#I mean the cycle of violence is also so fascinating in this lore

[workmitch]

God, just…finding the Shaman Village in SotE really recontexualizes Marika.

Like, she’s a god in her own right, a despot who exterminated races and forced The Lands Between to bend to her will, who discarded allies and friends and her own family when they no longer suited her, who loved maybe just one of her children and decided to destroy everything when he died. She’s a monster and a tyrant and a vessel for a greater power and she’s also just a scared shaman girl from an empty village.

The Fingers handed godhood to a traumatized girl who had watched her people die, and the ones not lucky enough to die mutated into grotesqueries and turned into living jars. How many years had she wished to inflict the pain tenfold onto the Hornsent? How many times had her people dreamed about having just enough power to stop them?

And then The Two Fingers gave her absolute power. Enough to not only stop her tormentors, but utterly wipe them out.

Could anyone have resisted that temptation? Was there any other choice to make?

And then when it’s over, when she’s gotten the vengeance she dreamed of, what does she do? She leaves a healing tree in her village to heal nobody, because there’s nobody left, and her victory and reign are as empty as that village. No matter what she does, no matter who she eliminates and subjugates, no matter how perfect she makes her Golden Order, the village will still be empty, and she’ll still just be the shaman girl given godhood.

[linkysmommy]

Well here it is. My Bloodbound review/reactions/essay/idk what.

For some reason, now that it's done most of what I have are critiques 😂 I guess because there were so many amazing things about this book, such great characters and themes, that certain things ended up leaving me... disappointed. But before I get into all that, let me start with what I really, really liked. (adding a cut because I feel like this is going to end up really long lol. also, spoilers ahead. obviously)

THE POSITIVES:

Overall, the vibes, the characters, the themes, and the lore were immaculate. The writers put a lot of thought into the world that they created and the themes they wanted to explore through that world, and I really respect that.

I thought that the vampire council and the clans in NYC was a really cool concept and was a little bummed that we didn't get to do more with vampire politics. Despite hating most everyone on the council, I also loved them. I found them all interesting and unique, and loved seeing the backstories that involved them, such as the scene at the fair or the scene when they all teamed up to take down Gaius. I was actually sad when the Baron and Lester died lol, while it did make for a cool scene, I felt that their deaths left a hole in the story. (oops sorry I did not mean to turn this positives into a half-negatives thing lol)

I swear that the toxic, messed up relationship between Gaius, Kamilah, and Adrian has me by the throat. The concept of a cruel, thousands year old vampire gaining the love and devotion of these two people not through the use of mind control *cough Rheya cough* but through sheer charisma, magnetism, and leadership skills... and then shaping them into tools to be used in his hands. Making them into his queen and his soldier and then forcing them into a cycle of violence while still inspiring them to follow, using them while still loving them... it's one of the greatest pleasures of having read this series to have gotten a taste for this relationship. And now that I've gotten a taste I'm just hungry for more, so this will be rotating in my head for a while yet.

Adrian Raines. My darling. My BABY. There is just something so fascinating, so alluring, about a creature born and shaped for violence, whose heart manages to remain pure. I especially loved how this was explored in Bloodbound 2. You see the heartless, emotionless cruelty that Adrian was capable of at the end of book 1, and then throughout book 2 he struggles with these two sides of himself: the heartless soldier, the angel of death, versus the kind, idealistic, sweet man who's fascinated by the simple things the world has to offer like open fields and sunlight, and the incredible ingenuity and good that the human race is capable of creating. Throughout book 2, this dance of Adrian being the foil to Gaius is clear as day and oh so powerful. Gaius was Rheya's soldier, who was shaped into a killing machine at her side, who was driven to extremes by seeing the way his own people were hunted and killed. Adrian was Gaius's soldier, who was shaped into a killing machine at his side, who had to fight the anger and hatred that tried to pull him to cruelty and snuff out his goodness. Like I said in a previous post, the juxtaposition of this inner warmth and kindness against the person Gaius tried to make him will never not be fascinating.

Kamilah and Adrian siblings bond!! PLEASE they're so cute! I adored how over and over again, we saw them exchange looks and have full on worldless conversations by just their facial expressions. The way they know each other so well, inside and out, and have complete respect for one another, and the way they would die for one another, it just warms my heart and I adore them.

Also, just Kamilah. She's a badass ancient warrior queen, and I really loved seeing how no-nonsense and serious she was. Like she's been doing this for thousands of years, she's seen so much, she's killed so much, I feel that she doesn't think she truly deserves redemption or is as pure as Adrian, but she fights to protect the people under her care. Those who cannot fight for themselves the way she can fight for them.

Gaius Augustine, what a villain you were. I loved how the game never shied away from the nuances in his character. They never painted him in cartoonishly villainous colors with no remorse for his actions. You can see why he became the way he was, and while you can understand that doesn't mean you have to excuse it; it does, however, make him more of an interesting villain. The fact that love and a desire to protect his people is what drove him to extremes makes him a fascinating villain, because his actions, while inarguably evil, are rooted in something that most everyone can understand: love. Although Gaius never knew how to truly love, it doesn't mean that he didn't. He hurt Kamilah and Adrian over centuries, but he never truly wanted to kill them. I appreciated that the various times where Gaius killed someone or almost killed someone with whom he had history (such as Takeshi or when he almost killed Kamilah), he expressed remorse. It wasn't enough to make him stop, because he is a bad man, but the fact that there was remorse in the first place adds more depth and emotion to both his character and the event itself.

