#and we can argue about monarchies in real life

[lastoneout]

Like every time Luffy's on an island there's a 70% chance he's going to overthrow the local government before he leaves but yeah sure he'd totally love and support the police.

[wifelinkmtg]

TUMBLR POST EDITOR WON'T LET ME TITLE THIS POST ANYMORE SO I GUESS THIS IS THE TITLE NOW. WEBBED SITE INNIT

So let's say you grew up in the nineties and that The Lion King was an important movie to you. Let's say that the character of Scar - snarling, ambitious, condescending, effeminate Scar - stirred feelings in you which you had no words for as a child. And then let's say, many years later, you're talking about it with a college friend, and you say something like, "oh man, I think Scar was some sort of gay awakening for me," and she fixes you with this level stare and says, "Scar was a fascist. What's the matter with you?"

The immediate feeling is not unlike missing a step: hang on, what's happening, what did I miss? You knew there were goose-stepping hyenas in "Be Prepared," but you didn't think it mattered that much. He's the bad guy, after all, and the movie's just pointing it out. Your friend says it's more than that: the visuals of the song are directly referencing the Nuremberg rallies. They're practically an homage to Riefenstahl. This was your sexual awakening? Is this why you're so into peaked caps and leather, then? Subliminal nazi kink, perhaps?

And then one of your other friends cuts in. "Hold up," he says, "let's think about what Scar actually did in the movie. He organized a group of racialized outcasts and led them against a predatory monarchy. Why are you so keen to defend their hereditary rule? Scar's the good guy here." The conversation immediately descends into a verbal slap fight about who the real bad guy is, whether Scar's regime was actually responsible for the ecological devastation of the Pride Lands, whether the hyenas actually count as "racialized" because James Earl Jones voiced Mufasa after all. Your Catholic friend starts saying some strange and frankly concerning shit about Natural Law. Someone brings The Lion King 2 into it. You leave the conversation feeling a little bit lost and a little bit anxious. What were we even talking about?

INTRODUCING: THE DITCH

There is a way of reading texts which I'm afraid is pervasive, which has as its most classical expression the smug obsession with trivia and minutiae you find in a certain vein of comic book fan. "Who was the first Green Lantern? What was his weakness? Do you even know the Green Lantern Oath?" It eschews the subjective in favor of definitively knowable fact. You can't argue with this guy that, say, Alan Scott shouldn't really count as the first Green Lantern because his whole deal is so radically different from the Hal Jordan/John Stewart/Guy Gardner Corps-era Lanterns, because this guy will simply say "but he's called Green Lantern. Says so right on the cover. Checkmate." This approach to reading a text is fundamentally 1) emotionally detached (there's a reason the joke goes, oh you like X band? name three of their songs - and not, which of their songs means the most to you? which of them came into your life at exactly the right moment to tell you exactly what you needed to hear just then?) and 2) defensive. It's a stance that is designed not to lose arguments. It says so right on the cover. Checkmate.

And then you get the guys who are like "well obviously Bruce Wayne could do far more as a billionaire to solve societal problems by using his tremendous wealth to address systemic issues instead of dressing up as a bat and punching mental patients in the head," and these guys have half a point but they're basically in the same ditch butting heads with the "well, actually" guys, and can we not simply extricate ourselves from the ditch entirely?

So, okay, let's return to our initial example. Scar is portrayed using Nazi iconography - the goose-stepping, the monumentality, the Nuremberg Lichtdom. He is also flamboyant and effete. He unifies and leads a group of downtrodden exiles to overthrow an absolute monarch. He's also a self-serving despot on whose rule Heaven Itself turns its back. You can't reconcile these things from within the ditch - or if you can, the attempt is likely to be ad-hoc supposition and duct tape.

Instead, let's ask ourselves what perspective The Lion King is coming from. What does it say is true about the world? What are its precepts, its axioms?

There is a natural hierarchical order to the world. This is just and righteous and the way of things, and attempts to overthrow this order will be punished severely by the world itself.

Fascism is what happens when evil men attempt to usurp this natural order with the aid of a group or groups of people who refuse to accept their place in the order.

There exists an alternative to defending and adhering to one's place in the natural order - it consists only of selfish spineless apathy.

Manliness is an essential quality of a just ruler. Unmanliness renders a person unfit for rule, and often resentful and dangerous as well.

And isn't that interesting, laid out like that? It renders the entire argument about the movie irrelevant (except for whatever your Catholic friend was on about, since his understanding of the world seems to line up with the above precepts weirdly well.) It's meaningless to argue about whether Scar was a secret hero or a fascist, when the movie doesn't understand fascism and has a damn-near alien view of what good and evil are.

There's always gonna be someone who, having read this far, wants to reply, "so, what? The Lion King is a bad movie and the people who made it were homophobes and also American monarchists, somehow? And anyone who likes it is also some sort of gay-bashing crypto-authoritarian?" To which I have to reply, man, c'mon, get out of the ditch. You're no good to anyone in there. Take my hand. I'm going to pull on three. One... two...

SO PHYREXIA [PAUSE FOR APPLAUSE, GROANS]

We're talking about everyone's favorite ichor-drooling surgery monsters again because there was a bit in my ~*~seminal~*~ essay Transformation, Horror, Eros, Phyrexia which seemed to give a number of readers quite a bit of trouble: namely, the idea that while Phyrexia is textually fascist, their aesthetic is incompatible with real-world fascism, and further, that this aesthetic incompatibility in some way outweighs the ways in which they act like a fascist nation in terms of how we think of them. I'll take responsibility here: I don't think that point is at all clear or well-argued in that essay. What I was trying to articulate was that the text of Magic: the Gathering very much wants Phyrexia to be supremely evil and dangerous fascists, because that makes for effective antagonists, but in the process of constructing that, it's accidentally encoded a whole bunch of fascinating presuppositions that end up working at cross-purposes with its apparent aim. That's... not that much clearer, is it? Hmm. Why don't I just show you what I mean?

Atraxa, Grand Unifier (art by Marta Nael)

In "Beneath Eyes Unblinking," one of the March of the Machine stories by K. Arsenault Rivera, there's a fascinating and I think revealing passage in which Atraxa (big-deal Phyrexianized angel and Elesh Norn's lieutenant) has a run-in with an art museum in New Capenna. The first thing I want to talk about is that, in this passage, Atraxa has no understanding of the concept of "beauty". A great deal of space in such a rushed storyline is devoted to her trying to puzzle out what beauty means and interrogating the minds of her recently-compleated Capennan aesthetes to try and understand it. In the end, she is unable to conceive of beauty except as "wrongness," as anathema.

So my first question is, why doesn't Atraxa have any idea of beauty? This is nonsense, right? We could point to a previous story, "A Garden of Flesh," by Lora Gray, in which Elesh Norn explicitly thinks in terms of beauty, but that's a little bit ditchbound, isn't it? The better argument is to simply look at Phyrexian bodies, at the Phyrexian landscape, all of which looks the way it does on purpose, all of which has been shaped in accordance with the very real aesthetic preferences of Phyrexians. How you could look at the Fair Basilica and not understand that Phyrexians most definitely have an idea of beauty, even if you personally disagree with it, is baffling. This is a lot like the canonical assertion that Phyrexians lack souls, which is both contradicted elsewhere in canon and essentially meaningless, given Magic's unwillingness or inability to articulate what a soul is in its setting, and as with this, it seems the goal is simply to dehumanize Phyrexians, to render them alien, even at the cost of incoherence or internal contradiction.

Atraxa's progress through the museum is fascinating. It evokes the 1937 Nazi exhibit on "degenerate art" in Munich, but not at all cleanly. The first exhibit, which is of representational art, she angrily destroys for being too individualistic (a point of dissonance with the European fascist movements of the 20th century, which formed in direct antagonism to communism.) The second exhibit, filled with abstract paintings and sculptures, she destroys even more angrily for having no conceivable use (this is much more in line with the Nazi idea of "degenerate art", so well done there.) The third exhibit is filled with war trophies and reconstructions from a failed Phyrexian invasion of Capenna many years prior, which she is angriest of all with (and fair enough, I suppose.) But then, after she's done completely trashing the place, she spots a number of angel statues on the cathedral across the plaza, and she goes apeshit. In a fugue of white-hot rage, she pulverizes the angel heads, and here is where I have to ask my second question:

Why angels? If you are trying to invoke fascist attitudes toward art, big statues of angels are precisely the wrong thing for your fascist analogues to hate. Fascists love monumental, heroic representations of superhuman perfection. It's practically their whole aesthetic deal. I understand that we're foreshadowing the imminent defeat of Phyrexia at the hands of legions of angels and a multiversal proliferation of angel juice, but that just leads to the exact same question: why angels? To the best of my knowledge, the Phyrexian weakness to New Capennan angel juice is something invented for this storyline. They have, after all, been happily compleating angels since 1997. We could talk about the in-universe justification for why Halo specifically is so potent, but I don't remember what that justification is, and also don't care. Let's not jump back in the ditch, please. The point is, someone decided that this time, Phyrexia would be defeated by an angelic host, and what does that mean? What is the text trying to say? What are its precepts and axioms?

Let me ask you a question: how many physically disabled angels are there in Magic: the Gathering? How about transsexual angels? How many angels are there, on all of the cards that have ever been printed for Magic: the Gathering, that are even just a bit ugly? Do you get it yet? Or do you need me to spell it out for you?

SPELLING IT OUT FOR YOU

There is a kind of body which is bad. It is bad because it has been significantly altered from its natural state, and it is bad because it is repellent to our aesthetic sensibilities.

The bad kind of body is contagious. It spreads through contact. Sometimes people we love are infected, and then they become the bad kind of body too.

There is a kind of body which is good. It is good because it is pleasing to our aesthetic sensibilities, and it is good because it is unaltered from its (super)natural state.

