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mrslittletall · 1 year ago

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I want to type down my thoughts about Mohg Lord of Blood and how I interpret his story and lore. Please be aware that these are solely my headcanons and nobody has to abide by them. Also, this text will have mentions of incest and non-con. You have been warned. See the text under the cut.

What do we know about Mohg? Not much actually. As always, canon gives us very little. We only have a few stated things.

- He is an omen and the twin brother of Morgott. Both of them were raised and shackled in the sewers.

- He claimed a shard of the Elden Ring for himself, like each of Marika’s children.

- He decided to take Miquella away from the Haligtree. It is heavily implied that it was an abduction. We can see him carrying away Miquella’s unconscious body in the intro sequence of the game.

- He is living up to his accursed blood and has formed a whole magic system around it.

- He is involved with an outer god, the Formless Mother.

- He wants to ascend the cursed Miquella to full godhood.

- He created a dynasty that he wants to rule over.

Where do we start with Mohg? Probably his childhood because it sucked. Omen are a sign of the Crucible and therefore the Golden Order is not happy about him, so Marika and Godfrey tossed their twins into the sewers. It can be argued that maybe Godfrey sometimes visited them or that they only got tossed into the sewers after some time passed, but ultimately, both Mohg and Morgott suffered from parental neglect and abandonment and both of them suffered quite some trauma from it.

Here I have to say, Morgott and Mohg are two sides of the same coin. They suffered the same abuse, but both of them decided to cope very differently with it. Morgott coped by rejecting his omen blood, seeing it as the curse the Golden Order wants it to be and fully leaning into their beliefs. Even though Morgott had so much love to give for the Golden Order and the Erdtree, the Erdtree and the Golden Order never loved him back, trapping him in a cycle of self-hatred.

Mohg, on the other hand, decided to fully embrace his accursed blood. We don’t know why exactly, but we know that he had his blood pots as a child already, so I like to think the Formless Mother contacted him at an early age, helping to put him on his path. Mohg never knew how it was to be loved by his parents and down the way he lost his brother to the Golden Order, so he got a very twisted and wrong idea of love.

For Mohg, love is something that needs to be taken and given by force. He doesn’t really get the concept of consent, he is utterly convinced that if he loves someone, then that one will love him back. It doesn’t matter that they had to be kidnapped, they are part of the Mohgywn Dynasty now and the Mohgwyn Dynasty is all about love. Characters like Varre who have a fanatic devotion to Mohg only strengthen this point.

What did Mohg do during the shattering? He surely claimed one of the shards of the Elden Ring for himself, because that is what the Great Runes are. But other than his siblings, he didn’t partake in the war. Because Mohg has no interest in the Elden Ring as a whole or to be the ruler of Leyndell.

Mohg wants to have his own kingdom to rule, the Mohgwyn Dynasty, a kingdom of blood, a dynasty he can be the ruler and founder of. I think like Ranni, Mohg fucked off to do his own thing while all the sieges during the Shattering happened. He had no interest in fighting them and also, why should he claim someone else’s kingdom if it would not be his? Why should he risk his life fighting the undefeated Malenia or the Starscourge?

No, instead, Mohg did his thing mostly in secret. He abducted the war surgeons, he experimented with the bloody fingers, he recruited several sanguine nobles, who either are omens like him or humans that altered their body once they got a taste of his blood. Mohg was patiently and silently building up his army. From the war surgeons, only Varre is active, because he is the only one who has mind intact, and his goal is to recruit more Tarnished into Bloody Fingers. The sanguine nobles are roaming the Land’s Between, probably searching for more recruits to be kidnapped, which doesn’t work with our Tarnished because they turn into grace upon dying.

Yes, it might be argued why they also attack when you are a Bloody Finger, but that is just game play shenanigans and not really proof of the lore.

So where does Miquella come in all this? So first thing first, I am absolutely convinced that Mohg genuinely loves Miquella. He probably was at the Haligtree for some time and met him there. When it came to start his dynasty, Mohg needed someone to start the dynasty with, so it was Miquella he took.

And also, MIquella is an empyrean. That was perfect for Mohg, because he isn’t an empyrean. Now the question is… why does Mohg need an empyrean?

These are only speculations, but looking at the other empyreans, pretty much all of them are associated with an outer god.

Marika -> The Greater Will

Ranni -> The Dark Moon

Malenia -> The Scarlet Rot

We don’t know about Miquella, but I think it might also have been the Greater Will, because according to Ranni, the two fingers are assigning empyreans. Ranni cast her great rune and flesh away to escape her fate, but she stayed an empyrean and I guess the dark moon is the outer god that spoke to her and had similar plans to her goals.

Malenia is downright cursed with her outer god. It was one of the things that Miquella tried to get rid of. He was creating an item that can delete the influence of an outer god.

So, Mohg is also associated with an outer god. The Formless Mother.

What is Mohg not? An empyrean.

It could very well be that the Formless Mother asked for an empyrean, that she needs an empyrean present to be fully able to come into the world, to interact with it, to be able to be hit by Mohg’s trident.

Yes, I know, we can also do the same thing when we use Mohg’s trident, but during that time Miquella and the Formless Mother are still around, it is simply Mohg that is missing. Besides, we are carrying around his great rune which might also have relevance to why it works.

So, Mohg wants to start a dynasty. He cannot start a dynasty on his own, so he needed Miquella. The Formless Mother probably needed an empyrean. So Mohg could kill two birds with one stone. He could get his love and an empyrean at the same time.

Is Miquella on board with this?

Honestly, I don’t think so. From the little lore we have of him, he seems to care mostly about his sister and the Haligtree. There is no reason for him to leave the Haligtree and let it fall to the rot and there is no reason for him to leave his sister behind to play around with Mohg. It might even be possible that he stayed asleep in his cocoon on purpose. “Mohg did not receive a response from the young empyrean”.

I interpret it in a way that Miquella was in love with Malenia. More than the love of siblings. And maybe Malenia shared the sentiment, as her brother was one of the only ones not afraid of her rot. Either way, it probably was a very codependent relationship. Mohg pretty much took the opportunity when Malenia was exhausted or away to snatch MIquella away and she didn’t even notice that Miquella was gone, ever guarding a brother that was not there anymore.

We could also get into Malenia, but the text is already long enough.

So, Mohg is forcing Miquella to undergo transformation that he didn’t consent to and maybe even forced himself on his sleeping body. Oh who am I kidding, it is kinda canon that he is coursing around in blood form in Miquella’s veins. If that is sexual or not is up to your own interpretation, but there is a certain intimacy to literally flow in the veins of your beloved.

Also, Mohg feels to me like… a very spiteful character. He was told his whole life that he is cursed and hated and should be locked away, so he totally embraced it. “You called me a monster, now I show you what kind of monster I can be.” But he also is surprisingly gentle, only that he has the problem that he doesn’t get or doesn’t want to take a no, forcing his love on anyone, if they want or not. And the worst thing is, Mohg is entirely genuine with his feelings. He doesn’t even think that he does something wrong, because that is how he understands love. As something that has to be taken by force and surely everyone else agrees to it.

I am absolutely convinced that Mohg wants to rule over his dynasty. It is called Mohgwyn and he calls himself the Lord of Blood. He doesn’t call it Miquellawyn and he doesn’t call himself “Miquella’s consort”. If he would not want the power, he would not make it so clear that he is the lord, he would not dress himself in such fancy robes and he would not be interested in keeping Miquella “his and his alone.”

Mohg feels very very obsessive to me. He cannot bear the thought that Miquella could be taken away. Taken, not that Miquella would leave him. Because Mohg is convinced that love has to be taken, not earned. When the Tarnished comes and doesn’t kneel in front of him, he doesn’t even consider they are there for his rune, he thinks they are there for Miquella.

“Miquella is mine, and mine alone.”

He repeated that over and over when I fought him, each time when I died. That does not sound like someone to me who is not interested in power or who managed to convince Miquella to come to him of his own free will.

Mohg is possessive, spiteful, embraces his nature as an omen, deeply religious to the Formless Mother and he doesn’t want anyone to kick him around. That is what Mohgwyn is about. Mohgwyn is his and his alone. Just like Miquella is his and his alone.

Mohg is coping with his trauma by forcing his love on others and creating a kingdom around the concept of love, a twisted and sick concept of love, but love nonetheless.

For the Moghwyn dynasty… with love!

So, does Mohg have an ultimate goal? I guess after he has built up his Dynasty, he might try and seize the Land’s Between and try to get his order of blood out there, but his plan is still very early, so there was no way that he could create a mending rune for the Elden Ring that would create the “Order of Blood”. No Lord of Blood ending unfortunately…

He is optional in game, but if he is killed, then his plan cannot come into fruition anyway. If not.. well, the DLC seems to be Miquella centric, so maybe we learn something more about the whole deal. We simply have to wait and see.

Like I said, in the beginning. These are simply my thoughts and headcanons about Mohg. Nobody has to agree with them. I simply looked at the lore and came to my own conclusion. I am not attacking anyone specific with this text, I just wanted to put down my own interpretation of Mohg’s character and lore with the little tidbits of information I have seen in canon.

Mohg is a deeply fascinating character to me and I would like to write him with nuance. I hope that I will succeed in the future, when I am able to get back to my writing.

#elden ring #mohg lord of blood #character analysis #incest cw #non-con cw

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trainerdelaney · 2 years ago

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Look, obviously every bit of writing has its flaws, but you know one in the Percy Jackson series that's always bothered me that no one seems to bring up? Or, if they do bring it up, I think they're on the wrong side. I say this because I saw a post earlier about how Calypso was SO right to curse Annabeth because she was mad at Percy for forgetting about her despite making a promise. And like... the Calypso storyline is one of the worst bits of writing Rick Riordan did??

First of all, she's thousands of years old and trying to get with teenage boys. Percy was, what, 14 or 15 at the time he met her? And she was trying to guilt him into staying on the island with her. Then at the end of the second series, she ends up with Leo, who was also a fucking teenager. Pretty sure none of the kids were above 18 by the end. And even if they were, they're still basically children?? Again, she's thousands of years old?? As I understand and remember it, her "curse" means that heroes will always somehow find their way to the island, but they never stay. The falling in love part was never enforced by godly powers, it just happened on her behalf.

And you're telling me that she hated Percy so much because he forgot to talk to the gods about her situation? I mean I know he brought it up to them, but it was literally one time. And then it was said that he never thought about her again, and never thought to check if the gods actually followed through on their deal. He was just like "Welp, I mentioned it. I've done all I can do. Time to move on." And it wasn't even some "magical Mist shit made him forget" situation. It was literally just "Oh he forgot. It slipped his mind." Percy "I dislike the gods and am going to spend so much of my time telling them to man the fuck up and own up to their mistakes and responsibilities" Jackson? Percy "at the climax of the story I am going to reject the offer of godhood in favor of forcing the gods to claim and take care of their forgotten and discarded children" Jackson? Perseus "his fatal flaw is his loyalty to friends and loved ones" Jackson? Perseus "cares more about others than himself to the point of physical and emotional self-sacrifice" Jackson??!? THAT Percy Jackson just FORGOT to call the gods out on something unjust they were doing to someone he supposedly cared about??

Oh, and Calypso took out her anger on someone else. She cursed Annabeth, who literally did nothing wrong, in order to hurt Percy. Yeah, the old "hurting your innocent loved ones is the best way to hurt you" trick. Totally something a good person would do. And then, at the end of it all, when she's in a relationship with a teenage boy and is free from her island, there's no closure. She never talks to Percy, Percy never brings her up to anyone, they never even see each other.

Nah. It's been years and I'm still fuming about this.

#sorry for the rant but i saw that post and something snapped #i've been feeling nostalgic about percy jackson lately #percy jackson #pjo #heroes of olympus #and you know i could be remembering some of this wrong but still #the gist of it is there #leo valdez #pjo calypso

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rataltouille · 4 years ago

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GEOMETRY OF THE HOLY MOON (1 AM): A SHORT STORY

GENRE: surrealism, literary fiction.

POV & TENSE: this little space is not enough for how wild the form is so i talk about this later!!

SETTING: a small desi village, 1924-25.

TONE: dreamy, unsettling, melancholic.

THEMES: faith vs reality, how people perceive others and how they perceive themselves, grief dealt the wrong way.

AESTHETICS: the splash of water on a quiet night, thick clouds obscuring the sky, rippling the moon’s reflection on the water. the intensity of a garden in spring, the emptiness of a dying town, the suffocation from being singled out. hands grazing lightly but never fully held. a lingering sadness behind your laugh. believing in things you shouldn't believe in. putting faith on a starless sky.

STAGE: completed first draft, 4085 words.

LOGLINE: a young boy, surrounded by loss, claims to talk to god. the story follows him and his conversations with this god, all while his village spies on him as he weaves his way around the two most crucial and lonely years of his life.

LITERAL LOGLINE: on today’s news let’s talk about a small backward town that hates sad little boys who worship god, even though the place is lowkey a cult!!

CHARACTERS:

THE SUMMER BOY: he’s around thirteen, and he’s very emotionally attached to his past. he lost his family at a young age to an unstable force, so he spends his time talking to himself. he’s a quiet, demure and sweet person, always willing to help others. he’s outwardly oblivious and sees only the good in people to a point where he doesn't understand when they’re trying to do him wrong. but! considering how the story [like a lot of my others] has themes of perception vs reality, it needs to be said that he isn't all that innocent. he’s rather impulsive and rash, never afraid of hurting himself [and thus accidentally harming others].

A GOD: is he real? do we even know if he’s an actual god? a very elusive figure despite having a lot of screentime. he’s a surprisingly humanised character and arguably the one with the most empathy. he has a soft spot for the boy and the two have a deep bond which is not common for a human and a god to have. you don’t get insight to what the other gods are like, but they’re implied to exist. this story has a very messy and hazy view towards religion and godhood and their nature towards humanity, and this vague figure, a dreamlike character, is proof enough of that.

