#Both being corrupted by people associated with rabbits

[nyancreeperpony]

Everyone talks about The Daycare Attendant’s narrative similarities to the Puppet, but no one ever talks about their narrative similarities to Circus Baby and I feel like that should start changing.

[exhaslo]

Hiii！I love your stories!!But can you write about Miguel × hybridbunny！reader？that Miguel was a rich mafia or ceo and he bought reader from a black market or an auction.（ps：make reader sit on Miguel’s desk while he works and he ended up eating her out and fcking her hehehehehhehe）🐇🐇🐇🐇

Hehehehehehehehehehe

Warning: MINORS DNI, Smut, oral, rough sex, dirty talk, creampie

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There were many pros and cons that came with being the CEO. Unfortunally, claiming ownership of Alchemax carried far more cons than the alternative. It did not help that Miguel took over the company from his corrupt father.

There were a lot of problems that needed to be fixed. Many were within the company itself; the associates to say the least. Miguel had to fire and clean up a lot of the corrupted associates' messes. This included having Miguel silently attend a black auction market.

Turned out, one of his former coworkers who worked in genetic splicing decided to test various animals on different people. While Miguel was so focused on Spiders that created Spiderman, his stupid coworker created hybrids and sold them on the black market.

Miguel just hoped that he could save as many people as he could. The work of tracking the others down was going to be a lot harder for him.

As Miguel sat in his VIP seat with a hood on, he watched the scum below him cheer with anticipation. None of these people cared. They just wanted new trophies. Miguel was going to buy as many hybrids were auctions and try to revert them back to regular humans.

-------

Miguel was about to lose faith. The auction was at the last bid and there had not been a single hybrid. Miguel did check and this was the only black market auction in the city. It was too dangerous for there to be anymore.

"Now! What you've all been waiting for, the most popular item during our shows! A hybrid!!" The announcer cheered.

Miguel nearly gasped, leaning forward as he watched the curtains unveil, revealing you.

"We got ourselves an adorable hybrid bunny!!! You know what they say about rabbits."

Miguel ignored the sea of laughter. You were standing on stand, shaking like a leaf. Before the announcer could even start the bid, Miguel yelled out an insane number. There were gasps in the crowd and barely anyone had the guts to go higher.

And just like that, you were bought by Miguel.

--------

You were hesitant as you followed your new 'owner' to his vehicle. The chain and collar still tight around your neck. Once you were seated in the back seat, you flinched as your tail got caught in the belt. You had to lower your ears, not wanting to hit the roof of the car.

"My apologizes, I'll get a bigger car." Miguel apologized as he entered the vehicle. You gave him a slight glare, "I'm not going to hurt you."

"Just fuck me," You whispered.

"No," Miguel sighed as he took the collar off once the car started moving, "I'm trying to right the wrongs that the former CEO of my company did."

You touched your neck, watching Miguel very carefully. You had an inkling of where this conversation was going, and it started to make your heart and body shake.

"My name is Miguel. I have no intention of using you for any purpose, but to try and undo what Alchemax did to you, if you would let me."

"Hah, so am I the lucky test subject?"

"No. I want to find all those who were experimented on. You were the first one I saved." Miguel noticed your hesitation and offered you a bottled water, "I have a room set up for you. Anything you want or need, just let me know and I'll get it for you."

"I suppose freedom isn't an option?"

"You and I both know what will happen if I let you go."

"Yeah, I know. Just wanted to hear your answer." You scoffed and leaned forward slightly, "I actually worked at Alchemax as an assistant. I don't think it will be easy to undo my DNA now that its been changed."

"I can try."

---------

It had been a few months since you were bought by Miguel. It came as a surprise, but he did mean what he said. You were living comfortably and Miguel was trying his absolute best to cure you. As you guessed, nothing worked.

That didn't stop you from wanting to help Miguel with his endeavor. Miguel had even rescued a few more hybrids during your stay with him. You couldn't help but feel a little jealous that you weren't his only one now. There was a simple reason as to why you felt like that.

You fell in love with Miguel.

You wanted to believe that Miguel liked you too, but you weren't sure what was holding him back. Perhaps guilt? Needing to see him, you started to hurry to his office. Thanks to your rabbit DNA, you were a fast runner.

"Miguel? Can I come in?" You asked with a knock at his office door.

"Of course, (Y/N)." He said with a smile, opening the door for you.

Before entering, your nose caught whiff of something delicious. Sniffing around, you ended up next to Miguel. You gently gripped his jacket, sniffing against his collar.

"(Y-Y/N), are you alright? Do I smell?" Miguel cleared his throat, careful to hold you back.

"Hm? O-Oh, sorry. You just smelled really good." You laughed nervously, wondering what was coming over you.

Miguel patted your head, assuring you that it was okay. You could only feel embarrassed again. This wasn't the first time your rabbit DNA caused you to do something silly or embarrassing. You were still having a hard time getting over making a 'secret room' in the building when winter was coming.

"Want to help me with something?" Miguel offered, motioning towards his desk.

You hurried over, taking a seat on his desk as Miguel pulled out some paperwork. Since it was hard for you to sit in regular chairs due to your tail, Miguel allowed you to have a spot on his personal desk. It felt like you were a trophy for him. One you didn't mind.

"So, what are you working on?" You asked. Miguel chuckled towards you as he leaned back in his seat,

"Company business."

"So how can I help?"

"You already are," Miguel chuckled again and leaned closer towards you, "I feel better having you next to me. I'm not as stressed."

Your cheeks started to burn up at his confession. Your heart was racing and you could feel yourself getting hot. This was bad. Lately, whenever you thought about Miguel you would get into a small frenzy, needing to relieve yourself. It had to be because of your rabbit DNA.

"(Y/N), are you alright?" Miguel asked, his hand against your forehead.

"Mhm," You winced slightly, shaking from his touch alone, "M-Miguel, I should...g-go," You stuttered, finding it hard to keep yourself together.

Miguel furrowed his brows as he gave you a quick check up. He checked your eyes, noticing the glossy lustful look, then your heart rate. Miguel inhaled deeply once he finally noticed you rub your legs together and your nipples perk.

"You're in heat?" Miguel muttered lowly, glancing at your once more, "Let me take-"

"N-No, let me stay," You whined, holding onto Miguel, nibbling against his shoulder, "I-I'm only...like this because of...of you,"

"Oh," Miguel resisted a groan, gently pushing you back, "Then, I suppose I need to take responsibility for you, huh?"

Oh, how those words turned you on even more. You whimpered and moaned against his touch as Miguel took off your pants. Your panties were soaked. You swore Miguel mumbled something under his breathe, but you were so zoned out that you couldn't hear him.

Next thing you knew, Miguel had taken your panties off and laid you back against his desk. He brought your legs around his head, making sure your tail wasn't crushed under you. His head directly in front of your vagina,

"My, my (Y/N), you should have told me sooner about your little problem. I could have helped you happily,"

"B-But-Ah~ M-Miguel~" You cried out as his tongue started to swirl against your folds.

Your eyes widen and your body arched as Miguel feasted. His tongue touching you in ways that your fingers could not. His aggressive licks and swirls against your clit causing that knot inside you to grow tighter.

"Ah~ R-Right...t-there~" You moaned, crying out your orgasm.

Miguel cleaned up your mess, his tongue now threatening to enter your drenched hole. Your whimpers and moans were delicious. He wanted to hear more, but he also didn't want to take advantage of your state. Licking your insides, Miguel hummed at your sweet taste. Your legs wrapping around his head.

'Miguel~" You whined, grinding your hips slightly.

"Now, now my little bunny, if you don't behave I won't be able to control myself," He hummed, sucking against your clit.

"P-Please...f-fuck me...I need you~" You whimpered.

Miguel felt his restraints snap. He flipped you on your stomach and inserted a finger inside your cunt. Your body shock as you moaned louder than before. Miguel groaned at how your cunt sucked his fingers in.

"Does my little bunny want to be fucked that bad? Even using your tail to seduce me." Miguel huffed, using his free hand to play with your tail.

Unable to take the pleasure, you cried out another orgasm the moment Miguel touched your tail. It was so sensitive. Pressing your face against his desk, you whimpered, begging for Miguel to fuck you. You needed him. You wanted him to make you feel good.

"Alright, I'll give my bunny what she wants."

"Mhm~ Y-Yesh," You babbled.

A sharp gasp escaped your throat as you felt Miguel's dick push through your folds. His cock stretched you out and filling you so perfectly. Your body felt so hot as his tip threaten to push your cervix. You could feel his shape every time your pussy clenched around him.

"A perfect fit. My little horny bunny likes this right?" Miguel chuckled as he started to thrust his hips into you at a rough pace, "My little horny bunny going into heat because of me."

"Ah~ Mhm~ M-Miguel~"

You swore you started to lose your common sense. Miguel was pounding the life out of your cunt and the air out of your lungs. Your vision kept blurring as you just focused on the feeling of him filling you.

You gasped as Miguel lifted your hips ever so slightly. His dick hitting your g-spot with each thrust while his free hand was playing with your tail. You were losing count how many times this man was making you cum.

"Does my little bunny want me to fill her up?" Miguel leaned over you, whispering your ear,

"Mphm~"

"I can't hear you, are you too fucked out to answer?" Miguel nibbled against your ear.

You pressed your ass up, "Inside~" You begged.

Miguel complied as proceeded to fill you with his cum. He moaned lowly, giving you a few more pumps before coming to a stop. Miguel started to pull out, but heard you whine in protest. A chuckle escaped his throat as he continued to slap his hips into you.

Miguel continued to fuck you until your heat finally died out. By the end of what seemed like endless fucking, both you and Miguel were out of breathe. Miguel had you seated against his lap, resting your body against his.

You whimpered tiredly, cum pouring out of your cunt. Miguel rubbed your back, his hand nudging against your tail slightly.

"Mhm,"

"Shh, it was an accident, baby." Miguel whispered, rubbing your upper back, "You should have told me when these heats started. I can make some medicine to help you."

"You're fine," You whispered lowly. Miguel chuckled, kissing your head,

"If that's the case, then it would be easier for you to stay at my place. I have been looking for a wife,"

"Mhm...I'll gladly...take that role," You muttered tiredly.

Miguel resisted a chuckle. He waited for you to fall asleep before dressing the two of you. He had one of his assistants bring your stuff to his place as Miguel took you home. He was going to make you as comfortable as possible.

But first, you both needed a shower.

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Hope you enjoyed!!!!

[stromblessed]

Mel 🔆, Viktor 🌌, and Jayce 🔥 symbolism

SUN 🔆

Mel's association with the sun is self-evident and still mostly shrouded in mystery, though her love scene with Jayce is notable, which is overlaid with starry imagery, where her silhouette and her freckled face are compared to the cosmos. The sun is also a star. It's just the star that's closest to Runeterra and has the most influence over the world.

Mel and the Hexcore are the POVs of the scene.

Hexcore and starry imagery is more strongly and consistently associated with someone else, though!

STARS 🌟 / THE COSMOS 🌌

Viktor's blue to purple pipeline is real

But seriously, the starry/swirly shapes point toward distant stars, the cosmos, a galaxy. There is no moon in Viktor's night scenes throughout the season, only stars.

Viktor's character regresses as the season goes on (blue to purple, ready to fall into Shimmer-like magenta as his corruption nears its peak).

His hubris opens him up to some kind of corruption by the Hexcore, or by whatever - or whoever - is using the Hexcore as a gateway, like what Jinx points out. Singed as his mentor plants and encourages the lie that Viktor believes, that he's better off alone and that the ends justify the means.

These perfectly ruinous circumstances lead to him getting Sky killed (Sky like sky blue, like Inspiration, lost as Viktor has lost sight of good in his pursuit of great).

In his running scene, Viktor runs not from left to right, filmspeak for progression - he runs from right to left, as though backstepping.

(And also for the Rocky Balboa reference called out in this brilliant post, but hey, I think it all works)

It's also worth laying the foundation that Viktor is a fantasy interpretation of Nikola Tesla, the Serbian-American inventor who was fascinated with electricity, radio signals, the cosmos, and [REDACTED for another post probably lol]

If you've fallen down the rabbit hole of League lore like I have, you might have picked up that peoples and warriors who are sun-worshipers are (at least anciently) tasked with hunting down and destroying Void beings, who are eldritch beings associated with the distant stars, or are Runeterrans constructed by the Void Watchers trapped between realms. The sun fights against interlopers from other dimensions or celestial bodies.

Mel and Viktor have the same ideas about risk and the nature of progress, and they are both technically foreigners living in Piltover and pursuing that progress - in two very different (but complementary) ways. They are most likely the two characters whose literal bodies are celestial, imbued with the Arcane. Their bodies are most likely augmented with magical metals.

Yet the arcane imagery that seems to accompany them respectively are diametrically opposed - Sun vs. Void, possibly. (Also, purple and yellow/gold are opposite or complement colors on the color wheel.)

Whether they wind up working together or whether they clash (as Viktor loses himself) or if it's a mix of both, I think Mel and Viktor are destined to collide in season 2.

So where does this leave Jayce?

FIRE 🔥

Fire for Jayce means more than one thing. The first thing that should come to mind is the fire of the forge. Creation and industry. The legacy and hard work of his family.

However, his FIRST imagery with fire occurs when Elora says "Speak of the devil" and Jayce is framed in flames at Mel's fundraising party.

He's similarly framed in the flames of a Molotov cocktail on the bridge between Piltover and the undercity with Viktor, after he's just called the people of the undercity dangerous.

What I think we're being shown here are Jayce's choices. He can use his talents and influence for good - creation and industry - or he can use them for destruction and oppression. A hammer can create.

A hammer can also be a weapon, a tool of destruction:

Fire can quickly burn and spread out of control.

Hey look, blue all the way to magenta in one scene!

And if you know his original League lore, the reason why his rivalry with [REDACTED] crosses the point of no return - fire and destruction. Yeah.

Jayce is interesting because his point position in the Mel-Viktor-Jayce trifecta makes it tempting to assign celestial imagery to him, too. However, adult Jayce is only present with Hexcore, star, and sun imagery when he is sharing a scene with Viktor or Mel respectively.

The show makes it a point that Mel and Viktor are the reasons he is the Man of Progress at all:

Note that Jayce in the center of his Man of Progress posters is backed by a gear (Viktor) and the sun (Mel). If Viktor had not intervened in episode 2, Jayce would be dead or disenfranchised. If Mel had not intervened in episode 3, then Jayce AND Viktor would have been kicked out of the Academy if not imprisoned or exiled, and Hextech with Jayce and Viktor at the helm would not exist.