I enjoyed the way that MC defeated Rheya. I thought that the twist that Rheya had murdered her own daughter after having given into her anger about the fact that she thought her daughter was murdered was really great. I enjoyed that MC didn't have to physically overpower Rheya; she just had to go back to where the cycles of violence began and show to Rheya herself that was the monster in her own story. I loved that.

It would be remiss of me to not mention Lily Spencer. From start to finish, she was a delight, and I loved how MC was honestly just as geeky as Lily sometimes, she just reigned it in a little bit more. Lily's enthusiasm for life was refreshing for a vampire story, where usually becoming a vampire is compared with death, and yet Lily's take on it was that she had a whole new life to live, new experiences to try out. I really enjoyed her humor, and thought her friendship with MC was both touching and relatable. So have some Lily moments that made me laugh out loud:

Also, the scene where MC died, and then she was Turned, and you woke up in a coffin, and you almost killed that girl in the park... peak cinema. Absolutely delicious, you'd better believe I ate that shit up. I also loved seeing the flashback where you saw how the other vampires reacted to your death. Yes, I enjoyed seeing Adrian in pain, yes, I am an angst fiend and sadist ig.

Sorry I feel like there's more to say but I've been working on this forever so I'm gonna leave the positives at that 😭

THE CRITIQUES:

Let me first preface this by saying that I truly enjoyed Bloodbound. It latched onto my brain, and I enjoyed the journey, and it managed to make me more invested in a Choices book than I have been since I read It Lives. That being said, after finishing it, I couldn't help but feel that many things could have been done better, and a little bit let-down that many of the things that I connected to were not fully explored or expanded upon like I felt like they could have been. So this massive critique going forward is done with love. That's all. ❤️

This one isn't a huge deal, but I was disappointed by the lack of variation that your choices had in the final battle. You had the choice to kill Rheya's vampire guards or leave them, then you had the choice to kill Dracula or leave him. The first time I played I was doing a supervillain route so I was intentionally trying to choose the darker choices and was delighted to see how people were reacting:

I thought that their dialogues were based on the fact I was going on a murderous, merciless rampage, but then when I came back and played and didn't kill everyone, their reactions were all the same. So that was disappointing.

The Jax/Lily death was,,, a choice. I get what they were trying to do. I do. Rheya lost her family, Gaius lost Rheya, Kamilah lost her brother, Adrian lost his family. There were cycles of loss that bred extreme behavior among our cast, and they wanted MC to experience that, too. They wanted to make her a reflection of Rheya, for the moment of losing Jax/Lily to be the trigger that makes her able to lose her humanity and become the very thing she swore to destroy. However, there were a few problems with how it played out! First of all, it's obviously suspect that the two sidelined Black or Asian LIs are the only ones who can die, while Adrian and Kamilah's plot armor protects them. Second of all, they wanted to make this big sacrifice to make MC snap but then they didn't even commit to it. If anything it would've made more sense for the LI to be the one who dies, seeing the impact that it had on MC. Because while my MC cares about Jax, he's probably the person in the crew that she's the least connected to so it felt a little odd for her in particular to lose it while the others were okay. I think that honestly, she would've reacted more like them. Sad, and angry, but without such an extreme reaction. But, the writers simultaneously tried to play it safe by ensuring that your LI doesn't die, while being "brave" and killing off part of the crew, so it just came across feeling odd to me and didn't quite hit the mark of what they were trying to do.

The romantic development was underwhelming. The romance quality skyrocketed in books 2 and 3, but unfortunately by then, the characters were already in relationships and while I enjoyed those scenes, I felt disappointed that we missed a quality relationship arc where we saw the characters fall for each other. I romanced Adrian, and I don't see what was so incredible about mc in the beginning to make him fall for her. She's just some human, and he's a powerful CEO, 300 year old clan leader and vampire council member. That's not say that I don't think he could've fallen for her - in fact, I think it's poetic and makes perfect sense that the man who's so embroiled in his vampire world and vampire politics yet adores humanity would fall for an average human - but the development simply wasn't there. The scene where you first let him drink your blood after breaking him out of jail was underwhelming and there was no emotional weight in the writing of that scene. In book one, it just really felt like the fact that something happened was supposed to be enough for us to believe that it was meaningful, instead of the writing and development showing us how it happened.

The actual plot events were in general... underwhelming. Both books 2 and 3 set up this fascinating potential for scenes and narrative arcs, with Gaius destroying NYC, and then Rheya taking over the city, and both times we just flew away to chase down artifacts and have diamond scenes in pretty places in various countries. I think it was an unfortunate choice to trade the potential of vampire politics for artifact-hunting.

The Order and Xenocrates in particular were woefully under-utilized. The tapestry paintings shed light on a fascinating dynamic between Gaius and Xenocrates, and we see that this anger and hatred has spanned millennia! Xenocrates is the reason that vampires are hated and hunted, he is the reason why Gaius is driven to extremes and decides that his plan to eradicate humans apart from keeping a blood supply for vampires is the only way to protect his people. And then... he just dies in a building collapse, and the Order is destroyed, and this thousands-year-old conflict is snuffed out pretty much immediately. It was disappointing, because there was so much potential in the lore that was created here, it just wasn't taken advantage of in the present storyline.

