#and it has a lot of clever things to say about religion at least in the D&D-verse

[pb-dot]

I find the way Fantasy High Junior Year treats religion to be fascinating, and evolving in an interesting way in the last couple of episodes. Like episode 14 makes it pretty clear, through Kristen's parents and Bobby Dawn that the helioic faith, ironically isn't much of a faith. There's no need for faith or belief there, they know who their god, Helio, they know he's a force interacting with their lives and their world, and they "know" that he is the only correct god to follow. This is in part a character flaw on their part, but is in a way also a logcial extrapolation of the cosmology of the D&D universe, or at least the particular branch of it in which Fantasy High resides.

Kristen stands as a stark contrast to this, where faith is all she has. Nobody knows whether Cassandra is alive, dead, or something in-between, and Kristen has chosen to believe that Cassandra is out there, somewhere. In a way, Cassandra is a better diety for doubt and mystery now than she was when she had a physical form one could see and interact with.

This is why the confrontation between Bobby Dawn and Kristen is so interesting to me, because while Bobby is technically correct in that Kristen's god is dead, it should tell him something that Kristen is still able to do the works of a cleric in Cassandra's name. That's not a fail state, that's a level faith that really justifies Kristen's sainthood, hell, we may be past the level of a saint at this point. This is the kind of stuff religious movements gets started off of. This is the kind of stuff that you only read about in ancient histories. It's happening in Bobby Dawn's classroom, and this corn pone televangelist motherfucker is too blinded by bitterness of Kristen ditching his religion, too drunk on the certainty of following The Right Way, to see this real life miracle unfold in front of him. This man shouldn't be a cleric teacher. Even if he managed to teach without biasing towards his Mean Girls crew of divinities and their followers, which I have no faith (heh) that he is able, or willing, to do, he still fails on a fundamental level. Bobby Dawn is beholding a wonder of modern faith, a messianic figure in the making, and opposes it. Not as a matter of conviction, but because is unable to comprehend it because it's not happening on "his team."

It's really interesting stuff, and it's shaping up to be one hell of a character arc for Saint Kristen Chillis Applebees as long as she doesn't get expelled.

[freakassfemme]

chronically offline abby headcannons ✧˖*°

she is coping so well and thriving. i said i could fix her and i did

heyyyy so this is sort of kind of low-key a little bit of a continuation on beloved butch abby, the premise of the au and personality is the same. i got a request asking for more and i was thinking about this anyways and thought they worked well together

♫ above the chinese restaurant (laufey)

ೃ༄ abby is (unfortunately) a retired soldier, she's got a kid to look after, she runs a cafe downtown and she's got two dogs. all at like, 22. did we really think she has the time to go online for anything more than 🔍 thirty minute dinner recipes your vegan teenager isn't going to kill you over

ೃ༄ just kidding. she doesn't mind lev trying out new things lol. he is her whole fucking world, she's more than happy to spend time with him cooking something he remembers from home, giving each other grossed out faces when they fuck up the tofu again, and giving up and going to target 15 minutes before close to piece together some random junk food.

Manny will come over and cook with them sometimes, and that's always a fun time. he's got abby drunk before nine and she's just a laughing mess.

ೃ༄ she just loves being around Manny in general. they meet up for lunch a lot, go on runs together in the morning, work on each other's trucks, etc.,

now that she's living a normal life, she's able to take a serious Spanish class, and he's very supportive about it.

ೃ༄ definitely takes the dogs into the cafe with her. whenever someone complains about the pandora radio she puts on, she blames it on the dogs.

yeah she uses pandora until someone teaches her what Spotify is

ೃ༄ she's such a planner. she's got a huge chalkboard in the kitchen for the week and the month with both of their schedules drawn on it down to the hour if needed. hers is written in orange and lev's is written in green.

only watches tv once a week, and it's for a designated show that's so laid back, like the great British baking show.

"do you want to watch this show?" "no it's not Sunday"

ೃ༄ she's definitely the type to limit screen time, and lev himself isn't like partial to brain rot, but sometimes he says something that has her turning around like what did you just say eyes wide and everything

lev tells her to touch grass one day and she goes on a hike

ೃ༄ her favorite evening activities are taking the dogs on a sunset walk with lev, and then when lev's gone up to his room for the night, she will pack him like a little bento-type lunch. she'll cozy up in her lazy boy by the fireplace with Alice at her feet and journal away, sometimes until she falls asleep.

she's got BUCKETS of journals. it started in therapy after her dad passed, as like a coping mechanism to at least attempt to correct her thought processes, and it's always stuck. it's always made her feel like she's putting herself in order again.

after therapy, i feel like abby spent a lot of time thinking about religion. she never really found anything that clicks, but she reads a lot about buddhism and really appreciates the perspective.

ೃ༄ definitely has a weird phone setup going on. she's either got a really old like iPhone 7 with maybe 6 apps on it or one of those CAT flip phones lol. can you imagine flip phone selfies from her

ೃ༄ writes her grocery lists on a little piece of yellow paper that she'll tuck into her front pocket. carries specifically one of those bic ballpoint pens, has like 5 year old reusable grocery bags and a keychain for her Aldi quarter that she thinks is so clever and fun.

she definitely uses one of her favorite coins from her collection as her Aldi quarter.

ೃ༄ gets the paper delivered to her house. she prefers to read it that way, but she pays for lev to get a digital subscription to his kindle or something

ೃ༄ keeps her dads beat up, decaying quilt as a topper for her bed. she folds it up neatly every night and sets it in a rocking chair in the corner of her room, just to preserve it a little longer.

ೃ༄ knows how to get throughout almost the entire west coast without a map or gps or anything

ೃ༄ reading is HUGE in her house. lev's reading log was NEVER forged not once. she spent a whole summer building ceiling to floor bookshelves with a gorgeous trim and a mahogany stain. she loves to swing by the used bookstore after work every once in a while, the one where she can get a book for 25 cents or a big bag of them for two bucks.

every birthday, lev gives her a bag of books, and he always puts one in that he loves but isn't sure she will like. it's usually not her style, but she likes learning more about his interests and she thinks they're always very sweet books.

always secretly surprises lev with little books with transmasc characters or about real trans people. she will just leave them on his desk in their shared office or something with a little sticky note with a heart on it

ೃ༄ makes friends with the lanky manager of the record store with a weird fucked up tattoo when she's looking for more cassettes for her beat up truck.

"dude, you're the only person who has looked through this crate in like, six months. you can just take what you want."

"holy shit, really? it's the only thing i can play in my truck besides the radio."

"jesus, that's kind of funny. yeah, anytime you want, you can use my shit to make your little mixtapes. if I'm not here, just tell them Ellie said so."

ೃ༄ is definitely an active member of her local library, not only for reading material, but to check out music, and she loves to participate in the chess and book clubs.

really loves board games in general.

ೃ༄ I feel like abby loves Birkenstocks, but the clogs. she has a pair of sandals for the summer, but in my heart I know she's a clog girly.

ೃ༄ very simple, very minimalist wardrobe. I feel like she exclusively sticks to Levi's for jeans, and then she has like 8 black tee shirts and some thrifted sweatshirts and tee shirts.

would very much adore though if her girlfriend crocheted her a hat or a scarf or something <3

ೃ༄ speaking of girlfriends, I feel like abby really goes for opposites attract. she's so mild in appearance, that she loves someone that's a little over the top. maybe a little frilly, or adds odd little details to their outfits. she loves funky hairstyles and creativity in women.

ೃ༄ she loves making her own coffee. working at the cafe wasn't just convenience for her, abby loves the slowness of it. she loves packing the espresso, she loves checking on her sourdough every morning, she loved crafting her own tea blends. she definitely has a beat up metal French press, but she probably invests in her own espresso machine to keep at home too.

ೃ༄ i feel like eventually abby would coach for a sports team at lev's school. maybe he joined gymnastics or like, made the soccer team, and abby's packing-coolers-full-for-the-team and carpooling and excessive volunteering eventually takes her to leading after school drills and a best coach ever mug for the middle school boys soccer team lol.

this OR she becomes one of the most active parents any GSA has ever known to mankind

joins the pta

ೃ༄ is SO sentimental. has photos of people she loves all over the walls of her house, keeps tickets from movies and cuts out bits from the newspaper to keep in a little shoebox under her bed. she keeps her dad's medical journals and research on a special shelf above the fireplace.

her little flip hone has a blurry picture of her and Manny in the background

ೃ༄ Abby texts and types like this. She is a very formal typist. She will become very confused if someone texts her in lowercase or without punctuation.

[deadnamedblog]

Because we are following a crew of kids and misfits around, it's so easy to forget how much other people know. Hell, even people from the crew.

Luffy, is a kid and airhead. But he's a D and forgets to say important things. He could know about the Will of D as a family legend.

Zoro is obsessed with his swords. He doesn't talk about anything else. But he had the keyword "Sunatchi", and right upon hearing Luffy's ambition from Coby, says "King of the Pirates?! Does he know what that means?!" He could know some history without knowing it's from the void century.

Nami had too much on her plate as a child to know anything but legends. Which is a good author choice, because she's too clever and would tell us things.

Usopp has been raised with Nika's religion. I bet he know at least the religious lore. Still a kid and it doesn't interests him much though.

Sanji had too much on his plate as a child, and is not interested. Would know Germa lore though.

Chopper had to learn a lot from becoming a human on. But he focused on medicine. Same as Nami, since he is clever. He also is still a child.

Robin : she is looking for information on the void century specifically. But she knows so much about the rest of History. Not the focus of the story, so she won't tell us unless it becomes relevant.

Franky : He is so focused on technology. The rest isn't that important, even the lore and legends he heard as a child.

Brook : Set sail before Roger, doesn't know him. Knows some history but is soooo out of the loop. Knows some lore, including music. (Looking at you, Binks' sake) He could even know things about the will of D. But it isn't a topic of interest on the ship.

Jinbei : as a Sun Pirate, he must know about Nika and the lore going with it. He must know the Fishmen's history. But he hasn't joined that long ago. He is still finding his footing. I assume he'll be able to tell us when it becomes relevant.

[nightjarring]

what do thrones eat? the big ones look like they take a lot of feeding. do the bird body ones eat bird food?

Thrones do, in fact, eat a lot. It depends a lot on their bodies, but most are largely omnivorous. Since being able to stomach a greater variety of foods means more things are then available to stomach. Throne bodies are also largely cosmetic, so they might not need to eat like the animal they most closely resemble. The Thrones of Sevab House have serpentine bodies, but don't eat all that differently than the beast-footed Thrones. The body-shape they have does usually come with practical concerns that influence things like diet, though. The beast-footed houses, take Dedēsne House as a good example, eat more wild game than the serpentine Thrones of Sevab House, because there's more of a culture of nobles going on hunts there, while Sevab's Thrones are more expected to drape themselves elegantly about and have clever things to say. They still might be designed with dietary preferences for cultural reasons, i.e., a house that follows a branch of religion that practices vegetarianism not being capable of eating anything other than plants - which is also in line with the fact that Thrones are held by their communities to higher standards of religious conformity, they are Holy Beasts after all. This mostly applies to Thrones with ruminant-like bodies, where the herbivory is symbolically significant. This would also come with the expected Ruminant Issues, though, so that's a thing.

The Lujnola Thrones are an interesting case, however, because their bodies are designed to be more practical than average, and some of the restrictions of real birds also extend to them. You won't find any adapted to eat leaves (no stinky hoatzin Thrones alas). The Lujnola Thrones eat fruit more than anything else. It makes up probably 70 or 80% of their diets, with some meat thrown in. The meat is quite varied, though. They do hunt and especially trap wild game, but like to eat animals - lizards, turtles, frogs, insects, and smaller mammals like rodents and tiny forest deer. They do have some livestock, big meaty snails, and certain woodboring insects with large grubs are generally popular in the eastern empire. The most unique livestock Lujnola has is a species of arboreal, golden-furred rodent that's often eaten on special occasions. There are quite a lot of spiritual cleanliness practices around hunting and the use of weapons specifically, which is actually a bit of a point of prejudice the Throne-Lords of the region have against their non Throne subjects, who hunt game like deer, boars, and forest cattle. None of the Thrones ever hunt large game, and they don't eat bird meat out of principle, at least not in Lujnola Province, traveling Thrones of the house wouldn't always turn bird meat down, fowl just arent hunted or kept as livestock back home. That isn't because "it's cannibalism", they just have a huge respect and reverence for birds in general. They do like eggs, though. A lot of rituals and "magical" practices involve eating bird eggs, and different species of bird are said to embue their eggs with different properties - cleverness from a Jay, bravery from a hornbill, love from a parrot, etc.

-

Also, because Throne bodies are so large, the mouth of their "head"/human portion is not adequate to feed them, which is why most Thrones have secondary, more proportionate mouths. Have an old doodle of a guy having a snack.

[desultory-novice]

I find it hilarious that kirby doesn't know how to read or write. Yet he completely understands the concept of money and how it works!

So... I had a lot to say about the "Kirby can't read" thing?!?

See, this struck me last time I saw someone bring up Kirby can't read as proof Kirby is a very young child. (1) Speaking broadly, we as a species tie age/intelligence to reading level, which, by my reckoning, is a holdover of the school system. (:cough: That or callous systems of oppression to deny various people rights based on things like money, land, freedom, gender, religion, race, etc :cough:)

A Kirby who can't read must be a Kirby who hasn't gone to school!

But wait... ..."School??"

[continued below...w/ pictures!]

-

Is there even "school" in Dream Land? Waddle Dees seem to get put to work serving the king or guarding treasure or swinging happily across train tracks ("Oh my god, he's got airpods in! He can't hear us!") pretty much from the moment they make their first "Wanya!" In fact, Wise Waddle Dee seems to have become "wise" because...he found a book? Now, he was able to read it, but how long did it take him?? Can the other Waddle Dees read? Was Delivery Waddle Dee (?) taught to read by Wise Waddle Dee? How long did it take them to acquire this skill? They've all been there for X amount of time...

If Dream Land and Popstar as a whole has no mandatory schooling -public, private, or otherwise - can we really judge intelligence or age based on the same things we judge them on in the real world?

Another thing that made me question the logic of age = schooling was, amusingly enough, deciding to finally check out a rather FAMOUS episode of the anime...

A shame that the, erm, "feel good" ending leaves a bitter taste in the mouth now.

Anyway, the reason I went to watch the whole thing in the original Japanese was because I spotted something of interest and had to confirm it for myself...

King Dedede (at least in the anime) can't read either!

Now, Anime King Dedede also has cartoon human teeth (?) drives a ridiculously sized car everywhere, and abuses his gay snail second-in-command for "comedy" + a lot of other things we very much doubt of our beloved game Dedede. He's also portrayed as comically dumb. A little sad that the anime uses lack of literacy as an indicator that "Oh, look! He's embarrassingly stupid!" (That whole episode was Escargoon's fault. Not that I blame him, given the way Dedede treats him, but you really couldn't have just read the book aloud?!)

Anyway - because I'm me and I love to overanalyze insignificant or discarded tidbits and try to find clever ways to re-apply them in various canon - I thought about this and considered, "Yes, indeed! Why WOULD Dream Land have traditional schooling?! Why would anyone without a specific interest in books have any need develop the skill of reading in this world?" What is there TO read, even?

(Helpful road signs? All visual!)

My interpretation, at least, is that game Dedede is intelligent, if flawed. Still, he builds robots! He's good at chess! But these "smart" things are no indication he's good at reading or writing.

The note sent to Kirby in Kirby Fighters 2? We don't know Dedede wrote that. Meta Knight, who can read (...or so we assume?!?! Maybe That Book Meta Knight Was Reading on the Knoll in the Opening Cutscene for Return to Dream Land and Return to Dream Land Deluxe is a picture book!) might have written it for the two of them. Although... this puts another funny, twisty idea in my head!

We gather that, regardless of Kirby's need to read, Kirby has terrible handwriting, as implied by Kirby and the Forgotten Land. (Planet Robobot as well as various merch shows us that Kirby's not all that good at art, either.) Which is excusable, since they're writing with little nubs! Meta Knight has nubs too, but he covers them with (magical?) gloves that somehow give them better grip??

With these pseudo-hands, Meta Knight MUST be better at both letter writing and art than Kirby! Except... do we know that for sure...?

I point you to a certain Star Allies picture where Meta Knight's mirror duplicate, Dark Meta Knight, is drawing peacefully alongside Adeleine, Ribbon, and Daroach. Adeleine aside, the rest are, y'know, decent! ...Except Dark Meta Knight, who is TERRIBLE. Maybe even worse than Kirby! But...if Dark Meta Knight draws as badly as Kirby, and Dark Meta Knight is Meta Knight's mirror world duplicate...

Do you see where I'm going with this...?

(I blew out all my art skills on Apologies. Take this Kirby Meta Knight tier scribble...)

Just imagine, King Dedede boldly dictating the duo's letter of challenge to Meta Knight for the knight to write down... horribly! And King Dedede, who can't read, has no idea it's written in "Nub Scratch," nods happily that their "flawless" letter should be sent to Kirby immediately! Meta Knight, who cares about his image, does not clue him in to the truth. Neither does Kirby, who couldn't read it even if it were legible. Meta Knight's bad handwriting remains a secret that goes with him to his probably very cool-looking grave!

...

As for how money fits into the low-literacy world of Kirby, it's not hard to imagine King Dedede being responsible for that! The man loves his shinies! Assuming he wasn't born with a king's robe and crown on him, we have to accept that he dressed himself that way because he likes it! He likes being/looking wealthy and in charge. He likes gold. Maybe not as much as a certain rat, but enough.

And what is a kingdom without its own currency? ...Or maybe all those treasures in the Great Cave Offensive came with price tags and Kirby's just dutifully reporting the numbers to us?

--

(1)Young/Child Kirby is fine, btw! Honestly, some more modern content, like the concert, have been skewing in a young Kirby direction, with Kirby needing to take a nap in the middle of the show due to how late it was. As an old school fan, I still prefer my Kirby to be something unfathomably old (yet forever young at heart) or something cosmic beyond our mortal concept of age while still somehow able to be a friend to all... but that's a Dess-Lore thing!

(2) Of course, Kirby (and by association, Meta Knight) aren't natives to Popstar - Kirby being a wanderer carried on a Spring Breeze - thus, Dream Land's lack of an education system wouldn't affect whether the two know how to read or write. But I believe the same "Why does reading matter on their planet of origin?" / "Why would they have such a system?" COULD apply to them as well.

...For the humor of it, if nothing else!

[sleepymarmot]

Sunshine (2007)

[Watched on December 16th-17th]

When this movie came out, or at least when I first heard of it, I thought “Nah, not gonna watch it, sounds scary”. Then I forgot about its existence until this year, when I came across a clever diorama based on a scene from it and became mildly curious. Then this week I rewatched the Doctor Who episode “Midnight”, then the Doctor Who episode “42”, and I remembered that there was a movie with a plot that sounded kind of similar. I’ve seen a lot of horror and a lot of stories set in space since 2007, so I should be able to handle this one fine, right?

Well guess what, I knowingly watched an unsettling movie and ended up very unsettled by it. *surprised Pikachu face*

Liveblog:

Oh this is the kind of movie clearly tailored to the big screen. This opening shot of the ship is supposed to make the viewer feel tiny.

The very first scene after the intro, and someone’s already acting like a TMA avatar.

Oh all of these nice looking people are going to die gruesomely very soon, aren’t they. Is this a suicide mission by design, are things going to go terribly wrong, or both?

Shouldn’t they have known in advance when they would have a good view of planets? It’s not like they’re flying manually, the course was charted a long time ago…

Only sixteen minutes in, and I’m already so nervous.

Oh, the payload looks like an eye… Like the closeups of human eyes that the film has shown us so often already.

(Disclaimer: I took a day-long pause in the middle of the shield repair scene. And in general I take breaks like every five minutes. This movie is not easy on my nerves.)

I’m surprised they reached Icarus I so quickly and without further misadventures. I was expecting And Then There Were None In Space for another half hour.

They really have only one person on the ship who can operate the payload? That’s fucking absurd. What if he, like, randomly had a heart attack in his sleep? What if something happened to him when he was repairing the shield? Here I thought the mission was about delivering a bomb, but turns out it’s first and foremost about Cillian Murphy’s safety.

Did Cassie just change her mind within half a minute?

This painful-looking rotating blade doesn’t seem like much of a “kindness”.

How convenient of this guy to have killed himself already and free the crew from the responsibility…

And why exactly is our precious irreplaceable protagonist going to confront the amogus all by himself without even warning the crew, let alone taking someone as a backup?

Bro you’re about to burn your pretty blue eyes to two pieces of coal, and how are you going to launch the payload then?

The amogus is monologuing and meanwhile I’m sitting here considering which entities to enter for this film in my list.

He is still not calling for help for some reason. Dude I know you’re an introvert who is only capable of talking when alone with Cassie, but get a grip?

Oh great, now the computer is offline. How did the bad guy even get to the mainframe? Do these people not have passwords? Has the password not changed between Icaruses I and II? I guess “everyone has physical access to the mainframe” at least has redundancy unlike “only one person is capable of finishing the mission”, but why are there NO security measures at all?

I was about to type “Is Michelle Yeoh going to be stabbed in the back while she’s admiring the sapling” and then she was.

A shame that the avatar guy is just stabbing people. He should have had the sun shining out of his eyes, 42 style. Or some other kind of light/heat/radiation themed attack. I thought the genre turn would be into religion or fantasy, not into a banal slasher.

How many times per hour can Chris Evans almost freeze to death?

Gonna lanch your girl inside the bomb into the sun, huh?

Explosive bolts, huh? 2001 says hello.

Weren’t they supposed to be at a very specific point of the sun’s orbit to launch the payload so that it would go into a specific place on the sun?

Why is he going to get into the payload? Does he somehow know Cassie is in there? Does he want to die with her or something?

Icarus burning also looks like an eye, nice.

There’s 13 more minutes. Is most of this going to be end titles, or is the amogus going to sabotage this part of the mission too somehow?

The subtitles say “We're flying into the sun” but what I hear is “I’m flying you into the sun”.

