Officially, I’m here to get in Mitsuhide’s way. To stop him from being reckless.” She smiled wistfully. “At least, that’s my job until the battle starts. But up to that moment, I plan to be by his side.”

“I see.” Kennyo’s gravelled voice sounded uncertain, a tone that rarely came from the demon-monk. 

“If you’re done talking to my lit - ah, my fiancee, I’d like to speak with you about my proposal,” Mitsuhide interrupted.

The Abbot’s expression hardened. “I have put down my weapon at the request of this young woman. Do not take that for interest in whatever game you play, kitsune.”

Mitsuhide glanced at Mouri in annoyance. “I had hoped your former ally would put a little more effort into persuading you.”

“Pfft. Be thankful I even brought ‘im,” Motonari snorted.

Kennyo’s squared his shoulders. “I am leaving. Be warned that when I see you again, I will not show mercy.”

“Please. A moment more, Abbot Kennyo.” Mitsuhide thought courtesy and respect would buy him just a little more time to soften the monk to his plot. “You have reason to disdain an alliance with me, but you share a need to see the shogun dead.”

The Abbot raised one eyebrow.

“Your follower, the one killed in the Azuchi dungeons?” Mitsuhide assumed Kennyo would remember the recent loss. He saw the Abbot give a slight nod. “He was murdered on Ashikaga’s orders. Yoshiaki used that death to try and make it seem that you and I were connected.”

Kennyo’s low growl sounded more demon than man. 

The chatelaine nodded agreement. “Yes, that’s right. He admitted it at Honno-ji.”

Mitsuhide watched the Abbot carefully. This was delicate work. “That death came after days of gruesome torture as he was forced to lie, and falsely confess we were allies.”

“Why . . . why are you telling me what I already know?” The words tore from the Abbot’s throat, a rumble of warning like the snarl of a rabid dog.

This would either win him to their side or provoke a renewed attack. Mitsuhide took a small step forward, just to make sure he could easily push his little one out the door if it came to that. “What other agents of yours might the shogun already know about? Perhaps another spy in the Oda forces? One my informants tell me is currently pursuing the shogun as we speak?” The image of bright, troubled eyes and a sweet smile accompanied the words as Mitsuhide thought on the subject of their discussion. 

The Abbot’s expression shifted to one of surprise and barely suppressed rage.

Yes. Now they had him. Mitsuhide kept his expression neutral. “I am right, am I not? Your faithful pet, the one you snuck into Azuchi some time ago . . . he is the one you’ve set to hunt the shogun.”

Mouri chuckled. “Damn. You even know about the kid, huh?”

“You hellspawn,” Kennyo rumbled. He grabbed Mitsuhide by his clothes and lifted him up as if to shake him. 

Mitsuhide knew he’d won this round. “Perhaps? But as you may know, my memory is quite poor. I find myself often confused . . . forgetting all kinds of things . . .” The Abbot had only to accept his defeat now. “I suspect that as long as I have proper allies in my fight against the shogun, this little detail will have quite escaped me by the time I return to Azuchi.”

Kennyo did shake him then. Still refusing to see the inevitable conclusion of this meeting.

“Abbot . . . tell me, didn’t you come tonight because your own fight against Ashikaga was going harder than you expected? Didn’t you wish for some assistance? Be honest with yourself, if not with me.”

Motonari straightened. “Come on, Kennyo. It’s not like yer marryin’ the kitsune. This is all just temporary. We can kill Akechi the second we put the shogun down.”

“You are both vile men.” The Abbot lowered Mitsuhide to the ground and released his grip.

“An’ vicious, mad, bloodthirsty,” Mouri went on, his grin widening until his teeth shone.

Mitsuhide straightened his clothes. “Yes. We are all birds of a feather. And to kill a man who barely grants others their place as fellow humans, it falls to monsters like ourselves.”

 Kennyo’s nod of agreement was barely a tilt of his chin. “Do not expect camaraderie from me. The moment the shogun’s head leaves his neck, I will again seek Nobunaga’s life. And yours.” The twin fires of his eyes burned like banked coals.

“Your terms are accepted. Now. We have much planning to do.” At that, the three sat on the floor, together, but apart. Hands near weapons, tense shoulders, and terse words.

“I’ll ah, go get that tea then,” the chatelaine mumbled. 

Mitsuhide flashed her a small smile. He was so proud of her. And so troubled by her. How could one little mouse leave him such a mess?

Next: Unexpected Gifts

#ikemen sengoku #ikesen mitsuhide #ikesen motonari #ikesen kennyo #Mitsuhide Akechi #otome boys #otome #fanfiction #fanfic

[musashi]

Give us the jessie bpd rant

JESSIE TEAMROCKET HAS BORDERLINE PERSONALITY DISORDER: A POST

[Paraphrased behaviours. I’m not a psychologist I just read the DSM-5 for fun. This is not a diagnostic tool, but if you identify with this post maybe look into some actual ones and learn some fun stuff about yourself.]

Identity problems, an unstable sense of self.

Jessie describes herself as adaptable, someone who can fit in anywhere, and this is indeed one of her strengths! She doesn’t let a lack of experience or qualifications discourage her because she believes that she can shift and change to suit her environment, and she’s right!

It’s also a major weakness of hers, though. Jessie in her element (when she’s her true self) is loud, confident, assertive, and bold. However, whenever she 'imprints’ on someone she throws her true personality aside entirely--buries it under the facade of someone who is malleable, softspoken, easy to be around, does whatever they can to make the person they love choose them. This trait of hers, and how it’s a fault, is a MAJOR plot point in XY063.

there’s a scene early on in this episode where she’s partially paralyzed from a stun spore, and Dr. White, the man who saved her from drowning, feeds her a berry to fix it. She poses triumphantly with her arms in the air and shouts ‘THAT DID THE TRICK!’ then realizes she’s being too loud around an attractive man and immediately throws her hands over her mouth, trying to stop more words from coming. It’s an incredibly effective way of showing how contradictory Jessie is when she imprints on someone. The Jessie we know would never even think of second guessing how much room she takes up in the world. 

In this episode, Jessie has feelings for Dr. White, and she completely buries her personality to make herself a silent, sweet, softspoken housewife in the hopes that he’ll fall in love with her. Dr. White instead falls for his childhood friend, a loud, rude, brash girl who likes to fight, calls him a wimp and tells him to fuck off when he presses her buttons.

The tragedy of this episode is that Jessie is forced to confront this about herself--this way she shifts and changes to keep people near may very likely have caused her to lose something here. She’s forced to reckon with the idea that if she had just been herself, he might have loved her back. Not in spite of her personality, but because of it. 

In Borderlines, this trait is often a survival mechanism, driven entirely BY:

A debilitating fear of potential abandonment, perceived or based in past trauma.

Jessie’s childhood trauma, though not often discussed, hinges entirely on her abandonment issues. She was given up to foster care around kindergarten age, which was long enough to learn to love her mother before never getting to see her again. Jessie’s implied to have been a deeply lonely child who never had a family to call her own, and who didn’t fit in with any other girls her age because she was too poor to afford even basic food and couldn’t keep up.

When Jessie opens up about her love life, she doesn’t go into specifics, only mentioning that it’s been full of nothing but heartbreak thus far. She’s an unreliable narrator, always, but when she’s inviting pity on herself it’s almost always manipulation to gain something, and these moments don’t seem to have that element. When she talks about her love life in EP100, it’s very carefully accented with this image:

In her adolescence, Jessie tried to center herself around her passions, pursuing them whenever she was handed the opportunity. Frequently, though, she’d find herself meeting people and growing attached to them, and would eventually reach a crossroads where she forced herself to choose between the people she cared about and the goals she chased relentlessly.

The biggest example of this is DP073, where she chooses to stay and train to be an idol, rather than to travel with the boy she’s in love with.

She ends up not passing her audition, losing both him and her shot at her career. This starts Jessie’s descent into compulsively abandoning/parting ways with everyone in her life in an attempt to control how people exit her story. The only way to prevent yourself from being abandoned with 100% certainty is, of course, to leave them before they can leave you.

This kinda blends into the next point, which is:

Instability in personal relationships.

As previously mentioned, Jessie has a tendency to leave people behind & sever ties. It’s only speculation on my part, but it would make sense that she does this because she has been left behind in so many regards and by so many people she loved, it’s the only way she feels she can take control of this phenomenon.

People who watched a lot of OS back in the day, but don’t necessarily keep up with the series much now, will famously circulate Jessie’s speech to the Ghost of Maiden Rock in EP020. The maiden was a woman who died waiting for her lover who was out at sea, and since her death her spirit’s remained on the cliffside in the hopes that he would come home. Jessie shoots the ghost of the maiden with a fucking bazooka half her height and says this:

This is lauded by 90s kids everywhere as a #GirlPower speech about how Jessie don’t need no man (which is true), but it’s actually, like... kinda tragic? She hates the ghost of the maiden because she sees herself in it, and she takes the opportunity to proclaim that what she sees of herself makes her sick to look at. This speech she gives is so aggressively out of nowhere and so long and rambling that you have no choice but to read it as deeply personal. She just short of confirms that you can’t leave Jessie because Jessie leaves FIRST.

And you GET to see this in action. Jessie struggles so hard with loyalty. In ALL her relationships! Literally all of them. Every time something shakes up her foundation with a person in her life, she hardlocks herself into run run RUN mode because there’s a slight chance they might leave her and she CANNOT have that.

It was shown in the most explicit detail in the side story about what she was like in training, where Jessie’s inability to stay beside various partners in Team Rocket is literally the trait that defined her to everyone in the organization.

There’s even a beautifully symbolic shot in the beginning of that episode where she abandons her 12th partner, and kneels down while the world literally collapses behind her.

In DP073, when Jessie sees her Dustox has fallen in love with another Dustox, she demands that Dustox leave despite the pokemon hesitating. She doesn’t let Dustox control that scenario--Jessie crushes her pokeball and demands she migrate with her mate.

When Meowth dips on her and James to work food service because he finds it more rewarding, Jessie doesn’t try to fight it, instead focuses her energy on also leaving her teammates in her dust because at least she can get out of there and move on before James abandons her.

When she realizes White loves another girl, she doesn’t bother to even say goodbye to him, she just leaves wordlessly with nothing in her wake but a bouquet of daisies, and when she remembers that oh right, her wobbuffet is also in love with White’s own--

She tries to leave him, too.

You can’t fire Jessie. Jessie quits.

This is the in-depth, analytical part of me Diagnosing Her. Everything else she exhibits is far more General and really doesn’t need a trained eye:

Instability in one’s goals, aspirations, or career: Jessie has a steady job in Team Rocket, but is constantly picking up side-hustles and being distracted by passions like acting, performing, contests, and the like. She’s left Team Rocket entirely before to pursue Contests, only to return almost immediately. (DP117)

Difficulty controlling the range/intensity of one’s emotional responses: Long past the Slapstick Days of the original series, Jessie’s still incredibly prone to outbursts. It’s not just anger--she reacts equally strongly when she’s sad, happy, lovestruck, anything. I have used this exact phrasing before, but Jessie doesn’t feel her emotions, she becomes them.

Poor impulse control: Kind goes hand-in-hand with the above.

Engaging in dangerous/risky/self-harming activities with no concern to personal limitations: This applies to all of Team Rocket, but Jessie seems to take it a step further in thinking she’s invincible. She’ll throw herself headfirst into anything, rarely backs down from a fight, and often has trouble taking rest days even when she needs them because she lacks self-preservation.

Hair-trigger temper: lol yeah.

Unstable emotions/mood swings: lol YEAH, Jessie will be crying one minute, screaming the next, immediately fine. She can cycle the whole spectrum of human emotion before you can finish a sentence.

Idealization & Imprinting: Jessie frequently rushes into relationships based entirely on the idea of a person, not grounded in reality. She becomes attached to people incredibly easy at times, willing to throw her entire life thus far away to run away with someone she’s just met.

Living entirely in the moment, unable to comprehend the past/future: Jessie prefers to go with the flow and, as previously mentioned, adapt if things don’t turn out in her favour. If something doesn’t work out for her, she immediately will turn in the other direction and start toward whatever’s there.

This post is so long and I could probably make it longer but I’m gonna stop here. My credentials are I’m an Incredibly Powerful Jessie Kinnie who has BPD herself as well as an autistic who’s special interest is the pokemon anime and team rocket specifically fdhdfghg.

IN CONCLUSION,

#long post #wendy rambles #pokemeta #im actually done apologizing for putting long fucking posts on your dash #oh god i have to source this #ok um #os #ag #dp #xy #ep020 #ep100 #ep224 #hs012 #dp073 #dp117 #xy063 #shinxchu #wendy answers #this is an ask but tumblr's formatting is fucking up rn???

[highladyluck]

“Magic Dagger Curse Is My Middle Name” & Human Evil in Wheel of Time

Part 2 of a series of essays on the theme “Tuon is Mat’s Replacement Shadar Logoth Dagger”. (Part 1 was “Stealing Is The Way to Mat Cauthon’s Heart”.)

This discusses the many parallels Tuon has to Mat’s dagger on a symbolic level, covering both her and her role as leader of Seanchan. But mostly, I talk an extraordinary amount about how the Shaido, Whitecloaks, and Seanchan reflect the archetypal in-universe human evil of Shadar Logoth.

Magic Dagger Curse Is My Middle Name

Tuon Athaem Kore Paendrag (now Fortuona Athaem Devi Paendrag) has a lot of names, and I'd found puns or references in most of them. There's the "Lady Luck" pun of "Empress Fortuona". There's the very appropriate "Kore" (Persephone's and Tuon's pre-kidnapping moniker, meaning "Maiden") for a girl who gets kidnapped and dragged through both the human underworld (a circus, and a dive bar that's literally called a hell) and the death-related underworld (a literal ghost town full of ghosts, and the hell of guerilla warfare). There's "Devi", a reference to divinity, which replaces "Kore". Paendrag is of course an Arthurian legend reference.

But the one name I never quite understood was her only other permanent name- "Athaem". The 13th Depository Blog suggests it was meant to evoke both "athame" - a knife or dagger used in magic rituals - and "anathema" - a curse, especially one that exiles someone. Go on, let that sink in. Tuon's middle name is "Magic Dagger Curse". Tuon "Magic Dagger Curse" Paendrag. Fortuona "Magic Dagger Curse" Paendrag. I CANNOT EMPHASIZE ENOUGH THAT TUON'S ACTUAL MIDDLE NAME HAS ACTUALLY BEEN "MAGIC DAGGER CURSE" THIS ENTIRE TIME.

Basically that's all I actually need to say here to prove that Tuon is the symbolic return of Mat's sexy cursed magic dagger that isolates the bearer via paranoia and suspicion, but let's throw in some of the other parallels just for fun and so you have time to recover from the psychic damage I just dealt you. There's some fun ones just around rubies specifically and the color red.

The Shadar Logoth dagger has a large dark ruby on it, the size of Mat's thumbnail. Mat estimates it would buy a dozen farms back home, and when Mat first meets Tuon, he notices she's 'wearing a fortune in rubies'. Also, before she becomes Empress, Tuon's signature color is red; she's got red fingernails, red and a very dark green are the imperial colors as seen on the Deathwatch guards, she buys a lot of red silk in Jurador, and presumably the roses in the Raven and Roses imperial sign are red, as she treasures Mat's present of red silk rosebuds. (Interestingly, she starts going more blue once she becomes Empress- I'm thinking specifically of the blue nails and dress she has when she declares maritime Ebou Dar her capital.)

Tuon also has other physical similarities to edged weapons in general, and the dagger specifically. Like the dagger, she looks ornamental but could absolutely kill you. Mat describes her hands as "bladed like an ax" when she strikes a footpad in the throat to save him. She's also sharp, in the sense of being very intelligent and canny. Also, she could learn to channel, and in being a sul'dam is a conduit for magic, so she fits that aspect of the dagger as well. And, last but not least, like the dagger, Tuon is a fascinating and deadly artifact of a powerful civilization that embraces a uniquely human form of evil.

Shadar Logoth as Ultimate Human Evil

In the books, Shadar Logoth is our loadstone for what is described as a specifically human kind of evil, separate from the absolute, somewhat abstracted "evil for evil's sake" that is the province of the Dark One. The Dark One's ideology as practiced by humans ends up being nihilism, or rather, self-interested nihilism. (Ishamael isn't a pure nihilist, he's ok with getting worldly power while there's still a world.) In contrast, Shadar Logoth's downfall is a kind of corruption; evil things done in the name of, and for the sake of, good things. There are other cultures that do that, of course, but Shadar Logoth is the purest example of 'the ends justify the means', since their 'end' was fighting the Dark One.

"The victory of the Light is all. That was the battlecry Mordeth gave them, and the men of Aridhol shouted it while their deeds abandoned the Light. [...] No enemy had come to Aridhol but Aridhol. Suspicion and hate had given birth to something that fed on that which created it, something locked in the bedrock on which the city stood." -Moiraine, The Eye of the World

The goal of opposing the Dark One (an abstract idea of evil) at any cost led them to turn on and destroy not just their allies but ultimately each other.

Mat's Shadar Logoth dagger is a part of Shadar Logoth that has most of the powers of the whole. When carried by an individual, it can brainwash, induce (semi-justified) paranoia, kill via corruption, and infect others. These are all powers associated with Aridhol/Shadar Logoth. About the only thing the dagger can't do that we see other elements of Shadar Logoth do is shapechange or snatch bodies (#JustMordethThings) and move semi-instinctually on its own (like Mashadar). Shadar Logoth is established as Peak Human Evil, an evil so archetypal it has undergone a sort of dark apotheosis and become both a physical and metaphysical force.

Because it is so archetypal, we should expect to see aspects of it reflected in other Randland cultures that are antagonistic to our heroes, but which are not explicitly pledged to the Dark One.  We should also expect to see the same part to whole dynamic in those cultures' leaders. Rand is a great example of this part-to-whole dynamic; as the Dragon Reborn who is 'one with the land', he struggles against increasing paranoia and self-hatred, which leads him to act as his own antagonist for much of the series, even as he explicitly fights against the Dark One. It's the Shadar Logoth struggle writ large. Therefore, the leader of a corrupted, Shadar Logoth-esque culture will be a powerful and faithful representative of the traits of that culture; you could say they are the purest expression of that culture.

This is a tenet of Robert Jordan's worldbuilding and narrative, and applies to more than just the antagonist leaders; protagonist leaders also stand in practically and symbolically for their culture or group. Over the course of the series, nations and groups end up led by the 'best' people for the job, where 'best' is some combination of 'most representative', 'most competent', and/or 'best adhering to their culture's ethical tenets' (which often happen to be our protagonists). This has the possibly unintended/unconscious effect of justifying autocracy, monarchy, etc in-world because it's all adhering to aristocracy, 'rule by the best', where 'best' is rather culturally relative. It's also an artifact in-universe of the world moving to a wartime footing; anyone who isn't the best person for the job gets tossed out of the way in the name of prepping for Tarmon Gai'don, by some combination of The Will of The Pattern as well as actual effort on the part of our heroes.