A happy ending is when all the good bodies destroy or drive into hiding all of the bad bodies. A happy ending is when the bad bodies of the people we love are forcibly returned to being the good kind of body.

Do you get it now?

ENDNOTES

It's worth noting that the ditch is very similar to the white American Evangelical hermeneutics of "the Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it," the defensive chapter-and-verse-or-it-didn't-happen approach to reading a text, what Fred Clark of slacktivist calls "concordance-ism". I don't think that's accidental. We stand underneath centuries of people reading the Bible very poorly - how could that not affect how we read things today? We are participants in history whether we like it or not.

I sincerely hope I haven't come across as condescending in this essay. Close reading is legitimately difficult! They teach college courses on this stuff! And while it is frustrating to have my close readings interrogated by people who... aren't doing that, like. I do get it. I find myself back in the ditch all the time. This stuff is hard. It is also, sorry, crucial if you intend to say something about a text that's worth saying.

I also hope I've communicated clearly here. Magic story is sufficiently incoherent that trying to develop a thesis about it often feels like trying to nail jello to the wall. If anyone has questions, please ask them! And thank you for reading. Next time, we'll probably do the new Eldraine set.

[ganondoodle]

so, doing this as an extra post bc i dont want to spam op nor invite more disaster into their post (sorry)

(i get annoyed, i get frustrated, but i rarely get pissed off, so if this sounds aggressive to you, it is; i have had enough of arguing with people -even if most of that arguing has happened on twitter-)

someone had replied (and later apparently deleted) something along the lines of "well zelda wanted to restore hyrule at the end of botw and what is so bad about ganondorf always being the bad guy in the way that he is?"

so first off, while i know hyrule and KINGDOM of hyrule is often used as an equally interchangeable word to refer to the world there, i dont think she meant the kingdom or its or its monarchy when she said that (does she? i dont have the end in my head rn and pretty sure its a lil different than english anyway) and much more the LAND of hyrule, its still in shambles even if people have found ways to live with it- that is an interpretation of me mostly, you can think what you want in that regard idc

secondly .... im not gonna get into that rant bc you cannot be seriosuly asking what is bad about how ganondorf is presented, treated in the games (espeically in totk) and his role and "writing" (oh geez i dont know maybe all the racism and stereotypes?? also, frankly boring ass writing, if your villain can be replaced by a cloud of toxic goo incapable of speech and nothing would change except saving money for voice actors that dont fit the role that is not a great look- hes never gotten much but totk is a new low)

then theres this reply

astro-shark3113 replied: "You're kidding right? If she cared about reinstating the monarchy then why is the castle still in disrepair after five years? Why does she become a teacher and live in a cottage with her boyfriend instead of taking on duties as princess? She clearly wants to help people and be a leader but she can do that without wanting to be a Queen. Please be real"

i am not kidding and i AM being real, i think you need to look at the game without your rose tinted glasses for a second; the castle is still in ruin? what the hell do you expect, theres no soldiers and very few servants left, repairing anything is quite impossible in that time and frankly not a priority (not proof of her not caring lol) also there is a plan for it at the very least given the camps with the hyrule crest all over it in the ruins of castle town- we dont SEE her as a teacher, or living a "normal" life, that happens in between the game, its flavor text, what HAPPENS in the game is her being taught a lessson on who she needs to be and what hyrule needs to be (pretty in your face too, she gets sent to paradise past of the "first" king that is some supposedly godly thing from the HEAVENS and watches him and his queen die at the hands of the eviiil guy, the last scene in the game mimics perfectly the scene where everyone that god king got under his rule swears undying loyalty to her ffs); she does live in that house, but what other option is there, set up camp in the collapsing throne room all alone?? nigh everyone from that time is long dead and the only one she actually knows is link who happens to have a house (bc impa doesnt care i guess idk), with her ""boyfriend"" is also interesting, a "boyfriend" that apparently is locked in the basement, lives in the woods or straight up dematerlializes when theres no big bad in need of stabbing bc why the hell does no one fucking know him in hateno??? not even the kids that come to the house EVERY SINGLE DAY?? and taking on duties as a princess, she very much does? just bc she doesnt get physically carried around in a castle doesnt mean she isnt doing royal stuff (also, again, that happens BETWEEN the games, not actually in totk), she still sees herself as the princess, everyone calls her that, she herself calls herself that (if the memorial stones are anything to go by) and everyone listens to the most overtly stupid and nonsensical stuff that zelda puppet says (even her friends follow that order without even asking back???) after over 100 years of there not being a kingdom as such its pretty weird how everyone immediately, even the ones not alive for the calamity event, snaps into blindly following her orders

"she can still lead without being a queen", did we play the same game?? totk? TEARS of the KINGDOM?? (its zeldas tears, she IS the kingdom) that game?? the game couldnt be more directly telling you that its whole point is that royal family holy and good and how much everyone has to sacrifice to uphold the holy kingdom bc its the only thing that keeps evil man from overtaking it!! including turnign herself into a farmable, glorified stone pedestal for the entirety of the actual game and then that sacrifice not meanign shit bc she just gets deus ex machina'd back (i didnt need her to stay a dragon, though it would have been the better choice if she still didnt get an active part in the game i would kill for her to have been a capable companion instead of the stupid ghost sages, and you dont even get to actually do anything for it, it just happens), not even the nuclear pebble is lost, how great! she and everyone else that is a leader of their people has a nuclear pebble now!! they will not let a bad evil man be a threat ever again!! like the point to bring her back in that utterly unsatisfying way is that otherwise the royal line wouldnt exist anymore, its a blessing of her ancient ancestors!! woohooo!!

and the thing is, i LIKE botw zelda, i liked her character, that she wasnt the typically maiden princessy type, her struggle (even if i find the way she unlocked her powers lame), i do NOT like totk zelda, after the intro of the game she is a princessy maiden standing prettily at the side of the god king that rules the only thing keeping evil at bay, the level of how much totk disrespects her makes me mad on her behalf but i have ranted about that alone enough as well

and with this i am DONE talking about this game, i have ranted so much about it, made my points carefully clear over and over, said that i dont have the nerves left to be nice anymore about it given how much shit alone on twitter i had to live through just bc i dared mildly critisizing the damn game, if you comment some snarky "be real" thing again im just gonna go straight to blockign people bc i am done with this

[halogenwarrior]

I find it interesting the moral double standards employed by fiction where all animals are depicted as sapient and able to talk to each other, ecological balances i.e “the circle of life” is a major theme i.e the Lion King, and at least some of the main characters are carnivores. The premise is always that the predators can’t be seen as horrifying or evil for eating sapient prey because they live within an ecosystem, and, as in real ecosystems, everything is complicated and connected enough that it can’t be boiled down to “everything would be better if the predators weren’t there”. No death can be seen as definitively a bad thing because of this ecological complexity. But in practice this premise never holds - prey deaths are acceptable and we shouldn’t be quick to call them bad, and yet we are supposed to feel any deaths of the predator protagonists are tragic and those who deliberately kill them are evil, in spite of the fact that by the same logic you should argue that no one can say those deaths are inherently bad, either - one lion or wolf’s death is just part of an overall cycle and who can say it’s bad because that death will mean other animals get to live. So it becomes a double standard - typical morality of death being tragic and murder being wrong for me, cold moral relativism for thee. 

And I get why this is tempting to do since to do otherwise would make a very cynical, depressing, morally nihilistic story that wouldn’t be a good fit for a kids’ movie - nothing you do matters, whether you live or die does not matter, as long as the overall ecosystem is preserved. So they will often try to make the stakes matter by having a villain who is not just threatening the individual lives of the main characters but threatening the “balance of nature” altogether; e.g, using The Lion King as an example again, Scar isn’t just bad because he kills Mufasa and tries to kill Simba, but also because by letting in the hyenas he enables overhunting, unbalancing the ecosystem and causing mass starvation. The problem here is that a lot of portrayals of “disturbing the balance of nature” rely on an overly idealized portrayal of ecology, where as long as the predators just take their fair share the prey’s overpopulation never causes problems for other species and the predators never starve. A basic look at predator-prey population graphs proves this wrong, though - it’s a constantly shifting “equilibrium” where the prey does get overhunted sometimes and drops in population, causing the predators to starve and drop in population themselves until the prey population rises again. So the famine Scar is causing is something that would have inevitably happened anyway. Rather than a constant peace the cynical sacrifices have to be made for it’s a constant strife where at any given time someone is always given the short end of the stick. 

An that’s not even getting into the part of the premise where the sapient prey species are considered so incapable of understanding ecological management on their own that they have to be paternalistically killed by ecologically knowledgable predators to keep them from overpopulating. And what would they do if they did feel they could manage their own affairs? The omnivorous animals are one thing, but what about all the obligate carnivores who have no choice but to kill even if they weren’t making moral justifications for it, would they just have to all be killed? Of course, a story where characters had to make the choice between accepting a constant state of being picked off and murdered for the “greater good” and committing genocide wouldn’t make for a good kids story. 

In the particular case of the Lion King, the setup is particularly disturbing because the “circle of life” stuff is being explicitly analogized to human systems of monarchy, which have a long history of using exactly this kind of double standard of “everyone must stay in their role and make sacrifices to keep the Balance, but somehow the lower-class people are the only one who have to make actual sacrifices while we don’t” to justify their power. And I can’t help but noting that there’s probably a reason along these lines that just about every Lion King fan work focuses completely on the lion (and sometimes hyena) characters, not really acknowledging other animals as characters. It’s just a lot more comfortable to have a more human-relatable story of one sapient species with everyone else being treated as moral non-entities (which raises questions about humans assuming one needs to be sapient to be a moral entity, though that’s an entirely different topic), than either maintaining the oppressive double standard of which lives have value or going for full-on moral nihilism where nothing anyone does in the story really matters. Or maybe it’s just that they like designing lion characters better and I’m reading too much into it, I don’t know.