Why did Cassie suddenly wake up and make it worse?

What is going on? What are the stakes? The bomb is already launched; the characters are all effectively dead; is there anything the bad guy can ruin now?

Oh, so because the payload was launched in a weird way, it needs some kind of additional manual on-site calibration?

[End of liveblog]

The cinematography and visual design of this film are gorgeous. Sleek modern cinema at its finest.

Did it have a good story? I literally can’t tell.

Did I enjoy the viewing? Well, as you might guess from the liveblog, no.

Apparently I still cannot handle suspense. Or space. Other people are talking about the screenplay’s merits or lack thereof, and I have no way to saying anything objective about it because I did everything to ground myself and to stop myself from being immersed in the story. I kept thinking that back in the day I must have powered through Interstellar only because I was in the theater with a friend and couldn’t just pause or leave. As you might see from the density of the liveblog, the viewing became easier when the film became less tense and more openly violent, and the script started getting incoherent. Clearly, this isn’t the intended reaction to the film, so I have no idea what the director was going for. I wonder how it would feel on a second viewing, when there’s no more worry about the plot anymore.

I tagged the film as “horror”, and later saw several reviews call it horror too… But only in relation to the slasher segment. That’s the opposite of my own impression! I’d classify it as horror on the basis of 1) the excruciating suspense, and 2) the relationship between the humans and the sun that fits the definition of transcendental horror to a T. Even the close-up of Capa’s face as he meets the sun looks just the closeup of The Lighthouse’s protagonist as he gazes into the light! The sun is the source of deadly danger and awe; it is simultaneously the primary antagonist and the object of the characters’ hopes and aspirations; the protagonist fears contact with it at the beginning, and ecstatically reaches out and lets himself be consumed by it at the end.

While I’m on the topic, here’s a breakdown of character deaths:

Kaneda, Searle, Capa, Pinbacker are fascinated by the sun and are killed by the sun

Mace is fascinated by waves and is killed by cold liquid

Corazon is fascinated by plants and is killed while distracted by a plant

What about Cassie (sun), Harvey (space), and Trey (blade)?

The opening scene gave me the false hope that the film will focus much more on various characters’ different ways of being obsessed with the sun. The theme is still there, but not as much as could have been. I still stand by what I said in the liveblog: unlike most other reviewers, I don’t mind the turn from hard sci-fi, but if it happens, I want it to be even wilder. Go full Desolation avatar on these guys! The sun worshipper should have killed people by subjecting them to the wrath of his god! I think it’s implied that’s what he did to his own crew (by luring them into the observation deck and disabling the filter), and he’s already a bit supernatural (where did that strength come from? do the distortion effects also exist in-universe?), so I think he deserved to pulverize people with light shining out of his eyeballs while hissing something like “Burn with me”. Can’t believe I’m saying this, but the run-off-the-mill episode written by Chris Chibnall in the same year did this better. …Or, you know, the film could stay with hard sci-fi and incorporate the sun obsession in a more realistic way. One of these two.

(The opening scene might still be my favorite part of the movie. And now I want a sun bath. It’s a few days before the winter solstice right now, and I just realized that I miss the sun.)

I think one of the weaknesses of the script is how unconvincing Capa is as a protagonist. At first the film looks like an ensemble story. Then it’s revealed that for some reason the mission depends on Capa alone, and that his life is more valuable than anyone else’s. Then we see that launching the payload is as easy as pressing a few buttons. Then he goes into the payload after the separation and has to fix something inside it. So what was he supposed to do according to the original plan? Was he always supposed to go down with the bomb and monitor it until the last second, was his message for the family to wait for him a lie? The stakes are very unclear throughout the final act.

The ship computer is also immersion-breaking. Why doesn’t it immediately raise the alarm about the misaligned shields, or the fire in the garden, or the intruder on board? Also, the structure of the Icarus, as far as I understood it, was: big shield – payload – smaller shield – main ship, correct? So why did the smaller shield immediately burn up after the separation? Wait, hold on, another question: if everything immediately starts burning if the ship is misaligned even to one degree, and the shield and the payload are always between the sun and the ship — then how does the observation deck with the direct view of the sun work?! This analysis of the ship on Youtube says that the observation window is cut in the middle of the payload section that’s not covered by the same panels as the rest of the shield, which sounds utterly bizarre to me.

I have to say, I lost a bit of respect for Alex Garland because of this script. There’s nothing here even close to the sharpness and nuance I saw in Ex Machina. Did he grow as a writer, or was that a lucky accident?

Media connections:

Let’s look on the bright side: even this film that took my entire weekend still wasn’t as stressful as another story about blowing up the sun that I encountered this year! If you know, you know.

I can’t not mention another soft sci-fi universe that I am currently immersed in and that has been influencing my expectations of spirituality in space stories. The way some characters in Sunshine faced the approaching wave of sunlight reminded me of how the characters in Rogue One faced the approaching wave of the light from the Death Star…

I want to mention “42” again, because I just found out that not only was the episode released almost at the same time as Sunshine, but the ship in it was also called “Icarus” and had to be renamed in post-production (source). That’s hilarious. Find another mythological reference!

Icarus, play “Hellfire” by The Mechanisms. Now that would have been the perfect song for the final titles…

[canonicallyginger]

Grace Chasity and Max Jägerman are kind of like two sides of the same coin. While we don't know all that much about Jägerman, we do have enough info to fill in some of the blanks, so that's the best place to start.

The song Literal Monster opens up with the nerds' opinions of him, but then he enters to pick on Ritchie. Not only does he target Ritchie, but he also lashes out at his teammates, who are the closest thing he has to friends. The only person he's not mean to is Grace. He's too into her to pick on her (although she definitely takes his flirting as an insult).

The song Literal Monster resumes shortly after she leaves. He mentions being aware that high school will be his peak, which is why he takes advantage of his status to control everything. He's only 18, so he's probably been told that he's not going to amount to anything.

Later, at the Waylon house, he drunkenly admits that he's afraid of ghosts and skeletons, and for a moment, he considers fleeing. But then he argues with himself: "[Run] where, Max? Back home so dad can call you a little cuck?" This is the only direct reference to his home life in the entire musical, but it's literally the reason he doesn't flee, so he must actively be worried about his dad finding out that he got scared. When he falls to his death, he's literally more concerned about looking like a wimp than he is about actively dying.

So despite only having a handful of details, we've got enough to get a broad picture. His dad is a bully, which led to him becoming a bully as well.

Meanwhile, the Chasity household is… pleasant, at least on their surface. They're puritans, and Grace fits the mold of what her parents expect of her perfectly. Until she starts to fantasize about Jägerman. The realization that she no longer fits her parents' expectations of her makes her snap, and she decides she needs to get back at Jägerman for it. It seems like her parents' love for her is conditional.

Those are two different kinds of emotional abuse, hinging on whether the kid is capable of meeting expectations.

Second point: how they perceive each other. She doesn't seem to understand him very well, but in the song Bully the Bully, she does claim that "he's just a nerd in disguise," which is a bit of a stretch, but it's not entirely wrong. Jägerman is almost clever with his bullying. He doesn't just beat people up. He also tends to go for puns and wordplay. Calling Ritchie "shit-lips," for instance, or his comment about intent and impact. He's not school smart, but he's quick-witted, and only Grace seems to have noticed.

Jägerman, likewise, is the only one that sees that Grace isn't the perfectly pure and chaste goody-goody everyone sees her as.

Point number three:

Jägerman doesn't have anyone that actually likes him. His teammates, who are the closest he has to friends, don't mourn him at all. They're actively happier without him around.

Grace is an outcast even among the nerds. She's such a judgmental prude that she doesn't seem to have any friends at all. The only reason she manages to band the nerds (plus Steph) together is because they were already interested in sticking it to Max.

Neither of them have anyone that actually likes them (even Grace's parents don't seem all that loving).

Another point: the references to Christianity. Grace being a devout Christian (specifically a puritan, given her opinion of catholicism), references her religion a lot, and while we don't have any clear evidence of what religion Jägerman was raised under (if any), he still references Christianity a handful of times.

For example, when asked why he wants Grace, his response is "Forbidden fruit, dickhole!" Obviously a reference to the Garden of Eden. Or the one time Grace hears him mention Judas.

Not to mention that when he dies, the two wooden planks he's impaled by form a cross, and he later comes back to life (Jesus parallel, adding to his god complex).

Idk, I don't have anything deep or meaningful to say about it, they just have a lot in common.

[casspurrjoybell-22]

Dream Eater - Chapter 2 - Part 2

*Warning Adult Content*

"Come in and tell me all about it."

Dante lets me go and leads the way inside.

His apartment is long and narrow and runs half the length of the warehouse.

One wall is all window and most of the space is taken up with art supplies.

Finished works line the other walls.

Like everything about them, Dante's paintings are elegant, refined and classically inspired.

Most feature nudes but none are obscene... which is surprising, coming from a sex-demon.

I've modeled for them in the past and my own face stares back at me from more than one place on the wall.

I look up at the largest example.

The guy in the painting has pale skin smooth as cream, eyes like liquid emeralds, silky brown curls and a mouth like ripe fruit.

Dante says they only paint the truth but the guy in the painting is not who I see in the mirror.

I glance over at the full-length one Dante uses for self-portraits.

The guy in the mirror looks like... well, he looks like he could use a shower and a warm meal... which, honestly, is why I'm here.

Dante's 'living room' is a collection of mismatched furniture arranged in a semi-circle against one corner.

I drop into a chair and they recline elegantly on a low sofa.

By the time I finish my story, they're sitting up, leaning forward with interest.

Even without recounting too many details, recalling the dream has me shaking again at the memory of so much fear and pain.

"And this guy has these dreams 'every time he sleeps'?" Dante asks, incredulous.

I nod.

"There's no way he's human. I mean, I'm a fucking 'dream-eater' and one time, was too much."

"You really think he might be Fallen?" Dante's deep purple eyes are bright with fascination.

Human religions are a mix of vague truths and fairy-tales.

Angels and Devils, Asuras and Devas, Aesir and Vanir, Gods and Titans... all are names for the same thing.

Basically, a long time ago there was this fight between two kinds of powerful beings and one side lost.

They are the Fallen.

They're dangerous and they're not supposed to be on this earthly plane.

"But I don't know how he could be," I say. "I mean, he didn't know I was a demon and he seems to genuinely thinks he's just an architect but that dream..." I shudder.

I can always tell when a dream is a memory or at least based on one.

Things are clearer.

Sometimes I can pick up smells and tastes, remembered sensations but nothing as strong as what I experienced with Damien Knight.

That shit was real.

"It sounds like one of the Hell realms, alright," Dante muses. "But if he somehow managed to escape from that, he's either very clever or one badass motherfucker or both. Whatever he is, he's trouble. I'd stay away if I were you."

"Don't worry," I laugh and rub my hands over my face. "If I never see him again it'll be too soon."

********

Dante agrees to let me stay with them until I can figure out my next move.

In exchange, they ask that I sit for them, as often and for as long as they ask.

This means hours of posing naked and motionless while Dante paints.

It's not my favorite thing but it beats the alternative.

By the end of the week, the thousand dollars is almost gone and I haven't had much luck with new clients.

I got two but they were both pretty weak.

One guy dreamed his checkbook wouldn't balance and he had to go through about ten thousand receipts to make sure they all added up.

The boredom wasn't worth the small amount of energy he gave me.

The other was a woman whose worst nightmare was that she came second in a marathon.

I mean, if I could finish a marathon at all, I'd be happy.

There was a lot of running and I woke up feeling like I'd lost energy rather than gained any.

Dante is generous but I can't stay with them forever.

I give myself two days to come up with new clients or a new plan.

After that... I don't want to prove Max right but I've done worse to survive.

I'm in the middle of redesigning my profile page on the job site, when a message from another social media platform pops up.

It's from Damien Knight.

Fuck.

Of course I used my real name on the job app and he must've traced it. I open the message.

Alex,

Since you haven't responded through the other site, I'm reaching out here. I'd like to schedule another session with you for my dreams. When can we meet?

Damien

I hesitate but then reply.

I'm booked. Not taking any clients.

There. Short and sweet.

He replies immediately.

I'll pay double your rate. $2,000 for two hours.

Ha ha... that's not double.

That's ten times my rate but he doesn't know that.

Proud of my resolve, I type...

'Sorry. No can do.'

I hit send.

Minutes tick by, and I start to feel hopeful that he got the message and gave up.

I go back to editing my profile, when another message pops up.

'I'll pay anything. Name your price.'

Jeez. Will this guy not take a hint?

On a whim, I answer.

$25,000.

His reply is immediate.

Done. When?

Shit. I stare at my screen.

You how people say stuff like, 'I wouldn't do that for any money?'

Well, most of the time they don't mean it and most of the time neither would I.

Not this time.

I'm sorry, I type.

I can't help you. Please stop contacting me.

I let out a long breath and fall back on the couch where I've slept for the past week.

My energy's low, and I need to find a nightmare soon... paying client or not.

There're always the hobos by the docks, if I get really desperate.

I'm frowning at that unpleasant thought, when another message pings.

Reluctantly, I reach for my cell-phone.

Once again, it's from Damien Knight.

I just turned down twenty-five grand but somehow I find these words harder to refuse.

I'm begging you. Please help me.

I stare at the message for ten minutes.

Finally, I type my reply.

Tomorrow 6pm

My finger hovers over the button.

I close my eyes and hit send. 

[pazodetrasalba]

With Usura

Dear Caroline:

This short post of yours was a follow-up to one by prophecyformula, itself a follow-up from a paper about about medieval finance (the levels of recursivity become quasi-escheresque!).

A lot of social practice related to religion, when this is prevalent, consists of finding clever ways of breaking the Law without actually, technically breaking it. One could argue that the Talmud is, amongst other things, precisely this. When religions legislative about non theological affairs, like taxation and lending money, the narrow economic views of the original milieu tend to get fossilized and, assuming a dogmatic respect to Scriptures and Commands, forces one inevitably to this sort of (from an outer perspective, rather funny) equivocating.

The usury taboo has long been a Catholic thing, and persisted long into the 19th and even partially, the 20th century. While popes were excommunicating all the main elements of Modernity (Liberalism, Religious Freedom, Socialism...), they didn't shirk, at least in theory, from the economic forms either. In one anecdote I remember having read in a history book, a catechism famously answered the question: "Can a Catholic read a liberal paper?" with "He may browse the section about stocks and prices". To God what is God's, to Caesar what is Caesar's...

One person who had a lot to say about this subject was probably the best ever American poet (and at the one and same time, a genius, a crackpot, a fascist and a nutter): Ezra Loomis Pound. In this, like in many things, he was drinking from the fountain of Medieval Literature. His Canto XLV, one of many of his on the topic, still reads like great poetry, even if it also reads as astronomically economically illiterate. Probably the reason why a lot of leftists like it so much, too.

Quote:

With usura hath no man a house of good stone

each block cut smooth and well fitting

that design might cover their face,

with usura

hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall

harpes et luz

or where virgin receiveth message

and halo projects from incision,

with usura

seeth no man Gonzaga his heirs and his concubines

no picture is made to endure nor to live with

but it is made to sell and sell quickly

Ezra Pound

[randomnameless]

That said… holy fuck. The writers attempts at being clever resulted in their characters looking like complete idiots. This is not a thing that should have been a twist, as it makes the characters come off as though they don't even live in Fodlan.

That is what a friend was telling me about VW/Claude's character in general, to make him "smart" or look like he has a point, everyone must act stupid or remain silent, else the gig will be up.

It's almost as if everyone is using the sauna, and then, Claude discovers hot water and treats it as a major discovery when, hey, if a sauna exists, hot water exists too.

Can we really believe Lorenz - the noblest noble of them all, who knows his heraldry and houses etc pretty well, since he only chases after nobles ladies - wouldn't have know, hell, even heard anything about Petra, the Princess of Brigid who is currently an Adrestia hostage?

Lorenz attended to Firdhiad School of magic, after the Tragedy of Duscur, and you tell me he didn't get the fact that Duscur is hated because of the Tragedy, and not because the Church said foreigners BaD ? Or he doesn't know that Faerghus trades with foreign countries and receives no flak from the Church because it would apparently counter their doctrine? That Lorenz?

Marianne is the heir of a House that thrived thank to commerce with "foreign islands", someone as pious as her would know if her dad's commerce is against the tenets of the religion she follows... but she doesn't say a thing?

Holding the Idiot Ball is a corollary to writing Claude, if you want to write Claude (at least in the devs' mind) his interlocutor has to hold that ball, else all of his ideas/words/biases/notions are immediately challenged.

For the Church to be BaD and Claude (and Supreme Leader!) to have a point, everyone must put their history/backgrounds/relationships on hold, so Claude will have a point : ultimately Lorenz will hold the biggest idiot plot ball to make Claude realise that, yes, hot water exists, Lorenz, with all the knowledge he should have as Erwin's heir about the Houses in Leicester, his bride hunting, and having traveled abroad, is now the one who has to pretend that pre TS Claude had a point, to show us how much Post TS Claude grew and learnt...

Especially since, as you said, Lorenz in CF knows the nobility only pays lip service to the Church thus can be xenophobic without needing the Church as a shield/justification for being asses to foreigners-

(not tackling House Goneril here, because they sure as hell don't the need the Church to have a reason not to like Almyrans, but hey, this plot point is as relevant as the War Assets in CF/AM).

Tl;Dr : the game wanted to hammer their "Church BaD" scapegoat to hide the real twist - while still wanting Supreme Leader to have a point so you'll be sad to fight against her - and it came at the cost of coherence, let it be in writing or with character interactions.

I mean, imagine if Claude "the church is the reason why Fodlan doesn't like foreigners and why they are not treated well" talked to... Seteth, and the game refused to give an idiot ball to Seteth.

"We hire people not native from Fodlan" + "the people of Fodlan had to fend off against invasions for the last centuries and those memories and resentment are hard to ignore and it can explain why some people in Fodlan don't like foreigners even if we try to preach acceptance regardless of the origins" + "we are targeted by the Western Church because we are too welcoming of foreigners, our doctrine is nothing like theirs" and in 3 hits Claude is striked out - VW ends.

I'm only half joking here - Fodlan has a lot of issues regarding the framing - it's not wonder why Rhea and the CoS in general is the shafted party, because the game's DNA is all about telling the player and having characters hammer how BaD they are, to make Supreme Leader have a point (and thus, make you feel bad to fight against the red emperor).

If Rhea and/or Seteth had their voice to the chapter - outside of pandering - both Claude and Supreme Leader's so called "points" would be rendered moot.

Hell, it took Zarhofl in Nopes to make people (myself included!) realise that to pretend Claude has a point, the characters must become stupid : Zarhofl!Claude affirms a lot of things Dimitri can debunk because he saw how wrong Claude is... But Dimitro suddenly carries an idiot plot ball, and so he will also nod and agree when Claude affirms the Church forces people to marry (even if Dimitri officiated one between nobles without the Church forcing anyone), the Church created nobility (even if Dimitri knows Sreng has a nobility system given how Leif is the grandson of a chieftain, aka a noble) and is the reason why the war started (even if in AG it's made clear that listening to the Empire's demands will make Faerghus "Adrestia's Northern province").

The wasted narrative potential of the Church of Seiros' weakness.

 The church of Seiros is rather infamous, as it is the organization overseeing the main Faith of Fódlan, akin to the Catholic Church in medieval Europe, including for the small territoires. 

The Church is seen by the Fandom and by many in-universe as truly powerful, controlling the Land through the devotion of the people, with a goal of ruling all of Fódlan as puppet masters at best. 

That however is factually false. 

The Church of Seiros is not some all-powerful organization, and isn't even unified. 

Rhea refuse to use her power to dictate policies of the nations, in fact, she many times is too meek, though it make sense.

The Eastern Church are weaponless and puppets of the lords of Leicester, the Southern Church was destroyed, and Faerghus is divided between the western and Central church, with the Western Church and it's aligned lords being traitors to both the Crown and central Church, and puppets of the Agarthans. 

Furthermore, the ideology of the Church, that promote the restraint from abusing Crests, is utterly ignored whenever convenient. 

And just look what happened with the Central Church being invaded! Many lords of Leicester and Faerghus swore themselves to Edelgard, and even in Adrestia, Edie didn't seem to face opposition. 

Though that last point is a bit horseshit, I'm French, and our own first revolution caused a Civil War with the Vendée region's commoners being the most famous for fighting to defend Crown, lords and Faith, it also show how Hresvelg propaganda against the Church, Hresvelg, not merely Edelgard, destroyed the ability of the Church to call to aid anyone south of Garreg Mach, or even East of it.  

The matter really is a wasted opportunity narratively, because the Church being all powerful is something done often in fiction, but beside the actively treacherous and xenophobic Western Church, none of the Churches is really doing manipulation, and the western Church's plots are guided by the Agarthans anyway.

I think there's a lot of possible stories from a Church-centric POV about how the Faith's weakness and scapegoat status, and the fact that so few care for it in favor of treating the organization as the genderbend Catholic Church on steroids is disappointing.

I've seen the comparison with the schrodinger cat being done with the Church and Rhea, the idea being that they're blamed whenever they "overstep", ignoring how their actions are usually justified, but at the same time blamed when they stay out of shits.

If anyone do know stories which exploit this potential, do tell.

[originalwinnercheesecake]

Gus Porter Appreciation Post

I have been wanting to do gull analysis of the important characters in The Owl house since like 2/3rds of the way through season 2. Now that the first season 3 special is right around the corner It feels like a good time to make posts and get views again.

Gus is a character I find particularly interesting. In season 1 and for part of season 2 Gus is there, but he is secondary comic relief, very token, and almost never seems to move or affect the plot. He slowly grows as a character with and develops arc’s though, and whats interesting to me is that unlike with characters like Luz/Eda/Willow I cannot really say when his character hit the turning point. I mean I know when his character had shifts, or started to focus more visibly on certain aspects of his character, a lot of the big moments his character goes through and core aspects that come to spotlight in episodes like “Through The Looking Glass” and “Labyrinth Runners” on re-watch actually start more subtle in the back ground of season 1 episodes.