On a more meta level, Robert Jordan's choice to use third person limited points of view means we get a lot of POV characters who are very embedded in their cultures and serve as an immersive cultural crash course for the reader. They tend to be either main or secondary characters who are movers and shakers in the plot (justifying the time we spend in their heads) or there to provide an outsider reaction to main or secondary characters (again, justifying the time we spend in their heads.) Robert Jordan's writing is concerned with the use, abuse, and fluctuations of power, but it's worth noting that he doesn't give us POVs of characters who are structurally and permanently without power.

POV characters often have moments of powerlessness, either in the beginning of their narratives or at the end, but if you happen to be a WoT character who never had power and never will, RJ isn't interested in showing us the inside of your head. For example, we don't ever get a POV from an ordinary da'covale who spends the entire series out of control of their own destiny, even though that could be a very powerful outsider perspective. Instead, we get POVs from sojhin, who are movers and shakers in their own right. (These are great POVs--Karede's POV in chapter 36 of KOD is maybe my favorite of the entire series, it's a work of art--but again, there's a bias here in who we observe observing.) In a series where people bemoan or celebrate being constrained by fate and consciously question if they have free will, we somehow don't hear from those who have never had worldly power; we only hear from those who do, or once did.

(I find this disappointing, and it's one of the reasons I find it difficult to recommend the Wheel of Time books- which are obviously deeply personally significant to me, and which I find fun, interesting, and more often than not, well-written- without caveats. The series is so obviously about power and choice and the ways they influence each other, and uses third person limited POV so skillfully, that it is surprising and disturbing to me that we are not exposed directly to the point of view of those who have been permanently and structurally deprived of power. We miss an opportunity to engage with the core themes on that level, and also uncover an authorial bias that hasn't aged very well and which makes me look at some of RJ's other choices with a more jaundiced eye. I believe WoT would have been stronger and richer thematically if it had grappled directly with the realities and perspectives of those who remained powerless throughout the events of the series. And whether it was an unconscious or deliberate choice to leave out those perspectives, not having them there lessens my trust and acceptance of Robert Jordan's takes on power and choice. But I digress!)

Heirs of Shadar Logoth: The Shaido

So, there are other antagonist cultures that we spend a lot of time with but which are not explicitly allied with the Dark One (though we are always shown their leaders being subject to the Dark One's influence, through their advisors and high-ranking coworkers, who are Darkfriend characters that have positions of structural power and influence.) Overall, the Shadar Logoth archetype means we are looking for structural corruption, fear, hatred, and the cultural belief that the ends justify the means. In-universe, that's what human evil looks like, and we expect to find it in our secondary antagonists.

So let's take a look at the Shaido, who are attempting to recapture a glorious (fictional) past by imposing a corrupted version of their original values on others; the Whitecloaks, who spread authoritative dehumanization and bigotry in the name of order and righteousness; and the Seanchan, who have the dubious distinction of doing *both*, which is why they win the door prize for Most Problematic Antagonist Who Isn't Literally Allied With The Dark One.

The Shaido are an example of a corrupted culture that imposes its corruption on others, especially others that do not meaningfully consent to be assimilated. Their corruption starts with suspicion and fear and leads to brainwashing; they choose to believe a lie because it is more palatable than the truth, and because they fear becoming powerless and losing their cultural identity. They and the Aiel that joined them cannot accept Rand's truth bomb about the origins of the Aiel as pacifists. It's an idea so counter to modern Aiel self-image and culture that the secret was carefully hidden and used as a test of character for Aiel leaders.

In the test, the knowledge that they had betrayed their original ideals to survive was presented in the original emotional and logistical contexts, which may have helped the Aiel who went through the test survive learning about it; it's easier to empathize and overcome fear and disgust if you know why people made the decisions they did. To survive, and to self-govern, the honor-bound Aiel leadership has learned to forgive themselves for their corruption, while not losing the lessons they learned from it, and empathize with people almost entirely unlike themselves. (How effective are they at that? Your mileage may vary.)

Normally, only those who could accept the information could reach the highest leadership roles. Sevanna, whom the Shaido exodus coalesces under after the death of Couladin, is the only Wise One who didn't go through that testing process (she got in on a technicality), which makes her uniquely qualified to lead the group that can't accept this information. Like that group, she lacks humility or the ability to accept unpleasant truths; however, she's self-confident, politically skilled, culturally competent, and has a clear vision for her people, which are the other qualities that the Aiel select for in their leaders. (I cannot believe that today I woke up and said nice things about Sevanna!)

She's presented as somewhat 'corrupted' by wetlander ways, greedy for wealth and power, but I think it's more that she's off the leash of strict Aiel morality; she goes on a reign of terror, taking more than she needs of any resource, and capturing non-Aiel and keeping them as permanent gai'shain. This is clearly slavery in a more modern sense. The Aiel proper have a sort of ancient-style slavery, based on taking prisoners of war, that is time-bound, highly regulated, and that everybody more or less consents to by living in that society. (I say more-or-less; not sure your average civilian Aiel precisely consents the way a warrior might consent, but then again, everyone in Aiel society is a little bit of a warrior.) Sevanna's unconsenting, permanent, non-Aiel gai'shain are a clear violation of all of these tenets, and resemble the bodysnatching and invasive nature of the Shadar Logoth evil. Fear turns into hatred of both kinds of uncorrupted Aiel (the originals, and the modern) and of those groups of people who are not like them. In the end, the Shaido dissolve, their corruption having weakened them so that they fall prey to outside forces.

Heirs of Shadar Logoth: The Children of the Light/Whitecloaks

The Whitecloaks are an obvious heir to Shadar Logoth, as they persecute channelers and anyone they consider a Darkfriend in the name of order, righteousness, and the Light. Whitecloaks represent the paranoia, assassination, and brainwashing powers of Shadar Logoth, and insofar as they have assimilated Amadicia and make forays across borders, they also cover invasion, though to perhaps a smaller degree than the Shaido (or the Seanchan). The Whitecloaks are also good intentions, corrupted; yes, Darkfriends are bad, yes, the Light is good, no, not everyone you don't like or who has power you want is a Darkfriend! They turn neighbor against neighbor, harrass, torture, and murder the innocent as well as the guilty, and generally do all the bad behavior you would expect of a military quasi-religious order that considers itself above the law. Also, Mordeth/Fain literally got his grubby hands all over the Whitecloaks early in the story and made them even worse.

Galad is a really good example of the 'best man for the job' ending up in it; Galad's extremely uncompromising morality is most likeable and practical when he's fulfilling a 'reformer' role in a group that really needs it, and when he's not in that role, his entire deal can feel excessive and alienating. (Although I will note that if you think about how his mom abandoned him to pursue what she was told was her duty, and his dad was a real asshole, you can kind of see why Galad has such a strict moral code and won't let something like family or feelings get in the way of carrying out his duty... anyway just having feelings about Galad, don't mind me.) When leading the Whitecloaks he recalls them to their original ideals and purpose, which is literally fighting the Shadow on an actual battlefield, and makes them hew to ethical standards from the original Lothair Mantelear text and his own personal extremely high standards.

He purifies the Children of the Light, insofar as they can be purified, purging the corrupt people and practices. This allows the Whitecloaks to ally with the Light, rather than sitting out the Last Battle or killing important Light-allied groups. But the Whitecloak channelerphobia is not going to be eradicated so easily, and that's mostly what Galad’s family was objecting to about him joining the Whitecloaks in the first place. And even Galad starts to succumb to it by the end of the series, although to be fair the White Tower had definitely done a number on his family by that point. Post-Last-Battle, Galad is really going to have to grapple with 'what is the practical purpose of a bunch of armed busybodies who think they're better than everyone else and who have a very deep-seated hatred and fear of channelers?' One hopes he'll convert them to a peaceable monastic order doing community service. If anyone can do it, it's probably Galad, but I think it's not going to be easy and it's also not clear to me if Galad is going to have the same opinion about the necessity that I do.

Heirs of Shadar Logoth: The Seanchan

So, now we come to the Seanchan, who are a rich, complex, fascinating culture that combines the best and worst thematic elements of both the Shaido and the Whitecloaks. Twice the fun, twice the flavor! Like the Shaido, they are the corruption of an honor-based culture that now assimilates other people and cultures without their consent. The Seanchan have a strongly-held honor system that uses public and private shame as a deterrent to unethical behavior, similar to ji'e'toh, but like the Shaido, they apply it to conquered peoples under duress; even if the Seanchan themselves are ok living this way, there's no real consent happening when they conquer.

Like the Shaido, the Seanchan claim to be the true heirs of an ancient legacy, the children of the child of Artur Hawkwing, but have spent enough time in Seanchan to absorb all sorts of concepts Artur Hawkwing never had (slavery, taming weird beasties, exploiting Aes Sedai rather than just avoiding or fighting them). Their culture is also built on convenient fictions; the knowledge that sul'dam can learn to channel, and that some can be held by the a'dam, is likely to produce a truth bomb down the line, one way or another. And the Seanchan are an imperial power, which means they automatically follow the natural growth and rules of empire; always be expanding, always be consuming, always be exploiting. They're Mashadar, baby!

Let's zoom in on the slavery, since that's one prong of what makes the Seanchan evil. It's a kind of bodysnatching and brainwashing, and there are some really interesting parallels here to the Shaido and Aiel. The Seanchan have three forms of institutional slavery; so'jhin, da'covale, and damane. So'jhin, hereditary upper servants of the upper class, have the most power and are analogous but not precisely equivalent to normal Aiel gai'shain. Like standard gai'shain, they are considered property that can be traded, have some level of autonomy and ability to direct their lives, certain rights and privileges, and in theory can be manumitted.

Unlike gai'shain, they actually can have more political power than free people. Also unlike gai'shain, they are not guaranteed manumission after a set time, and while I think the gai'shain consent issue is a little muddy (Aiel can't help being born Aiel and thus subject to Aiel raids) so'jhin are born into slavery and have therefore absolutely not consented to it. So'jhin appear to be based at least partially on Byzantine examples of high-ranking slaves, and slavery in other very complex and bureaucratic cultures where those in power needed highly competent administrators, but didn't want the administrators supplanting them.

Da'covale are equivalent to Shaido gai'shain; often (but not always) captured from other cultures, absent the rights and privileges of regular gai'shain or so'jihn, and bound to involuntary servitude for life, although they can in theory be manumitted. (Shaido gai'shain have the option of trying to escape, I guess.) They have very little autonomy and power to direct their lives. It may be possible for da'covale to become so'jihn, so again there is a kind of internal mobility/potential access to power that doesn't have an exact equivalent with the Aiel models, but that's offset by the lack of consent; da'covale can also be born into slavery. One can be made da'covale as punishment for defiance or anything else the Seanchan see as a crime, or born into it. It seems historically equivalent to ancient, prisoner-of-war-type slavery, mixed with the carcereal state; you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or you fucked up, and that's the justification for making you a slave.

Damane have some points in common with both regular Aiel and Shaido versions of dat'sang; they are all slavery in the form of the carcereal state/slavery as an outcome of the justice system. Dat'sang are 'despised ones', usually those accused of being Darkfriends or who have committed heinous crimes. It's a punishment that is apparently permanent and unrecallable, and they are sentenced to the most shaming labor in the worst conditions. They are cast-out from the community and forced to serve it in the most degrading way. Marath'damane, channelers with the spark who are not leashed, are treated like dat'sang are, in that they are cast out of their communities and shamed for their 'crimes'. Once they are leashed, though, they become integral parts of Seanchan society and are told to take pride in the service they can provide, which is very unlike the dat'sang cultural experience. Damane are enslaved and exploited for their talents, ostensibly to keep the general population safe from their magic powers and their potential political power, but also because they're an incredibly powerful military and infrastructure resource.

The first damane was created out of a combination of fear, greed, and hatred. One Seanchan-local Aes Sedai captured a rival and brought her to Luthair Paendrag, who she knew would be receptive to constraining the power of channelers. What she didn't count on was that solution being institutionalized, and that she'd eventually fall prey to it herself; a classic Shadar Logoth "do a shitty thing unto others and eventually you'll just be doing a shitty thing to yourself" move. Both the existing Seanchan population and Luthair's group had already othered, hated, and feared channelers, the Seanchan possibly for logical contextual reasons (seems like the Seanchan Aes Sedai were all independent Americans who didn't want to be governed by a universal code of ethics or subject to institutional oversight, which is not conducive to living in a society), and Luthair because of Ishamael’s original corruption of Artur Hawkwing.

In the end, the combined Luthair group/original Seanchan institutionalized their channeler bigotry, saying that the ends (preventing channelers from exploiting non-channelers) justified the means (exploiting channelers). Damane are never, ever freed and now the Seanchan think of channeling independently as inherently a corruption and a crime; something that makes the involuntary channeler evil and unhuman. They also break channelers, brainwashing them into thinking that this is for their own good (and not just for the good of the state).

(Another meta aside: Because involuntarily channeling is a genetic trait that the channeler has no control over, leashing damane feels to a modern reader, especially US ones, I think, very much like the race-based slavery of our recent past. Especially the idea that the enslaved person is enslaved as a punishment for a crime; this is something that would hit a US reader pretty hard, given that the US's booming prison population is the only legal slave labor force in the US and is also disproportionately made up of people of color. I am pretty sure that explicit parallels between racist slavery and the practice of leashing damane would be supported by Robert Jordan, especially since he literally put the Seanchan on post-apocalyptic North and South America. They have other influences, including Imperial Japan and Imperial China, and the Byzantine Empire, but in this way, and also because of the Texas accents, they are very, very American.)

The Seanchan are also similar to the Whitecloaks; they're both military groups who hate and fear channelers, and they are particularly susceptible to paranoia and assassination/extrajudicial murder. The Shadow didn't have any trouble infliltrating either the Whitecloak command structure (especially the Questioners) or the Seanchan Blood; there's a certain background level of 'the ends justify the means' going on in Seanchan and Whitecloak power centers that makes them fertile ground for recruitment. The Whitecloaks and the Seanchan both have a kind of secret police; Questioners and Seekers (they even have similar names!) who operate under certain strictures with respect to their upper management, but who can basically do whatever the hell they want to ordinary people. And I'm sure I don't need to tell you that secret police are PEAK Shadar Logoth; they were always judging everyone else, generating paranoia and mistrust.

The Blood and Imperial family are also a really great example of Shadar Logoth values creating a (somewhat) functioning society full of extremely fucked-up people; the more power you have, the more delicately you have to step and the harder you have to watch your own back. The higher up you go, the less trust you are able to have in others, until you reach the point where people are sending assassins after an imperial baby, and the imperial baby grows up thinking that's completely normal and fair and it's their fault if they are ever not good enough to dodge it. (Hi, sorry, please excuse me and my many, many feelings about Tuon.) That kind of thing makes you very, very sharp, assuming you survive; it also makes you very inured to violence and most comfortable when you've got a high baseline paranoia going at all times. It puts you in danger and it gives you the means to survive danger; it's very Shadar Logoth dagger, which attracts Darkfriends but also gives you the ability to sense the Darkfriends right back, and incidentally stab the hell out of them.

A Part With the Power of the Whole: Tuon and the Seanchan

So, we have all the sins of Shadar Logoth united in the Seanchan; they're invaders, they brainwash and bodysnatch, they're paranoid, they assassinate and murder, they've institutionalized hate and fear, they're structurally corrupt in that power in their society is based on lies and exploitation, and they think that when it comes to dealing with their mortal enemies (channelers), the ends justify the means. And their leader, Fortuona Athaem Devi Paendrag, Empress of Seanchan, is indeed many of these things wrapped up in one efficient and deadly package.

She's a sul'dam and she enjoys her work breaking and training damane; she's had siblings assassinated and we've seen her kill onscreen; she's deeply suspicious, always second-guessing and skeptical (except about received values and information from her culture); she embodies and enforces Seanchan culture and power. She is all Seanchan in one person, and she'd tell you that proudly. She tries to assimilate *herself* into the state, because she thinks that's what she's supposed to do, to best serve her people. She wants to be the part that is an exact mirror of the whole, and she wants the whole to be perfect, so she wants herself to be perfect, too.

Do you see the shades of Galad, here? Like Galad, she has a strict and impractically idealistic moral code that makes her somewhat unpopular wherever she goes; she's too unpredictable, merciful, and flexible for her counterparts in the Blood (she's always surprising them with her unconventional choices) and too perfectly Seanchan for her allies (who are all horrified by the damane thing, or the da'covale thing, or the assassination thing, etc etc.) The things people grudgingly praise her for are sincerity, competence, compassion within the bounds of her ethical structure, and (sometimes) a willingness to consider new information or accept oversight, the last of which is only impressive because of how enormous her ego is and how thoroughly she's been indoctrinated to believe she's inherently correct and all-powerful.

She is the best of Seanchan, within the context of Seanchan: she survived, took, and kept power, making her the most competent imperial daughter; she's very ethical within Seanchan strictures, not striking first unless threatened, working to acknowledge and correct personal faults, keeping her word, showing concern and mercy for those she believes are suffering, being thoughtful and careful of consequences when she exercises power; she is most representative of all of Seanchan's flaws and virtues, as a sul'dam, Empress, and Lightside ally. (That said: is Tuon the most ethical Seanchan within a broader cultural context? Hell no, that's Egeanin, who goes through a long and painful process of realizing and rejecting the corrupt and nasty parts of Seanchan culture, after it rejects her.)

To conclude: just like Mat's Shadar Logoth dagger, Tuon is a fascinating and dangerous tool of a powerful, antagonistic civilization that embraces a uniquely human form of evil. Her middle name is literally "Magic Knife Curse", Seanchan is the most Shadar Logoth-y of non-Shadow-aligned antagonist cultures, and she also follows the very Robert Jordan pattern of leaders fractally reflecting the culture or group they lead.

#wheel of time #wheel of time meta #meta #shadar logoth dagger #tuon paendrag #problematic fave tuon #tuon is mat's replacement shadar logoth dagger #part 2 #shaido #whitecloaks #children of the light #galad #galad demodred #sevanna #I'm sorry this is 9 pages long in a word document #I had a lot of thoughts

[heyyyharry]

Chapter 16: Night Before the Battle

(from ‘The Winter and The Crown’)

…in which Harry accompanies Y/N to meet the other queen.

Word count: 3.6k

AU: queen!y/n, commander!harry

Description: Y/N and Harry set off on a new adventure to find ‘the cure’ for an ancient curse, meanwhile, the enemies are plotting to take her kingdom.

Wattpad link (Reyna as Y/N aka Peach)

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Y/N and Harry arrived at the southern border at dawn and found a single tent with two horses outside. Calanthe and whoever had accompanied her must have camped here overnight. Y/N assumed it was one of The Monks; however, she’d never met any of them, except for the one who had been sent to kill her at the market last year.

Y/N dismounted Thunder, unsheathed the dagger at her side and tucked it into her riding boot. They would be asked to submit their weapons before Calanthe received them, and even though Y/N doubted Calanthe could hurt a single fly, it was still better to be careful.