(This is reaching, but I like to interpret that the circle + notches in the gear shape are like Viktor's star symbolism, but even if that's the big reach that I think it is, Viktor is a machinist, engineer, and techmaturgist with Artificer parents - the gear definitely represents him on a meta level)

The imagery that I believe is Jayce's and Jayce's alone is that of fire. He is terrestrial, using magic contained within tools the way he has always wanted to bring Hextech to every household, while Mel and Viktor are influenced by magic on a whole other level.

Sure would be a shame if Jayce found a reason to choose the path of destruction and be corrupted further, diverging from Mel and Viktor's core values

Sure would be a shame if Viktor's personal choices had consequences that radiated out further than season 1 and he gets put on a disastrous collision course with everything that Jayce and by extension Piltover hates and fears

Sure would be stressful for us if Arcane decided to be a Greek tragedy about it

Though possibly the most important piece of this picture is how Mel - gold like the sun, gold that doesn't tarnish or rust, gold that is an excellent conductor - has already faced the abyss and said NO to her own corruption:

It sure would be something for her to have to watch Jayce and Viktor go down a different path, huh

[imthepunchlord]

Thinking about those fox powers also reminded me of my ideas for the peacock. The first is how I could alter the canon power. So, along with the basics of removing the sentient life aspect, I would also make it more summoner-like. So, the user would use their own emotions, the emotions of those around them, and even the emotions that have seeped into the places they are in to create sentimonsters (no amok or item). The sentimonsters would generally be more animal-like, and the powers they have are more minor and depend on the creature. The user can control the creatures mentally and with hand movements. The user can probably make multiple at a time (both the same creature and different ones), but making too many can overwhelm the user and split their focus too far. Basically, it would be like what Maria Renard from Castlevania: Nocturne can do (https://youtu.be/xCFvixsZFhc?si=4OnHNv7A5taaOuKo)

Some other ideas for alternative powers are: stunning people with their beauty, delving into the mind of a target to discover their secrets by making direct eye contact with a target, absorbing negative energy to empower themself, scrying, seeing into the future (and if paired with the snake the snake could see into the past), and wind manpulation

Man, Peafowl and Rabbit really are the top two I want changed power wise.

On the topic of Peafowl's canon power, changed or not, I really should've been a power tied to Ladybug. Whether making sentient life to animated puppets, that's heavily ted to Creation.

Peafowl I stand should've had something different, something that should've changed up the status quo as it felt too similar/an extension of Butterfly. And it is a little funny that you have Mayura moving about when when she's a little more designed to be hidden away than even HM himself.

But yeah, a lot you brought up would work. They are iconic symbols of beauty and I also thought of a power of charming with their appearance, maybe even able to charm people to do as they ask. Mind reading, scrying, and foresight all make sense given the major eye motif peacocks have, Vision is one of their more iconic aspects and would've made more sense for Duusu's concept. Air/wind manipulation I'm the most iffy on, there is the fan to work off of, but that power may better work for a more aerodynamic bird like Falcon or Eagle. Peacocks I don't really associate with flight, and I don't know how good a flyer they are, especially with those long tails.

Other possibilities to add:

Healing/purification/rejuvenation, as the latter is an iconic symbol of it, as well as rebirth. Peacocks are associated with taking in evil/corruption and purifying it into beauty, eating venomous snakes to bring out the color of their feathers.

Peacocks also could've had a time power, even Snake's time resetting power could've worked. Mayura is a peacock that stands upon a snake and represents a cycle of time.

Peacocks are also tied to truth, and there's the idiom True Blue to work off of.

They're also tied to guardianship, royalty, luxury, and invulnerability. So they could've been related to fortune and wealth or being more defense.

They're tied to spirituality so could've done something related to spirits, or astral projection.

It's one of those animals that has a lot of possibilities in terms of powers, so the route they went is disappointing, kinda lazy, and convoluted a lot. It's also a little funny as I have read up that peacocks are tied to absolute goodness, being incorruptible; yet it's Miraculous is broken and misused (and maybe still? Idk if Felix is a good guy or not).

Also, idk about you guys, but since I've done various research on other animals and their myth, folklore, symbolism, and idioms, Ladybug I found to be kinda boring as a major lead animal to focus on and set up to be important. Why couldn't it follow a more interesting animals, we could've had Peafowl!Marinette instead. That also could've better worked off her interest in fashion too.

[charmwasjess]

Yooooo! What if George had the plans for the Prequels down back in the 90s and Joruus C'Baoth was secretly a Count Dooku clone?

GEODE MY MAN! What's up??! I love this ask so much because it made me do the thing I like best: run down a rabbit hole that ends with me dragging out Lord of Misrule and re-reading Christopher Lee’s delightful, if vaguely bemused chapter on filming AotC.

So, Dooku’s origins: while I think Lucas had profound, interesting thoughts on Dooku’s character outside of his obvious tropism, I always thought he created the character predominantly FOR Christopher Lee and classic film villain homage. You know: Count Dooku/Count Dracula, the cape, the tastiness of having Sir Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing in his original trilogy and needing a fitting cultural icon from that same golden generation for his new one... 

But in the memoir, Christopher Lee’s own account of getting the role kind of contradicts that? His agent - unsolicited by Lucas - suggested a meeting with the Star Wars casting director might be a good career move. Christopher Lee, agent, and casting person all had a very nice lunch and didn’t talk about Star Wars or Dooku at all. (AotC was already entirely scripted at this point.) That was it. A couple weeks later, Christopher Lee got a call saying he was Dooku, if he wanted to be. 

This is very, very funny to me because it implies that Christopher Lee’s Dooku audition was “having a nice lunch” and he nailed it so hard he got the job with absolutely no other follow up. It also seems to imply that Dooku was already written well before any association with Christopher Lee and any references were belatedly tacked on.

—This rambling is all probably missing the INTERESTING point you’re actually making: that Joruus C'Baoth predates Dooku’s invention and that he and Dooku share significant parallels. Star Wars is all too happy to cannibalize EU storylines, reiterate, and repeat. I’m sorry to say that I don’t know Joruus C'Baoth well enough to talk very articulately on the minute differences, aside from the wiki-level obvious similarities of them both being disillusioned white haired older human Jedi of similar generations and interests, who both were personal friends of Palpatine prior to their fall. Sidious seems to have been very interested in the flower of that Jedi generation and badly wanted one. Dooku’s Jedi friendgroup and peers seemed very attractive to him as a potential influences/points of attack in both Legends and Canon - Joruus C'Baoth, Dooku, Jocasta, Sifo-Dyas, and now even Rael all seemed to have some levels of exposure to him and potential influence, unwitting or not.

Is Joruus C'Baoth a proto-Dooku? To return to meta for a minute, this is something that came up a lot in the fandom between Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones because when Dooku was premiered ahead of Attack of the Clones, everyone was pretty pissed off about the character, for a number of reasons including

Great, after all the athletic glamor of the duel of the fates we’re going back to old man battles??!

Asajj Ventress’s concept art was floating around and people theorized the new Sith/villain would be a badass woman

We all thought Yoda was Qui-Gon’s Master for some reason that I can’t remember and we were mad about it being this new guy with a stupid name

But most importantly, because the central narrative thing in Dooku’s story is a Jedi who is corrupted and becomes a Sith, and we’re already doing that with Anakin. And, apparently, Joruus C'Baoth.

I'm not sure that accurately answers your question, but I sure did blow off an hour of boring work on it, so truly, thank you, friend. :D <3

[faerymeat]

In your bio, wdym by "irl alice liddell"? Like, you look like her(which you definitely do) and/or you act like her? Or some other reason?

i mainly put it there because ppl always tell me i look like her lol 😂 but aside from looks i do have a lot in common with her. we both were sent to asylums against our will. we both have experienced psychosis and trauma. we both have a sister named Lizzie. Both our sisters named lizzie experienced the same kind of abuse that bumby put lizzie through, except in my case he did it to me too. i am older than my sister lizzie so i tried to protect her by opening up about the abuse to my mom. judging by alice's wonderland in the game, i'm assuming its made out of her own interests and things that pertain directly to her. its pretty obvious considering the heavy symbolism associated with it. based on that assumption i think its safe to say we both like bugs, teeth, etc. the vale of tears and the doll house levels are literally what the inside of my brain looks like. me and alice both tried to stop our abusers and both our abusers had other children as their victims. me and alice were both manipulated into thinking we were insane by multiple people in our lives. in my case it was my mother, doctors, and my abuser. we both love cats lol 😂 though i never received shock therapy, ppl did try to force me into receiving it because i lost the right to make my own medical decisions. i ran away before they actually could go through with the procedure. we both were abused/mistreated at mental asylums by corrupt/cruel healthcare workers. we both used opium as a "vice". we both have a toy rabbit 😂😂

its actually insane how much i have in common with her. thats why its my comfort game🖤 its really therapeutic to play a game as someone who went through the same experiences i did and be ale to get revenge on her abuser and finally begin to heal from it. because sadly my own abuser only got 3 years in prison for ruining my life and my sister's life. i have really bad anxiety/ptsd and most of my mental health issues stem from being abused as a child. I play alice: madness returns when i'm feeling upset or overwhelmed and it helps me immensely 🥰

another huge way i relate to her character is the wonderland part. like many ppl with ptsd i have always sort of retreated into my own little world when going through a traumatic experience. i even wrote stories about it and drew pictures about a place i made up when i was a kid. i would literally stay up late at night crying because i was so devastated that it wasn't real and that i was really trapped here forever😭 even as an adult i sometimes go back to that little safe spot in my brain when everything is just too much to handle mentally. 🧠⛈️

anyway, i'm sure there may even be more stuff i have in common with alice, but those are the major things i noticed when i first played alice: madness returns and american mcgee's alice🖤

[lemmingsunday]

Okay, so most of you wanted this. Here is the in depth analysis of how the bright eyes scene in watership down 1978 manages to evoke so many emotions.

(Under the cut)

So this analysis is mostly practice to improve my grade in english, so dont expect anything good.

So the scene starts out with hazels "death". I think the reason so many people thought he was dead to start with is because of how richard adams presents death within the book and by extension the film. In all cases of death in watership down, it is sudden. It starts off with violet in the cornfield, and fivers short statement of "violets gone". There is no greiving for her, no remembrance. The group keeps moving on. The same is with hollys memory of the warren, the rabbit whos throat is ripped out by woundwort (i think he was blackavar, but i cant be sure) and eventually hazel himself at the end of the film. The exception to this pattern is bigwig when he was caught in the snare, but he wasnt dead, and that scene wasnt as such a deception, but a way to keep the stakes high and further illustrate the corruption of man and the land. Hazels false death follows the trend of swift sudden death (and i could talk for hours about how this is to reflect the true fate of many animals and how the 2018 remake just couldnt capture that, but i cant rn), and so because the viewer already associates this with final death, they think hazel is gone (also causing a shit ton of childhood trauma but anyway). Another reason the death feels genuine is because the film isnt afraid to kill off characters (violet, the warren ect) while other films are, and so this already deviates from status quo.

Anyway, ramble over, on to the actual scene. So we have all these emotions and shock built up from this moment. Fiver (the moral heart of the story) is in shock. He doesnt believe it, hes in denial and begins to look for his brother. Then the animation begins to shift. It gently flows into that sort of abstract, pale style of fivers visions, the first hint to hazels life, and the first section of bright eyes starts to play. Now there is hope. This is different to every other framing of death, and is so beautiful/heartbreaking. Then the lyrics kick in. This really cements this scenes deviation from the tone of the film (but not in an way that feels out of place) and the viewer gets hope. If you really listen, the lyrics "how could a light that burned so brightly suddenly burn so pale" and "down the river of death" allude to hazels death, however this is juxtaposed to the imagery of fiver chasing the black rabbit/vision of hazel (they both appear at times). Both of these things represent the conflicting emotions within the viewer, and just fit in really beautifully, while showing that it isnt hazels time. The other rabbits dont get this, they dont get death leading a rescuer to them.The scene flits between fiver searching for hazel and younger, simpler version of the pair playing together, which reminds the audience that the two are indeed brothers and have the closest friendship in the group, which further adds to the pile of emotions going on and just ties everything together perfectly.

Forgot to add, but the fact that this song has lyrics is another deviation. Sorry for missing that and not having time to develope it.

Anyway, the ending. The music dies down and fiver approaches the farm. He rounds on to the pipe and we hear this deep, echoing heartbeat. Hazel is alive. I cant express just how perfect this ending is for that scene. There is just nothing to add. We dont need to see hazel or hear fiver say "hazels alive!" It is the perfect example of show not tell. The remake could only dream of being that good. The impact of that ending is just too good and satisfies the audience, while also keeping that sense of suspense and apprehension.

Thats going to be it, since i have to eat now, but i hope this satisfied the people who wanted this, especially you @kazbrekkerfast

Bye

[grandma-susan]

*appers*

Hey mod. Was susan like this while alive? I have a feeling she wasn't.

And if nit what was she like alive?

:: Like what alive? Stubborn, cold, with a quick tongue or her being a stickler for manners and formalities? Yes! She was! Susan was from a middle class family and as a young woman she was a nurse for soldiers and many of the trouble makers were fielded to her because she was a good nurse, but also took none of their shit and made sure that they would get the best care in the most unpleasant way possible if they kept acting up. She was always a stern woman, but not bitter woman, she was a charismatic theater lover, playful outdoors woman and very fond of animals, like fox, rabbits and geese.

Her softer side mostly showed when she worked pediatrics, and tended to patients who were in hospice and when she would act with her theater crew and no one else knew her soft side best than her first 'husband' and 3 step children. Her bitterness and disdain for the elite and religion came after both her husband and her step children were forcefully taken away from her by her husband's family. Not only did they take them away but they also separated each of them to the point where within a year or two it was pretty much assumed they had all died. Susan was fueled by the desire to find her family, climbed up the social ladder married her second husband, but when she found out that her family were most likely dead she turned that grief into a vendetta, especially after she saw her new family was repeating the same tactics on other lower class families. After she completed her goals of ending the bloodline she liquidated the estate, compensated the families effected by her mongrel of a husband, and went onto quietly to living by herself with a servant or two, but overall mostly on her own.

She fully expected to find her second family in Hell and do them in a second time but the records showed that they never entered Hell to begin with. So her anger towards Heaven and its corruption grew to the level it is now. The conclusion she had come up with was despite her second husbands crimes, him, his family and associates were still able to pay their way into Heaven. Her violent tendencies and aggression is a tactic to keep people at bay, because its easier to watch people leave and die if they aren't attached to you. But it is also a protective guise. You see Susan manifested as an old cannibal woman, not because she consumed flesh, but rather she had consumed herself, self cannibalized her personality, her youth, her truths, and became someone else to fulfill a goal. She is able to take several other forms, one being her younger self, and some other characters, one notably named Lord/Mister Tod. And both versions she is less caustic, in fact both Younger Susan and Mister Tod are rather flirtatious, mischievous and playful. But at her base form, its easier to be an crotchety old woman. And its important to note, that Susan never considered or expected to go to Heaven. One, its full of liars and thieves in her opinion, but also early on in her life, primarily after her initial loss, she knew whatever path she took it would would lead to Hell and she was fine with that. After all, to have Free Will should also mean to fully accept the consequences of one's actions.