This one is small, but. Where the heck did MC's mom go 😭 we see one memory of her and then never hear about her again. Did she die? If she's not dead, why is MC not concerned about her while Gaius and Rheya are trying to destroy/take over the world.

This one is also small but worth mentioning - I was so annoyed that MC was forced to speak up and voice her opinion all the time in situations that really didn't involve her. It was just odd to me that Adrian's assistant thought it would be a good idea to speak up in a vampire council meeting after only having known about vampires for like. A few days lol. There were many times where I cringed at having to choose something to say because I, frankly, would have just remained silent because it wasn't my place to speak.

Maybe this is just me but... I definitely felt like Jax was done dirty by the writers. Not just in that he was sidelined and had fewer scenes and plot relevance apart from "being part of the crew", but I think his development as a character was weaker than the others. By book 3, I do feel like he came more into himself, and it was nice to see him have a character arc regarding his relationship with Takeshi, but for books 1 and 2, I personally felt like the writers didn't really know him. He was sort of just... bland, left vaguely blank aside from the "rebel vampire leader" for a while. The writers themselves said that he was the hardest character to write, which makes sense because I could tell that it took them a while to figure out who he really was.

Now for my biggest critiques, mostly centering around the handling of Gaius's character and missed potential.

First, Gaius's character development and thing with Rheya. I... was not a fan at all of the brainwashing plot point. I found that it made Gaius's character far less interesting and seemed to be almost incompatible with previous portrayals of his character and who they had been creating. For example, Rheya supposedly severed his compassion for humans, yet we see a direct contradiction of that when he had empathy for Kano, a dying child who'd lost his parents, and decided to Turn him in order to save his life and give him a chance to avenge his family. What made him so fascinating to me originally was the fact that DEVOTION was what ultimately turned him into a monster: first, devotion to Rheya, and second, devotion to his own people. By book 3, he was reduced from a terrifying vampire leader who would put his life on the line to protect his own people (as seen in crypt scene where he risks his life to save other vampires instead of running to safety) to a mindless zealot of Rheya whose only purpose seemed to be "Obey the goddess!" While the devotion to her is fine, it saddened me that his role as a leader who let fanaticism guide him as he sought to protect vampires was overshadowed by this interpersonal conflict between two individuals. I think there was a hugely missed opportunity to pit his two devotions against each other when he learns that Rheya doesn't actually care about him OR the vampires as a whole, and would happily take their lives if it meant gaining more power for herself. To watch him wrestle between his devotion to Rheya, his beloved goddess, and his devotion to his vampire progeny... now that is a character arc I'd love to dive into. Imagine if, in addition to being angry that Rheya used him like a tool, he was also angry that she wanted to hurt vampires. Just imagine something like this: "While you were asleep I was building a kingdom for our people, while you were gone I was the one who stepped up to protect them! And now you think you can come back, and use them, and kill them, and that I'll support you?" The vibes... immaculate.

Going along with the topic of Gaius being responsible for his own actions vs the concept of brainwashing, if Gaius hadn't been brainwashed and simply turned against Rheya because he realized she didn't care about the well-being of vampires and saw them as tools in her quest for power, I feel as though it would've made the alliance between Gaius and MC's crew all that much more interesting. A fragile alliance between people with a common enemy, but Gaius is still not an ally because he still disdains humanity, and once Gaius helps you get Rheya out of the way, you know that you'll have to deal with him next... mmm delicious.

As an add on, learning that it was all the result of brainwashing opens up a whole can of worms of "okay this man still committed war crimes but how much is he actually responsible for?" that I frankly don't feel was necessary, because Gaius was fully fascinating all on his own without needing to add the element of brainwashing to it. I just felt like it had the result of turning a fascinating, layered, nuanced character into "black-and-white" to make his redemption easier for lay readers to stomach.

Even after having bought every single tapestry diamond scene and plenty of diamond scenes with various characters, I was still left with lingering confusion about what happened in the past, namely: what did Gaius's empire look like and how did it work, what exactly were Kamilah and Adrian doing to spread his empire and enforce his rule, and what about him made them choose to swear fealty in the first place? They talk so much about all the people they killed and yet we really only saw them kill people who weren't exactly innocent? Iirc we only saw Adrian kill confederate soldiers, a British soldier who tried to kill him first, and a rogue vampire that had just drained a man of blood. And yeah, there was some sketchiness about it because the confederate soldiers weren't attacking him, and there was a young kid with them, but at the end of the day they were enemy soldiers fighting to maintain slavery and this is war - hardly the same thing as ruthlessly murdering strangers. Anyway the point is that I would've liked a clearer picture of what they did, to truly see them at their lowest points. And then, to see what was the catalyst that started pushing them back up again. I would've liked to know who they were sent to kill, and why, instead of vaguely "I've killed so many people." Give me the details!!

Like Part 1, I am Tired now and I feel like I've said most of what I want to say. So I am finished with my critiques section.