THE VILLAGE: okay so in general these people suck. the village consists of, well, the village, but they’re very fluid in the way they appear in the story? as in for the most part they appear as a collective, a unit. one character, the summer boy’s “friend”, is somewhat separate considering he’s a pretty important character. it’s very hard describing this unit of a character but essentially they’re the main antagonistic force and they hate the protagonist for seemingly no reason.

WHAT GOES DOWN:

sometime around this time, the boy chances upon meeting his “god”, this being who lives up in the clouds and whom he talks with often, except you don't know if this god is real or not. that’s one of the recurring themes of this story: what’s real and what isn’t. it’s :) a fun time :) for sure :)

essentially Things Happen And It Only Gets Weirder. i cannot even try describing what happens because it’s all very spoilery but let’s just say that this is a very sad story but not even in a “this makes me cry” manner, but rather in a “this is so fucked up wtf why”. the prose of this is very, very hazy and thick, in a manner that’s both smooth and suffocating. there’s also a lot of moon and water imagery which we love. i love the atmosphere + the setting—colonial india— as it’s a subtle but key element to the plot.

FORM:

OKAY YES be prepared for the true colours of how unhinged i am. i apologize for the form brainrot.

POV: so in this story i really said “what if it had all three of the main povs... jk jk... unless 😳😳” and then proceeded to use all three povs. you’re probably wondering, how did i do that? WHY did i do that? and my answer to that is: 🙂

the first-person pov: the summer boy narrates in first person. his pov takes up about 40% of the story, and this is where we unlock family backstory + how he feels about the various forces playing into his life. he’s an extremely unreliable narrator and he knows it; his narration oscillates between very naive and very self-aware, and this effect is pretty disconcerting. the summer boy is kind of a walking contradiction and we love that conflict.

the second-person pov: a god narrates in second person. his pov takes around 20% of the story, and his scenes all involve his conversations with the boy. his pov is extremely detached, and suspends belief because he seems awfully made up. there’s an edge to the prose in his narration, where you know that something's off, but you can’t exactly pinpoint what.

the third-person pov: the villagers narrate, either as a collective, or as an individual figure, in third person. they take up the other 40% of the story, and there are so many different people and differing opinions with this, and every time we read a third person excerpt it’s a different person, and this is mostly used to add onto the different ways in which the boy is perceived. this is also where the structural part of the form gets really wacky.

STRUCTURE: if my story isn't told in vignettes is it my story though /j. gothm is told in vignettes, each one between 50 to 500 words. the first and second person bits are normal-ish vignettes, with straightforward narration. the third person vignettes, on the other hand, are super assorted. we have a lot of epistolaric sections— there’s a letter, a folk song [which was found around the summer boy], and most of the conversation is told as just plain dialogue without tags. there’s also a phone call transcript, and finally some normal chunks of prose. what am i doing wtf.

also to add onto this the story is told non-linearly. 😀 the only thing that keeps me from going insane is the fact that there are chronological tags before most vignettes [also the manner in which they're tagged differs from pov to pov. for example a few of the third person conversations are marked just as “sunday” or “thursday”, while the summer boy’s narration is marked with the full date and year]

in all this clownery i completely forgot to mention what the tense was [the way everything else was so complicated that i forgot tense was a thing lmao] and good news!! it’s the only sane thing about this story!! it’s told fully in present tense. thank everything.

AN EXCERPT:

okay i’m once again not sharing much because this will be submitted to litmags 🧞

[The boy is scrawny as always. He carries an air of diswant— even death had rejected him when the plague killed only his grandmother— but walks like he doesn’t notice. He smiles at them, jitters, and wipes his hand across his knees. Blood comes away in thin, translucent lines. He saves it on the kerchief he keeps tucked in his shirt, careful to dirty the cloth even more. The villagers scrunch their noses in disgust; who knew how old and rotten the kerchief was, or how long it had carried blood like the unwashed sword of a warrior?]

also by the way this excerpt is in square brackets because it is a third-person interjection in a vignette that is otherwise first-person [at this point...]

SPARE THOUGHTS:

this was inspired by a conversation i had with my grandfather, where he was telling me about how people used to sing songs to the skies, as a way of devotion to a specific god. he used the [loose translation of] the english word “yearning” to refer to the emotion the singers would invoke, and that sparked the concept of a disillusioned young boy who talks to the moon as a way to please the god he’s in love with. it’s a very softly disconcerting story and once again deals with the theme of “perception vs reality” which if you know me and my work, is the theme i’m forever obsessed with.

i really like how this turned out? the atmosphere is exactly how i wanted it to be, and there’s so much i have to add on as i edit and i’m really looking forward to that. this is also the only short story i’ve written where i knew which litmag i’d love for it to be published in? like i never write things with publishing in mind, but for some reason while writing this story it occurred to me that it would be a perfect fit for this specific magazine and i love that. anyway if you’ve made it through the post till here,,,, bless you and your braincells. and that’s all for today!!

#am writing #writeblr #wtwcommunity #atlastracking #ofcolourtracking #crabappletracking #tw death #tw plague #tw blood #the way this post gets increasingly incomprehensible...#love how my blog has just descended into pure chaos post-hiatus #geometry of the holy moon (1 am)#god complex #god complex intro

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shadlad24 · 3 years ago

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The Lord of War

Continuing from where we left off:

You know what else is interesting? Draco and Ares take little-to-no notice of Gabrielle at first. Draco doesn’t see her even when she very obviously sneaks into the meeting hall right behind Xena, at whom Draco is staring; Ares largely writes Gabrielle off during the first two seasons of the show.

Then Draco falls for the bard thanks to Baby Bliss. Next episode, “The Furies”? Ares grabs Gabrielle and holds her to him—who responds to him much like she did to Draco—before verbally acknowledging the sway she has over Xena. (Yes, his comment is insulting, but Ares often deals with his deeper feelings by ridiculing them and their object.)

The next time Ares and Gabrielle come face-to-face with each other, he is very drawn to her, and their chemistry together just grows from there. His appreciation of Gabrielle’s body gets taken to an extreme by the end of the season; the instant he gets the opportunity to be with “her,” he takes it and greatly enjoys it. He is then protective and reassuring with Hope the same way he was with Gabrielle when they were alone.

Yes, because although I don’t think it was really him who appeared to Xena on that mountain during “The Bitter Suite,” I do think he was inception reverse-psychology’ing Gabrielle during “Forget Me Not” on multiple levels. The character is just too much like the real Ares for me, and his objectives generally clash rather than mesh with those professed by Gabrielle’s supposed guilt. Not to mention, he knows things that Gabrielle does not: the names of the Rivers, for instance. Which would mean that Ares went out of his way to not only secretly visit Gabrielle while Xena was away, he tried to tempt her choose the easier path, just as he often did to Xena. (At the same time, he also seemed to actually be trying to help her. I won’t go into it, but I think that Ares understood Gabrielle more than he did Xena and sometimes more than Xena understood Gabrielle.)

His desire for the battling bard grew over the years such that he at least considered filling Xena’s place in his heart with her, making her his new warrior princess in both “Succession” and “Seeds of Faith.” Then he gave up his godhood to save Gabrielle’s life in “Motherhood.”

Seeing all their commonalities and how Ares and Draco were never appear in the same episode together, is it crazy to suggest that Draco wasn’t a real person? That he was just one of Ares’s alter egos—like Atrius in “Ties That Bind”—whom the god of war used to manipulate Xena back to his side, even going so far as spending lengths of time in those identities apart from her to build up histories for them? This further fits perfectly with my theory about the methods Ares used to appear to Xena before “The Reckoning.”

Finally, it makes sense that right after Xena began her journey toward redemption, Ares would be all over trying to win her back. But he’d need a disguise because of all he’d done to her on “HTLJ” through Darphus: stirring a mutiny against Xena, making her walk the gauntlet, looting in her name against her wishes, and then trying to feed her to his freaky dog.* So, Ares popping up as himself wasn’t an option. Who was? The fallback that he’d been using to get with Xena anyway; Draco. It’s the same with Gabrielle. Ares ruined things with her by slaying Eli before her eyes, then tried to get the bard to turn to him instead; he even let her feel his power as the ultimate temptation. She flat-out rejected him without Xena’s help (unlike in “Succession” when Xe sent Ares away on Gabrielle’s behalf). So, who came along straight away in “Lyre, Lyre”? Draco. Hmm…

*I don’t have access to Hercules episodes and so can’t screenshot them.

PS: No, I don’t actually think Draco was a fake, but it’s intriguing how well so many elements of the possibility fit together, isn’t it? Hm...

#xena #xena warrior princess #xwp #xena and gabrielle #gabrielle #fan theory #ares #xena and ares #ares and gabrielle #draco #parallels

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mittensmorgul · 4 years ago

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I've watched season 11 again, and I have a question if you're willing to answer. In season 5, Cas was very disappointed about learning God was basically a "dead beat dad," as Dean called it. But when Cas had an opportunity to talk to Chuck, he didn't seem all that interested in talking to him or even asking a question or two. Why do you think they never had Cas interact with Chuck as a son talking to his father when it was such a huge deal for Cas in season 5?

Hi there! I’m happy to talk about this, because honestly I was personally GLAD that Cas treated Chuck the way he did in s11.

(A/N: I was halfway through writing this when my power went out last night, so now that everything is back on I’m gonna see if I remember wtf I was even talking about... if this goes sideways halfway through, blame Potomac Edison)

Cas had already realized long before exactly who and what Chuck was. I mean, not that Chuck was actually God, but that God and “His Plan” was always a load of BS.

Chuck left the angels a lot of conflicting information, and not a lot in the Free Will and Critical Thinking arena. I was just thinking about season 6, and this sort of feeds into a lot of the same distinction between Cas and the rest of the angels. My personal line of thinking earlier this evening was this line in 6.20:

CASTIEL I'm doing this for you, Dean. I'm doing this because of you. DEAN Because of me. Yeah. You got to be kidding me. CASTIEL You're the one who taught me that freedom and free will -- DEAN You're a freakin' child, you know that? Just because you can do what you want doesn't mean that you get to do whatever you want!

Major Tangent Warning, because I gotta write out what I was thinking earlier in order to explain why I am So Pleased with Cas and his reaction to Chuck in s11, which I think of as abject disdain. This is key to everything Cas had learned, to all of his growth as a person up to that point.

What Dean tells Cas here is in direct contradiction to what Raphael’s self-stated motive in restarting the apocalypse was. Also from 6.20:

RAPHAEL You rebelled - against God, heaven, and me. Now you will atone. We'll start by freeing Lucifer and Michael from their cage. And then we'll get our show back on the road. CASTIEL Raphael...No. The Apocalypse doesn't have to be fought! RAPHAEL Of course it does. It's God's will. CASTIEL How can you say that?! RAPHAEL Because it's what I want. CASTIEL Well, the other angels won't let you. RAPHAEL Are you sure? You know better than anyone, Castiel. They're soldiers. They weren't built for freedom. They were built to follow.

Raphael is just doing “whatever he wants,” in the way Dean was trying to convince Cas NOT to. Because if Dean learns anything in s6, it is the cosmic cost of his own actions. Think 6.11, and the lessons he learns having to play Death for a day. As much as Dean tries to work around the Bigger Picture of the Universe, he does understand that there is a right and a wrong, and that some things are worth fighting or even dying for, but the cost might sometimes just be too great. And unleashing all the souls in purgatory on the planet seems like just a different sort of apocalyptic level of bad... like putting out a fire with a flamethrower.

Cas had to make a choice here. He’d chosen his path every step of the way, wrestled with each decision he’d had to make over the previous year leading up to that point, but he’d passed the point of no return, and his direct prayer to Chuck went unanswered, and he never got a sign whether he was doing the right thing or not.

I’ve argued in the past that he absolutely DID get a sign, in the form of Dean telling him to stop in 6.20. But Cas dismissed him, out of pride, out of hubris, out of desperation to do the one thing he believed could give him the power to stop Apocalypse 2.0, save Heaven, and also save Dean in the process, since Dean would be back on the radar to be Michael’s vessel if Raphael succeeded in breaking him out of the Cage.

And here’s the really tangenty part of the tangent: it just made me think of all the nitwits who won’t wear a mask in public, or follow social distancing rules because MAH FREEDUMB, you’re impinging on MAH LIBERTY. BUT THE CONSTITUTION!

Because yes, we can do what we want, but we can’t do WHATEVER we want when our actions are harmful to others!

The framers of the Constitution could never have foreseen a pandemic like this. But any SOCIETY where people must coexist needs to put some constraints on liberty, and the framers absolutely DID understand this.

They also couldn’t have foreseen air travel, but we have established rules about this. They couldn’t have foreseen cars and traffic lights and interstate highways, and yet we have rules that govern our behavior there, as well. Air traffic controllers, stop signs, speed limits-- we don’t just have the right to drive 90 mph through a school zone and run through red lights. And yet nobody yells BUT MAH FREEDUMB! when they get a speeding ticket.

Polite society ALSO must include *MY* right not to be killed because someone else decided that traffic laws didn’t apply to them, see?

Basically, wear your mask and shut up about it, whiny pissbabies. This is what is required of you to live in a functioning society. You do NOT have the right to infect others with a potentially deadly illness. Full stop.

But back to Cas and the Leviathan infection he’s about to infest the entire planet with...

Dean was effectively giving him the “wear a mask, nitwit” speech, but on a cosmic level.

And Cas had to live with the consequences of his choice, with the GUILT and DEPRESSION that resulted. And he spent the next few seasons desperately trying to make up for what he’d done, to atone and do whatever he could to redeem himself-- to Dean. He’d tried to redeem himself to Heaven, but the more he eventually began to learn about Humanity, the less affinity he felt for his fellow angels, and for Chuck’s construct of Heaven.

