#can you worship something that fails? i think yes. in this dissertation I will— [I am run over by a car]

[greenerteacups]

You've spoken about Narcissa before, and I always love to read your thoughts on her and the Black's. My question is technical/emotional: how do you refrain from softening her? She is so warm and loving, so witty and charming, and so brave - such a perfect, interesting, beloved character - how do you resist the temptation to have her let go of some of her rigidity and become the perfect mother? (I'm very glad that you HAVE resisted, but I don't think I could do it! You are made of sterner stuff).

Oh, that's the interesting stuff about her! The sharp edges of her character, especially as Draco starts seeing her outside of a purely domestic context, are what make her fun to write. There's very little to think about when a character fully embodies their virtues; what makes them real is the ways that they fail to perform what they believe, or succeed in performing a mistaken belief. That's where you get the contradictions and the pressure-points that arise in real life, and even the best mother you know has probably had at least one episode where she snapped and yelled at her kid, or lost patience, or forgot to practice a particular virtue of motherhood. That's what makes them real people. Watching an idol be good at something isn't all that impressive; it's the struggle against weakness and vice that makes a character recognizably human, and therefore lovable, when they triumph in the attempt.

[thirstyforred]

my working notes (as in done at work when I should do work instead), unedited, just transcribed

girlies, and i know no one cares because i never wrote that Rissberg fic, but what if Carla Demetia Crest Raven Way was the last living member of the research team by the time of witcher saga and she was totally a GILF? What about that?

And like Salamandra tries to recruit her because she's awesome and authored that only one existing dissertation on witchers and mutagens. But she's like 'no <3', and Azar and Prif are like 'uwu pappy JdA, she doesn't want to work with us :C'. So Jacques sends over Albrecht who's like 'I can hand draw a perfect circle', and Carla is like 'lmao is that supposed to impress me? <3', and then they fuck. YES, Al fucks that grandma. And they bond over their mutual interest in demonology because I never wrote that Rissberg fic, but that's what I actually planned for Carla to be doing at Rissberg, Kiyan idea had to come from somewhere, so it might be from a bunch of guys going 'maybe my experiment will succeed', even tho a woman already told them no, it won't <3

Anyway, Al and Carla work together wasting Salamandra's resources and not making much progress in demon + witchers stuff because of all that sexual tension in the air

and don't tell me that Kiyan and Fail Experiment don't look at least somewhat similar. also don't tell me about Ortolan, I don't care, I'm not read storms or whatever

instead let me tell you how Albrecht dies, because I love making up guys and then killing them silly, it just fucking works, so you know how the Order splits and whoever cares for fire stays with de Lowe and goes to build that totally-not-Malbork in Redania? yeah, so for whatever fucked up reason Order ends up being at war with Redania, and Siegfried ditches this fucking circus before that because clearly no one actually care for good-doing, and Al kinda ends up being in charge, and there's that whole siege of that castle, and now he's acting grandmaster and they're clearly gonna lose, but at this point, he's just so fucking lost, and then he summons something he shouldn't but is all so sure of himself, like 'we're in the chapel stupid demon, you can't do shit to me :D', but the demon is just laughing and goes 'fool, you don't worship the Fire, your faith is in JdA, but Jacques is no more, he was a mortal and now he's dead. Your god is dead and you have no power!' and then Albrecht just gets ripped apart. That would be sick! lowkey vibe of that Castlevania moment with lies? in the house of god? more likely than you think!

anyway one may ask, thirsty, marcin, my bro, what de fuck it has to do with Carla, and i don't know, it's work in progress and i never wrote that fucking Rissberg fic, but trpg has a chapter about demonology in the latest book, i didn't read it like all, because fuck reading and fuck trpg, but there's that mechanic that lets PCs bind the demon to themselves, and when you bind Bes and it gives like dexterity and shit like that, or claws, idc, anyway Greater Binding done by Carla, she's now fresh as ever after 400 years of girlbossing

[bifacialler]

theskoomacat replied to your post “Why I have a dubious opinion about Baba Yaga in contemporary media”

as a slavic person: she literally eats babies in many tales. not to diminish the narrative and historical complexity of her character but was always used as a forest bogeyman for kids. she is never presented as a noble wise woman she is a half dead cannibal prone to cursing people. i mean if you really want to get inspired by the real version go for it but what you are saying is in the same vein as "medusa's curse is for her protection" it's just not correct

As a slavic person to another slavic person: I understand where you are coming from, and if you don’t mind, I shall expand on some points that you made, and explain why I approach her whole “cannibalism” part in the way that I do. 