If you made it this far, you are the best and I appreciate you being interested enough in my thoughts to read this long, rambling review ❤️

[faithlesbian]

Wesley and guns actually makes total sense in the context of ATS I think.  Throughout S1 and S2, and even in the opening of S3, Wesley is shown to be a ringer of sorts at throwing darts - planting the seed very early on for his arc of becoming a marksman and has kept a shotgun in his closet from the point that his character had an apartment set. Being that the Wesley of old was rather deficient at defending himself, it would stand to reason that a character like that would learn how to shoot in order to defend himself in other ways. And being that the character is shot and wounded by a gun at essentially the halfway point of S2, showing that he’s out of his depth, his recovery and the fallout become what spurs him into the leadership position he assumes by seasons end. In a way, it makes sense to me too that when Wes falls to the dark side he fully embraces guns as the weapon of choice since they’re the antithesis of everything he was before (meek, quiet, mystical-minded). Maybe it’s the LA setting but guns are all over ATS as opposed to like the 5 in Sunnydale and it’s fairly baked in how and why Wesley uses them to adapt to and try to supersede the environment he’s in.

this is a Fascinating response thank you for taking the time to write it all, i hadn't put two and two together about the darts thing but it makes total sense! i definitely see how guns can be symbolic here for both character and setting, when i was watching ats i also thought that wesley's increasing use of guns could be a sign of him 'americanizing', and the fact that it happens after he was shot by a cop is definitely charged in that way.

my main issue is that, although guns are a lot more common on ats, they still for the most part follow the same rules as on btvs: they are used by the bad guys, and they dont work. i see what you mean about the LA setting, but for example gunn's gang dont use guns to fight vampires because they're smart enough to figure out that bullets wont kill them, it's only once they're playing an antagonist role in s3 that they're shown using guns to cause pain and chaos, for destructive rather than defensive violence. the cops use guns, wolfram and hart's operatives use guns, guns in this universe only work to non-lethally hurt demons, or kill humans, and since the protagonists (typically) want to kill demons and help humans guns stay pretty firmly in the villains' arsenal.

wesley hardening his outer persona as a result of the violence he's faced is a logical progression of character, and his use of guns fits into that, but this doesnt solve the fundamental problem that guns still dont work. wesley has a gun (either back in his house or in his car, either way nearby) when justine slits his throat. it didnt help him. in almost every single fight he's in where he fires a gun, two guns, a shotgun, multiple rounds -- none of them work because he's fighting demons, and the established lore has always been that guns dont kill demons. there is one exception to this and its when he shoots directly into the demon's ear because his skin is bulletproof but this way the bullet goes straight through his brain. this happens once, out of easily half a dozen seperate fight scenes where guns do absolutely nothing except maybe slow the demon down or piss it off. it got to the point where me and @titsgirlbuffy were laughing every time there was a slo-mo shot of wesley jumping through the air firing two handguns because all he achieved was to fall on his side dramatically.

american gun culture is a self-perpetuating cycle of paranoia and violence, and the buffyverse typically refuses to capitulate to it, which is why it's so baffling that wesley, an otherwise smart and logical character, keeps trying to shoot things that wont die from being shot. its that classical definition of insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. and at the same time, the narrative won't interrogate this as a potentially fascinating character flaw, a result of wesley's traumatic history with gun violence sending him into that spiral of paranoia, convinced against all evidence of experience that being armed will protect him if not this time then the next time, surely.

please dont take this is criticism of your ask btw, you make great points, its the show writers i have issue with! if they wanted to play him being a marksman as a cool thing (and they totally couldve) they shouldve had it work more than one time out of ten

[bilbobagginsomebabez]

i finally watched battlestar galactica because it was VERY highly recommended by an old friend group and i should have known this shit was gonna be fucked up that friendgroup was toxic as hell and what the fuck is this ending. what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck. we have MULTIPLE SEASONS where the assumption of the characters and the narrative itself is that this HUMAN/CYLON HYBRID BABY is the SHAPE OF THE FUTURE. okay. total transcendence regarding the meaning of humanity, literally melding with the machines through romantic love, the children of which are the only hope for both races to survive (cylons sterile with each other, resurrection destroyed, human women infertile due to radiation poisoning)-- transhumanism as salvation! structurally really well done! everything built up SO WELL! it is narratively very difficult to move characters from literally genocidal hatred to looking at their nemesis people group like their only chance for survival. and to have their conflict carry them to that place! to have them literally destroy each other to the point that they will go extinct unless they not only give up their hatred but become one people. the lore of the show hinging itself on cycles of time and cycles of violence--"this has happened before and will happen again"--humans destroy cyclons so cylons destroy humans so humans destroy cylons. it started because humans enslaved cylons and refused to grant them freedom and autonomy, which is especially fascinating as an early post-9/11* work, only a few years after the towers fell. ran from 04-09 and that was the height of what can only be described as a national frenzy of xenophobic bloodlust, one that lead to 20 years of war, the destabilization of 3 governments, and 11 million dead. this story took that bloodlust and followed it to the near-annihilation of both groups, forcing them to rely on each other for survival or go utterly extinct. interesting stuff!!