Because back to another previous point, Chuck effectively left the angels two opposing sets of instructions: orders to watch over the earth and act as shepherds to humanity, and orders to bring on the apocalypse at any cost. Can’t do both, truly. Even Naomi will eventually say, right before Metatron stabs her in the head, that she (and the other angels) forgot that their true mission was to protect and defend humanity, and she didn’t know when or why that ever changed.

FINALLY back to the point! WHEEE!

Basically, Cas has, in the six years between s5 and s11, experienced “god-ness” from every angle, experienced his own guilt over what he now believes were misguided actions, that sometimes Humanity has a better answer, and there are some things that just aren’t worth it in the long run.

Mostly, he’s realized just HOW deadbeat Chuck has always been. And the revelation that Chuck had actually been God all along? Saw their pain and suffering at trying to STOP the apocalypse all those years before? KNEW FULL WELL that Sam, Dean and Cas were doing everything they could to try and save the world from basically the entirety of Heaven and Hell, who were plotting the destruction of humanity and most of creation with it. I mean... Cas spent s5 begging for God’s help, to save the world, to convince Michael and Lucifer that they did not have to destroy humanity, and Chuck... had done LESS than nothing. He’d sat there and ghoulishly watched the entire mess unfold like a bad tv show... oh wait... :’D

By s11, Lucifer had not reached that point that Cas had. Lucifer had many other issues, having been rejected and locked up for most of existence, and even HE had been the one in 5.22 to try and talk Michael out of enacting Chuck’s battle plan. Lucifer never had the experiences Cas did (and despite being given every opportunity to have them over the next few seasons after s11, he continues to reject those experienced at every turn anyway, only serving to highlight the difference between Cas and, honestly, most of the rest of the angels). Lucifer had a personal need for a direct apology from Chuck for everything he’d been put through-- starting with taking on the original Mark and ending with the cage.

Of course Lucifer didn’t get an honest apology, because in the end, it was all just a theoretical production to Chuck. He had never apologized, in any of his universes, to any of the beings he created. And he never would. And on some level, Cas-- via his experiences, what he himself had already come to understand about God and creation-- already understood this about Chuck.

Cas... didn’t care about him anymore. He cared about HUMANITY, about Chuck’s CREATION. The creator might be a worthless jerk, but what came out of his creation is a thing of ultimate beauty. Humanity, love, free will, and the beauty of the universe is what ends up saving the world in 11.23, so I’ve chosen to accept this read of Cas and his relationship and opinions of Chuck. Because it’s perfectly in line with the “moral” of season 11.

Plus it’s just so personally satisfying to me watching each individual character’s reactions to Chuck, and understanding how that aligns with all of their personal arcs.

Dean: brought the “how could your forsake your creation” of a broken-hearted son who has finally seen the truth. something he worked out YEARS ago between himself and his own father, so it didn’t come with that particular personal baggage and didn’t completely break him in the process (as it may have done with Cas had Chuck revealed himself, say, in 7.01...)

Sam: brought his life-long hope that God was real, his faith in God’s inherent “goodness,” did the Chuck Fanboy for a bit before seeing Chuck a lot more clearly. He was able to relinquish his idol worship of Chuck as the Savior of Humanity.

Cas: had brought his experience of Humanity and Godhood, the entire spectrum of Creation that he had experienced for himself and grown through. Cas, for all his mistakes, had never stopped TRYING to do the right thing, never stopped doing everything in his power to save humanity and creation from every cosmic threat, while Chuck himself had only hidden away and watched from the sidelines, when he’d ALWAYS had the power to make everything good and right and allow the Winchesters their peace. Honestly, what BETTER response than to treat Chuck like a bit of gum stuck to his shoe?

Metatron: who had basically spent s9 trying to turn himself into Chuck Lite, literally plagiarizing his Supernatural novels to create his own origin story as the new God, and failed miserably. What other angel could truly confront Chuck, writer to writer, and call him out for His Story? Even fallen as low as he could go, Metatron understood first-hand the responsibility of The Cosmic Author in ways even Cas couldn’t, because narrative symmetry. Metatron was always about the Word, as God’s Scribe. He was a bad copy of the original with the names scratched out. He basically wrote the worst self-insert fanfic of all time. And that gave him the narrative space to confront Chuck about everything that Cas no longer had. Cas had long since rejected that role, sided with Humanity, and smashed Chuck’s Word. The original tablet-breaker.

Crowley: carried on Crowley-ing. Doing the best he could with what he had, and somehow miraculously BS’ing his way through.

Rowena: recognized the Biggest Power in the room and ingratiated herself to it for comfort and protection, and hopefully for a bit of power and security.

Billie: gosh she just stepped in at the 11th hour to annoy Chuck. :’D

But yeah, I’ve always been incredibly pleased that Cas basically ignored Chuck in s11. Good for him.

#spn 6.20 #spn 5.22 #spn 5.18 #spn 11.20 #spn 11.21 #spn 11.22 #spn 11.23 #spn 14.20 #castiel winchester #chuck's process #in the time of covid-19 #Anonymous

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jq37 · 5 years ago

Text

The Report Card – Fantasy High Sophomore Year Ep 19

The Ties That Bind

The penultimate Fantasy High: Sophomore Year episode is upon us and not a moment too soon. Seems a little counter-intuitive to seek comfort from these objectively wild current events we’re experiencing from a fictional Nightmare Forest but we know what we’re about so let’s jump back in and start with the death of a beloved main character.

Yay.

Rewinding back to two episodes ago, last we saw Kristen, she got stabbed through by a skeletal unicorn and died. We pick back up there and, as she’s dying, she feels a sense of pain, betrayal, and anger--very similar emotions to what Brennan told her the goddess was feeling with her Nat 20 Religion Check. Kristen gets a vision of the goddess being destroyed in cracks of lightning by her own followers--the same vision Fig saw in the dream scrying pool when she scry-ed on Kristen last week--and then she wakes up on the chapel floor.

She’s not...dead exactly. But she’s not super alive either. She’s bleeding, but more oozing blood than the normal mechanical way of bleeding out because her heart isn’t beating. There’s a hole in her chest and, within it, her heart is crushed. Her skin is pale because the blood isn’t pumping through it properly anymore. Her breathing isn’t regular. And a piece of her finger tip (the piece taken by her friends for a possible Revivify) is missing.

She sees evidence of her friends having been in the room--footprints and the smashed wall--and to place this in the timeline, she can’t remember Fabian right now. When she checks her crystal, she sees it’s been 90 minutes since they walked into the forest. She does Cure Wounds on herself to stop the blood from dripping. Then she heads out towards the forest, passing the Oracular Pool Fig used in the last episode as she goes. She stops as she sees it and something in her heart glows with golden light. When she looks into the pool, she sees the sun reflected in the pool (and also Fig’s boot prints leading up to it). That’s weird because it is super not a Sol/Helio aligned Chapel/Area they’re in. She also sees the moon reflected and she feels like she’s being called in. It doesn’t necessarily feel safe but it feels like she might get some answers and also she already died today so how much worse can it get? She dives in and come up and when she does, she’s suddenly in the outer planes. Specifically, she’s in Elysium which is like the Neutral Good heaven. She hears a voice that she mistakes for her dad’s because of the major dad energy she’s getting from it: You can come home.

As she walks, she finds herself--as Kristen weirdly often does for some reason--in the presence of gods. Specifically, Sol (god of the Sun) and Galakaya (goddess of the Moon and his sister as we find out). Helio is also there, like the screw-up son of a CEO, hanging out in his office. Both of them are good gods but not neutral good so Kristen gets the sense that they brought her here to have a neutral place to talk to her.

Kristen is hilariously nonplussed by being personally Uber-d to heaven by arguably the biggest gods in the pantheon and when she is asked to take a walk with Helio so she can get some important information, she’s like, “Nooooo, can literally anyone else do it?” Galakaya agrees to do it instead.

They take a lap and she asks about Tracker. Galakaya says that Tracker isn’t dead but she’s in major danger. Then, she changes the subject. Has Kristen ever wondered where her spells have been coming from when she’s been between gods? Because, as Galakaya says, doubt is nothing. She reveals that even though Kristen rejected him, Helio has been providing Kristen spells this entire time. He sent the philosophers and the grad students to be her spirit guardians. Kristen rejected him but not the light. Galakaya likens it to a child running away from home to the front yard. Kristen isn’t too far gone. She can still come back to the fold. And, if she doesn’t want to be Helio’s champion, she can be hers instead and become a Moon Cleric, which would still be keeping it in the family. But that’s the problem Kristen has with it. Helio to Galakaya? It seems like more of the same--especially the way she’s been acting, like she would fit right in at a brunch table with Arianwyn and Anguin. Except, when Tracker comes up, Kristen notices she gets a little snarly, almost like a tic she’s trying to keep under control.

Kristen asks for her pitch, and it’s basically the same deal she was getting with Helio but with different window dressing. The Moon, sisterhood, and unquestioning obedience. Galakaya can’t see into Sylvere to check on Tracker like Kristen asks but if she had a Champion, say Kristen, she could send her all kitted up with new powers. She says she wants the Nightmare King dead more than anyone seeing as the Nightmare King killed her baby sister (the Mystery Goddess). She calls her baby sister sweet and sometimes confused, seeing as she thought destroying her name would make her more powerful. But Kristen knows that’s not what happened. It was her followers who destroyed her name as she desperately warned them not to. Some chicanery is going on.

She says she will take the job as Galakaya’s champion and when she makes like she’s going to pray to her to seal the deal, she instead reaches out to the mystery goddess again. The golden light in her chest disappears and is replaced with cool shadow. She feels shock from the goddess, that Kristen would still choose to reach out to her after she died at her hand. The goddess says, emotionally, “I’m sorry, I’m just so scar--” But, before she can finish the word, Galakaya grabs Kristen by the shoulder and snaps her out of it, face snarling and wolfed out. After a second, she composes herself and seems almost embarrassed that Kristen saw that, which makes Kristen realize what’s going on with her. Tracker is a cleric of Galakaya, but knowing Tracker, she wouldn’t worship someone so reeking of high elven prim and proper-ness. And she also knows what the number one rule of godhood is: As above, so below. Galakaya has basically been claimed as a high elven goddess. Which means that the vast majority of her followers aren’t like Tracker. They’re snooty high elves. Which means so is she and her wolf part is still there, but it’s buried and distasteful to her now.

Which, coincidentally, is how Kristen feels about this entire godly family. She “respectfully declines” both of their offers. And by “respectfully declines” I mean she socks Helio in the face and makes a run for it. Sol, full of rage, says, “I told you that kid was trash! Now get her!” The philosophers on Sol’s payroll look at each other and instead mob him (why is the literal sun god so easy to 1v1?) and help Kristen escape. As she does, Helio calls out after Kristen something she kind of already sensed upon arriving in Elysium. Most people are a soul in a body. But Kristen, at the moment, is a soul *as* a body. If she dies again, with no god to intercede for her, she’s dead-dead. No afterlife. But that’s not enough to make her stay. She keeps running and makes it to the pool. For the first time, she feels herself fully cut off from her spells.

Back in the cave in Sylvere, Kristen chats with the Philosophers. They tell her they were working for Sol so they couldn’t tell her what the deal was but they were always rooting for her. One of the philosophers quotes her own words back to her: Doubt can’t be a belief but it can be a practice. And as she says this, she turns Kristen’s Shepherd's Crook cool and metallic and turns it into a question mark. She can’t hold doubt in her heart but she can hold it in her hand (stats for the Staff of Doubt below; also what a sick line from Brennan).

She knows that to get to the center of the forest where she needs to be, she has to follow her fear, so she goes in the direction she doesn’t expect to find Tracker.

Shifting gears, we find Gorgug and Fabian at the mouth of the cave (and no longer high on duskmoss) in their floating rock island surrounded by the others. They see that there are other openings and decide to check them to see if they can find any of their friends. They spend a good two hours, tied together and climbing this rock face which is some extremely solid male bonding. When they reach the cave they were aiming for, they find Baxter, riddled with arrows they know to be Sandra-Lynn’s. He’s dying but not dead. I am outraged at Brennan until I learn a fact that I don’t think has come up until now: Artificers get spell slots. Which means that Gorgug has Cure Wounds. He only cures him for 3 points but that’s enough to stabilize him at least so we can all stop sharpening the pitchforks. However, Baxter is clearly dejected and confused. He has no idea why Sandra-Lynn would suddenly turn on him. So maybe the pitchforks are still called for.

They want to leave Baxter in the cave so he can rest up but, on a 1 Animal Handling, Baxter absolutely demands to follow them. It’s faster than climbing at least. They do so.

And we switch again, this time to the Abernants.

Adaine is still trapped in a prison orb and barred from doing most of her spells. She can, however, do the Message cantrip and Aelwyn is still in the room along with Anguin. She Messages Aelwyn and asks, What’s going on? Why is she working with their parents still? Aelwyn replies that she doesn’t like her parents but she does love them. Doesn’t Adaine? “They don’t love me,” Adaine shoots back. Aelwyn parrots back ideology that she’s clearly learned from her parents: Love has to be earned. What value does something that hasn’t been earned have? Adaine, fresh off of therapy and with full knowledge of Aelwyn’s broken psyche, fully calls her out. She is so closed off to love, to everything that abjuration is her school of magic. Aelwyn tries to wave her off but Adaine, very seriously, says, “I don’t love our parents but despite the fact that you have not earned it, I do love you.” Aelwyn fully dissociates (and I’m not far behind).