Disclaimer: I am more familiar with the mythos around Baba Yaga within the confines of Russian, Belorussian and Ukrainian folklore. If you have information regarding the Baba Yaga mythos from other Slavic cultures (Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia and so on), feel free to share, I would love to learn more. [Like I recently learned about the concept of powerful human souls called Zduhači within Montenegro/Herzegovinian/Serbian folklore who would epicly battle each other with storms and stuff and if that is not amazing, I don’t know what is.]

Yes, in the post-christianisation revamps of the tales Baba Yaga is diminished to the boogeyman to fend kids away from the forest under the reasoning that she will eat them, and has multiple hand visual cues of being cannibalistic, most importantly a fence out of human bones. (Not surprising, since the only form of paganism that was accepted with introduction of uniformed religion was through elimination of major pagan deities [destruction of places of worship, throwing their totems into the river and so on] and demonisation of the lesser vedic creatures). More so, in majority of tales the woman starts off her meeting with a person by saying “go away or I will eat you”. I spend couple of hours this fine morning searching for a single tale where she actually does - there are multiple where attempts are made, always failing due to ingenuity and expression of kindness of the protagonist towards other characters present: for example, in Afanasiev’s Baba Yaga, the girl feeds the cat and the dog, gives a girl a kerchief so she won’t stoke the fire, oils the gates and so on. and they help her escape. I found one (1) story in which Baba Yaga manages to actually eat someone - it was mentioned in Encyclopedia of Russian Mythology by Eriashvili/Madlenskay/Pavlovskii - and it was her daughters (which are a pretty rare occurence in the collective of the Baba Yaga tales), but since being eaten by Baba Yaga was another way to get to Nav’ (one-way trip, so to say), and they were already of the mythical kind thus belonging to the Nav’, being shape-shifters and such, it really has no weight. 

Baba Yaga is not nice, never was, because she is indeed half-dead, and presented as such. [She is also heavily implied to be blind, but that’s a separate topic.] She literally exists in two planes simultaneously: in Yav’ and in Nav’. Being tightly associated with both cult of Mara/Mora and cult of Makosh (there is a pretty fascinating dissertation published in 1999 covering Yaga/Makosh juxtaposition called “The ambivalent images of Slavic Panteon”), it is her primary duty to conduct the rites of transformation and passage (mostly similar to burial rites), which didn’t mean she had to be hospitable about it - would be surprising, considering the character coming to her is either seeking the entrance to the underworld which is Not For Mortals (if we are talking heroic tales), or are send to her to die (most of women/children characters). [Also, I read a theory that she does the Russian version “Fe, fi, fo, I smell the Englishman’s blood” because as the smell of the dead is unpleasant to the living, the smell of living is unsavory to the dead aka those from the Nav’. Which is hilarious, since not only someone barges into her house demanding things, they also reek to kingdom come, possibly of black tar, so I’m inclined to say #same.]

To say that she is not noble is true - she has a right to, she is a nasty old woman who honestly doesn’t want to deal with all that - but to say that she is not wise is to omit one of her 4 archetypes, Yaga the Giver, who is a literal keeper of magical knowledge (props to Propp, once again). This is particularly interesting when taken in juxtaposition with her Yaga the Kidnapper archetype, because within those tales we can she that she is duped EXTREMELY easily. To the extend that it might be suggested that there is no possible way that she couldn’t see all of that coming. More so, it turns to pretty much comical to me, because whenever a child/young girl would be demanded to do something, in came in a form of “Do this, or I will eat you”. If she truly wanted to eat them she wouldn’t go through all that. This is a character, in her Yaga the Warrior archetype, who was able to beat the person half to death for breaking in her house. Yaga helps those she deems worthy of her help. There are tales in which Yaga is antagonistic, but these are later tales, featuring creatures like Koshei, a post-13th century character. 

Baba Yaga to me is absolutely fascinating in her complexity, so yes, I prefer to take her through the prism of 200 years worth of folkloristic and mythological study, rather than solemnly through later itinerations where most of the complexities are reduced to superstition and concepts like holy/unholy and good/evil, which are not really that interesting to me, and I genuinely think she deserves better.