and in the LAST EPISODE. okay. the last fucking episode. they find a second earth (because we already found Real Earth which was really a cylon colony) and this earth2 is NOT their species' homeworld. they find human populations on earth2 anyway and specifically comment on how totally crazy unlikely it is to have the same exact species evolve half a universe away. earth2 is also our planet, same continents. so yaaay! not all humans will go extinct AND these earth2 humans solve their fertility problem because they aren't radiation poisoned which removes the need for the cylons! hold up though! the indigenous earth2 human populations are PRE-LINGUAL. WELL BEFORE THEIR OWN FUCKING STONE AGE. our galactic colonizers react by saying "we can teach them all that" (yes! the visual was racist!) and then talk about how their space civilization wasn't actually destroyed by the injustice of slavery or meaningless hatred but instead Really by "too much science, too fast." so they decide to REGRESS TO BEFORE THE STONE AGE, disperse the last of their survivors into smaller groups across the planet not to merge with existing people groups but for "better chances of survival," and SHOOT THEIR TECHNOLOGY INTO THE SUN. just to put a point on it, they will never be able to reach or speak to each other again seeing as they shot their planet-traveling technology into the fucking sun. they are trapped on different continents with only pre-stone age technology. no one has a problem with this.

so back to before the last episode, we spent MULTIPLE EPISODES building a strong alliance with the rebel cylons based on the hybrid shape-of-the-future baby. because our special hybrid shape-of-the-future baby was stolen by pure-machine cylons and they had to get her back For The Shape Of The Future!! supposed to become one people remember! everything building up to it. well! the pure-machine cylons still hate humanity but have basically agreed to an opposite-sides-of-space nonaggression pact and won't go extinct because they got resurrection back in exchange for the girl. they are planning to discontinue the human-model cylons because the leader of that faction thinks machines trying to be like humans is an atrocity and resents his own existence for it. OUR rebel cylons who escaped that maniac and were planning to interbreed only get about three lines and are suddenly just totally okay with their type of human cylon going extinct. they want to "be as useful as possible" before they "expire" or some bullshit. the human-cylon hybrid baby is not addressed once. the multiple battle episodes about getting her back are just the reason the other cylons aren't trying to exterminate them anymore.

the writer was a fucking mormon and you can tell he wrote himself into a corner on the Legitimacy of God and could not let it go.

[raven-of-domain-kwaad]

Favorite character from 10 fandoms

Got tagged a while back by @swtorpadawan to do this. Thanks for the tag and sorry it took me so long!

I’ll tag @blitzindite​, @chaoticspacefam​, @palepinkycat​, @a-muirehen​, @starknstarwars​ and anyone else that wants to give this a go.

Rules: List your favorite character from 10 different fandoms and then tag 10 people

I’ll do the same thing you did and use the fandoms you used that I am also a part of or was once into.

Star Wars - Kreia

I absolutely love KOTOR 2. It is probably my favorite piece of star wars media. Kreia was a fascinating character that has been a Jedi and a Sith and walked away with the belief that both were flawed. She also developed the theory that I subscribe to which is that the force itself is the ultimate evil / big bad of the star wars galaxy. As long as the force exists then there will always be wars and conflicts because of it and the people of the galaxy will suffer in an endless cycle of violence.

Lord of the Rings - Boromir

I just adore the tragedy of his character and I might have had a crush on Sean Bean ever since I was a kid lol

TMNT - Casey Jones

Loved Casey Jones in the 1990 movie. He was a cool guy that didn’t have ninja skills but still could kick ass with the turtles.

RWBY - Coco Adel

Ok so this was mainly because I wanted to be her. Like I wanted to be her so bad. Her look and style were awesome and the reveal that her weapon was a freaking minigun was awesome.

The X-Files - Walter Skinner

I just really liked Skinner’s character and how he grew into a great ally of Mulder and Scully. Also his tired and exasperated father figure routine in response to the chaos that Mulder always causes was some great levity for the show.

Starcraft - Kerrigan / Queen of Blades

Full disclosure, I have never played any of these games and don’t plan to. RTS games just aren’t my thing. That being said I have watched all the in game cinematics and dove into the wiki for lore. Kerrigan is just so damn cool. Like imagine if Ellen Ripley got turned into a human / alien queen hybrid that can command and control the hive, that is Kerrigan (no alien resurrection does not count)

Star Trek - Benjamin Sisko

I mean he was the lead for DS9 which is probably the best Trek series ever so yeah. Out of all the Captains he was probably the most fully realized character. He was a father, widower, religious icon, starfleet officer, soldier and more which all get addressed and explored in the show. He gets angry, he loses, he gets put into no win scenarios where a deus ex machina does not arrive at the end of the episode to set everything right. He also punched Q in the face and sasses a vulcan prick as seen above.

Assassin’s Creed - Ratonhnhaké:ton / Connor

AC3 remains my favorite of the games and Ratonhnhaké:ton remains my favorite protagonist. He is so sweet and almost naive at times but he never stops fighting for what he believes in even when he stands alone. He is also a halfie having a Kanien'kehá:ka / Mohawk mother and a british father and I am always a sucker for more halfie protagonists.

Fast and Furious - Han

Ok so yeah your girl likes the Fast series (at least the first five when it was about crime and street racing), sue me lol. Han was an enigmatic, korean, cool guy which was SO rare at the time. Korean culture had not yet gotten into the mainstream in the US and I was still getting the “oh are you north or south korean?” question from folks whenever I said I was half korean. Being able to see a suave badass korean in big films like this was just so damn cool to me.

Dishonored - Emily Kaldwin

The gay, weed smoking, Empress of the Isles with shadow demon powers. Goals.

[scarletravenswood]

Who is John Barleycorn?