Adaine notices that Anguin is readying some kind of Sending spell and that he’s wearing a sword that he usually doesn’t have. He tells Aelwyn to ransack her sister’s brain for the info they need from her while he prepares her punishment. Aelwyn, clearly in a slight panic, tries to (not at all) casually persuade Anguin to just leave Adaine in the orb, unharmed, when they are done with her. She tries to do it in a, “This isn’t worth our time,” kind of way but betrays herself when she blurts out, “She’s a baby!” Anguin raises a hand at her and she flinches, apologetically casting Detect Thoughts on Adaine who has already (via Message) said she’d support her no matter what she did.

Enter, Adaine’s Mindscape: A series of interconnected rooms--and her Aelwyn’s rooms--repeated over and over. Adaine has her surface thoughts be all of her memories of Aelwyn *almost* being nice to her and then pulling back at the last second for fear of her parents. Aelwyn doesn’t press deeper than these thoughts and says that if Adaine’s goal was to humiliate her then she’s done so. But that’s not what Adaine wants. She wants to rebuild their relationship. They’re gonna be sisters for the rest of their quasi-immortal lives. These memories suck but they can make new ones.

And then, through a window, Aelwyn sees another memory. The memory of herself in the hot-tub post Calethriel Tower rescue mission. She doesn’t remember this because of the events in the memory itself. Adaine went into her mind and, at her written instructions, reboot her memory and personality. They’re able to Inception themselves into Adaine’s memory of Aelwyn’s mind and they walk through it. Aelwyn is confronted with the knowledge that this is how she is and that Adaine knows this. Siobhan, from her sniper perch, gets the kill order from Brennan to take the shot directly into my chest.

“Would you be my big sister? I would really, really love to have you as a big sister.”

So now it’s both Kristen and me who have crushed hearts this episode.

Aelwyn fully loses concentration on the spell and snaps out of it. When Anguin asks for the information, she, on full glassy-eyed autopilot, says she didn’t find it. Anguin decides to go for the nuclear option, readying a bolt of magic to throw at Adaine. “Prepare to be better, dear, sweet daughter.”

The magic races at her, ready to do something Stepford-ian to her mind I’m sure, but, suddenly, Aelwyn steps forward, still out of it but following her true, deeply buried but natural protective instincts. Protective magic covers Adaine and the spell is Counterspelled.

Adaine quickly dispels her orb but then it’s Anguin’s turn and he goes for Aelwyn. Adaine attempts to return the favor she has just been given and Counterspells but Anguin Counterspells her Counterspell and Lightning Bolts Aelwyn. The second before she’s hit, Aelwyn looks at Adaine and says, “I’m sorry”. She goes down.

Adaine’s turn.

And, if you recall, Adaine just received two boons: A bonus to her Strength score and a little spell called Adaine’s Furious Fists.

And, my dude, if Adaine has ever been furious in her life, it’s now.

5th Level. And it’s a strength saving throw but, just to be certain of her success, Adaine gives her undoubtedly weak father her 4 Portent roll. That’s 10d10 damage.

77 points of damage.

She charges forward at Anguin.

“Guess what bitch? I’m strong now.”

And she full Dragon Ball Z energy punches her dad, dealing more than double his max HP. You know what that means? Ding Dong the bitch is FULLY DEAD.

Deed done, she rushes to Aelwyn’s side and gives her her 11 portent roll for her first death save (super clutch use of a mediocre portent). Then, on an 18 Medicine check, stabilizes her without the need for any more checks. Aelwyn is immediately weepy about how she doesn’t deserve the kindness she’s being shown. Adaine, again, gently says that love isn’t about deserving or not deserving, though she definitely doesn’t deserve the crappy situation she’s in right now. And, maybe when this is over, she can exchange her bed for a bunk bed and Aelwyn can move in? If Aelwyn wasn’t crying before, she super is now, and spilling her guts. She’s the one who sank she ship the previous elven oracle was on, she worked for Kalvaxus and Kalina--things Adaine is willing to attribute to being under the thumb of evil, abusive people but that Aelwyn seems desperate to atone for. She gives Adaine an important piece of information for their mission: In the past, heroes going after the Nightmare King have failed because they failed to undo all five curses. They need to make sure they do that.

Adaine gives Aelwyn the tincture she has on her, freeing her from Kalina’s influence, and then Aelwyn gives her one more piece of information before she slips into unconsciousness. Before Aelwyn had the previous Oracle killed, she was sure that Adaine was going to be the next Oracle and she told Kalvaxus that. Why was she sure? Because the elf that becomes the next Oracle is always the most skilled Diviner alive at the time.

“I love you too,” Adaine replies.

Then she nicks the dope sword (and 30 gp) off her dad’s corpse, leaves Aelwyn there to rest, and goes to find her friends.

And, speaking of, let’s pop over to see how Riz and Fig are doing.

In a word, bad.

They’re still tied up and cornered by the skeletal unicorn who says they’re captured and soon their friends will be too. Nightmare Fig shows up with Baby (who is shortly tied up as well) and reveals herself to actually be this many-armed, snake-woman demon. A whole army of demons show up, ready to start wrecking house as soon as they’re ordered to.

Fig wants to try and use her lighter to set her bonds on fire and Riz wants to use his spy-watch to laser her bonds off. They both fail but Riz notices they’re not being stopped from trying. It’s like the demons want them to escape so they have an excuse to chase and kill them. He also notices a jiggling from his briefcase.

At the same time, Fig gets a Sending from Bill saying he just hawked all of Gorthalx’s stuff, including the six suits of magic armor. But, wait a minute. There were seven suits. On a Nat 1, she thinks Bill is screwing her over.

But then.

All of a sudden.

Riz’s briefcase of holding springs open and out pops a figure in gleaming gold Pride Armor. The armored figure, holding a brilliantly gold halberd, cleaves through some demons and the raises his visor showing that it’s none other than the chosen one himself--GILEAR! You see, the Deadly Sin armor feeds on its respective sin in the user and consumes them, but, as Gilear puts it, he has no pride.

He absolutely wrecks house, killing demon after demon. Riz records it on his tie-camera for posterity. Gorgug and Fabian on Baxter see the commotion and fly down, seeing the tail end of the fight. Gilear kills the last of the demons then gets spit out of the armor like it’s an Iron Man suit, fully dead. Again. He may have had no pride when he put the armor on but watching himself kick ass have him just enough to be fatal.

Fig gets free from her bindings and, on a 27 with Bardic from Fabian, beats the 25 DC she needs to make an illusory diamond (which turns into a real one) of high enough quality to cast Revivify. She does so, after a heartfelt statement about being proud to be like him and a sick lick on her bass.

Gilear comes back up and we learn that he’d been hiding in RIz’s briefcase with the armor since they sent him away because it was the only way he could think of to be useful to them and protect Fig. Fabian and Riz (along with the audience) also unfortunately learn that Gilear is hung like a horse when they fail their saves to look away quickly enough.

Adaine rushes in with her new sword and the information that she killed her dad which everyone congratulates her for. She then ritual casts Identify on the sword. Aelwyn told her earlier that it’s the sword that belongs to whoever the current Oracle is and she also learns it’s called the Sword of Sight, it can be used as an arcane focus, and was made by Fabian’s Grandad (full stats below).

Riz gets the footage from his tie onto his crystal and posts it on Fig’s account which has got to be the wildest social media account on Magic Facebook.

The Bad Kids are mainly reunited, but let’s get back to the final missing member.

Kristen, alone in the woods, starts using her blood to draw a picture of the Mystery goddess. She hears a creepy voice say, “Be careful what you give a face,” and some other ominous stuff. But Kristen ignores it as she lies prostrate in front of her drawing because she understands something extremely important.

As above, so below.

Galakaya is worshiped primarily by stuck up high elves, so she has become that.

If Kristen is now the only follower of the Mystery goddess and she says that she’s real and she’s good then as above, so below. The math checks out.

The bloody image changes to a beautiful woman’s face. The Mystery goddess. She says she only ever wanted to comfort her followers and tell them that the night itself was nothing to fear. Kristen sees flashes of the chained Court of Elders--the representatives of the five races who worshiped the Mystery Goddess and were convinced to destroy her name (ignoring her warnings not to). Among them are the unicorn and the decaying elf Adaine saw in her Scry.

Fear of the NK breaks her out of the vision and she finds herself surrounded by Twilight (that she’s generating) with Tracker in front of her, fully wolfed out with a bloody muzzle. Tracker is going feral, all, “You’re so selfish, everything is always about you.” Something is going wrong with her. Now, good news/bad news:

Good News: Kristen is fully committed to this Mystery Goddess so she gets her spells back and she is now a Twilight Domain Cleric.

Bad News: She goes Invisible (eliciting a, “Why are you running? I knew you would leave me. Why won’t you accept me like I am?” from Tracker) and tries to cast Greater Restoration but all she needs is a 4 and she rolls a 3. Tragic.

She finds that she is insubstantial still and is whisked away from a snarling and lamenting Tracker. As she is traveling, she sees the face of the Nightmare King who asks why she would follow a dead goddess whose path is just going to make her life harder. Kristen feels a pang of doubt and fear that she has just done exactly what her religious upbringing warned her against and put herself and her friends in grave danger for no reason by straying from the path, but then she has another classic Kristen-ism: Everyone is basic and wrong. She’d rather follow a goddess who is like, “Hey y’all, I also don’t have it all figured out but I will for sure do all I can to help you navigate it,” than a god who demands unquestioning faith and loyalty. And with that, she finds herself floating above her friends.

She feels the pull of her missing finger bone in Adaine’s pocket and she feels like it might be impossible for her to fully, properly, come back but on the other hand, she’s died like three times at this point. What does impossible even mean? She gets the sense that she can cast Raise Dead on herself and she does so.

Welcome back to the Bad Kids, St. Kristen Applebees of [REDACTED], halo aglow, newly reattached finger shedding a bit of light.

(“That’s hot for being gay,” Ally says about Kristen’s new glow.)

Everyone hugs everyone and catches up everyone on everything. Kristen heals up Baxter for 20 HP and gets a +2 bump on her Intelligence mod for her ordeals in the forest. They all make a plan to get everyone in one place so Kristen can put some of her new AoE healing spells to use. Fig wants to go on Baxter to get Ayda. Adaine, bringing us full circle, invites Fabian on a rescue mission to get her sister.

And we take a break.

Deep breath y’all.

Detention

Brennan for Cursing us With Knowledge About Gilear’s Penis

@allsevenmaidens put this very reasonable request in and I have to concur because what’s the alternative? Giving Anguin this spot AGAIN? Like, I don’t even want to give him the satisfaction of being the best of the worst. Adaine gave him the death penalty which is what he deserves and all he’s gonna get.

So, Brennan gets this spot for forcing me to hear the words “Gilear” and “hung like a horse” in the same sentence.

Honor Roll

Gilear for Kicking SERIOUS Ass

Listen, SO many Honor Roll-worthy moments happened this episode. Kristen’s Amazing As Above, So Below moment. Aelwyn finally stepping up to protect Adaine. Adaine absolutely obliterating Anguin in a single punch.

But, at the end of the day, I have to give it to Gilear “Just a Guy” Faeth for cramming himself and a suit of cursed armor into a mostly airless briefcase out of desperate need to do whatever he could to help protect his daughter and her friends who are basically demigods. He truly is the Anti-Anguin and I’m so glad Riz got that on tape for posterity. Way to go man.

Random Thoughts

I already wrote so many words and we have a five hour finale tomorrow so I’m going to try and keep this section brief.

We’re staring down the barrel of the last episode (coming Friday at 8PM EST) and I want to say this now rather than later: thanks for reading these and leaving nice comments in the tags and stuff like that. I’m not always the most confident person and the support really means a lot.

We’re also staring down the barrel of a global crisis right now so, you know, be nice to yourself and escape through fiction when you need to, reach out to people, and eat a vegetable if you can. Read a 5000 word recap of an episode you presumably already watched. Whatever you need to do.

The Staff of Doubt has ten charges and can cast the following spells at the cost of the amount of charges listed: Detect Magic (1), Lesser Restoration (2), Dispel Magic (3), Banishment (4), Greater Restoration (5).

The Sword of Sight gives +1 to attack and damage rolls. It gives a base 12 AC which bumps Adaine’s to 15. It lets her cast Divination cantrips as bonus actions. She gets to take the Dodge action when she casts a Divination spell. And she gets no disadvantage on attacks on Invisible creatures (seems very useful against Kalina possibly).

EDIT: I forgot to say! Gorgug saying very sincerely to Kristen, “I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” “there” being, “at her most recent death” broke me.

Where in the World is Ragh Backrock? We have at least an approximate idea of where the rest of the hirelings are but nothing on Ragh. I’m concerned. His vision was asking Gorgug if he was his dad. Maybe it has something to do with that?

Very curious about what the mechanics of the final confrontation will be. What Aelwyn said seems like it could be setting up for some shenanigans. Plus, there are still all the hirelings to worry about.

Another question, I feel like we still have almost no idea what’s going on with the NK. Half of me is almost expecting some kind of Te Fiti/Te Ka situation. On another day I might try to speculate and play detective but that’s not where I’m at today so I’m just gonna leave it at that.

I feel like Kristen is always negging deities to their faces. Like, girl. Her Axe/Dove metaphor was *chef’s kiss* though. Anyway, when (hopefully) Tracker is back to normal, I hope Kristen has a take that’s different than, “I met your goddess and she sucked.”

Kristen makes me feel bad for Helio. He’s just a surfer dude who likes corn, OK. He never did anything to her except give her magic!

Didn’t have a good place to mention this earlier but Fig alerted Bill to their situation and location so if there’s a Bill Ex-Machina next ep, it’s not out of nowhere.

(Also, just a small point of order, Gorgug did say he had a bone from Kristen last ep but so did Adaine. Doesn’t really matter but just wanted to explain the mismatch with my last recap).

Making everyone roll a save to not see Gilear’s dick is so funny. As was Zac invoking danger sense to roll with advantage.

“I cast Spare the Dying on Gilear’s Penis.”