Ironically, at the moment, she's found more happiness in Hell than on Earth and she'd probably crack Peter over the head if she somehow got redeemed one day and tell him to send her back down. Her full story is still in the works. I'll post it eventually.

[gatheringbones]

["The phrases plumbing the depths and reaching new lows occur frequently in conversations about the far-right, but where transphobia is concerned, the truly remarkable thing is not the depths to which believers sink, but rather that the movement has struggled, for all its malicious creativity, to produce anything more depraved than the material that is already available in respected newspapers, on surface-web social media platforms, and in the Gender Studies sections of high street bookshops. Just think of all the absurd fabrications we have encountered in these pages— children are being corrupted and cajoled by a manufactured 'social contagion' so as to expand the trans population; trans people are trying to silence their critics— most of all, women— because they are really patriarchal shock-troopers sent in to break feminist resistance; trans women perform 'total rape' by simply existing in women's spaces; trans women are forcing cis lesbians to sleep with them; trans people are trying to destroy the very concepts of reality and truth; trans identity is a disguised form of ancient mysticism, and on we go, deeper down the dank rabbit hole.

Leading trans historian Jules Gill-Peterson has described what she calls the 'laundering' of transphobic conspiracy theories for mainstream consumption, but I would note that, very often, transphobic lies do not begin life in the far-right or similar alcoves of hate and then find their way outwards, but rather originate in mainstream discourses and then find their most violent expression in the far-right. Case in point, by the time Q-Anon's morbid fascination with trans people began to pick up in 2019, the bottom of the barrell had been well and truly scraped clean by well-connected anti-trans feminist and Christian commentators in Britain and the United States, and the Uvalde and Highland Park lies were not far removed from the lies put forth by the likes of Janice Raymond and the Christian Institute. The characterisation of trans women as 'total' rapists, to use Raymond's words, is but one particularly ugly example. As Shion Faye writes:

The image of the trans women as a living, breathing act of rape is a potent and persistent trope in the transphobic discourses of both right-wing men and anti-trans feminists: both groups are capable of providing cover for the other to perpetuate it. If transition itself is rape, so this argument goes, then the trans women is already guilty by the mere fact of her existence and can expect to be punished.

The casual association of trans people with abhorrent crimes that carry hefty sentences under the law does not stop there. J.K. Rowling's 2020 novel Troubled Blood features a male murderer who wears women's clothing in order to lure his female victims— a classic example of the 'trans predator' archetype, very popular in Britain's tabloids at present. This was, she insists, based on real cases and not a deliberate attempt to smear trans people, although even were this true, the implications carried by such a narrative in the current discursive climate cannot possibly be lost on Rowling, who chose to write it anyway. In the 2022 follow-up, Ink Black Heart, a woman is harassed by trans activists and then murdered after she expresses transphobic opinions online, thus actualising, in the most inelegantly on-the-nose fashion imaginable, trans people's supposed fantasies of an Orwellian suppression of wrong-think. If this agonisingly implicatory train of thought— the narrative that there exists an unpopular, insular minority that possesses a counter-intuitive and wholly disproportionate vice-grip on the levers of media and state power, which it uses to attack, murder, and imprison nay-sayers— gives you deja vu, there's a good reason: Transphobic imaginations never stray far from standard antisemitic models for conspiratorial hypothesis. What's new is old.

Much as these parties might protest that all they are doing is voicing legitimate concerns about rapid societal change, there are only so many logical conclusions to be drawn from their portrayal of trans people as paedophilic, raping, murdering, child-indoctrinating, grooming, anti-democratic, self-obsessed, God-killing, truth-bending, science-denying heretics— and none of those conclusions are conducive to peaceful coexistence. With so abhorrent a statement of faith, political transphobia habitually teeters on the edges of stochastic terrorism: mass character assassination with the (sometimes subconcious) intent to encourage others— those with less to lose than established politicians, authors, journalists, academics and pundits— to resort to violence. The messaging is underhanded enough to preserve some plausible deniability, but specific enough to impart a clear call to action that runs something like this: 'Look around and see what's happening. Women are in danger. Children are in danger. Traditions are being destroyed. Western [White/Christian] civilisation is being weakened [feminised/secularised/postmodernised] from within. Now what are you going to do about it?']

rebecca jane morgan, from gender heretics: evangelicals, feminists, and the alliance against trans liberation, 2023

[pet-genius]

A complex and many-layered thing

But Harry’s anger at Snape continued to pound through his veins like venom. Let go of his anger? He could as easily detach his legs. . . .

This is the first Occlumency lesson. Harry is right, of course. Feelings don’t go away because you want them to. To let go of them when they’ve not been addressed or validated can be as hard as detaching a leg. And yet, it’s what Dumbledore asked Snape to do, and it’s what Snape had to do to survive the first war as Dumbledore’s spy. You have to ask yourself… how?

Trapped animals chew off their own legs to escape. It’s a sacrifice they make to survive.

If there’s one thing in a fic that turns me off it, it’s the idea that Occlumency shields are a thing, that Severus was so gifted at it because he’s got some power like Second Sight or being a metamorphagus. I always preferred to think of Occlumency and Legilimency as skills that can be learned, even if some have more aptitude for it than others.

Severus entered Hogwarts with the kind of life experience that primed him for developing these skills, and left it with even more. Occlumency is magical dissociation, a post-traumatic coping mechanism, and Severus has C/PTSD. More under the cut; tw: just general angst.

To survive, he would have had to develop a knack for telling how explosive and unpredictable people feel. Over his life, he faced at least two egregious examples of what Pete Walker, author of “Complex PTSD” calls “the Charming Bully”.

Especially devolved fight types can become sociopathic. Sociopathy can range along a continuum that stretches from corrupt politician to vicious criminal. A particularly nasty sociopath, who I call the charming bully, probably falls somewhere around the middle of this continuum. The charming bully behaves in a friendly manner some of the time. He can even occasionally listen and be helpful in small amounts, but he still uses his contempt to overpower and control others. This type typically relies on scapegoats for the dumping of his vitriol. These unfortunate scapegoats are typically weaker than him. […] He generally spares his favorites from this behavior, unless they get out of line. If the charming bully is charismatic enough, those close to him will often fail to register the unconscionable meanness of his scapegoating. The bully’s favorites often slip into denial, relieved that they are not the target. Especially charismatic bullies may even be admired and seen as great.

These would be James Potter and Tom Riddle, who are distantly related, I might add. Harry inherited the tendency to default to the fight response, but since he grew up the scapegoat and not the golden child, he never becomes quite as appalling, and after all, a fight response is normal when they are after you. Even so, Harry, who has both James and Voldemort inside him, triggers Severus to no end. It’s not a coincidence that the memories Harry sees when he is with him are largely horrible, and vice versa. There had to be happy or at least neutral or even boring moments, but these two detest each other, and they know they detest each other. Negative emotions and associated memories are so close to the surface they can’t be contained. This is the purpose of the Pensieve in this context - to contain the emotions. Since Severus knew what was in there when he pulled Harry out, my theory is that you don’t suddenly forget the memories you placed there, but rather you make them less fraught with emotions.

“Get up!” said Snape sharply. “Get up! You are not trying, you are making no effort, you are allowing me access to memories you fear, handing me weapons!”

Harry stood up again, his heart thumping wildly as though he had really just seen Cedric dead in the graveyard. Snape looked paler than usual, and angrier, though not nearly as angry as Harry was. “I — am — making — an — effort,” he said through clenched teeth.

“I told you to empty yourself of emotion!”

“Yeah? Well, I’m finding that hard at the moment,” Harry snarled.

“Then you will find yourself easy prey for the Dark Lord!” said Snape savagely. “Fools who wear their hearts proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked this easily — weak people, in other words — they stand no chance against his powers! He will penetrate your mind with absurd ease, Potter!”

A lot to unpack here.

“Memories you fear,” “weapons”, “easy prey”.

Fearing your own memories, viewing your own lived experiences as weapons to be used against you, being easy prey… Severus could not be speaking louder of himself here. He is the one whose mind had been penetrated with absurd ease, he is the one who handed weapons to Voldemort, and he is the one who had to do the psychological equivalent of detaching his own leg – again and again – to survive.

I’ll argue that Severus developed a fawn response and a flight response, as fighting had never really worked out for him if it was possible at all. He had at least two more people I’d describe as bullies in his life, Tobias and Lucius.

Again from Pete Walker:

These [fawn] response patterns are so deeply set in the psyche, that as adults, many codependents automatically respond to threat like dogs, symbolically rolling over on their backs, wagging their tails, hoping for a little mercy and an occasional scrap. Webster’s second entry for fawn is: “to show friendliness by licking hands, wagging its tail, etc.: said of a dog.” I find it tragic that some codependents are as loyal as dogs to even the worst “masters”.

Remember what Sirius called him? Lucius’s lapdog. Bellatrix called him Dumbledore’s pet, Dumbledore said he dangles on Voldemort’s arm, the narrative compares Snape to a rabbit in SWM and Harry compares the Half Blood Prince to a beloved pet who had gone feral (yes, this does mean a lot to me on a personal level, yes my username is not a coincidence).

His unconscious fawn response might have been his undoing, drawn as he was to figures like Lucius and Voldemort. As an adult, I think he utilized the skills he had developed to survive in order to stitch these people up, and involuntary dissociation and fawning became Occlumency, which to me, is his signature magic. Harry needed only to banish Voldemort from his mind; Severus could not settle for this. He had to give Voldemort something, and knowing how to fawn meant knowing what to give him and how to draw himself in such a light that Voldemort would believe it. We see how he wanted to be seen by the Death Eaters: a self-serving coward who sought to hide behind Dumbledore’s apron, playing his pet. But that’s Pettigrew, not Snape. Imagine the self-immolation, the self-violation, it must have taken to convince everyone that you’re an ersatz Wormtail! Snape is a man and a prince, and the text recognizes this as Harry calls him, in the end, Dumbledore’s man, the bravest man, and as that chapter is called “The Prince’s Tale”. Voldemort thought Snape was nothing more than a “good and faithful servant,” and that his last words were “My Lord”.

But Severus had an unequaled gift for Occlumency, specifically against Voldemort, because Voldemort could not legilimens what he couldn’t feel; and he couldn’t feel love, grief, guilt, and remorse. This was Severus’s secret weapon, which would not have worked against Harry - who can feel these things, and who is also Lily’s son. I can prove it. The first time Harry gets the hang of Occlumency is after Dobby dies:

His scar burned, but he was master of the pain; he felt it, yet was apart from it. He had learned control at last, learned to shut his mind to Voldemort, the very thing Dumbledore had wanted him to learn from Snape. Just as Voldemort had not been able to possess Harry while Harry was consumed with grief for Sirius, so his thoughts could not penetrate Harry now, while he mourned Dobby. Grief, it seemed, drove Voldemort out . . . though Dumbledore, of course, would have said that it was love. . . .

Harry learned to dissociate, though fortunately in a healthier way than many of us ever get to.

Of course, Snape was a good and faithful servant… to Dumbledore, which brings us to the flight response. The chapter wherein he escapes after killing Dumbledore is called “Flight of the Prince”. He should be fighting, he had just proven that he can cast a killing curse, and yet he flees. He can literally fly, in fact: He, Lily, and Voldemort are the only ones we see pulling this off.

As a child, we see this too: He copes with his home situation by reminding himself “it won’t be long and I’ll be gone.” He is thrilled when he imagines Hogwarts, his escape; he follows Lily out of the carriage instead of confronting James and Sirius head-on (which might have saved them all a lot of pain eventually). But this doesn’t work out, we see that in terrifying detail. The next attempt at an escape is joining the Death Eaters, but this too doesn’t work out.

He can’t flee anymore.

“Severus, you cannot pretend this isn’t happening!” Karkaroff’s voice sounded anxious and hushed, as though keen not to be overheard. “It’s been getting clearer and clearer for months. I am becoming seriously concerned, I can’t deny it —”

“Then flee,” said Snape’s voice curtly. “Flee — I will make your excuses. I, however, am remaining at Hogwarts.”

Shortly thereafter:

“Severus,” said Dumbledore, turning to Snape, “you know what I must ask you to do. If you are ready . . . if you are prepared . . .”

“I am,” said Snape.

He looked slightly paler than usual, and his cold, black eyes glittered strangely.

He was ready, and he was prepared. He didn’t fly; he walked toward what might well have been his end with open eyes, armed only with the strength of his mind. Before Voldemort killed him, he looked pale, again, and terrified.

“I sought a third wand, Severus. The Elder Wand, the Wand of Destiny, the Deathstick. I took it from its previous master. I took it from the grave of Albus Dumbledore.”

And now Snape looked at Voldemort, and Snape’s face was like a death mask. It was marble white and so still that when he spoke, it was a shock to see that anyone lived behind the blank eyes.

I ask myself if this was the moment he realized he had been betrayed, that by giving Dumbledore a painless death he had secured his own. Maybe he wasn’t pale because he was scared; maybe he was pale because he was shocked. He was at his absolute limit, Occluding with all his might when he could have easily saved himself. The dam is about to break. All the memories he feared, all the weapons, the entire content of his heart is about to spill through - literally.

He fawned for Voldemort, the worst of all possible masters, but in the end, he was Voldemort’s undoing. All the ways in which he was weak and powerless against Tobias, James, Lucius, et al., proved to be part of goodness and source of his power. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that Snape is so loved. I’ve never actually seen such love for any other fictional character. He represents a kind of courage that many of us need to get by, lest we simply become evil or give the fuck up (“I wish I was dead”). A kind of courage rarely celebrated. The more time I’ve spent in the fandom in general and in the Snapedom in particular, the more I am convinced of this.

[otterskin]

Lokabrenna - Loki & Fire & Swords, Part 2

This is a sequel to this post here

This is why I don’t mind trailing off in a post sometimes. People come by and give me new information to chase. Thanks to @whatyoufish4​ for informing me of some more Loki-Fire facts. Because learning one simple word has taken me down a rabbit hole...

Lokabrenna translates as “Loki’s Torch” or “Loki’s Burning”.

Lokabrenna was the Scandinavian name for the North Star, AKA Sirius, AKA the Dog Star, AKA My Favourite Harry Potter Character. 

It’s also, Google informs me, the name of a Black Metal album by Nawaharjan (meaning Corpse Army, which may be another reference to Loki, neat), released in February of 2020.

