#i like her event story much more than isolde's story

[kane-turu]

Mentally I'm still here. Marcus was trapped in self doubt, overthinking her position in this world and the countless better choices she could make. But then she realized there's someone willing to help her 'read' this beautiful complex world without worrying too much abt details

Now she needs to read this world alone again. No matter how's the ending, I think Marcus and Hofmann will never regret meeting each other

[ihaveforgortoomany]

Discussing Isolde's new garment "And all that Jazz" as an evolution of her original and insight 2 Outfits

Consider this a continuation of an earlier post with greater focus on the similarities of Isolde's new garment to her previous two and how they tie to her character development in Ch. 6 (this is global friendly)

(spoilers for just Chapter Six )

In short her new garment in 2.1 can be considered the development of her character post the events of Ch.6.

The outfit we met Isolde in, the white one, signifies Isolde's previous repression of herself, her outfit similar to Trista in the Small Room story. While this sprite was used to depict young Isolde primarily, we can say that this more resembles Trista and how Isolde especially in her younger years was haunted and tormented by Trista. Isolde's boss the Mezzo takes a similar appearance to her original outfit than the insight 2 Tosca one, here again Isolde is repressed and allows Trista to possess her during the fight.

(Side note: Trista probably is the most powerful Dittasdorf in terms of the family's arcane powers, plus the fact that she died during a seance at a young age, became this relentless spirit that even years beyond her death continues to torment Isolde and as seen with her boss fight possess her)

Moving onto her insight 2 outfit this signifies the release of the repression, the inner self as Isolde peforms Tosca, kills Mr Karl, jumpstarts WW1 months earlier and proceeds to kill both Heinrich and Hoffman. Unlike the outfit she no longer has a veil obscuring half her face, a much smaller one signifying that loss of repression of desires.

Ignoring the green highlights and feathers clearly alluding to Kakania, the upper "jacket of the outfits does appear to mimic Kakania's jacket/ blazer or the ruffle on Isolde's first outfit, the overall sliver colour of the "And all that Jazz" garment calls back to her original outfit in being a darker shade, no longer is Isolde tied down by societal expectation of Vienna and acts freely (within the limitations of the Foundation ofc).

Both the low cut in her dress and the headpiece both reference to her insight 2 outfit, alongside her new voicelines signifies further this freedom from previous repression that Kakania (regardless of how much it did backfire) gave her. Yet despite this freedom was remains alone.

Additional note: in this new garment the knife is replaced with a cane that features very prominently. The cane has been historically seen as a overt status symbol of wealth and power, in comparison to a knife that would be easily concealed. We can speculate how Isolde in her younger years in the Small Room was thought to be meek and not stand out by Mr Karl, who eventually dies by Isolde's hand by a knife, no longer repressing any part of herself. What is noticable is that both Mr Karl and Isolde in her new garment dominantly hold the cane in their left (looks on the right to us and Mr Karl's is largely covered below) . We can speculate Isolde now possessing a cane reflects her increased power no longer under the repression of others (noteable ones being Mr Karl and Trista) instead able to act on their own, yet still cling to Kakania at the same time.

(Idk if it is the same cane Isolde is using as Mr Karl as I can't find a full spite of him but it would be interesting if it was, signifying her own triumph over the man who tormented her over the years to take his symbol of power)

Even her posture/ default stance is different: the previous outfits have a more reserved posture aiming to make herself the smallest in the room (does this count as a pun) whereas her new garment has her in a more confident and powerful pose, more open and empathises the cane again.

Summary - it is fascinating how her new garment doesn't seem like just an Opera Singer turned Jazz singer, instead a progression of her character following the events of Vienna as someone who while has escaped the torment and societal pressure is not truly free of that pain and trauma, but nevertheless no longer represses herself in the same way as before.

[starryseafo4m]

🎫 + isolde !!

YESYESYESYEES (okok I needed some time to gather my thoughts before I could answer cuz omfg I got so many things in my mind rn and I may or may not have gushed and ranted about her lore and upbringing more than me just simply loving her, so I deeply apologise if there are any grammatical errors!)