[azula-omnipotens]

OOC and to Mun: Hallo. I am the guy who told you about the Decembrists Revolt. I've been interested and obsessing over that event for days now cause it's arguably one of the most important events in Russia's history. The Decembrists not only wanted Russia to be a Constitutional Monarchy and end serfdom but they also wanted to copy the US Constitution and form states within. Had the Decembrists succeeded, Russia today would have been very different. Communism would have never materialized or remain debased, Russia would have become more populous and economically advanced and not to mention they would have become strong allies with the US. Just imagine for a moment if that's the Russia we got. History would have been far different for better and worse in some aspects. (Russia if it was like that would have probably never joined WW1 and declared neutrality which means that France and the UK would have been in a world of hurt) but still the Decembrists are the heroes Russia didn't deserve but needed the most for a brighter future. Russia could have arguably become a Democracy or a Federal Republic like the US. But alas, The Russia the Decembrists envisioned never came to be but perhaps in an alternate timeline it was the case.

OOC: Hey! I won't argue on that. At least Decembrists, as the revolutionaries who must've had to fight for their idea, would be devoted to that idea, unlike those, who, I guess, came after Soviet Union broke down. For real, I'm always trying to be realist without believing any idea could go like on paper, so I think at one point human factor would take over, and there would be corruption, power shifts, treason and so on, but Decembrists for sure could make a great basis and hopefully boost their nation's quality of life for decades or maybe even century or two, who knows... if we wouldn't consider the unpredictable nature of XIX-XX century world, when different authoritarian and totalitarian regimes bloomed in multiple places. However, wait... there was time when Stalin and Hitler were working together, so maybe that constitutional monarchy of Decembrists would instead help Poland and try stopping the Third Reich earlier... What can I say... it's simply unpredictable, but for sure interesting.

[thegunmaybetheperfectweapon]

THE NATURE OF FREEDOM

93. We are going to argue that industrial-technological society cannot be reformed in such a way as to prevent it from progressively narrowing the sphere of human freedom. But, because "freedom" is a word that can be interpreted in many ways, we must first make clear what kind of freedom we are concerned with.

94. By "freedom" we mean the opportunity to go through the power process, with real goals not the artificial goals of surrogate activities, and without interference, manipulation or supervision from anyone, especially from any large organization. Freedom means being in control (either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) of the life-and-death issues of one's existence; food, clothing, shelter and defense against whatever threats there may be in one's environment. Freedom means having power; not the power to control other people but the power to control the circumstances of one's own life. One does not have freedom if anyone else (especially a large organization) has power over one, no matter how benevolently, tolerantly and permissively that power may be exercised. It is important not to confuse freedom with mere permissiveness (see paragraph 72).

95. It is said that we live in a free society because we have a certain number of constitutionally guaranteed rights. But these are not as important as they seem. The degree of personal freedom that exists in a society is determined more by the economic and technological structure of the society than by its laws or its form of government. [16] Most of the Indian nations of New England were monarchies, and many of the cities of the Italian Renaissance were controlled by dictators. But in reading about these societies one gets the impression that they allowed far more personal freedom than our society does. In part this was because they lacked efficient mechanisms for enforcing the ruler's will: There were no modern, well-organized police forces, no rapid long-distance communications, no surveillance cameras, no dossiers of information about the lives of average citizens. Hence it was relatively easy to evade control.

96. As for our constitutional rights, consider for example that of freedom of the press. We certainly don't mean to knock that right; it is very important tool for limiting concentration of political power and for keeping those who do have political power in line by publicly exposing any misbehavior on their part. But freedom of the press is of very little use to the average citizen as an individual. The mass media are mostly under the control of large organizations that are integrated into the system. Anyone who has a little money can have something printed, or can distribute it on the Internet or in some such way, but what he has to say will be swamped by the vast volume of material put out by the media, hence it will have no practical effect. To make an impression on society with words is therefore almost impossible for most individuals and small groups. Take us (FC) for example. If we had never done anything violent and had submitted the present writings to a publisher, they probably would not have been accepted. If they had been been accepted and published, they probably would not have attracted many readers, because it's more fun to watch the entertainment put out by the media than to read a sober essay. Even if these writings had had many readers, most of these readers would soon have forgotten what they had read as their minds were flooded by the mass of material to which the media expose them. In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we've had to kill people.

97. Constitutional rights are useful up to a point, but they do not serve to guarantee much more than what might be called the bourgeois conception of freedom. According to the bourgeois conception, a "free" man is essentially an element of a social machine and has only a certain set of prescribed and delimited freedoms; freedoms that are designed to serve the needs of the social machine more than those of the individual. Thus the bourgeois's "free" man has economic freedom because that promotes growth and progress; he has freedom of the press because public criticism restrains misbehavior by political leaders; he has a right to a fair trial because imprisonment at the whim of the powerful would be bad for the system. This was clearly the attitude of Simon Bolivar. To him, people deserved liberty only if they used it to promote progress (progress as conceived by the bourgeois). Other bourgeois thinkers have taken a similar view of freedom as a mere means to collective ends. Chester C. Tan, "Chinese Political Thought in the Twentieth Century," page 202, explains the philosophy of the Kuomintang leader Hu Han-min: "An individual is granted rights because he is a member of society and his community life requires such rights. By community Hu meant the whole society of the nation." And on page 259 Tan states that according to Carsum Chang (Chang Chun-mai, head of the State Socialist Party in China) freedom had to be used in the interest of the state and of the people as a whole. But what kind of freedom does one have if one can use it only as someone else prescribes? FC's conception of freedom is not that of Bolivar, Hu, Chang or other bourgeois theorists. The trouble with such theorists is that they have made the development and application of social theories their surrogate activity. Consequently the theories are designed to serve the needs of the theorists more than the needs of any people who may be unlucky enough to live in a society on which the theories are imposed.

98. One more point to be made in this section: It should not be assumed that a person has enough freedom just because he SAYS he has enough. Freedom is restricted in part by psychological controls of which people are unconscious, and moreover many people's ideas of what constitutes freedom are governed more by social convention than by their real needs. For example, it's likely that many leftists of the oversocialized type would say that most people, including themselves, are socialized too little rather than too much, yet the oversocialized leftist pays a heavy psychological price for his high level of socialization.

[horizon-verizon]

Also-also---

Since Dany accrues the power she needs from Viserys/Aerys/Rhaegar/Rhaego/Drogo's deaths AND needs to be queen both for her own and her people's safety, does that mean that she can never be truly "heroic"? So because monarchies are and have been patriarchal and abusive, she herself can never be a "good" ruler or a good force in this world?! You can't make the argument that the original or beginning material must be "feminist" (as in something made towards the political and ideological movement) or set that as a reason to deny how any woman gaining power from a patriarchal structure bc are we then to say she can't be a "real", altruistic ruler?

Often, that is exactly how many women & feminist groups get power back, as I already noted above, but also in real life often women use the patriarchal logic of any familiar argument against men to show how stupid that argument is or unsustainable its implications are for how we form and shape society in the broader sense. Or they have to go through and make use of or manipulate the laws/policies designed for men for their own use to gain power and then they can decide to use that in both underhanded and overt ways against men for a bigger or altruistic cause. One way this is literally embodied is how Dany obtains the Unsulllied in a more anti-slavery context; but for feminism we have that case in Australia (I think) of that artist who succeeded in making her point about those Gentlemen's clubs, made a ladies' club, was sued by a man for excluding him, but won all while still making her point (a much more overt example). She could not have made her points more salient with the effect that it had without creating her gender-exclusive ladies' club WHILE ALSO giving a safe space for (some) women from men. Dany cannot free slaves without becoming the queen that she is, which is very dependent on the already existing systems of rulership in both Essos and Westeros.

Feminism as a movement in of itself didn't exist until the 18th century, so we shouldn't care what any woman does before then or how they resisted & made use of the patriarchal narratives for themselves and/or for others? These women are no longer "heroes" or inspirations for private or public resistance/resisters? Because they used what existed for them to use?!

So it's more than "shortsighted"; it's dangerous to argue a thing. It smacks of "we shouldn't care about Rhaenyra's story or Dany's story or Rhaena the Black Bride's bec none of them were feminist"...okay...

From time to time, I see some people argue that Dany can't be Azor Ahai because Azor Ahai was a man who killed his wife and such a character can't be considered a hero. So Dany couldn't be Azor Ahai because she is a hero and because such a feminist character like Dany can't be associated with Azor Ahai.

I agree that Dany is a hero, and I agree that Azor Ahai killing his wife is not the most feminist story. But I disagree with the idea that this means Dany isn't Azor Ahai, because literally all the foreshadowing points to her, she fulfills every aspect of the prophecy. Just because we as readers might think there's a moral dissonance in Dany being Azor Ahai, doesn't mean that she isn't. Whether we as readers might not like her being Azor Ahai, whether we think it's not feminist for Dany to be Azor Ahai, it doesn't change the fact that GRRM wrote all the clues pointing to her.

Also, while some people may argue that it's not feminist for Dany to be Azor Ahai because the original Azor Ahai killed his wife, other people might argue that Dany being Azor Ahai is a feminist subversion, because everybody expects the prophesied hero to be a man.

[dwellordream]

“...A lone woman could, if she spun in almost every spare minute of her day, on her own keep a small family clothed in minimum comfort (and we know they did that). Adding a second spinner – even if they were less efficient (like a young girl just learning the craft or an older woman who has lost some dexterity in her hands) could push the household further into the ‘comfort’ margin, and we have to imagine that most of that added textile production would be consumed by the family (because people like having nice clothes!).