I’m not much of one for black metal, but I found the description of why the band chose to name their album after Lokabrenna good for our purposes as well:

“The album’s namesake, Lokabrenna is the Scandinavian name for the star Sirius...The star is associated with important destructive and liberating attributes in many cultures worldwide.

“Within the Brandawegiz tradition, Lokabrenna is associated with the liberating powers of Loki. It is also linked to the destruction of the cosmos that follows after the release of the flaming sword Lævateinn during Ragnarök and Loki’s transformation into his final, liberating aspect Hveðrungr.”

I’m not sure what or who “Brandawegiz“ is, I think it’s something to do with metal music and therefore very outside my knowledge - but now I’m beating myself over the head for failing to mention the sword Lævateinn! Because this is the sword forged by Loki himself in Norse Mythology! Although there’s some contention there - some think it’s more of a magic wand or staff, or maybe a dart or arrow, or perhaps even a shape-shifting weapon. Apparently that’s due to contention over how to translate the name. To quote Wikipedia:

To be fair, Lævateinn or læ-wand can have three possible senses of meaning,[11]...The three meanings of læ (the nominative case of læva) are: "cunning", "deception", and "injury".[12][13] The weapon's name is glossed as "wand of non deceit" in passing without further explanation by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson.[1][14]

Wand of non-deceit? Sounds a little like a thesaurus reworking of ‘Sword of Truth’. Probably a coincidence, but...when it comes to these posts, I make coincidence a three-course meal with an ice cream stopped for on the way home. 

So, anyway - Lævateinn. It’s from a poem called the Fjölsvinnsmál, one of the youngest Eddic poems. And it has a great deal of fire in it.

To sum up a very old, partially corrupted and very confusing story and cut to what interests us today, there’s essentially a hero named Svipdagr, who’s got to kill the Rooster at the top of Yggdrasil as part of his quest to wed Menglöð, who is trapped inside a fortress made of fire. The only weapon that can slay the celestial cockerel is the flaming sword Lævateinn, forged by Loki.

This is interesting, because other than this I’d not much heard of Loki being connected to forging - that was always Thor, who has many ties to blacksmiths. Then again, Loki is around dwarves a lot - maybe he learned a thing or two after commissioning Thor’s hammer from them in the first place. How interesting that Marvel comics have Loki again forging his own weapons as well.

The poem also implies that the hall of flames was also constructed by Loki. How interesting. This poem leaves a lot of questions - why did Loki forge the cockerel-slaying blade, and construct the hall? Well, the cockerel is probably related to the one that raises Odin’s soldiers from the dead with his radio-clock-alarm call. And the hall contains Menglöð and will only open to a hero with the true name Svipdagr, but only if he kills the cockerel. So it would seem implied that this was Loki’s plan, or some sort of destiny driving everything towards Ragnarok and end of days.

(I’d like to recommend this post, which goes into much more detail about Loki’s role in this poem. It also gives more details on why some think Loki was originally a fire giant and his connection to Surtur, expanding what I touched on previously.)

Speaking of driving everything towards Ragnarok - what about this bit of that wonderful album write-up?

Loki’s transformation into his final, liberating aspect Hveðrungr.

Hveðrungr - A name meaning ‘Roaring’, as in the sound of an out-of-control conflagration, or that of a howling storm. It appears as a name for Loki in the Völuspa  (incidentally, I’ve been using parts of that poem in Finnesang), which is a seer’s prophecy about Ragnarok. It’s the name used for Loki as an apocalypse-bringer.

I like what Nawaharjan are implying here when they say that Hveðrungr is a liberating aspect of Loki - I’ve always felt bad about Loki’s transformation into the world-destroyer Snorri Sturluson helped make him and considered it a character assassination of the lighter character I’d come to love in my Norse Mythology books as a child. Yet this different perspective is one to consider. The album cover depicts Loki’s flaming sword severing the chains that bound him to the rock, where he was tortured by acidic serpent’s venom by the Aesir, the people he both despised and desperately wanted to be loved by. In freeing himself and beginning Ragnarok, in unleashing all of his fury and pent-up destructiveness, maybe he did become someone else - a Roaring. After all that treachery, maybe it was cleansing.

I seriously want a copy of this LP now, and I’m positive I won’t really listen to the music too much, ha ha. It’s just so shiny!

To doubleback to where we all started with this, though - Lokabrenna, the star. Let’s get serious about Sirius for a second.

It’s the brightest star in the sky and used as North in navigation. Ancient Greeks believed it could make dogs behave strangely in summer (where the term ‘Dog days of summer’ comes from). It can be seen as a star of ill repute. Homer describes it in the Iliad as:

Sirius rises late in the dark, liquid sky On summer nights, star of stars, Orion's Dog they call it, brightest Of all, but an evil portent, bringing heat And fevers to suffering humanity.

Interestingly, many indigenous people in North America also associated the star with canines. The Cherokee believed it one of a pair of guardian dogs on either end of the Path of Souls. Some Inuit tribes called it the ‘Moon Dog’, while the Pawnee tribe called it Coyote Star (another famous trickster) or Wolf Star. Funnily enough, Chinese astronomy called it the ‘celestial wolf’ as well. 

No matter where, though, Sirius is one of the most important celestial bodies there is thanks to its role in navigation. It’s odd that the Norse decided to name it “Loki’s Torch”, especially since Loki has a strange place in the pantheon, with few known worshipers. They could have called it Odin’s Eye, or Thor’s Toe-Nail Clipping, or Fenrir’s Spittle - but it’s called Lokabrenna. A guiding torch to lead people home or out into the unknown.  

Loki with his torch, alternative cover for Lokabrenna (2020)

[purgemarchlockdown]

If you don't mind me adding to this a bit since I'm very fond of the cat metaphors. If we're going down the Cat Assignments in Milgram we can see a pattern with them.

We have:

Catgirl Yuno, who is frustrated that people keep on portraying her as a "poor innocent girl" and is destroying that image, and is representing a "sinful" and "impure" Yuno (Cat as Sin and Impurity)

Kazui, who is revealing his "lies" and "sin" to Hinako which destroys his marriage. (Cat as Sin and Impurity) (We also have the lyrics but I'll get to them in a bit)

And Amane, who doesn't have as easy of a picture to insert but:

Is Literally The Cat and the cat is both the thing that gets her to "sin" (Cat as Corrupting Force) and she herself is punished for being "sinful" and "impure" even outside of this event, which is why she's a cat. (Cat as Sin and Impurity) This doesn't include Mahiru since Mahiru isn't as overtly catish however most people do note that:

This frame of her's in particular looks very cat-like and she Pounces on her lover. Who is portrayed shown as feathers. Birds are a Cat's pray and same as mice so it's possible something is going on with her too. She also has a sin and impurity thing going on, calling herself covered with sin in I Love You and her love being destructive and unhealthy.

Which actually leads into the other cat associations, common theme with these three (four counting Mahiru) is Love and a Lack of Proper Love. Yuno dislikes most of her clients and is distant and lonely from people, Kazui wants to be normal and loved like a cat (or more accurately loved like a Pet Cat.) and gets the first thing by being with Hinako but not the second. Mahiru indulgent and destructive love that eventually killed who she cared about, and Amane...

Well, she's a Horribly Taken Care of Pet Cat. Not only does she have the prisoner tag collar, but when viewed through the idea of "Amane as Cat" a lot of things her cult Does is colored in a very particular way.

Cats are obligate carnivores who cannot digest plants properly.

Amane is a vegetarian

What kind of meat do you like? I don't eat meat.

Cats have poorly developed tastebuds for sweets due to evolutionary reasons (not eating much sweets) Amane does not eat sweets even if she really wants to.

Amane: I don’t need it. I’ll gratefully accept your well-wishes, but I don’t eat things like that. Also…… Shidou-san, I can’t say I’m especially fond of the way you assume that all children will love frivolous things like this. Shidou: ………… Is that so… I apologise. I’m sure everyone else will be happy to eat it, so don’t worry about it. Sorry for intruding. Amane: ………… ……cake……

This brings additional context to the cast in Magic.

We have two cats here, one with a collar, one not. The one without is Amane (as previously established) and is uncollared and "wild"

The reason why the other two animals (dog and rabbit) don't have collars because in the eyes of the cult it's not necessary. Those two are already pure and righteous, but cats aren't.

Fuuta: Huh, what, so you’re just eating grass? What are you, a rabbit or something? Since you’re just a brat, you should be eating your meat properly.You won’t grow if you don’t.

(This isn't to say Amane doesn't like vegetables or wants meat or anything, just showcasing the biological roots of some of this Metaphor)

The cult wants her to be something that Isn't a Cat but will settle on her being collared.

Y'know...like with the bow, and the medal around her neck.

If were viewing this through 0708 parallels this adds a lot of fun stuff to them. Since it changes these lines in Kazui's lyrics.

I wanted to be loved, just like a cat Maybe act capricious, on my word and at my fancy

He doesn't want to be collared up and chained but he wants to be given the benefits of being a pet. He wants his "abnormal" desires to be fulfilled.

I can’t stop, I can’t be normal This feeling, it can’t be gratified I can’t stop, I can’t be normal This feeling, it’s yearning to be satisfied

It's not what he should want or is supposed to want but he wants it anyway. Cats not being given love and affection seem to be a Thing Here. I could go on forever but most of that is Amane Stuff. I will say on Dogs we have two main sources of Dogs. Haruka (who has his own dead cat in his MVs) and Kotoko, which is technically wolves.

I would separate the two given how the symbolism of both seem pretty different. I Think it's possible that Haruka's dogs are representative of Neotony or Juvenilization which ties into how Haruka is infantalized and Kotoko...well...hunters for justice.

(Also I think it's possible that Rabbit is the other side of this dichotomy, I have no good evidence for this I am just going off of how Jackalope looks like a rabbit and how Fuuta calls Amane a "rabbit" when she's a cat but I dunno, interesting to note)

Just a quick thing, but I saw it noted the other day how season 2 is going really ham on the cat imagery and it made me think of something

We know milgram is basing some of its symbols off the Bible story the "Parable of the sheep and the goats" but I think the cat imagery is supposed to serve as a modern reinterpretation of this

The parable tells the tale of two animal herds, a group of sheep and a group of goats The sheep get up to generally virtuous things: clothing the homeless, visiting prisoners, feeding the poor ect But the goats get into all sorts of trouble, knocking over people's pots, stealing things, generally being a nuisance Then at the end Jesus (or god, I can't remember) comes in like 'Wow, the sheep were Really Good! that means you guys get to go to Heaven, but you goats have been very naughty, you guys are going to hell. Today's lesson is be a sheep not a goat, goodnight folks.'

Now while real sheep can't donate to charity, this depiction isn't inaccurate to the real animals, sheep being more likely to follow along with where you're trying to herd them. Whilst goats have a reputation for mischief The bible really likes sheep, all the stuff about Jesus being the 'Lamb of God' and the story about the good shepherd ect The only other time I remember goats coming up (although they probably did a bunch) was when Abraham was told to kill his only son Isaac and the devil was like 'noo thats a bad idea maybe you shouldn't listen to god?' but Abraham went through with it and when he went to stab Isaac, god magically replaced the boy with a goat - this is where we get the term 'Scapegoat'

Anyway back to milgram, I think they have updated this concept of 'virtuous, loyal, sheep' and 'sinful goats' Into a metaphor of 'loyal dogs' and 'sinful, willful cats' Ever heard the expression "Like herding cats"? It's difficult to do Like goats, cats can't be forced into doing stuff, they're not aiming to please a master like a dog is, they'll knock stuff off the table, decimate local ecosystems and whilst I don't think Japan has a concept of a bad luck cat, in parts of Europe/North America, black cats are certainly seen as unlucky

[cosplayswitzerlandaskblog]

Unlike last time Hetalia got a new season, the response has not been particularly positive, and I’m seeing a lot of twisted feelings towards the show and the fandom to a point where it seems long time content creators are stepping away from it. I know anyone still active who follows me either are or were fans of Hetalia, so it should be relevant for all y’all.

As a fan who never fell out of the show, I find the response sad though healthy, and even if I know I ghosted you all on tumblr (sorry) because of time constraints and mental health, I still make the occasional CMVs. Fact is, I do not let go of special interests very easily. It seems a lot of you all started watching the show at 10-14 years old, where I myself was a bit older – 17 – and had grown a bit more. Long story short, my Naruto phase was your Hetalia phase, and no, it’s not pretty. You’re young and stupid and don’t know much critical thinking and make mistakes, and you have to forgive yourself for those mistakes, especially when the content you consume is associated with the real world in a sensitive subject.

But after seeing all these posts explaining all the bad we see from Hetalia, I wanted to make a post explaining what I learned from it – all the good that can come with a show like this if you stay aware of perspective. I am not excusing all the bad that came with it, for WWII is a serious event in history that should never be forgotten nor made fun of, but here goes:

I went from a ‘war-is-cool’ history buff to one who truly delved in and learned the intricacies of history, being fascinated with the ‘hows’ and the ‘whys’ as well as getting an excuse to look at the histories of nations which I’d never otherwise be interested in, and I know a lot of other people in the fandom did the same. This is how history should be known, as that is how we can truly apply it to the real world.

I learned to separate people from their countries. To give an example that’ll hit close to much of tumblr, when I started Hetalia I hated Americans with a passion because of the road “you” had put the world on, and I considered all y’all dumb and bad as a cause of it. Getting that excuse to take an ACTUAL look at how your nation functioned and what communities truly hid behind the borders, I learned instead that your government is corrupt as shit, your society is rigged against you and you have been forced to stand by and watch as chaos happens. It got applied to the world as a whole, where I considered other nations being as dynamic as my own, with people both good and bad, and the actions of the nation is even less of a reflection of the people in the cases of corrupt democracies or dictatorships.

I separated from Colonial world views. I was never actively racist, brought up in a proper home, and already before Hetalia I fiercely protected the rights of Muslims who are often mistreated in my nation and tried to hear them out when possible. But I was a Westerner, and even if the nation I came from had barely participated in invasions, I had learned to consider my culture ‘correct’ and native and African cultures ‘primitive’. While the journey was long, a step wise process of realizing things like there was nothing inherently ethically wrong eating dogs or partially incubated duck eggs, only in how the animals were acquired, that cultural progress is heavily dependent on perspective and that fucking genocide of native peoples still happen in this damn century, Hetalia was the stepping stone which gave me the interest in other nations to expand my world view. I probably ain’t done here – I have a whole life of outside influences to unlearn – but I’m further than most people I know in my near surroundings, and I’ve even managed to move my parents who originally taught me to respect people of all kinds in the first place.