Warning very long post underneath

Things with Gus that could have been done better

Okay first lets address some of the weakness’s of Gus’s character. I want to get those out of the way so that I can spend more time speaking his praises. Up top I call him 3 things “Secondary comic relief” “token” and “unimportant plot wise”. I stand by all three being true (at least for a lot of the series) and all three can be problems with his character. For the “secondary comic relief” one... King is out main source of comic relief. King is voiced by Alex Hirsch, who many fan’s recognize as the creator and voice actor for many Gravity Falls characters. He is a very funny man. King himself is also a funny character, because he sees himself as big and ferocious, has a large personality, and all of this is wrapped up into a like 2.5 ft tall fluffy little dog body. Gus’s first ever job in the show was to come assist Luz on adventures and mishaps where she would be away from Eda and King. Unlike King though Gus does not have a large personality, and with his a main trait being “Self-proclaimed “Human Expert”, when actually everything he says is wrong” he just never seemed as funny. Also King despite being mostly comic relief had lore and backstory from the beginning, taught Luz about demons and life with Eda, and was able to come up with clever ways to help defeat foe’s. Gus... shares his food, and can do basic distracting.

I called him “token”. that is a word that I know gets thrown around a lot, and there is some argument as to when it is appropriate and what it means. So let me give the definition I learned for “token”: One or a few characters that are different from the main cast in a noticeable way, and are added in mainly to give the illusion of this show/book/game being inclusive.” You know how in 90′s and early 2000′s shows about super hero’s/crime fighting a team will have that one (or maybe two if its a big team) female character because otherwise the show writers can be accused being sexist “don’t you think girls can be hero’s too”? Plus without her they will have more trouble doing cliche romance tropes. Or how about in Christmas specials you always have at least one who is briefly stated or shown to be Jewish, because of course the show runners know that Christianity isn’t the only religion, and Christmas is not the only holiday. Gus would qualify as a token character for two reasons. One is that he is one of the only few boys at Hexside who is learning magic, and is also important enough to have a name. The score for that I believe is Girls 11, Boys 5. Of those 5 Jerbo and Barkus were intended to be one off characters and while we saw them again they got no focus and virtually no development (Barkus is in a hexsis holdum club, Jerbo flew for that jerk professors flyer derby team that one time). Edric only shows up spuraticaly and rarely is shown at school. Mattholomule also rarely shows up, and when he does it is to be a parallel foil to Gus (more on him and that later). So Gus is our only frequently occurring boy to actively bee seen trying to become a witch.

Secondly he can count as a token Black character. The Owl house has prioritized  including 3D characters of different sexuality, and learning types. Its disability representation has also gained positive notice and appreciation by its audiance as well. But is does have some problems and struggles in race. I will start by saying that I am white, and as such I do not notice as many things as a POC would when it comes to racial inclusion, and my word should always come second to a POC’s when talking about this. But even I can notice that Amity’s character seemed completely thought out and written with fluid direction when Dana and the crew were still throwing Mabel, Webby, Star, Anne, every other off-beat, family carton, female protagonist of the last 10 years, and multiple popular teen cliche’s all against the wall to see what stuck as character for Luz. Even I can note the racism on giving Luz a new White Mom when she already had a Latina Mom. Then treating White Mom as her main/better/more fun mom, because Latino Mom tells tries to change Luz (get her to tone down her more destructive behavior while at school) but White Mom lets Luz do whatever she wants, up to and including praising her for crime. And even I can notice how Gus got way way less screen time and focus than characters who had lighter skin than him. Now here I want the opinion of POC fans: in season 2 Dana and the crew added 3 more POC characters (Raine, Darwin, and Darius), brought back 2 existing characters (Katya and Mattholomule) and, admittedly more towards the end of the season 2, gave Gus and Skara more focus. Did this feel to you like Dana and the Crew noticing and correcting an issue, or did it feel more like the damage control?

Gus’s plot relevance in episodes is kinda self explanatory. In 1B he does not even participate in shenanigans and mishaps that Luz,Willow, and Amity do. He is the group cheerleader. Which would be fine if they let him do all the cool tricks, acrobatics, and full on routines cheerleaders do. Combining his illusion powers with all of that would have been really awesome. But instead of doing any of that they just gave him two small flags that he waved back in fourth from the stands. That was his whole cheer routine, and most of his 1B character... Okay now I am finally done with writing out the flaws/problems with his character, remember I do love this character, and can move on with praises.

Gus’s magic abilities

Gus’s learning trope is that he the “stressed out gifted kid”. He is a protege magician when it comes to Illusion magic, and have even skipped 2 grades. Okay We do not know that much about how different grades work at Hexisde (it’s an all grade school) since Luz our main character see’s the school for the first time at 14. Given that Luz enrolls during a Summer semester I am guessing that Hexisde is a year round school (how do grade levels work at those? I do not know) that does like 4 three week breaks during each season. But I am going to guess that Elementary level kids learn about the different coven tracks and opportunity’s in them, middle school kids pick their track and learn the basics/early lessons, then High school kids perfect their magic and take more advanced lessons. We have never heard Lilith or Raine or any of the Blights mention Colleges, so maybe its not a thing on the isles and kids only leave when coven recruiters come and take them away...

Gus again skipped two grades and “Labyrinth Runners” implies he does it pretty young, he looks like 9 or 10 in his flashback of his first week in advanced classes. If Willow’s powers came late, could Gus have developed Illusion powers early? We also see that he wasn’t then and still is not now in complete control of his powers. My guess is that when Perry and Bump saw what Gus was capable of they moved him up those grades because they believed the best thing for Gus was to get help from an experienced illusion professor who could help him learn more control and mastery of his powers. We can see how great the Illusion professor is in “Labyrinth Runners”, and how much she cares about Gus.

In season 1 Gus mostly sticks to what seems like advanced basics. He could sentences in the air, and make copies of himself, and he was amazing at it. He was not doing one letter at a time, or even one word at a time, he could magic whole sentences into the air at once with great theatrics. His can make multiple copies at once. His copies still remain fully functional when he is away from them, and they can all talk. For clones made by a child, they are very advanced copies. In “Looking Glass Ruins“ Gus makes an illusion large enough to cover a small grave yard, and then In “Labyrinth Runners” his school. In that episode he also pockets a powerful magnifier glass that lets him peer into foes heads and call fourth bad memories. This gives Gus a way to cause actual damage to Belos in “King’s Tide”.... But Gus may have been hit some recoil on that.

This brings me to another part of Gus’s character that I love: He gets progressively stronger through out the show, but he never reaches the ceiling of his potential. He can give his copies more advanced mobility and speaking skills, But when he does they are less likely to do what he wants. See the that only pretended to take notes for him when he skipped, and the one that he made when he wanted to interview himself who promptly told him “I would rather die than reveal my secrets”. He is not able to make large illusions in season 1, and in season 2 they tire him and he still loses control if they go over a certain size. He learns to use the magnifier glass quickly, but he can only us it on an already subdued opponent and using it may pose danger to him in the process. Gus has all the potential to become a mater illusionist, and the dreams and ambition to become even more. But all of this will be one day in the future. For now he is a kid who needs to keep studying and practicing so he can get better, smarter, and wiser.  This brings me to my next point about Gus

Relatable Fears

First off let’s look at the pressure Gus puts on himself. He loves to brag about getting to skip two grades. He can be a show off with his magic, and when mentioning that his dad wants him to become a master illusionist he laughs says “That’s easy”, and declares that he will become this powerful and new figure in relational politics and end a long standing feud between the boiling Isle residents and the Giraffe’s.

When tries to help Willow deal with a pixie infestation with an illusion and it doesn’t help at all, and she gets hurt anyway, He goes through a huge existential crisis and starts wondering openly questioning if the illusion track is even worth studying. Some bullies trick him into helping them clear a way to the graveyard for them, before revealing they do not want to be his friends and do not care about his feeling’s or opinions. Gus blames himself for all of this. Who was he kidding thinking Bria actually cared? Well it’s not his fault. HE thought Bria cared because she did a really good job of putting on a show of acting like she cared. Its pretty high key hinted that he does this all the time at Glandis and that’s how she keeps her three “friends” and probably others under her thumb. Heck its low key hinted that she got Mattholomule in so much trouble that his parents took him out of Glandis at least in part to get him away from her and the members of their group. Gus isn’t stupid, Bria is just a skilled manipulator.

After Bria Gus and the cast, unfortunately meet, Adrian Graye Venworth. Gus see’s through his first illusion and saves Edric and the other kids from being tricked into getting sigiled. But Later Gray and a member of the Emperor’s Coven trick Gus into almost going with them by casting an illusion to make the Coven Scout look like Willow. Hunter See’s through the Illusion and grabs Gus yelling that it is a trick. Gus is devastated that he could not tell the difference between his best friend and an illusion and concludes that he must be stupid and have something seriously wrong with him. A few things that I will point out here (and I am so glad Hunter points out to Gus in the episode). Gus is not at fault at all. The coven guard pretending to be Willow fooling him? They showed up when Gus was in danger, scared, and desperate to find help so of course he feels a wave of relief at Willow. Hunter saw through it because he has rained himself to never drop his guard (he has had to) But Gus has no reason to distrust Willow. Even if he was fooled it was never a fair fight. Gus is a gifted kid, but he is still only a 12 year old kid, and is still learning. The Emperor’s coven is made up of all the most ambitious students and highest scores AFTER they graduated school, past tons of vigorous recruitment tests, and devoted their lives to nothing but improving their magic and serving the Emperor. Adrian is a Coven head, a.k.a the top ranking Illusionist on The Titian. Him and all he guards are older and have both more training and experience than Gus. They were able to fool Bump and the Hexside teachers too, and none of them are fools. Gus’s only problem is the pressure he puts on himself.

To go a bit deeper into Gus’s fears, we see him began to work through his fears in season 2 but I think his arc with fear and overcoming it actually starts in season 1′s ‘Enchanting Grom Fight”. Remember at the end of it when Willow and Gus are helping with the clean up and that peace of Grom morphs into their fears. We see that Willow is afraid of ladybugs (???) and that Gus is afraid of clowns. Now Clowns are a pretty common, it would be enough to assume Gus is scared of their big red grins, yellow teeth, or giant stomping feet. But in “Through the Looking Glass Ruins” through that Illusions are not able to help solve his friend’s issues like Gus hopped he loses faith in them and himself. Then h starts calling Illusions “party tricks” and himself a “clown”. Which descends to “Stupid”, “Fool”, and “Kidding himself” in “Labyrinth Runners”. You add all this together and it equals Gus not being scared of clowns because of creepy make-up, oversized cloths, or how in-your-face some clowns are. We only see the clown image Grom used on Gus from the back but I am gonna gus its front looked kinda similar to Gus himself. “Clown” is the bad name Gus calls himself when he gets angry/scared/or frustrated at his own mistakes. Gus is scared that maybe he is destined to be a clown. Maybe his dad, teachers, friends, and himself are all fooling themselves when they call him someone special, and maybe everything he is good at is just stupid, unimportant, party tricks.

THAT IS NOT TRUE. Gus’s is a great friend and his support has done a lot for Willow, Luz, King, Mattholomule, and Hunter. He has been a real light and the dark for them all. While his illusions have limits, he starts finding knew things he can do with them throughout the season as he improves (and we thankfully say god bye to the Gus the uninspiring cheerleader and the two tiny flags that all he does is flick back and forth). Gus’s own magic feets even hit Heroic status on at least three occasions “Through the Looking Glass Ruins”, “Labyrinth Runners”, and “Kings Tide” where if not for him things would have gone much worse and potentially innocent lives could have been ruined or lost. Gus can, is, and will be great witch. He just needs to take some time, and come into it in his own way.

Gus’s development into a more empathetic friend and his growth and maturity through out the show.

Just a small heads up most of this will be about Gus’s relationships with other males. I know, I know Willow and Luz are his best friends. I am not trying to undervalue his relationships with them, they are great friends and very important to him. The reason I am not talking much about them is that his friendships with them start from their first meeting and remain really consent throughout the show. There is never really any change. They are all friends, Willow and Luz know he is younger by a couple years but they do not treat him any different for it. Gus loves this and is super protective of both of them, trying to jump on or “Gus chomp” any big kid who calls one of the Trio “losers’ or tries to give them a hard time.

Let’s start with the first time we see Gus in his element. Gus’s time as the President of the Human Appreciation Society (a school based club he started). This was Gus at his absolute worst, most jerkish, and it got him nothing. Gus says in the episode that he created the club because being the youngest kid in his grade he was always overlooked and wanted to create a place where that would not happen to anyone. When he says that it is the only time that he is either kidding himself or just being stupid. Because Gus is a tyrannical leader that and overlooks every other person there. No really he is. Gus calls himself “The President��� but also made himself a crown, like he’s the king. He has a huge list of rules that he made himself and that no one else is allowed even comment on. He is the only person allowed to touch the objects, He is the only one allowed to make decisions (he legit see’s the group wanting to vote as anarchy), and judging by his reaction to Matty dumping out his backpack Gus may even be the only one who is usually allowed to bring in artifacts. Gus made himself a place where he would get to be in charge of kids older than him and they would have to listen to what he says. Well later in the show we see that Bigger Kids used to take advantage of Gus’s trust and trick him into doing their work for him. These are his worst memories.So seeing that I can see why Gus would want a place like the H.A.S., but that is an explanation for his behavior and not a excuses. He is acting like his old bullies and it is getting him nowhere. The bigger kids in his club must stay because they are interested in learning more about human culture, because they do not seem to care for or like Gus. When Mattholomule challenges him for leadership two kids support him and one just proclaims himself “an undecided voter”; none of them back Gus. When Bump kicks Gus out of the club none of the kids care or ever speak to him again.

Losing the club was painful for Gus in the short term because it was a club he cared about (and it led to 1b Gus and his boring obsession with two tiny flags. They really could not have also given him a horn, some lights, or put the flags on a baton), but after the way he had acted I cannot say he did not deserve to lose it, and he did grow from this. His relationship with King is the first one to show his growth. In “Really Small problems” Luz gets the day off from school and decides to take King to the carnival. While there she runs into Willow and Gus and asks King if they can join them. Gus is really condescending to King here, but King agrees to let them join for Luz. Willow and Gus do not listen to what King wants to do, gradually take more of Luz’s attention, and eventually fully exclude King. This drives King so crazy that he buys a potion to make Gus and Willow temporarily disappear. Which of course he bought from a con artist, its actually a scam that gets everybody in trouble, and King has to apologize and explain his loneliness to the other kids. He tried to make peace with Gus and Willow by offering them both pieces of broken friendship necklaces which they both take. Gus thanks King saying that he has always wanted “A jagged piece of cheap metal”. Willow gets on to Gus, I guess believing he is still being condescending, but I do think Gus was checking himself. Two episodes later when everyone is getting excited about Grom Gus gets to be the announcer and he goes to King to ask if he would like to be his assistant. When King gets stage fright Gus finds him and helps him through it in a much more tactful and friendly way. Gus is 3-4 years older than King, so to King Gus is a big kid. When King confessed the way Willow and Gus made him feel, I think this was the first time Gus was able to see his former bullies in his own actions. He did not like it and he makes steps in later episodes to be more friendly to King and treat him like one of the group.

Now Let’s go to Mattholomule. Gus was a jerk to the other members of his club, but when Mattholomule does his whole “scared and lonely new kid who just wants friends act (which I know was not completely an act)” Gus believes it and really does seem genuine in wanting to be Mattholomule’s friend afterwards. When Mattholomule turn on them and sends Luz to the detention pit, Gus goes to save her, and Mattholomule gets literally dragged along in the crossfire. Gus could have left Mattholomule to rot down there. There is a few options as to maybe why. Maybe Gus feels responsible since he kinda started this whole mess. Maybe since Mattholomule has the most experience with dentition pits Gus and Luz thought they could need him in the escape. What ever reason Gus shows genuine kindness in recusing Mattholomule as well as Luz. That is not an act that Gus gets repaid back to him right away. As soon as they get out and Bump see’s what they did to the pit, he tries to blame Luz. Gus takes all the blame, part of which should got to Matty, but Matty only speaks up when he see’s that he still has the opportunity to steal Gus’s club. Just to be clear on Mattholomule as H.A.S.P: He is a jerk, he will be just as tyrannical as Gus was, and like Gus the club made him no friends, no more popular, and any power he thinks the title gives him is in his head. Gus has to leave and become better.

But in “Through the Looking Glass Ruins” we get more back story on Mattholomule. We meet his old crew (whom his brother does not seem to like him hanging out with anymore) and see that they are all better than him at magic and hear how his lack of polished skill led to other kids making Glandis very difficult for him. Mattholomule essentially dealt with the same issues as Gus but on the opposite end. Mattholomule tries his best to keep Gus away from the other kids, and Gus thinks this is just him being mean. Only to find out to late that these other kids are just using them both. Because Gus was once kind to Matholomule, something that try as he might Matty has apparently not been able to stop thinking about or being grateful for, Matty goes back to help him. After watching Gus defend the graveyard from his old crew Matty finally makes the right choice for the right reason (reasons other than power or dept) and offers to help fix it up. Then, at hearing the illusion history may have to be hidden away, Matty suggests that he and Gus can build it a stronger defense system. Gus has a new friend now (who may one day also become more than a friend, they do share interests and passions) and has renewed faith in both that illusion magic matters, and that people aren’t all bad, and are capable of changing for the better.

These lessons all come to play during Gus’s relationship with Hunter. Gus does not really like Hunter when they first meet. Hunter or “Caleb Jasper BloodWilliams” is a strange, rude mouthed, big kid, who Gus has not seen before, but getting Willow’s flyer derby team approved suddenly depends on him... It turns out “Caleb” is really Hunter, a.k.a the Golden Guard, and he is here to trick them into the roughest coven of them all. Yes Hunter regrets it and goes back to save them (actually he may have done it more for their palisman than them, but he still helped them). He did the right thing, only after lying to them, scamming them, and putting all of them in danger. Gus is not obligated to forgive Hunter or try and be his friend the next time meet. When they meet again Gus half expects Hunter to try and pull the same crap, until he learns that Hunter is on the run. Then he offers him help and a listening ear. Gus did this because he knows that Hunter is not 100% bad, feels empathy for how alone/confused/scared Hunter is, and he knows people can change for the better. Gus has come along way from the bratty, vindictive, kid he sometimes acted like in season 1a. To him these basic acts of kindness do not seem like much, but to Hunter, who is going through so much, they mean the world. It’s because of Gus’s influence that Hunter finds the courage to come out of hiding and publicly supports the rebel side. This indirectly helps lead to all 6 kids (I included King) being together on the day of Unity and able to help each other against Belos.

Gus Porter All and All

Gus is a really great, well thought out character. He is in the background more than some others, and I wish the show had brought him to the forefront more (I do believe that if the show had run longer we would have gotten more of him and Matty protecting the graveyard, Matty introducing him to his favorite book series, and Gus meeting Steve. Grrr). But even when Gus is stuck in the background he still has some really interesting arc’s going on and you miss out if you just dismiss him. I also appropriate Gus getting to do important things and be a hero from the background, he reminds me of Codename: Kids next Door’s numbah 5 in that respect. She mostly stayed out of the spotlight by choice, but was indisputably the backbone of her team. Gus’s journey through school and the insecurities that he deals with remind me a lot of myself when I was younger as well as friends I had back then. I am willing to bet a lot of kids in school can relate to Gus and I like how so much of his feelings and situation are shown to us instead of told. Its nice that kids can see him, and have him to help learn to not doubt or be so hard on them selves, You are special, the right people will see you as such. IF the voices in your head call you names, then tell them to shut up because they do not know.

[kimmimaru]

Continuing my FF7 character headcanons, my next one is Tseng. Now, to me, Tseng is the most dangerous of the Turks. Not because he’s ‘evil’ (he’s not), but because he’s patient and clever. I think in one of my fics I had Hojo describe him as the spider in the center of the web and I feel like that’s an apt descriptor. We never see him actively fight but I imagine he can and is good at it too but his real strength is his brain. I see him as an expert manipulator as well, a man in his position would likely have to be considering the people he works with. I feel like Tseng is a deeply conflicted man. Watching his progression through the FF7 stories, from BC and CC where he’s relatively approachable and seemingly friendly (esp to Zack Fair who I would say was someone he considered a friend) to the man he becomes in the OG and Remake proves it to me. Also the other Turks’ reaction to this change show that this is new and they don’t like it. The reason Reno and Rude get so angry and shocked at Tseng’s change is because it’s NOT who he is, if it was it wouldn’t have been surprising. This is the same man who sent his Turks out to track Zack Fair down to not only help him (which, if found out, would have resulted in their deaths. Doubt Shinra would be so forgiving a second time even with his son’s intervention) but to give him Aerith’s letters. I feel that the cause of this conflict is partly due to a sense of helplessness, at least to an extent. Realising that, despite being director of a pretty powerful department, he doesn’t really have the power to change much until he allies himself with Rufus and partly due to a facade he’s convinced he needs to have to be able to do his job. I have a headcanon of Tseng as having a very awkward and difficult relationship with religion. Wutai has always struck me as a pretty religious country and since that’s where I, and many other fans, think he comes from it feels right to me. I like to make up various reasons for this in my fics. On a similar note I headcanon Tseng as being considered very ‘odd’ in his native country. Someone who struggled to fit in, didn’t have many friends in his age group. So, I see him as having been socially excluded except for maybe one or two people in his homeland.  Tseng’s hair is important. I know that in many cultures across the world hair has cultural and religious significance and the fact that Tseng, who is in a job that involves fighting wears his so long seems an odd thing to do unless it had some other purpose. I mean, it’s easy to grab someone’s hair if it’s long and use it to disable them and stuff. (Reno’s hair strikes me as more to do with laziness than anything else, lol). Also that scene in BC when Tseng properly takes over from Veld he lets his hair down to indicate that the Turks are entering a new ‘era’ with him at the head. This seemed very significant to me.  Tseng had great respect for Aerith and even loved her. Not necessarily in a romantic way, although I know that is a ship but he spent a LOT of his life watching over her and that would easily breed some kind of feelings. I know the other Turks are very protective of Aerith but Tseng’s relationship with her is much deeper and much more complicated. Ok, on to my final major headcanon about Tseng. I believe that Tseng works with Rufus to actively bring down his father after BC. This decision is driven partially by revenge on his part, I believe that Tseng absolutely hates and is disgusted by old President Shinra. Mostly because he tried to have the Turks executed and forced Tseng to shoot his own mentor but also because I just don’t see Tseng being able to even remotely respect a man driven purely by greed. Now, Rufus is also greedy in his own way but he also has other motivations as well. I feel that Tseng is very protective of his found ‘family’, more than he lets on. He contrives the whole plot of faking two people’s deaths in order to protect them, he would do anything for them including plot to bring down President Shinra with his son.