Mary had come to see Y/N the other night, and if the witch had been honest, Harry’s and Lance’s speculations had been true. It wasn’t at all shocking to Y/N that The Monks were only using Calanthe as a chess piece in their game. Calanthe didn’t seem like the mastermind behind this elaborated plan, starting with the attacks at the borders and Harry’s capture. Calanthe was desperate and angry, but she wasn’t vicious enough to want to take over the world.

Hearing Y/N’s and Harry’s arrival, a tall dark man with a thick beard emerged from the tent, dressed in a large black cloak – the signature look of The Monks. He swept his fierce eyes over Y/N with his thick eyebrow arched. Her heart thudded violently as she held her breath in fear of him acknowledging the weapon hidden inside her boot. Thank Gods, he didn’t.

His dry lips spread in an attempt of a smile, which didn’t look at all genuine and less intimidating. He put a hand on his chest and took a bow before Y/N. “Queen Y/N, my queen was expecting you.” His gaze flicked to Harry’s sword. “You must submit all weapons. And your servant is not allowed to enter.”

“That’s my commander,” Y/N said.

The man gave Harry a scornful smirk as he told Y/N, “If you say so, Your Majesty.” Y/N glanced at Harry to see her lover have his fingers wrapped around his sword-hilt. It must take everything for him not to say something when being disrespected by the enemy.

“If Harry is not allowed to enter, he must keep his sword,” Y/N said.

The man held her stare thoughtfully before another eerie smile transformed his long face, sending chills right down her spine. He didn’t ask Harry to hand in the weapon anymore as he told Y/N to come with him.

The inside of the tent was dimly lit by firelight. Calanthe sat in her chair in her riding clothes, her hair tied up in a braid at the back of her neck. The shadow on the wall looked as though it wanted to engulf her. She looked small and young and helpless. Without Y/N’s uncle’s crown on Calanthe’s head, no one would be able to tell that Calanthe was a queen and not a young maiden being held captive by the evil man in the black cloak.

The inside of the tent was dimly lit by firelight. Calanthe sat in her chair in her long golden velvet dress with her hair tied up in a braid at the back of her neck. The shadow on the wall looked as though it wanted to engulf her. She appeared small and young and helpless. Without Y/N’s uncle’s crown on Calanthe’s head, no one would be able to tell that Calanthe was a queen and not a young maiden being held captive by the evil man in the black cloak.

“I thought I told you to come alone,” Calanthe spoke once the man had left.

Y/N took some time to study the Queen of Theros. A lot had changed about Calanthe since the last time Y/N had seen her in person. She looked sick with her bony physique, lifeless eyes and pallid skin. What had they done to her? What had she done to herself?

“Harry’s my commander,” Y/N said, keeping a straight face. “It’s not safe for a queen to travel that far on her own. And didn’t you bring someone as well?”

“Vossler’s my new consultant.” Calanthe rose from her chair, eyeing Y/N with contempt. “Since you killed the old one.”

“I’m not here to be accused of murder. I wasn’t in the castle that night.”

Calanthe tilted her head and pouted with feigned innocence. “Who should I complain to then? Your husband?” Her face turned cold. “Let me remind you why you’re here, Y/N. I asked for the witch. Where is she?”

Y/N’s expression remained unchanged. “I told you I came with just Harry.”

Calanthe’s eyebrows knitted. It wasn’t until now that Y/N realised how quiet it was. There was no sound but the crackling of the fire and the sighing of the wind. She wondered if Harry was still waiting for her outside. He wouldn’t leave her by choice. She could take down Calanthe, and hopefully, Harry could handle Vossler, unless this was a trap and they’d just walked straight into it. Y/N doubted it, though. The reckless little girl who’d been forced to put on her dead husband’s crown would probably have Y/N and Harry murdered tonight. However, Calanthe wasn’t playing this game. The Monks were.

“The witch belongs to me,” Calanthe said, pulling Y/N out of her thoughts. “You return her to me, and I will spare your life in the war.”

“I don’t ask for mercy in a war I’m not losing.”

“Even if it means you’d get to keep the North?”

“Get to keep the North?” Y/N scoffed. “The North belongs to me. I’m the rightful ruler and heir to the crown. My family is the oldest family that’s ever lived–”

“Said the only family member survived,” Calanthe cut her off. It was a jab in the heart, still, Y/N didn’t let it show. “The first High King angered the Gods,” Calanthe went on with a smug grin. “His bloodline would end with your death.”

“Is that a threat?” asked Y/N.

“I never threaten.” Calanthe’s brows were drawn together. “I guarantee that you won’t live to see your people bend their knees to me.”

Y/N chuckled. “Should it be easier if you kill me now, though?”

“And become the villain in the story? No, darling,” Calanthe asked with fake surprise. “I must win on the battlefield, my dear. But if you give me the witch, I’ll let you live to be a sad loser. You can keep the North, marry your handsome king and live happily ever after in your winter castle. But if you keep the witch, I’ll have to declare war against the South based on the fact that your brother murdered my husband, and you murdered George Wallace.”

“There’s no proof for either of your accusations.”

“Trust me.” A corner of Calanthe’s red lips lifted. “It’s so easy to convince the other kingdoms that you’re just as mad as your brother.”

Y/N swallowed hard, balling her fists. She wasn’t going to let herself be provoked by Calanthe’s harmless words. This woman wasn’t the real enemy.

“If you declare war with the North,” Y/N said, “you declare war with Attwell, too.”

Calanthe rolled her eyes and smirked. “With Rouxvania’s support, I would surely win.”

Y/N’s stomach dropped. “The East is on your side?”

“While you were too busy looking for the cure for your lover, I was busy nurturing my allies.” Calanthe turned her back to Y/N, facing the fire. Y/N caught a glimpse of two long scars on Calanthe’s right palm. It seemed like she had been learning to wield a sword. Y/N guessed The Monks was going to send Calanthe onto the battlefield where they’d make sure she would not return. They wanted all kings and queens to fight to the death so they’d take over one hundred kingdoms.

“They’re just using you,” Y/N broke the silence. Calanthe glanced over her shoulder, her eyes troubled. “They’ll kill you like they did to my brother and the first High King,” Y/N went on, keeping her voice as quiet as possible. “Egon and Lokesh also believed they were ‘the chosen one’. You’re their next victim, Calanthe.”

Calanthe whirled around as she snapped, “And why should I trust you?”

“Because I don’t want the South for my own,” Y/N calmly said. “And I’m not standing here as your enemy. I’m here as a woman who doesn’t want to see another woman suffer from abuse from men.”

Calanthe’s eyes squinted with doubt. “You’re only saying this because you fear you’re going to end up like every single one in your family. Dead.”

Y/N clenched her fists, now highly aware of the existence of the dagger in her boot. Still, she kept her composure. “I know you hate me because of what my father did to your family and kingdom. I am sorry. If I could go back in time and stop him, I would. But I can’t. I’m trying to help you now by telling you the truth–”

“You don’t know what the truth is,” Calanthe cut her off. “You think you’re so special huh? Just because you found the lake and survived the North Forest, it doesn’t make you special, Y/N. You’re just as twisted as the men in your family. Lokesh sold his baby’s soul for victory, didn’t he? And we both know you didn’t just ask a witch to bring your friend back to life for free. You killed you ba–”

Y/N didn’t wait for Calanthe to finish. She shoved Calanthe into her chair, drew the dagger out of her boot so fast that Calanthe could barely gasp when the shiny blade was held at her throat.

“Your Majesty, is everything all right?” asked Vossler as his shadow towered over the entrance of the tent.

Y/N applied a little bit more pressure to her dagger as she leaned in and whispered into Calanthe’s ear, “I’d cut your throat before he could set foot into this tent.”

She could see that Calanthe was trying her best to look calm while her big blue eyes were showing the opposite. “Everything is fine,” she told Vossler.

Y/N looked back over her shoulder and saw that Vlosser hesitated before he left. He probably suspected something was off but had no choice but to obey the command.

“I know you can’t kill me,” Calanthe said through gritted teeth.

Y/N turned back to her. “I can. I just chose not to because I’m not stupid.” Her fingers relaxed around the hilt of her dagger. “But as you can see, it’s very easy for me to kill you. And we’re not even on the battlefield, Calanthe.”

When Y/N pulled away, Calanthe let out a loud sigh as she immediately reached for her throat as if to make sure her head was still attached. Y/N thrust the dagger back into her boot, smiling.

Calanthe gave her a dismissive wave, too embarrassed to even make eye contact. “You may leave.”

Knowing there was nothing she could do to change this foolish woman’s mind, Y/N kept her thoughts to herself and walked out without a single glance back.

Outside, Harry was waiting with the horses while Vossler was sharpening his blade by the tent. Y/N could feel Vossler’s dark eyes following her as she exited the tent and padded straight toward Harry. His eyes stayed fixed on Vossler as he asked her, “So?”

She shook her head and mounted her horse. “Let’s go.”

Harry’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion, but he knew this wasn’t the right time to have this conversation. Giving Vossler one more glare, he got onto Lightning’s back. Together, they rode away.

When they came across a river, Y/N suddenly stopped, got off her horse and walked straight to the riverbank. She stood there in silence, just gazing out at the water.

Harry came up from behind her. “Peach, what happened back there?” He sounded worried. It made her feel bad.

She sucked in a breath and put her arms around herself. “I had a dagger at her throat, and she still wouldn’t surrender.”

There was a pause. “Peach, you can’t do that. She’s still a queen.”

Y/N whirled around to face a concerned Harry. “She’s an idiot. Now people are going to die. I can’t stop this war from happening.”

He sighed and placed his hands on her shoulders. “It’s not your fault. You can’t control everything.”

“Everything is my fault.” Her head drooped as her voice cracked. “This all started with me running away. I killed my father and my brother, and my uncle was murdered because of me.”

“You did what you thought was right at the time. You couldn’t have known.” He squeezed her shoulders gently. “You’re not responsible for their deaths. If I were to die defending you, it wouldn’t be your fault, either.”

Her heart stopped. She looked up into his green eyes. “Don’t say that. Don’t you ever say that. You won’t die.”

A knot lodged in her throat as his eyebrows sloped. “When someone dies, they die, Peach. You cannot stop it. But no matter how or when it happens, it will not be your fault. And you will not waste one moment on guilt.”

Tears blurred his features. Y/N couldn’t even think of something happening to Harry again. Losing him once was already too much. Other than Lance, Harry was the only person in her life who knew what kept me up at night. He knew her more than her own family had. It would be like losing her mother all over again, but she’d known long before her mother’s death that it was going to happen. Her mother had been sick. If Harry died under the hand of the enemy, it would happen suddenly. How could she ever recover?

“Tell me you understand that.” His voice shook her back to reality.

She didn’t want to understand, but she nodded nonetheless because that was what he needed to see. She slipped her arms around his neck, and he hugged her tightly. She never wanted him to let go.

“Your father and brother weren’t good kings.” His voice thickened. “But you are a great queen. You’re the chosen one, Peach. You’ll lead your army to victory. I believe in you..” Stepping back, he squeezed her shoulder once more and offered a smile to fool her into thinking everything was going to be okay. At least it worked. “Come.” He kissed her forehead. “It’ll be a long trip back to the castle.”

.

.

.

It was official. There was going to be a war.

Two days after Y/N and Harry had come home, the news had travelled to all high and low courts that The High Queen of Theros had declared war against Isolde to avenge the deaths of her husband and her consultant. Y/N had faith in her well-trained army as well as Lance’s for they had all expected this outcome. Her father had been well-prepared for this. Nevertheless, this wasn’t at all what Y/N wanted.

The night before the battle, it snowed thickly outside. The castle was too quiet. It was as if the universe was holding its breath for the bloodbath tomorrow.

Y/N rose from the soaking tub. Jo helped her slip on a thick robe, and she padded on her bare feet across the fire-warmed stone to the lone mirror. Using her palm to wipe away a bit of steam, she tilted my cheek and observed the faintly red and bruised skin along her chest and the corner of her mouth. She’d got them from the fall off the cliff; they were barely noticeable now. Sometimes she missed that feeling of free-falling to her possible death. If it hadn’t been for the people she’d leave behind, she would have chosen the easy way out.

Was it easy, though?

Death.

It sounded easy if the choice was given to you. However, her death would only prove Calanthe right. That she was destined to receive the same fate as the men in her bloodline. And she didn’t want to be associated with their crimes and weaknesses. If she were to die, she’d die brave and honoured, holding her sword.

Blinking, she caught Jo’s dreadful eyes looking back at her in the mirror. “I’m scared, Y/N,” Jo muttered as she twisted the towel she was holding.

Y/N turned around. “Don’t be scared. We’ll be fine.” She didn’t know that for sure, but she’d say anything to put her friend at ease. It didn’t work, though.

“If they took the castle, what would happen to me?” Jo asked, her forehead creased. “I’d surely die. I cannot protect myself.”

“I won’t let them take the castle.” Y/N mustered an encouraging smile as she took Jo’s hand. “And you can protect yourself, Jo. I’ve shown you how to use a dagger—”

“Being shown the basics of how to use a blade and using it on another living person are two different things.” Jo pulled her hand back. “I would’ve stood there and screamed.”

“You would’ve defended yourself,” Y/N said, this, she genuinely believed. “I’ve seen how vicious you get when Harry ate your last piece of pie.”

The skin around Jo’s eyes crinkled as she giggled. “I would duel him to the death for that delicious cake.”

A short laugh burst from Y/N. “Just imagine all the attackers as Harry trying to steal your last piece of pie and you’ll be good.”

They laughed about it together and pretended that it was just a joke. In reality, Y/N knew Jo had a good reason to be scared, as was she. She’d failed to save Jo once. How could she be sure she could succeed this time? There was no witch to help her. She’d have to do this on her own.

.

.

.

Sweat dampened Harry’s skin as he dipped down and kicked out. Caught off guard, Lance staggered to the side and froze before he could start striking back. His gaze dropped to where Harry held the dagger to his throat. The corners of his lips lowered.

Harry smirked. “I win.”

“It’s not about winning.” Lance scoffed, rolling his eyes. “It’s about surviving.”

“Isn’t that winning, though?” Harry lowered the dagger and stepped back.

Lance shot him a glare and sheathed the dagger at his hip. “The battle tomorrow isn’t a game.”

“I know that.” Harry put away his blade. “But I still won.”

“Boys, can you stop being boys for a moment?”

They both whipped around to find Y/N standing on the steps in her white fur coat, staring out at the yard.

“She’s talking to you,” Harry and Lance said to each other at the same time

Y/N marched up to them. Her face scrunched up like an angry teacher as she regarded them both. “You two are aware that we’re heading to battle at dawn, right?”

Lance’s eyes widened as he aggressively pointed his hand at Harry. “I’ve been trying to tell him!”

Y/N crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow at Harry, who put on a grin. “I’ll be in serious fighting mode at dawn.”

She rolled her eyes. Her lips arched faintly. Harry knew that she knew he was just trying to keep everyone calm and in good spirits. Deep down, he was a bundle of nerves. He hadn’t been sleeping since they’d returned from the border. Whenever he closed his eyes, he’d see death. He wasn’t afraid of dying. But if he died, he couldn’t protect her. There would still be Lance, but he couldn’t count on anyone else but him and herself to keep her safe at this point.

The three of them headed back inside. Y/N stopped Lance when he was about to retreat to his chambers. “Come to the throne room and drink with me,” she said. “Both of you.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to get drunk before a battle,” Lance said.

Harry and Y/N exchanged the same kind of look. To Lance, Harry said, “We’re not drinking to get drunk. Besides, this might be the only chance we get to drink together.”

Lance flicked his gaze between Harry and Y/N before throwing his head back and exhaling sharply. “You two are unbelievable.”

Y/N laughed as she slipped her arm around Lance’s and tugged him along. Strangely, Harry felt fine with it. Maybe knowing this could be the last night of his life had made him more sensible. He would think about what she’d said on the night she’d asked him to marry her. About how she loved Lance even though it wasn’t the same way she loved Harry. He would look out for Kenny, too, even though Kenny and Stefan were married and had a baby together. While Lance’s feelings were not reciprocated, Harry knew he’d still jump in front of an arrow for Y/N.

“Here’s to us staying alive,” Y/N said, raising her cup. “Long live the Queen.”

Lance chuckled as he lifted his. “Long live the King.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “Long live Harry.” And chugged the wine from his cup.

Y/N sat on her throat while Harry and Lance sat on the step on either side of her. She stared thoughtfully into her cup as she took a deep breath. “I want you to promise me one thing.”

“No.”

“You don’t even know what I’m proposing, Lance.”

“Well, I have a feeling that I won’t like it,” Lance said and poured himself some more wine. Harry gestured for Y/N to continue anyway.

“If you see me having trouble on the battlefield,” she said, “just know I can get myself out of it. I want you to mind your own business, watch your own back unless I scream for help. Do not try to help me and get yourself killed.”

Lance shook his head. “Y/N, you know I can’t promise you that.”

“You must.”

“You’re not giving me orders. We’re equals.”

Y/N let out a soft breath. “I’m not giving you orders, Lance. I’m asking you.”

Harry could see Lance softened at once. The King averted his eyes and stared down at his cup. “I promise,” he replied weakly.

It was enough for Y/N. She turned to Harry. Forcefully, he nodded and gave her his word.