I learned Nazis were people. This is a conversation which often comes up here on tumblr, and the demonization Nazi Germany and its government directly allows actual Nazis and fascists like Richard Spencer a free pass because they look groomed and proper. Until then, I’d simply assumed no one was ‘stupid enough to be a Nazi’ because of the atrocities of WWII and therefore looked at the world naively. Realizing how little true support Nazis had during WWII and similarly anyone could end down that pungent rabbit hole, I became careful of what I excused on social media and allowed myself to doubt seemingly normal people if their behaviour was alarming – such as the police man who is supposed to be a damn ‘hero’ of society.

I learned how to deal with material sensitive to others. A common problem in the fandom has always been the cosplaying and portrayal of Nazis, especially at cons and the like, and in a similar vein – I did blackface once because of Hetalia. The horrible thing about this is that blackface is immensely common in Europe – at least my own country – and blackface frequently happens at schools during ‘international’ events, where whole classrooms are assigned to portray a designated country. A whole of two times – in 6th grade as well as 2nd grade of high school – I was exposed to blackface as my class was given an African nation to portray – Somalia the first time, Kenya the second. No one, adult, teen or child, are aware of the history of race imitation in my country, but by the second time I was supposed to participate in dressing up as an African tribe, I’d understood the issue – thanks to Hetalia. My friend group of white, privileged, European teens discussed what symbolism was appropriate at cons or in videos – could we wear the Iron Cross? The Nazi flag? What if we burned it during the video? These thoughts are not usually a part of the mind of European youth, and I consider that a grave problem which leads to people making fun of ‘triggers’, downplaying racial issues and the like.

It offered me a means to make history personal. The biggest struggle for good history teachers and the reason we are often made to read and write letters from the periods we study is to make it seem real and get a emotional connection to these past, lost peoples. Hetalia offered puppets for me to place into historical contexts to make them truly real – the main driver pushing me away from mere fascination of war, since I suddenly felt the horrors of warfare through the characters that I loved. Things like Elizabeth I’s court, the conquests of Rome, the dissolution of the Kalmar Union, the battlefield of Somme, the invasion of America, damn slavery becomes different when something you already know is a part of it and you can see them in there. Hearing of people of the past should in itself be enough, and for the closest parts of history (WWII and afterwards) it always was for me, but we are human. We cannot understand the size of a billion, and we struggle understanding the lives of those living centuries before us, unless we are offered context.

I’m not blind to the issues of the fandom or the show. I was here for ‘the r*pist, the pervert and the p*dophile’, I know of South Korean and Chinese issues with the show, and I heard the gassing joke in the show’s dub and got nauseous from discomfort and anger. I’ve always been in the fringe of the fandom due to my social disabilities, so I don’t know everything that happened, but I’ve seen many racist OCs and disrespecting of historical sites. It’s not pretty, but I will believe these people, who were likely young, likely learned in time. And I may have been able to learn these things by other means, but not in the same way, and not through personal interest and research that’s helped me become sceptical and analysing of the world around me.

At its core, Hetalia is about watching a normal, nerdy guy learn how to draw, using stereotypic country personifications mainly from the perspective of Japan. It’s natural he chooses Japan, since he’s Japanese, and WWII is unfortunately the automatic historical event for most common people to focus on – but Hetalia doesn’t even solely focus on that, but is an amalgamation of vaguely correct historical situations played out by the characters, and often it is with the intent of comedy rather than the grimness often associated with historical settings which allows a wider audience than merely history nerds.

What I want you all to do is learn from your mistakes and forgive your younger selves for not knowing better. Maybe reflect on what you got from the show, rather than what you lost. A new generation of young Hetalians is likely coming with the new season, and us old timers might be able to help them avoid pitfalls if we stay around to teach them. The best of the show is compassion towards the people of the world combined and love of history, as I believe Hima wanted it – the worst is Nazi apologetics and racial stereotyping. We decide in what direction we take it, and what lessons we bring into the future.

TL;DR: As a lot of media intended for older audiences, Hetalia is a show which has to be watched critically, which makes it dangerous for young people to watch unhinged, but it also opens up for interest in the world beyond the borders you live within. We should be aware of the issues and learn from them, but in and of itself the show has a lot of good to offer in learning compassion for other nations and cultural groups.

[virlath]

Sera and the small painted box

One of the burning questions I’ve had since DAO is, what exactly was inside the painted box we stole from First Enchanter Irving’s room in the Circle Tower?

I had an epiphany the other day reading more into The Calling, and what follows is a pretty wild theory about Sera, the small painted box, red lyrium, and her connection to Andruil.

spoilers for everything, get your popcorn, and byo tin foil; the rabbit hole goes deep. 

The small painted box

Before the Inquisition and during the events of DAO, Sera was around ten years old, ‘playing with small painted boxes and burying stuff [she] stole’ in Denerim.

Based on her dialogue in DAI, it is strongly hinted the small painted box as part of the Friends of Red Jenny quest in Origins is associated to Sera’s childhood.

The quest seems like a standard fetch and deliver quest and it starts when you find a small painted box in First Enchanter Irving’s personal room in the Circle Tower. 

You then find the following note on a traveler when you are ambushed by Zevran:

The task was never promised to be easy. You said you could enter the Circle Tower, and you were believed. Find the small painted box in First Enchanter Irving's office and deliver it to the door marked in Denerim as agreed, or be prepared to find yourself hunted across Ferelden.

--Friends of Red Jenny

(There is a sketched map of several doors. It requires the box to be placed on it to block out false leads.)

A large shadow and a child’s laugh can be heard from behind the door when the deal is done, a clear hint that Sera was involved in this quest somehow. (also note the large shadow and change in air pressure when the door is opened...). After delivering the box, the quest is complete and you go on your merry way.

But what if the quest was something more? The item in the box was clearly important enough to warrant a manhunt if the person failed to deliver as promised.

What if the entire quest was a blip in a string of events throughout history hinting at bigger schemes going on behind the scenes? 

What if what was being carted around and stolen by the Jennies was in fact an enchanted red lyrium dagger previously used by First Enchanter Remille in The Calling?

The ebony black dagger

The Calling by David Gaider is a prequel book to DAO and recounts Maric’s journey into the deep roads as his party uncovers the Architect’s plans prior to the events of Origins/Awakening.

To cut a long story short, an ebony black dagger is a major plot item in the book, used by Duncan in the final battle to defeat First Enchanter Remille who was using blight magic taught to him by the Architect. 

Reading the story with the hindsight of DAI and Tevinter Nights, I am convinced the ebony dagger in The Calling is made from the same type of magic as the red lyrium idol. I also think there is a good chance the ebony dagger is what was contained within the painted box that we stole from Irving’s room and delivered to the Red Jennies.

Duncan first steals this dagger from Remille’s room in the Circle’s tower at the start of the book. A reminder that the story is set in 9:10 Dragon, 30+ years before the events of DAO.

Duncan was about to start searching the desk more carefully when something tucked away at the bottom of the wardrobe caught his eye. Something glittering amid a pile of rolled-up linens. Hidden. A slow smile crept across his face as he knelt down and moved some of the rolls aside. This revealed a red lacquered box, longer than it was wide and with a small golden lock. Very fancy, the sort of thing one might keep jewelry in, he thought.

Ignoring any warning thoughts about magical protection, he examined the lock closely and then reached into his belt to retrieve two fine pieces of wire. The lockpick was small enough to do the job, he figured, and as he quietly plucked away at the lock mechanism he was pleased to see he was right. It resisted him with click sounds until finally it gave way and released. Cautiously, he pulled it out and opened the lid of the box, half expecting it to explode.

It didn’t. Duncan gasped as he looked in the box to see an ebony-black dagger lying upon red silk. The entire dagger seemed to have been carved from a single piece of glossy stone, looking almost as if it was made of glass. Was it obsidian? He had heard of such a material but never actually seen it before. The hilt was beautiful, delicate ridges leading up to a pommel carved into a roaring dragon’s head. As he lifted it out gingerly, he saw what looked like red veins within the black blade, tiny cracks along its surface. He would have thought it was blood, but running his finger along the side told him it was perfectly smooth. Not a stain or blemish.

Now this was worth stealing. This was something special, something that the First Enchanter prized enough to hide within his own chambers...

Chuckling with amusement, Duncan slid the blade into his shirt. Where the smooth metal touched his skin he felt a tingle. Not unpleasant, and almost warm. It made him like the weapon all the more.

Read the entire excerpt above and compare the description to the red lyrium idol in the 2018 teaser...

..and tell me THE DAGGER AND THE IDOL ARE NOT MADE OF THE SAME THING.

Also, note the red lacquered box the dagger is found in.

This is a pretty big deal - not only because it’s now obvious red lyrium enchanted items have clearly been floating around a lot longer than I thought (way before the fifth blight even), but also because there is a very good chance Sera has come in contact with the same red lyrium enchanted dagger in her childhood.

Whether this was by fate, chance, or something else (Andruil perhaps? I’ll get to her later) is anyone’s guess, but I have a hunch her biggest fear, the Nothing (or the Void), is connected to her mysterious past and the reason why she is so scared of confronting her truth.

Prior to this revelation, I always assumed Sera’s painted boxes were like a child’s hobby to pass time. But there is actually nothing in lore stopping the boxes from being containers for stolen items, including being a red lacquered box. 

The Jennies have been around for well over a hundred years (possibly longer) and Sera somehow rose in the ranks at a very young age. Could her involvement in procuring this item as well as her natural talent for bows sped up her promotions?

The thing that sells this theory to me is that First Enchanter Irving actually replaces Remille after he is defeated in The Calling.

It is easy to assume Irving inherited Remille’s magical belongings including the box and the dagger. Coincidentally, the painted box is found in the First Enchanter’s room both times.

Furthermore, the Red Jennies in DAO clearly knew whatever was inside this box was important, and they were very specific with their instructions.

You said you could enter the Circle Tower, and you were believed. Find the small painted box in First Enchanter Irving's office and deliver it to the door marked in Denerim as agreed, or be prepared to find yourself hunted across Ferelden.

Remember during the time of the fifth blight, literally no one knew anything about red lyrium, let alone the blight or even darkspawn for that matter. Most people were even dismissing the idea of a blight entirely! So how was it that the Jennies knew this dagger was significant enough to warrant a manhunt over it?

Enchanted red lyrium

While we’re on the topic of the dagger, let’s talk about red lyrium for a bit.

Thus far only enchanted red lyrium has been able to nullify the effects of the blight/red lyrium. This can be seen with Sandal’s rune in DA2, Dagna’s rune in DAI on Samson’s armour, and possibly even in Tevinter Nights to nullify the piece of the Black City, called Dumat’s Folly. 

I’m convinced the ebony dagger is similarly made of enchanted red lyrium, because Remille initially allied with the Architect on the premise they would taint the entire world, but he never planned to follow through with it. He was only interested in the power of blight magic, and so needed a way to counter the Architect to betray their alliance.

In the final battle against him, no ordinary magic could counteract Remille’s spells. Only Duncan was able to slice through the shadows with the ebony black dagger before it ‘consumed him’.

Desperate, he stabbed at the shadow with his dagger. Better to carve off his own flesh than be eaten whole by this magic. To his surprise, he didn’t stab himself. The moment the blade so much as touched the shadow, they recoiled from it. He began pressing the blade with frenzied haste against his body wherever the darkness touched him, and each time it retreated.

Within moments he had escaped, backing against a wall and breathing rapidly. Terror raced through him as he stared at the inky black pool that lay just a foot from him, now sizzling.

...The dagger almost pulsated now. He stared at it as realization slowly dawned on him. He had stolen this from the First Enchanter’s quarters, something the man had hidden away...he’d hidden it from the prying eyes of the templars and the other mages. It was made of the same magic that the Architect had taught him! 

...

The mage unleashed a sphere. It flew at Duncan, making a shrieking sound as it sailed through the air, and when it reached him he closed his eyes and swiped at it with the dagger.The shrieking turned into a burst of sound that resembled a wail, and he felt a wave of coldness wash over his skin. It was like being dunked into a freezing pool of water, but he didn’t slow and he wasn’t hurt.

The dagger’s enchantment also protected Duncan from the brooches Remille gave to the party at the start of the book to ‘hide them from darkspawn'. The brooches did work as intended, but unbeknownst to them the brooches also accelerated the taint within the wardens which allowed the Architect to track them easily.

This was why Duncan hadn’t been affected by his brooch like the others had. His skin had never corrupted, he’d never heard the Calling, all because the dagger’s enchantment had protected him.

To be clear, it’s never explicitly stated what the painted box in DAO looked like or if anything was even in the box, however I would guess it probably does contain the dagger considering it was left in Remille’s chest after he is killed. Presumably it was later retrieved when the tower was cleaned up and forgotten about thereafter. 

I do wonder why Duncan never thinks to retrieve the dagger for inspection though, considering he and Fiona are later recalled to Weisshaupt to report on the Architect’s powers. The wardens take an interest in studying the brooches Remille gave them, so it’s bit of a mystery as to why they didn’t think to inspect the dagger as well. Duncan isn’t a mage so perhaps he wrote it off as some custom enchantment Remille cooked up and tied to him personally.

And to be fair, no one really had much first-hand knowledge of fighting the darkspawn and the blight for centuries before this, so maybe it was simply an oversight from everyone. Blight magic was and still is a huge mystery because rarely anyone has seen it and lived to tell the tale. The dagger also only activates around blight magic so to most people it would just look like a static glossy black dagger (with red veins through it).

Where did the dagger come from and why did Remille have it in his possession?

It is never explained how Remille obtained the ebony black dagger in the first place, but given the fact he first met the Architect in the Fade I’m going to guess a separate third party got wind of his alliance and offered him an alternative deal. 

Perhaps the Red Jennies were involved behind the scenes and they helped plant the dagger in Remille’s room. Perhaps the mastermind behind this scheme hinged their bets on the assumption Remille would choose sole power over an alliance with the Architect because that is what they expected him to do.

Taking this idea one step further, I believe the mastermind behind this could very well be Flemeth herself, who warned Maric a blight was coming way back in The Stolen Throne. Remember, she’s been around a long time and knows the hearts of men. 

"Men's hearts hold shadows darker than any tainted creature."

How could she have known about a future blight if she did not have prior knowledge of the Architect’s plans?

Personally, I believe she has been playing a long game of “chess” with various third parties throughout history (the “Old Gods”) in an attempt to seek out her revenge/end-game. 

The issue of the blight is the most pervasive problem in Thedas and it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that Flemeth’s main opponents in all of this are the “old god” whisperers who have been whispering in the minds of men since the veil was created.

I think the Architect (and the rest of the darkspawn magisters) are pawns to higher beings impersonating the Old Gods with the end goal of tainting the entire world. The old god dragons are a different matter entirely - third parties caught between the power struggle of blight vs. no blight, and are unfortunately for them, magically sealed within their prisons underground.