[centaurianthropology]

Impressions of ‘A City that Never Sleeps’ (NY by Night Season 2 Episode 1)

Less of a full summary this time around, more just thoughts and a smidgeon of analysis. 

A new night in New York, and a new group of Kindred.  We move away from the rough streets and Anarch freedoms and confusions, and we move over into the glittering world of the Camarilla, where everything is a guilded cage, beautiful but restricting.  The fashion is immediately different as well.  All the characters are impeccably dressed, with one glaring exception, and they all move and talk as if they either own the world or are just waiting in line for their turn to do so.  

It’s smart to set such a different vibe, to create a sense of the divisions in the city, the sense of haves and have-nots, but also of freedom and restriction.  In the Camarilla far more than the Anarchs, appearances are deceiving, and despite all the characters but Brawn dressing the part of Camarilla political animals, only one of them really plays the part.

Khalida is our first big surprise of the game, and the first indication of exactly how closely tied this new coterie really is to our favorite Anarch disasters.  Specifically, it turns out that Fuego is not Rafferty’s only childe. Khalida is far better at playing the dutiful childe, sweet and respectful and always willing to do what she’s told.  She and Rafferty at least seems superficially close, but given Ventrue politics, it may only be skin deep.  After they’re away from Rafferty she certainly seems much more afraid of him than she let on in his presence, which may speak to a rougher relationship than they displayed in company.  It seems at least possible that Khalida is bonded to Rafferty in a similar way to Fuego, or is only just beginning to break that bond, and fears his power over her.

Kiem initially comes across as young and impressionable.  She says she’s new to town, just settled in, and her sire is apparently friends with Rafferty, hence why she’s been summoned to his jazz club. She talks about wanting a mission. She also talks about faith, and it seems that, while Coco apes religion more as a means of control, Kiem is a true believer.  Later in the episode in the gallery, she views the paintings as demonic.  She has to destroy them and destroy Lizzie for painting them.  It seems almost compulsive.  And despite her appearance and initial impression, she also seems to be built to brawl.  Her specialty is in grappling, and she’s both fast and very strong.  It’s not a traditional Toreador build, but it does put one in mind of Qadir, the Toreador sherrif of New York.  One wonders if they’re acquainted, or even if he’s her sire. She doesn’t talk a lot about her sire, and so far their relationship seems neutral.  She seems eager to settle in and find her place in the Camarilla, but she’s also interesting in that she seems like the first to really question if the restrictions placed on them by the Camarilla are worth the apparent benefits. Something tells me there is more conflict in her than I first thought.

She also apparently has a thing for earlobes?  I have no idea what that means.

Brawn is the definitely the most obvious odd one out for this coterie.  He plays the part of the dumb thug, again a departure from the ‘clever spy’ trope that Nosferatu often lean into.  However, the clan compulsion to know secrets still seems to be there, and when Rafferty mentions that he doesn’t know the Anarch numbers in the city but wants to, Brawn visibly perks up.  

He’s also perhaps the most overtly funny of the group.  His one-liners are fantastic, his comments to everyone were some of my favorite of the evening, and several of his lines made me laugh out loud (“I like art, and am called Brawn.”).  His sire is called Glass Jaw, a fearsome kindred that runs an underground fighting ring. And Brawn is clearly no slouch there either, giving Airbox a run for his money as they tangled at the gallery.

And Coco?  She seems the most obviously contradictory.  Her appearance says ‘perfect Camarilla kindred’, and during her bestial failure she openly tried to show up all the others by reciting the six traditions first.  She seems reluctant to engage with them or take much interest in them beyond their working relationship.  As Brawn and Kiem fought Lizzie and Airbox, she elected to leave to go after Argus and Angela, leaving her alone to tangle with an older, stronger vampire.  She clearly prefers hanging in the shadows, collecting information, and dealing with her problems with her powers, rather than socially engaging.  She also apparently doesn’t sound as she’s coming across in to the others in New York. While she speaks with the Coterie and with Argus, her accent is American, but she takes on something that sounds very different when speaking with her Beast.  I’m not sure which accent it is—I didn’t hear it for long enough to pin it down—but it suggests she traveled some distance to get to New York, and no wonder.  It’s one of the few cities where the Lasombra are accepted in the Camarilla, and she seems to want that badly.

Rafferty, meanwhile, seems to be playing the new Richter for this season.  Interestingly, he doesn’t sound at all like he does in Fuego’s head. He’s a bit colder, a lot more pragmatic and uninspiring than Fuego remembers him.  Khalida hears him far more clearly in her head, and seems to have a better understanding of him.  He’s preoccupied with the Anarchs, noting that, while they put on a  strong front, the Cam are worried about the numbers and strength of the Anarchs now that Torque is in charge.  This may or may not be impacted by Rey’s actions in the penultimate episode of last season, and whether or not Lavash brought Rey’s claims to Rafferty’s attention.  It definitely has something to do with the rumors that Annabelle has come to town looking to stir up a fight in a city that has, more or less, remained peaceful and stable for several decades.

He also acts as a teacher, more pedantic and direct than Richter.  This is a nice way to emphasize that the Camarilla are less free, but generally better taught than the piecemeal education of the Anarchs.  They run through the six traditions, which Coco preempts, and once the ground rules are laid down, Rafferty charges them with investigating a gallery.  If they succeed he will give them a boon, and I imagine they might get domain somewhere.

The Gallery heist emphasizes several things.  First, it clearly demonstrates everyone’s skills and weaknesses.  Khalida is a great controller and manipulator, but not a fighter.  Coco prefers to stick to the shadows, but also goes off on her own and might get in over her head without noticing.  Brawn is incredibly tough, giving Airbox far more of a run for his money than Rey managed, but he’s also not at all bright.  And Kiem is also very tough, but has very little self-control and tends to fly off the handle.  I didn’t expect her to so closely parallel Rey, but there we are.  

It’s difficult not to draw comparisons between the two coteries and the two seasons.  The Camarilla has a drastically different vibe than the Anarchs.  The Anarchs are scrappy and poorly organized.  The coterie is necessary in large part because they are all so vulnerable, many don’t know their sires, and kindred like Isaac have to pass on what little information they have to those with even less.  There is a sense of desperation and living on the edge in the Bronx that is, at least on the surface, not there in Manhattan. Like at the beginning in his description of Manhattan and the jazz club, there is an emphasis on beauty and opulence on this side of the river.  Brawn stands out in Manhattan, while in the Bronx no one would bat an eye at how he dresses.  The others know better how to play the game, and lean into high fashion and a sense that they are better than everyone around them.  The ambition is more naked.  Everyone there seems to act either like they own the world, or that they’re in line to do so and very ready to shiv the person in front of them.

It’s an interesting contrast, but it also means that which setting you prefer will likely influence which season you prefer.  I’ve always enjoyed the scrappy underdogs, so I love the Anarchs in this setting.  The new actors this season are very good across the board, but the characters don’t grip me as immediately as Serif, Rey, Fuego, and Isaac did.  I think they could, after a time getting to know them, but I perhaps don’t have the immediate and visceral love of them that I did the other coterie.  

And the seasons are almost immediately crossing over, with appearances not only from mentioned characters like Rafferty, but also known quantities like Lizzie, Airbox, Argus, and Alicia.  This is a living city with factions crossing streams and bouncing back and forth far more than either would care to admit.  It’s possible we’re setting up the crossover for season 3 already, showing that the Camarilla and the Anarchs could be a united front with free movement, if they felt like it.  Or at least there is more in common there than different, and they could be pushed together with external impetus.

But bringing in so much from last season right away also creates a sort of tension in me.  While I may not be too attached to Airbox and Lizzie, I have seen them multiple times.  I want to see more Lizzie interactions.  I’ve seen Airbox put Rey through a window (and he does it again here, as it’s apparently his favorite move).  So I wasn’t as clearly rooting for the new coterie to beat them in the gallery fight.  I found myself wanting Airbox and Lizzie to escape, and our new coterie to start the season with a defeat rather than a victory.  Likewise, I definitely didn’t want Coco harming Argus and Alicia before Serif has a chance to deal with things herself.  

At the same time, I appreciate how dynamic the world is.  Serif may have to deal with a completely different situation than she expected if Coco hurts Argus or Alicia. I also found it interesting that it was Serif whose name was the first to really come up this season.  Not Isaac, with his ‘Sabbat’ connections, not Rey who wants to join the Camarilla, not Fuego with her identical ties to Rafferty as Khalida.  But Serif.  The one no one the Camarilla had never even heard of.  I like that choice, as it’s an unexpected first bridge.  I’m sure the others will be dragged in as well, but having her be first is fascinating.

We’re setting up season 3 to be a very different landscape than the one we left in the minivan at the end of season 1.  All the players are still on the board, still very active and still getting into trouble and danger.  Things won’t pause for Serif’s sire or her mother, nor will they pause for Lizzie, Airbox, and all the other secondary characters we met last season.  So it makes an exciting question as to what both coteries are hurtling toward.  

One another, of course, but how?  Will they be antagonistic, or will they work together?  We’re already seeing parallels, even at the surface glance we’ve gotten for this new coterie.  Kiem and Rey seem like they’d have a lot weirdly in common.  Brawn and Isaac both feel like the odd man out, while Isaac and Coco have the ex-Sabbat clans thing in common.  I can’t even imagine what Khalida and Fuego might be like together. Or Coco and Serif, both drawn to the shadows and to unseen powers.  There are a lot of potentially interesting dynamics being set up.

But in the meantime, I do want to get to know this new coterie.  The Camarilla are far more about masks and politeness than the Anarchs, so we get less of an open and honest look at these kindred right away. Will they manage to be friends? Just coworkers?  Something else unexpected?  What lies beneath the polite masks (or the thug’s mask that Brawn wears)? I am looking forward to finding out, and seeing how the story continues to intertwine until this coterie and our Anarch coterie are thrown onto a collision course.

[rubberduckyrye]

-inhales-

No no, it's both! The Fatui are inspired by the Commedia dell'arte. It was an early form of professional theater, originating in Italy, that was popular throughout Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries. At least that's what wikipedia says. I actually want to learn about it more myself, since I happen to be Italian.

If the song "Bohemian Rhapsody" only took the name "Scaramouche" (Which means "Little Skirmisher" in Italian btw) then his backstory is more loosely based on the song than the character from Commedia dell'arte. However, if the Comedia dell'arte character, Scaramouche, has a commonly known story that the Genshin character follows, then his character is probably more based on the play.

However, from what research I've done, there is no like... "set story" for these characters. Wikipedia doesn't show anything specific (even stating that Scaramouche (Commedia) can sometimes be the owner of The Dog, or be very clever or very foolish depending on the actor's interpretation. There's a pretty great video done talking more about the Commedia dell'arte influences and stuff here that I think might be worthy of watching!

The song "Bohemian Rhapsody" has a lot more influences that tie in with Scaramouche (Genshin) than Scaramouche (Commedia) has with his Genshin counterpart. From the very opening of the song, we hear "Is this the Real Life? Is this just Fantasy?" which when you look back at Scaramouche's (Genshin) appearance, the first ever event "Unreconciled Stars", ends on the note of Scaramouche asking if "The stars, the skies, are they real?"

I think a lot of people miss the first half of the song because the second half is the one that mentions Scaramouche (Commedia) by name, but I suspect that the first half might be more "explored" in the upcoming 3.3 patch with Scaramouche (Genshin). Though already the first half does seem like it'd be really close to Scaramouche's (Genshin) internal dialogue, and the mention of wind is, of course, represented in Scaramouche's (Genshin) future Anemo vision.

Then of course we get to the second half of the song, where a lot more ties to Scaramouche (Genshin) are made. "Thunderbolts and Lightening" being a memeable one, but did you know that the usage of the word "Bismillah" might also be one as well? According to this article, it is an Arabic word and refers to the Qur'an's opening phrase. Considering that the use of this word, a Muslim word used in religious contexts, and considering that Islam is a very dominant religion in Egypt, the main inspiration for the desert portion of Sumeru... And considering that Scaramouche's (Genshin) main story line seems to be taking place in Sumeru, it's kind of a really niche little detail that fits in, doesn't it?

There is also the mention of Beelzebub (also spelled Beelzebul) which is Raiden Ei's real God name--and Raiden Ei is Scaramouche's (Genshin) creator.

There are also emotional, hateful parts of the song that just fit. "You think you can stone me and spit in my eye?" translates emotionally to "You think you can get away with hurting me?" and "So you think you can love me and leave me to die?" emotionally translates to "You think you can get away with betraying me?"

I think another thing to keep in mind is that Wanderer's "drip marketing" was posted on HoYoVerse's official Twitter Account on October 31st, the same day the song "Bohemian Rhapsody" was released in 1975.

So yeah! I'd say that Scaramouche's (Genshin) was heavily influenced by this song. There are too many references to it, imo, to just be coincidences :'D

News just in, I live under the biggest rock in existence 'cause I never heard the full song before--

[a-secret-bolton-vampire]

The Crow's Eye: A Study in Evil

TW: Rape, CSA, Donald Trump, religion

Long time since I last did anything, but Euron has been on my mind a hell of a lot lately, so I decided to write a thing about him. Do be warned, this is the longest thing I've written, and it is very, very long.

There are many villains in A Song of Ice and Fire: Tywin, Cersei, the Mountain, the Others, Roose, Rorge. The most despicable of the lot though would be Joffrey, Ramsay, & Euron. There is something that makes them so hatable yet they have such a large imprint on the story. Despite there being little to almost no grey in any of these three characters, they each have subtle nuances to them that makes them compelling villains.

Joffrey is the deconstruction of the pretty prince. He has his mothers and fathers good looks, yet he is a brutal, psychopathic tyrant. He enjoys hurting and humiliating people, and is an entitled brat. He thinks that everyone will listen to him because he's the king and that's whats to be expected. Yet, we see that he was neglected by Robert and at least some of his intense cruelty was part of trying to impress or follow in Robert's footsteps (who was a famed warrior and often hunted).

In addition, being raised by Cersei, who herself was raised by Tywin who has questionable logic for leadership, couldn't have helped much either. However, Joffrey is simply still a child. An utterly sadistic tyrant, but still a child. He loves to belittle and torment but he is too ineffectual to even fight in battle, and on multiple occasions he is easily shut down by other people (like Tywin, or Cersei, or Tyrion). He was the first real villain of the series. From here on, the villains get intensely more vile and terrifying.

Ramsay himself is not without some nuance. His mother was the wife of a miller, and when they married without Roose's approval, he had the miller hanged and raped his wife. Growing up, Ramsay was with his mother, who had been given certain gifts by Roose on the condition she stay quiet about the rape. Yet as Ramsay grew, he grew wild, all the while his mother and his servant Reek pushed him towards trying to claim his rights, despite his bastard status.

Ramsay greatly resents being a bastard, and you could also look at his insanely cruel actions as him trying to live up to the Bolton name. In addition, Roose is a very cold man, and there is no real warmth between father and son. Ramsay killed Domeric out of jealousy, and Roose shows no affection or care for Ramsay. The upbringing of Joffrey & Ramsay are obviously not excuses for the crimes against humanity they routinely commit, but it provides insight into how they became what they ended up being.

Joffrey was a villain that shows what can happen when spoiled children end up in a position of high authority, and is a threat to those already low down in society. He's essentially a bully but with the power that comes with royalty. Ramsay is a different sort of villain, more akin to a serial killer from psychological horror films. He is clever, a capable trickster, and unrepentant sadist who enjoys torturing and breaking people down so they can serve him as his own personal pets. Yet, like Joffrey, he has a temper that is hard to control, and his inability to control his cruelty is what will eventually do him in.

Enter Euron Greyjoy. While I don't like saying that Joffrey was the first act villain, Ramsay was the second, and Euron is the third, these are three human villains that we feel the most emotions about, due to their impact on the plot and their unbelievable cruelty. Both Ramsay & Euron are villains straight out of horror, but their horror is very different. I will be breaking down Euron's character, his backstory, his intents, his narrative relevance, and his ultimate role in the Song. So, join me on this long, winding adventure into horror, gods, & madness.

The Slow Build Up

To start off, I want to give a scene by scene break down of Euron as he is shown chronologically in the books, to get the sense of the narrative around him. We first hear about Euron in A Clash of Kings, when Theon arrives to Pyke, and makes note of who is and isn't there.

Old men were cautious by nature. His father was old now, and so too his uncle Victarion, who commanded the Iron Fleet. His uncle Euron was a different song, to be sure, but the Silence did not seem to be in port.

At this point, I don't know if GRRM was already planning for Euron to be a super important character to the plot. Instead of having this big complex plan, I think that he had an idea of who Euron was and that he would be important later, but left it ambiguous enough to expand on when needed.

This first mention indicates that wherever Euron was, he was not like his brothers Balon & Victarion, and is notably absent from the rest of his family. You might even call him the black sheep of the family. Still, there are more things about Euron that are mentioned that build him as a potentially imposing figure.

"Euron Croweye has no lack of cunning, though. I've heard men say terrible things of that one." Theon shifted his seat. "My uncle Euron has not been seen in the islands for close on two years. He may be dead." If so, it might be for the best. Lord Balon's eldest brother had never given up the Old Way, even for a day. His Silence, with its black sails and dark red hull, was infamous in every port from Ibben to Asshai, it was said. "He may be dead," Esgred agreed, "and if he lives, why, he has spent so long at sea, he'd be half a stranger here. The ironborn would never seat a stranger in the Seastone Chair."

An outcast, intelligent, and dangerous. Yet, the last words that Asha says here turned out to be woefully wrong. We hear no more mention of Euron until A Storm of Swords, when we learn that Balon has died. The captain of Myraham, which brought Theon to Pyke, returns to let Robb know of the news from there:

The captain bobbed his head. "Aye, but that's not all of it, no!" He leaned forward. "The brother's back." "Victarion?" asked Galbart Glover, surprised. "Euron. Crow's Eye, they call him, as black a pirate as ever raised a sail. He's been gone for years, but Lord Balon was no sooner cold than there he was, sailing into Lordsport in his Silence. Black sails and a red hull, and crewed by mutes. He'd been to Asshai and back, I heard. Wherever he was, though, he's home now, and he marched right into Pyke and sat his arse in the Seastone Chair, and drowned Lord Botley in a cask of seawater when he objected. That was when I ran back to Myraham and slipped anchor, hoping I could get away whilst things were confused. And so I did, and here I am."

Here we get more of an idea of who Euron is. At this point it's pretty clear Euron is being set up to be important. This fearsome man with a sinister reputation appears the day after his brother dies, and when someone objects to him taking the throne, he simply has him drowned. Doesn't sound like a very nice guy.

No more mention is made of him, until A Feast for Crows. When Aeron learns of Balon's death and Euron's return, he begins to get flashbacks to his brother Urri and a rusted hinge screaming, and is deadset against Euron being king, calling a kingsmoot to let the Drowned God decide matters. Even Asha's uncle Rodrik is against going to the kingsmoot, worried that Euron will be Urron Redhand come again, slaying all the captains & kings on Nagga's Hill and establishing himself as the only true King of the Isles.

Victarion also has thoughts about Euron, and hates him tremendously, so much so that he thinks about killing him and the curse of the kinslayer when he arrives at Old Wyk. Only here do we finally see Euron on page.

He looks unchanged, Victarion thought. He looks the same as he did the day he laughed at me and left. Euron was the most comely of Lord Quellon's sons, and three years of exile had not changed that. His hair was still black as a midnight sea, with never a whitecap to be seen, and his face was still smooth and pale beneath his neat dark beard. A black leather patch covered Euron's left eye, but his right was blue as a summer sky.

And immediately Euron starts shit. When Aeron objects to godless men sitting on the Seastone Chair, Euron goes on a long boastful monologue about how he is the godliest man ever to raise sail, that he is more devout than even Aeron, and when Asha asks about his involvement in Balon's death, it nearly breaks out into a fight between Asha and Euron's supporters, only for Victarion to put an end to it.

Afterwards we learn why Euron was away, and why Victarion hates him. Euron impregnated Victarion's salt wife (either via seduction or rape), and ruined Victarion's honour in the eyes of the culture of the ironborn. As a result, Victarion beat his wife to death to retain his honour, and Balon exiled Euron to prevent Victarion from killing him, telling him to never return to Pyke so long as he lived. But now he is back, and when the kingsmoot starts, Aeron hopes that Euron would speak first:

The Crow's Eye was never patient, Aeron Damphair told himself. Mayhaps he will speak first. If so, it would be his undoing. The captains and the kings had come a long way to this feast and would not choose the first dish set before them.

Instead, Euron waits to be the last person to press his claim, and interrupts when he has one of his men blow a massive horn he has in his possession. He then makes a speech that even inspires Aeron:

"My little brother would finish Balon's war, and claim the north. My sweet niece would give us peace and pinecones." His blue lips twisted in a smile. "Asha prefers victory to defeat. Victarion wants a kingdom, not a few scant yards of earth. From me, you shall have both. "Crow's Eye, you call me. Well, who has a keener eye than the crow? After every battle the crows come in their hundreds and their thousands to feast upon the fallen. A crow can espy death from afar. And I say that all of Westeros is dying. Those who follow me will feast until the end of their days. "We are the ironborn, and once we were conquerors. Our writ ran everywhere the sound of the waves was heard. My brother would have you be content with the cold and dismal north, my niece with even less . . . but I shall give you Lannisport. Highgarden. The Arbor. Oldtown. The riverlands and the Reach, the kingswood and the rainwood, Dorne and the marches, the Mountains of the Moon and the Vale of Arryn, Tarth and the Stepstones. I say we take it all! I say, we take Westeros."