At the same time, that rate of production is high enough that a household which found itself bereft of (male) farmers (for instance due to a draft or military mortality) might well be able to patch the temporary hole in the family finances by dropping its textile consumption down to that minimum and selling or trading away the excess, for which there seems to have always been demand. ...Consequently, the line between women spinning for their own household and women spinning for the market often must have been merely a function of the financial situation of the family and the balance of clothing requirements to spinners in the household unit (much the same way agricultural surplus functioned).

Moreover, spinning absolutely dominates production time (again, around 85% of all of the labor-time, a ratio that the spinning wheel and the horizontal loom together don’t really change). This is actually quite handy, in a way, as we’ll see, because spinning (at least with a distaff) could be a mobile activity; a spinner could carry their spindle and distaff with them and set up almost anywhere, making use of small scraps of time here or there.

On the flip side, the labor demands here are high enough prior to the advent of better spinning and weaving technology in the Late Middle Ages (read: the spinning wheel, which is the truly revolutionary labor-saving device here) that most women would be spinning functionally all of the time, a constant background activity begun and carried out whenever they weren’t required to be actively moving around in order to fulfill a very real subsistence need for clothing in climates that humans are not particularly well adapted to naturally. The work of the spinner was every bit as important for maintaining the household as the work of the farmer and frankly students of history ought to see the two jobs as necessary and equal mirrors of each other.

At the same time, just as all farmers were not free, so all spinners were not free. It is abundantly clear that among the many tasks assigned to enslaved women within ancient households. Xenophon lists training the enslaved women of the household in wool-working as one of the duties of a good wife (Xen. Oik. 7.41). ...Columella also emphasizes that the vilica ought to be continually rotating between the spinners, weavers, cooks, cowsheds, pens and sickrooms, making use of the mobility that the distaff offered while her enslaved husband was out in the fields supervising the agricultural labor (of course, as with the bit of Xenophon above, the same sort of behavior would have been expected of the free wife as mistress of her own household).

...Consequently spinning and weaving were tasks that might be shared between both relatively elite women and far poorer and even enslaved women, though we should be sure not to take this too far. Doubtless it was a rather more pleasant experience to be the wealthy woman supervising enslaved or hired hands working wool in a large household than it was to be one of those enslaved women, or the wife of a very poor farmer desperately spinning to keep the farm afloat and the family fed. The poor woman spinner – who spins because she lacks a male wage-earner to support her – is a fixture of late medieval and early modern European society and (as J.S. Lee’s wage data makes clear; spinners were not paid well) must have also had quite a rough time of things.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of household textile production in the shaping of pre-modern gender roles. It infiltrates our language even today; a matrilineal line in a family is sometimes called a ‘distaff line,’ the female half of a male-female gendered pair is sometimes the ‘distaff counterpart’ for the same reason. Women who do not marry are sometimes still called ‘spinsters’ on the assumption that an unmarried woman would have to support herself by spinning and selling yarn (I’m not endorsing these usages, merely noting they exist).

E.W. Barber (Women’s Work, 29-41) suggests that this division of labor, which holds across a wide variety of societies was a product of the demands of the one necessarily gendered task in pre-modern societies: child-rearing. Barber notes that tasks compatible with the demands of keeping track of small children are those which do not require total attention (at least when full proficiency is reached; spinning is not exactly an easy task, but a skilled spinner can very easily spin while watching someone else and talking to a third person), can easily be interrupted, is not dangerous, can be easily moved, but do not require travel far from home; as Barber is quick to note, producing textiles (and spinning in particular) fill all of these requirements perfectly and that “the only other occupation that fits the criteria even half so well is that of preparing the daily food” which of course was also a female-gendered activity in most ancient societies. Barber thus essentially argues that it was the close coincidence of the demands of textile-production and child-rearing which led to the dominant paradigm where this work was ‘women’s work’ as per her title.

(There is some irony that while the men of patriarchal societies of antiquity – which is to say effectively all of the societies of antiquity – tended to see the gendered division of labor as a consequence of male superiority, it is in fact male incapability, particularly the male inability to nurse an infant, which structured the gendered division of labor in pre-modern societies, until the steady march of technology rendered the division itself obsolete. Also, and Barber points this out, citing Judith Brown, we should see this is a question about ability rather than reliance, just as some men did spin, weave and sew (again, often in a commercial capacity), so too did some women farm, gather or hunt. It is only the very rare and quite stupid person who will starve or freeze merely to adhere to gender roles and even then gender roles were often much more plastic in practice than stereotypes make them seem.)

Spinning became a central motif in many societies for ideal womanhood. Of course one foot of the fundament of Greek literature stands on the Odyssey, where Penelope’s defining act of arete is the clever weaving and unweaving of a burial shroud to deceive the suitors, but examples do not stop there. Lucretia, one of the key figures in the Roman legends concerning the foundation of the Republic, is marked out as outstanding among women because, when a group of aristocrats sneak home to try to settle a bet over who has the best wife, she is patiently spinning late into the night (with the enslaved women of her house working around her; often they get translated as ‘maids’ in a bit of bowdlerization. Any time you see ‘maids’ in the translation of a Greek or Roman text referring to household workers, it is usually quite safe to assume they are enslaved women) while the other women are out drinking (Liv. 1.57). This display of virtue causes the prince Sextus Tarquinius to form designs on Lucretia (which, being virtuous, she refuses), setting in motion the chain of crime and vengeance which will overthrow Rome’s monarchy. The purpose of Lucretia’s wool-working in the story is to establish her supreme virtue as the perfect aristocratic wife.

...For myself, I find that students can fairly readily understand the centrality of farming in everyday life in the pre-modern world, but are slower to grasp spinning and weaving (often tacitly assuming that women were effectively idle, or generically ‘homemaking’ in ways that precluded production). And students cannot be faulted for this – they generally aren’t confronted with this reality in classes or in popular culture. ...Even more than farming or blacksmithing, this is an economic and household activity that is rendered invisible in the popular imagination of the past, even as (as you can see from the artwork in this post) it was a dominant visual motif for representing the work of women for centuries.”

- Bret Devereaux, “Clothing, How Did They Make It? Part III: Spin Me Right Round…”

[stromuprisahat]

Alina and the Darkling’s interactions, pt. 8

Chapter 21- This will be long, split into two or three parts. There’s a lot in this chapter to analyse.

Aleksander, five minutes before Alina’s arrival:

“I was right all along, wanting made me weak and too dumb to see she cares only about running away with her otkazat’sya.”

after:

“SiT dOwN, aLiNa.”

He’s good in hiding his emotions, so I’d argue that exasperation wasn’t faint.

“If I insult you, you won’t take me seriously.” I wonder why...

Well, yeah, half-right. The Darkling already figured out Maaaaal is the only thing Alina cares about. What kind of an idiot wouldn’t use their sole leverage? And where did we learn Darkles loves power? Oh! Got it! “He was blinded by his hunger for power.”- Baghra, Ch 15

Technically, the Darkling’s very nice. He should’ve handed Malyen to his superiors. There would be no discussion with Alina, just court martial and swift execution.

Or possibly interest? Perhaps he’s intrigued?

Alina’s not just some village girl, bound to be married to someone and pop up one kid after another till death does them part. The Darkling sees her as someone meant for more. It started before he developed his unwanted feelings for her. His lack of understanding isn’t only about his antipathy for Malyen or Malina.

“Ivan, mind your tone. She is Grisha now.”

He spent his long life being punished for what he is, but also proud of his difference. Part of it is his upbringing (Baghra’s insistance they’re more than others.), but I’d say part of it started as a coping mechanism. Acceptance of yourself, esp. the parts others use to bully you, can be very empowering. Look at real-life fat children, gays etc. To quote Tyrion in A Game of Thrones:

“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armor yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”

Not only you take bullies’ ammunition, you make yourself stronger with the same step.

As someone, who accepted himself long time ago, and made sure others won’t have to struggle this way on his watch, I think the Darkling genuinely cannot grasp, why would Alina deny herself in such a way. He fails to understand why would she want to be something she’s not. Not necessarily lesser, as in “under” Grisha, but incomplete, rejecting parts of what she is. Which is exactly what she did as a child, when she's with Malyen in Noviy Zem and eventually it’s done to her in Ruin and Rising.

“Back to pretending to be less than you are, I see. The sham doesn’t suit you.”

Siege and Storm- Chapter 1

I’d love to see Alina play diplomat...

If nothing else, she’s healthy now. She has friends in Little Palace. Slave? Sweetie, you live in absolute monarchy. Dark wizard locks you up in fancy tent to use your magical powers in war effort? Well, you could’ve been send to the front as canon fodder. Or left to starve, while working the fields. Or bend over the nearest flat surface by some wealthy noble, who thinks it’s his Saints’ given right to do as he pleases with any servant. I’d say you don’t have it half bad.

She’s dehumanising him again. Saints forbid our heroine would admit her antagonist is a person. With feelings!