Solas loathes the idea of the Grey Wardens killing off the old gods preemptively the instant he catches wind of it, yet this same idea is explored by the Architect way before the Fifth Blight. I believe Flemeth and Solas are on the same page with regards to this and they both know slaying the Old Gods preemptively is a bad idea.

Flemeth says herself she nudges history, or shoves it when required. But she also says things happened that were never meant to happen. 

Perhaps she tried stopping the fifth blight by making the enchanted dagger available to Remille, but the unknown factored in and the Architect managed to get away before he could be killed. 

When the Architect preemptively started the fifth blight by awakening Urthemiel, she sent Morrigan with the HoF so she had a chance to preserve the old god soul.

And after the events of DAI, her ‘shove’ to history is passed on to her lackey, Solas, because all her chips have been lined up in the previous 40+ years of plotting and manipulating.

As for the dagger in question, a few questions remain.

Do the Red Jennies still have the dagger in their possession and where is it now? 

Did Sera come into contact or use this dagger at any point after the HoF delivered it in Denerim? 

Will the dagger come into play in the future as an alternative way to counteract blighted creatures or even Solas or the evanuris?

Does the red lyrium idol act similarly to the ebony dagger, given the fact it has been described as a ritual blade in Tevinter Nights and possibly was the weapon Merrill spoke of in DA2??? Massive implications if so.

Sera is an echo of Andruil

I am convinced Sera is a wisp or echo of Andruil and she’s retained jumbled up bits of her memories and abilities from ancient Elvhenan. 

The theory has already been well explained in great detail here so I encourage you to check it out:

Sera’s connection to the ebony dagger from The Calling is very suspicious to me, because there is strong evidence Andruil had been dabbling with the blight and the Void, so much so Mythal had to steal her memories from her to cure her ‘insanity’.

If Sera hosts even a wisp of Andruil (which I strongly believe she does), was Andruil ‘killed’ like Mythal at some point in time and is only now just reforming as Sera? 

Is Andruil now trying to help rid the world of the blight instinctively after seeing the devastation it caused first hand?

I disagree with the notion that Sera being Andruil cheapens her character. To be honest when I first heard the theory I didn’t want to buy into it either. It felt too convenient and on-the-nose. But there are simply too many coincidences and foreshadowing that I can’t ignore anymore. There is definitely something special about Sera.

If anything having this theory confirmed would strengthen her overall character arc and the DA universe as a whole to me, because there is still so much potential for her character by the end of Trespasser. Solas says himself, when spirits die they can reform if their spirit form was strong or if the memory was shaped by other spirits.

Sera is a character that is easy to hate but in my opinion, one of the most self aware and insightful characters in the series. She says herself around the start of the game that she wants to see what’s true for herself. 

She was raised as an Andrastian but deep down she knows there’s more. If you read her journal her problems reconciling her religious upbringing is constantly on her mind.

If Andruil really did have her memories stolen by Mythal and her memories are now slowly coming back, triggered by the events of DAI, the big question is whether or not she can eventually face her greatest fear of the Nothing (the Void) to move forward and come to terms with her past self- a part of her she is clearly trying to lock away.

With the blight and red lyrium looming over Thedas, if Sera were to confront her nightmares and memories based on Andruil’s prior knowledge, she could be a very useful ally to have in uncovering Solas’ motives and objectives, how to navigate the Void, and potentially even help to stop the blight.

Personally, I have always felt Andruil was one of the gods who actually wanted to do good, but was manipulated by the people around her for power and so she eventually succumbed to the institution she was in.

Perhaps Sera’s spirit is Andruil but also something more - an echo that actually remembers its past and what it was like to be corrupted by power because that memory and experience left such a strong impression. 

Perhaps Mythal’s sapping of her strength and her reformation in Sera finally allowed her a chance to reflect on her past actions and make instinctive decisions to be a part of the Red Jennies and join the Inquisition to protect the little people instead.

This would explain why Sera hates nobles so much, and why she asks a romanced Inquisitor for reassurance they are still themselves at the end of it all. ‘I just need you to stay you’.

She’s seen power corrupt people first-hand and this is why she believes in the chaotic, undefined hierarchies of the Red Jennies, because she doesn’t believe in glorified rulers with nobles at the top anymore. Which funnily enough, is very much in line with Solas’ thinking.

Remaining questions on her I would love to see addressed in the future:

What was the shadow behind the door in Denerim with Sera? What was even going on in that room that the air pressure inside felt different when the door opened? It sounds magical. And remember, Sera hates and is terrified of magic.

If Sera was involved in smuggling out the ebony dagger from Irving’s room, what did she do with it? She was only around ten years old at the time - why was she even dabbling with this item to begin with?

What is she so afraid of in the Void when she’s never even really been there? (presumably, maybe she forgot or blocked it out of her memory)

Why does she experience deja-vu and why can she sense the veil when she’s not a mage?

Has she blocked out parts of her memories because her dabbling with the ebony black dagger in her childhood caused her to remember too much of her past self?

When she describes the sky as ‘feeling like falling’ is that how one enters the Void? By falling up into the sky of a titan?

And why is she so afraid of a romanced Inquisitor falling into the Void? Her vision/nightmare foretells the Inquisitor’s death and fall into the Void after the battle with Corypheus but what if it foretold a future event, something we may possibly see in DA4?

Personally I believe the events of DAI particularly the Fade and The Temple of Mythal triggered certain memories within Sera that reminded her of her past and the consequences of her actions.

I believe she knows what the Void is and how to wield it’s power, but she’s afraid of confronting the truth because the knowledge of what it can do to a person truly terrifies her. 

When you are corrupted, you forget your sense of self, you forget all sense of time and even past conversations, and you even forget your true face. 

[ianworthy]

Israel vs Palestine

What is really happening? And the bloody solution…

First off, I'm from a small town on the other side of the planet so I don't have any kind of agenda.  If you want that B.S. there's lots of options.  I realized more than ever over the last year that we are being lied to and manipulated on the daily, which led me down many rabbit holes. I've been "re-educating" myself and started writing in an effort to make some sense of the craziness.

History made shorter…

We should start around when the Ottoman Empire ended for some context, which was in the early 1920s in case you slept through History.  If you rely on the ‘news’ you'd think this started a couple of weeks ago.  Reality, if you go back far enough no one "owned" anyone, nor the land they occupied or any of the land you’re on right now. Humanity and its entire existence has involved one tribe/country trying to annihilate the other.   It never works out, but here we are 200000 years later, give or take 194000 years, depending on whether your belief in Science transcends beyond vaccines and masks.  In case you didn't catch that I’m referring to the 6000 year timeline outlined in the Bible.  Breaking this down to the core revolves around religion used to create unnecessary animosity, so a relatively small proportion of a population can benefit.  Isn't that every war ever?

After the Ottoman collapse, the land that's in dispute aka Israel and Palestine was given to the British.  Interesting fact, if you look at all the atrocities and wars currently going on in the world, they are all countries that were "occupied" some way or another by the British or to a lesser extent, the French.  Aren't we all curious for Harry's hot take on how he's the product of ruthless colonization of his great grandparents that its impact on global society is ever present? These former colonies are humanitarian disasters enslaved by whichever military coup at the time provides corporations with the most resources.  But hey, as long as the Old B of England got the right biscuits to accompany her afternoon Tea that's all that matters, right?        

When the British, or most powerful Army at the time called the shots, there was a movement referred to as Zionism that began to gain support from the Jewish people throughout Europe.  Zionism basically means the nationalist movement to create a state for the Jews, not the jam by Damien Marley, which is my first exposure to the word Zion.  I'm sure this rise was foreshadowing of what was to come.  Not to get all conspiracy theory on you but none other than the Rothschilds (wealthiest family in history that created the global money supply that are apparently no longer wealthy) created a proposal that involved divvying up the land for a state in the future, which was after the war.  Google the ‘Balfour Declaration’ if you don't believe me.  From that point the amount of land occupied by the Palestinians has steadily decreased, according to the last map I checked it was looking pretty bleak.  The land was divided not because they are physiologically different but because one group of parents parents parents were raised to believe in Abraham and the other a linkage to Abraham.

Up to the current point… 

I'm sure that Jared Kusher's involvement in recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the Trump peace plan of supplying the middle east with more missiles played a supporting role, but more current, Ramadan.  The Israelis like all of the World Leaders during the last year have been flexing too much during the lockdowns of COVID, which carried over to yet another Ramadan and evicted some families for further settlements.  In addition to the evictions the Israelis broke up a Mosque gathering on Eid, Antifa style.  Eid for Muslims is like Christmas for Christians, but instead of getting toys and gifts from Jesus swap, Santa Claus, you get to eat during daylight after a month of starving yourself.  This Mosque is Islam's third holiest site, conveniently Jerusalem is Judaism and Christianity holiest site as well, coincidence?  To relate, for Christians, if Jerusalem is the holiest, and the Vatican is the Second then probably a Church like Notre Dame would be third, or up there at least.  I feel that the MSM coverage of the Notre Dame burning was little different than the burning of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. 

In retaliation to the Israeli raids, Hamas, the awful military leadership of Palestine launched missiles that had no real threat of reaching their target, being shot down half way by the Rafael Advanced Defense System (Iron Dome) that the US taxpayer supplied batteries for under Obama.  In response to a “potential” desert storm attack from Palestine a bunch of USA made Lockheed Martin F-16s equipped with M61 Vulcans and Raytheon AIM-9 Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles launched an Airstrike killing a bunch of innocent civilians, including kids.  According to the death toll I just looked at, it was 241 dead Palestinians, including 5 top Hamas commanders, the media and a bunch of kids to 12 Israelis, no executives, consultants, shareholders or politicians were killed.               

The Solution Is…

Two solid states, and no longer decreasing the amount of land occupied by the Palestinians and increasing of Jewish settlements.  Palestinians and Jews both have the right to a home.  With the help of the greedy boomers (worst leadership class in history) and the media making the next couple of generations hate each other, the rift is super deep.  Every war is sustained by the industrial military complex.  Lockheed Martin Raptors or Raytheon Heat Seeking Missiles do not magically appear in the Israeli Air Force.  The corporations that run the United States are in the business of making money at all costs, in this case innocent lives mostly Palestinians.  Humans need to stop providing the means to commit such acts of horror.     

It also seems pretty convenient that Benjamin Netanyahu was recently unable to form a new government and is facing criminal corruption charges.  Party leaders are always guilty of something, it’s just a matter of if they follow the most profitable line or not.  He's obviously not the right person to run Israel, taking it in the extreme right position that’s trendy right now in politics.  Extreme either way is no solution to anything, and the sooner Netanyahu goes the better.  His father was an Ivy League Professor active in the Zionist movement, who's father was also a Zionists.  Point here is people that grow up entitled with an unwavering ideology and no life experience make for horrible leaders.  That applies to a lot of world "leaders", even the countries that don't have nonsensical inbred Royals in charge.  Any peaceful long-term resolution involves leadership that recognizes that Jews and Palestinians have a right to a home.  There also needs to be more fair coverage.  I guess it doesn't help that the people running Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Lionsgate, Universal, NBC, The New York Times, The Tribune, Discovery, CNN, Google and Facebook are all Jewish.  In Palestine, the Israeli Air Force blew up one of the main media buildings that housed Al Jazeera News and the Associated Press.  No press or opinion vs all the colluding press and opinions. 

As for Hamas, or any of these military coups that emerge are the result of instability and no leadership for its people, present more of a challenge.  Israel can and hopefully soon, will function just fine with new leadership.  My entire adult life, the Industrial Military Complex has been at war with the Middle East.  The defense contractors that have been defending America from an “evasion” always seem to find some action. It's purely about Oil(Money) and strategic power, but we can leave that for another time. From the West perspective Hamas is a terrorist organization, which they are, but if you're living in Palestine having dinner with your family and a Raytheon heat seeker comes through the window and blows up your family into pieces. Wouldn’t that be a terrorist act? In order to have any kind of sustainable solutions the counties and corporations that pillage these places killing innocent people need to find a way to structure these de facto coups into a legit military that can serve as a National Army. At the end of the day these kids are just fighting for what they think or are forced to think is right. Given the option, and right identity, kids can redirect their frustration and hatred towards a national unity that respects and values its citizens. Not that I have much faith in non-secular rule, but I think as a starting point a country that can be run more or less by its people is better than this apartheid situation that’s going on now.

The ceasefire has been called, which is the necessary short-term solution, however not going to change much going forward.  This game is being played with a zero-sum, and I think that they were premeditated targets that were going to be fired at some point in the future regardless of what the spark was. My position at the end of the day is that a handful of countries produce all the weapons used to blow everyone up, so it should start at the source and those who benefit the most.  Which obviously isn't the everyday people of Palestine or Israel. The upside, with the media fighting for relevance the corporate narrative is being challenged.  We just haven't figured out the right way. I have some thoughts, subscribe or follow please.

[headphonemouse]

This was a really great read thank you! I've also been wondering about the ABFD's identity and that reddit post was really good too. I was keeping note in my head about things to bring up but when I got down to Grey I couldnt remember it all, so I scrolled all the way back to the top to take physical notes. I only have notes on the Red and Gold/Yellow sections though.

Red:

Lee Jihye's tassle was never described in detail in the novel, it was only stated that she had a keyring from her friend that she hangs from her sheath instead of her sword. You might be able to analyze the symbolism the manwha decided to add with the use of a rabbit character and a pan chang knot (both symbols of longevity)

Asuke Ren had silver hair in the novel, though I don't know if that's been changed for the ebook. Silver is similar to white, but not quite the same. I think it fits with her strange position in relation with the 'reality' of TWSA and the 'reality' of Peace Land

Gold/Yellow

The white pages of a well loved or old book become yellow over time. Maybe characters associated with yellow are similar to those associated with white in that they exist outside of the focus of the narrative (while still heavily relying on the existence of the narrative), but lack the ability to change anything because their stories had been written and finished a long time ago.