Although Asha and her supporters object to what he says next, Euron tells the captains that the horn is a dragon horn, capable of binding dragons to his will, and when he reveals his massive amount of loot, he is elected the new king, much to Aeron's shock. After this, Aeron proclaims he will have the smallfolk rise up to undo Euron's ascension, but he goes missing. Baelor Blacktyde attempts to flee, but Euron has Victarion hunt him down and cuts him into seven pieces. Asha flees back to Deepwood Motte.

Not long after, Euron leaves with the ironborn and takes the Shield Isles, raising four new lords to hold the isles. Yet here he makes a mistake, when he says that they are going to sail east to Meereen and Daenerys. The ironborn do not want to travel a long distance, instead intent on raiding around the Reach. Even Rodrik the Reader calls him out.

"I am the storm, my lord. The first storm, and the last. I have taken the Silence on longer voyages than this, and ones far more hazardous. Have you forgotten? I have sailed the Smoking Sea and seen Valyria." Every man there knew that the Doom still ruled Valyria. The very sea there boiled and smoked, and the land was overrun with demons. It was said that any sailor who so much as glimpsed the fiery mountains of Valyria rising above the waves would soon die a dreadful death, yet the Crow's Eye had been there, and returned. "Have you?" the Reader asked, so softly. Euron's blue smile vanished. "Reader," he said into the quiet, "you would do well to keep your nose in your books."

And for a moment it seems that Euron's hold on the Seastone Chair is not secure. He later has Victarion visit him, and says that he realized that he was moving too quick, forgetting that the ironborn are small minded and not as ambitious as he is. Instead, he sends Victarion to Meereen with the Iron Fleet to bring Daenerys back, with Victarion plotting to take Daenerys as his wife in an act of revenge. This is the last we see and hear of Euron for a long time. Until we reach The Forsaken.

Aeron's thoughts on Euron, up until now, have been rather ambiguous as to whether he was as big of a threat as he thinks he is. His trauma might've been clouding his judgement of Euron as an antichrist type figure. But now the title of his first chapter, The Prophet, begins to make sense. Aeron was right about everything.

Here, we learn that Euron has no interest in being the King of the Iron Islands, in fact he holds disdain for the Old Way and ironborn culture and religion. In fact, his ambitions are far beyond what we initially assumed. He doesn't just want Daenerys and her dragons, he doesn't just want the Iron Throne; he wants to be a god. Now him telling Aeron to kneel to him for blessing makes more sense, as does his speech on being the godliest man ever.

We also get clarification on exactly what Euron did to Aeron. It is not completely explicit, but it's explicit enough that it leaves little room for other options. In fact, what we learn is much worse than we could have imagined.

“It was me who taught you how to pray, little brother. Have you forgotten? I would visit your bed chamber at night when I had too much to drink. You shared a room with Urrigon high up in the seatower. I could hear you praying from outside the door. I always wondered: Were you praying that I would choose you or that I would pass you by?”

Euron molested Aeron and his brother Urri as children. Yet even that's not the end of the horrific reveals. He tells Aeron that he has killed three brothers; Harlon, Robin, & Balon. A kinslayer thrice over. At this point, we can say that Euron is a monster worse than Joffrey or Ramsay ever were. And as the chapter unfolds, he gets worse and worse and worse. By the end, he has numerous mutilated priests tied onto the prows of ironborn ships (including Aeron on Silence) and sails into the open ocean. Then, he brings forth his own lover, Falia Flowers, pregnant, her tongue cut out, and naked, tying her right next to Aeron as a "gift".

Aeron thinks of him as a demon in human skin. There is no more apt description for the Crow's Eye. Here is the end of what we know. Now let's go all the way back to the beginning, to see how Euron became the way he is, and what he wants.

Ascension of the Crow's Eye

Euron was the second son of Quellon Greyjoy, right after Balon. The timeline is not exact, but from what we know, Euron was always different from the rest of his family. We know that at some point, he killed his half-brothers Harlon & Robin. Both were sick, easy targets, yet Euron killed them out of more than just sadism:

"Do you remember little Robin? Wretched creature. Do you remember that big head of his, how soft it was? All he could do was mewl and shit. He was my second. Harlon was my first. All I had to do was pinch his nose shut. The greyscale had turned his mouth to stone so he could not cry out. But his eyes grew frantic as he died. They begged me. When the life went out of them, I went out and pissed into the sea, waiting for the god to strike me down. None did."

Euron seems to have been curious about the divine early on. According to Balon and later Victarion, no man is more accursed than the kinslayer. Euron strikes me as someone who is very intelligent and curious and wants to know more about the world. Perhaps he had suspicions early on that the gods might be fake, so he tested it by committing the biggest sin in ironborn culture; killing his own brothers. When nothing happened, he took this as proof that the gods do not exist. It freed him from the constraints of ironborn culture, knowing that nothing would happen if he defied the Drowned God.

We also know that he craves power. Child sexual abuse is a form of domination and control, something Euron obviously wants. He abused Aeron and Urri because of the power he got from it. This is seen in multiple instances with his family. Euron abused his two younger brothers, then later impregnated Victarion's wife, bragging about it afterwards. Euron knows his siblings and what makes them tick all too well, so I have no doubts that he intentionally had Victarion's wife impregnated so that he would be forced to kill her because of his strict adherence to ironborn culture.

It's too light to say that Euron is the wildcard of the family. He practically is the most dominant of them all. Even Theon fears him and his eyepatch. Almost all the trauma that his family has gone through is a direct result of his own actions. We will get to more about his utter sadistic tyranny over his family and what that means, but that will come later.

Looking at those quotes from A Clash of Kings about Euron, I think exile for him must've not been much different from his usual activities. He loves reaving, he loves traveling, and he loves dominating over people and seeing other cultures. The only difference being that he did not return to Pyke for three years, longer than was usual for him.

He claims to have gone as far as Ib and Asshai, and even sailed the Smoking Sea and visited the ruins of Valyria, where those who go never return. It's ambiguous as to whether or not we went there. At the least, he's not telling the truth about certain things, and what is and isn't fact is hard to discern from him. What is for certain, is that the exile changed Euron, and led to him being the man he is today. His want for power is not new, but his ways of going about it have changed. Although, again, we cannot fully trust everything he says, Euron claims to have acquired a dragon's egg, and told a Myrish wizard to hatch it. When he grew impatient, he killed the wizard and threw the egg into the sea.

This might've been the first time Euron has tried to use dragons as a means to acquiring more power. Even though it was an egg, and it failed to hatch, he realized that there was more to the world than meets the eye, and there were ways he could become powerful that others simply brushed off or found foolish. I believe that everything changed after Daenerys left Qarth.

"You had not been gone from Qarth a fortnight when Pyat Pree set out with three of his fellow warlocks, to seek for you in Pentos."

Yet, despite this, and despite Daenerys knowing the warlocks never forget a slight, they never came for her again. That's because someone else came for them.

"Shade-of-the-evening, the wine of the warlocks. I came upon a cask of it when I captured a certain galleas out of Qarth, along with some cloves and nutmeg, forty bolts of green silk, and four warlocks who told a curious tale. One presumed to threaten me, so I killed him and fed him to the other three. They refused to eat of their friend's flesh at first, but when they grew hungry enough they had a change of heart. Men are meat."

According to the A World of Ice & Fire app, this what where Euron acquired Dragonbinder, not from Valyria, but the warlocks:

The warlocks under Pyat Pree attempt to pursue and avenge themselves on Daenerys, but their ship is taken by Euron Greyjoy, who seizes their alleged dragon-binding horn from Valyria and takes them as slaves.

We need not wonder what the curious tale the warlocks told was. They had a dragon horn, they left to get revenge on Daenerys, and they know of her dragons, having seen them with their own eyes. But I believe that the real thing that finally made Euron return was the shade of the evening. Shade of the evening is essentially magical LSD, that gives you one hell of a trip, but with the bonus of prophecy and visions to boot. A mind altering drug like this could easily change someones life, as I believe it did with Euron. He acquired secret knowledge, saw things that nobody else knew, and decided that it was time he came home.

Euron himself confesses to killing Balon;

"Oh, and Balon was the third, but you knew that. I could not do the deed myself, but it was my hand that pushed him off the bridge.”

We also see a vision back in A Storm of Swords, from the Ghost of High Heart;

"I dreamt of a man without a face, waiting on a bridge that swayed and swung. On his shoulder perched a drowned crow with seaweed hanging from his wings."

It's all but confirmed that Euron hired a Faceless Man to kill Balon and allow him to return to Pyke. Of note, this has parallels with another ironborn king of history, Harwyn Hardhand.

When Harwyn returned to the Iron Islands, he found his father Qhorwyn dying, and his eldest brother two years dead from greyscale. A second brother still stood between Harwyn and the crown, and his sudden death even as the king was breathing his last remains a matter of dispute to this day. Those present at Prince Harlan's passing all declared his death accidental, the result of a fall from his horse, but of course it would have been worth their lives to suggest otherwise. Beyond the Iron Islands, it was widely assumed that Prince Harwyn was behind his brother's demise. Some claimed he had done the deed himself, others that Prince Harlan had been slain by a Faceless Man of Braavos.

This isn't even near the only parallel Euron has with Harwynd, but those shall come later. Euron immediately claims the Seastone Chair, yet he is confident when Aeron calls for a kingsmoot, that he will prevail. Victarion says he will only do more of what Balon did. Balon's rebellions were meager and full of defeat; he could not go against the Iron Throne himself, and he could not hold the North. Asha calls for peace, to get the lands around Sea Dragon Point under ironborn control, while they ally with the North against the Iron Throne.

Yet ultimately, Euron succeeds in being chosen, for several reasons. Asha suggests to Victarion that if he made her his Hand, she would support his claim to the Seastone Chair. However, Victarion was too full of pride, and Asha was too forward thinking for him, thus dividing their supporters instead of uniting them. But the biggest factor is that Euron simply appealed to the ironborn in a way Victarion & Asha simply didn't.

Victarion's campaign slogan was literally "same as always", which doesn't really inspire confidence, whereas Asha's was "we can simply have peace". Euron's was "make the Iron Islands great again". Euron promised the return to when the ironborn were feared, when they held real power. No more meager raids along the shorelines, no more being in the shadows of the Iron Throne. This time, they will conquer, they will rule, they will be victorious. Added to the fact that Euron is well traveled and has some seriously intense loot (look at Dragonbinder), the Crow's Eye successfully keeps his hold on the Seastone Chair.

In many ways, Euron's ascension is similar to the election of Donald Trump as president of the US in 2016. Trump promised a return to make America great again (literally his slogan), appealing to the lowest common denominator, as well as religious fundamentalists, and the dregs of society that were previously hidden. By appealing to white supremacists, fascists, and evangelical Christians, Trump made them feel seen again and that they were an important to the country, thus solidifying his support base.

Also like Euron, Trump was a wanna dictator who craved power, domination, and whose leadership put the country in political ruin, setting the US back decades in the Supreme Court and other areas of government, and led to thousands of deaths from his own incompetence and desire to "own the libs". Euron's way is undoubtedly going to result in a massive decline for the ironborn while he gets a power high.

Regardless of real life comparisons, Euron as king now allows him the position in society to accomplish his ambitions. Once again, his ambitions are nothing about bringing glory to the ironborn, it's all about bringing him glory. He wants to be a god, he wants to sit the Iron Throne, and he wants to ride a dragon and marry Daenerys. The ironborn are merely a means to an end for him.

The full backstory to Euron paints a picture of someone whose curiosity led to him discovering something that he views as incredibly potent power that he can wield with great effect. If you are for the Old Way, then Euron is by far the man you'd want to chose. Only problem being that he'd let you die if it meant more power for him. Yet despite this, Euron's hold on the ironborn is only growing stronger (as we'll explore later).

The Death of Gods & the Birth of Another

Religion has been a large part of the world of Westeros and Essos, but it comes to the forefront post-A Storm of Swords. Bran learns more about the weirwoods and Davos learns more about the worship of the old gods, the worship of R'hllor is spreading among the smallfolk of the Riverlands, and the High Sparrow gains significant power after the Faith Militant are reformed. In Essos, the high priest of the red temple preaches that Daenerys is Azor Ahai reborn, and there are hints of a religious uprising stirring.

And of course, Euron is also part of this metaphysical plot as well. However, instead of contributing to religion, he is the antithesis to the religious revival of Westeros. An atheist, Euron does not believe the gods exist, setting him apart from nearly all other characters in the series, who either acknowledge the gods or worship them. Not only does he not believe in the gods, he himself wants to become a god. His ego and narcissism rivals even that of Cersei, as it takes the idea of craving power and rulership over others into the metaphysical realm.

What exactly Euron's apotheosis means in the long run is not known, but it might be less literal and more philosophical. One of his most famous quotes illustrates this point very well;

"Who knows more of gods than I? Horse gods and fire gods, gods made of gold with gemstone eyes, gods carved of cedar wood, gods chiseled into mountains, gods of empty air . . . I know them all. I have seen their peoples garland them with flowers, and shed the blood of goats and bulls and children in their names. And I have heard the prayers, in half a hundred tongues. Cure my withered leg, make the maiden love me, grant me a healthy son. Save me, succor me, make me wealthy . . . protect me! Protect me from mine enemies, protect me from the darkness, protect me from the crabs inside my belly, from the horselords, from the slavers, from the sellswords at my door. Protect me from the Silence." He laughed. "Godless? Why, Aeron, I am the godliest man ever to raise sail! You serve one god, Damphair, but I have served ten thousand. From Ib to Asshai, when men see my sails, they pray."

His narcissism runs so deeply that even when people suffer at his hands, it's about him. What he is saying here is that because he makes people pious through fear, he has served the gods, thus making him godly. In fact, he views him as the instigator for Aeron's religious zealotry (in which case he's not entirely wrong);

“It was me who taught you how to pray, little brother. Have you forgotten? I would visit your bed chamber at night when I had too much to drink. You shared a room with Urrigon high up in the seatower. I could hear you praying from outside the door. I always wondered: Were you praying that I would choose you or that I would pass you by?” Euron pressed the knife to Aeron’s throat. “Pray to me. Beg me to end your torment, and I will.”

Yet he is still an atheist. He constantly points out that the gods are powerless and false, especially to Aeron when he's torturing him.

"They pray to trees and golden idols and goat-headed abominations. False gods . . ." "Just so," said Euron, "and for that sin I kill them all. I spill their blood upon the sea and sow their screaming women with my seed. Their little gods cannot stop me, so plainly they are false gods."

"Still praying, priest? Your god has forsaken you.”

The Crow’s Eye pressed the dagger in a little deeper, and Aeron felt blood trickling down his neck. “If your Drowned God did not smite me for killing three brothers, why should he bestir himself for the fourth? Because you are his priest?”

“That which is dead cannot die,” said Aeron fiercely. “For he who has tasted death once need never fear again. He was drowned, but he came forth stronger than before, with steel and fire.” “Will you do the same, brother?” Euron asked. “I think not. I think if I drowned you, you’ll stay drowned."

Euron makes people pious out of fear, yet the gods never intervene when he murders and rapes and tortures. In his mind, he has more power than any of the gods.

“That’s it, priest. Gulp it down. The wine of the warlocks, sweeter than your seawater, with more truth in it than all the gods of earth.”

Euron routinely drinks shade of the evening, so this sentence solidifies his belief that he is more powerful than any god. His use of blood sacrifice and magic also is worthy of note. Thus, his belief is that because he has power and the gods never stop him when he blatantly blasphemes and sins, he himself is the only true god. He makes people pious and he disproves the existence of the gods, all through his own actions.

In fact, we see in The Forsaken how Euron's hold on the ironborn is quickly growing stronger. When he first invades the Reach, he briefly gets ahead of himself by saying they should sail to Meereen, but the ironborn are still not thinking the way he is, and so he decides to instead stay with them reaving. Throughout the chapter he keeps Aeron imprisoned out of everyones view, only moving him at night when nobody would be awake. By the end, however, things have changed greatly. He now openly parades Aeron around and even ties him to the prow of his ship.

And the ironborn are starting to slowly come around to his way of doing things;

“Your curses have no power here, priest,” said Left-Hand Lucas Codd. “The Crow’s Eye has fed your Drowned God well, and he has grown fat with sacrifice. Words are wind, but blood is power. We have given thousands to the sea, and he has given us victories!”

How quickly they suddenly reject tradition, calling their deity Aeron's Drowned God, and now using blood sacrifice as common practice. Euron in the beginning did not want to be seen as a kinslayer, but now he has Aeron tied to Silence, possibly in a sacrifice, and nobody is objecting. Tradition no longer matters to them, only the result. In a way, Euron has already started a cult among the ironborn following him.

Euron is what happens when someone is a megalomaniac and gets a hold of great magical power. He is a villain straight out of Lovecraftian horror. He doesn't just want the Iron Throne, or Dany's dragons; he wants to be above it all as a god-king. He knows the end is near, and is taking advantage of it.

The Damphair & the Drowned God

On a first read through of A Feast for Crows, when I got to Aeron's first chapter, The Prophet, I found myself having trouble connecting to him. The chapter was great, but religious zealots are not the kind of people I enjoy, and I couldn't really get behind Aeron, due to all the horrible things he said about women and his extremely deontological view of the world. Little did I know that this chapter was merely hiding the absolute madness that awaited in The Forsaken.

When he was younger, Aeron & his brother Urrigon were close. They share a room in the seatower, and played the finger dance, a game where ironborn would throw a throwing axe and try to catch it in midair. They were also both sexually abused by Euron. As the Crow's Eye notes above, Aeron would pray every night before their abuser came to them. Because of the culture of the Iron Islands, Aeron blames himself for his own abuse, viewing himself as weak and full of sin (something that is also experienced by real victims of child sexual abuse).

Nine sons were born from the loins of Quellon Greyjoy, and I was the least of them, as weak and frightened as a girl.

He still has flashbacks to his abuse, involving the scream of a rusted hinge, usually with him waking up screaming Urri's name. He then has to reassure himself that it is only a dream and Euron has not come again. As he got older, he looked up to his eldest brother Balon, but Balon was anything but warm, instead showing him nothing but scorn:

Aeron feasted on goat for a year, and named the longship Golden Storm, though Balon threatened to hang him from her mast when he heard what sort of ram his brother proposed to mount upon her prow.

Urri died when he was only 14, after he lost several fingers that got infected after poor healing by a maester, following the finger dance, something that still haunts Aeron to this day. He participated in the Greyjoy rebellion, reaving with his older brothers, but when his ship sunk in battle, he washed ashore and was held prisoner in Casterly Rock for the rest of the war. Later, Aeron had another near death experience, this time when his ship went down in a storm. When he washed up on the shore, he thought the Drowned God had saved him, and thus he became entirely devoted to the Drowned God as his priest.

Aeron's religious fervor is a result of many traumatic incidences throughout his life. He describes how he has two pillars that hold him up in life;

Aeron Greyjoy had built his life upon two mighty pillars. Those four small words had knocked one down. Only the Drowned God remains to me. May he make me as strong and tireless as the sea. "Tell me the manner of my brother's death."

Because of his extreme devotion to the Drowned God, Aeron is seen as mad even by other ironborn. He is singular in his goals to follow his god and interpreting what he is to do. Because of Euron's extreme abuse of Aeron leaves a massive impression on him, it is at first unclear if Euron is truly as big of a threat as Aeron himself says he is. Yet eventually we learn that Aeron's first chapter was very aptly named; he was right about everything.

A storm was brewing, he could hear it in the waves, and storms brought naught but evil.

He was born a lord's son and died a king, murdered by a jealous god, Aeron thought, and now the storm is coming, a storm such as these isles have never known.

Aeron tugged his beard, and thought. I have seen the storm, and its name is Euron Crow's Eye.

The decks of Euron's ship were painted red, to better hide the blood that soaked them. Victarion. The king must be Victarion, or the storm will slay us all.

Aeron constantly compares Euron to a storm throughout his first chapter, and later on Euron even calls himself the storm, after Rodrik the Reader calls him out on the problems with sailing the entire ironborn to Meereen:

"Where will you find fresh water, food? The first storm will scatter us across half the earth." A smile played across Euron's blue lips. "I am the storm, my lord. The first storm, and the last."

As we see later in The Forsaken, Euron cares not for the ironborn, only himself and his own power. And in classic fashion, Aeron's calls against Euron go nowhere. Even in The Forsaken, when he tells Falia Flowers to leave, she does not listen to his warnings;

“Run. He will hurt you. He will kill you.” She laughed. “Silly, he won’t. I’m his love, his lady. He gives me gifts, so many gifts. Silks and furs and jewels. Rags and rocks, he calls them.”

And then come the end of the chapter;

He beckoned, and two of his bastard sons dragged the woman forward and bound her to the prow on the other side of the figurehead. Naked as the mouthless maiden, her smooth belly just beginning to swell with the child she was carrying, her cheeks red with tears, she did not struggle as the boys tightened her bonds. Her hair hung down in front of her face, but Aeron knew her all the same. “Falia Flowers,” he called. “Have courage, girl! All this will be over soon, and we will feast together in the Drowned God’s watery halls.” The girl raised up her head, but made no answer. She has no tongue to answer with, the Damphair knew.

This leads into the existential battle between Euron & Aeron. It only makes sense for Aeron's philosophical and moral enemy is the atheistic and nihilistic Euron Greyjoy.

Euron subjects Aeron to unimaginable psychological torture; demoralizing him, pointing out how the Drowned God has not answered his prayers, taunting him of his abuse, force feeding him shade of the evening, all to get Aeron to do what Euron truly wants him to; to pray to him as his god and make him his priest. Euron may have Aeron tied to the prow of Silence at the end of the chapter, but his actions go to show that his goal isn't to kill him;

“The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.” Then Euron lifted a great horn to his lips and blew, and dragons and krakens and sphinxes came at his command and bowed before him. “Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.” “Never. No godless man may sit the Seastone Chair!”