For someone, who’s been let down countless times, who’s hated and feared by the very same people he’s protecting, Aleksander’s maintaining admirable amount of love for his country. Ravka and Grisha first. No matter the cost.

pt. 1, pt. 2, pt. 3, pt. 4,  pt. 5,  pt. 6, pt. 7, pt. 9, pt. 10, pt. 11, pt. 12

[ravenclawisms]

just finished watching star vs the forces of evil all the way through and realized something and suddenly i have a lot to say about it

i am aware that it is a kids show and they might not have intended for this but hear me out!!

there are obviously a ton of inconsistencies and unanswered questions posed by the ending and the sudden merging of worlds but we're not supposed to know!! the show spends four seasons spelling out many many things, one of them being how the presence of magic in any world is a double-edged sword: what happens when people reserve the use of that magic for, say, a monarchy; what can come from this structure governing a diverse population (ie mewmans and monsters) where the monarchy is entirely comprised of one faction of the population; the discomfort, growth, and radical change that it takes to get people to confront their own biases and accept a new reality. which is why the show ends with the "no magic" angle.

but another one of those pillars of central themes (or, i argue, THE central theme) is the crazy, wonderful, amazing, terrifying, uncomfortable and supernatural things that can happen when we connect with each other and relate to each other deeply. we see this in terms of the previous theme of magic, and in terms of mewmans and monsters, mainly through eclipsa: her struggle with being accepted by the public in season 4; her turbulent relationship with meteora in season 3 turning to her genuine deep love and admiration for her baby daughter; her attachment to and borderline obsession with freeing globgor and how, at the start, it governs nearly all of her decisions and actions as queen. we see it through moon literally building a community out of nothing in the middle of the forest because she simply can't help but care about people. (and river's subsequent complete adoration of her.)

but we also see it very often through the lens of star and marco. at first (and the vast majority of the time) it isn't even in a romantic manner--literally the day they meet, they are already fighting in sync, a pattern that continues throughout the first season--they finish each other's sentences, etc etc etc. and it could be argued that a lot of that is a direct result of the blood moon ball, where their souls are (theoretically) bound together at the ripe age of fourteen. but whether or not it was a magical curse (again, the role of magic and its positive and negative effects in life) doesn't matter in the end. to me, it is simply a story of two people who have something real and beautiful and powerful, and how the presence of magic first hinders but then helps them uphold that.

we're not supposed to know what happens after the worlds merge because we're supposed to believe that by the power of friendship or love or any combination of the two they will figure it out. it's because of that very power that they've always figured it out in the past!! the ending raises a ton of good and important questions about worldbuilding, society, etc but we're not supposed to care about those questions; at the very least, we're supposed to accept that they themselves don't care about those questions. there's a reason the last scene is the two reconnecting: it is clearly ALL that they care about. and that's beautiful!!!

literally everywhere you turn in this show, basically every single plotline or arc you can think of, boils down to people (or not-people) loving, wanting to love, wanting to be loved, wanting to be accepted, wanting to feel connection. ex: ludo didn't get love as a child and so resorts to commanding respect to cope, and the only way he's able to snap out of this cycle is when dennis finds him and they both experience the first real loving connection either of them have ever had. meteora knew nothing of her family history growing up and was taught that everything natural about her should be shunned and suppressed, and the only times we see her drop or even soften her guard before the end of season 3 are when she is trying to foster a connection with rasticore (which doesn't go well) or when she finally finds eclipsa and is overjoyed at the prospect of true, unflinching motherly love. tom starts the show obsessed with star, driven solely by the idea that someone who once loved him might be able to do so again, and as the show progresses he not only learns to control his anger issues but learns how to respect both her and himself in doing so, leading to a relationship that is visibly much more healthy the second time around.

star and marco are another example of how this concept is done so beautifully, and an example of the fundamental idea that fierce and true love shouldn't break a world, it should make it. and i think the ending aims to show that. we know that there is a story after the one we stop seeing, and we know it's one that's going to be driven by empathy and connection and hope, and to a certain extent (especially in a kids show) isn't that all you ever need??

tldr: at its core svtfoe is yet another piece of media about the otherworldly power of human connection which is why the ending is Like That

(i'm aware this is a contrarian take and i'm sorry in advance i just like to be positive)

[symphonyofsilence]

What annoys me about a Jon Snow sequel series is more than how it is yet another forced, unnecessary spin-off of a beloved franchise to milk it dry.

Yes, HoTD was great. I did not expect it to be. But it surprised me in the best way. But it was from a very great book GRRM has already written. We already knew it was a great story. GRRM wrote it because he really had a great idea. And the show was loyal to the books. In some ways, it improved on it. And it had an entirely new cast of characters with entirely new stories. Even the world was different than what we knew.

But the thing about Jon snow is that show! Jon Snow had ceased to be Jon Snow for some time. Jon showing his intelligence and strategic thinking and political skills by suggesting Alys Karstark's marriage to Sigorn of the Thenns, and advising Stannis to attack the Iron islands first instead of attacking Winterfell was key to his character. But I could live with the erasure of those. It would make him less awesome, but it wouldn't make him a bad character.

What did make him a bad character was not only making him fall in love with Daenerys after about 3 conversations all of them arguing about the throne, but GIVING THE NORTH TO HER! The north! Which two of his brothers died for! His sister suffered so much for it! The North that its people trusted him with! Even though all his life he had thought that he would never have the chance to inherit it! And he desired it so much! Remember how tempted he was when Stannis offered it to him?! And remember when he said that he couldn't accept it because it was SANSA'S BIRTHRIGHT?!

Real Jon Snow would not only fight tooth and nail for the North but he would do it because he'd believe that it's Sansa's birthright! He wouldn't give Sansa's birthright away! Especially not after she went through hell for it!

You can't distribute land and kingship because your crush saved you, Jonathan, you're not Maedhros the tall!

And to top it all, he only looked miserable and had about three lines for the entirety of the last season. He was my first favorite character in the books I couldn't wait to get to his chapters, but in season 8 I wanted him to shut up every time he opened his mouth.

(No, I didn't want him to become the king. I didn't want anyone to become the king. I thought the story showed us so many even good people becoming horrible monarchs to show that "absolute power corrupts absolutely." And Monarchy should be set aside. But even if we went with Monarchy, No, Jon Snow was not the true heir to the Iron Throne because he was the last Targaryen. Targaryens were legitimately and lawfully removed from the Iron Throne and replaced by the Baratheons. But at that time, Westeros was in so much chaos that the Iron throne belonged to anyone who could get their hands on it.)

So I hope the Jon Snow show surprises me and turns out to be enjoyable. But I don't see how a show about Jon Snow can be good after they have destroyed Jon Snow and the world he lives in.

[serpenteve]

I'm having the horrible realization that Aleksander never actually did any serious wooing of Alina in the books. It's all just Alina her self being horny attracted to him. But this is supposedly???? His grand scheme???? Of manipulation???? Implications! It seems like the girls in these books wasn't the only one slut shamed. I'm- ☠

Leigh wrote a man sexy and captivating and said "it's his fault, actually, that Alina got a crush on him. He shouldn't of.... uh.." Flips through papers. "Ah, had such pretty eyes."

Okay! 👀Yes, we are finally doing this!

I'm flipping through my copy of Shadow & Bone and noting down all the interactions between the Darkling and Alina which I've put in chronological order beneath the cut.

First of all, the Darkling and Alina are only alone together in about a handful of scenes. Most of the time, the are surrounded by other Grisha or Baghra or are in a public place. A lot of the Darkling's actions and words are clouded by Alina's own insecurities. She constantly voices how she feels like she's not good enough, not pretty enough, not strong enough and he takes it in stride and gently encourages and placates her. There are a few lies he does tell her (that the Black Heretic was his ancestor, that he wants to destroy the Fold, and he doesn't know what Baghra's power is, etc) but if we extrapolate the trajectory of her ill-fated romance arc, I think even book!Darkling would have told Alina about his real plans if she seemed like she'd accept them.

A lot of speculation has been made about the Darkling's seduction of Alina and honestly???? Aleksander literally just exists and Alina is thirsting for him because she's desperately looking for validation and re-assurance. I initially head-canoned his first kiss by the lake as being pure calculation and the kiss at the Winter Fete being 100% accidental (because Dark Lord Sasha played himself lmao) but on this re-read, I don't even know anymore. He already came close to almost kissing her after they have a tender moment, catches himself and then immediately leaves before he can catch feelings. Then when they share another tender moment at the lake, he kisses her and then is surprised by it and before he can really process it, Ivan comes by to cockblock.

Like, even Leigh (as much as she has shit on this ship) said at one point that the Darkling has strong feelings for Alina, even if he may not necessarily quantify them as love. So looking back, I don't read anything the Darkling did as manipulative seduction. He obviously lied about some stuff and wasn't transparent about his real plans for the Fold, but as a military commander who sees Alina as an opportunity for a coup, it makes sense that he'd play that a little close to the chest---especially when Alina has proved to be wary of his powers and has a very black-and-white sense of morality. If anything, this is less "the Darkling seduced Alina to manipulate her into being used!!11" and more "local dark lord tried to encourage his protege and accidentally caught feelings and it was a mASSIVE FUCKING INCONVENIENCE TO HIS EVIL PLANS"

But you know who does slut-shame Alina a lot? Baghra. Seriously, Baghra makes Alina feel like shit for her crush on the Darkling numerous times. She has all these lines:

"You want to be [his pet]...Don’t bother lying to me. You’re like all the rest. I saw the way you looked at him."

"Dreaming of dancing with your dark prince?"

"Foolish girl." (After Alina shamefully admits the Darkling might come to her that night)

At one point Baghra creeps on Alina and the Darkling's interactions and even though literally nothing happens between them and when the Darkling leaves, Alina catches Baghra giving her a snooty look. ("For no reason at all, I blushed")

She is determined to shame Alina for her feelings and make her feel like a lovesick idiot for daring to crush on him and this is in addition to all the slut-shaming Mal does. The narrative revealing the Darkling is the bad guy all along while leaving Alina no compelling arc to discover this on her own feels very much like Leigh hitting us all with Baghra's stick, like "Foolish girls! You thought he cared about Alina just because he has a sexy jawline??? HAHA HE LIED YOU SLUTS"

Scenes with Alina and the Darkling in Book 1

Their first scene together is in the Grisha tent. Based on Alina's description of him, she already thinks he's hot as barely any other character in this godforsaken series gets so many descriptions of their grey/smoke/slate/quartz eyes as Aleksander does 😏

The next time they're together he saves her life. Alina is traumatized from seeing a man sliced in half and the Darkling instructs her to keep her eyes on him instead. She is disturbed that he killed the person about to murder her and this aversion seems incredibly contrived and arbitrary on behalf of the author. It's almost like she wants Alina to be vindicated and shamed for not trusting her initial bigotry against him or something 🤔The Darkling admits even he can make mistakes and then he touches the back of Alina's neck (with some secret Heartrender/Healer abilities?) and she falls asleep riding on his horse.