The horns ARE significant but I can't tell you how. "More horns = more power" was a rule that was used in the authors' previous work, The World After the Fall, as well. It's been a while since I read it so the details are fuzzy but basically in one region in TWATF, people don't age. Their soul deteriorates over time and they become corrupted UNLESS they grind up the horns of monsters and consume them. Monsters with bigger/more horns are stronger and have higher quality/medicinal efficacy. The horns are also used as crafting items though I don't think that's relevant here. Again, I don't know exactly what they represent symbolically, something about dokkaebis with more horns being more resistant to probability, having lots of viewers, creating better stories, something about monster horns being strong medicine against time, something about consuming stories to be able to bear enduring time

(Don't quote me on this) The reincarnators all seem to be associated with yellow/gold and their whole deal is about enduring time, being forgotten, being preserved. They are old books stored safely on a shelf, never or rarely opened. This makes me wonder what the difference is between a story that is forgotten because it was old (but was well loved before) and a story that was forgotten because it was never popular

Black & White & Color in ORV (6.9k words)

Yin and yang as a concept is rife throughout orv, black and white aside, it makes the basis of almost the entire book, "life and death companions" - "unstoppable sword and unbreakable shield" - "war of Good and Evil" every stroke and arc of this book deals with dualities, this is of course not rare nor exclusive to orv, this is a staple in any form of writing, there is a push (good) and a pull (evil), but in a lot of those stories the basis of this yin and yang tends to be simple, one triumphs over the other, there is a balance until there isn't and vice versa a very well done example of this is the legend of Korra and the avatar franchise - where the balance gets disrupted and Evil (vato) reigns, until the first avatar locks him away, locking him away has Consequences for the plot the balance is disrupted, the spirit world and the human world are separated and we get the philosophy of the legend of korra as a whole, which is a story where the world is thrown into a metronome for our consumption from one imbalanced side to the other.

for there to be a plot there needs to be an imbalance, but because of that not many stories tend to explore the intertwined nature of these opposing forces in their balanced states and furthermore less stories go beyond it into weaving them into the philosophies the stories are exploring we all know black and white as yin and yang, as push as pull as good and evil, but ORV looks at all at that and tells us, what if its is text and paper too? what does that mean then? to be part of one singular whole, to contain both the unfathomable evil and the unfathomable good and its all in our hands in the book we are reading, the black text against the white paper, the black text is no less than the white paper, you cannot read a blank page, just as like you cannot experience ink - they are intertwined into a single whole and because this is ORV, it never stops there, if black is text and white is paper, what is the cover that holds this book? what is the world around these bound papers? what is being described by the black and white? if yin and yang is to exist it needs to be painted with the world around it, for there to be a balance of parts there needs to be a chaos for balance to define itself against it, and that is in itself a duality - white is a reflection of color and black is an absorption of color in this post I will be going through not just how black and white is defined in the story but also more importantly how color exists in them, in between them and around them, highlighting and defining them I will be using the webtoon as a reference to ease the transition into explaining the colors because I find it is very well researched and very respectful to the color theory in the book you might find some contradictions in the things I say, ill try to touch and explain why ORV might break the rules it establishes as best as I can when I can but of course this is all just my observations from a text that is translated, if you can explain something yourself in a different way I encourage you to, ORV is a very well written text most often than not if there is a contradiction there is a reason

so starting off - ORV posits Black as text

what does that mean? well it means the closer your relationship is to black the more proportionally closer you are to the text and what that means, ie the plot elements, the writing, you are the character, you are wielding the story, you are being wielded by the story you are the black against white, the blemish, the focal point you are the black against white. I repeat the black against point twice, to emphasize the matryoshka effect of being the text, you cannot be defined as black without the white as such you see a lot of characters play with that duality in the story Black as Text like a lot of things in ORV is a gradual build up with many quotes illustrating it, however to give a blatant example in CH255 "Entrance as a character" Dokja has been cast outside the story post the demon king arc, and has gone through a lot to enter the story once more and be defined by text, but its not until he looks deep within himself that he finally starts allowing himself to be defined by black, aka the story

My coat and other clothing were charred black. I couldn't believe that the coat with the automatic restoration function was damaged like this… The ceiling of the office looked like it had been hit by a meteorite. "Are you okay?" "I'm fine. Of course, I'm fine…" Rather, I felt lighter. It was impossible. My body was burnt like this but my spirit was clear. The power of my stories felt fuller. [The effect of the exclusive skill 'Reading Comprehension' has increased understanding.] I saw the message and a previous memory emerged. That's right. I had obviously seen such a message. [Your understanding of the character 'Kim Dokja' has increased.] The message marked me as a character. It was something that never happened before. Cool energy filled a corner of my chest. I had seen the presence of 'characters' many times'. They were those who came from outside the original novel but was eventually assimilated with the original. They were mostly those who stopped reading the novel.

That white coat of his, is black for the first time, in a blatant showing of him finally accepting that he IS part of the story. Spoiler end--------

where the black is described and located also matters in explaining its function, wearing all black has multiple meanings, it is the literal effect of "wearing the story" using it as armor, or being deeply affected by the story, being defined by it etc

[img id: yoo joonghyuk, yoo sangah in a black suit, han sooyoung holding crystals, the first apostle] I use these examples because they are the most notable/ show case this most easily yoo joonghyuk: all black almost never defined by any other colors and if he is they tend to be in small amounts, the white around his neck (a collar around his neck), his sage eye golden etc he is completely swallowed up by the story and by black, he likes black, its where he feels most comfortable a fish in water, the text is his domain, but he is also constrained by it yoo sangah: yoo sangah notably starts out in a brown suit, and then transitions to a full black body suit, she is often compared to a heroine by both dokja and han sooyoung, when we next see her wearing that suit there is a remarkable shift in her abilities and the lengths in which she exerts herself on the story, wearing the black gave her the agency because she has started using the story, but also she is being used by the story (the constellations) to further their own goals, however she isn't as defined by JUST black as yoo joonghyuk is, gold and brown and later on more colors are part of her (SPOILERS CH 291) han sooyoung fragment: the han sooyoung we meet early on is just starting out her life, she is a character first a person second, not within the designs of the world and dokja's interpretation but within the designs of herself, this is not the han sooyoung with the most memories, she is a fragment she left behind, we can argue on how much han sooyoung she is (I like to think she split herself like dokja 49/51 for the story telling symmetry) but the han sooyoung we meet is "lesser" at the start, and when han sooyoung crafts characters they are almost Always wearing black clothes, and this fragment is no exception, she is wielded by the story and wielding the story, and I dont find it surprising that one of her first proper appearances in the book/webtoon she is holding all the colored crystals - holding all the meanings of the story, but when she tries to wield them they are empty, the sword doesn't work etc first apostle: I added him to strengthen the han sooyoung fragment example, whenever han sooyoung makes alter-egos they are wearing black the more important they are, she cloaks herself in the story with the first apostle and the advisor character, its akin to a visual way of showing us she is "writing" the characters into existence Spoiler end-------- honorable mentions: Uriel wearing black lace, lee jihye wearing black hoodies, the abyssal black flame dragon (he is to me the character most defined by black, due to specifically me seeing him as a personification of all the stories that people use for survival, he is the personification of every child's discovery of story as self expression, but also the overwhelming reliance on stories to give us purpose and never finding our own purpose, losing ourselves in the abyss)

wielding black weapons and items also is very significant, because it means you are wielding the story most notable mentions: han sooyoung wielding black flames that burn her hand, she burns herself to write, her black flame ability eats away at her for her to wield the story etc CH246 dokja giving yjh the black heavenly demon sword, as a symbol that he is giving him the ability to "wield the story" before he leaves him and kimcom - the significance of the duality in the name in the english translation also makes me think its also akin to wielding salvation? and then again in CH442 when yjh's black heavenly demon sword given to him by dokja, cracked after fighting secretive plotter and losing dokja to him - 999 gives yjh his own sword and we find out that 999 to the surprise of yjh wasn't wielding splitting the sky sword, but instead wielded the black heavenly demon sword, it emphasizes the heaviness of that sword, the agency it gives yoo joonghyuk, the salvation in his own story, his own form of wielding the story, he was relying on dokja because he was afraid of his own self, but he always had agency, he didnt need it from anyone else Spoiler end-------- another thing of note is that almost every enemy that dokja fights in the early chapters is wielding black weapons and or black is mentioned somewhere in the scenes but in Small ways, some examples the monarch of small fries sponsor:

Knuckles shining with a black gloss—they weren't ordinary iron knuckles. Did he receive it from his sponsor?

kim namwoon post zombiefication

My thigh was scratched by Kim Namwoon's overgrown black fingernails.

Black ether and the dark keeper that impregnates Myungoh

The dark keeper's tentacles rose. "Ooooof!" One of the tentacles entered his mouth and Han Myungoh turned black

I especially like the last example, instead of saying Myungoh was turning purple or blue, they specify Black, a lot of moments like this where other colors could suffice but instead they use black specifically and pointedly in general I think this is to ground the story in dokja's view of it, which is that its fiction, it is text, it is a story, all the wild enemies that are out to get them that are evil have black somewhere, and it appeals to our sensibilities as readers too, it feels right for the evil to have blackness to it

White on the other hand, is the gaps between the text

it is what exists outside the story, what is undefined, its what we need to read between the lines for, or the completely unknown, as long as its grounded in the text first, just like black, it cannot exist without being defined in some vague form by the text

[img id: lee seolhwa, kim namwoon, bihyung, 41st shin yoosung]

Obviously I should use kim dokja here too, but I think orv explains it better than I ever could

The texture of the soft paper touching my fingertips. The black letters blooming on a white field. The texture of the page I folded with my hands. 「 It isn't important to read the letters. The important thing is where the letters lead you. 」 My mother, who loved books, used to say this. At least for me, it wasn't just a saying. The gaps in the black print. My own little snow garden lay in between the letters. This space, which was too small for someone to go into, was a perfect place for a child who liked to hide. Every time a pleasant sound was heard, the letters stacked up like snow.

dokja is as defined by black as he is by white, however he finds comfort in white, like yjh finds comfort in black, even though like dokja he is also defined by outside interpretation

like black, I used these characters in the image specifically for ease of explanation, you'll also note most of them have a close relationship to death but death in ORV is not death as we think of it - as such white here has multiple meanings too, in orv "death" is to become unreadable/unconsumable/not a story, but Death also, is just a different kind of story too, one that we can create and add on and this is why white is defined against black lee seolhwa: personally, I find her to be the character most defined by white in orv, yes more than dokja, in the sense that dokja has a lot more going on, but lee seolhwa ONLY has white and some red to define her, and that's on purpose by the writers I truly adore how lee seolhwa's character is presented and then thereby later handled by the writers, in that there is a SPECIFIC and stark lack of character, dokja only knows her in a very specific setting in very a specific moment, as Yoo joonghyuk's previous lover read through a book, stripped of that setting she is unknowable to him and therefore to us, but she still plays a role around him, one he never bothers to examine or to get closer to her for moments where she is mentioned she is a backdrop faceless doctor, actually here is one of my favorite moments where she ISNT mentioned that illustrate why she is "the whitest character" (no race jokes intended)

spoilers ch141 novel - ch157 webtoon

So, in the book right before dokja gives his depression bandaid speech on top of the rooftop to yoo joonghyuk

"Hey, Yoo Joonghyuk." Yoo Joonghyuk turned to look at me. I didn't know exactly what scenery held value for Yoo Joonghyuk. As I said every time, reading Ways of Survival didn't really tell me about this person. After all, I was only understanding the text, which had been processed and transmitted to me. Some things couldn't be read because they were unreadable. "Let me talk to you for a bit."

and in the webtoon, they cut out his thoughts which are about not being able to understand him and missing context and things being unreadable (the definition of white against black) in the webtoon what they do instead is they show lee seolhwa in the scene right before this

making you remember her and go "oh yea, why don't we ever get to know her?"

and then furthermore in the book

"Kim Dokja, you don't know." This might be my misunderstanding. Yoo Joonghyuk could give up at any time because he was still in the midst of his regressions. In the end, Yoo Joonghyuk's purpose was to prevent the 'destruction of this world'. Paradoxically, he could give up on this world at any time. His essence was regression and this fact would never change. "No, I know," I replied. "What?" "The fact that you can regress at any time means that death is meaningless." I looked down at Lee Seolhwa caring for the injured. Lee Seolhwa was feeding her boiled soup to an unknown person. Despite her efforts, there was a high probability that the character would die. Even if they lived now, they would die tomorrow. If they miraculously survived tomorrow, they would die the day after tomorrow. It was the same in the fourth regression and the fifth regression. There would always be 'death' in the world of Yoo Joonghyuk, even after passing the 100th regression. "If there is no sense of death then the value of life also disappears." "What do you know…" "Yoo Joonghyuk, wake up. Don't think things will improve if you repeat them a few times."

lee seolhwa plays a VERY important absent part in both the lead up to this scene and in it specifically, in how she is the personification of an unknown character, this scene, like many scenes in orv boils down multiple of its messages very succinctly, you can never truly know a person, you can still try your best to reach out, lee seolhwa reaching out to someone she doesn't know who is injured, dokja reaching out to yoo joonghyuk

we never truly know kim dokja, and we never ever truly know lee seolhwa she is always at the edges of dokja's story, nothing beyond "doctor" and I think that they handled the concept of her character brilliantly

Spoiler end--------

Kim namwoon: like I said Death is just a different form of a story, and white is to be written out, banished between the space in the sentences - kim namwoon within the first chapter is both marked for death and marked to be written out, we never get to know kim namwoon outside of dokja's perceptions, like lee seolhwa, kim namwoon is a tool to highlight dokja's biases (and subsequently the texts biases)

bihyung: his color scheme is actually one of my favorites in the webtoon, his fur being white, as a being intrinsically outside of the story, a watcher, a voyeur and a director, wearing black, being under the confines and control of the story and the viewers (has to keep them happy), with tiny gold horns

41st shin yoosung: someone who lived most of her life outside the story, banished and lost and imprisoned, and when she finally thinks she has hope to be part of the story in a kind way, she dies, her soul/story golden and then white

white seems to appear commonly in hair and clothes, it is used both as a shield (kdj) but also as a wall/prison too (41st sys) the only instance of a white weapons I can remember is blade of faith and also jung heewons "white flames" both used in ways that change the story for the better, kinda like "white out" or an editor burning and cutting away at the story, white space (outsiders) fighting the author back, pausing their writing to deliberate on the next words most notably white appears as a location often, white fields, snow, white sand, reinhart von djerba's house, actually when we get to paradise I wont be surprised if they depict it with a lot of white in the webtoon, bonus points if its an inspired tunisian-greek style based on the actual djerba

one of the hurdles of separately explaining black and white like this is that you might lose sight of their intertwined nature in all of this. Rather than looking at them as "black" and "white" its "black against white" and "white against black" for example, in the webtoon characters change clothes a lot, lee jihye doesn't always wear ONLY black in fact she wears white, gray, black, blue rather than looking at that and being "she isn't defined by black" its best to look at that and ask "'what are they trying to tell me in this moment" this allows for more flexibility in analysis, and a broader view when looking at these characters, none of them can simply be described with one or two colors, or even a lot of colors as ORV explains, we never can truly understand someone, but what their function here is to direct your eye and to help in easing the pieces together when you are reading.

black and white are the clearest and easiest to keep track of but ORV utilizes other colors in a very similar fashion all around them, but in a lesser, less obvious amount, a lot of these I am still not certain on to their meanings, its much easier to connect threads together and sit here looking for meanings after the fact, ill start from the ones I am most confident about to least confident. --------------------------------------

Blue This color I think is the most frequent after black and white, its every where in the webtoon and in the book, in fact one of its first mentions should explain it

A character from the novel had appeared. Now I really had to acknowledge the situation. "Soldier-nim! What is happening?" "I have been trying to contact my unit, but…" "The Blue House! What is the Blue House doing? Please contact the president quickly!" "I'm sorry. I am just an ordinary soldier and don't have a hotline to the Blue House." Lee Hyunsung explained.

