Hello! Are you still writing hcs?
Graves with a spouse(writing this as a husband for him myself 🥰) who loves sewing and knitting, or some something amongst 'cozy hobbies' like embroidery, reading, poetry or baking. Just wondering How a relationship would be between them or how Graves would act.
Your writing is very lovely btw! I fell in love with it, very beautiful!
Hello! I am still writing HCs, it'll probably be a little bit longer until I take a proper break! That was a really cute request, I liked that one! Domestic and sweet stuff like that is always the best, so thank you for bestowing a request like that upon me! (❀❛ ֊ ❛„)♡
Graves with a Spouse with Cozy Hobbies
As mentioned already, Graves loves feeling like the big, strong, useful man in the relationship, so he’d absolutely love you even more if you have “soft and cozy” hobbies like the ones you mentioned. While he is very much a talker, something like knitting can be done while holding a conversation, so he’ll definitely talk to you as you work on your next project. He thinks it’s really awesome, the way your hands move so quickly to create something like a sweater, a scarf, or even a plushie. You don’t really look at him, way too absorbed in your project and not wanting to make even a single mistake, but you still spend time with him. It’s ideal, he can tell you the newest, juiciest gossip among his Shadows while you make him the coziest sweater he’s ever seen. Lets you measure him, if you need and want to, because he really wants that sweater. You wanna put a cute little motif, like a cup of coffee on it as well? He’ll fall in love even more than before.
But even when he’s tired, he wants to spend his time with you. Instead of talking, he’ll lean against you and watch you crochet a bit before nodding off ever so slowly. It’s nice, it’s repetitive, for the most part, and it’s also quiet. By the time he wakes up he gets to see more of your beautiful creation, so that’s a big plus. And when he isn’t dozing off against you, he’s more than happy to hold your yarn and make it a bit longer when you need it. There’s something magical about watching you crochet. He had to crochet in elementary school, but, since he didn’t want to sit down for something like that, he wasn’t very good at it. His strengths always lied elsewhere, so it’s fascinating to him that you can sit in the same position for hours on end, barely moving, and still having fun. The only time he has to do that is when he’s filing reports, and afterwards he needs something to take his mind off of those.
Graves, every time he’s about to go out without you, will always ask you if you need anything from the arts and crafts stores, willing to buy you the loveliest fleece for felting if you ask him for it. Hell, if you want to sell your plushies, or your creations in general, he’s probably the best man to have on your side. Especially when it comes to plushies. Some of his Shadows have families with children, so he knows some of them would love your creations. Might sometimes ask you if you could knit or crochet a baby wooly hat for one of them, if you have the time, since his Shadows know you can be trusted with a task like that. You will always be reimbursed, either by his Shadows or by Graves himself. Sometimes he does like to gift his Shadows something you made and pretend they bought it. You’ll always get your money, but it might sometimes be out of Graves’ pocket.
He definitely likes the domesticity of it. He can go about his day, certain you won’t get hurt, unless you’re sewing or embroidering. But he’d never stop you from pursuing a craft like that. In fact, he’ll actively encourage you, always asking about your projects and wanting to know if he can help you in any way. He wants to see your embroidery, your crocheting, your sewing, as well, so he might gently pick it up from time to time, view it from every angle and give you feedback a la Graves, praising you like only he could.
When you’re a baker you can be sure he’ll taste test your stuff every single time. He has a bit of a sweet tooth, not too much, but he loves you, so he’s willing to eat everything you make. If you’re up making cookies, then he’ll help you by either buying you the best, most reliable hand mixer he can find, or by stirring the dough himself so your arms won’t get too tired. This he does under the condition that he gets to be the first person to try your cookies, your cake, your cobbler. He may not be the worst baker, but he can still learn a lot from you. That he does with all the love in the world, looking at you with an adoring expression as you put the baked goods in the oven, waiting for them to finish. Always has a big smile on his face when he watches you be this content with your life. While you wait for it to properly bake, he’d sometimes ask you to play card games with him. Always lets you win on purpose during those times since you always look so happy when you win. Afterwards he rewards you with a kiss.
While he may be everything but a fan of poetry, he can respect you being one. Will listen to everything you have to say about them, from your analyses to you reading one out loud. If you have a few poets you like especially well then Graves will bend his back trying to find beautiful anthologies of their works. Maybe some books with a few gold engravings that would look well on a shelf. He wants you to know that, despite him not being interested, he still supports you. While you’re reading a book, he might sneak up on you, startle you and then take you into his arms, trying to get you comfortable so you can continue to read. Might glance at your book from time to time to get a feeling for what you’re reading. If it’s something especially cheesy he might chuckle a bit and call you out on being a hopeless romantic, giving you a kiss to your nose afterwards.
Overall, he likes it. It’s nice, not having to worry about you going god knows where and ending up injured. Besides, he always has something nice to come home to, whether that be some beautiful embroidery of violets or a Sachertorte you made from scratch. Will always praise you for doing well, will always make sure you have the means to keep creating, baking and reading. Does his best to keep it that way as well, you’re his precious little darlin’ and you deserve the world and so much more in his eyes.
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Finding "the meaning" to a show that could have had up to five or seven seasons but was cancelled after the second is somewhat like trying to understand a novel composed of seventy chapters by having read only twenty — there is a whole wealth of information which we do not possess that could alter our reading of any given element or of the entire thing in itself.
Still, there are always patterns that weave a story into a cohesive unit and they can help us to better grope in darkness towards comprehension. One such pattern in Warrior Nun appears to be how the consequences to mistakes, "sins" or evil deeds committed by characters manifest.