#harry styles #harry styles fandom #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fluff #harry styles writing #harry styles imagine #harry styles x reader #harry styles x you #harry styles x y/n #harry styles angst

[ducavalentinos]

How would you rate Sabatini's biography on Cesare? I love it, but I wondered if you had any other (English) recommendations? Also take a shot everyone Sabatini interrupts his narrative to talk about how hot Cesare was sfhttjjggj

I think as far as Cesare bios goes, I’d rate his biography 7/10. I have conflicted feelings with Sabatini’s work, because I love his writing style, his sense of humour is great, it matched mine right away, and he has such a genius way of pointing out the hypocrisy and double standards applied to the Borgia family. He cleverly shows how much of the Borgia myths and general accusations thrown their way are connected to politics (shocker!) and to their Spaniard, and less nobly origins. Not to mention how he exposes the historical bias against Cesare, and general dishonesty with him, from primary sources to modern historians such as Gregorovius, that paragraph Sabatini wrote about him was truly a moment in the Borgia historical literature for me, I'm glad he said it. I just wish he hadn't fallen so hard for the Machiavellian Prince archetype about Cesare. The more I re-read his work, the more it becomes clear to me he took Machiavelli’s writings about Cesare at face value, fell in love with the image presented by him, and then proceeded (whether consciously or unconsciously) to apply this interpretation, one that has its limitations and flaws on their own, to all the facets of Cesare’s character, and all the other aspects of his life lol, which resulted in this too strict, robot-like persona. There is no nuance, no deepth to Cesare’s Sabatini, he exists only as the stoic, unscrupulous, unfeeling Machiavellian Prince. It’s a mistake I see being made time and again by most of Cesare’s biographers, many who follow Sabatini too blindly, or just Borgia biographers in general tbh, but Sabatini’s bio acutely illustrates this particular issue better than the other bios I’ve read I think, (with the exception perhaps of Beuf’s “work”, who somehow managed to outdone Sabatini in this Machiavellian presentation of Cesare, taking it to new extremes with super dramatic and misleading writing, for the most part). And you know, I always get the impression Sabatini had his own conflicted feelings in regards to The Prince, and its clear-headed, pragmatic politics. He seemed to admired it and feel repulsed by it at the time. And those mixed feelings sometimes ended up leaking into his view and writing about Cesare and some historical events, and what he believed had happened (e.g., the take of Urbino), and I find that very interesting. In any case, the point is: Sabatini’s Cesare is unrealistic, and it constantly enters into conflict with what Sabatini also presents as evidence for his history. I mean, he insists throughout the book in reaffirming Cesare was a utter egoist, cold man. Only moved by his ambition and thirst for power. He was incapable of kindness, or of being considerate with others, of feeling compassion, without ulterior motives involved. All of his actions were always calculated to only serve his own interests. Everyone around him were pawns to be used and discarded when they were no longer of any use to him. We are to believe he was a cynic, a block of ice, essentially. We are also to believe he never had genuine emotional bonds with anyone, much less with women. Women were interchangeble to him. Sabatini was convinced he was a man incapable of having a sentimental side, of loving or of having any connection with them beyond the physical aspect. But then, in between chapters, sometimes pages, he also tell us how Cesare seems to have deeply grieved the death of his cousin, Giovanni Borgia, whom he refers as Mio Fatre in his letters. He gives an honest, if quick, account about the marriage and relationship between Cesare and Charlotte d’Albret, in which Cesare’s obvious feelings for her can be seen, as well as his kindness and respect towards her. Sabatini admits the evidence shows they may well have loved each other, and that when leaving Charlotte in charge of all his affairs in France, as the governor and administrator of his lands and lorships there, as well as his heiress in case of his death, Cesare shows “his esteem of her and the confidence he reposed in her mental qualities.” And of Cesare’s policies and behavior as its ruler in the Romagna, it reaches a point where his mere self-interest doesn’t quite alone explain his relationship with this romagnese subjects and many of his decisions. It undermines Sabatini’s claim that it was for show and for his political gain. Last but not least, what is one supposed to make of the hypothesis he posits to the what I like to call, the Dorotea affair? This event is the peak of his contradiction and his mental gymnastics, because to be sure, his hypothesis is not far-fetched. I will concede I thought it was the first I read his bio. But over the years, between carefully separating fiction from history and reading other sources, then going back to his bio, I recognized his hypothesis is one of the plausible ones, certainly more plausible than the official sensationalistic narrative of Cesare simply abducting the innocent maiden Dorotea out on a whim, to satisfy his lust, (the fact Borgia scholars  are still repeating this narrative with a straight face is beyond my comprehension), I can see Cesare doing what he proposes, it def. aligns better with my understanding of him, and all the historical material I’ve read about him and his times, however, this hypothesis is completely irreconcilable with Sabatini’s Cesare. So, he says one thing, then he says another that’s incompatible with the first thing he said, and then proceeds to show evidence that either puts into doubt or confirms the opposite of his characterization of Cesare. And that’s only considering the historical info he dedided to include in his bio. If he had included some of the info Alvisi presents in his Duca di Romagna, a work he must have checked out, if not read it all, given one of the languages he spoke was Italian, and Alvisi’s bio is the best and most authoritative historical work made to date about Cesare and his life, I believe he would have struggled a lot more than he did. It just seems like he enters into a trap of his own making. Turning an already difficult task more difficult than it needs to be, honestly. Ironically, his stance is as messy and contradictory as the aforementioned Gregorovius in his Lucrezia Borgia, where you also have two Cesare(s): the one he sees and wants to present versus the one that emerges from the his own writing at times and historical material he himself exposes it. Overall, his work frustrates on some fronts, and I think it could have been better. It has its faults, some the typical faults/vices fond in Borgia biographies, others very much his own, but nevertheless I have a fondness for his bio which I do not share with others bios on Cesare, or the Borgia family. It is the only bio in the English language I find myself reading again and again, and the one I would put it first as better, or more decent, in this language about Cesare. I admire his honesty, and his bravery in challenging a little bit of Cesare’s dark legend, and the baseless accusations attached to his name. I appreciate what he tried to do, the very least of what I expect from a serious historian when dealing with figures as infamous in popular imagination as Cesare and Rodrigo Borgia. There is no denying his work was one of the main works which advanced Cesare’s historical literature, and the approach to his figure. Moving slightly from the literary, colorful, villain-like character of the Italian Renaissance, towards starting to be more seriously studied as a historical figure properly. And oh my god, yes, interrupting the narrative to talk about how hot Cesare was. It’s funny you mentioned that, because I don’t remember him doing that so much (time for a re-read!), but that's one of the characteristics of the Borgian/Cesarean historical literature heh. I’m yet to read a bio where authors do not feel the need to take a moment to talk about how hot he was, some even a poetic way lol, it’s so amusing, and always the one thing I know I will agree with them, if nothing else. Also, I think Borgia bios have huge potential for drinking games! Like: take a shot of tequila every time Cesare gets badmouthed for no reason, or baselessly asserted guilty of questionable murders, fratricide, rape, and abduction. Or when Juan and Cesare envied and hated each other narrative is repeated. Or when Guicciardini, Sanuto, Cappello and Giustinian are uncritically used as credible sources for Rodrigo and Cesare. Every time Lucrezia gets painted as the Good Borgia, the pretty, passive doll who was the helpless victim of the terrible Borgia men. Or when authors get uncomfortably shippy with the Cesare/Lucrezia relationship resulting in exaggerated claims such as: Lucrezia was Cesare’s only exception, or they were unusually close as siblings, etc. And of course, whenever Cesare’s hotness and allure has to be talked about dsjdsjsj, the list is long, and I think it will get you drunk very quickly. I know I couldn’t keep up back when I was reading Sacerdote’s bio, and I was drinking wine so. As for recs in the English language, I would say Woodward’s bio has its value in terms of sources and historical documents. I also think his analysis about politics, about Cesare’s goverment in the Romagna, and also concerning the conclave of 1503 are generally good. His last five, four chapters are the best ones imo, so if you are interested in these points I mentioned, it might be worth checking out. I would just open a caveat saying that as far as a biography about the person of Cesare Borgia is concerned, it is weak and to be read with a grain of salt. I was mostly unimpressive by his work on that front, and I thought about quitting time and again. He likes presenting himself as the impartial historian, (a big red flag that only makes me twice as cautious when reading any historical work) writing in a mostly sober tone, but of course like all scholars, all people, he has his bias, and they do come to surface from time to time. He displays an peculiar antipathy and ill will towards Cesare at times, which leads to harsh, confusing, unsubstantiated claims about his character and some of the events about his life. In contrast, you can see he is more benevolent and fair towards Rodrigo Borgia, and a constant thought I had while reading his bio was that he obviously chose the wrong Borgia to write a bio on. Had he chose Rodrigo as his Borgia subject, I believe we would have had a pretty good bio about him and his papacy.

#ask answered #anon ask #cesare borgia #césar borgia #house borgia in history #auth: rafael sabatini #long text #i thought many times about making this shorter #but as it is said: yolo djsdjsdjs #i have many thoughts about sabatini #and the influence of his Cesare in followers scholars' works #i also think he had an interesting mind of his own #and i think that's part of the reason why i love his writings so much #despite their flaws #so yeah

[itsclydebitches]

Do you think Ruby will kill Grimm!Summer and if so, how do you think that will clash with her objection to killing Penny?

I think it's all going to hinge on a) how the story portrays Ruby reacting to Jaune in Volume 9 and b) what sort of shape grimm!Summer is in.

First, they may not have Ruby kill Summer at all. And I don't just mean that the plot will twist to ensure someone else has to (somehow, without silver eyes) do the deed because she's unavailable, thereby freeing her of that hard choice — precisely like how Ruby was conveniently in the void by the time Penny needed to die. Rather, Summer might still be able to be saved. Many (myself included) have theorized that if Ruby's eyes destroy grimm and grimm only, she might be able to destroy the portion of a grimm that possess a person (for lack of a better word), leaving the rest of them intact. That's mostly come up in Salem discussions — could Ruby remove the influence of the grimm pool, leaving human!Salem behind? — but now that same question applies to Summer too. When she used her eyes on the Hound we saw the grimm part of him get stripped away, revealing the faunus underneath, before the goo of the grimm started Venom-creeping back over the rest of him. If Ruby could give off a more powerful blast, perhaps she could erase the grimm portion entirely, all in one go, sort of akin to how they won the geist fight in Volume 4. Hit it harder, all at once, until after a single blow only the core of the beast remains. In each case the grimm would leave the thing it possessed.

So that's Option B: is Summer in a state where it's possible for her to recover in some way? How deep do these grimm experiments go, are silver eyes capable of destroying the grimm without killing the person? How much of the original Summer would be left without the grimm parts? etc. etc. Lots of questions we don't have any answers to. Option A, however, comes up if we're given a scenario where Summer is beyond hope. She's a grimm now, no way to fix it, killing her is seen as a mercy. And that, I think, is the crucial difference. Ruby unequivocally said no to killing Penny... but Penny also wasn't presented as having to die. It's one of the rare moments in the volume where I 100% agree with what Ruby is saying. Penny has been hacked, her order is to open the vault, and then she's set to self-destruct. So how does killing her benefit anyone in anyway? They obviously want to save Penny, so all killing her at the manor would do is hurry the self-destruct along, the thing they want to stop. They want to keep the Maiden powers safe, but killing her might risk sending them off into the world, lost, or even wind up with Cinder if her attempts to steal them formed any connection. Obviously we know now that the powers didn't go to Cinder, that Penny was able to think of Winter and send them to her, but my point is that just killing her then is a HUGE risk. Finally, there's no real danger in opening the vault. I mean yeah, they don't want Ironwood to get the staff... but like, he just wants to leave. If Ironwood were planning to use the staff to, idk, decimate all of Atlas I can understand the group considering killing Penny to be worth avoiding the potential death of an entire kingdom, but there's no threat to anyone if Ironwood does somehow snag the relic. The only threat here is that opening the vault will allow Salem to get the relic instead, but the group decides to open the vault anyway. Penny is basically going, "If you don't kill me now then I'll open the vault, which will lead to Ironwood escaping Salem with a large portion of the kingdom and standing down from his bomb threat, and then I'll die!" So you want them to kill you to avoid... other people not dying? And you want to die so you don't... die?

It's absolute nonsense.

This is basically a long-winded way of saying that killing Penny in that moment wouldn't benefit the good guys in any way, shape, or form. The fact that Penny suggests it at all is monumentally stupid. It's a Deep, Dramatic Moment that makes absolutely no sense. "You have to kill me!" she cries... even though killing her does nothing good, likely does a whole lot of bad, and absolutely does a Big Bad by hurrying along one of the major things everyone is trying to prevent: Penny's death.

Of course Ruby said no. That's the smartest Ruby is in the whole volume.

But when Jaune is faced with the question? Well, it's meant to be a very different context. I've gone on the record multiple times as saying that the show did a HORRIBLE job of justifying the need to kill Penny, but I also recognize that we're supposed to believe that was the best option on the table. Unlike at the manor, Penny's death does achieves something here: giving her the ability keep the powers safe. It's also presented as inevitable: Penny will (supposedly) die regardless, so better that she die when she chooses, preventing Cinder from getting more power, then dying in a few minutes with more risks attached. The manor death had nothing going for it. The finale death — no matter how badly executed — is meant to be justified to some extent, whether we personally agree it or not. We're still meant to realize, "Yeah, Penny is dying, no way to avoid it, so killing her will at least help keep the power out of Cinder's hands and will give her some agency over the time she has left." It's still stupid, but it's a "You wrote this scene really badly" stupid rather than a "This entire concept is nonsensical" stupid.

So Ruby has never actually been in Jaune's position. For all her insistence that she won't let anyone die, Ruby has never actually been in a scenario where killing someone would do the most good for the world, or would put someone out of their misery, or would give them some agency over their own existence — all the things that Penny's death is (again) supposed to represent. We don't know what she'd choose if death was inevitable and she was faced with providing a "kinder" death, or what she'd choose if a death was, from a practical perspective, presented as the best way forward. That's because right now the story is horribly written and Ruby isn't forced to choose anything, but if they actually brought her back to her Volume 1-5 self, I can easily see her killing her mother as an act of kindness. Summer was turned into a monster by Salem. The very thing she's spent her whole life trying to eradicate. There is no possible, other way to help her. She is a danger to Ruby and all of her friends. Perhaps, if a part of her is still lucid, she expresses that she doesn't want to continue living like this, being the thing she despises, being Salem's tool, being a danger to her daughter. So Ruby kills her as an act of mercy and love. It's presented as a release from a nightmare existence.

But that potential, future characterization depends on whether Ruby understands the choice Jaune made. Again (again, again, again) I think the story did a terrible job writing that scene and that it didn't succeed in justifying the kill, but for the purposes of what I think the story was trying to do, Ruby may well parrot all that back in Volume 9: "Yes, Jaune. Penny was dying and there was no way to save her even though your semblance is healing. There was nothing else you could have done even though you might have gotten her through the portal and saved here there. Killing her then kept the powers safe messy lore aside. You did the right thing, horrible as it was." And that acts as setup for Ruby doing the same thing for Summer later on. Either that, or she's initially furious at Jaune and comes to realize — after some messy and contradictory character arc — that he did the right thing all along and she was just too grief-stricken to realize it. Which I will hate if we get that given how badly it'll all end up lol.

So those are the two theories I'm leaning towards. Either the story, in the fashion of Volume 8, will ensure that Ruby never has to make the hard choice of whether to kill her mom or not (oh god I'm imagining a scene where Yang offers to do it instead as some act of sisterly devotion/a sacrifice so the "pure" sister remains pure no no no no), or Summer's situation is (no doubt just as badly) presented like Penny's second request for death, as a necessary act that Summer wants, will assist the heroes in some way, and is definitely the Best and Only Thing To Do.

Of course, Option C is that this is... just never resolved. It definitely speaks to my lack of faith in RWBY atm, but given how many important things we've dropped I would not be surprised if Summer is never actively introduced into the series again. RWBY may well treat this as the answer to a mystery that never existed until said "answer" arrived, the writers viewing this merely as the explanation of what happened to Summer and nothing more. Don't get me wrong, viewers are 100% right to expect more in the future. This change raises even more questions than were already attached to Summer's disappearance and the existence of the Hound absolutely implies that, in a well written story, grimm!Summer will appear somewhere down the line. But, to be blunt, RWBY is not a well written story. So if some number of years from now we look back and go, "Wow, the answer to how they'll handle this is that they... didn't. This was never brought up in a meaningful way again" I really wouldn't be surprised.

#rwby #mymetas

[freewilllife]

1) Even though Kashi is still pretty mysterious but based on the flashback I would answer yes to all your questions. I think she neither loved Yona nor Il, I think for her the most important thing was to fulfill the gods' will because When did she act as loving mother or wife? and look at all what she did in the flashback starting with telling Il to marry her so they can

Well, that is it anon, “based on the flashback”.

Kashi is a person that is shrouded in mystery. We actually know very little about her, since we have to - or at least should - keep in mind that we only see her through the lense of Yon hi who also did not have a very close relationship to her.

I would even argue, that Iguni did not know her too greatly...

Some of her statements even contradict themselves...On one hand everything is determined by destiny, but on the other hand we have Yona who should be a mere human being that has to grasps the things she needs with her own hands.

Or does it merely apply to Yona and it was justified that she told King Il when the boy was about 2-3 years old, that he would be the murderer of King Il?

I would argue that we know the following things about her:

a) She was the queen of Kouka = Yona´s mother and King Il´s spouse.

b) She told prophecies to King Il and some of them became true ( Yona being born for example) or that Soo Won would kill King Il.

c) She used to be a shrine maiden and appeared to have been deeply pious. 

d) She survived the fire and was rescued by King Il ( She had a burn scar on her face)

e) She knew Ik-soo, but Ik-soo has never mentioned anything related to Yona about it.

f) She seemed to have liked the former priest that was murdered by Yu hon. It appeared she was shunned in the past for her “prophecies”.

g) It was important to her, that Yon hi knew who she was or else she would not have tried to talk with her previously. King Il wished to keep her identity a secret. But Kashi not - at least not in front of Yon hi..for what purpose?

h) Kashi appeared rather messy in contrast to Yon hi

Some important facts we do not know yet:

a) her death: murder? suicide? accident? If murder by Yu hon or another party? Is she maybe still alive?

b) Her feelings for Yona: Her daughter? Reincarnation of Hiryuu? Hiryuu?

c) Her feelings and relationship to King Il: Did she love him? ( I would argue that she had some feelings for him...that had a romantic nature) Was he a means to fulfill her destiny? Did she use him?

d) Her relationship to Yon hi, Yu hon, Soo Won: Did she hate them? Did she feel pity for Yon hi? Did she try to use Yon hi? Did she hate Soo Won or was he merely a tool for her aspirations?

e) What did she think about her own role? Did she consider herself merely a messenger of the gods...one of their tools? Or did she know that she did play a pivotal role in the greater scheme? With other words...Did she have an active role by voluntarily controlling some events or did she merely act passively as a mere servant or tool of the gods?

f) How far could she really see into the future? Was she really unable to see her own future or was this merely a lie to mislead Yon hi?

g) What was her aim? Revenge? Fulfillment of a predetermined destiny? Fullfillment of the will of the gods?

So you see anon...There are many factors and situations we still are unaware of!

#akatsuki no yona #kashi

[chiseler]

Ophelia By the Yard

Cobwebbed passages and wax-encrusted candelabra, dungeons festooned with wrist manacles, an iron maiden in every niche, carpets of dry ice fog, dead twig forests, painted hilltop castles, secret doorways through fireplaces or behind beds (both portals of hot passion), crypts, gloomy servants, cracking thunder and flashes of lightning, inexplicably tinted light sources, candles impossibly casting their own shadows, rubber bats on wires, grand staircases, long dining tables, huge doors with prodigiously pendulous knockers to rival anything in Hollywood.

Here was the precise moment — and it was nothing if not inevitable — when the darkness of horror film, both visible and inherent, leapt from the gothic toy box now joined by a no less disconcerting array of color. The best, brightest, sweetest, and most dazzling red-blooded palette that journeyman Italian cinematographers could coax from those tired cameras. Color, both its commercial necessity as well as all it promised the eye, would hereafter re-imagine the genre’s possibilities, in Italy and, gradually, everywhere else. 