Euron pressed the knife to Aeron’s throat. “Pray to me. Beg me to end your torment, and I will.”

It is now time to come across the religious imagery and symbolism with regards to Euron and Aeron, because they are both full of it. It's rather easy to view Euron as Lucifer, with Aeron taking the role of Jesus Christ. Euron is a highly intelligent man, and every gift he gives comes with a price. As Victarion says, "Euron's gifts are all poison".

Upon winning the kingsmoot, Euron has Erik Ironmaker marry Asha (though it is a proxy marriage as Asha has fled), giving him stewardship of the Iron Islands and naming him the castellan of Pyke. At first it appears like he's simply rewarding Erik to ensure his loyalty. He is, but the truth of the matter is that Euron does not care for the Iron Islands, and couldn't care less what happens there to Erik Ironmaker, who was his rival at the kingsmoot.

After winning the Shield Isles, Euron gives the islands away to four new lords, a great honour. Yet, he allows the ravens announcing the attack of the isles to fly back to Highgarden, knowing that a force will be marshaled and they will be retaken. He says as much to Aeron;

“Your victories are hollow. You cannot hold the Shields.” “Why should I want to hold them?” His brother’s smiling eye glittered in the lantern light, blue and bold and full of malice. “The Shields have served my purpose. I took them with one hand, and gave them away with the other. A great king is open-handed, brother. It is up to the new lords to hold them now. The glory of winning those rocks will be mine forever. When they are lost, the defeat will belong to the four fools who so eagerly accepted my gifts.”

And those four fools were no random picks either. Nute was one of the most loyal followers of Victarion Greyjoy onboard his ship. Andrik the Unsmiling was one of the champions of Lord Dunstan Drumm at the kingsmoot. Maron Volmark supported Victarion and was considered by one of the drowned priests the true heir to the Seastone Chair given House Volmark's relation to House Hoare, who ruled when Aegon conquered Westeros. Finally, Harras Harlaw was a supporter of Asha, and removed him as Rodrik the Readers heir in place of Hotho Harlaw, who supported Victarion.

Then there is Euron sending Victarion to Slaver's Bay, and the gifts he gives him. The dusky woman, calling back to the wife Euron impregnated and Victarion beat, and Dragonbinder, the dragon horn that binds dragons to the owners will via blood sacrifice. Just as Lucifer does, Euron promises great rewards, but they always come back to your face in some way.

Many times, Euron visits Aeron in the bowels of Silence, trying to tempt him to break his faith, to worship him as his god, promising to raise him as his own priest;

“Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.” “Never. No godless man may sit the Seastone Chair!”

Euron pressed the knife to Aeron’s throat. “Pray to me. Beg me to end your torment, and I will.”

In this manner, Aeron takes the role of Jesus to Euron's Lucifer, when Jesus crossed the Judaean Desert. While Jesus fasted in the 40 days and 40 nights he spent crossing the desert, the devil came several times to tempt him.

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” (Matthew 4:8–9)

Like Jesus, Aeron resists Euron's temptations, holding true to his religious fervor. He believes that the Drowned God is testing him and holds onto his faith. Yet, in an inverse to Christ's crucifixion, Aeron refuses to believe that the Drowned God has forsaken him. According to the Gospel of Matthew, the last words of Jesus were;

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27: 46)

Whereas when Euron visits Aeron in the Silence;

“Still praying, priest? Your god has forsaken you.” “You’re wrong.”

And of course, the very end of The Forsaken has Aeron tied to the prow of Silence, in a style reminiscent of Jesus's crucifixion;

They bound Aeron Damphair tight with strips of leather that would shrink when wet, clad only in his beard and breechclout.

Throughout all his torture, Aeron holds deeply to his religious beliefs, and as yet, Euron has been unsuccessful in breaking down his faith. He believes he will soon die and live an afterlife of joy in the watery halls of the Drowned God.

Yet, from the looks of things, I do not believe Aeron is going to keep his faith. Looking back at his Feast chapters, we see that Aeron's religious devotion is a response to the trauma he has suffered throughout his life. Yet, when he tries to use his religion to stop Euron, he fails. Every single time.

When he hears Euron has claimed the Seastone Chair, he decides to hold a kingsmoot, trusting the Drowned God to intervene and correct the wrong;

"The god took me deep beneath the waves and drowned the worthless thing I was. When he cast me forth again he gave me eyes to see, ears to hear, and a voice to spread his word, that I might be his prophet and teach his truth to those who have forgotten. I was not made to sit upon the Seastone Chair . . . no more than Euron Crow's Eye. For I have heard the god, who says, No godless man may sit my Seastone Chair!"

And then it goes very very awry when Euron is elected king anyways. Yet Aeron rationalizes this by saying that Euron had his warlocks put a spell on the men to choose him;

"It was not the god who spoke. Euron is known to keep wizards and foul sorcerers on that red ship of his. They sent some spell among us, so we could not hear the sea. The captains and the kings were drunk with all this talk of dragons."

And thus Aeron goes into the sea, to take counsel with the Drowned God (which I will discuss more about in just a moment). Afterwards, he seems to be in high spirits again;

Aeron Damphair had struggled back to shore, full of fierce resolve. He would bring down Euron, not with sword or axe but with the power of his faith.

And then he is immediately kidnapped and chained in Silence by Euron's men. When Euron meets him and first force feeds him shade of the evening, Aeron curses him;

“I curse you,” Aeron said, when the cup was empty. Liquor dripped from down his chin into his long, black beard. “If I had the tongue of every man who cursed me, I could make a cloak of them.”

And of course, nothing happens to Euron. When he is imprisoned on Oakenshield and fed by Falia Flowers, Aeron tries to send a secret message to Victarion, but again, Euron defeats him;

“You must bear a message to my brother. Not Euron, but Victarion, Lord Captain of the Iron Fleet. Do you know the man I mean?” Falia sat back from him. “Yes,” she said. “But I couldn’t bring him any messages. He’s gone.” “Gone?” That was the cruelest blow of all. “Gone where?” “East,” she said, “with all his ships. He’s to bring the dragon queen to Westeros. I’m to be Euron’s salt wife, but he must have a rock wife too, a queen to rule all Westeros at his side. They say she’s the most beautiful woman in the world, and she has dragons. The two of us will be as close as sisters!” Aeron Damphair hardly heard her. Victarion is gone, half a world away or dead. Surely the Drowned God was testing him. This was a lesson for him. Put not your trust in men. Only my faith can save me now.

And then he prays to die so he can join his god, but this also doesn't work;

That night, when the tide came rushing back into the prison cell, he prayed that it might rise all night, enough to end his torment. I have been your true and leal servant, he prayed, twisting in his chains. Now snatch me from my brother’s hand, and take me down beneath the waves, to be seated at your side. But no deliverance came. Only the mutes, to undo his chains and drag him roughly up a long stone stair to where the Silence floated on a cold black sea.

When Euron next visits Aeron, Aeron doesn't believe that Euron is capable of kinslaying, only for Euron to prove the exact opposite;

“Pray to me. Beg me to end your torment, and I will.” “Not even you would dare,” said the Damphair. “I am your brother. No man is more accursed than the kinslayer.” “And yet I wear a crown and you rot in chains. How is it that your Drowned God allows that when I have killed three brothers?” Aeron could only gape at him. “Three?”

The Crow’s Eye pressed the dagger in a little deeper, and Aeron felt blood trickling down his neck. “If your Drowned God did not smite me for killing three brothers, why should he bestir himself for the fourth? Because you are his priest?”

And then he prays for his brother's death, yet he remains stubbornly alive. When the warlocks and other priests are brought to share the room with him, he fervently prays to his god, thinking he is stronger than all the other false gods. Still, Aeron's mental state is declining;

In his saner moments, Aeron questioned why the Crow’s Eye was collecting priests, but he did not think that he would like the answer. Victarion was gone, and with him, hope. Aeron’s drowned men likely thought the Damphair was hiding on Old Wyk, or Great Wyk, or Pyke, and wondered when he would emerge to speak against this godless king.

One last time, Aeron tries to warn Euron about the wrath of his god;

“Release me,” Aeron Damphair commanded in his sternest voice, “or risk the wroth of god!” Euron produced a carved stone bottle and a wine cup. “You have a thirsty look about you,” he said as he poured. “You need a drink; a taste of evening’s shade.” “No.” Aeron turned his face away. “No, I said.” “And I said yes.”

If the Drowned God is going to make the Crow's Eye pay, he's sure taking his time. When Aeron is finally brought up to see Euron's captains, it becomes clear that nobody seems to care about the Drowned God anymore;

“Have your gods been good to you in the dark?” asked Left-Hand Lucas Codd. One of the warlocks snarled some answer in his ugly eastern tongue. “I curse you all,” Aeron said. “Your curses have no power here, priest,” said Left-Hand Lucas Codd. “The Crow’s Eye has fed your Drowned God well, and he has grown fat with sacrifice. Words are wind, but blood is power. We have given thousands to the sea, and he has given us victories!”

By the end of The Forsaken, despite the excruciating torture at the hands of his demonic brother, Aeron still holds onto his faith. But the fact remains that when Aeron has attempted to do anything involving his faith to defeat Euron, nothing happens. This itself doesn't mean that Aeron will lose his faith, as seen in his chapters, these defeats are rationalized to fit his super religious worldview. However, there are small hints that his faith is merely a shield that is slowly being chipped away at.

Despite Aeron calling Euron godless and saying that the Drowned God himself said he did not want Euron on the Seastone Chair, it's quite clear that it's Aeron who doesn't want him because of his trauma. This isn't an invalid reason, Euron absolutely should not sit the throne, but the fact remains that the Drowned God did not tell him anything, it's all in Aeron's head. When Euron is elected at the kingsmoot;

Even a priest may doubt. Even a prophet may know terror. Aeron Damphair reached within himself for his god and discovered only silence. As a thousand voices shouted out his brother's name, all he could hear was the scream of a rusted iron hinge.

When Aeron faces the reality that his tormentor and abuser has succeeded, in the holiest of places, when he tried to use his faith as a weapon, he is unable to reach his god. Despite this brief moment where he is unable to comprehend his faith with the reality of the world, he quickly goes on to say Euron used sorcery to get the captains to vote for him.

After the kingsmoot, Aeron goes to speak to his god, in one of the most telling moments in The Forsaken;

And there and then, the Drowned God had come to him once more, his voice welling up from the depths of the sea.“Aeron, my good and faithful servant, you must tell the Ironborn that the Crow’s Eye is no true king, that the Seastone Chair by rights belongs to ... to ... to ...” Not Victarion. Victarion had offered himself to the captains and kings but they had spurned him. Not Asha. In his heart, Aeron had always loved Asha best of all his brother Balon’s children. The Drowned God had blessed her with a warrior’s spirit and the wisdom of a king – but he had cursed her with a woman’s body, too. No woman had ever ruled the Iron Islands. She should never have made a claim. She should have spoken for Victarion, added her own strength to his. It was not too late, Aeron had decided as he shivered in the sea. If Victarion took Asha for his wife, they could yet rule together, king and queen. In ancient days, each isle had its Salt King and its Rock King. Let the Old Way return.

If the Drowned God was actually talking to him, how come he isn't even able to finish his sentence? How come he doesn't even know who the true ruler is? Aeron is talking to himself, convincing himself that his voice is the voice of the god. Even though he uses his faith as a shield, he unknowingly uses his own thoughts and feelings to fuel his delusion that the Drowned God is talking to him.

It might sound like I'm being very harsh towards Aeron. I am an atheist, and like GRRM, do not like religious fanatics. The horror of what Aeron is going through is not just Euron being literally the most evil character in the universe, it's also the fact of what this torture means when you think about belief in the gods. The horror is that Aeron tries to find reasons to believe the Drowned God is still with him, yet the god never even intervenes. For some, the fact that Aeron still believes in his faith is seen as inspirational and uplifting; even though he has gone through an unbelievable amount of abuse, he's still holding onto his faith, winning over Euron who has been trying to break his faith down.

However, I see this as incredibly dark. On an existential level, the basic concept that staying faithful to God even as bad things happen and that god is all powerful is just frightening. If the god can intervene, why is he not intervening? The horror of The Forsaken isn't just from Euron's mad ambitions; it's in the fact that Aeron's god has not done anything observable to help him in the darkest of times. Even if it is to "teach Aeron a lesson" or "test his faith" it still comes off as horrifying. Who would worship a god that lets bad things happen to you in order to test if you are truly devoted to him? At worst, that's just another form of abuse.

Aeron's story is very dark. He's been abused, used, nearly died, tortured, and devoted to a god who isn't here for him. None of this is to say that if Aeron wasn't religious he'd be handling his torture better, or that Euron is in the right, far from it. I view it as a multilayered tragedy. There is a reason GRRM wrote Aeron as a religious zealot and Euron as a monstrous demon. Ultimately, they are both on the extreme opposite ends of the religious spectrum.

Everything Aeron does is for the Drowned God and is so singular in his devotion that he is blind to the fact that the Drowned God is not the answer to everything. Meanwhile, Euron is so vehemently against religion that he believes everything is nihilistic and is devoid of any and all compassion, serving only himself. While I am an atheist and have many problems with religion, both Aeron and Euron's worldviews are incredibly flawed and ultimately self serving and harmful.

This is why I think, when Euron does whatever he's about to do with Aeron tied to the ship, Aeron's faith will falter. I don't think that GRRM wants Aeron's story of religious fanaticism to be one of triumph and success. His worldview will not be able to withstand everything, just as Euron's worldview won't be able to withstand everything. It's a very dark ending to one of the most tortured characters in the series, but The Winds of Winter is going to be very dark and things will get worse for many characters.

The Corruption of Victarion Flamehand

Older than Aeron, but younger than Euron or Balon, Victarion is sort of the middle child of the Greyjoy family. He, like Aeron, followed Balon loyally throughout his life. When Robert's Rebellion was raging, Victarion joined Balon and Euron in convincing their father, the progressive Quellon, to join in. This led to their fathers death, and Balon claimed the Seastone Chair. When Balon started the Greyjoy's Rebellion, Victarion served him loyally, commanding the standing royal fleet, the Iron Fleet, as its Lord Captain.

Although Victarion is a capable battle commander and naval captain, he is more of a follower, loyally serving his superiors. He is also devoted to the Old Way and reaving culture, wearing plate armour at sea for he does not fear drowning. He lives for fighting and battle, so much so that he wishes to fight some of the best warriors in Westeros;

He would give half his teeth for the chance to try his axe against the Kingslayer or the Knight of Flowers. That was the sort of battle that he understood.

Otherwise, Victarion is not the brightest person in the world (and we'll get to that).

Victarion also mistrusts laughter, as both Euron and Aeron mocked him using feigned praise when they were younger, which hurt him. Yet, he hates Euron for a much deeper reason. When it was learned that Euron impregnated his salt wife (either via seduction or rape), this dishonoured Victarion in the eyes of ironborn culture. To retain his honour, Victarion beat his wife to death, and nearly killed Euron, but Balon reminded him of the sin of kinslaying and instead sent Euron into exile, never to return as long as he lived.

Since then, Victarion has blamed Euron for his wife's death and has wanted to seek revenge. When the kingsmoot is called, he puts forth his claim, yet he is no poet, and all he says is that he will give the ironborn more of what Balon gave them. When Euron wins, unlike their younger brother Aeron, Victarion is resigned to the outcome;

"Drunk, and fearful of that horn. You heard the sound it made. It makes no matter. Euron is our king."

Despite Victarion's hatred of his brother, he follows him loyally. When Baelor Blacktyde refuses to accept Euron as his liege, Victarion blocked his escape with the Iron Fleet and delivered Baelor to Euron to be executed. He then follows Euron's plans to take the Shields, by blocking the mouth of the Mander to prevent the dromonds from returning to the isles while Euron swooped in and took them undefended. He also agrees to sail the Iron Fleet to Meereen to bring Daenerys back to Westeros when Euron asks him of it, but he plans to betray Euron and marry Daenerys for himself.

As noted above, Euron's gifts are poison, and Victarion is aware of that. One of the most interesting of gifts Victarion is given by Euron is the dusky woman;

As a reward for his leal service, the new-crowned king had given Victarion the dusky woman, taken off some slaver bound for Lys. "I want none of your leavings," he had told his brother scornfully, but when the Crow's Eye said that the woman would be killed unless he took her, he had weakened. Her tongue had been torn out, but elsewise she was undamaged, and beautiful besides, with skin as brown as oiled teak. Yet sometimes when he looked at her, he found himself remembering the first woman his brother had given him, to make a man of him.

Euron is very well aware of Victarion's hatred of him and his issues with women after impregnating his wife. The dusky woman as a gift is a different type of poison; a reminder of the power Euron has over Victarion. He took away Victarion's wife (again, as Victarion sees it), and just as easily gave him a new woman. As Moqorro later sees, Euron is the one behind the black strings that make Victarion dance. And dance he does.

When Victarion leaves to sail east with the Iron Fleet, he begins to change. For the first time, Victarion is truly on his own, with no one else to give him orders or advice. And here we begin to see Victarion change into a different sort of person. While he loathes Euron, Victarion also seems to look up to him. As the middle child, Victarion inevitably suffers from middle child syndrome, always walking in the shadows of his older brother, who gets all the credit while he obediently follows him from behind. Throughout the journey, Victarion thinks about Euron and what he'd do, and it influences his own decisions;

So he had slapped the Limper twice across the face and said, "The first is for the ships you lost, the second for your talk of curses. Speak of that again and I will nail your tongue to the mast. If the Crow's Eye can make mutes, so can I."

The Crow's Eye had sailed halfway across the world, reaving and plundering from Qarth to Tall Trees Town, calling at unholy ports beyond where only madmen went. Euron had even braved the Smoking Sea and lived to tell of it. And that with only one ship. If he can mock the gods, so can I.

But Moqorro knew these strange shores in ways the ironborn did not, and secrets of the dragonkind as well. The Crow's Eye keeps wizards, why shouldn't I?

But sailing around Yaros would cost him precious days. With Yunkai so near, shipping in the straits was like to be heavy, but he did not expect to encounter Yunkish warships until they were closer to Meereen. What would the Crow's Eye do? He brooded on that for a time, then signaled to his captains. "We sail the straits."

As the journey continues and he discovers Moqorro, he also begins to find a new confidence within himself, thanks to the red priests magical abilities. His hand was infected thanks to him not treating a wound he took in a previous battle, and when Moqorro healed it, it became something entirely different;

The arm the priest had healed was hideous to look upon, pork crackling from elbow to fingertips. Sometimes when Victarion closed his hand the skin would split and smoke, yet the arm was stronger than it had ever been.

Moqorro continues to give accurate predictions from his nightfires to Victarion, allowing him to find missing ships and hunt down other ships to add to his fleet. As he grows in his own newfound power, he also begins to take on the worship of R'hllor, sacrificing to him in addition to the Drowned God;

"Two gods are with me now," he told the dusky woman. "No foe can stand before two gods."

"With this gift of innocence and beauty, we honor both the gods," he proclaimed, as the warships of the Iron Fleet rowed past the burning ketch. "Let these girls be reborn in light, undefiled by mortal lust, or let them descend to the Drowned God's watery halls, to feast and dance and laugh until the seas dry up."

This culminates when Moqorro sees the dragon horn Euron gave Victarion, and translates the runes inscribed on it;

"Here it says, 'No mortal man shall sound me and live.' " Bitterly Victarion brooded on the treachery of brothers. Euron's gifts are always poisoned. "The Crow's Eye swore this horn would bind dragons to my will. But how will that serve me if the price is death?" "Your brother did not sound the horn himself. Nor must you." Moqorro pointed to the band of steel. "Here. 'Blood for fire, fire for blood.' Who blows the hellhorn matters not. The dragons will come to the horn's master. You must claim the horn. With blood."

With this, Victarion now has a plan to have three thralls sound Dragonbinder, after he has claimed the horn with blood, in order to get Daenerys's dragons bound to him. Suffice to say that his ambitions are starting to grow;

He brushed his hand across one of the red gold bands and the ancient glyph seemed to sing beneath his fingertips. For half a heartbeat he wanted nothing so much as to sound the horn himself. Euron was a fool to give me this, it is a precious thing, and powerful. With this I’ll win the Seastone Chair, and then the Iron Throne. With this I’ll win the world.

Yet throughout all of this, Victarion never questions why Moqorro is helping him or if he has an ulterior motive. Moqorro serves him and his needs, and thats all that matters to the Lord Captain. Although Moqorro is most certainly only going to be 100% faithful to Daenerys, as she is Azor Ahai reborn, he is ultimately using Victarion as a means to an end, yet he is useful to him in that regard. He must get to Meereen, and the best way is to get into the good graces of Victarion, and it does him no good to lie or deceive him when Victarion is the only person who doesn't want to sacrifice him to the Drowned God.

In addition, Moqorro has gained a convert to R'hllor, although begrudgingly, as Victarion still worships the Drowned God. He is also coming to ally with Daenerys, which gives him maybe more credit than if Moqorro were to be picked up by someone else. While I don't think Moqorro is lying to Victarion, he is still manipulating him, trying to convert him to R'hllorism and giving him valuable information so that Victarion doesn't kill him. It all works towards Moqorro's larger goal of serving Azor Ahai, aka Daenerys Stormborn.

I think that Euron's original plan for Victarion was simple. Have him travel to Meereen, plot to betray Euron, get obsessed with Dragonbinder, then blow the horn and die as a result (or some other way), gifting Daenerys a dragon horn and a fleet of ships to bring her to Westeros. Despite Euron's manipulation and psychological trickery usually working out for him, Moqorro is a potential wildcard that throws his plans out of balance. It is because of Moqorro that Victarion is now on the verge of acquiring dragons. It is because of Moqorro that Victarion has this newfound power and confidence. It is because of Moqorro that Victarion did not die of his hand wound that he previously refused to treat.