“I am no man,” from LOTR but instead it’s Gilear saying, “I have no pride.”

“Drink deeply Gilear.”

Why is Kalina working for the NK? She’s supposed to be the Mystery Goddess’s familiar, right? Just another thing that doesn’t add up. Where’s that puzzle piece we’re missing?

The thought of Baxter being so confused and dejected and fatally injured, not understanding what he did so wrong to have his mistress riddle him with arrows makes me wanna throw down with Brennan IRL. Also, I’m Concerned about Sandra-Lynn.

I need to say this on the record. Ally Beadsley does some bonkers things in D&D that I could not even begin to understand but that As Above So Below Gambit was Galaxy Brained.

You knew this was coming. Abernant Time Bay-Bee (the abridged version because I need to get this out before Friday)!

First off, I am very happy to say that basically exactly what I predicted/hoped for in my last recap for this scene is what happened, with Anguin making Aelwyn cast Detect Thoughts on Adaine. And basically EVERYTHING I had on my Abernant Sisters Reconciliation checklist was checked. The Detect Thoughts. The pointing out that they’re gonna live for a long time and do they want to do it at each other's throats? Aelwyn finally stepping up to the plate and leaning into her Abjurative Instincts in a positive way and shielding Adaine from their father. And then the stuff that I wanted so bad but didn’t know it. The bunk beds moment? The “I love you too” moment. “She’s a baby!” I mean, “Will you be my big sister?” F off Siobhan. That was beautiful.

A little concerned about Adaine having left Aelwyn unconscious so close to where their mom is but I am glad she remembered to cure her of Kalina.

When Brennan said, “In Aelwyn’s last moment,” for a second I thought he meant she was about to be perma-dead and my heart legit stopped.

I was up until about 2 AM last night, popping bottles with @camwritery (my Abernant Sisters confidant) about Brennan and Siobhan giving us everything we wanted and I’m going to get yelled at by her if I don’t mention something I said while we were talking. Last week, during the fireside chat, all of the players talked about what future lives/jobs they’d want for their characters. I posited the same question for Aelwyn and offered my answer--CPS Case Worker. Because, like, think about it. She is an extremely protective person. She wants to atone for what she did and failed to do for Adaine. When she gets all the therapy she needs, she’s going to be equipped with deep, personal knowledge of what abuse looks like/what it can do to a child and an extremely long lifespan. Can’t you see an adult Aelwyn, in the living room of a well appointed house, speaking cordially to some high class A-hole with his terrified kid sitting next to him, trying not to say anything or do anything that will get them punished and Aelwyn does a surface level Detect Thoughts at the same time so she can mentally kneel before the kid and tell them, “I’m on your side. You can be honest with me. I’m here to protect you. I promise. Don’t be scared.” This is all I want for her.

This episode Fig rolled one Nat 1 and Gorgug rolled two but one was cancelled with advantage. No Nat 20s were rolled.

#fantasy high #fantasy high spoilers #dimension 20 #dimension 20 spoilers #fantasy high live #(kind of a rush job bc the next ep is so soon so def hit up my asks if I missed s/t you wanted to hear about)

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flightfoot · 5 years ago

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Many of the side character’s stories and development in Trials of Apollo mirror and support Apollo’s own development

One of the things I love about ToA is how many of the other characters’ stories, their situations, their development, mirrors and compliments Apollo’s own development, reinforcing the story of how Apollo changes from being a selfish, arrogant, shallow, apathetic person, to one of the most selfless, humble, aware, and empathetic people in the Riordanverse.

Meg Mccaffrey

Obviously Meg’s story is the one that mirrors Apollo’s the most. I’ve already talked about this in past analyses however, and it’s so blatantly obvious I don’t want to waste time making a point that I’m sure all my readers already know. Maybe I’ll make another analysis focusing on Meg later, but I’ll skip over her for now.

Calypso

Fairly superficial similarities here. Calypso is also a former immortal who’s learning to deal with the loss of her powers (though not TOTAL loss) and being thrown into the demigod world headfirst. The emotional core of their experiences is different though, since Calypso’s whole thing was that she was trapped on an island (albeit a nice one) under house arrest for thousands of years. Apollo wasn’t really trapped like that. Even saying he was METAPHORICALLY trapped is a bit of a stretch, Zeus doesn’t seem to have been to involved in the day-to-day business of what Apollo got up to.

Lityerses

This one IS fairly similar actually. Lityerses is controlled and manipulated by his father, and it sounds like he’s okay with that - like he’s as bloodthirsty as his father is.

“Right.” He regarded Calypso. “I think I’ll keep you alive long enough to kill you in front of Valdez’s face. That’ll be fun. But this former god here...” Lit shrugged. “I’ll just have to tell the emperor that he resisted arrest.” (TDP 152)

But there are hints that maybe there’s more going on there. His muttering of “I hate that” when Midas casually mentions accidentally turning Lit to gold in The Lost Hero, him being glad that Apollo gave his father donkey ears, his casual mistreatment by Commodus - all of it gives the clues that maybe there’s a REASON for his attitude, for his behavior.

What it does NOT do, however, is hint that Lit could be a better person. None of any of the heroes’ encounters with Lit actually suggests that. That’s a leap of faith that Apollo makes, hoping that MAYBE, just maybe, Lit will be a better person if someone gives him a chance. If someone shows him kindness, helps him when they have no good reason too. He identifies with Lit. The hidden depths that Apollo’s shown as a mortal... they wouldn’t be apparent to a casual observer of him as a god. Heck, APOLLO didn’t know they were there! He’s constantly surprised at himself, at the kind of person he is now, at the sort of things he’ll do. Apollo gives Lit the chance he wants people to give himself, the sort of chance that he didn’t even really realize he needed. Showing him - showing Apollo - showing Lit - that level of kindness, mercy, and concern, when there’s no ulterior motive, showing it just because this is another person, and they haven’t really done anything to ‘earn’ compassion beyond that simple fact - that threw both of them for a loop.

In Apollo’s case, he really started appreciating others compassion in THO, when his children took him in, treated him as family, cared for him, said they’d protect him against anyone who gave him trouble.

“If anyone gives you trouble, Kayla will shoot them. Then I’ll curse them so bad they’ll be speaking rhyming couplets for weeks.”

My eyes watered. Not so long ago - like this morning, for instance - the idea of these young demigods being able to help me would have been ridiculous. Now their kindness moved me more than a hundred sacrificial bulls. I couldn’t recall the last time someone had cared about me enough to curse my enemies with rhyming couplets.

“Thank you.” I managed. I could not add “my children”. These demigods were my protectors and my family, but for the present I could not think of myself as their father. A father should do more - a father should give more to his children than he takes. I have to admit this was a novel idea for me. It made me feel even worse than before. (115)

It makes a difference here that his kids are helping him when he couldn’t offer anything back. If he’d still been a god, he wouldn’t have given their help much thought. He would’ve just thought that he was entitled to it, and that it’s not like he’d REALLY need them anyway. But this? This is different. They’re helping him just because they care - it’s not anything transactional. Apollo isn’t used to thinking about relationships this way - not for the most part anyway. His relationships with Artemis and Leto are solid, and he seems to have genuinely cared for Hyacinthus, genuinely loved him as a person, and cared for Asclepius quite a bit, but aside from that? Not so much. Certainly not caring about someone who’s practically a stranger.

This set an example for Apollo, one that he carries forwards to Lit. Lit also has never been shown this sort of kindness before, kindness when he’s at his most vulnerable, compassion without an expectation of a return, and most especially, compassion when he’s given Apollo and the Waystation residents every reason to reject him. And that compassion is enough to cause him to break down, to rethink his whole stance on life. Seemingly overnight, he changes from being the brutal, cruel killer who would murder Calypso in front of Leo just to hurt him that much more, to being a lost person just looking for something or someone to live for, to fight for. And having found it, he suddenly softens, becoming kinder, more balanced.

But it’s not really an overnight change, is it? This other side has always existed, it’s just been hidden under layers of bravado and cruelty. That’s why both Lit and Apollo are able to change their mindsets so quickly - not all the aspects of what they’ve learned is truly “new”, they just haven’t applied them like this before, or not for a long time. Apollo’s experienced these sorts of caring relationships with Leto and Artemis at least, so they’re not totally a foreign concept. I’m betting in Lit’s case that he and his sister, at least at one point in time, did truly care about each other. The difference is seeing it applied more broadly to themselves by people who don’t already know them well, and then applying it to others that same way in turn.

Piper

Piper’s whole identity crisis has similarities to Apollo’s own. She was thrown into a situation where people expected certain things of her, and she just kinda... conformed to them. Which isn’t to say that she might not have chosen them herself on her own, but she didn’t really get that choice. Now that she has the time and has had a chance to think, she’s trying to find herself, figure out who she is. Her dad being financially ruined throws a wrench into it, but both of them returning to their roots, her father seemingly having more time to spend with her - those aspects are familiar. Apollo’s now figuring out who he is, now that he doesn’t have “being a god” to define him, along with everything else associated with that. His having his godhood stolen, and only now spending time really getting to know his kids and his demigod half-siblings, along with many, many others, is like how Piper’s dad now has time to spend with her, time he didn’t have before - a silver lining in this whole mess.

Apollo’s advice to Piper seems to be talking about himself nearly as much as it’s talking about Piper.

“It’s been my observation,” I said, “that you humans are more than the sum of your history. You can choose how much of your ancestry to embrace. You can overcome the expectations of your family and your society. What you cannot do, and should never do, is try to be someone other than yourself - Piper McLean.” (265)

With how Apollo’s grown throughout the series and ESPECIALLY in TTT, this fits him as well. Apollo is more than the sum of his history, of what he has done, of what has been established by the older gods. He can choose how much of his past - and his family - to embrace, and overcome the expectations of his family, both godly and mortal, and of godly society. And he will do it by being himself, his WHOLE self, including the parts of his being that he’s been nurturing as a mortal, the compassionate, empathetic parts of himself.

Jason

Jason is a little different, because I don’t think his development, his situation parallels Apollo’s CURRENT situation, so much as Apollo’s future development. His willingness to sacrifice himself, to be the one who dies so that his friends can survive, wanting to keep secret about the prophecy so that Piper doesn’t try to stop him, so that hopefully he can keep her safe, even if it means merrily walking to his own death.... I’m expecting Apollo to get into a similar situation in TON. Though there are elements of that he’s already lived through, since he ALREADY chose Meg’s life over his own in TDP, and in TTT, he tried to conceal and downplay just how badly he was hurt to try to stop Meg from worrying as much.

Frank

Frank carries his mortality - the stick that’s attached to his life force - around with him. He’s decided that in order to lead the Legion effectively, he has to put one hundred percent of himself on the line. He can’t let fear hold him back.

Apollo’s mortality is also on the line all the time. Originally he wanted to hide away, to cower behind others so as not to die (not that he actually tended to go THROUGH with it, either because he couldn’t or he wasn’t willing to abandon them) but now? Now he doesn’t even try. He wants to live, that’s true. But he values his companion’s lives more. He won’t hesitate to put himself on the line, to commit himself completely if he believes that it gives them a greater chance of survival.

The greater parallel however comes later, with Apollo’s hypothesis for how Frank survived his stick burning up. He believes that maybe since Frank took charge of his own destiny by willingly sacrificing himself, that he was freed from his old destiny and forged a new one:

“It’s just a guess,” I admitted. “Frank went into that tunnel knowing he might die. He willingly sacrificed himself for a noble cause. In doing so, he broke free of his fate. By burning his own tinder, he kind of… I don’t know, started a new fire with it. He’s in charge of his own destiny now. Well, as much as any of us are. The only other explanation I can think of is that Juno somehow released him from the Fates’ decree.” (393)

I don’t know how plausible this explanation is. Honestly, it kinda sounds like BS to me, especially since Jason did the same thing and HE died. But what’s important here is what APOLLO thinks happened. His explanation says as much about him as it does about what he thinks happened with Frank.

Breaking free of your fate by accepting, by EMBRACING your own mortality, putting everything on the line, sacrificing yourself completely in order to have a shot of stopping your friends from being hurt or killed... it’s similar to what happened with Jason, but with the added twist that Frank survived and started a new story, free of his previous destiny.

The destiny thing is really important. As a god, Apollo’s not ‘supposed’ to be able to change or mature. The gods seem to believe that their nature is more set in stone than mortals are. But Apollo has disproven that. He’s changed a lot, and has continued to change. He’s forging his own destiny, one different than he ever imagined it could be. And maybe, just maybe, one that Zeus won’t have control over. One that’s truly his own.

Don the Faun

Don has only a small role, but what Apollo says about him - what he thinks about him - says a lot.

“Hey, Apollo, you- you know the difference between a faun and a satyr…?”

[…]

A moment later, his body collapsed with a noise like a relieved sigh, crumbling into fresh loam. In the spot where his heart had been, a tiny sapling emerged from the soil. I immediately recognized the shape of those miniature leaves. Not a hemlock. A laurel - the tree I had created from poor Daphne, and whose leaves I had decided to make into wreaths. The laurel, the tree of victory.

One of the dryads glanced at me. “Did you do that…?”

I shook my head. I swallowed the bitter taste from my mouth.

“The only difference between a satyr and a faun,” I said, “is what we see in them. And what they see in themselves. Plant this tree somewhere special.: I looked up at the dryads. “Tend it and make it grow healthy and tall. This was Don the faun, a hero.” (398-399)

Here, Apollo’s noting that the difference between satyrs and fauns are purely societal. That there’s no inherent difference between them. Like the difference between gods and mortals, mentally, isn’t that different. Gods may be more powerful, but they’re still people, like mortals are. The differences between them, psychologically, have more to do with how society sees them, and how they see themselves. Having had his godhood stripped away, this is very apparent to Apollo. Because he’s still himself. A better version of himself, in fact, but that has nothing to do with him being mortal - not in and of itself. But with the things he’s learned as a mortal. He can be a hero, truly. Because he is just as capable of such things as any mortal.