Gruesome Origins & Modern Retellings

I was planning on making a post about the different harvest traditions for the Autumn Equinox, but in the middle of doing research for that I came across a character so crazy and fascinating that I felt the need to devote a whole post to him.  So today let’s go down the rabbit hole together to explore the strange tale of John Barleycorn and what it might reveal about our Pagan history.  The Autumn Equinox, also known as Mabon, is the second of the three important harvest festivals.  Most Pagan harvest festivals embrace the idea of sacrifice, perhaps none more so than Mabon, which is the time when the last sheaf of wheat & barley would be harvested. This notion of Sacrifice is one of the key themes associated with the popular story of John Barleycorn. You may have heard one of the many musical variations of this story or perhaps you're more familiar with the Robert Berns version from 1782.  If you haven’t ever heard this English Folk Song, give it a listen The story of John Barleycorn actually has really old origins.  There is a Scottish poem with a very similar theme and wording included in the Bannatyne Manuscript of 1568, though it’s likely that John Barleycorn is even older.  This is because the Bannatyne Manuscript is a collection of pre-existing works, many coming from the ancient oral tradition.  And considering the many pagan themes in the story, it’s definitely possible that the origins lie in Pre-Christian times. Specifically there may even be a link between John Barleycorn and the mythical figure Beowa, which is a figure from Anglo-Saxon paganism whose name means "barley." Now, the prevailing theory is that the tale of John Barleycorn is a symbolic representation of the crop of barley being harvested each autumn. The song describes the process of preparing the land, sowing the seeds, waiting for the crop to grow, and eventually harvesting. Then the song describes making the products of beer and bread which were key staples of the diet of early agrarian people.  For the most part this all makes sense but those of you who have read the poem or listened to the song have probably noticed the really gruesome way that this harvest is worded.  For example: “They laid him out upon the floor, To work him further woe; And still, as signs of life appear’d, They toss’d him to and fro. They wasted o’er a scorching flame, The marrow of his bones; But a miller us’d him worse of all, For he crush’d him between two stones. And they hae taen his very heart’s blood, And drank it round and round; And still the more and more they drank, Their joy did more abound.” Sure, maybe that’s just meant to be a creative interpretation of how to turn barley into beer and perhaps the reason this story has survived so long is in part due to the violent imagery, which makes the story more interesting and memorable.  Though perhaps there’s a bit more to the story. I want to share a theory that I recently found that might have some merit. This theory proposes that the tale of John Barleycorn is more than just a metaphor for the barley harvest and that it in fact contains references to real human sacrifices that occurred in Ancient Britain. I know what you’re thinking - pagan human sacrifice is a big trope often used by others to slander paganism.   But hear me out for a second because there’s some really interesting passages in this poem that deserve further inspection. The poem begins with: “There were three men come out of the west, their fortunes for to try, And these three men made a solemn vow, John Barleycorn would die” It’s interesting that we start with 3 men coming out of the West.  We’re all familiar with the religious importance of the number three.  The Celtic triad & triple spiral are of course famous symbols in Celtic paganism.  I also think it’s interesting that these men are coming from the West because in Celtic myths coming from “The West” meant coming from the otherworld or realm of the Fae. Also, in the tale of John Barleycorn before the the cutting of the barley there is an interesting passage that states: “They let him stand till midsummer Till he looked both pale and wan, And little Sir John he growed a long beard And so became a man.” Of course the reference to midsummer is interesting from a pagan perspective but I’m even more interested in the “growing a long beard” part.  Firstly, I’m not sure how the beard part fits in if this poem is just a metaphor for the barley harvest.  Instead, I think it’s possible that it’s referencing the long beards of the druids.  The druids believed that our life-force was channeled through the extremities which is why Druid priests would grow their beards and hair long.  So perhaps our John Barleycorn is representing a sacrificial priest. Next in the story we have a death being depicted in the poem, but it’s a three-fold death.  The poem states: “They hired men with the scythes so sharp To cut him off at the knee, They rolled him and tied him by the waist, And served him most barbarously. They hired men with the sharp pitchforks Who pricked him to the heart.” The three-fold death is a really common theme in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon folklore.  Even Merlin in the Arthurian legends prophesied a three-fold death for himself which would occur by falling, stabbing, and then drowning. So already we’ve found references in the passages of John Barleycorn to: - The Celtic triad and the Faerie realm in the west - The spiritual tradition of beard growing among the Druids - The importance of the three-fold death in Celtic lore. So what’s really going on here? In the famous anthropological book called “The Golden Bough” by Sir James Frazer, he states that the Barley King was personified in ancient ritual practice by a real person.  This man was honored as a King during the yearly cycle and when it was harvest time he would be sacrificed and dismembered and his body was dragged through the fields to ensure a fertile harvest for next year. This reminds me of a particularly gruesome passage in the poem: “They've wheeled him around and around the field till they've come unto a barn And here they've kept their solemn word concerning Barleycorn They've hired men with the crab tree sticks to split his skin from bone.” If this is just a metaphor for harvesting the barley, then what is the purpose of wheeling him “around and around” the field.  Perhaps Sir James Frazer might be right and that this passage could be a reference to the sacrificed individual being dragged through the fields to ensure the fertile harvest. It’s definitely a pretty disturbing visual and I probably should point out that we don’t really have much historical evidence concerning Pagan religious sacrifice.  One of the most popular accounts of pagan human sacrifice comes from Julius Caesar during his conquest of Gaul where he reports to have seen the burning alive of victims in a large wooden effigy, which is now known as a wicker man.  Though considering the Celts were his enemy at the time it is possible he exaggerated some details.   So, while it’s likely that some human sacrifice occurred among the Celts and Anglo-Saxons we don’t really know too many details and it’s likely that the violence was probably a bit exaggerated. So when it comes to our story of John Barleycorn we have our two main theories: The first theory is that the story of John Barleycorn is just a metaphor of the barley harvest and that any violent wording was just added for extra flair and it doesn’t represent any wider themes. The second theory is that the story of John Barleycorn actually contains references to the practice of religious human sacrifice among the Celtic and the Anglo-Saxon pagans. So which theory is correct?  In my opinion I think it might be both.  I think the main purpose of the story is to be a metaphor for the autumn barley harvest.  Though because this story is in fact really old, I think it picked up some Pagan references, stereotypes, and motifs along the way.   But, I’d love to hear what you think the story of John Barleycorn represents.  So share your thoughts down below in the comments. 