This is also why I think Victarion will be successful in acquiring his own dragon (for a time). With Moqorro's knowledge, which Euron could not have possibly foreseen, Victarion now has the capability of acquiring a dragon. Although it's certainly plausible Moqorro's information is faulty, the information we have is consistent with what we know, and as stated above, there are ample reasons to believe Moqorro isn't trying to get Victarion killed. Story wise, if we are to up the stakes, then someone taking control of one of Dany's dragons would be a big way to change things and show the power that Dragonbinder possesses.

Despite all the talk of manipulation, Victarion's goals are still his own. It's why his chapter titles switch from his roles (The Iron Captain/The Reaver/The Iron Suitor) to his name (Victarion I). He is becoming more himself, he's just being given the tools that allow him to do so while also suiting other peoples agendas. And the more he becomes himself, the uglier he seems. Between his increasingly graphic human sacrifices and his almost delusional want for immense power, he's becoming more selfish and villainous than before.

In fact, while he is coming into his own, it's also very noticeable that he is slowly also becoming more like Euron. He is starting to use magic for his own ends, has a red priest coaching him in magic, and starting to reject some teachings of ironborn culture by also worshipping R'hllor. This is rather significant, as I'll discuss later, but Victarion becoming like Euron is more than a result of him being jealous about living in the shadow of his older brother; despite the fact that Euron's way is not like the Old Way, he has more in common with Victarion than Victarion cares to admit.

He objects to Euron selling the captives of the Shield Isles into slavery, when the ironborn practice thralldom, which is essentially a form of slavery. He objects to Euron supposedly using his warlocks, but then Victarion decides to use a red priest. Most importantly, however; he does not accept responsibility for his wifes death. Ironborn culture is incredibly misogynistic and terrible, and Victarion being who he is, follows through even though he didn't want to.

Yet, although Euron definitely knew what he was doing and what Victarion would do, he cannot be to blame for what Victarion did. He chose to beat his wife to death because she was impregnated by another man. The fact is that Victarion is a villain who undeniably believes himself to be the hero, and works through psychological loopholes to put the blame on someone else. Euron and Victarion are opposites, yet also identical in a way. They are both villains, but while Euron knows he is a terrible person doing terrible things for his own gain, Victarion thinks he's a good person and serving his gods while doing terrible things for his own gain.

Of course, there is also the factor that Euron is actually competent; he's highly manipulative, politically aware, and perceptive of how to play people. Meanwhile, Victarion is dumb as a stump, easily manipulated, and never considers what other peoples motives might be (even though he does with Euron, he ends up just not thinking about that at all). It makes for a rather entertaining contrast between the two.

Sailing on a Sea of Blood

Having now talked about Euron and his relationship with his brothers, it's time to look at what Euron is going to do in the future, and The Forsaken is the starting point to build off. It is one of my favourite chapters in the entire series; it is a masterpiece of psychological horror, with big twists, reveals, and terrifying moments. There are also many visions that Aeron experiences from being force-fed shade of the evening. The section will be split into three different parts.

The first will be viewing at the general visions, deciphering their possible meaning to the story. The second will be specifically looking at the visions and other text that might pertain to the coming naval battle Euron is planning to engage in. The third will be exploring what exactly Euron is going to do. I will also be taking bits from different chapters as well as I see fit. Since it was a sample chapter for an unreleased book, it is important to note that the visions Aeron has may change in the final product. But since we don't have the final product, we'll be sticking with the one we know.

To begin our journey into madness, we have Aeron's first set of visions. These occur at the beginning of the chapter when Euron first force feeds Aeron the wine of the warlocks. It begins with Urri, Aeron's dead brother;

“Urri!” he cried. There is no hinge here, no door, no Urri. His brother Urrigon was long dead, yet there he stood. One arm was black and swollen, stinking with maggots, but he was still Urri, still a boy, no older than the day he died. “You know what waits below the sea, brother?” “The Drowned God,” Aeron said, “the watery halls.” Urri shook his head. “Worms ... worms await you, Aeron.”

On a subconscious level, it'd make sense for Aeron to have dreams of his faith being false. Dream Urri tells him that nothing but death awaits him in the sea, no Drowned God, no afterlife. This is potentially prophetic, as it goes nicely with another vision later on;

When he laughed his face sloughed off and the priest saw that it was not Urri but Euron, the smiling eye hidden. He showed the world his blood eye now, dark and terrible. Clad head to heel in scale as dark as onyx, he sat upon a mound of blackened skulls as dwarfs capered round his feet and a forest burned behind him.

The scale dark as onyx might refer to the Valyrian steel armour Euron wears at the end of the chapter. And here we see the true Euron; his smiling eye, the blue eye that represents the face he shows the ironborn, is hidden, and now his blood eye, the black eye filled with malice that represents his true monstrous self, is visible. Him sitting on a mound of burned skulls with dwarves at his feet, and that burning forest, probably represents his way of acquiring power and how he views himself.

He is bringing untold death and destruction in his wake, all in a quest to gain ever more power. In his view, everyone else is insignificant and he towers over them. It also fits nicely with the general apocalyptic aesthetic these dreams have, which is important to the next part where Euron says;

“The bleeding star bespoke the end,” he said to Aeron. “These are the last days, when the world shall be broken and remade. A new god shall be born from the graves and charnel pits.” Then Euron lifted a great horn to his lips and blew, and dragons and krakens and sphinxes came at his command and bowed before him.

The mention of the red comet is interesting. Over the POVs we learn that the comet has many different meanings to people. However, we also know that from the Azor Ahai prophecy, which states;

"There will come a day after a long summer when the stars bleed and the cold breath of darkness falls heavy on the world. In this dread hour a warrior shall draw from the fire a burning sword. And that sword shall be Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes, and he who clasps it shall be Azor Ahai come again, and the darkness shall flee before him."

So Euron at least knows what the red comet signifies, or perhaps even knows about the Azor Ahai prophecy. Whatever the case, he knows that something apocalyptic is coming and is taking advantage of it. I do not believe in the theories that Euron is in league with the Others and wants to lead them or anything; he is simply aware that very bad times are coming and is using it as an opportunity to gain power.

The symbolism regarding the dragons, krakens, and sphinxes is mostly straightforward- the dragons representing Daenerys coming to Westeros based on his own actions, and the krakens being the ironborn he rules over- although the sphinx is much harder to figure out. Historically, sphinxes are known for killing those who cannot answer their riddles, acting as spiritual guardians. Perhaps this represents Euron's own hubris when it comes to power; the warlocks of Qarth have hidden knowledge, thanks to their shade of the evening, but Euron has now gained that knowledge after dominating them. Perhaps the warlocks might be represented by the sphinxes, guarding their ways closely, but Euron has bypassed that and can now tap into them. Who knows, sphinxes are purposefully tricky.

And the first vision set ends with one of the more disturbing images in the chapter;

“Kneel, brother,” the Crow’s Eye commanded. “I am your king, I am your god. Worship me, and I will raise you up to be my priest.” “Never. No godless man may sit the Seastone Chair!” “Why would I want that hard black rock? Brother, look again and see where I am seated.” Aeron Damphair looked. The mound of skulls was gone. Now it was metal underneath the Crow’s Eye: a great, tall, twisted seat of razor sharp iron, barbs and blades and broken swords, all dripping blood. Impaled upon the longer spikes were the bodies of the gods. The Maiden was there and the Father and the Mother, the Warrior and Crone and Smith ... even the Stranger. They hung side by side with all manner of queer foreign gods: the Great Shepherd and the Black Goat, three-headed Trios and the Pale Child Bakkalon, the Lord of Light and the butterfly god of Naath. And there, swollen and green, half-devoured by crabs, the Drowned God festered with the rest, seawater still dripping from his hair. Then, Euron Crow’s Eye laughed again, and the priest woke screaming in the bowels of Silence, as piss ran down his leg.

As Euron getting Aeron to worship him as his god has been discussed elsewhere, we'll move right past that and talk about Euron's goals. Here it's clear that he doesn't care for the Iron Islands, or the Seastone Chair, or hell, even the ironborn. He is merely using them for his own ends in acquiring what he truly wants; the Iron Throne.

The bodies of the gods impaled on the Iron Throne represents Euron's goal to be seen as a god, and the fact that he holds all the gods false. In his mind, he is the only true god, and all the others are false. There is possibly more to this, but that will come later. Afterwards, there is at least a few weeks before Euron once again forces the vile LSD wine into his mouth, and the visions get more terrifying and mysterious;

The dreams were even worse the second time. He saw the longships of the Ironborn adrift and burning on a boiling blood-red sea.

As I'll discuss later, this is most likely a view at the upcoming naval altercation Euron is about to have with the Redwyne fleet, so we'll explore this in detail in a moment;

He saw his brother on the Iron Throne again, but Euron was no longer human. He seemed more squid than man, a monster fathered by a kraken of the deep, his face a mass of writhing tentacles. Beside him stood a shadow in woman’s form, long and tall and terrible, her hands alive with pale white fire. Dwarves capered for their amusement, male and female, naked and misshapen, locked in carnal embrace, biting and tearing at each other as Euron and his mate laughed and laughed and laughed ...

Aaaaaand we have gone to Lovecraftian horror. Euron in this vision is supposed to invoke the imagery of Cthulhu, who is a cosmic entity worshipped by various cults and the source of constantly subconscious anxiety in the works of HP Lovecraft. Sounds a lot like Euron, doesn't it? I don't think that this vision is meant to be literal, in that he will turn into a squid demon, but it's definitely meant to represent the existential horror he brings.

The shadow in woman's form has been subject to much theorizing and debate, but I ultimately believe that this is meant to be Daenerys. Aeron, who has never met her, does not know her, but given that Euron is mad and cruel, it is reasonable for him to assume that Daenerys is also mad and cruel, otherwise why would Euron want her? It is also important to note that Euron has also never met Daenerys, and this may also be how he views her; a partner in conquering and surviving the apocalypse. The dwarf imagery, again, speaks to the dominance Euron wants him and Daenerys to have, ruling as gods over everyone else.

Aeron dreamed of drowning, too. Not of the bliss that would surely follow down in the Drowned God’s watery halls, but of the terror that even the faithful feel as the water fills their mouth and nose and lungs, and they cannot draw a breath. Three times the Damphair woke, and three times it proved no true waking, but only another chapter in a dream.

This is the last vision Aeron has, and it goes back with the very first vision he had. Urri told him that nothing glorious awaits him in the sea, no afterlife, just death. And here in this dream, Aeron is afraid as he drowns. Drowning at sea is considered one of the most holy ways to die in Ironborn culture, yet Aeron is fearful. Of course, this is definitely subconsciously something he is afraid of, but given evening's shade has a magical component to it, it might foreshadow his real death. There is more support for this, when Euron visits him;

“That which is dead cannot die,” said Aeron fiercely. “For he who has tasted death once need never fear again. He was drowned, but he came forth stronger than before, with steel and fire.” “Will you do the same, brother?” Euron asked. “I think not. I think if I drowned you, you’ll stay drowned."

And thus the visions come to an end. But where does this leave us? What is to happen next? Well, we did skip over certain parts for this purpose, and now is time to look back at that. About midway through the chapter, Aeron is joined by several other priests in Euron's custody;

It was in the second dungeon that the other holy men began to appear to share his torments. Three wore the robes of septons of the green lands, and one the red raiment of a priest of R’hllor. The last was hardly recognizable as a man. Both his hands had been burned down to the bone, and his face was a charred and blackened horror where two blind eyes moved sightlessly above the cracked cheeks dripping pus. He was dead within hours of being shackled to the wall, but the mutes left his body there to ripen for three days afterwards. Last were two warlocks of the east, with flesh as white as mushrooms, and lips the purplish-blue of a bad bruise, all so gaunt and starved that only skin and bones remained. One had lost his legs. The mutes hung him from a rafter.

Here we have three septons, a red priest, followed by the two warlocks of Qarth joining a Drowned Priest in this dungeon. There could be more, however. I find it rather unlikely that a red priest would be found in Westeros, as it is a primarily Essosi religion. When looking back to the vision of the gods impaled on the Iron Throne, it could also foreshadow Euron's upcoming blood sacrifice. If it does, then he might have more priests from the other gods we see. One thing to note as well is that Aeron does not see the old gods, as they would not have priests.

Regardless, Euron is collecting these priests for a special purpose;

He stepped back and sheathed his dagger. “No, I’ll not kill you tonight. A holy man with holy blood. I may have need of that that blood ... later. For now, you are condemned to live.”

In the canon of bloodmagic, we've only ever heard of kings blood, as Melisandre notes it has great power. She and Stannis nearly burned Edric Storm to wake dragons out of stone because he was the son of King Robert. Holy blood is something entirely new. However, he also is using a pregnant Falia Flowers in the ritual as well. Their child has kings blood, so Euron might end up using kings blood anyways. This mixture of holy blood and kings blood suggests that he is trying to tap into different forms of magical power. Euron is also ready to sacrifice the warlocks, who may not be priests, but are magical people.

There is also the possibility that these won't be the only people he sacrifices. In two visions, Euron is associated with the image of a sea of blood. This first appears when Moqorro tells Tyrion about the people who are seeking Daenerys;

"Only their shadows," Moqorro said. "One most of all. A tall and twisted thing with one black eye and ten long arms, sailing on a sea of blood."

The second, of course, is this line from Aeron's nightmare visions.

The dreams were even worse the second time. He saw the longships of the Ironborn adrift and burning on a boiling blood-red sea.

The burning ships might indicate that the ironborn will suffer large casualties in the coming battle with the Redwyne fleet. Euron himself knows that the Redwyne fleet and Hightower fleet are trying to trap him in the Redwyne Straits using a pincer maneuever;

“Count yourself blessed, Damphair,” said Stonehand. “We are going back to sea. The Redwyne fleet creeps toward us. The winds have been against them rounding Dorne, but they’re finally near enough to have emboldened the old women in Oldtown, so now Leyton Hightower’s sons move down the Whispering Sound in hopes of catching us in the rear.”

And yet Euron knows this and sails into battle anyways. The Redwyne fleet is also the largest in Westeros, around 200 warships. Meanwhile, with the Iron Fleet gone, Euron's main source of seapower is gone. His fleet, as Aeron sees, is also far smaller than the one they are about to enter conflict with;

And so, Aeron Damphair returned to the salt sea. A dozen longships were drawn up at the wharf below the castle, and twice as many beached along the strand. Familiar banners streamed from their masts: the Greyjoy kraken, the bloody moon of Wynch, the warhorn of the Goodbrothers. But from their sterns flew a flag the priest had never seen before: a red eye with a black pupil beneath an iron crown supported by two crows. Beyond them, a host of merchant ships floated on a tranquil, turquoise sea. Cogs, carracks, fishing boats, even a great cog, a swollen sow of a ship as big as the Leviathan. Prizes of war, the Damphair knew.

Only 36 longships and an unknown number of ships they caught from their raids. Militarily, the fleets of the Reach have the numerical and tactical advantage, with larger fleets and ships built for naval combat. Euron is also very confident about what he is doing, and given that there is no way he can defeat them conventionally, it's most likely that he is about to use magic. While the Reach fleets want to lure Euron into a trap, Euron himself is luring them into a different kind of trap, and the perfect bait would be to send some of his fleet to do battle, perhaps as a sacrifice of sorts (more later).

This image of a sea of blood appears as visions from two different sources; one a red priest far away in Essos, and the other Aeron. Being shown far from each other suggests that this event is important magically and metaphysically. It has shades of when Daenerys saw a vision of the Red Wedding in the House of the Undying, far away from Qarth or anything she was involved with. When considering what Euron is exactly doing here, one possibility is that he is summoning krakens. Krakens are apparently drawn to the surface by blood, and capable of pulling under large galleys, as Arianne is told by the Tolands in Dorne;

"And krakens off the Broken Arm, pulling under crippled galleys," said Valena. "The blood draws them to the surface, our maester claims. There are bodies in the water. A few have washed up on our shores."

In the Iron Islands own history, krakens also appear in large numbers when there are heavy casualties from sea battles. From Fire & Blood, we know that after the death of King Harren Hoare, the Iron Islands were thrown into chaos and battled one another with their own kings;

Other claimants around on Great Wyk, Pyke, and Orkmont, and for more than a year their adherents battled one another on land and sea. It was said that the waters between the islands were so choked with corpses that krakens appeared by the hundreds, drawn by the blood.

Krakens being drawn to the surface by the blood from the large casualties seems possible, but this would not be the main reason for the sacrifice. Given how much build up there is, the fact it spans two continents, I think that something far more magical and powerful is happening. One of the most curious, and severely underrated, portions of The Forsaken is the detail in Aeron's vision that the blood-red sea is boiling. It could definitely be from krakens appearing, but as noted, there seems to be something more happening. It also invokes the image of the Doom of Valyria, where the Smoking Sea is said to boil in places.

Going back towards the idea of a set of ships being sent as bait to the Redwyne fleet, there might be more reasons for this to happen. Instead of being just bait, these ships and the ironmen on them could also be sacrifices. It would justify the scale of what Euron is doing, using a huge amount of death to accomplish it. Steven Attewell suggests that Euron is planning to sacrifice his entire fleet, deliberately having thousands killed, while he uses the priests as talismans or ways of focusing magical energy to complete the ritual.

While I don't agree with everything written in the post, I think that Euron is definitely going to deliberately sacrifice at least a portion of his fleet, and use the priests sacrifices to amplify the power of the death from the naval battle. And Euron is definitely preparing for battle, not just a sacrifice;

Euron Crow’s Eye stood upon the deck of Silence, clad in a suit of black scale armor like nothing Aeron had ever seen before. Dark as smoke it was, but Euron wore it as easily as if it was the thinnest silk. The scales were edged in red gold, and gleamed and shimmered when they moved. Patterns could be seen within the metal, whorls and glyphs and arcane symbols folded into the steel. Valyrian steel, the Damphair knew. His armor is Valyrian steel. In all the Seven Kingdoms, no man owned a suit of Valyrian steel. Such things had been known 400 years ago, in the days before the Doom, but even then, they would’ve cost a kingdom.

He's not wearing that for no reason. He intends on a fight, with magical assistance. But what exactly he is doing is a lot harder to parse out. Perhaps the Doom of Valyria example is close to the mark. Euron himself has many artefacts and ideas that are rather deeply rooted with Valyrian culture. He had Dragonbinder, he has a suit of Valyrian steel armour, he wants to marry Daenerys and get her dragons. His antitheism is even reminiscent of Valyrians view on religion, although he is not tolerant;

Some scholars have suggested that the dragonlords regarded all faiths as equally false, believing themselves to be more powerful than any god or goddess. They looked upon priests and temples as relics of a more primitive time, though useful for placating "slaves, savages, and the poor" with promises of a better life to come. Moreover, a multiplicity of gods helped to keep their subjects divided and lessened the chances of their uniting under the banner of a single faith to overthrow their overlords. Religious tolerance was to them a means of keeping the peace in the Lands of the Long Summer.

He is also practicing blood magic, which the Valyrians also famously practiced. It's possible that this sacrifice is something rooted in Valyrian magic. Him needing "holy blood" also strikes me as him trying to tap into some sort of divine power, something that could be considered an act of god.

When thinking about Euron's goal to become a god, we can get caught up in the idea that he wants to literally become a god and this ritual is his way of trying to do that. However, he already believes himself to be more powerful than all the gods, as he does horrific things constantly without ever being stopped by them. Instead, I believe Euron is doing this ritual to do something that makes him appear as god-like, instead of literally making himself a god.

What exactly that is, I'm not sure. The visions are vague, and the boiling sea could mean any number of things, whether it be krakens being summoned, or the Redwyne Straits literally becoming the new Smoking Sea. He has been planning it for a while, as he mentions needing holy blood halfway through the chapter, long before the end. Perhaps he was waiting for the right time, when there would be massive casualties as a result of a massive sea battle, to do this ritual. In that case, he could try to make himself a god in fact, or gain power in some way, rather than simply do his own act of god.

He is noted as not caring much about material wealth;

She laughed. “Silly, he won’t. I’m his love, his lady. He gives me gifts, so many gifts. Silks and furs and jewels. Rags and rocks, he calls them.” “The Crow’s Eye puts no value in such things.” That was one of the things that drew men to his service. Most captains kept the lion’s share of their plunder but Euron took almost nothing for himself.

Despite being narcissistic, he doesn't seem to really care about having the most powerful stuff. This could be that his real goal is to try to gain some sort of power or godly ability, and gods have no need of material wealth. It's not what he wants, he wants deification. There are three things I'm sure of, however; 1) Aeron will not be able to comprehend what he will see. 2) The Redwyne and Hightower fleets are fucked. 3) It's going to be horrifying and exciting to read about.

The Future of the Crow's Eye

The final section is going to explore what Euron will do in the story beyond weird pirate warlock god-king shit, his next moves, as well as his inevitable end. As frightening and imposing a figure he is, I don't believe he will be the "final villain" of the series. The main antagonist of the series has always and will always be the Others. This doesn't mean that Euron won't succeed in doing some serious damage, however. Mad, bold, and malicious, he is going to and has already started to do things that significantly move the narrative.

His presence in the Reach means he is a very near and significant threat to Sam and others at the Citadel in Oldtown. He has already sent Victarion to Slaver's Bay, and whatever he does there will be because of Euron. The probability that Daenerys is going to use the Iron Fleet to reach Westeros is also pretty high, as it would be a waste of narrative space for the fleet to be sent to her and them leaving without her. We will return to Daenerys and Victarion later, but first a look at some of the historical parallels to Euron.

The image of someone wearing an eyepatch and having a bright blue eye is also found with Aemond Targaryen, from the Dance of the Dragons. Unlike Euron, he had only one real eye, but the eye he lost was replaced with a sapphire gemstome, which he usually kept hidden with an eyepatch. He was also the second born brother of the king, and a narcissist who remarked that he looked better wearing the crown (when named Prince Regent after Aegon was wounded) than Aegon II ever did. However, beyond that, he doesn’t share much more with Aemond.