Reyna

And lastly, there’s Reyna. She too, like Frank and Don previously, broke free from expectations to forge her own path.

“My whole life, I’ve been living with other people’s expectations of what I’m supposed to be. Be this. Be that. You know?”

[…]

“But you showed me. When you proposed dating…” She took a deep breath, her body shaking with silent giggles. “Oh, gods. I saw how ridiculous I’d been. How ridiculous the whole situation was. That’s what healed my heart - being able to laugh at myself again, at my stupid ideas about destiny. That allowed me to break free - just like Frank broke free of his firewood. I don’t need another person to heal my heart. I don’t need a partner… at least, not until and unless I’m ready on my own terms. I don’t need to be force-shipped with anyone or wear anybody else’s label. For the first time in a long time, I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders. So thank you.” (405-406)

Reyna thought that she was supposed to find a partner. Everyone else thought she needed a partner - needed romantic healing. Until Lester asked her out. Until she saw how ridiculous it was to let others expectations - or curses, or whatever you’d call Venus’s little prophecy - control her life.

Apollo has a similar thing going on with letting expectations about what he’s supposed to do, about who he’s supposed to be, control what he does - or did, at least. I’ve gone over that already, so I’ll skip past that.

But the romantic angle? About thinking - or having others think - that she needs to be healed romantically? That also falls in line with Apollo’s development. Apollo’s had a LOT of romantic relationships, and a decent number of them have ended in disaster. He seems to be convincing himself that some romance will “fix” things, like with how he convinced himself that getting together with the Cumaean Sibyl would fix things:

But that wasn’t enough for me. I was smitten. I convinced myself it was love - the one true romance that would wash away all my past missteps. I wanted the Sibyl to be my partner throughout eternity. As the afternoon went on, I coaxed and pleaded. (131)

But he wasn’t in love with her, not truly, or his love wouldn’t have turned to hate so fast when she refused him. He just really WANTED it to be a shining romance, one that would finally fix things.

He actually does seem to be finding this sort of fulfillment now, but not with romantic relationships - with more platonic, familial relationships instead, such as with Meg.

I’d always wondered what it would be like to have a younger sibling. Sometimes I’d treated Artemis as my baby sister, since I’d been born a few minutes earlier, but that had been mostly to annoy her. With Meg, I felt as if it was actually true. I had someone who depended on me, who needed me around no matter how much we irritated each other. I thought about Hazel and Frank and the washing away of curses. I supposed that kind of love could come from many different types of relationships. (192)

I don’t think he’s realized it yet, but in a way, Meg seems to be “washing away” his curse of loneliness, of feeling empty. Taking care of her, connecting with her, bantering with her - this is what he needed. To be a protector. To be a friend. Romance is fine, but they’re not the only fulfilling sorts of relationships.

Honestly with Reyna and Piper both taking a break from romance in order to find themselves, I think that Apollo may lay off the romance for a bit after ToA’s over, work on his more platonic relationships instead. I don’t think he’d swear it off, but maybe look for something more steady than he was before. And with the experiences he’s had as a mortal, I think he could better recognize truly serious love versus a temporary infatuation.

Final Thoughts

I really love how focused this series is on developing Apollo! A lot of aspects of this series seem geared to do that, from who the antagonists are and how they act, to the storylines of the side characters. It allows a level of development for Apollo that’s deeper and more nuanced than with any of Rick’s previous protagonists, even Percy. I look forward to seeing how Rick will conclude his development. If his writing for Apollo in TON is as solid as for previous entries, I’m sure it will be worth the wait.

#ttt spoilers #the tyrant's tomb #trials of apollo #toa spoilers #the trials of apollo #analysis #my post #apollo #lester papadopoulos

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twatd · 5 years ago

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Getting TWATD at the Wake, ii: The Eulogies

Every month, two writers returned to this blog. They did an essay each. For five years. And now it’s all over.

The Wicked + The Divine #45 came out a month ago, and we’re still at the metaphorical wake. In this part, we pick out two characters we haven’t written much about, consider the paths their lives ended up taking, and write their obituaries. It could get emotional.

Spoilers for... well, for the entirety of WicDiv, I guess, below the cut.

Tim: Endings are bittersweet things at the best of times, and for a series as preoccupied with death and heartbreak as The Wicked + The Divine, we were never going to reach a conclusion without shedding a few tears. Still, there are many ways in which #45 is a happy ending for several of the characters – and that’s truer for Aruna, the god formerly known as Tara, than possibly anyone else.

Looking across the span of the series as a whole, she is a character who has suffered abuse, indignity and manipulation. But here at the end, Aruna is free from many of the troubles that plagued her life both before and during her time as a god. I don’t know if the Aruna we see in 2055 is living her best life, but it seems infinitely better than we could have expected after #13, the issue which gave us a painful glimpse into a character who had remained a mystery up to that point.

Pre-Godhood, Aruna had been made to feel uncomfortable in her own body by sexism and misogyny. That feeling was amplified by her divine transformation and the increased celebrity that came with it, culminating in her begging Ananke for the mercy of death. But Ananke’s manipulation accidentally set up Aruna to transcend the cruelties inflicted upon her. As a miraculously preserved head, she was free from the burden of her body, and free to reinvent herself.

With the help of Jon, Aruna she was able to reject a new form when she wasn’t ready for one – and, once she was, to create one that existed beyond the constraints of traditional biology. Her story touches on themes of transhumanism, not an area that WicDiv has traditionally dabbled in, but one that has some interesting connections with the themes of people seeking immortality. As you might expect given the ideas of gender and bodily autonomy at play, it’s also easy to read through a queer lens.

I’m glad that, while it’s clear Jon and Aruna have developed a close partnership over the years, Gillen and McKelvie chose to leave the exact nature of their relationship open to interpretation.

Aruna’s previous discomfort with the spotlight, and Ananke’s subsequent exploitation of that fact, also ended up benefitting her in other ways. Her distance from the rest of the Pantheon meant she avoided jail time after the events of #44 (it probably helped that it’s hard to handcuff someone when they’re just a head).

You could also maybe draw a line between the sudden outpouring of appreciation following Tara’s death and the way she was able to successfully campaign for the Pantheon’s early release, performing benefit concerts and raising awareness. This goes some way to colouring the previously devastating ending of #13 in a new light, as the insincere chorus of Twitter observers become a platform Aruna is able to use for good.

There’s an important distinction, though – this time around, she was able to approach a musical career and fame on her own terms, as Aruna rather than Tara. Also, the fact that her ‘death’ wasn’t a permanent one doesn’t take away from the tragedy of it, or how the comic made us complicit in the culture that led to it.

Aruna’s story following her ‘death’ could be called WicDiv’s ultimate triumph. The old truism about suicide being a permanent solution to a temporary problem feels especially apt here. Ananke took someone who was miserable and vulnerable, and proceeded to place them in a situation that they couldn’t cope with. Ananke became Aruna’s sole source of ‘support’, isolating her from the other gods, amplifying her insecurities until Aruna felt the only solution was to take her own life.

Strip away some of the details, and the story starts to take on some truly dark parallels, but unlike so many real-life stories, there is a second act to Aruna’s tale.

Once the true nature of Ananke’s plans are revealed, Aruna is eventually able to escape her role in them, retake control of her life, and eventually thrive on her own terms. WicDiv may be a story that largely approaches death as a firm reality, but by giving Aruna a reprieve from her seeming demise, it allows us a glimpse of a real happy ending, in amongst the more complex feelings the final issue evokes.

Alex: Aruna’s story is a happy one because she escapes the cycles that life locked her into. But the god I want to talk about, I’m not sure they ever did. Which might not be a terrible thing – it was always a little different, with Dionysus.

We don’t get much time with Umar before he goes all Olympian, but the moments we do get suggest there’s less of a gap between his two identities than there is for most of the other gods. He’s the guy who drives his friends down to London so they can get wasted on the way, who asks sensitive questions of strangers.

When he becomes Dionysus, the difference is mainly a question of scale. The group of people he’s trying to do right by gets bigger and bigger, and that makes this behaviour unsustainable. That first time we meet him, in issue #8, we get pretty much the whole Dionysus story. Dude takes on everyone else’s troubles, exerts himself to make them feel better, and makes it look breezy – only occasionally cracking and showing the weight of it all.

I’m not sure that ever really changes for Umar. He keeps using his powers to make people happy for a night, even as it starts to take a toll. He waits in the darkness, lets The Morrigan attack him, just to be there for Baphomet. He has faith in the power of the crowd, even as they crush him. He just keeps giving and giving, and it lands him in a coma.

This is Dionysus’ hamartia – the fatal flaw built into every one of WicDiv’s gods, the thing that ensures their downfall. As these things go, it’s not a bad flaw to have.

It marks him apart from the other gods. Gillen has talked about the Pantheon all being aspects of himself, his own flaws built out into characters, people he’s trying not to be anymore. But Dionysus’ flaw actually makes him someone to aspire to.

A spare Gillen quote from my Polygon interview that didn’t make it into the final article: “Umar is someone I'd love to be now… But Umar's a fictional character. Therefore, it's easier for him to be Umar than for Kieron to not be a shithead.” Even in the comic, we see how Dio’s behaviour is unsustainable – but to try and live that way, all of the time, in real life? It’s impossible.

I say this with authority, because in many ways I spent my twenties trying to be a Dionsysus. I’m an Inanna by nature – a pleasure seeker who tries to be kind but can sometimes forget that having the best possible time can have consequences on the people around them. (And, sidenote, it’s a fascinating twist on the archetypes that the god with these traits isn’t the one who, y’know, gave us the word bacchanalian.)

But, to be uncharacteristically nice about myself for a second, my idea of having a good time does tend to include bringing as many people along with me as possible. The version of me I like is the one who always opens up the circle on the dancefloor to sweep up strangers and stragglers. Or spot someone who seems left out and work to change that. Or pour hours into a project that’ll be seen by just a handful of friends, or just one.

I kind of buried that person this year.

This wasn’t an active choice, or something I was even conscious of doing at the time, but looking back I can see the reasons behind it. Firstly, because it’s not always clear whether people actually want these things done for them, or if it’s an unwelcome overreach, and that thought makes me to want up curl into myself and just die. And second, because I’m not good at knowing how to apportion effort, meaning it can involve frankly life-damaging amounts of preparation for very little payoff.

It’s not a sustainable way to live. Dio might be the best possible version of the WicDiv god, but he’s still someone sacrificing his self to become an idea. It kills him, eventually, and #37 shows how he’s remembered for it by the public, the people he gave everything he had to: ‘that guy on drugs’.

But eventually he is repaid by one of the recipients of his kindness, as a little bit of that selflessness rubs off on Baphomet. And Umar joins the rest of the Pantheon as they step back from their defining flaw, allow themselves to become more than an archetype. “I thought it was my job to save everyone,” Dionysus says, and I cry my little eyes out.

Maybe that was the moment I started to realise I’d been stepping back from that version of myself. Or maybe it was talking with Tim (my other, non-fictional model for the sort of person I want to be) about issue #45, when he explained how he read the older Umar: someone in whom all that kindness turned a little bitter. Aged like vinegar, not wine.

My reading is more hopeful than that, I think. The final issue trades in hints and suggestions of lives, but with Umar more than most. And personally, I fill in that blank with a different story: someone who has tempered his need to always put others first, and become more judicious about when and how and to whom he gives himself. And that? That is someone I’d really like to be.

#WicDiv #The Wicked and The Divine #The Wicked + The Divine #TWATD #Tim + Alex Get TWATD

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nicostolemybones · 5 years ago

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Ghostly Gods (2)

Of course, Nico and Will had stayed around camp after receiving godhood, but now, walking towards the cabins, it became blindingly obvious how different everything was. It wasn’t necessarily that the architecture had changed- after all, even when it had, Nico and Will had been around to notice. But now, not wrapped up in each other and trying to relive their youths, they were able to notice how different the people were. It felt weird to be walking towards the campfire, because it was so familiar yet so foreign. Because they were used to Percy and Annabeth and Jason and Cecil and Lou Ellen and Kayla and Austin and Lacy and Mitchell and Drew and Leo and Piper and Harley and Jake and Nyssa and everybody else they grew up with- it wasn’t the camp they recognised, because that camp was dead.

Hestia was the only face apart from Chiron that Nico or Will could recognise, greeting them like old friends and disappearing into the background once more. Nico seemed to withdraw, shrinking back into the form of a fifteen year old boy with an oversized aviator’s jacket and ripped black jeans, fading closer and closer into the shadows. Will was thriving in the excitable and nervous buzz of the campfire, leading the traditional campfire songs with his ukulele. The campers took to him instantly- he seemed to have a way of calming the nerves of even the most anxious campers. It was easy to forget that Will was a god when he was like this- Will seemed to embody all the positive traits that made up humanity. The faint warm glow encompassing him made him difficult to ignore- people found themselves drawn to him no matter what, even the most broken campers finding solace in his company.

Whereas Nico was invisible and cold and closed off, because becoming a god, being near infallible, didn’t take away the fact that Nico was deeply uncomfortable in these situations. He didn’t know anybody, and he could tell he had nothing in common with most of them. Making friends through shared circumstances almost never bodes well, forming too fast and too fickle, only to find that the similarities you share are superficial, surface level, sheltering you from seeing the toxicity of the people who claim to care but don’t. He rather liked being invisible today, but the way people looked through him, he wondered if he’d turned into a ghost for good. It was only Will reaching out and pulling him gently into the light of the campfire that Nico felt visible, and a part of him was glad- it wasn’t that Nico didn’t want to talk or interact with the campers- but rather he was so used to his own company or the same company that he’d forgotten how to meet people, how to strike up a conversation- the shadows never made for good small talk after all. He was surprised with how at ease everybody was around him now- that’s when it finally hit him that they seemed to be used to the aura of death and decay just like Will was- there were Hades campers here, blended in, conforming innocuously with the neon orange crowd. He smiled inwardly- acceptance always struck close to home with Nico, who had to fight to be accepted.