[sazandorable]

Death as all the other Entities

i’m really attached to how the TMA cosmology lore works means anything can theoretically be linked to any of the Fears, just depending on what it is exactly about the thing that freaks you out, and @backofthebookshelf started a fascinating discussion about how different cultures would come up with different taxonomies and some of them may not even have the End as a cultural fear (for various reasons), and tl;dr I had fun thinking of ways the concept of death could belong to each of the other entities. This has no particular point, just had fun victimising the End out of a job.

Obviously, morbid and a lot of TWs ahoy.

Beholding: the fear of not knowing what it’s going to be like; the fear of dying unknown; the fear of not seeing what happens after you’re gone (wym the eye is more than just FOMO); the entire concept of closing the eyes of the deceased; I seem to remember something about Ancient Egyptian graves having statues with the purpose of watching for intruders but I can’t find sources rn...

Dark: the whole thing with death being described as darkness falling over your eyes (vs the light at the end of the tunnel in NDE), the fear of eternal darkness after death

Stranger: the fear of how a corpse looks and how a dead body suddenly stops looking human / like the person you knew

Spiral: the fear of dying from old age with your brain slowly shutting down; the fear of losing your consciousness and sense of self (going off a Spiral reading of Binary); the inability to fully comprehend what the fuck death is; religious beliefs, losing faith, the fear of being wrong (did you do it right, have you earned your place, or did you royally misread the instructions? no way to know before you find out!)

Desolation: the fear of losing your loved ones; the fear of dying in pain, of burning to death; cremation

Slaughter: the fear of sudden unprovoked violence, fears of any weapon ; war, and in hero/warrior cultures, concepts like Valhalla, dying in glorious battle, honour over life, dying historic on the Fury Road (so death not as something to be feared, but embraced as part of the Slaughter)

Hunt: the fear of being hunted down, all the fears of predator animals, the Big Bad Wolf; the cycle of life and death from living from your hunt

Flesh: the fear of cannibalism, the fear of being eaten; the fear of starving; that weird relation to your body and your alive-ness, the whole "life is really just electric impulses through meat, wtf" deal

Vast: death/the afterlife as unending; the realisation of how few people are alive compared to the numbers of people that have died since the start of humanity, how short and insignificant your life is in the scope of the universe and how long your death will be

Buried: of course A Gravedigger’s Envy, the fear of being accidentally buried alive in a coffin (the little bells!); also the discomfort at the thought of walking over someone's grave, and how some people can’t stand the thought of their body being buried

Web: the fear of being assassinated; the fear of not being able to control how you’ll die nor what will happen to your remains after your death, the way people desperately try to regain some semblance of control over their situation (through a will, a funeral plan, tidying up your affairs); euthanasia, suicide; the concept of fate and your death being predetermined; the fear of your consciousness remaining trapped in your dead body forever

Corruption: the fear of dying of illness, of pandemics; the fear of all the unpleasant things that happen to a dead body

Lonely: the fear of losing your loved ones, grief; the fear of being forgotten, of dying alone; the fear of the afterlife being grey and empty and just you alone forever

Extinction: the fear of the end of the world, of disasters caused by humanity, of the absence of future, of not being able to survive in a changing world; the fear of the end of your bloodline; the fear of genocide

[the-wolfs-raven]

♌: what’s your family like?♍: other blogs?♎: would you date your muse?♏: would you and your muse be friends?♐: 3 things that scare you

♌: what’s your family like?

Ooh.  Boy.  Well, my dad’s pretty chill.  He was a hippy and all that.  Did a LOT of drugs in his time (which I didn’t learn about til this year.  Go figure.).  Got a bit of casual racism stuck in his humor, but he doesn’t mean any ill-will to anyone.  He’s a good guy overall.

My mother and her family, though.  Damn.  Like.  I’ve never met anyone so hateful and paranoid about the world.  Grandma turned me into a fundamentalist Christian psycho in elementary school (thankfully that got nipped in the bud in middle school).  Ma always said she’d disown us if we were gay (then did a complete 180 when my brother came out).  They’ve mellowed a bit with time, but now Grandma has Alzheimer's and is a complete psycho nut again.  Also, again with the casual racism, but they’re far more serious about it.  Typical MAGA folk.

So woo for breaking the hate cycle, I guess?

♍: other blogs?

Loads.  