Blue is government, Blue is systems that govern the world, where do we see blue the most in the webtoon? its in the quest logs, its the structures that keep the story going, its the printing press and advertisers and a publishing house and the store front, its capitalism and money

Its the title card.

[img id: Omniscient reader spelled out against a white background, the text is colored blue and black]

I also specifically like how when you are reading the book, blue doesn't jump at you as being used a lot, sure its here and there, but in the webtoon its suffused everywhere, a product of the capitalist consumption of stories

[img id: lee sookyoung in a blue mask and blue prison uniform, han sooyoung in blue body suit with black and white on it, lee hyunsung in a blue shirt] prison uniforms being blue, yet lee sookyoung still masking herself in blue, hiding behind the systems ( a different way of dokja's face being blurred by the system) how han sooyoungs body suit is only ever described as blue in the book but in the webtoon they interweaved black and white into it elevating its original intent, she is in control she exploits the systems, she wears the system, she is the system how lee hyunsung is defined by his military past and his utter reliance on systems

dokja specifically "wields" blue a lot, blade of faith has an attribute that turns it blue which he did a couple times, his lightning is often described as "blue-white" --------------------------------------

Red

[img id: screenshot from early in the webtoon where dokja tries to wipe away blood from his face but he finds that its on the glass, not on him, also wearing a blue tie] (I know im supposed to be talking about red, but dokja's tie being blue <3 noosed by the capitalistic system he used to work for a parallel to yjh's collar being white) red, and subsequently where it pops up the most as, blood, is reality and truth but also a lie, a lie specifically because this is dokja's worldview and he views reality as a lie, its actually very interesting because this color pops up a lot within the view of "fiction" too (example: gong pildu's turrets) but its most present moments is specifically when it comes to the truth about trauma and the reality of is this a "story" or "fiction" that dokja struggles with

[img id lee sookyoung with the blue mask, the blue mask has a red circle in the middle, asuka ren who has red hair, min jiwon in red formal wear, lee jihye holding her sword with a red tassle, jung heewon amidst a blaze of fire with a red tie being mind controlled, anna croft her left eye is a red demon eye] lee sookyoung's mask just having a red circle in the middle of it, a reminder to dokja, an emphasis on reality, on not being able to run away ch133 book ch145 webtoon spoilers asuka ren's entire storyline culminating into "what is a writer's responsibility when writing a helpless abused world? and what does reality mean when fiction is real? who remembers a story after the writer forgets? was the story ever the writers?" these questions that blur the line are where red exists to dokja, its not the blurred lines between black and white, its the blurred lines between black against white and reality, its "does fiction affect reality" but also "does reality affect fiction" an ouroboros

Spoiler end--------

min jiwon holds a similar place to asuka ren in the story, she is there to make dokja question reality, he knows her as a character purely, but she is a famous actress and he uses her as a backdrop to understand if this is fiction or real, the other apostles forgetting she is a character blurring her in their minds lee jihye's red tassle is a visual detail in the webtoon that I don't quiet remember if it exists in the book, but its an important one to me, because it raises questions, specifically with how much it stands out in the webtoon, and I think its tied to her trauma, her past and her friend, it being in her sword she uses it as a tool, her reality is one she wields, she has bloodied her hands killing her friend, none of this is fiction to her but it feels like it is from how absurd it is

jung heewon is interesting because she often suffers from an over abundance of red, she is controlled by red with that red tie around her neck, and while a lot of characters have trauma in this story, red is almost always reserved to people acting as characters or are viewed as characters by dokja, so for gilyoung and yoo sangah who both have a lot of trauma each we never see red define them because dokja views them as "real-ish" furthermore she is the only one who acts on that trauma, whenever she is mind controlled or reliving her past she starts attacking, and I think specifically why red defines her is that who does she have to blame? the story writer? the people who have harmed her? she along with dokja are one of the few characters that wield white They are both trying to carve out a kinder existence in the story for themselves, wielding subtext because the text has no place for them, she was written off and dokja gave her a second chance, what is her reality then? destined to die and suffer in obscurity in every iteration? except for this one that gave her meaning? also just as an aside lee hyunsung is MOST defined as blue when he is next to her in the webtoon, its a visual thing because red and blue next to each other are good, but also its also interesting from a story telling perspective, lee hyunsung relies on systems the most around her

anna crofts great demon eye lets her see possible futures, possible realities, half truths unrealized I am not as confident of my reading of red as I am of blue, because I feel like there are also a lot of examples that are harder to fit in this definition of it, mainly gong pildu's turrets ngl😂 also red is heavily emphasized with the demon kings also, so red does have as heavy of a space in fiction as it does in reality, its just a versatile color --------------------------------------

Gold/Yellow

[img id: prisoner of the golden headband, yoo sangah with gold aura all around her wielding golden weapons, painting of 41st sys looking at 3rd round sys, while she is holding biyoo, the painting is infused with gold, painting by renibet_ on tumblr]

gold/yellow is an extension of black, gold/yellow is a well loved story, and more often than not a well loved story is a popular story, and a popular story is a strong story in the world view of orv, you can be a strong story without being popular of course, too, usually by being an old story. a lot of the strong constellations have gold in their presentations, Olympus and Eden as examples, but gold is also control, a prison

prisoner of the golden headband is the strongest incarnation in ORV his story 'journey to the west' is one of the oldest, most well loved, most adapted stories and orv emphasizes that, but it also emphasizes how the great sage is trapped within this "love" he has had so many adaptations of himself, his own story traps him with the headband being his prison. in CH444 for example he joins the sides of the yogoe, the side of the story that is never understood because who is he? what is his story? what does it mean to be understood? Spoiler end--------

yoo sangah also starts having a heavy emphasis on gold when she joins up with Olympus who are a very well loved story, she fights with it, its all around her, entrapping her, but also she loves stories and that gold in her is also a manifestation of that the shin yoosung industrial complex of stories

sorry I had to phrase it like that, but I am trying to encompass all shin yoosungs at once biyoo included and thats why I used art instead of the webtoon, she is a strong story, as 41st shin yoosung she has spent immeasurable time trapped in time, and we know time in orv is proportional to the strength of a story, so thats why 41st sys is gold, but furthermore 3rd round sys is well loved, her story is one all of kim com cultivate slowly with love and care, she is young, but her story is bigger than her and she inherits it slowly, biyoo specifically only has a golden horn, and I KNOW there is a significance to horns, and their colors, but I haven't figured it out, if anyone does feel free to add it honorable mentions of gold: nirvana, the golden throne that gets destroyed, the young gold dragon heart, yjh's sage eye, jang hayoung and most importantly,

my favorite instance of gold in the story CH294

Yoo Joonghyuk still didn't answer and the Fourth Wall laughed like it knew everything. The letters of the Fourth Wall started to increase. Gold letters soon filled the room. Yoo Joonghyuk stared at the letters drifting around him and reached out for one of them. The letters seemed to respond to his hand and started to speak. 「 "My name is Dokja." 」 「 I usually introduced myself to people like this and then the following misunderstanding would occur. 」 It was the story of a world he had never experienced. The Fourth Wall giggled. 「 Very in te res ting. 」 Yoo Joonghyuk quietly listened to the story.

Spoiler end-------- like red, there are a couple of instances that are outliers to this, mostly due to how loosy goosy the translation is with yellow/gold being interchangeable, for example I'd like to add anna croft as an example here for "strength of the story" but I cant tell if that is the actual intent of yellow in her hair and the yellow eye that follows her around, in contrast there are a lot of moments where they describe yjh's transcendent as yellow, when clearly they are emphasizing his strength of story --------------------------------------

Brown brown is past trauma, trauma that still defines a person, actually brown and red get blurred/mentioned together a lot in the book so maybe I should've just combined them like I did with yellow and gold, but there is still enough of a difference that I want to make a distinction even if they do overlap heavily conceptually, brown is more "realer" or rooted in "reality" as dokja sees it, things that happen outside the time from of the start of the end of the world and cant be attributed to a writer but to life

this color isn't actually mentioned a lot alone in the book, and is more prominent in the webtoon - there is only one specific instance in the book that I can think of where it meets how its used in the webtoon

CH489

This intense stink of the brown coal, the sight of his father and mother lying on the ground like dead cockroaches – memories of him poking on the cold, unmoving flesh. A funeral without portraits came to an end, and the fatigued eyes of his relatives looking at him.

[img id: gilyoung in a brown shirt, dokja in a brown school uniform with a red tie being bullied, dokja in a brown suit that looks like the old uniform getting his shit kicked in by his bully, lee sookyoung in a brown coat, yoo sangah in her brown suit]

lee gilyoung, very early on in the story has hints of deep rooted trauma that he is struggling with, mostly seemingly centering around his mother

kim dokja, for him I was mostly going over his outfits in the webtoon and their significance in my head, and I couldn't come up with a reasoning behind the brown suit till my friend pointed out it looked a lot like his brown school uniform, and to cinch the deal further the chapter where he gets that suit in the webtoon, CH69 (nice) the title is brown

yes, the chapter titles change colors, yes it seems to track with my insane color thoughts, yes the webtoon artists pay a HUGE amount of attention to details like this so far the only colors the title has been is black and white, blue, red and brown off the top of my head

but yea self explanatory trauma around his highschool bully brown uniform+ brown suit lee sookyoung's coat is a mirror to dokja's, she uses her trauma as a shield and a cover, she wears it like armor and hides behind its lies

yoo sangah's office job was hell, sexually harassed by her superior to the point that he'd steal and hide her bike, it pushed someone who is generally nice and well mannered to the point of retaliating and then we find out how her job is an escape from a life her parents built for her

this isnt to say only these characters suffer trauma, on the contrary but the closer their relationship is to the story and the trauma being under the story, the redder the brown gets, for example I assume yoo joonghyuk's hell of eternity will be depicted in red's the only thing that fudges with this which is admittedly a bit of a wrench, is lee hyunsung, he is often depicted in blue, gray, green and brown, brown is actually pretty prominent in lee hyunsung, I dont know how he fits in against everything, I assume its because his trauma is older? so the relationship between brown and red is simply just trauma before the end of the world and trauma after? --------------------------------------

Grey

okay we are entering the territories of colors I can barely explain but I know there is something going on with the symbolism because its too consistent, Grey seems simple enough to explain at face value its what lies between black and white for example theoretically it would be something between good and evil, neutrality, but have you ever seen grey in yin and yang? ever read a book that had a portion of gray text?

grey has a LOT of uses in the story, it muddies the relationship between black and white, it fades away the intent of the story/character, a half way point to white, a halfway point to black, but its also just..used a lot? especially in the webtoon characters wear grey a lot, I assume its because they are background characters in the instances where they are present, it seems like a filler dokja especially ping pongs a lot at the start between grey and black and white in his outfits in the webtoon, and so does jung heewon but its brief

the Biggest prominence of grey is around CH365

in the great war of saints and demons, when the relationship of good and evil is under examination and subsequently that means dokja's relationship to the text and his morality is also under scrutiny, grey plays its biggest role

in it we meet an angel called Michael who is the embodiment of satan, an angel who ate the forbidden fruit and who became a demon and has a contradicting modifier "Saviour of the Corrupted" like dokja, but unlike dokja who defines himself in stark black and white, Michael is defined with greys and purples

grey as such is also a form of corruption, when things lose meaning or struggle to define themselves, Michael is constantly buffeted by forces greater than him, used as a pawn

Good' and 'Evil', in conflict against each other for eternity itself. And Metatron's face, the one who had managed to endure all those years, continued to carry the exact same smile for thousands of years. – You need to be careful about one thing. When using this power, you must never… [The power of 'Fruit of Good and Evil' is going berserk!] All of his memories were swept away in one go; Michael was enveloped in horrifying pain akin to his head being ripped to tiny shreds. Aaaaaaaaah-!!!! All 'Good' in the world cried out in sorrow. From the blades of grass to trees; from small insects to every type of 'Good' living in Creation fell into a state of sorrow and cried out in grief. [You have directed a fatal attack at an opponent on the side of Absolute Good!] [Story, 'Evil that Destroys Evil', is roaring out in bitter sadness!] [You have broken the taboo!] [You have been handed a terrible penalty!] A grey-coloured angel covered in blood was smiling at Michael.

what disables Michael here is the lack of clarity, by being grey he isn't capable of being either black or white

grey is a difficult one to explain specifically due to the amount of use it sees, and then you have ch365 with a very specific usage of grey, so I assume its just a flexible multi use thing --------------------------------------

Purple

okay so the best I can explain the relationship of purple is this, its like the inverse of gold, in that it has a deep relationship to black, just like gold, but in the opposite direction

I dont want to say its "hated" stories because honestly its not used like that, the most prominence it sees is in regards to corruption in general and also han sooyoung and ABFD, strong stories that are difficult to stomach I guess? the intersection between blue and red? traumatic fictional stories? best I can do. I also find it funny that han sooyoung is often depicted in a purple hoodie when its never mentioned in the book that she wears purple, she wields it though! --------------------------------------

Green

[img id, lee gilyoung wearing green hoodie, lee gilyoung in brown shirt holding green grasshopper box, lee hyunsung with a green glow around him, nirvana in a green sari, uriel winking, one emerald eye open, the jade from the demon king arc as illustrated by manadream] these images are all I have, I literally have ZERO explanation for green, I just know lee gilyoung and nirvana are heavily defined by it, lee hyunsung is also defined with it slightly, mostly old military uniform and when he is protecting people

I've been thinking about green in orv for a long time, the only thing I can kind of guess is that it might have something to do with philosophy? a frame of thinking?

if you have any guesses feel free to share in this post --------------------------------------

anyways I hope this was an entertaining read, I know there is a lot more I've probably missed but I hit on all the big things I've been thinking about, I'd like to reiterate that pointing out the function of the colors in the story isn't meant to pigeon hole these colors into one single function, a lot of them do a lot in the story beyond these descriptions, these are just common threads I picked up on and wanted to share, that I felt made reading the story richer to me

and I also wanted to emphasize paying attention more to the webtoons artistic depictions because more often than not I find them elevating the already existing story, and they really do put a lot of thought into it, to the point where I wonder if they have singnsong on speed dial to get approval or opinions

if there are any glaring mistakes, feel free to correct also, Ill edit the corrections in