A solemn wave of pity made a nest in Will’s heart- these were temporary people, with temporary lives and temporary consciousnesses and temporary legacies. Nico was used to death- it didn’t seem to bother him anymore- knowing that everybody he knew would die, because death was his territory, and he’d accepted it. But Will didn’t think he could ever accept death- he’d become a god to avoid it. He didn’t want to be a puppet of bones summoned to dance the danse macabre by a curious necromancing demigod for entertainment. He didn’t want to have his skull sat upon a camper’s desk as a memento mori, an empty hourglass and a reminder of mortality. He didn’t want to be a tool to be summoned to fight with regardless of what he believed in or wanted to fight against like all the other skeletons. And Will couldn’t help but see every camper the way Nico had once described people- as living corpses. They were all temporary, to be washed away if he should chance to close his eyes, and he couldn’t save them from that. He couldn’t help but think about the organs within, just biological mechanisms, cells using chemical messengers, every thought just an action potential somewhere deep inside their brains. Just skeletons inside an illusion of life, being puppeteered like marionettes by charged impulses rapidly firing through a lipid organ. Will wished he could take away the existential fear he remembered having as a mortal, but all he could do was comfort the dying, because everybody, no matter how healthy, was slowly dying.

Nico had accepted their mortality, his own once, his sister’s, his friend’s, Will’s once. So Nico saw the life inside them, he saw it burn with passion, a cause to fight for, because every person was temporary, and every person deserved to have their voice heard, to have their identity worn proudly, to stand up and change things for a hope of a better world for the next generation. Nico saw and understood and accepted them before he knew them, because he’d seen asphodel, seen the chattering husks that called themselves somebody but couldn’t remember who that somebody was. Asphodel wasn’t full of morally grey people, it was full of those who had no acceptance, who had to stay silent, who weren’t allowed to make a difference and weren’t allowed to live their own lives. It was full of people who were scared to die, and had to stay silent to stay safe. He’d always said; ‘your voice is your identity. If you don’t use it, you’re halfway to asphodel already’. He remembered when he couldn’t use his voice, when he was too scared, too alone, too hurt to stand up proudly, too full of self hate to accept himself. And he remembered how glorious it was when he did accept himself, when he paraded unapologetically, when he allowed himself to love, to protest, to riot, to fight back. He remembered how alive accepting himself made him feel despite how dead the hate tried to make him feel. He remembered the buzz of being free, and it reminded him that even a temporary life was a life worth accepting, if only for a short moment of comfort.

The campfire was a place of comfort, of stability, of reassurance, a place where everybody was accepted and everybody was allowed to be bitter about the sting of rejection from their families. It was a place Nico and Will had the most fond memories of- there was something about the way even the most anxious or shy of campers were able to find their voices, something about the way everybody came together that felt like home, reflected in the homefires kindled in Hestia’s eyes. Will liked the campfire because it felt like comfort, and Nico liked the campfire because it felt like acceptance- the two weren’t binary opposites after all, people realised, in fact they had a lot in common. Nico had been a soldier, a martyr, and Will had been a healer, a service- both had been resources to exploit, both had been the boy who couldn’t cry, who when they broke, they exploded in a supernova of mirror shards, each shard reflecting the consequence of everybody’s expectations and judgments and choice to turn a blind eye to their suffering. Comfort and Acceptance were two sides of the same coin- it was impossible to truly have one without the other, and both had only truly found the other side of that coin within each other’s arms.

“How did you find hope in all of this,” a camper asked timidly, brokenly, and nobody answered for a while.

“Because even when the sun isn’t shining, even in the darkest of nights, the stars are a thousand suns shining just for you. And when you’re feeling alone, if you reach out to the sun,” Will began gently, summoning a ray of light from a distant star and holding the sunlight in his palm, “and you take a ray of sunshine,” he continued, placing the light in the camper’s hands and closing their fingers around it, “and you put it in your pocket,” he instructed, waiting for the camper to do so, “then you aren’t alone anymore, because the sun shines on us all, and somewhere, somebody else is feeling alone too and looking up at the sun, so you’re never truly alone, and the sunshine in your pocket will keep you company.” The camper smiled, their cheeks tinted a healthy dusty rose as they found a new hope, a new confidence, found comfort.

“What about you, sir,” the camper asked Nico, and Nico took a moment to gather his thoughts.

“I didn’t,” Nico began strongly, “I accepted that some situations are hopeless, and I learned that chasing after a ray of hope that isn’t truly there wasn’t healthy for me. Reaching towards hope that wasn’t made for me felt like the darkness was pulling me back and cutting into my soul. But when I let go of that hope, let the shadows take over and let myself fall, I found myself being pulled backwards through the shadows, only to emerge at the back,” Nico explained, summoning tendrils of shadows around his wrists and gripping them like reigns in his hands, “but from behind the darkness, I found myself at its helm, in control of this chariot of darkness within. I made my own hope, because I controlled the darkness now, it didn’t control me. I accepted it, I accepted the pain and I accepted that I couldn’t change the things I wanted to change. I let go of hope, and it allowed me to take control, to find power in the shadows that I once feared. False hope prevents us from accepting our circumstances, it keeps us wanting something more, stops us from being satisfied with who we are and what we have. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is let go of hope, but sometimes, just sometimes, accepting what you can’t change and accepting who you are is far more powerful than the relentless hunt of an elusive better life. Only once you accept what you can’t control can you begin to take the reigns and fight for a better life, but hoping for it won’t do anything but hurt you should you fall short. I go into everything with no hope for myself. I fight for what I believe in, not for what I hope for. Don’t fight or keep going for some utopian vision of the future. Accept the dystopia you’re in and learn how to use it against them, learn how to control all that rage and hate and all that darkness inside and turn it into your weapon, your voice, your identity. If the ichor of a toxic society or person or idea is causing you pain, use the burn to fuel your passion, and use their own ichor to make them face what they’ve done.”

“My mom would’ve approved,” the camper said with a small smile, and Nico noticed the eye patch worn proudly on their face.

“Justice is a virtue favoured by the underworld,” Nico replied, “and I intend to fight for what is just, but in my own name, and in the name of those who can’t use their voices themselves. I speak on behalf of those in personal asphodel.”

“What about you,” the camper asked, turning to Will, “what do you fight for?”

“I don’t fight unless I have to,” Will said candidly, “do I stand up for what I believe in? Yes. But fight? I prefer to heal, to allow for recovery and growth. So I guess I do fight, I fight alongside those who need to know somebody out there has their back. I fight for brighter times, to be a guiding light through the darkness and to bring some warmth and compassion and comfort and recovery to an otherwise cold and bleak reality. But one thing they don’t tell you? Sometimes it’s okay to fight for yourself. You don’t always have to fight for others. Sometimes you can fight for yourself, love yourself, try to change things for the better for yourself. You have to fight for yourself, because others won’t always fight for you. You can let go of hope or cling to it, just never stop fighting for yourself, okay? Sometimes you won’t find comfort in others, sometimes you have to recover by building up piece by piece, one kind word at a time. Believe in yourself when you can’t believe in anyone else, or anything else for that matter. The world isn’t a kind place, so fight to stay kind. Be the comfort to others you wish others were for yourself, and one day, if everybody thinks like that, hope might live again.”

#ghostly gods #nico di angelo #solangelo #will solace #nico di angelo x will solace #nicohasahappymeal

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artemis-entreri · 5 years ago

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[[ This post contains Part 6 of my review/analysis of the Forgotten Realms/Drizzt novel, Boundless, by R. A. Salvatore. As such, the entirety of this post’s content is OOC. ]]

Genre: Fantasy

Series: Generations: Book 2 | Legend of Drizzt #35 (#32 if not counting The Sellswords)

Publisher: Harper Collins (September 10, 2019)

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Additional Information: Artwork for the cover of Boundless and used above is originally done by Aleks Melnik. This post CONTAINS SPOILERS. Furthermore, this discussion concerns topics that I am very passionate about, and as such, at times I do use strong language. Read and expand the cut at your own discretion.

Contents:

Introduction

I. Positives I.1 Pure Positives I.2 Muddled Positives

II. Mediocre Writing Style II.1 Bad Descriptions II.2 Salvatorisms II.3 Laborious “Action”

III. Poor Characterization III.1 “Maestro” III.2 Lieutenant III.3 Barbarian III.4 “Hero” III.5 Mother

IV. World Breaks IV.1 Blinders Against the Greater World IV.2 Befuddlement of Earth and Toril IV.3 Self-Inconsistency IV.4 Dungeon Amateur IV.5 Utter Nonsense

V. Ego Stroking V.1 The Ineffable Companions of the Hall V.2 Me, Myself, and I

VI. Problematic Themes (you are here) VI.1 No Homo VI.2 Disrespect of Women VI.3 Social-normalization VI.4 Eugenics

VII. What’s Next VII.1 Drizzt Ascends to Godhood VII.2 Profane Redemption VII.3 Passing the Torch VII.4 Don’t Notice Me Senpai

Problematic Themes

No Homo

Boundless continues to perpetuate some long-standing regressive to outright harmful ideas, as well as introducing new ones. There are two that are the biggest. The first is something that's existed for over two decades in the Drizzt books, and something that I've criticized Salvatore for for a long time: the fetishization of sapphic relationships. While Boundless is an improvement (and a bit of an oddity for Salvatore) in that it doesn't include any gratuitous lesbian sex scenes or allusions, it still very much perpetuates an imbalanced representation, such that it wouldn't be fair to describe it as true representation. Yet again, despite it being canon that the default sexuality in the Realms is pansexuality as opposed to heterosexuality in our world, the only people that we see in Boundless that are capable of same sex attractions are female. Ever since the token gay guy Afrafrenfere's epiphany that everything else he'd been engaged in, which includes his deceased boyfriend, was a distraction from enlightenment, there hasn't been so much of an implication that men could be attracted to other men in Salvatore's Realms. There exists more chemistry between Harbonair and Zaknafein than between Zaknafein and Dab'nay, which is rather sad given that the latter pair are actively sexual with each other. There's of course the possibility that Salvatore just doesn't know how to write gay male chemistry, but to be fair, his heterosexual chemistry is pretty bad. Most of it is just sex or another physical act spontaneously happening that triggers a change in the nature of the relationship, for instance, the start of the relationship between Entreri and Calihye. There's so much background "everyone is heterosexual" stuff going on that to be inclusive, Salvatore just needs to mention that there's more than one man in an orgy rather than it always being one man to many women. Or, better yet, use an example directly from the world canon that other authors have used, namely, that the workers of a brothel or attendants in a temple of Sune are of more than one gender and that a male client is greeted by both male, female, and other gender-identifying attendants. Casual inclusion of this nature isn't difficult, and we see Salvatore do it with sapphic stuff enough that leads me to believe that it's a choice on his part not to be fully inclusive.

An example of when Salvatore could've gone for inclusion, but instead went for fetishization, is in the scene of Dahlia infiltrating a Waterdhavian nobles' ball:

This isn't much better than gratuitous lesbian sex scenes at the total exclusion of gay men. It's completely unnecessary for Salvatore to have specified that women also drooled after Dahlia; simply stating "people" would've been sufficient. It's not like Salvatore doesn't have many chances and setups where he can drop a hint that gay men exist in the Realms like he does so frequently for gay women. Oftentimes, Salvatore's writing feels very much like he realizes that there's "too much" chemistry between two male characters, such that he has to throw in a "NO HOMO" wrench. For instance:

While there isn't anything inherently gay in this passage, there isn't anything inherently gay in so many places where Salvatore artificially injected "these women are sapphic" indicators. Yet here, between two male characters, it's specifically clarified that it's brotherly love. Love is love, it shouldn't have to be clarified like this. Sure, some people might jump to romantic love, but so what? This was a good opportunity to at the very least, leave it vague, but apparently Salvatore can't stomach it enough that he has to cross the possibility out with a bold black marker (maybe its the same sharpie he uses on the tapestry of Faerûn). It's as though the possibility of romantic love between two men somehow taints the sacredness of their bond. Salvatore's writing style is very old-fashioned and set in its ways, but that's no excuse not to change. Despite his espoused views on social media, Salvatore's lack of representation in his writing suggests a discomfort that he doesn't want to address. This is increasingly problematic as we try to push to a better world with more acceptance and equality. Inclusion isn't truly inclusion if it's done with only a portion of the population.