This leads us back to Harwyn Hardhand, who we mentioned much earlier. Like Euron, he (probably) hired a Faceless Man to kill his older brother and then take the Seastone Chair. And, like Euron, he spent much time away from the Iron Islands;

His son Harwyn had no use for peace, but much and more for the arms and armor that his father forged. A belligerent boy by all accounts, and third in the succession, Harwyn Hoare was sent to sea at an early age. He sailed with a succession of reavers in the Stepstones, visited Volantis, Tyrosh, and Braavos, became a man in the pleasure gardens of Lys, spent two years in the Basilisk Isles as a captive of a pirate king, sold his sword to a free company in the Disputed Lands, and fought in several battles as a Second Son.

After his time away and returning, Harwyn then invaded and conquered the Riverlands, which the ironborn would hold for three generations. This is worth noting as the ironborn are not great on land, but Harwyn’s time with sellsword companies in the Disputed Lands made him a worthy commander on land and sea. Euron is strictly a very skilled naval commander, but he has also learned about the power of blood sacrifice and magic, which the ironborn are now also utilizing. His deceptive tactics have also begun to find use in some of his reavers;

"It grieves me that honest men must suffer such discourtesy, but sooner that than ironmen in Oldtown. Only a fortnight ago some of those bloody bastards captured a Tyroshi merchantman in the straits. They killed her crew, donned their clothes, and used the dyes they found to color their whiskers half a hundred colors. Once inside the walls they meant to set the port ablaze and open a gate from within whilst we fought the fire. Might have worked, but they ran afoul of the Lady of the Tower, and her oarsmaster has a Tyroshi wife. When he saw all the green and purple beards he hailed them in the tongue of Tyrosh, and not one of them had the words to hail him back."

Sam notes that the ironborn are far bolder than ever, no doubt emboldened by Euron’s victories. With the Arbor having been sacked, and with the Redwyne and Hightower fleets dealt with, Euron is now free to raid Oldtown. It’s likely that he will use some sort of deception, as Oldtown is a strongly fortified city and the Hightowers are preparing to deal with them. Once again, look no further than Harwyn Hardhand;

Harwyn assembled a host and led it across the bay on a hundred of his father's longships. Landing unchallenged north of Seagard, they carried their ships overland to the Blue Fork of the Trident, then swept downstream with fire and sword.

Given the obvious parallels with Harwyn Hardhand, succeeding in conquering most of the Reach, this is another way Euron could parallel Harwyn. While some of the ironborn attack Oldtown straight from the Whispering Sound, he has others land south of Oldtown, carry their longships around to the Honeywine, then strike Oldtown from the north where they least expect it. If they get a hold of Oldtown, they then have another base they can use to launch even more raids all along the Honeywine, far inland into the Reach.

There is, however, the possibility that Euron might not succeed. Oldtown is set to be an important location in the future, and we currently have Sam Tarly there as a POV. When Jon tells him to go to Oldtown to earn a maesters chain, he also tells him to keep up his practice with archery, and he does, joining the red archers aboard the Cinnamon Wind to send out a volley of arrows against ironborn trying to hunt them down. He even manages to have his arrow hit the ship by the end, which shows he is improving. Thus far he has worked with Ulmer of the Kingswood Brotherhood, Kojja Mo aboard the Cinnamon Wind, and is now to be looked after Alleras (Sarella Sand), all of whom are very skilled archers. In addition, the sigil of House Tarly is a striding huntsmen atop a horse with a bow in hand.

I think it’s possible Sam actually does kill Euron, but even if he doesn’t, he might prove important to the battle or rescuing Oldtown in some other way. If he’s successful in sacking Oldtown, I imagine he will be continuing to raid the Reach, all to prepare for Daenerys to come to Westeros and maybe impress her with his own deeds. Yet, I do not believe things will work out for Euron exactly as he wishes, because events in the east are going far beyond his control.

So now we finally return to Meereen and now I can wrap this whole thing up. There is a strong possibility for Victarion to succeed in binding a dragon to him, as discussed before. The big question is how Daenerys might react to this. On the one hand, she might not be super happy with Victarion taking one of her children, and she has been warned by Quaithe not to trust “the kraken”. On the other hand, the House of the Undying tells her “three heads has the dragon” and she thinks to herself;

The dragon has three heads. There are two men in the world who I can trust, if I can find them. I will not be alone then. We will be three against the world, like Aegon and his sisters.

Yet when we look at the House of the Undying visions, I think it becomes clear that Daenerys will allow Victarion to ally with her, possibly even marry him too;

. . three mounts must you ride . . . one to bed and one to dread and one to love . . .

It’s most likely that the one to bed is Drogo and the one to love is Jon Snow. The one to dread could refer to her being a dragonrider with Drogon, but if we go along the themes of a lover or a husband, it could refer to someone else, possibly Euron or Victarion. This would be ambiguous to me if it weren’t for more obvious visions that Dany receives from the Undying;

Her silver was trotting through the grass, to a darkling stream beneath a sea of stars. A corpse stood at the prow of a ship, eyes bright in his dead face, grey lips smiling sadly. A blue flower grew from a chink in a wall of ice, and filled the air with sweetness. . . . mother of dragons, bride of fire . . .

She is called “bride of fire” and we have her silver gifted to her by Drogo, her husband, so these all likely refer to significant marriages in her life. The corpse at the prow of a ship with grey lips smiling sadly, in my mind, almost certainly refers to a Greyjoy (what with the ship and the allusion of grey lips smiling being a sort of pun on the name Greyjoy). Victarion is already present in Meereen and Euron is hundreds of miles away. With an offer of marriage, and a visual of a future husband matching Victarion or another Greyjoy, it seems to me she will marry a Greyjoy, and Victarion makes the most sense to me.

Why he is a corpse at the prow of a ship is tricky; perhaps he did actually die and Moqorro brought him back to life (although I prefer to think he was just healed with fire magic). Or he is a dead man walking whose time is limited. There’s a lot to think about for this. Drogo was important to Daenerys, as she ended up falling in love with him (as problematic as I find that entire storyline), and his death did lead to the birth of her dragons. Jon Snow, one of the other main characters of the series, is likely to have a significant impact on Dany as well (there is an almost overwhelming amount of foreshadowing for the two getting together but we’ll save that for another time).

If we keep with the pattern, perhaps Victarion might be important to Daenerys as well. I find it difficult to imagine this, but GRRM has done this sort of stuff before, and perhaps I am underestimating Daenerys in that regard. And there are reasons why Daenerys might marry Victarion, even if she won’t fall in love with him. For one, Victarion is rather easy to manipulate, and he would do anything to get into Daenerys’s good graces. He might have some severe issues with women, but something tells me he would do whatever she told him if he meant he would get her as a reward.

On the other hand, he has many things to offer her; he has Dragonbinder that Euron gave him, and he has the Iron Fleet. One reason why Quentyn failed to get Daenerys to marry him (apart from the fact she was still trying to integrate into Meereenese society) is because he only showed up with two of his friends and a signed marriage pact. In other words, nothing present and material that she can see. But if Victarion helps in the defeat of the Yunkish, defeats the Volantenes, and has a massive fleet he commands, it would prove to her that he is a useful ally to have.

In addition, she is now of a mind to finally just head to Westeros and leave Essos all together, and so marrying a Westerosi lord would be important to her, even if he is a fucking Greyjoy. All together, although I found it to be strange at first, there is a strange amount of evidence and logical reasons for her to marry Victarion. It is an inverse to Quentyn’s quest, where both go over a long journey and have similar end goals, but where Quentyn failed, Victarion will succeed… at least for a bit. And, as Euron tells Victarion;

"When the kraken weds the dragon, brother, let all the world beware."

Except the kraken marrying the dragon is Victarion, not Euron. If this happens, then Daenerys comes to Westeros with Euron as her antagonist, not a potential suitor. This leads to the final point (finally) I want to discuss. How will Euron meet his end? He’s a legit villain and a major threat, but there is no way he will survive the series. I brought up the theory of Sam the Slayer killing Euron, but it is equally plausible that Euron kills Victarion and in revenge Daenerys burns Euron to death with her dragons. I have another theory, however.

In Victarion’s first chapter alone, kinslaying is brought up four times, and in his next two it is mentioned thrice more, all in reference to Euron;

Euron was still his elder, no matter how much bad blood might be between them. No man is as accursed as the kinslayer.

He would give half his teeth for the chance to try his axe against the Kingslayer or the Knight of Flowers. That was the sort of battle that he understood. The kinslayer was accursed in the eyes of gods and men, but the warrior was honored and revered.

In addition, there are references to Victarion thinking about Euron while also thinking about killing him with his own hands;

Victarion's hands closed into fists. He had beaten four men to death with those hands, and one wife as well. Though his hair was flecked with hoarfrost, he was as strong as he had ever been, with a bull's broad chest and a boy's flat belly. The kinslayer is accursed in the eyes of gods and men, Balon had reminded him on the day he sent the Crow's Eye off to sea.

Victarion would not speak of kinslaying, here in this godly place beneath the bones of Nagga and the Grey King's Hall, but many a night he dreamed of driving a mailed fist into Euron's smiling face, until the flesh split and his bad blood ran red and free. I must not. I pledged my word to Balon.

"He put a baby in her belly and made me do the killing. I would have killed him too, but Balon would have no kinslaying in his hall. He sent Euron into exile, never to return . . ."

He drank in the darkness, brooding on his brother. If I do not strike the blow with mine own hand, am I still a kinslayer? Victarion feared no man, but the Drowned God's curse gave him pause. If another strikes him down at my command, will his blood still stain my hands?

"The Crow's Eye fears you, my lord, why else send you so far away? He does not mean for us to return." Victarion had thought the same when he met the first storm a day out of Old Volantis. The gods hate kinslayers, he brooded, elsewise Euron Crow's Eye would have died a dozen deaths by my hand.

And now Victarion has a volcano arm with supernatural strength. Victarion may be stupid and a brute, but if he was going to die, then it’d feel a bit weird for Victarion to die so soon after getting it without playing some other purpose. It’s not just this that makes me consider the possibility Victarion is the one who deals the final blow for Euron. Throughout his journey to Meereen, he begins to imitate Euron, worship R’hllor, and become more his own person, not 100% following ironborn tradition.

If he is becoming more like Euron and less like a typical ironborn brute, then it’d fit for him to become a kinslayer, having the power to finally stand up to his demonic brother and kill him. Alternately, him thinking about if he would be a kinslayer if someone else did it at his behest might suggest he has someone else kill him instead. It would be a great bit of irony that Euron, arguably the smartest Greyjoy, and the atheist of the family, sent away Victarion, the dumbest Greyjoy, to die, only for the will of R’hllor to find Victarion and give him the strength to kill his own brother.

A simple death is so incredibly fitting for a sorceror king who wishes to become an invincible god. In many ways, Euron is a deconstruction of the dark lord trope that GRRM has been critical of from Tolkien imitators. Euron is 100% a dark lord, and also has many parallels with Sauron. Both become more powerful through the use of magic. Both want to conquer Westeros/Middle-earth to rule as its god-king. They even have similar banners/flags and imagery. Compare the Eye of Sauron with Euron’s nightmarish personal sigil.

Yet, I think GRRM wants to tell us a very human lesson with Euron. He may want to become a god, believe he is a god, stronger than all the gods. But despite the blood sacrifices, extreme sadism and torment, his intent on ruling in the aftermath of a massive apocalypse as a god-king, and his confidence, Euron is, at the end of the day, still human. He is mad and ambitious but he is not all powerful or beyond mortality;

"The Horned Lord once said that sorcery is a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it."

He is playing with forces he does not understand, and there will be a price to what he does, which is as human as you can get. He is not a god, and he can still be killed by normal mundane means. He is absolutely a terrifying demon in human skin, as close to absolute evil as anyone can be, and not to be dismissed out of hand. But he can still be brought down and killed just like anyone else, and his want for power and the consequences of his own actions will be GRRMs way of making Euron human.

Fuck an overview conclusion, I already wrote everything and I spent dozens of hours on this… to anyone who finished this and read every word, thank you. I will never write anything this long in my life ever again, I swear it on my grave. I hope this doesn't break anyones browser as it did mine.

[regina-del-cielo]

Immortal Siblings AU | Four, then three, then four again

I mentioned that the bulletpoint post describing how the Guard from the Immortal Siblings AU found Joe had totally run away from me. It has, in fact, become a study on them grieving over Lykon and then finding Yusuf. 

I have, somehow, reached a sort of natural end to the amount of bullshit my mind can add to this list/fic draft. So, if you want to give it a read... grab a snack. It’s long. I’m sorry.

Warnings for Wikipedia levels of historical accuracy - I added links to the relevant pages when quoting historical events, but since I was just trying to work out a timeline (famous last words), the research wasn’t extensive. There’s a lot of hand-waving.

By the end of the 11th Century, I think Andy, Quynh and Nico haven’t been in Europe for a while, not really. They moved south, and then east, after the sack of Rome of 410 CE. Seeing the great cities fall has become hard for them, especially for Nico, who is a nomad at heart but has a soft spot for cities, together with Lykon, the true city boy in the group. He’d seen it happen to Athens, he wasn’t sure he could deal with seeing Rome wilt.

For reasons I cannot fathom, my mind is settled on them having been in India when Lykon dies (possibly sometime around the middle of the 6th century, in the mess that was the crumbling of the Gupta Empire???)

Seeing him die destroys them, and they take a break from any battlefield to grieve their friend and brother. They wander, occasionally helping but almost never raising their weapons, too leery of injuries and of losing each other.

(Quynh, who was the first to notice Lykon’s wounds, has nightmares that make her cry in her sleep. Andromache holds her so tight Nico can feel the tension on her muscles against his back. He and his sister barely sleep, scared of the open spaces of Asia as they’d never been before. Lykon was the youngest of them and he died, what if they stop healing too?)

(If Nico stands guard over his sisters and feels an ache in his chest seeing how they hold onto each other, he’s never going to say it out loud. His Mache deserves the love she shares with Quynh. But sometimes he wishes he had someone to hold him like that, one he can call his heart.)

The first time they go to battle again like in the old days it’s almost the end of the 10th century, and they’re helping Quynh’s lands gain independence from China. They have a reason and a specific side to root for, and it’s the kind of cause Lykon would have approved of. They find purpose again.

They are distantly aware of how things are holding up in the west – they know Constantinople has crowned itself capital of the Roman Empire (what is left of it anyway); they know of the new religion, Islam, and how it was brought further east with the armies conquering Persia. They met the Varangians on the Northern Plains of the Rus’, when Andy insisted on going back to their steppes for a while.

They acquire new swords, repair the old weapons, make improvements on their bows. They travel, and help, and listen. They learn new languages. They heal.

They’ve just spent the winter in Samarkand when they hear merchants newly come from Constantinople talk about the Frankish armies that took Antioch and making their way further into Palestine. 

The words ‘freeing Jerusalem from the infidels’ make Andy sigh in exasperation and twist Nico’s guts. The three of them don’t really understand the point of going to war for a god, but Jerusalem is old, and she’s been coveted by many throughout their long lives. Things like this never end well, they know it intimately.

But they’ve been away for a long time, centuries at this point. Things are very different from when the Romans had the power. They are less eager to throw themselves into the battlefield now, and there’s much they don’t know about the dynamics of Europe and the Levant. Still they’re worried, and decide that they’ll move west to see if something can be done, for the civilians at least.

At first they travel slowly, keeping an ear out for gossip spoken by the caravans coming from the west. Things radically change, however, when they dream of a new immortal (a man, with a curly black beard and shining dark eyes) dying on the walls of Jerusalem and reviving to an unprecedented slaughter – said man is, obviously, absolutely terrified and they feel it.

He’s also woken up surrounded by living enemies, with high risk of being killed or injured multiple times, and of being seen.

They are still too far away to do anything more than hope that the new guy is clever enough to keep himself alive until they can reach him, but now Nico is all for moving west at full speed to get him out.

“What the everloving FUCK is happening over there?!” is the common theme in their thoughts; nothing about this war they’re walking towards is making any sense.

Yusuf al-Kaysani is, in fact, clever enough to keep himself (and a few other civilians to boot) alive and get out of Jerusalem when it becomes clear than no matter how many Franks he kills he can do nothing to stop them alone. (It’s a fucking carnage, and he’s so tired). He walks away from the battle and tries to reach some sort of safety in the desert.

When he’d decided to stay in Jerusalem and fight instead of escaping the siege, Yusuf had considered the possibility of dying. He had not accounted for waking up from a fatal wound with no sign of having been hit in the first place.

And then there are the visions. Or dreams, he’s not sure. They don’t seem to make any sense? Who are those people?! Is his mind so addled by the war that he’s conjuring scary warrior women and a stupidly handsome man, armed to the teeth and camping in the desert?

(fantasizing about handsome men in his sleep isn’t exactly news for him, but there were never women in those. And none of his usual dreams involved weapons. Something is definitely off)

For the following days, Yusuf makes sure to stay away from human settlements while putting as much space as possible between Jerusalem and himself – the last thing he needs is to become a potential target for any invader that may cross his path.

But he’s alone, having nightmares, constantly on edge, and in a body that suddenly doesn’t feel like his own anymore, since he doesn’t even have the scars to prove that the injuries he sustained were real to begin with.

After a couple of weeks, the appearance of the strangers in his dreams starts feeling safe and comforting; they seem to operate like a little family, and God knows how much he misses his own.

(should he try to go back home? Would news of the siege reach his family before he does? Would he be able to go back to his previous life in the state he’s in? Could he keep this secret from them? Would they still love him or think him a monster?)

Despite their impressive warrior appearance, they feel... kind. And gentle. Sometimes, it feels like they’re trying to reassure him, even. Especially when he dreams from the perspective of the man.

The sensation those dreams leave on his skin is like a cape. You’re not alone, it whispers. Wait for us.

Andy, Quynh and Nico have just left Baghdad when the dreams change, and not for the better - Yusuf was passing through a village when a band of marauding Franks started harassing the locals. He moved to defend the villagers, but was overwhelmed and what’s worse, the Franks saw his wounds close too fast. Their reaction was vehement: they called him a demon, incapacitated him and then brought him back to their garrison, with every intention of ‘properly getting rid of him’.

Nico wakes up screaming and Andy has to sit on him so he doesn’t just sprint ahead without actually knowing where the fuck he’s going.

“We can’t just raid every single Frankish encampment in a twenty mile radius around Jerusalem, Nico!” “TRY ME” *Aggressive Sibling Bickering follows* *Quynh doesn’t bat an eye and just rolls out a map of the area she purchased and starts mapping out the fastest routes*

Yusuf is having a Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week at the hands of his captors, who are getting disturbingly creative in their tortures, but whenever they let him fall unconscious he sees the people of his dreams travelling much faster than before, looking Royally Pissed Off, and the surroundings are... starting to look familiar too? 

If he tries to pay more attention to the conversations his torturers are having with each other outside of the tent he’s in and hoping the dreams go both ways, so the maybe-real trio can find him easier, now that’s nobody’s business but his own.

(spoiler: it works)

When they are in sight of Jerusalem, the immortals find a drunk “pilgrim” boasting about his band capturing a ‘pagan demon’ while coming back from their victory at Ascalon, follow him back to his camp, and as soon as it’s feasible they attack.

(Andy will later gripe that Nico didn’t leave her anything to do because he just paved his way through the Franks like he was harvesting wheat.)

seeing the Stupidly Handsome Man of his dreams standing in front of him covered head to toe in blood, with a double-bladed axe in one hand and a sword in the other, staring intensely at him as if to peer directly into his soul is... an experience for Yusuf.

(he may have composed a lot of poems about that first vision of Nico through the centuries. The words ‘avenging angel’ have been used quite profusely, too)

The protective instinct that Nico has felt for the newest immortal since the first dream clutches at his throat when he finally sees him, chained to a pole and so thin his clothes barely cling to his body, but with the softest dark eyes staring back with a glint of recognition when he comes closer.

(he could cry with relief at the knowledge that he’s not scared of him. Nico has seen the faces of the men that were keeping him captive, he knows he looks a lot like they did, and that he paints a gruesome picture.)

“Are you alright?” Nico asks first, in Greek. (He knows, from the dreams, that his captors prayed in Latin. He wants to make sure that the other knows that he’s not like them.)

“You were in my dreams. You came.” Yusuf answers back in the same language, although his sounds much newer than Nico’s.

“Of course. We’re not meant to be alone… and no one deserves to be in a cage”.

Nico uses the axe to break the chains, and by the time he’s done Andy and Quynh have reached them and his sister throws the keys at him to open the shackles.

“Couldn’t take a moment to get them yourself, little eagle? You wanted to show off your skills to the new one?” Quynh teases, just to see Nico blush. Andy stares at her brother and their new companion for a few beats, before finally asking his name.

“Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad Al-Kaysani, known as al-Tayyib” he answers, letting out the first smile in weeks at the raising eyebrows of his saviours. “Just Yusuf is fine.”

“You have a sense of humour, brother. I like you!” Andy snorts, before cutting her palm with the edge of her axe, and showing him her fast healing.

“We are like you, Yusuf. That’s why you dreamt of us, and we of you” Nico adds gently, while Quynh offers her waterskin to Yusuf. They also offer their own names.

“We need to clean up this mess and move away from here” Andy says, while Nico helps Yusuf up. “One of those fuckers was boasting about an undying demon with others in a tavern, the last thing we need is to fight our way out against their whole army because someone else decided to come check if he was saying the truth.”

“It’s been a long time since we were in Kush” Quynh whispers, and Yusuf sees their faces open in a look of affectionate grief he remembers seeing on his Baba’s eyes when he talked about his own mother.

“We can talk about it more when we’re somewhere safer” Andromache suggests, before moving to set up the stage of an ‘accidental’ fire.

As they’re riding away, Yusuf turns slightly to watch the camp burn, leaving no trace of the invaders that hurt him. Jerusalem looms in the distance - lost, and wounded. If he were a little less exhausted, he could  easily work out a metaphor about his own situation.

But then he looks at the three people of his dreams – Quynh, Andromache, Nikolaos – that came for him. Who are the same as him, immortal.

His world has turned upside down, and there are so many questions to ask, and he could sleep for a month straight – but one thing is certain. 

He’s not alone anymore.