When color hit the Italian Gothic cycle, a truly new vision was born. In Hammer films and other UK horror productions, the cheapness of Eastmancolor made it possible for blood to be red. Indeed, very red. And, while we shouldn't underestimate the startling impact this had, it was a fairly literal use of the medium. In the Italian movies, and to a large extent in Roger Corman's Poe cycle, color was an unlikely vehicle to further dismantle realism rather than to assert it. Overrun with tinted lights and filters, none of which added to the film’s realistic qualities, the movies became delirious. In Corman's Masque of the Red Death, we learn of an experiment that uses color to drive a man insane; it seems that filmmakers like Corman and Mario Bava were attempting the very same trick on their audiences.

The application of candy-wrapper hues to a haunted castle flick like The Whip and the Body adds a pop art vibe at odds with the genre, and when you get to something like Kill, Baby...Kill! the Gothic trappings are barely able to mask a distinctly modern sensibility, so much so that Fellini could plunder its phantasmal elements for Toby Dammit, fitting them perfectly into his sixties Roman nightmare.

Blood and Black Lace brings the saturated lighting and Gothic fillips into the twentieth century -- a sign creaking in a gale is the first image, translated from Frankensteinland to the exterior of a contemporary fashion house. A literal faceless killer disposes of six women in diabolical ways. The sour-faced detective remains several deaths back on the killer’s trail because the movie knows its audience, knows that it has zero interest in detection, character, motivation — though it’s all inertly there as a pretext for sadism, set-pieces of partially-clad women being hacked up, dot the film like musical numbers or action sequences might appear in a different genre. 

Since the 19th-century audience for literary Gothic Horror was comprised of far fewer men than women, would it be fair to ask whether Giallo’s advent might be an instrument of brutal violence, even revenge against “feminine” preoccupations? Consider 1964’s Danza Macabra, the film’s amorous vibes finding their ultimate source in that deathless screen goddess named Barbara Steele, whose marble white flesh photographs like some monument to classicism startled into unwanted Keatsian fever. Her presence practically demands that we ask ourselves: “Who is this wraith howling at a paper moon?” In other words, is it a coincidence that Steele’s “Elizabeth Blackwood” — a revenant temptress and undead sex symbol — hits screens the very same year as Giallo, which would transform Italian cinema into a decades-long death mill for women? 

The name “giallo”, meaning yellow, derives from the crime paperbacks issued by Italian publisher Mondadori. The eye-catching covers, featuring a circular illustration of some act of infamy embedded in a yellow panel, became utterly associated with the genre of literature. These books were likely to be by Edgar Wallace, the most popular author in the western world, or Agatha Christie: cardboard characters sliding through the most mechanical of plots; or classier local equivalents, like Francesco Mastriani or Carolina Invernizio. The founding principles laid down concerned the elaborate deceptions concealed by their authors, traps for the unwary reader, and the use of a distinctive design motif. The tendency of the characterisation to lapse into sub-comic-book cliché, the figures incapable of expressing or inspiring real sympathy, was, perhaps, an unintended side-effect of the focus on narrative sleight-of-hand.

When Italian filmmakers sought to translate sensational literature to the screen, they looked to other filmic influences: American film noir, influenced by German expressionism and often made by German emigrés (Lang, Siodmak, Dieterle, Ulmer); and the popular krimi cycle being produced in West Germany, mostly based on Edgar Wallace's leaden "shockers." These deployed stock characters, bizarre methods of murder, deceptive plotting, and exuberant use of chiaroscuro, the stylistic palette of noir intensified by more fog, more shafts of light, more inky shadows. A certain amount of fun, but different from the coming bloodbath because Wallace, despite somewhat fascistic tendencies, is anodyne and anaemic by comparison. No open misogyny, a sadism sublimated in story, a touching faith in Scotland Yard and the class system. In the Giallo, Wallace's more sensational aspects are adopted but made to serve a sensibility quite alien to the stodgy Englander: people are generally rotten, the system stinks, and crime becomes a lurid spectator sport served up to a viewer both thrilled and appalled. 

The Giallo fetishizes murder. But then, it fetishizes everything in sight. Every object, every half-filled wine glass and pastel-colored telephone, is photographed with obsessive, product-shot enthusiasm. Here, it must be emphasized that design implicates the viewer as the Italian camera-eye gawps like some unabashed tourist. Knife, wallpaper, onyx pinky ring — each detail transforms into an object made eerily subject: a sentient and glowering fragment of our own conscience, staring back at us in the darkened theater and pronouncing ineluctable guilt. And yet, for the directors who rode most dexterously the Giallo wave, homicide was something one did to women. Indulging in equal-opportunity lechery was merely an excuse to find other, more violent outlets for their misogyny. Please enter into evidence the demented enthusiasm for woman-killing evinced by Dario Argento, Mario Bava, Lucio Fulci, et al. — whatever trifling token massacres of men one might exhume from their respective oeuvres are inconsequential. Argento’s defense, “I love women, so I would rather see a beautiful woman killed than an ugly man,” should not satisfy us, and hardly seems designed to (also bear in mind Poe’s assertion that the death of a beautiful young woman was the most poetic of all subjects).

Filmmakers like Argento have no interest in sex per se. Suffering seems inessential, but terror and death are key, photographed with the same clinical absorption and aesthetic gloss as Giallo-maestros habitually apply to their interior design. Here, it must be emphasized that design implicates the viewer as the Italian camera-eye gawps like some unabashed tourist. Knife, wallpaper, onyx pinky ring – each detail transforms into an object made eerily subject: a sentient and glowering fragment of our own conscience, staring back at us in the darkened theater and pronouncing ineluctable guilt. That’s one important subtlety often lost amid Giallo’s vast antisocial hemorrhage.

Like a river of blood, homophobia, in the literal meaning of fear rather than hatred, runs through the genre. Lesbians are sinister and gay men barely exist. As we try to work out what in hell the Giallo is really up to, little dabs of dime-store Freudianism seem sufficient.

The filmmakers’ misogyny could be suspect, a sign of compromised masculinity, so they need fictional avatars to cloak their own feverish woman-hating. The subterfuge is clumsy at best, the desultory deceit embarrassingly macho. Giallo’s visual force, powerful enough to divorce eye from mind, is another matter, leaving us demoralized and ethically destitute; our hearts beating with all the righteous indignation of three dead shrubs (and maybe a half-eaten sandwich).

The Giallo is founded on an unstated assumption: the modern world brings forth monsters. Jack the Ripper was an aberration in his day, but now there's a Jack around every corner, behind every piece of modular furniture, every diving helmet lamp. Previously, disturbing events arose from what Ambrose Bierce called The Suitable Surroundings, or what the mad architect in Fritz Lang's The Secret Beyond the Door termed, with sly and sinister euphemism, "propitious rooms." There's the glorious line in Withnail and I: "That's the sort of window faces appear at." But now, in the modern world, evil occurs in the nicest of places, and tonal consistency died in a welter of cheerful stage blood. One needn’t enter an especially Bad Place to meet one’s worst nightmare, or perhaps better to say: the whole bright world qualified as a properly bad place. Imagine the pages of an interior design magazine invaded by anonymous psychopaths intent on painting the gleaming walls red.

Though the victims are overwhelmingly female and their killers male (Argento typically photographed his own leather-gloved hands to stand in for his assassin’s), when the violence becomes over-the-top in its sexualized woman-hating (like the crotch-stabbing in What Have You Done to Solange?), it’s usually a clue that the movie’s murderer will turn out to be female: a simple case of projection. Only Lucio Fulci, the most twisted of the bunch, trained as a doctor and experienced as an art critic, not only assigns misogyny to a straight male killer (The New York Ripper) but plays the killer himself in A Cat in the Brain. Though, in another self-protecting twist of narrative, all psychological explanations in Gialli are bullshit, always. Criminology and clinical psychology are largely ignored, and Argento has a clear preference for outdated theories like the extra chromosome signaling psychopathy (Cat O’Nine Tails). Did anybody use phrenology, or Lombroso’s crackpot physiognomic theories, as plot device?

A tradition of the Giallo is that the characters all tend to be dislikable, something Argento at least resisted in Cat O’ Nine Tails and Deep Red. With disposable characters, each of whom might be the killer and each of whose violent demise is served up as a set-piece, this distancing and contempt might just be a byproduct of the form rather than a principle or ethos, but it’s of some interest, perhaps mitigating the misogyny with a wash of misanthropy. A Unified Field Theory of Gialli would find a more deep-seated reason for the obnoxious characters as well as the stylized snuff and the glamorous presentation. What urge is being satisfied, and why here, now, like this?

Class war? Though prostitute-ripping is encouraged in the Giallo, most victims are wealthy, slashed to ribbons amid opulent interiors. Urbane characters who might previously have graced the sleek “white telephone” films of forties Italian cinema were briefly edged out by neo-realism’s concentration on the working class. Now these exquisite mannequins are trundled back onscreen to be ritually slaughtered for our viewing pleasure.

Victims must always be enviable: either beautiful and sexy or rich and swellegant, or all of the above, so the average moviegoer can rejoice in their dismemberment with a clear conscience. Mario Bava bloodily birthed the genre in Blood and Black Lace (1964), brutally offing fashion models in a variety of Sade-approved ways, the killer a literally faceless assassin into whom the (presumed male) audience could pour their own animosities without ever admitting it, with the female killer finally unmasked to provide exculpatory relief.

If narrative formulas absolve the straight male viewer, compositions have a way of ensnaring him. Beyond that omnivorous indulgence of sensation for its own lurid sake one finds in Giallo, there is a more gilded emphasis placed on Beauty (in the Catholic sense), and it is only the women who are mounted upon its pedestal. That these avatars of beauty are to be savored, ravaged, and brutalized — in that order — is what concerns us. But the sex and the suffering that captivates most sadists is never what registers; no, it is the instance of death, the terror that afflicts the dying woman’s face that resonates. Once again, physical interiors become a negative form of emotional interiority, rooms amplified for the sole purpose of grisly annihilations; a kind of heretical, strictly anti-Catholic transcendence through amoral delight in what otherwise falls under trivial headings, either “the visuals” or “color palette” – neither of which touch the essential nerve endings of Giallo.

Swaddled inside an otherwise hyper-masculine castle lies a windowless chamber with feminine, if not psychotic, decor. Before he tortures and stabs her to death, “Lord Alan Cunningham” (fresh from his sojourn in the asylum) brings his first victim to this pageant of off-gassing plastic furniture, the single most obnoxious vision ever imposed on gothic environs. Risibly overblown ’70s chic rules The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave with nods to Edgar Allan Poe, as the modish Lord juggles sports cars and medieval persecution. Laughs escape the viewer’s throat in dry heaves when each new MacGuffin devours itself without warning. Take “Aunt Agatha” (easily two decades younger than her middle-aged nephews) suddenly rising from her motorized wheelchair, clobbered from behind seconds later, her body dragged into a cage where foxes promptly munch her entrails. Nothing comes of this. The phony paralysis, the aunt’s role in a half-dozen mysteries, which include a battalion of sexy maids in miniskirts and blonde Harpo Marx wigs – all gulped, swallowed.

About the only thing we know for certain is that “Aunt Agatha” is gorgeous. Though, in the end, she’s another casualty of the same nihilism that crashes Giallo aesthetics headlong into Poe country. That is into “Lord Alan” and his gaudy room crowded with designer goods to be catalogued in a horror vacui of visual intrusiveness – a trashy shrine to his late wife, the titular Evelyn. If lapses of good taste define The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave, they also reflect Giallo’s abiding obsession with real estate. After all, this Mod hypnagogia has to fill the eye somewhere. Why not bang in the middle of a castle? Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher features a wealthy aristocrat burying his twin sister alive, thereby entombing his own femininity.

Evelyn represents both Usher’s primary theme of the divided self and the obdurate refusal to learn from it. “Alan,” who emerges a moral hero in the end (after his shrink aids and abets his murder spree), remains just as ornery, alienated, and vainglorious as Giallo itself. We’re never told precisely what the film’s fetish objects are supposed to mean. And since the camera seizes upon each one with existential grimness, we’re left with a visual style that begs its own questions.

Function follows form into the abyss. One Ophelia after another dies to satisfy our cruel delectation, even as will-o’-the-wisp light, taken from the bogs and neglected cemeteries of Gothic Horror, finds itself transformed into a crimson-dripping stiletto.  Evelyn stands in for all Gialli, a genre which redefines film itself on the narrow front of visual impact: stainless steel cutlery and candy-colored light enact a sentient agenda as color becomes an instrument of hyperbolic misogyny that fills the eye and then some.  

As with certain other Italian genres, notably the peplum, smart characterization, solid performances and decent dialogue seem not only unnecessary to the Giallo but unwelcome (the spaghetti western, conversely, in which many of the same directors dabbled, seemed to demand a steady stream of good, cold-blooded wise-cracks). Argento, in pursuit of that “non-Cartesian” quality he admired in Poe, took this to extremes, stringing non-sequiturs together to form absurdist cut-ups, torching his stars’ credibility merely by forcing them to utter such nonsense. And this wasn’t enough: from Suspiria (1977) on, the psychological thriller (which the Giallo is a sub-genre of, only the psychology has to be deliberately nonsensical) was increasingly replaced by the supernatural. So that the laws of nature could be suspended along with the laws of coherent motivation.

In Suspiria and its 1980 quasi-sequel Inferno, the traditional knifings are interspersed with more uncanny events, as when a stone eagle comes to life and somehow makes a seeing-eye dog kill his owner, and there are also grotesque incidents with no relation to story whatever: a shower of maggots, or an attack by voracious rats in Central Park. The Giallo’s quest for a solution, inspired as it was by the old-school whodunits, is all but abandoned, replaced by the search for the next sensational set-piece.

Argento’s villains are now witches, but, abandoning centuries of tradition, these witches show more interest in stabbing their fellow women with kitchen knives than with worshipping Satan or riding broomsticks. Regardless of who they’re meant to be, Argento’s characters must express his desires, enact the atrocities he dreams of. And inhabit places built for his aesthetic pleasure rather than their own. Following Bava’s cue, he saturates his rooms in light blasted through colored gels, making every scene a stained-glass icon, no naturalistic explanation offered for the lurid tinted hues. Just as no explanation is offered for the presence of a room full of coiled razor-wire in a ballet school, or for the behavior of the young woman who throws herself into its midst without looking.

Dario Argento’s true significance, at least with respect to Giallo, was perceiving in the nick of time the almost incandescent obviousness of its limitations; that Italian commercial cinema’s garish, polychromatic spin on the garden-variety psychological thriller – departing from its forebears mainly in the rampant senselessness of its “psychology” – had Dead End written all over it. It could never last. On the other hand, Giallo does take a fresh turn with Argento’s Inferno, thanks in no small measure to a woman screenwriter who sadly remains uncredited. Daria Nicolodi explains that “having fought so hard to see my humble but excellent work in Suspiria recognized (up until a few days before the première I didn’t know if I would see my name in the film credits), I didn’t want to live through that again, so I said, ‘Do as you please, in any case, the story will talk for me because I wrote it.’”

Daria Nicolodi

Nicolodi’s conception humanizes (it would be tempting to say “feminizes”) Argento’s usual sanguinary exercises du style, while at the same time summoning legitimate psychology. This has nothing to do with strong characterization – indeed, the characters barely speak – and everything to do with the elemental power of water, fire, wind.… Inferno rescues Giallo by plunging it into seemingly endless visual interludes, a cinema that draws its strength from absence.

by The Chiselers

Daniel Riccuito, David Cairns, Tom Sutpen, and Richard Chetwynd

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #337

“if i showed you my soul, would you cover your eyes?”