Disrespect of Women

What Salvatore does with sapphic women is fetishization, which is additionally problematic because it's a short hop from objectification of women. This point is one that I haven't touched on much in the past, but it's glaring in Boundless because in this novel, Salvatore also tries to demonstrate respect of women. Salvatore has a long history of poorly-written female characters. In his books, a female character's most redeeming characteristics were that she was hot and young. For a while, I could tell which female characters were there to stay, which were doomed to die from the get-go, and which would suffer horribly as they met their inevitable end. It always had to do with how physically attractive the character was, and usually with respect to how she measured up to Catti-brie's beauty. Not counting female villains like Sheila Kree who were not coincidentally unattractive, protagonist characters weren't spared this treatment. For instance, Delly Curtie didn't hold a candle to Catti and could barely find happiness with Catti's rejected suitor. By the same token, Innovindil, who, despite being a full-blooded elf, wasn't as beautiful as Catti, and was subsequently very short-lived. Dahlia, another full-blooded elf who wasn't as beautiful as Catti, admittedly didn't die (yet), but what she went through is arguably worse. Dahlia is portrayed to be very much second best to Catti, from her looks to her rejection by Drizzt to Catti outright beating Dahlia in a fight. So, of course, Dahlia gets stuck with Entreri, who's frequently portrayed as second best to Drizzt. Salvatore does deserve credit for trying to break the mold with Penelope Harpell and Wulfgar, but Penelope's appearance doesn't leave much of an impression. We're reminded multiple times that she's an older woman, and the focus is on her personality, but with how often younger female characters' physical appearance is mentioned and re-mentioned, it gives the impression that Salvatore doesn't believe older women can be physically attractive. As always, Catti-brie was an exception to the rule, for even in her mid-forties, "her form, a bit thicker with age, perhaps, but still so beautiful and inviting to [Drizzt]", a characterization that follows another sentence describing how beautiful she was barely a page prior. But we don't hear such about Penelope, instead, we're told about the strengths of her personality, which are admirable, but only become the focus for her, rather than for a young-appearing strong female character like Yvonnel the Second. This is not to mention that someone's form probably shouldn't be characterized as inviting, as that is something the person should do, not something done by the person's looks. The objectification of women is problematic enough on its own, but instead of addressing the issue, Salvatore appears to consider it sufficient to put in a significant anecdote featuring a temporary character to prove that he is an ally to women. The mysterious "demon" possessing the little girl Sharon is painted as a moral adjudicator, entrapping the evil in its unbreakable cocoons filled with wasps that have human faces. Before this "demon" entraps Entreri, it ensnares an old man, whom we're simply told is an old lecher, with no insight about what makes him such and what wrongdoings he'd committed. All we know is that he and his wife attempted to kidnap Sharon and threatened to kill her if she resisted. It's not very clear what's going on in that scenario or what the couple's intentions were. The man's description shifts suddenly from nothing to "old lecher", and he is damned to an eternity of suffering. But how was he a lecher? Was Salvatore trying to imply that he intended to sexually assault Sharon? Or was human trafficking one of his many sins, with the "lecher" part referring to how he is towards women? While all of these crimes certainly warrant harsh punishment, the message that Salvatore's trying to convey isn't clear. Furthermore, the anecdote gives the reader zero satisfaction in the guy's punishment, because we're only marginally invested in what's happened. His anecdote is nothing more than a cheap and lazy setup to illustrate what the "demon" can do.

Social-normalization

The second of the two worst among Salvatore's long-standing problematic themes is the simplified and social-normative qualifications of what makes a person worthwhile. To put it simply, one is good and just if they are the Companions of the Hall and/or act like them, despite the many many ways that the Companions behave unheroically and hypocritically. On the flip side, one who doesn't subscribe to or follow the model of the Companions is evil, bad, or not worthy of existence unless they change to become like the Companions. Of the latter group, it isn't sufficient to change to become a different version of themselves. For instance, during the demonic assault, Zaknafein throws himself into the fray of battle, risking his life, yet again, for his ungrateful son. Yet, Drizzt's takeaway from watching his father do this is, "joy to see his father so willingly risking his life for the cause of the goodly folk of the Crags". There appears to be a subconscious inconsistency here on Salvatore's part, for he even writes that Zaknafein helps the dwarves because Zaknafein knows it's what his son wants him to do, so removing Drizzt from the picture, Zaknafein wouldn't be doing it solely on behalf of the dwarves. Zaknafein isn't Drizzt, and that's a good thing, for not everything needs to be a Drizzt clone, but Salvatore doesn't seem to agree with that assessment.

Salvatore doesn't seem to realize that Drizzt is the problematic one. Boundless represents a point in time in which it's been awhile since Zaknafein has returned. During this time, while Zaknafein has been trying to adapt and adjust his worldviews, Drizzt's perspective hasn't changed at all, despite Jarlaxle spending a great amount of time talking to him about Zaknafein and presumably helping Drizzt get past the initial emotional turmoil of the return of Zaknafein and his own struggles with reconciling the past and the present. There's also a double-standard here, for while Entreri is forced to change because enough time has gone by, Drizzt isn't.

It really seems to be the message that the only characters that are good and valid need to be as close to Drizzt as possible, and this belief applied to Entreri has been the cause of the assassin's increasingly poor characterization. Entreri has become a "better person" by the narrator's approximation, a quality that is, yet again, not coincidentally synonymous to being an ally to the Companions of the Hall. Artemis Entreri may very well have become a better version of himself, but that is not, and should not be, becoming more like the Companions of the Hall. By whose definition is "a better person" anyway? By Drizzt's? By the Companions'? It's often the case that those that believe that they are the definition of what's right and define others' morality relative to themselves are the least qualified to do so.

Eugenics

Although not as prominent as the two themes already mentioned, one final consistent problematic theme of Salvatore's in the Drizzt books that I'd like to discuss is the idea that mediocrity and excellence are inherited traits. Boundless reminds us yet again that all of the offspring of Rizzen are as unpromising as he is, and while it isn't specifically stated that all the offspring of Zaknafein is very much otherwise, we have over thirty books basically telling us that so it probably doesn't need to be repeated. While it is true that genetics do play a role in determining what makes up a person, genetics do not lock in guaranteed results. Yet, the undistinguished Rizzen sired "the mediocrity of Nalfein", and as though that insult wasn't bad enough, "His pants fell down, too. Again, and as expected, unimpressive." Dinin "would do Rizzen proud", but that's not saying a whole lot because it was in the context of the total failure of Nalfein. There's a further level of problematic theme here, for perpetuating the stereotype that a man's worth is at all related to the size of his genitalia. All of that aside, not everyone is privileged enough to be born to top specimens, and those that weren't inherently already have a struggle on their hands. They don't deserve to have the idea that they'll be mediocre no matter what perpetuated. Genetics might be what makes an individual, but what defines them is the actions that they take.

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brackets002 · 6 years ago

Text

“Why did you do it?”

They had flown alongside each other in silence for some time; She asked this after staring at the Vessel for several minutes. With the Seals long broken their body had begun to reflect their true age; they weren't yet nearly as tall as the Hollow Knight had become, but their proportions fit their size better and they did not threaten to topple from the weight of their mask. So too had grown their stolen wings, which were strong enough now to carry them in flight; pale, finely scaled gossamer that beat hard and then stilled, allowing them to glide. The ragged cloak the Vessel had been born in was exchanged now for the armor and furred mantle of a Nailmaster; their old nail, modified to fit their new size, was hung on their hip and swayed in the rushing winds. When She spoke and they turned their head to look at Her, the scar down the middle of their porcelain visage was nearly imperceptible from the years since its creation.

The Radiance probed the surface layer of their mind as though She had struck them with a Dream Nail, but all She registered was a confusion regarding Her question. She looked ahead again, steering Her own flight, and said, “You repaired your mask after dragging Me into the Void. You tried to abandon godhood and became this.” With one arm, without looking, She gestured towards their body. “Why?”

No answer, at first, was offered. She could feel emotions swirling under the surface thoughts their consciousness limited Her to, half-formed words and spiraling phrases that told Her they were searching for the right words. When they formed at last a sentence, it was the face of a storm of synonyms and connotations. Language was an odd thing for how little it conveyed. I wanted a life of my own carried just beneath it feelings of bitterness and hope, a glimpse at a dozen memories, a desperation for agency. Even simply I signified musings of who “I” was, a struggle for a name. Vessel, Knight, Shadow, My Friend, Ghost, Little Ghost, Ghost of Hallownest, I am Ghost.

The Radiance ignored all of this. She focused on the sentence as they had built it.

“A life?” She said, a little contemptuously. “Is that all? A life of mortal toil and suffering? Divinity is a life, Lord of Shades, one infinitely superior to that of this minuscule shape. The power I commanded at My peak...you passed up omnipotence, mastery of your domain, to wear gaudy armor and swing a blade. You’re a fool.”

I am not the Lord of Shades, their thoughts thundered. (Under the backtrack in thought was what the Radiance recognized as phrases they had tried to say simultaneously: god of a grave, king of siblings slaughtered, eldritch, alone.) That thing may live in me, but I nearly lost my mind to it. Divinity was death (loss of I…). They stopped briefly to beat their wings; in the moment’s silence this brought, they scanned the barren ground below and allowed themselves to calm. They considered and said, It was too great a sacrifice not to hesitate in making. I fought to rid the world of you, and I believed I could have the chance to live in such a world.

“So it was out of spite?”

Most of my decisions are out of spite. We have a commonality there. But no.

“Make up your mind. You just said--”

I found a SELF, Ghost pronounced. I learned I could be more than a Vessel (king’s toy, empty, hollow knight, sacrifice, nameless), more than a killer (feral thing, storm-lashed, murderer, vicious beast, nameless)...Their thoughts continued to wrestle with each other, and the Radiance laughed loudly. Her course through the air momentarily drifted as She guffawed, then She adjusted Her furred wings and banked a little closer to Her companion.

“That just makes you even more of a fool!” She replied. “What are you but a Vessel and a killer, if you refuse to be the Lord of Shades? What is a Nailmaster but a bug trained in death? And your status as a Vessel cannot be escaped, unless of course you embrace the Void entirely. Do you always contradict your own reasons like this?”

Do you always pretend to exist in a vacuum?

That reply came with a maelstrom of biting words and seething rage behind it. Her flight wavered again as She was buffeted by buried screams of memory: a single, purple moth croaking out explanations, alongside a thousand orange pustules and the eyes of attacking husks. The condemnation was clear. But with the meanings they pushed on Her were those they had meant to reserve for themselves: an elderly bug clutching a beautiful flower, those same flowers decorating a grave, a tall pillbug wearing a white mask as a hat, a broken Vessel reaching for them as it died, an enormous bug in Nailmaster’s armor, Hornet. These flickered through Her eyes too fast see clearly, but the weight they held in the Vessel’s mind shook Her more than the recollection of infection did.

The Lord of Shades has no one. Eternity alone with all those Shades (echoes, siblings, dead, regrets)? I cannot abide the thought. I love them, I always shall...but there are things outside the Abyss I love as well. Their explanation paused as the two of them flew beneath a storm cloud, the arcs within illuminating them in harsh blue-white. But Ghost’s mind had crescendoed with the thought of loved ones. As the Radiance searched for a train of coherent thought, a kind of peace filled them as though they had forgotten who they flew with. I found friends. A sister. A bug who considered me progeny (his student, his child, heir, fellow, beloved). I wanted a future with them. A future, in the world that taught me I could love and be loved. I rejected godhood because I decided I deserved a future.

“So you aren’t only a fool, you’re also pathetic. Mortals have no future, we blink and they’re gone.”

Of course, I was wrong to believe I deserved that. My work wasn’t finished, for you still live. And you, glorified lumafly? If you despise this condition so much, why not stay submerged within the Void? You almost make it seem preferable to this form.

Looking down again at the body in question, the Radiance scowled. Gone were Her metallic legs, gone were the ever-changing and prehensile wings, and gone was Her crown of horns; climbing out of the Abyss, shaking, She had been horrified to find Herself reborn as little more than a tall moth. Alabaster fuzz covered most of Her body, ending just before the claws of Her legs and four arms. Her wings, now a desaturated yellow-grey with only traces of gold patterning, hung limply around Her like a cloak when unused; flying on them now, though those golden circles shone brightly, She could barely stand to look at them for their relative drabness. The reflections She had seen of Her face had been similarly disgusting; two bristled antennae, angled forward and out in crude mockery of Her old horns, swayed in every breeze. She didn’t want to consider how they looked now, buffeted by the winds of Her flight and the harsh lands below. The only true sign of what She had once been was the constant glow of Her yellow eyes, and that only served to confuse and frighten those who saw it.

She seethed at the thought of those bugs’ uncomprehending faces. “How are those circumstances at all comparable?!” She demanded, and when a silent chuckle rolled through the Vessel’s thoughts She grew only angrier. “Had I known I would be reduced so, perhaps I would have stayed drowned! But I was powerless, cold, dying without end, do you understand? You passed up all the power of the Void to have your ridiculous ‘future,’ but I? I?” The Radiance stared at the ground hundreds of feet below, recalling the despair She had felt immersed in the sea of shadow; the despair that hadn’t truly left Her since. “...I was forced to choose between torture in the dark and this weak, drab, finite shape. I don’t know if I chose well. Both fates were horrors beyond anything I could have conceived.”

She had hoped to stir some sympathy within Her companion, but Her words seemed to have the opposite effect. Beneath Ghost’s surface thoughts boiled an anger renewed. Whisperings of how dare you and selfish moron were discernible in snatches, until they formed a sentence to project to Her. Woe to the god gone mad, Ghost thought. Forced to endure a consequence for the first time in her existence, a horror no doubt eclipsing all the pain and death her infection wrought. To think a single apocalyptic tantrum could have brought this upon her. Awful, truly.

“Sarcasm shouldn’t be attempted without a mouth,” the Radiance noted aloud. “You convey both too much and too little. I don’t know why I expected you to understand, Lord of Shades. You’ve never known what it is to be immersed within your own element, only to be attacked and suffocated by your oldest enemy. Nor have you ever felt the love of worshipers.”

And you, contrarily, have never known any other kind of love (siblings, teachers, friends, quirrel, quirrel, quirrel…). I do not envy you for having the likes of the Moss Prophet to babble your praises. If it weren’t for who you were and all you’ve done, I might have pitied you.

The Radiance glared at the horizon as She withdrew Her attention from their thoughts, blocking out whatever else they may have wanted to say. “I cannot wait,” She murmured, lowering Her gaze to scan the ground below, “until the day we can treat each other as enemies once again.” She didn’t have to look to know that Ghost shared the sentiment—and was probably tightening their hold on their nail, dreaming of that very moment. Speaking louder She added, “Pharloom isn’t far from here. Follow me, we’re nearly there.” With a shining flap of Her wings She began to accelerate.

#hollow knight #fanfic #twilight of the gods #ghost #radiance #nailmaster ghost #preview for an upcoming story #...probably

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