They spend the next few days traveling. Alina notes that the Darkling hasn't spoken to her (probably because he's focused on getting her to the Little Palace without any more assassination attempts) but Alina is a paranoid she's offended him somehow. Again, this is just Alina's insecurity painting a narrative that simply doesn't exist based on what actually happened so far.

They exchange a few words by the stream and Alina fishes for pity points by saying she's ugly and can't possibly be Grisha. Aleksander appears 100% done with her stupidity and says she doesn't understand but he's not in the mood to explain at the moment and walks off ☠️

Alina joins the Darkling and his men for a meal. She notes that the grouse they've killed is meager shared meal but that the Darkling doesn't want to put his men in danger by sending them out to hunt in the forest at night 😌He also sits on the floor to eat like they do and he doesn't take more than the regular portion than they do 😌. Sorry, how is this man the most ~evil~ wizard on the planet? He is obviously a good and fair commander and beloved by the Grisha.

Alina has been checking Aleksander out the entire time so when he catches her, he walks over to talk. He fishes around for information on what Alina has heard about him. He seems sad when Alina mentions she has heard that Darklings are born without souls, though not surprised. He then spins the story about the Black Heretic being his ancestor and how the Fold was a mistake and how every Darkling since then has tried to undo it and how Alina is "the first glimmer of hope" he's had in a long time.

Because Alina is still on that "Grisha are unnatural monsters" agenda, she asks him about the Cut and he explains it but she's still distrubed. He asks her if it would have been better if he used a sword and she replies: "I don't know". The Darkling gets offended and leaves. Alina tries to convince herself she can't have possibly hurt his feelings (because Darklings don't have souls or feelings?) and then feels paranoid that she's failed some secret test. Yeah, the test you failed is called "empathy", Alina 🙄

Two days later, they arrive at Os Alta. Aleksander roasts the Grand Palace as the ugliest effing building he's ever seen. He leaves immediately after dumping Alina at the Little Palace and Alina actually seethes that he isn't paying more attention to her? I understand that it's overwhelming to go to a brand new place, but Alina expecting him to constantly hold her hand and explain everything to her after she basically insulted him is a bit strange.

The next time Alina sees the Darkling, they are scheduled to appear before the King and Queen. The demonstration is a surprise for Alina and Aleksander's lack of transparency of what's expected of her means she's forced to rely on him and trust his instincts. This might be his underhanded way of getting Alina to see that she can trust him; that he will not make her look like a failure or humiliate her; that they are in this together and it will only work if she trusts him.

After the demonstration, Genya and the Darkling trash the monarchy for a bit (Alina is horrified) and then the Darkling orders Genya to get a black kefta for Alina, to which Alina infamously wants a blue one. The Darkling doesn't really put up much of a fight, merely wanting to know why. Alina decides he doesn't approve of her choosing blue and wonders to Genya if he's angry.

After Alina's first day, the Darkling calls her to his quarters to ask her how her day was. Alina is surprised that this is all he wanted to know because she was paranoid he was going to torture her??? She says: "Why shouldn't I be afraid of you?...You can cut people in half. I think it's fair to be a little intimidated." If the Darkling is offended or angry about this, he doesn't show it and merely indulges her. He notes that she has a habit of running her hand across a scar on her palm and asks her about it, tracing the scar himself. Alina gets distracted by his touch but manages to answer his questions: she got the scar at Keramzin, Mal is also an orphan, he is good at tracking. He shows her a secret passage back to her rooms to avoid the main hall.

Alina starts her training and at one point laments that the Darkling is rarely at the Little Palace and when he is, he never speaks to her or barely looks her way and she is convinced it's because she's a failure and can't summon light on her own. It could also be because, you know, he's the commander of the Second Army and is usually seen in talks with other military advisors and the fact that Alina kinda lowkey insulted him with her wariness about his powers???

The next time they are together, Alina interrupts him and Baghra arguing. He politely asks her how she is. Baghra antagonizes her. The Darkling defends her. They talk about amplifiers and because Baghra is being a snarky little shit about it, they take their conversation outside.

Aleksander complains about how annoying his mom is and then asks Alina what stories she's heard about Morozova's herd. At one point he laughs for the first time and Alina practically creams her pants at the sound. Alina expresses her concerns that she can't summon any light and the Darkling says he's not worried and it will happen when it happens and worse case scenario, it will happen once she has the stag. They have a quiet intimate moment, gazing softly into each other's eyes and then suddenly Aleksander realizes he's catching feelings and steps back suddenly like "GoodLuckWithYourLessonsOKayBYE". Baghra watches this interaction from her hut and gives Alina a slut-shaming look.

Alina eventually does learn to summon light on her own. Baghra gives her grief about how it's not enough. The Darkling shows up during one of these lessons and says as much. Alina says she's useless. The Darkling corrects her (“I don't think you're useless, Alina....No Grisha is powerful enough to face the Fold. Not even me”) and then he apologizes for letting her down ("I've asked you to trust me and I haven't delivered"). He wonders if his mother is right and he's crazy to hunt the stag. They have a nice bonding moment, Aleksander lies about Baghra's power, and then he asks if Alina would think him crazy for still wanting to find the stag. She asks why he cares what she thinks, he seems genuinely surprised himself that he cares. Then he kisses her. He seems not to have meant to kiss her because then Ivan shows up for his 5 o'clock shift of cockblocking and the Darkling immediately pretends like nothing happened and walks away with him. Like dude is acting like a fucking dork who's allergic to feelings at this point. I should note here that Alina practically has an orgasm from how giddy she is about this moment. She can barely think of anything else.

The next time they're together, it's at the Winter Fete. They do their demonstration and Alina accidentally reveals her insecurities about how he had kissed her and then disappeared. He responds, "Did you really think I was done with you?" and then they enjoy some steamy kisses and thigh grabbing in an empty room before a random round of Grisha show up for their 6 o'clock shift of cockblocking. Aleksander is annoyed at his own attraction to Alina. He asks if he can come to her that night but Alina doesn't get a chance to respond.

and then the Darklina romance arc falls off a giant cliff and dies a terrible death 😭😭😭

[layingeggs]

@cricketflour You raise interesting points! I have thoughts. Oh, I need a read more for spoilers of course.

First of all, I don't think the show ending on Dianna's death is necessarily against the optimistic narrative themes. Death is a part of life. And crucially, Turn A's optimism is the optimism in the face of loss. Not the absence of it.

And liking to believe they grow old and happy together. We all like that, don't we?

Here, I think this is a question of love. And all of Dianna's loves are either tragic or problematic.

Dianna and Kihel.

It's very easy to interpret Dianna and Kihel as having a profound and deep love. But Kihel goes to the moon to live as queen. It is precisely this sacrifice that allows Dianna to finally rest and truly know peace!

Theoretically, it's possible that Kihel Dianna was able to make some moon earth visits from time to time and reunite with Dianna Kihel. But if we're going to imagine that then we can just as easily imagine it happening in one of the timeskips implied by the epilogue.

It's also more suitable to the story I think that Kihel Dianna would get swept away in the moon politics and possibly be put into hibernation again, and the next time she wakes up Dianna Kihel is already passed away. Dianna Kihel becomes Kihel Dianna's very own Will Game!

Remember, it was the burdens of the crown that put Dianna in all this mess in the first place. The system of monarchy that used her up, her spirit and her health. It was her fear of dying on the stagnant moon that lead to rushing ahead the return to earth and the escalation of war. Dianna's greatest regrets are her trying to escape her fate of dying alone as queen. But if she had never acted selfishly, then she would have hibernated and politiced until her end!

That's what Kihel Dianna inherits. Turn A was about preventing the mistakes of history from being repeated in the present. It was not about creating a perfect system with no possible future risk of those mistakes ever being repeated again. And I think it is precisely fitting for a love story specifically that Kihel Dianna should fall in love with Dianna Kihel and then be unable to see her again by nature of her being queen, and having to live through the deaths of her loved ones by nature of her being queen.

But it was precisely Kihel's love for Dianna that motivated her to make this sacrifice for Dianna to be able to live as Dianna Kihel. And it would not be a sacrifice in the first place if there were no downside to Kihel becoming queen!

Dianna and Loran.

Pop the bottles because I think we win this one!! This was my ship and I fully wholly argue they get together in the end. Loran still as Dianna's servant but still they are servant master lovers.

It is very problematic. It would be disgusting in the real world. But it's a personal favourite fantasy of mine, and frankly it would be no better for a noble to choose one of their servants for a lover and elevate them to noble status 'to make it okay'. That's still an unbalanced power dynamic!! That's still presenting servants with a harsh reality where hoping a noble falls in love with you makes you their pet is the best odds you have for a decent life! Historically, real life relationships that go down this road tend to end very badly!

Nonetheless, this is a story. And I very very much enjoy Loran and Dianna's relationship. There's a lot of complexities to it and a lot of push and pull. He is clearly very embarrassed at being in love with his own mistress and she clearly enjoys that. It's a wonderful dynamic. The ending confirms nothing but leaves the ambiguity that they get together. In my mind, that's as good as it being canon!

Dianna and Harry.

This one is both problematic and tragic. Harry is again working for Dianna. And also, I think the show implies that Harry is in love with the queen and not with Dianna? I think he feels greater admiration at the queen who had earn it rather than the queen who was born into it? I think the show implies that. It's a lot of complex scenes that say that though.

I think that Harry is in love with the queen, and possibly has a preference for Kihel Dianna. Dianna Dianna is not as great as Kihel Dianna, and Kihel Kihel is just some earth girl.