Basic storytelling usually requires characters to act on something so that complications or resolutions may arise from their choices and move the plot forwards. In Warrior Nun, many of these actions are quite tragic in nature: Suzanne's arrogance and pride lead to the death of her Mother Superion; Vincent's allegiance to the higher power he believed Adriel to be inspired him to kill Shannon; Ava's flight from the Cat's Cradle ends up damning Lilith as she is mortally wounded and taken away by a tarask... All of these events have negative outcomes and heavy repercussions on all characters directly or indirectly involved. Something changes permanently because of them, be it in the world around them or within the characters themselves.
And yet, it would seem that all of these dark deeds not only move the story forwards but might also have overall positive results. We would have had no protagonist without Ava — and she would arguably never have received the halo to begin with had she not been murdered. What's more, on a personal scale, the horrifying crime she suffers is, in the end, the very thing that allows her a second chance in life, a new life.
An act of outside evil permits Ava to grow and develop, shows her a path she would not otherwise have found. Without her own season in some sort of hell, Lilith would not have been able to advance towards other ways of being and understanding beyond her very strict limitations. Vincent and Suzanne would not have embarked on their own journeys of enlightenment without having caused the pain they are responsible for.
Beatrice might have been paying for someone else's mistakes, but she, too, is given the chance to grow into herself through it. The afflictions that torment these characters advance the overall plot, but they also advance them, as individuals, as long as they are willing to learn and keep going despite the calamities large and small that they are faced with. Beatrice keeps going after parental rejection, Mary keeps going after losing Shannon, Jillian keeps going after losing her son (in part through her own actions, adding insult to injury)... Trouble and the adaptation that follows it, if one is open enough to learn from the experience, motivates the characters, propels them forward, teaches them.
The problem of evil has occupied the minds of many a thinker throughout the ages, given how the very existence of it, evil, might call into question that of God (a good, omniscient, omnipotent one, anyway). A common way of justifying suffering (and also God), then, is by claiming, as Saint Augustine, that "God judged it better to bring good out of evil than not to permit any evil to exist".
Now, it would be rather ridiculous to say of Warrior Nun that it follows in Leibniz's footsteps, also because this philosopher, expanding on the augustinian concept, attempted to defend the goodness of a real God with his "best of all possible worlds" while all we have is... Well, whatever/whoever Reya is.
But there seems to be an inclination towards some sort of optimism as a worldview nonetheless.
Betrayals reveal truth and grant knowledge (Vincent's culminates with the coming of Adriel, which allows us to know of the threat of a "Holy War" and thus prepare for it; Kristian's gives Jillian much needed insight, William's lights up the fuse for the fight to be taken more seriously...), crimes committed willingly or not open the way for Ava (Suzanne's killing of her Mother Superion causes the loss of the halo, which is transferred to Shannon, whose death opens the gates for Ava to walk through after being herself murdered by sister Frances)... The magnitude of these positive outcomes is perhaps not "balanced" when compared to the evil that brings them about, but there is still something to take out of the catastrophe.
However tragic the tones of a given event, the show itself appears to shun the predetermination that makes tragedy as a genre; if everything is connected, here it at least appears to not necessarily drag everyone into their horrible dooms.
What's more is that this lurking "optimism" matches really well with our own protagonist's personality.
And it makes perfect sense that Ava would do the best she could with whatever she is given.
Life for her, in the conditions she experienced after the accident, would have been unbearable without some sort of positive outlook on life. However deadpan, the joking and the "obscene gestures" and whatever other forms of goofing around beside Diego are a way of turning a portion of the situation in her own favour. Proverbial eggs have, after all, already been broken right and left — might as well make an omelette of whatever remains.
Humour is just another way of looking at the bright side of something, or, at the every least, of mitigating the utter horror it might bring. If the show allows for moments of lightness, if it lets us laugh, if it takes us through a perilous voyage which still bears ripe, succulent fruit instead of the rot of pessimism and its necessary contempt for humanity, it is because Ava herself sees things in this way. It isn't gratuitous or naïve in this case, but a true survival strategy, especially as it is confronted with the morbidity of Catholicism.
Here is a religion that soothes its faithful with the promise of reward in the afterlife — how else does one charge into battle against the unknown, risking one's own death along with that of one's sisters, without the balm of believing that we shall all meet again eventually, "in this life or the next"? How else does one come to terms with the ugliness and the pain of this existence if not by looking forward to a paradise perfect enough to make all trials and tribulations here worth it?
True nihilism would have annihilated Ava. Her present perspective is what avoided the abyss.
And there is nothing Panglossian to her attitude or what the show might imply by giving us her view on things. This isn't about "the best of all possible worlds", but of making the best of whatever situation we're in, of taking what we have and doing something with it, something good, something of ourselves. It isn't God making good out of evil, but our choices.
Killing innocent people and feeling no remorse will never be the best someone can aspire to do. Sister Frances, cardinal William, Adriel all learn this the hard way.
Those who do their best find that, somehow, they can move on from whatever it was that paralysed them. Ava, most of all, knows what it is to be stuck, frozen in place; she can never be the character who refuses to grow, even through pain, lest she condemns her spirit to the same fate her body is all too familiarised with. Those around her wise enough to let themselves be touched by her, by the dynamic power she carries, walk forth with her and live.
It says very little about "God" that Warrior Nun should adopt its heroine's views and seem "optimistic" as it progresses — but it speaks volumes about the values it presents for pondering, of the inspiration its protagonists provide, and of the multiple reasons why this is a story unlike most others.
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