Okokokokokpk ISOLDEE, alright so first of all how the game portrayed her, her first appearance, her in the end of chapter 6, and her backstory

First things first, she, from the very beginning was introduced to us as a patient who is ill and unable to live a normal life due to hysteria(the story takes place in a era where hysteria was interpreted as a valid illness to be diagnosed with) and so ppl had pity on her from the very moment of her existence

Because! We see in the event "A small room" where we witness her backstory, we are first introduced to Isolde's mother and her deceased daughter (Isoldes older sister that has passed away) and once the others find out that after this tragedy, Isoldes mother was announced pregnant with her(Isolde), and so others pitied her when she wasn't even born yet!! Afterwards we are given an explanation that Isolde's family possesses the capability of talking to spirits but one of the ghosts that resented (not really but partially) was her older sister (and from what I understood it was because she wished she lived instead of her)

I can go in depth how much chapter 6 gave us in regards to Isolde that makes her such a complex and interesting character, she's neither good or bad she's so flawed but yet so pure intentioned because by the end of the day she desires a world where arcanists are not discriminated against by society, making her think that "the salvation" is the cure and liberation of all arcanists

And now my rant as my f/o. She is one of the most gorgeous individuals I have ever seen in my experience, I don't tend to believe in things such as "love at first sight" but I must admit this is how I felt when I first met her. At first she seemed like an untouchable force of nature above all beings but ever since understanding her she's much more divine because of her humanity and desire for her people to be happy. I would like to kiss every part of her face, every little eyelash, everything, I'd like to give her the most gentle of kisses and reassure that everything is going to be alright and that I'm not going anywhere (because after hearing her voice lines we can assume that she has attachment issues) I'd love to wake up next to her and pamper her with the softest of kisses and admire her beauty that lies in and out of her soul. If she's ever sick of the ghosts that haunt her, I, with the biggest pleasure would let half of her ghosts to haunt me so she'd feel the pleasure of a quiet undisturbed night

Thank you for coming to my yap fest<33 I really appreciate the liberty that I have gained now that my emotions are written down!!

[stari-hun]

I actually only hold angst in my heart for Journey to Mor Panhk, everything about that event is so deeply touching in a ruins you forever kinda way. Reading that story was like playing Alter Ego or a game that puts you into so much retrospective. Don't even get me started on how Kumar is character for the Eldest Daughters. The thing about it is that the antagonist of Mor Panhk is someone who could've been ANYONE. It makes me think of the Funkyfrogbait video making rounds right now where they said "how many Einsteins have spent thier lives washing dishes? How many Mozarts have bent over stoves instead of pianos?" then learning about the fact that Mozart had an elder sister who some said were better than him yet none of her works survived. Kumar wasn't born with innate talent but she had the skill and tenacity to work herself to make her arcanum strong enough to where two geniuses (one being her own student) had to learn her life's work in order to stand a chance against her. But in the end it'll never matter to her parents because they had a son with exactly what they wanted too. The only issue between them in the cold narrative is that Shamane never wanted that either, he was more livid than anything about what their parents did to her. They have the same tragedy that Theopil and Isolde have, Shamane wanted to love and be with Kumar because he saw her for the talented older sister she was, but Kumar didn't want anything to do with that. Kumar had other plans, and when the bitterness of being abandoned for the sin of being born "wrong" in her parent's eyes, she wanted nothing more than to wipe out the conditions and environment that hurt her off the map. In the end, we could've all been Kumar. I think that's one of the reasons I fixate on her the most and think of her all the time along with Isolde, they're characters who were done wrong then did wrong to others, their wrath at their original abusers overflowing to innocent people. Whether you take her as the Eldest Daughter abandoned for the idealized dream of her parents that a male child could do it better, or you identify with her as another marginalized person who was told they were made "wrong" when they were born a certain way.

Shamane’s character event is one of the best because of when it happened in the game. It showed us exactly how arcane creatures behave and adapt to the ecosystem before we got to [Farewell, Rayashki]. Where Windsong told us exactly what arcane creatures are like, and how they merge into the ecosystem alongside humans. Shamane’s job was to be apart of nature and live in harmony with it while being a person. Most notably, the event showed us how creatures like carbuncles, who are the main reoccurring enemy in the game, aren’t entirely feral like we thought. People like Jessica and New Babel can control arcane creatures like carbuncles, in Jessica’s case she can even talk to them, but they don’t necessarily make friends with them and convince them to fight by their side.