But if Harry and Dianna could have been lovers, then that's tragic because Harry goes off to serve Kihel Dianna!

Dianna and Will Game.

Obvious tragedy. He dies. Twice.

So you know. Does Dianna have a happy ending or a sad ending? I don't know. I think she dies and it's a happy ending. In terms of a love story? I think there's many ways to read it! I do feel sad that Kihel and Dianna can't be together more. But again, that is the nature of being queen! And their story would be wholly different without that!

Oh! You've written up two more comments in the time it took me to write this reblog. (I would have commented myself, but I have too much to say! When I go past the word limit, I just cut and paste to a reblog rather than starting a comment chain!

omg

OMG

Okay so first of all, I'm pretty sure Loran was irradiated in a number of scenes? I'm not sure that he lasted much longer than Dianna did! I think maybe the easy to digest soup wasn't just for one sensitive palate!

If he did have more years in him, then yeh that would be quite sad! Though once again I insist that Turn A is about the optimism in the face of the loss. I think Loran would keep living! Maybe go work for Keith's bakery. Maybe he finds something new.

Sochie. Oh boy Sochie.

Sochie's epilogue is very sad for her. But I do think she needed the grieving. Repeatedly throughout the show, she is shown to face hardship and to respond to it with lashing out and anger and revenge. I think maybe part of her story is the accepting of loss.

I think in particular, the use of the moon toy, the carved fish toy, the use of that in the epilogue was crucial I think. This thing from Loran's innocence that he held onto even through his passage into adulthood, and then he somewhere left behind in the course of his adult life. That Sochie held onto as her own symbol of innocence right up until the end.

And then Loran and Dianna Kihel leave. She has to accept that she's not going to get together with her childhood crush. She throws the toy away in a river just as she met Loran in a river.

Could Loran and Sochie have reunited after that? I don't know. Perhaps they could have done but only as normal master and servant, don't you think? He never loved her. And surely, her story is about moving on? I think it would be more hopeful in this circumstance if they build new futures for themselves.

Don't worry about hijacking my post. The conversation is the thing.

A Gundam Called Turn A Gundam. Ending spoiling.

So Dianna dies at the end, right?

There are a number of moments throughout the series. At one point when Dianna and Kihel together are running in a battle, and Dianna gets breathless first, and she says how the cryosleep isn't perfect, she looks young but her quality of fitness is of someone much older, due to how many centuries her body has been artificially preserved.

And there's another scene where she talks about her sins. How she was supposed to be the ruler of the moonrace, and it was her selfishness and shortsightedness that lead to war and loss of life. And specifically, she says, the selfishness that she could feel herself wearing away from the cryosleep. She could feel that one day she would just not wake up. She could feel how she was trapped on the moon and trapped in this era of history of waiting for humanity to recover from the previous catastrophe. How she rushed ahead the plans to return to earth because she wanted to feel alive and ultimately she wanted also for her nearing death to be in a place of contentment and happiness, not of waiting and stagnation. This was her sin.

So then, in the final episode, in the epilogue. We see Dianna. Having swapped placed with Kihel for the final time. Living with the last person alive who she loves and who loves her. Kihel carrying her sins for her. Kihel bearing the weight of monarchy and Dianna having the peaceful last days of her life that was all she wanted.

We see her dressed in heavy layers and carrying a walking stick in a snowy mountain. Seems appropriate attire for the environment. But she doesn't appear to travel far from her home. And Loran doesn't appear to need any of that gear. It seems more like she just has trouble walking. Just has trouble with her circulation and staying warm.

Loran feeds her soup. (An easy to digest meal!) And lays her to sleep. The camera lingers on that shot of her, resting motionless, in the dark. We begin to hear what sounds like the chanting of the moonrace who were left behind on earth?

So like, she dies, right? That's her death, right? Posting this because like, this isn't too far fetched is it? I'm not jumping to spurious conclusions am I? She dies, doesn't she. For her sins. Forgiven for her sins.

[thistle-and-thorn]

What are your thoughts on the historical and current relationship between christianity and royalty?

Thank you for this, honey!!! I am open for business on all royalty-related inquiries!

I think it’s really interesting…so, I’m going to stick with England because that’s the topic of the day. Also, I’m on my phone so forgive typos 😭

Throughout the vast majority of European history, there has been a tension between the church and the state for power. These tensions have played out in a lot of medieval and early modern conflicts….which was the topic of my research in college. Sometimes these relationships became violent in unexpected ways such as the murder of Thomas Becket and had long-reaching impacts as I think could be argued in the case of the legal and social cover-up clerical abuse in the Catholic Church. In England, of course, because the state essentially took control of the Church in the 1530s, this relationship has historically been very muddled with the Head of State (the monarch) and the Head of the Church being nominally the same thing. (An interesting side not is that under Elizabeth I, there is a lot of legalistic wording around what the title actually is…monarchs are governors of the church not heads of the church because this whole arrangement is not exactly…Biblical. Because Biblically, the Head of the Church is my man Jesus Christ himself.)

In the 21st century, this governorship, like a lot of the roles of British monarch, is largely ceremonial in that the monarch no longer decides policy but it still has real implications for the relationship between the Church and the State—the Prime Minister recommends church leaders which have to be approved by the monarch, the Prime Minister has spiritual advisors specifically giving advice on the operation of the Church of England. So, the current relationship of the Crown and the Church is very integrated.

I think we can also interrogate a little bit like…when there is talk about abolishing the monarchy, how challenging that is because of relationships like these. Or maybe not challenging…but how many policies and processes would need to change. I think it’s interesting to speculate on…if the monarchy ever went away, what that would do to the legitimacy and character of a national church (and to snowball, how that would impact the broader global Anglican community). Additionally, it makes me think how the decolonization process in a place like Scotland, for example, would also have to be a faith-based decolonization because while the King or Queen of England doesn’t hold a leadership role in the Church of Scotland…they do still play a role in appointing the parliamentary representative of Scotland’s national church.

So this is the macro-question of the current relationship. In terms of the personal relationship of the current members to their faith, it’s interesting. Elizabeth II was well-known for being a person with a real true faith practice and genuinely held beliefs in God and the Church. She had a long friendship with evangelist, Billy Graham (check out the Crown episode on their relationship; it’s fascinating!!!). I think there’s something to be said about her relationship to faith and her relationship to what she perceived as her duty. The argument for why royalty exists (in Europe) has always had a relationship to the idea of ordination. This has different shadings at different times and eras and is really indicative of the monarch’s context oftentimes …you have the principle of the divine right of kings under the Stuarts in the 17th century, for example, during a period of upheaval where the Crown was Fighting for Its Life™️ and you have the personal religious identification of monarchs such Elizabeth I making her targets for terrorism while also forming her own sometimes prosecutorial policies now…in a time of a significantly more neutered monarchy (in terms of policy power) and there was a queen who, I think it could be argued, saw her role as Queen as part of her duty to live out the mandates of a Godly and Christ-like life.

Now, in the reign of a Charles III, what does that look like? As the Governor of the Church, what does his own relationship to faith sort of say about royalty’s relationship to the Church? I mean…I don’t know that much about Charles’ personal faith. It’s not as well-documented as his mother’s or I’m not as aware of it. But he does sort of represent what a modern Anglican looks like…he’s a divorced man in a blended family. And I don’t make that out to make him sound amazing or brave or groundbreaking, he’s still, um, a member of the Royal family lol. But it really is a neutral statement of fact that his aunt was not allowed to marry a divorced man and his great-uncle had to abdicate to marry a Nazi divorcee and it is a marker of how the Church has changed from allowing divorced couples to marry in the church just since 2002 (I believe?) to allowing a divorced man to hold a significant, if still ceremonial, position within it.

I think the question is…why should we care about these people’s faiths or relationship to religion? And like, this is the question of a lot of my academic and creative life. People’s relationship to their spirituality is one of the most mysterious and intimate things about them. But it still has huge impacts on what happens in our world, because each individual’s relationship is critical in shaping their worldview or actions. And in a world of that is definitely not post-religion, trying to parse what that relationship is, can grant a significant part of understanding what forms the institutions around us and what makes powerful people—because monarchs, no matter how ceremonial, still have an enormous amount of power with the potential to claim more—tick.

[taravangianlistenstothebeachboys]

How'd you like Baru Cormorant?

Semi related: Is your username unironic?

Oh, I adored The Traitor Baru Cormorant. I actually cracked and got the second book already, but I've had to hide it from myself so I could get my midterms done.

As for the second question, my username is (mostly) ironic; I'm just really fascinated by versions of the "evil utilitarian" character who actually come off as nuanced and somewhat sympathetic. I feel like Sanderson is using the Stormlight Archives to explore his own feelings on consequentialist ethics in an interesting way; on the one hand we have a lot of straight-up villains who use weak utilitarian reasoning to justify self-serving behavior. Amaram tries to justify stealing Kaladin's shardblade and killing his men as necessary, saying that the right story needs to be told to keep up the army's morale, but it takes about 5 seconds of reasoning to realize his logic is bullshit. Sadeas doesn't even pretend to believe his own lies about the necessity of grabbing power, and Gavilar's musings in later life on the importance of improving and uniting Alethkar have been revealed as the grandiose myth-making of a man obsessed with legacy and eternal power. Just focusing on these characters, it would seem like utilitarians are all a bunch of power-hungry assholes who equate "the greater good" with whatever helps them get ahead.