What's your favorite brand of chips? I like Lays best. Are you a good painter? My Painting teacher when I was in college last said I did wonderfully, but I definitely beg to differ. Before buying a car, do you usually test drive it? N/A Have you ever written a poem and then read it aloud? No, but a teacher has. It was so fucking awkward; it was very pacifist, the topic being about war, and it had some depressing tones of death; there was just silence at the end of it, and I still don't know if it was shock or "what the fuck, she's messed up." There was this one guy that went, "Nobody is going to clap at that?", though, which I thought was pretty nice and reassuring. Do you like pineapple? Yeah, I do. Have you ever met your favorite author? I don't have a favorite author. Have you and your best friend ever liked the same person? No. Do you have any freckles? Not on my face (though oddly enough, I did as a kid?), but on random parts of my body. How many different languages can you say goodbye in? English, German, and then Spanish. Do you like or hate the smell of fish? I hate it. Have you ever been to Sea World? As a child, yes. I'd never go as an adult. Do you know someone who suffers from short-term memory loss? I don't know how this is actually diagnosed, but my memory is absolutely fucking nightmarish, almost exclusively in short-term situations. I can remember the most obscure events from my childhood, but not what I said to you five seconds prior. I'm rather sure my medications have made it worse over time. Have you ever read any of John Green's books? I got like, one chapter or less into The Fault in Our Stars before the book got replaced with the Wings of Fire series, so I never finished it. Are you a protective person? I'm an immensely protective person over those that matter to me. Have you ever experienced an earthquake? No, thankfully. I'm terrified of earthquakes. What's one thing that makes everything in life worthwhile? The fact that to our proven knowledge, this is the only one we'll ever experience. What type of waffles do you like? (Plain, blueberry etc..) I prefer plain, but I can eat chocolate chip ones as well as blueberry and strawberry. Have you ever seen the show Wife Swap? Yeah, I actually quite like it. Do you like chicken or beef better? Or do you not eat meat? Chicken, I think. I eat meat, but wish I didn't. What brand of dish soap do you use? Dawn, usually. Do any of your neighbors have dogs? Yes, and they never shut up. Do you believe in fortune tellers? They're money-driver bullshitters. Have you ever been to one? No, and judging by the fervor in the above question, I hope you can tell I never would do so and thus monetarily support them. Do you like regular or chocolate milk better? Chocolate, of course. But I love normal milk, too. Once again, wish I didn't, though. Forcing a cow to constantly reproduce to lactate is pretty fucking cruel. Growing up, did you listen to country music? I actually did. Do you normally wash your hands in warm or cold water? If it's just a quick wash, it's usually cold because our water takes quite a few moments to warm up. However, if I'm looking to thoroughly wash my hands, it's gotta be relatively hot. Do you believe in mediums? I see them in a worse light than I do fortune tellers, so... Like sure, manipulate grieving people for profit, sounds great. Have you ever been to one? Obviously not. Have you ever dated someone on the football team? No. Do you have a gazebo at your house? No. Do you like tomatoes? Solely when straight from a garden and on a bacon and mayonnaise sandwich. Otherwise I am noooot a fan. Are you a competitive person? Not very, but there's a tiny spark in me, really when it just comes to photography. I hate it. Google or Bing? Does literally anyone use Bing? What's your favorite brand of bottled water? Essentia. Do you have any ceramic animals in your house or outside? Ummm I don't think so. Have you ever given someone flowers? Yes. What is something you might eat with a hamburger? Fries or mac and cheese. What is a sport that you’ve always wanted to play, but never got a chance to. None. What is a fruit that you might eat in the morning? A banana. Who might you send a selfie to? I don't send selfies to anyone. About how many pages is the longest book you’ve ever read? I THINK it surpassed 1,000? At least in the high hundreds. Who would you call first after getting engaged to tell them the news? Probably Mom. Around what time do you start feeling tired enough to go to sleep? Truth be told, it's usually arouund 7-8. I rarely make it to 9:00 nowadays. What trends do you refuse to give in to? I don't even know what's trendy right now. What subjects in history interest you most? As dark as it is, I find the Holocaust interesting to learn about. Are you superstitious in any way? No. How do you get rid of anxiety? What a relevant question, being in a partial hospitalization program right now. Coping skills that help me are doing deep breathing, mindfulness exercises, and a little jerk back to reality is splashing freezing cold water on my face. It also helps to talk it out with somebody, just get my feelings into words. Then if it's a true anxiety or panic attack, I have my "emergency" anxiety prescription. Are there any items of jewelry you never/rarely take off? My lip and tragus piercings never do, and I always wear two rings. Do you find yourself correcting people’s grammar often? Not really, no. It just seems rude and snobby to me, honestly, if it's not in an educational setting, like helping someone with an essay. Correcting someone in your average conversation is just... unnecessary, imo. Now if you're talking like in surveys and stuff, I definitely do in questions and such, but I don't point it out. Gummi worms: Yay or nay? Yay, love 'em. What do you do when you have ‘me time’? I only ever have "me" time, so what I always do... Do you lack common sense sometimes? I have a horrible lack of common sense, shit's embarrassing. Have you ever poured glue on your hand just to peel it off for fun? No. How do babies make you feel? "Nervous. They’re so damn breakable." <<<< Mood. Would you/Have you milked a cow? No, and I'm not interested. What really gives you the creeps? #!: seeing a baby move inside its mother's stomach. It will actually make me scream and/or cry because it just grosses me the fuck out. Whale sharks' mouths also creep me out big time. Do you ever eat leftover pizza cold? Yeah, I love cold pizza. When you're wanting a midnight snack, what do you normally get? We normally have cashew bars that I like if I'm really hungry. Which cartoon character would you want to keep as a pet? Obviously Pikachu. My niece loves Pikachu anyway, so she'd be ecstatic to see a real one. Or well, maybe I'd go for an Eevee. Not as dangerous with electricity and all but just as cute and small. Do you like marshmallows? Yeah. If you had the opportunity to live forever, would you take it? No. It would ruin so many factors of the temporary nature of life. Things would lose meaning, get old and boring, it'd be much easier to take advantage of things... There are many reasons why I have no desire to live forever. Hell, I even wonder if I want an afterlife for those same reasons. Did you ever really believe in Santa Claus? As a little kid, yeah. Do you like quesadillas? I like cheese, chicken, and shrimp ones. What's the greatest/most influential song you've ever heard? Ozzy's "Life Won't Wait." Do you prefer to pull off band-aids slowly or quickly? I tend to do it slowly. What was the last thing someone told you that had you at a loss for words? Uhhh I feel like Sara said something, but I don't remember what. What was the last health scare you had? Ugh... I'm kind of living in one now. As my legs have been worsening, I'm becoming increasingly concerned I'm eventually going to need a wheelchair for "walking" longer distances. And mind you, "long" for me is probably short for the average person. My knees do nothing but crack incessantly and burn when I use them, and they frequently feel like they're going to give way, and in a few rare instances, have. It's my own fucking fault for not sucking it up and exercising with my mom in the room, so I'd like to move on. What is your favorite filling for a piece of chocolate? Caramel. Do you enjoy the sound of birds chirping? I do. If applicable, what’s your favorite drug, and why? I don't do drugs, so. What was the last TV show you binge-watched? Avatar: The Last Airbender with Sara. Would you rather eat burgers or tacos? Definitely burgers. I don't like tacos. Did your mother change her maiden name when/if she got marred? Yes. What was the last job you applied for? Did you get the job? Deli worker, and yes. Do you use TikTok? No. What decorations do you have in your bathroom? None. Our bathroom is pretty small. Well, the one we use, anyway. The one attached to the master's bedroom isn't cleaned up yet, but we'll use it in case of emergency. What year was your favourite band formed? (Before people think I'm smart, no, I looked the dates up, haha.) Well Ozzy was Black Sabbath's vocalist, and the band formed in 1968, but Ozzy became a solo artist in 1979. What's your favourite fruit? Strawberries. Have you ever had an out-of-body experience? No. Do you prefer gory horror films or the psychological ones? I prefer psychological. Are you easily paranoid? Yeah. Do you have a favorite obsession? Meerkats and Mark are kinda tied, haha. Are you a workaholic? No. Have you ever given a tattoo before and would you like to? No and no; that would be an awful idea, given I have bad tremors in my hands. Have you ever seen the movie Labyrinth? I actually have not. Would you rather be called pretty or hot? Pretty. Have you ever gotten a serious injury at school? What happened? No. Have you ever performed in front of my large group of people? Yes; I was a dancer for many years. Have you ever fundraised? If so, what for? You know how Facebook recommends making fundraisers for a charity of your choice for your birthday? I've done that for the Trevor Project and two charities for ovarian and pancreatic cancers. Are you wearing earrings right now? Ugh, no, even though I want to be. The first holes in my ears are just too stretched for normal earrings because I wore heavy ones too often, and I just don't have nice earrings. I still want to get very small gauges to put in the stretched holes. Name a singer whose voice makes you swoon? Fall Out Boy's Patrick Stump can do that, holy shit. "America's Suitehearts" does it for me, man. Y'know, when his voice goes all deep. Do your pets follow you when you walk around the house? My cat Roman is quite literally my shadow. Where I go, he goes. What do you do online? I seem to only exist online, really, so I've got a lot on my plate to choose from, yet I'm still bored half the time, haha. I'm essentially always watching or listening to YouTube, I play World of Warcraft for varying amounts of time depending on the day, I scroll through deviantART, check KM periodically, do surveys obviously, "work" at the wikis I contribute to, wander around on Facebook... idk, that's all I really do at least semi-regularly online. Haha oh, wait, I also check Craigslist like... every day for tarantula and hognoses even though I can't currently get either. Let me dream. Do you have any scars on your face? I have a couple on my chin from when I fainted and busted it open. What countries were your grandparents born in? In the US. What was the most damaging relationship (romantic or not) that you’ve ever been a part of? Ultimately, with Jason, because of how it ended. The relationship itself wasn't at all damaging to me, but the breakup shook my entire fucking world. When in your life was your self-esteem at its lowest point? Self-esteem? Now. I'm very unhappy with my weight going back up, my body is just in poor health in general, I'm not employed, not in school... I just feel like a lowlife. Who was the last person you cut out of your life? Do you regret it? I want to say my sister's mother-in-law. Sure don't, considering she revealed her disgusting support for conversion therapy. I'm civil around her in person, but I kicked that woman off my Facebook so fucking quick when I saw that shit. Who is the most attractive person you know personally? That I know personally... I would say Alon, but I haven't seen even a picture of her in forever. Summer, though, shares selfies frequently, and by god is she gorgeous. I know a lot a lot of beautiful women, asldkjf;awe. It's funny that I'm blanking on men, at least involving people I still "know"/are somehow present in my life. Would you rather look older or younger than you are? I'm fine looking my age. Have you ever dated someone who was very vastly different from your “type”? No. What is the biggest project you’re currently working on? I suppose you can count an RP plot as a "project." I'm procrastinating so bad on it because it is going to be A LOT of writing. Is there a person from your past that you wonder about frequently? Who? Take a shot in the dark for me. Who knows you best, excluding romantic partners? My mother. What are your thoughts on human creation? I believe we evolved. How many people have you had sex with? One. Have you ever had a yard sale? Yeah. Have you ever been surfing? No.

#survey #surveys #questions #lyrics: ''voices'' by motionless in white

[seymour-butz-stuff]

Over the past century of popular culture, Satan has acquired the souls of delta blues musicians, incited youth rebellions, possessed small children and goats, impregnated unsuspecting women and transmitted evil through backwards lyrics on heavy metal records. But recently, to paraphrase the Rolling Stones, the nature of his game has been puzzling us.

The forces aligned against Satan have become so objectionable that he no longer looks like the bad guy. They include such groups as the Westboro Baptist church, notorious for its hate speech against LGBTQ people, Jews, Muslims and other groups, all of which it condemns as “satanic frauds”. There’s the Trump administration, in league with the US religious right, which has been aggressively pushing anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ legislation, not to mention engaging in overt Islamophobia. Those forces would also include the 20,000 people who recently signed an online petition condemning the Amazon TV adaptation of the cult novel Good Omens – about a demon and an angel – as “another step to make satanism appear normal”.

Now, a documentary threatens to rehabilitate Satan. Directed by Penny Lane, Hail Satan? follows the early adventures of the Satanic Temple, an institution that has hit upon the perfect counter-strategy to the evangelicals’ efforts to recouple church and state. Based in Salem, Massachusetts (where else?), the Satanic Temple is officially recognised as a tax-exempt religious organisation. As such, it has been claiming the same rights and privileges as those obtained by evangelical Christian groups – albeit with a prankster sensibility.

Where the city council of Phoenix, Arizona, began its meetings with a Christian prayer, for example, the Satanic Temple demanded that satanic prayers should also be said. The council chose to drop the prayers altogether. When the Child Evangelism Fellowship set up the pro-Christian Good News clubs in US public schools, the Satanic Temple introduced its own After School Satan clubs – promoting scientific rationalism. And when the Oklahoma state capitol permitted the installation of a Ten Commandments sculpture in its grounds, the Satanic Temple campaigned to erect its own 8ft-high statue of Baphomet, the goat-headed, cloven-hoofed deity. 

“It became very apparent that there was a real need for what we were doing,” says Lucien Greaves, the Satanic Temple’s spokesman and de-facto leader. “More and more, they try to whittle away the rights of others and define us as a Christian nation, to the extent that religious liberty applies to them alone. That’s just a scary circumstance for us to be in.”

Greaves is exactly what you would expect the earthly ambassador of Satan to look like. Pale-skinned, well-groomed and dressed entirely in black, and with one clouded eye, he could have walked off the set of a teen vampire series. Harvard-educated, he often sounds as if he is reading from an academic text. There is no mention of God in the US constitution, he points out, but there is a first amendment protecting freedom of expression and religion. The words “under God” were added to the US pledge of allegiance in 1954, and “In God we trust” first printed on US currency in 1956 – so as to differentiate the US from the godless communists. “Up to that point, it had been E pluribus unum – ‘from many, one’ – which was a much better motto.”

Greaves doesn’t believe in God, Satan, “evil” or anything supernatural, he says. Nor does he sacrifice babies or serve a secret coven. The Satanic Temple is nontheistic, and its principles are broadly liberal humanism. The first of its seven tenets, for example, is: “One should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason.”

So why call it “satanism”? “The metaphor of Satan is just as important to a lot of us as it would be to anybody who takes it literally because we grew up in a Judaeo-Christian culture. It really does speak to us in a very pointed and poignant way about our place in our culture and what our affirmative values are … and, of course, it defines what we oppose: these kinds of theocratic norms and authoritarian structures.”

The Satanic Temple’s interpretation is closer to that of Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost, Greaves says. “The rebel against tyranny, who stands in stark contrast to that mindless superstition and that mob mentality that causes people to give themselves the moral self-licensing to create the ‘other’… and thereby victimise people.”

You could say that is in keeping with Satan’s place in pop culture. Only occasionally has he been taken as a literal figure of evil; more often, the devil represents the outsider, the provocateur, the one with the best tunes. To be labelled “the devil’s music”, as jazz, blues and rock’n’roll all were, was the best possible branding. The Rolling Stones expressed their Sympathy and called an album Their Satanic Majesties Request, but nobody considered them serious satanists. Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page would have been more qualified; he inserted mystical symbols into the band’s imagery, owned an occult bookshop in London and was a keen collector of the works. He even bought the Scottish home of the occultist Aleister Crowley (whose face also appears on the cover of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper album). Page collaborated with the film-maker Kenneth Anger, whose films of the era, such as Lucifer Rising and Invocation of My Demon Brother, brought together a Who’s Who of 60s occult-dabblers, including Page, Mick Jagger, Donald Cammell, Marianne Faithfull, the Manson family member Bobby Beausoleil, and Anton LaVey.

LaVey is acknowledged as the founder of modern satanism, although he, too, was more theatrical showman than genuine prince of darkness. He strove to look the part, with his shaved head, sharp little goatee and black cloak – imagery largely gleaned from old horror movies. He opened the First Church of Satan in San Francisco in 1966, synthesising various occult sources into a semi-coherent philosophy, and attracting a few celebrity devotees, including Jayne Mansfield. Greaves acknowledges the Church of Satan as an influence, but rejects LaVey’s beliefs in social Darwinism and police-state authoritarianism as “Ayn Rand with ceremonial trappings”.

The heavy metal acts of the 1970s and 80s caused more alarm in some quarters, from Black Sabbath and Coven onwards through the likes of Slayer, AC/DC, Iron Maiden and onwards to thrash, death and ultimately black metal. Again, the satanic messaging was largely theatrical: occult symbolism, demonic lyrics and horror-movie guitar riffs. The exception was the infamous Norwegian black metal scene, which devolved into genuine horror with the bands Burzum and Mayhem, whose horrific saga involved church-burnings, suicide and murder. “A lot of these movements have always had an inordinate amount of attention for how small they really are,” says Greaves. “Sometimes, they embraced the worst elements of what they were accused of. They become this creation of the hysteria against satanism.” 

That hysteria rose to witch-hunt levels in the 1980s and 90s, in what became known as the “satanic panic”. Doubtless inflamed by the imagery of horror movies, such as The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby, Christian groups began finding “evidence” of satanism everywhere. They heard subliminal satanic messages in rock records, the most famous being Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven (which supposedly contains the phrase, “Here’s to my sweet Satan,” when played backwards). Then came lurid allegations of satanic ritual abuse around the world – child sexual abuse, murder, torture, cannibalism and gory rituals, ostensibly at the behest of a secret sect intent on undermining the foundations of civilisation.

This is the environment in which Greaves grew up. “I saw peoples’ lives destroyed by the mere attribution of satanism,” he says. “I began to realise that the real evil was in the witch-hunt itself, and not in any of these alleged cults that were supposed to be initiating these activities.” While satanist conspiracy theories filled the airwaves, it bears remembering that there really was an organised sect sexually abusing children on a global scale with impunity: the Catholic church.

#documentary films #christianity #religion #film #culture #2

[aion-rsa]

Vikings Season 6: How Lagertha’s Legacy Lives On

https://ift.tt/3n3LEgt

This article contains Vikings season 6 spoilers.

With the release of season 6 part two on Dec. 30, Vikings has come to an end. While the spinoff Vikings: Vahalla is set to premiere on Netflix sometime in 2021, it will pick up the story of the Viking and Anglo-Saxon conflict 100 years after the last events depicted in the original series. Thus the series finale of Vikings means we are saying goodbye to all the characters whose exploits viewers have enjoyed these last seven years. Whether in the flesh or in flashbacks, this is the final farewell. And no character will be missed so much as Lagertha.

When Vikings began, in the spring of 2013, it was a largely misunderstood enterprise (and still continues to be, by some). Premiering as it did on the History Channel, a cable channel best known for its WWII/Hitlerian focus in the 90’s and more current shows like Pawn Stars and Swamp People, many assumed that Vikings was a testosterone-heavy fight-fest created to feed the key male 18-49 year-old demographic that the network targets.

But that was never really the intention of creator/writer/showrunner Michael Hirst. As Hirst tells Den of Geek, women, particularly Viking queen Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick), were always supposed to be central in the series’ storytelling. 

“I was hoping she would be popular,” Hirst says. “History Channel is a male-viewed channel. And I think History Channel initially picked the show up because they thought it would appeal to that natural base. That they thought, ‘Well, you know, it’s obviously going to be a show full of battles and fights and so on.’ But I always thought it was going to be about Lagertha as much as Ragnar. And I like writing with women.”

Hirst’s focus paid off. Women, like myself, eventually found (generally through word of mouth) the series, and we loved what we saw. Lagertha and the rest of the women on the show were more than pretty faces and eternal victims. They ran the gamut from the initially innocent and oppressed Anglo-Saxon Judith (Jennie Jacques) to soft-power-wielding Gisla (Morgane Polanski) and Aslaug (Alyssa Sunderland) to shield-maidens like Torvi (Georgia Hirst) and Gunnhild (Ragga Ragnars).  

But it wasn’t simply the variety of types of women on the show. It was that none of them were ever simple and they were never just plot devices. Whatever label their cultures applied to them, they have always exceeded them. The women of Vikings have been spouses, parents, politicians, strategists, lovers, and friends—everything that their male counterparts were, and often more successful in their endeavors than those men. It was surprising, and on a show like Vikings, something rarely seen on American television.

And Lagertha—farmer, visionary, wife of Ragnar, mother of Bjorn Ironside and Gyda, shield-maiden, Jarl and Kattegat’s queen in her own right— was the first among the women we tuned in to watch. Which pleased her creator.

“What was wonderful for me was that the show, on History Channel, was getting 50/50 male/female viewership,” Hirst says. “In other words, particularly Lagertha was making women watch the show. And it was about so much more than fights and battles and things. So I was really proud of that. And I think that Katheryn was just brilliant in the role.”

And she has been. Appearing in over 80 episodes (and directing season 6A’s “Valhalla Can Wait”), Winnick shows up more than any other actor, and helped the show bridge the gap when Hirst’s other primary antagonist, Ragnar, was killed off. Doomsayers predicted the end of the series after the departure of Travis Fimmel’s excellent Viking legend. But Winnick and Lagertha went a long way in ensuring we continued to stay engaged and tuning in.

Not that everyone was pleased. From the start, there has always been some Internet criticism of Lagertha that accuses the character of “forced feminism,” ahistorically expansive sexuality, and the impossibility of the existence of actual “shield-maidens.” Some have even argued that women do not possess the physical strength to wield historically accurate Viking weapons (despite watching female actors, Winnick and Georgia Hirst specifically, regularly do just that on Vikings on a regular basis).

In fact, Lagertha appears to be closer to the truth than even many historians assumed when the show began seven years ago. According to the series’ historical consultant and writer Justin Pollard, not only was “Viking society, for all of its apparent terrors to Christians, a much more egalitarian society than Christian society, and women had a much stronger role in it,” but despite “quite a lot of howls of complaint, since then, we’ve found a number of excavated bodies, often excavated in the 19th century, that have been reanalyzed and now been shown to be women.”

The most famous of these is the grave of what many historians had referred to, up until 2017, as the archetypical “ultimate Viking” of the tenth century, found on the island of Birka, Sweden. First discovered and documented in 1878, it was assumed to be the skeletal remains and grave items of a male warrior—sword, spear, axe, arrows, shields, etc. One year after Vikings premiered, an analysis of the pelvic bones and jaw by bioarchaelogist Anna Kjellström strongly suggested that the skeleton was that of a woman. In 2017, analysis of the DNA and Strontium isotypes on the skeleton by a team led by Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson confirmed that the body was a woman, and consistent with the geographic profile of someone having lived in the correct place to be a Viking. 