@thepalewolfhowls is Tara’s daughter, Taria Fletcher.  My little lore bender.  Very angry daughter of Lo’Gosh with a fondness for orcs and punching people.  She has her own daughter now, Accalia, and a sort-of mate, Grok’tor Ironbite, a grizzled war veteran.  Taria underwent chronomantic aging to make her an adult (partially because I fucked up my timelines.  Partially because a child is an inconvenient agent and adult Taria can break so many more skulls).  She would have been around 7 years old if not for the aging, but she is fully an adult, physically, mentally, and emotionally (though her step-father may argue the latter.  lol)

@bluewolfcaravan is Tara’s trading and shop ventures.  Lots of fun stuff there when I’m not too dead to run them.  

@the-white-lioness is Ishtara Lionstar.  A Night Elf whore who originally turned Tara down the path of owning her sexuality.  She and her lions are all named for Assyrian (Mesopotamian, whatever) figures since its a good chunk of my heritage.  Lovely lion whore, basically.  

@wordhobbies is Necrocia Witherwing aka Twitchy formerly known as Sentinel Lyralel Dawnwhisper.  After a traumatic blow to the head, the elf became completely unhinged, putting herself in dangerous situations and stitching herself back together.  Though she’s never technically died, you wouldn’t know it from looking at her.  She also has...Hobbies.  Lots of hobbies.  “I asked myself, why should a murloc only have two eyes?  Why not ten?  Or TWENTY THREE?!”  …ehem…Her fascination with hobbies was actually pulled from an eccentric character from a children’s cartoon (Grandpapa Thistle from Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom).  Occasionally, she has short periods of sanity where her hair returns to its normal state and she becomes terrified of everything that’s happened to her.  Twitchy is almost emaciated and has various scribbles, scars, tattoos, etc all over her body from just...various things.  Sometimes she needs to remember something and she’ll literally just ink it into her skin.  If she can’t find something to tattoo herself with, she’ll just carve it on.  She’s extremely difficult to play for a long period of time because she just requires SO much energy.

@obscure-snowdrop is my little Shadow Whisperer bookworm who I made specifically to join the Crows.  She began hearing whispers at a young age and they keep her relatively sane despite her horrific life.  If wards or any such thing silence the whispers, she goes into a fit as everything that has worn on her over time coalesces in one fell swoop.

@snaythes These were my spook family from many fandoms back.  They are hemomancers of sorts with various quirks.  The eldest brother builds furniture from human parts.  One brother is a butcher who specializes in cannibalistic delicacies.  One brother, who had his heart broken, incorporates unused bodies into their home’s décor.  His ex-fiancée currently serves as a chandelier in the living room (I realize the irony).  The only sister is a painter who works with macabre and lascivious subjects.  She and the eldest brother have an...unconventional relationship.  The youngest brother is the most tame, and doesn’t really share his family’s penchant for violence and murder.

@korbintavernack aka Nix is a Blacktalon agent who worked closely with Taria in the past.  He’s a brawler and a magebreaker with enough wards to silence any magical activity in a 20 foot radius around himself.  He’s also responsible for the warding on Taria’s mind making her resistant to mental attacks and manipulation.

@theunkindness is an organization of (traditionally only Kaldorei) assassins and thieves who take morally upright contracts overall (killing bad folk like slavers, abusers, etc).  Tara is a part of the Unkindness and still communicates with several of her old contacts.

@winterscalesheir is the original Warhammer 40k Tarvasha.  She is the complete opposite of WoW Tara and I have no idea how it happened.  The bastard daughter of Rogue Trader Calligos Winterscale, she’s determined to find the Baleful eye of Sebastian Winterscale and cement herself among her father’s bloodline.

♎: would you date your muse?

I mean, if I had to date someone, Tara would be a pretty high reach for me.  I think I’d feel way too inferior to actually date someone like her, though I’d shower the poor girl with affection.  We’d probably try to outdo each other in gift-giving and kind gestures.  However, Tara is more heteroromantic, as am I, so even given the chance, it probably wouldn’t work.  lol

♏: would you and your muse be friends?

I think we’d make decent friends.  I don’t like the upkeep that comes with friendships and Tara tends to disappear a lot, so I think that would work out just fine in the end.

♐: 3 things that scare you 

Someone breaking into my house.  Seems kinda specific, but here’s the thing:  I have a shit fight or flight response, even when my kids are involved (I once left them in the backyard as I was running away from a wasp).  This is partially due to the fact that I was terrified of SIDS, so I didn’t allow myself to bond with my kids when they were born.  A lot of people I know are like “Yeah, I’d bust someone’s ass if they ever tried to touch my kids” but honestly, I feel like I’d probably run like a bitch and hate myself forever for it.  But who knows?  Maybe I’d pick up a floor lamp and fucking wreck someone’s day?  I’d rather not find out one way or the other.

Losing my technology.  I live through screens.  All of my memories are contained in my tech and on the web.  I’m terrified that I’d lose those things.  I’ve already had a phone run over and lost all of my children’s baby photos and videos.  I have very little memory of those times, so losing that was pretty heartbreaking for me.

Apocalypse.  Any sort of end-of-the-world bullshit where you’ve gotta figure out how to survive.  A lot of my friends have bug out bags and everything else but my oldest is a Type 1 diabetic.  If the places producing insulin suddenly stop, I have no way to keep my daughter alive.  It’ll be cyanide pills for the lot of us.

Thanks for the ask @latildarommel!  Sorry it got so heart-wrenching at the end.  lol