And this type of character is probably the main representation utilitarians get in popular media. But there are more complicated depictions as well. We have Jasnah, leader of an entire radiant order whose whole philosophy is ensuring the greatest possible ends. And yeah, she's pretty goddamn ruthless. Her first pitch for strategy in Oathbreaker was pretty much just genocide. But she's consistently used her power to egalitarian ends, much more so than other, more traditionally sympathetic characters like Dalinar or Adolin. She loosened caste restrictions, is enacting an end to the Alethkar slave system, and is planning on bringing an end to the monarchy. She actually walks the walk in trying to achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest number, and I suspect in later books that this will extend to the Singers. While not presented as wholly "the true good," Jasnah and her worldview are presented as salient and understandable, and in my eyes, admirable. It's something we don't see a lot, which leads to occasionally weird reactions—I remember some people were convinced (and may still be) that Jasnah freeing the Alethi slaves would turn out to be part of some big evil plot of hers. And that reaction honestly makes some sense, because it a lot of stories, it would be. Way too often individual acts of kindness are depicted as the only legitimate ways of doing good, with large-scale societal reworkings either doomed to failure or part of a secret villainous scheme. It's a narrative that I think has done a lot of harm, and I'm glad to see it being challenged in a small way.

And somewhere in the middle, we have Taravangian. You could argue that his motivations are somewhat self-serving; during his high-intelligence low-empathy period in Oathbringer, he had a whole mental spiel about how his plan would show up those who thought him an idiot since birth. But for the most part that's background noise to the much more interesting problem: a man is faced with global oblivion, has a plan he all but knows will circumvent it, but will have to commit atrocities to achieve it. He knows it's possible that other strategies can win out, strategies that would sacrifice less good people. But he also knows those strategies wouldn't be certain victories. If he commits to them instead of to the diagram, he could very well be missing out on the one real shot the world has. Could he justify potentially dooming everything when a solution is right there?

Really, its the same reason I love Baru so much as a character. After all, her actions and motivations are much the same: start wars, betray close allies, burn everyone around you to keep your own flame alight until you're in a place of power high enough that you can ensure the worst won't happen. Taravangian throws nations into chaos so he can ensure some remnant of humanity will be spared by Odium, Baru breaks Aurdwynn to keep the Masquerade from doing to the world what it did to her home. I don't agree with either character, but examining why isn't a simple matter. It's fascinating and its horrifying and it brings up interesting questions about how to act when every action and inaction has massive but uncertain consequences.

[astringofmadhousefloozies]

Nickèd Names

Yuu finally learns who her funny Horned Boy is. This one takes place just after the ghost wedding. Content warning for coarse language and frank talk of bodily functions.

As always, check my Twisted Wonderland Fanfiction tag for more, and don’t be afeared to send me a message if you enjoyed something!

~*~*~*~

"You're finally back in class?"

You nodded at Deuce. "Stopped pissing blood every time I sneezed, so I'm back."

There's much to be said for kissing pretty ghost girls, but the main drawback is that when you do, you immediately, catastrophically hemorrhage from every pore as all your organs fail, and even with magical healing, you're still bedridden for a week. You wouldn't be doing that again. Maybe. Eliza was very cute.

"You're back. Excellent." Trein dropped a stack of papers in front of you. "Here's the work you missed."

You blinked up at him in horror. "Professor, I nearly died."

He stared back, face impassive. "You nearly did. And I'm fond of your work ethic. That's why you get this instead of a fail."

"... I'll take that."

~*~*~*~

It's after dark, so he should be along any time now. You set your phone down and wait.

True to form, your funny horned boy is soon sitting on the railing of your balcony, smiling at you. "You're all better now?"

"Better-ish." You might never get to stop taking those pills and supplements. "Why didn't you come by the room?"

"You don't know that I didn't. You slept a fair deal."

"Rude. Let's walk."

~*~*~*~

You're too tired to try the woods, so you're both slowly picking your way around the dorm grounds, your pretty horned boy keeping an eye that you don't trip. You could count the times he's touched you on one hand; when you asked, he said he didn't want to be rude. Perhaps he wasn't as fond of you as he seemed.

A buzz from your phone, Ortho wanted a symptoms check-in. You tapped back that you're fine, and your boy peered over your shoulder, leaning this way and that. Curiosity took the better of you.

"... You do know what a phone is, right?"

He chuckled. "Of course I do, my child of man. Not all technology is unknown in my homeland."

"Do you have one? I can give you my number."

He shook his head. "After I broke my last one, we decided it really wasn't necessary."

"You can replace them, you know."

"It was my... fifth?" He started counting on his hands. "No, sixth. They're delicate. After going through that many in as many weeks, we simply canceled the contract."

Your eyebrows went up through no effort of your own. "Jesus, you have the dropsies that bad?"

"The what?"

"Dropsies.” You mimed opening your hand, dropping something. “You dropped them."

"The first one went that way. Most simply shattered when I pressed the screen too hard, and one Lilia threw against a wall."

You decided to ask Lilia how he know your boy later. "Why'd he do that?"

"I tried to download a game and got, in his words, 'so many viruses.' " He seemed rather proud of himself. "They clearly weren't bad ones, I did not cough once."

"No, honey, that's not how that-" Even in the gloom, you saw he'd turned an alarming shade of red, and you backtracked. "Uh, you want to see anything on mine? I have pictures."

"Only if you don't hand me it."

~*~*~*~

"So there is a camera on this?"

"Yeah, most phones have them. Watch." You opened the camera, and hit the button so that the front camera was on, reflecting your spotty face and a wide-eyed faerie boy behind you. "This one's for selfies."

He made a face of pure confusion, and you hit the button to capture it, and showed him.

"Could you... not do that again? It's not proper." 

"You know it doesn't steal your soul, right?"

He opened his mouth to speak, but again, sheer confusion stopped him until he gathered himself. "You always surprise me. But no, it's that... portraits are a formal thing. You shouldn't share that."

You blinked up at him with your best, sweetest face. "Is this just because you don't want me to ask around for your proper name with it?"

he stopped, blinked, inclined his head. "That didn't occur to me until now, but yes."

"I'll keep it to myself, I promise," you lied, and he believed you, and therefore did not hex your phone when he returned you to your room.

~*~*~*~

It was only partially a lie; you didn't actually show it to anyone. You simply set the picture of you both as your lockscreen, so you could enjoy it anytime. And this was what got Ace staring at your phone like it started sprouting feathers and clucking.

"Why do you have a picture of yourself with Malleus Draconia?"

Ah, so that’s it, you thought to yourself. "Who? That's my Horny Boy."

"what"

"Yeah, he said I could call him whatever I wanted because names are special and he's kind of a dumbass and let me."

Ace put an arm around your shoulder. "Yuu, I need to tell you why that is the second stupidest thing you've done in your life."

~*~*~*~

"He's not scary. You're clearly mistaken."

Ace flailed, halfway between exasperation and disbelief. "He's the strongest magic user in the school! Fifth strongest in the world! He is the Prince of Thorns and a big scary dragon and could kill you in the blink of an eye."

You frowned at him. "He is a great big loser who likes gargoyles and has zero clue about anything, ever. Have you ever actually talked to him?"

Ace gave you his best are-you-fucking-stupid-or-something face. "Of course not. He's also a third year, on top of everything else. I don't want to get turned into a rose bush or something."

"He's actually very easy to talk to. Probably because everyone's too scared to talk to him."You paused. "I'm gonna go talk to him."

"Nope!" Ace pulled you back in to your seat. "What if you curses you because you know his real name?"

"I highly doubt that. Let me go, Ace."

He smirked at you. "If you wanna go so bad then pull away." 

"You know I can't do that, Ace." You're still too weak from your sickroom stay. "If you want me to stay, fine."

So you sat on his lap with a heavy flop, and watched him wince in pain. Even with all the weight lost from your illness, you're still too heavy for him. But he, stubborn brat, still gripped your arm and glared at you.

A battle of wills, one overweight brat and one stubborn weakling, rapidly losing sensation in his legs. "You're not going. I can stay here all day. You'll get bored before I do."

He's not wrong, but you have a secret weapon. "Keep me here and I'll fart on you."

He narrowed his eyes at you. "You can not fart on command."

You leaned over. "You don't know that. For all you know I had cabbage rolls for lunch and it's been brewing all day. You really wanna try me, Trappola?"

He did not want to try you, and, let you go with a grunt of disgust. "If you die, it's not my fault!"

"I'm not gonna die!"

"You said that about the ghost princess!"

"Is everyone going to hold that against me now?"

"YES!"

~*~*~*~

You found your horned boy in a pissing match with Kingscholar, and you decided to be as petty and obnoxious as possible. Walking up behind him - Malleus, what a pretty, pretty name for a witch boy - You simply wrapped your arms around his middle and squeezed, while he froze in place posed like a cowboy about to draw.

Leona started snickering. "Really? You get that few hugs in your life?"

"Shush." You peered under Malleus's arm, while he looked down at you. "Malleus? Can we talk a moment?"

Interesting. He could turn even paler than what he was.

~*~*~*~

"So the entire reason you didn't share who you were is that you thought I wouldn't want to hang out any more."

He nodded. "Most people are afraid of who I am. And you have generally unkind things to say about monarchies, as it is. I did not think you would take the prince thing kindly."

"Well." You shrugged. "Now I know why you kept taking notes whenever I started on that."

"You have many interesting things to say about it!" He brightened considerably. "I couldn't have a shift to elections within my lifetime, obviously, but much of it would be great to try implementing."

"Wouldn't your big scary grandma have anything to say about that?"

His smile was thin, but genuine. "She has much to say on most topics. But, if she did not want me to be exposed to new ideas, she could have simply kept me at home and continued with my private tutors."

You couldn't argue with that. "One last thing, Malleus."

He tilted his head slightly, face faintly pink. How could anyone be scared of him? He's so adorable it's enough to make you sick.

"I don't think I'll call you Horned Boy anymore, now that I know your more proper name."

He looked... disappointed, and you continued. "Mal's a little better for a nickname, yeah? Less of a mouthful."

He made a small noise, considering, before brightening. "Anything that you call me is perfection, my friend."