Lagertha, and women like her, weren’t a modern-day invention—Hirst’s women warriors were a strangely prophetic echo from the past. 

Read more

TV

Vikings Ending Explained

By Jamie Andrew

Nor are women incapable of the type of fighting we get to watch on the show. I brought up the point when I interviewed Clive Standen (Rollo) a few years ago, asking whether it was odd having Winnick, who stands as much as a foot shorter and weighs half as much than many of her male co-stars, on the battlefield. He laughed outright, assuring me that the actress, who holds black belts in two martial arts and founded three martial arts schools before the age of 22, is more than a match for those her character faces on the killing fields of Vikings–a not inconsiderable recommendation considering Standen’s own martial arts background. In other words, what we saw on the series was just as, if not more, real than the reality shows that make up a great deal of History Channel’s programming.

But whatever problems that naysayers may have had with the depiction of shield-maidens in general and of Lagertha in particular, her fans are legion and loyal. Word of her impending death began to circle as early as 2017. Article after article conjectured that she was always about to be killed off—even well past the point where most of Aslaug’s sons had given up their mission to avenge their mother. 

So we had long been emotionally prepared for the death of the semi-retired Lagertha. That the means of her death was less glorious than the eventual end of her son Bjorn might have rankled had it not been so very much like the woman we have come to love. Both die in defense of their beloved Kattegat, but for Lagertha, the moment is about the heart of the show: family. 

Vikings has always been less a historically-based action series and more a family drama told on an epic scale. And as it is as true now as then that rivalries and alliances, anger and empathy, misunderstanding and enlightenment, are constantly in flux in families. Lagertha has always had reason enough to hate her murderer. His birth alone might have earned him death at her hands. But like her equally illustrious partner Ragnar, she has never been as simple as the blood vengeance we traditionally and often erroneously associate with the Vikings. 

Both are complicated characters, and capable of seeing the bigger picture when it comes to their family, to honor, to their fates. She recognizes that his actions are enough to rip apart the wounds only half healed among Ragnar’s sons. That she is able to comfort her own killer, to reassure him that he has done no more than live his destiny and hers, speaks to complexity and compassion all but absent in depictions of Vikings before the show began its run on History Channel. 

And in that, Lagertha is precisely the embodiment of Hirst’s wish for the series:

“One of the things I most wanted to do was to overturn all the cliches about Vikings. I was told by some people at the beginning that I couldn’t really make a show about Vikings. Or, at least, I couldn’t make a show where Vikings were the heroes. Because they were always the Other. They’re the bad guys. They’re the people who come in the night and steal and rape and burn. And how could I make them heroic in any way? And of course, people thought they knew about the Vikings. Actually, they didn’t know anything, which is often the case. And so I thought, “Well, how do I show that?”

It turns out, you do it by creating a character like Lagertha. You do it by taking one of the most misunderstood members of a misunderstood culture and turn her into a hero who makes mistakes and silent sacrifices, enjoys triumphs and endures losses, bides her time and acts impulsively, regrets and doesn’t compromise, gives and takes, and loves and hates, and still goes on, even in death. 

You make her one of us. 

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

And that’s why we have loved her, cheered her on, cried over her pain, and now mourn her end. Because Michael Hirst and Katheryn Winnick made Lagertha someone we could recognize some modicum of ourselves in, creating a link between Vikings of the 9th century and our own 21st century lives. She reminds us that carrying a sword in battle isn’t what makes a hero. Heroes are so much more than that, and while we will never wield axe or spear, the heroic is always within our own grasp.

The post Vikings Season 6: How Lagertha’s Legacy Lives On appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/387HG2f

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[diveronarpg]

Congratulations, CARA! You’ve been accepted for the role of HIPPOLYTA. Admin Julie: Cara, you’ve once again blown us away with your app. From your plots, to your para sample, to the reason why you were drawn towards Halcyon, everything about the woman we see here is incredibly human in a very gripping way -- and we know that’s not easy to pin down when it comes to Halcyon. It was a joy to read. The additional writing sample especially drew me in, and by the end of it, I was totally hooked. We’re thrilled to see you bring her to our dashboards once again, and we cannot wait for you to put what you have planned for Hal into play on the dashboard. Set her loose! Go wild -- we’re watching with anticipation. Please read over the checklist and send in your blog within 24 hours.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | Cara

Age | 34

Preferred Pronouns | She, Her

Activity Level | Please describe how active you think you’ll be in a few sentences. - I’m able to get online everyday and do replies. Depending on how many and the length, I can write one to three replies perday. I do have a busy schedule during the weekend, so these would be my less active days.

Timezone | EST

How did you find the rp?  | I’ve been aware of it since it’s first run and was happy to see it back last year. I’ve been checking in often, waiting for the right moment to apply. And now, after being inactive, I’m back.

Current/Past RP Accounts |

https://ofhippclyta.tumblr.com/

https://laraxrutherford.tumblr.com

https://theninalowell.tumblr.com/

IN CHARACTER

Character | Hippolyta, Halcyon Santos

What drew you to this character? | I’ve been eyeing Diverona since it opened and the character I always come back to is Hippolyta.

To say she’s resilient would be an understatement. There’s something amazing in her, in a woman who falls from grace like her, someone who had everything and still defied the odds and wanted her own path. Her label being the Phoenix is only proof of that. Halcyon is a woman who sacrificed a lot to the idea that others had of herself, who she was or should be. Being good of heart, like she once was, doesn’t make it less a sacrifice. Halcyon existed for others only for a long time, something that she didn’t challenge. Her purpose served others until her time came.

The strength she showed since Cosimo came after her is not something she showed before. Not in such a raw way. It was one of the most determining moments of her life, when she asked to be taken to him, and it was her first taste of another kind of power. She didn’t accept death because there’s something stronger inside of her, a  will to live on her own terms. She had nothing left to lose, she had been betrayed by everyone she ever loved and trusted. She saw an opportunity and took it, something that is very interesting to her. She has the ability to see steps ahead, of being able to size her opponents the minute she sees them. It’s something that most likely comes from all her years of sitting quiet, of observing the world around her without making a move.

Halcyon is a complex person, with two sides. She is kind, something that hasn’t changed in all those years, surprisingly. Her kindness is mostly shown through her work for the Church. Halcyon always had a want and a need to help those who were less fortunate than she and she’s still doing it. But that kindness has hardened over the years. Halcyon has been holding her breath for so long, that when her husband died and she knew the Capulet would come for her, in a way, she started to breathe again. His death was the final push she needed to let go of the life she lived and to forge a new one.

What is a future plot idea you have in mind for the character? |

Rising higher. Halcyon is ambitious, there’s no denying. She is deeply loyal to Cosimo and Vivianne but what about the others? How far will her ambition take her? I would like to have her be confronted with the opportunity to do something, maybe double-cross one of her own, in order to rise higher. Or even be faced with the choice of choosing between Vivianne and herself. Because as much as Halcyon isn’t selfish, how far would she go, in terms of sacrificing herself? Her loyalty to Cosimo is strong but weaker than the one to herself. Breaking away from the Capulets wouldn’t be easy, if even doable, but if her life was at stake,, or if Cosimo betrayed something she strongly believed in, she  would try to keep her head high and rise from the ashes of that betrayal, one again.

The ties that bind. When it comes to Halcyon, blood doesn’t run deeper than water. At least not anymore. Her parents caused her too much pain. But could she go as far as hurting them? Halcyon cares deeply about Verona, but what if her parents stood in her way? She never fully let the darkness and ugliness stain her, but would going as far as to cast out her own blood be the thing to push her over the edge? Killing for others is easy, but killing for oneself is harder. In a moment of anger, Halcyon would be confronted with the ghosts of her past and seize that opportunity to completely severe her current life from her past life. Because there is a darkness inside of her, despite all her goodness, and having that balance tip when it comes to her parents specifically would be something that completely unleashed that darkness inside of her.

Greatness. I see Halcyon has still being adored, even if not as much as she used to be. Those who watched her fall and get up, more than once, might have even more faith in her. But I want that faith the people have in her, the symbol they made her be, to eventually fade, either because they turn their backs  on her or because she did. Though I imagine if they knew what she was really up to, they would be the ones to cast her out. It would also test her faith, and that’s something I’d like to have happen to her, to wonder who or what she is without God.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | Yes. Death is needed for this kind of group and while I adore Halcyon with all my heart, killing her would be a good plot. I would just like her to have been developed and written a bit before, so that her death could be more meaningful and that she would have her moment to shine.

IN-DEPTH

In-Character Para Sample: Again, write as much or as little as you need to get your interpretation across.

SAMPLE I

It had been a strange request, to dye a wedding dress in red, but the Santos name held too much for the tailor to turn it down and the hush money helped too. “Why do you need two dresses?” her future husband had asked, his tone bored. It was an arranged wedding for him as well, and he hoped to gain a dutiful bride. He had been assured that it would be the case.

Halcyon and Callum had gone on a few very public dates, the wedding being regarded as the event of the year. The Santos and Pardi, united as one. Halcyon Pardi, the woman hated the sound of that. Where Celia had insisted they both keep their maiden name, Halcyon was expected to shed hers as soon as the vows would be pronounced. Nonetheless, she smiled on these outings, nodded when he talked and voiced the right opinions only when prompted. She knew that her life would be just like that and she wanted to feel Celia one last time, to feel passion before losing it forever. And so, she had Celia’s wedding dress dyed crimson, a sign of the fire that burned her and the blood her heart had bled.

“Everyone except me to have one for the wedding and another for the ceremony. A woman has to be trusted on these things dearest.” The words sounded sweet, they all did when they came out of her. But they tasted bitter to Halcyon, bile rising into her throat. They ached, every single one of them. They cut through the very fabric of her soul. And she bore them, like the children she would never give him, refused to give him. She was thankful for the pills she could take, until she wasn’t fertile anymore, so that she would never give this man and her parents what they hoped; an heir. Her two biggest rebellions, she thought as her finger ran through the fabric of the dress, now tucked away in her closet, never to be worn again. Celia was gone and she was now someone’s wife.

A voice was heard and Halcyon rushed into the master’s bathroom, avoiding the man she kissed every night. His voice sounded angry and she knew he was talking about them again, the Capulets. Her husband was greedy, money wasn’t enough, he wanted power. And the Capulets had the one thing he really wanted, Verona. Halcyon ran the bath’s water, creating a diversion. She played the almost empty headed wife so well, he often forgot she even had thoughts that weren’t his. Callum felt safe around her, too safe. Pressing her ear against the shut door, she could hear everything he was saying. He had been trying to buy the police department lately, thinking that if he had them in his pockets, the rest would follow easily. But they were not easy to bribe and he was going at it all wrong. He was playing a dangerous game, pretending to help Cosimo while working against him. He wanted to be mayor and he needed more than the few businessmen that stood in his corner.

Halcyon could see all this unfolding before him and the man still thought he was on top of everything. Every little mistake he made, she predicted, finding some sick joy in it, in watching him be a fool. She kept quiet and maybe, just maybe, if he didn’t expect her to be nothing else than an accessory, would she have helped him see what was coming. But with every day that passed, he kept asking why she wasn’t pregnant when it was all she had to do. He kept treating her as if she was failing at the only thing she was supposed to be good at, bearing children. She pretended to cry and despair as he badgered her about it. But that was her secret, at least one of the many she was starting to collect.

As she stood there, holding her breath so that not even that would make her miss a word, she could see too well the choices she had in front of her. If she talked, if she said it all, surely he would understand his mistakes and be able to stay alive. And wasn’t that her duty, as a wife, to help her husband? Hadn’t she vowed, in the Cathedral, to stand by his side, for better or worse? It was a holy bond and Halcyon respected the Church. But she knew her words had been empty then, they meant nothing if they weren’t spoken to the woman she loved. It was there, in their bathroom, that she was conscious, for the very first time, that she would let this man walk into his death. From the outside, it would look as if she had been passive in all this, not involved. But the reality was different, every moment she chose to stay quiet was bringing her one step closer to her freedom and she knew that.

Maybe one day she would understand that he had been her first kill, her first taste of the darkness that was buried inside herself. And years later, when Vivianne would suggest she infiltrated the police department, she would smile, knowing that she would succeed where a man failed.

SAMPLE II

A delicate flower, that’s what they had built her to be. They gave her poise and grace, told her she was the best and deserved the world. And in return, she smiled, nodded and extended her hand to those who needed it. She had walked among them, an angel, her light inspiring others. Never did Halcyon let it alter her, her heart remaining pure. She had loved, believed in it. Like an innocent girl, not yet the woman she was today, she was bound to wed. The fire that consumed her gave her strength, made her better. Halcyon was naive, she believed that everyone was like her, good, or at least, that those who raised her were as good as she saw them. She had been wrong, fooled by her faith. When her fire ended in ashes, she had to get up. She rose above herself with a burnt mark that would always follow her, a scar forever etched on her heart. Had it been a mistake, to nurse her broken heart and not turn the city upside down looking for her missing  half?

No matter how deep the bullet lay, reality was ugly. The woman she loved could be bought. And by none other than her parents. It was with trembling hands, already feeling the blow in her heart, tears coming down, that she had taken the note that was left with the wedding dress. A soft finger ran  over it, even when she couldn’t see the words anymore obscured by her vision. That’s when the light had gone out. There was rage that first night, something that she was ashamed of. She had sought out her confidante the next morning, feeling herself calmer in the hot air of the Cathedral. She was told that God had a plan for her and she believed it.

Halcyon draped herself in her sadness, coming out of it even more beautiful than before. Her failed engagement wasn’t a secret, the Santos’ were well-known in the city. And it wasn’t long before talk of another wedding ran through the streets.

“I can’t,” she cried many times. “Please don’t make me do this.”

“You’re marrying him. We gave our word.”

“Mama, please,” she appealed to her mother, the one who had nursed her, taken care of her.

“Listen to your father. He knows what’s best.” And Halcyon knew, she had left her mother’s womb for good.

“Stop being a child, Halcyon,” her father snapped. His final words on the subject.

She smiled the day of her wedding, she was gracious to the guest, she played her part. And she played it well. There had been too many tears, too much pleading that had lead to this moment. Her parents had as good as killed her the day they gave her hand away, sealed her faith in a magnificent ceremony, a funeral where she was dressed in white. It wasn’t the fact that she didn’t love him. It was the fact that they extinguished her light, put her in a cell and threw away the key. Halcyon didn’t exist, the shadow that walked this world instead was not her. And they didn’t care, for they all had what they wanted. Her parents gained more money and her husband gained the most beautiful woman in the city. A trophy, polished regularly, something that people took pride in, a simple object. Never did she let others see  any of this. She was only his wife, but she was a good one, a dutiful one. Devoting herself to charities, the only thing she was allowed to do, and the halo on her head grew bigger. Little did they know, her hands would soon be bathed in crimson. When her husband was killed, the tears weren’t for him. They were for her, for finally being free from him and from her family.

Halcyon knew Cosimo’s men would come for her. Against everything, she hadn’t fled the city. Verona was her home and like a Queen, she would never leave it behind. Her blood would soil the city if needed, her pain and anguish visible for everyone. A martyr. She had left the door unlocked, knowing there was no need to try and protect herself. Cosimo was powerful and a locked door would not stop him or those who worked for him. Her back was to them when they came in as she looked at the city she called her own all her life. It would all be over soon. “Please,” she started. Make it quick. Her life flashed by, the faces of those she helped and of those who caused her pain. But what troubled her, even more, were the words she heard all her life. Fragile. Useless. Deviant. Wife. Martyr. Fiancée. Beautiful. Kind. Icon. Weak. One word was missing, one word had never been spoken to describe her. Determined. Never before had she felt such courage, or rather, had she been aware of it. “Take me to him.” The words were said as she turned to face them, an angel awaiting her death.

All her life, Halcyon had stood by, quiet, observing. The world unfolded in front of her and she watched it, in awe. Never before had she thought that all her observing would pay off for her, that being quiet would serve her. A presence quick to be forgotten, a pretty face deemed nothing more, the woman has listened. And learned. Until this moment, until her life hung in the balance, she never understood how precious that gift had been. It paid her in information. Her husband was dead, killed by the Capulets. And they thought, foolishly, that all of his secrets were buried with him. They had been wrong. Information was precious, the most powerful currency there was. Information would be her most powerful weapon. “There’s more he doesn’t know.” The words were a whisper as the woman slowly found her voice, the one that had been muffled all her life. She could be valuable, something she saw for the first time in her life. Every moment led her to this, right now, she could finally see it. They thought they had put her down for good, but she got up, stronger than ever. The shackles  on her hands were gone.

SAMPLE III

It hadn’t been long, or so it felt like, since Vivianne was in the hospital and now it was Halcyon’s turn to be freshly out, or almost. The days following her release had been spent trying to patch the hemorrhage, a word that could be taken to its most literal meaning. The Capulets were bleeding despite all their physical wounds being, at last, and yet things still felt too fragile. The capitana could be seen at all hours at the headquarters, working relentlessly to find a way to make the Montagues pay double for their actions. Halcyon herself had come close to losing too much, with Theo laying unconscious in a hospital bed for days, a player so precious to the woman, she had been on edge. A short breath of relief had been exhaled when she learned to other had woken up, something she felt on more than one level, some form of friendship forming with the informant.

It was late at night and when everything had started to blur she silently made her way to her dear friend and underboss’ office. On a night like this, exhausted like she was, it was the comfort of the friend she was seeking and not the advice of the leader she blindly followed. “Posso entrare?” May I come in? Tired words that followed a soft knock on Vivianne’s door. Something in Halcyon’s voice had the woman looking up from the reading she was doing and beckoned her to the more private area of her office.

There had been whispers of the state the underboss had been in when she learned that Halcyon and not come back from the mission, something she had seen, in parts, herself when she was finally alone with the older woman. Halcyon had seen changes, subtle ones, in her mentor since she got out of the hospital as if a confidence she once paraded so easily was no longer so strong. Maybe the capitana was reading too much into all this, a trick her own emotions were playing on her. It was, after all, so small what she thought she saw. If only she was not looking at the other so often, maybe they would not be here tonight.

The two women shared a bond, everyone knew it, but it was not something that was openly discussed between the two. Halcyon would die for Vivianne, in a heartbeat. But the moments when they talked about how much the friendship meant were rare. Tonight, the younger one needed that, for herself, but she sensed also for the underboss. As they sat down, closer than usual, an action that was deliberate on her part, a soft sigh escaped her. “Too much has been on your mind.” It wasn’t a question, a simple fact that was uttered as big brown eyes searched the blues she dreamed of losing herself into.

It was a rare occurrence, a hand brushing the other, waiting to see if part of the skin she felt like she craved at times would shy away. When it did not, Halcyon’s hand became heavier, a gesture that was meant to let Vivianne know she was there. But suddenly, it did not seem enough. Amidst the chaos, this simple hand, one that would follow the other woman anywhere, felt too little. “Whatever it is, whatever you’re keeping, you are stronger than it.” Without thinking, something she would never do usually, Halcyon let go of the woman’s hand. Light fingers followed by warm palms went to the underboss’ visage. For a woman who could be ruthless, there was genuine care for those she cared about, many of whom had been targeted lately.  “You won’t lose us. You won’t lose me.” They were so close and the touch felt like everything that could soothe Halcyon’s tired body and mind. But Halcyon did not dare allow herself to go further, to let the sudden flushing of her cheeks get what drove the blood there. She did not close the small, too small, space between their lips.

SAMPLE IV

Location: Halcyon’s house

Date: March 25th, 2019

Ever since the hospital, the Capulet forged a second layer around her, another armour that guarded her from the outside. The physical wounds were something she could take, another symbol of the war she was fighting. But the emotional ones were something she tried to shield herself from, marks that were carved too deeply into her soul. Wounds that followed her everywhere, even in her sleep. Days were long, the list of things that had to be done to contain the hemorrhage the Capulet had been cursed with in recent months and the woman always came home later than usual, long nights working at the Cathedral. Some nights she even prayed, the Faith that had been testing her for years never too far. The lights were not turned on as she walked into her penthouse, the dark soothing for the headache that had been building all day. Heels were carefully discarded, joining others that were in the entrance, forming a delicate line. Never would she dare say the words out loud, but there was loneliness lately in coming home to such an empty place, a longing for something more, something well beyond her reach. Her hand could extend, fingers grasping into thin air, and never would she reach what was missing.

The television was turned on, the channel already on Rai News24. It casted a glow in the living room and she went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea, the background noise eased part of the storm inside of her. The Santos name was heard distantly just as the kettle started to boil, the whistle of it drowning the noise. Not that it mattered, her father’s business was often in the spotlight. The name barely registered, too preoccupied with the day she had, going over every little detail of everything that was said to her, trying to see if she had missed anything. Absent fingers were running along the edge of her tea cup as she walked back to the living, only then looking at the screen in front of her. Strangely enough, the news was still talking about her father. Breaking News were not words that were usually associated with any of his activities. The images did not make any sense, neither were the words. Was this really how Halcyon Santos was to learn of her father’s death? Not by her own mother but by the coldness of the television. The cup she was holding dropped to the floor, shattering in tiny fragments. Slowly walking closer to the object that was turning her world upside down, finger gently brushing a picture of her father that came with the segment. The woman crumbled on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably. Halcyon didn’t know if she was crying because her cage was finally broken for good or if it was because the man she once held so high would never be redeemed in her eyes, breaking her heart forever.

Extras: If you have anything else you’d like to include (further headcanons, an inspo tag, a mock blog, etc), feel free to share it here! This is OPTIONAL.

Headcanons

Training Halcyon was easy. Her years of ballet made her graceful and athletic. Hand- to- hand combat came easily to her, it was another form of dance. The woman surprised everyone by how easily and quickly it came to her and soon, she was able to  best more experienced fighters.

She started at the bottom and rose rather quickly because of how determined and dedicated she is. Halcyon directed all her energy and emotions into the tasks that were given to her, breathing and living solely for the Capulets. She was running and quick-thinking, able to see many outcomes unfolding before her. Her charm and apparent sweetness fooled more than one and it played at her advantage.

Halcyon is still nursing her broken heart. Celia was the great love of her life, up until this point. She was a burning fire and Halcyon gave herself completely to her lover., The woman always knew she was attracted to other women. And to men at times, something that was very confusing for her Catholic soul. Never before Celia had she been so open and free with another person . It was Halcyon, timid and fair compared to her passionate lover, who proposed. The ring was exquisite and when Celia said yes, Halcyon thought she could never be happier. In the days and weeks leading to Celia’s departure Halcyon could feel something had changed. She thought it was the wedding’s excitement, as the day was nearing. But when she came home to an empty house and saw the dress, she knew. Her heart hasn’t mended since].

The first tasks she had when she joined the Capulets were easy enough. Her first kill wasn’t. It was a conflicting moment, one where her soul fought the two sides of her, the light and the darkness. Never before did she thought she would or could kill another. But when the moment came, it felt…easy. There was half a confession to Hugo, Halcyon talking of a great sin without naming it. But she found that once you committed something that seemed hard, the next times were easier, until it came almost naturally. There was a war to fight and she was now part of it.

#accepted: hippolyta #accepted

[marithlizard]

Thoughts on RWBY v7 finale, “The Enemy of Trust”

Okay, finale, it's you and me.   I've heard some eyebrow-raising things.    Let's see what you've got.  

Neo vs JNRO!   My money's on umbrella girl, even at four to one.

Oscar's really getting along with this team.   I won't be surprised if sometime next volume they officially invite him to be the P(ine) in the reborn JNPR.

Yep, short and sweet.  She had a bit of fun there, and she was never in any danger.

I'm really appreciating the option to watch the fights at half-speed on the RT site and actually catch some of the clever moves.

Cinder's fighting style is quite different here than it was in all previous volumes. Remember the bow, the telekinetically controlled black glass shards,  the Maiden fire and the giant sword?   Right now she's leaping about acrobatically in melee with two short swords. If the face was different everyone would take this as an entirely new character.   I get that it's cool to try new things, writers, but I miss the consistency.

So she specifically despises the privileged elite of Atlas. Can't blame her for that.

Okay, consistency or not I have to admit the aerial combat is visually fantastic. Winter's gryphon and Penny charging Cinder from opposite sides, followed by  fire and ice colliding, wow.

Background music also doing its usual stellar job.

Penny says "I...disagree"  in exactly the same tone of voice Adam used, and for exactly the opposite reason.  That's a cool parallel and I'm sure it was intentional.

Oscar lagging behind out of breath. He's smaller and younger and is years behind everyone except Jaune on training, it makes sense.  Also probably not using Aura to recharge stamina like the others. 

Oooh, I knew it wasn't Nora instantly by the body language. Neo moves very distinctively, it's great.  

And she's had lots of practice in imitating the person you love at the right instant to make you hesitate. Poor Ren.

You don't normally yell "Drop your weapons!" and simultaneously open fire unless you are intending to kill rather than capture. I guess the soldiers are assuming that Huntsmen will survive any kind of damage a normal person can dish out.  Which is...not a safe assumption for Oscar I don't think.  Ugh Ironwood your stormtroopers are dumb.

Ren is crying oh no

Annnnd Neo just toddles off with the lamp. I love that short officer with short ponytail look on her.

FRIA WAKES

and she is  AWESOME

(Her eyes are the same blue as Ironwood's,  it does make you wonder. We never learned her last name. )

Ren with an understandable lack of perspective. He's thought of Huntsmen as the pinnacle of combat badassery all his life, when really it's just a benchmark  of competence along the path.   I suspect there aren't many people alive who could defeat Neo, outnumbered or not, and most of the people who can are god-tier.

Maria's kept a low profile all volume because she has no patience for the high-level strategy and arguments and politics,  she sure as hell isn't going to run grunt missions, and she'd last ten minutes in a room with the General before smacking him in the knees or possibly the nuts.  But she was ready to charge in with the logistical support the instant that arrest order went out on the net.   I just...love her.  She is the best.  

"I was supposed to protect the power of the Maiden until I was ready.  I worry I may have lost track of time...but you can tell James that I'm ready, now."    People were worried that Ironwood was holding Fria prisoner, forcing her into a sacrificial death. But the way she says that makes it very clear that she wasn't pressured.  He specifically told her when you're ready.   And he waited as long as he could.  

Ironwood apologizing to Winter with so much regret in his voice.   Look, you may hate him,  but the writers don't, that's abundantly clear.  And I don't either.  This is a classical Greek-style tragedy unfolding before us, a good person being destroyed as their inherent fatal flaw meets the worst possible circumstances for it.  

Oscar descending in the elevator, standing just like Ozpin.  That is an eerie sight.   He's going to imitate Oz as much as he can because Ironwood has been asking for Oz all along.   ...and it's going to backfire as a strategy, isn't it.

"And....whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?"  "Still just me."  But you're leaning on your cane as you walk just like Ozpin did.

Someone suggested applying Blake's "embodiment of a word"  idea to all the characters, and the word I thought of at first for Oscar was innocence....but it's not, is it.  Oscar is the embodiment of sincerity.  He means every word of his offer to reconcile.  How could anyone resist?

...Apparently Ironwood can.   And I see it, I do.   If this is a chess game, then protecting the king - the relics - is ultimately the only thing that matters.  All the other pieces are expendable. Oz and Oscar and Ruby represent the opposite approach:  every piece matters, and what's most important is not to win the game but to preserve the board, to keep it all going.    

(If they'd told Ironwood all the way back in ch2 that as far as they know Salem can't be killed, would he have adjusted his perspective?   I believe he would have,  but not all the way.  There's a fundamental difference in mindset.   Lois Bujold talked in one of her books (Brothers in Arms I think) about how people are drawn to the romance of the hard choices. If you've believed all your life that hardship and painful sacrifice are necessary and inevitable, you get proudly attached to them in a way, and you tend to be skeptical, at best, of anyone who claims they can be avoided.  I've been thinking about that a lot this volume.)

Uh.

WHAT.

You were having an argument,  a heated but peaceful one.  Why would you suddenly draw your weapon and shoot a teenager off the edge of a cliff?   One who was offering no physical threat to you at all and who you could certainly have overpowered and arrested?   You arrested Watts, who was trying to kill you, nearly destroyed your kingdom, and made you nearly tear your own arm off.   Why would you murder Oscar?

You wouldn't.  This makes no sense, just like Clover and Qrow fighting each other instead of teaming up against Tyrian makes no sense.  I was hoping there'd be context in this case but there just isn't. The RWBY writers wanted dramatic scenes here and they didn't think the fans would care about anything else as long as it looked cool.

And this is new in v7, IMO.  While I've certainly had some quibbles with the writing in past volumes, I don't remember anything remotely like this.  Nothing so huge that I can't handwave or rationalize or say that it's a minor story element.   I'm a Watsonian, not a Doylist; I hate having to say that something is just plain bad writing.  

Ugh. Okay. Moving on.

That's a fast-regrowing Grimm arm.

I was expecting Penny to say "No, it's not me, it's supposed to be Winter," but she's really hesitating.  After the conversations they've had she's not sure the power should go to Winter.    There's nothing personal about it, no ambition.  Penny has been acting exactly as a Maiden should from the moment Fria first saw her, her every instinct to protect and help.

Uh, y'know, Winter, you could SHOOT CINDER during the many seconds she's writhing in helpless agony there.   You don't have to stand there and wait till she's ready to fight again.  Sigh.

That said, the sequence of Oscar falling,  power building in him and Penny,  the silver eyes etc is stunning.

(that little twirl Oscar does, like a shoujo magical girl.  cute)

holy carp there are still ten minutes left.

I don't think you're correct about fear being the common denominator, Oz, but I'll shut up and enjoy your very fine speech.

Winter makes her choice...and she's not surprised that Penny chooses differently.    Opposed to the heroes or not, I do think it's a good thing for her to stay at Ironwood's side.  Somebody sane needs to be ready to take over there sooner or later.  

Penny getting support from Ruby and Weiss,  yay.

This can't be easy for Pietro.  He's loyally helped Ironwood for decades, and he's not exactly in good shape to live the outlaw life.

Cinder, continuing to piss off her only ally.  Despite being the antagonist in a boss fight she felt...weirdly irrelevant at the end of it.  So much so that she just quietly left when no one was looking. 

"It's gone."  Well, now that's an interestingly vague way to put things, Winter.  Are you protecting Penny?   Withholding information from your boss is, as we've seen, not something he reacts well to.

Watts has an implausibly nice cell with a beautiful view.  

I think that's a quarry Oscar has fallen into, or perhaps the outskirts of a mine.  He and Oz have a LOT to talk about and I would really love to actually see the conversation next volume, writers.  For a change. 

ooooookay yep that's a flying murder behemoth whale.   I was expecting to be reminded of FFX's Sin, but it's got a vibe more like the whale from Pinocchio.  My vote for a name is therefore Monstro.   

Someone's dressed to impress her ex.

....Hmmmmm.  You know, I didn't see an actual army of flying monkeys.  Is there one? Is it inside the whale, or in that black cloud?  Or does Salem have something else in mind?  

"Fear" does seem like a song from Oz's point of view, but I don't feel it expresses his - or their - personality.  It's not the image song I'm still waiting for.  But then, quite a  few characters still haven't gotten theirs.  

Well. I'm on board for volume 8,  hopeful the writers will make better choices, and curious to see how we're going to START a volume with an ultimate boss encounter.  That's not a thing I've seen a story do before.

#rwby #spoilers #v7 spoilers

[arthur-of-camelot]

Knights of the Round Table Plot

Do you like fun? Action? Adventure? Does saving the town from disaster and acting like a hero of legend appeal to you? Want some petty drama between characters that stems from centuries old beef? Then this may be the plot for you. Excalibur has been pulled from the stone and in so doing has called for the knights of the round table to return to Arthur and work together as one. 

How this works: When Excalibur was removed from the stone, a wave of magic spread throughout Swynlake like a call to arms reaching out to people who would be deemed worthy of continuing the legacy of the knights. Those people in that moment would then have been flooded with the memories and knowledge of the knight that they most closely resembled. The goal of the sword was to bring these people back together in order to protect the realm (or Swynlake) from harm. It’s up to the mun as to what elements of a knight’s story your character receives/how you decide to handle it. See this post for an example of the flood of memories that can occur. From there the goal is to bring the knights together and have them experience modern day quests to protect Swynlake/adventure etc. The dramatic backstories can also help foster interesting/weird/dramatic new relationships with characters.

If you’d like for your character to be given the memories/experiences of former knights, please fill out the tiny app under the read more. YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE A MALE/NON-MAGIC TO APPLY.

List of Knights:

•Sir Galahad (Son of Sir Lancelot): known for his gallantry and purity and and one of the most perfect of all knights. It’s said he was able to defeat a lot of his enemies because he was pure. One of the ones who quested for the holy grail.

• Sir Lancelot: known as Arthur’s closest friend/greatest companion and the greatest swordsman and jouster of the age. Also known for wrecking Arthur’s marriage and hooking up with Guinevere basically helping destroy Camelot. (I have two seriously great plot ideas regarding Arthur and Lancelot so getting Lancelot would be so so good) • Sir Gawain: known as Arthur’s nephew and as a formidable, courteous, and also a compassionate warrior, fiercely loyal to his king and family. He was a friend to young knights, a defender of the poor, and as "the Maidens' Knight" a defender of women as well. (personally feel Gawain should def be a lady knight this go around) • Sir Percival: One of the knights who looked for the holy grail. Renowned for his strength and fighting prowess. He was kind of beefy. But also a cool dude. • Sir Lionel: a double cousin of Lancelot, he was apparently raised by the lady of the lake in her underwater kingdom. He proves himself very unworthy of the holy grail by trying to kill his brother for not rescuing him. *Strongly recommended to be a magick. • Sir Bors: brother of sir Lionel, was worthy of seeing the grail. Lionel tries to murder Bors, and Bors does not defend himself, refusing to raise a weapon against his kinsman. Became Arthur’s successor when Arthur died. • Sir Tristram/Tristan de Lyones: He was sent to fetch Iseult/Isolde back from Ireland to marry the king. However, he and Iseult accidentally consumed a love potion while en route and fall helplessly in love; the pair underwent numerous trials that tested their secret affair. Also known as a great musician and falconer. • Sir Gareth: Arthur’s nephew and Gawain’s brother. He avenged the death of a fairy king. He defeated a bunch of knights since he’s apparently a badass himself. Was accidentally killed by Lancelot, though he was also like a son/younger brother to the dude. Oops. • Sir Bedivere: known as the one who returned Excalibur to the lady of the lake. A handsome one handed knight. He was described as the most handsome man in the world other than Arthur and the wielder of a magic lance. *Strongly encourage a character with a disability • Sir Bleoberis: Though described as skilled and honorable, he is also depicted as malicious. One example is with King Mark's marriage with La Beale Isoud, where Bleoberis rode into Mark's court, demanded a gift, and, on being granted it for sake of his renown and his place as a knight of the Round Table, he helped himself to Sir Segwarides' wife as the fairest lady at court and rode off with her. He also tried to kill Gawain's son, Guinglain, at the Perilous Ford. • Sir Brunor: was nicknamed ‘the badly-cut coat’ by Sir Kay after his arrival in his murdered father's mangled armour and surcoat at King Arthur's court. He vowed not to take it off until his father’s death was avenged. Was also known as the Good Knight without Fear. • Sir Palomedes/Palamedes: Had an unrequited love for Iseult/Isolde so he and Tristram/Tristan clashed. The two basically had a love hate relationship. Was known as the hunter for the questing beast, and being on Lancelot’s side when the affair with Guinevere is revealed. Killed by Gawain. • Sir Lamorak: was referred to as Arthur's third best knight, only inferior to Lancelot and Tristan. He was known for his strength and fiery temper. His father killed Gawain’s father which led to Gawain eventually turning around and killing Lamorak’s father. And then to make things worse, Lamorak decided to hook up with Gawain’s dad’s widow therefore making their blood feud worse. Rejected an offering of truce from Arthur, and ended up ambushed and killed.

• Sir Pelleas: was the son of a poor vassal and ended up falling for a high born maiden. She spurned and humiliated him and refused to let him into her castle. Pelleas goes to Gawain for help but Gawain ends up being into the maiden too and hooks up with her, devastating Pelleas. Gawain eventually remembers his promise to help and convinces the woman to love Pelleas. • Sir Kay: the foster brother of Arthur’s, sort of helped raise Arthur and teach him how to be a knight. Also kind of dickish. He’s most associated with hot-headedness and a fiery temper supplemented by his role as an incompetent braggart.

• Sir Ector/Hector de Maris: younger half-brother of Lancelot. Murdered a lady’s fiance so he could be with her. Also had an affair. Deemed unworthy to behold the holy grail. Sides with Lancelot with the Guinevere drama. • Sir Dagonet: considered the court jester. He saw himself as a courageous warrior and acted like he was but in reality, he would flee at the slightest provocation. He often battered his own shield so that it appeared that he had been in a fight – telling all that he emerged victorious of course. • Sir Agravaine: nephew of King Arthur. Was known as the one with hard hands. Proud and kind of a bully. He secretly made attempts on the life of his hated brother Gaheris and participated in the slayings of Lamorak and Palamedes. He played a leading role in exposing his aunt Guinevere's affair with Lancelot which lead to his death at the hands of Lancelot. • Sir Mordred: a traitorous nephew most well known for fighting with Arthur and mortally wounding him even as Arthur did the same to him. He actively worked to expose Lancelot and Guinevere and to ruin the kingdom.

APPLICATION: 

Muse: Preferred Knight: Why do you want this particular knight/what would you want to do with them?: (200 words)

#arthurian plot #my god how long have i been planning this #SO LONG IT'S INSANE