[ohnoitstbskyen]

Ruined Miss Fortune vs Ruined King Miss Fortune

Ruined Miss Fortune is, to me, a deep disappointment of a skin, for multiple reasons.

The first is the method of her Ruination. Basically: Gangplank isn't dead and Fortune is super duper way the hell extra special scared of him, and so she voluntarily gets Ruined by Viego because he'll give her the power to definitely for sure kill Gangplank this time!

It sucks. The entire scene sucks. The way her characterization is played sucks. She is fully written as a Hysterical Woman™ who is too emotional to see reason and who gets corrupted because she can't handle her anger and fear, and the f***ing visual imagery of Miss Fortune willingly submitting to Viego by asking him to penetrate her with his eight foot Overcompensator Sword is just... good grief, the semiotics of that entire thing are just bafflingly bad.

The second is that if she had to get Ruined there was a much, much more compelling way to do it that would actually relate meaningfully to the core themes of the entire Ruination event.

Viego is driven fundamentally by a tragic loss, and total inability to cope with the grief of death. He lost Isolde and, being the spoiled little hyperromantic princeling that he is, absolutely could not accept that something he loved could be "taken away from him."

Miss Fortune is driven fundamentally by a tragic loss, and total inability to cope with the grief of death. In her case, it is the brutal murder of her mother by Gangplank, and the complicated mess of survivor's guilt and vengeful hatred that has left her unable to ever put her mother's memory to rest.

So... what if we had built some kind of thematic connection between the two characters, a shared form of loss, the connection of which is exploited by the abusive, manipulative monster to further his own goals? What if Viego had said to Fortune "I will bring back to life she who you love the most?" with the absolute insane certainty and sincerity with which he believes he will bring back Isolde?

And rather than MF being the dumbass who gets taken in by an obviously lying man's obviously false offer of power because she's just so scared of Big Bad Gangplank, she gets taken in by a moment of connection and a glimmer of hope, however vain, that the literal worst thing that ever happened to her can undone?

I dunno, given that the entire Ruined King event was thematically about learning to cope with grief, to let go of those who are dead and to stop making other people's lives and deaths about yourself, that seems to me like it would have been cool, actually.

Anyway the third reason is that the skin itself is basically a bland-as-hell "EVIL = SEXY!!!" fanservice skin, which first of all is extremely tame and boring as fanservice (srsly, cleavage and a bit of thigh action? That's the best you can do for a sexy evil pirate queen?), but which also simply does not fit the character story being told here.

Miss Fortune falls for power, she falls for the strength to destroy her enemies, she falls for the power to rule and control. The Ruined Skin looks no more dangerous, powerful or domineering than her Captain Fortune skin, it's just a sexy pirate halloween costume with all the colors turned off.

Now, in the spirit of fairness, there are some production reasons for this. It was not a Legendary skin and Riot puts a hard budget limit on how many actual changes you can make to a design at lower skin levels. So no changing her animation, for example, and only limited changes to her model itself and no changes to its rigging. There was probably a corporate and technical mandate not to stray too far from her base form.

On top of that there is in-game readability. Silhouettes are important for character recognition, and Riot are... usually quite careful about broadly preserving them skin to skin to avoid gameplay confusion. Usually.

So yeah, there's some limits on how much you can do, but if you want an example of what I would consider a good "Ruined" version of Miss Fortune, Riot Forge and the people over at Airship Syndicate helpfully went and made one:

Good feature number one: The Crown. The corruption of Miss Fortune as it is told in the Ruination is that she lets her paranoid lust for power blind her and this allows Viego to take over her mind.

So what do we have here? A crown literally blinding her, mimicking the shape language of Viego's crown, indicating his deception of her and his domination over her mind. That's some good visual storytelling.

It is also Sauron-esque as hell, so it reinforces Miss Fortune as an imperious, domineering, regal presence. Queen, sovereign, it is the visual language of power.

Good feature number two: the chains incorporated into her design, which are just about the most widely used visual shorthand for enslavement and control. Riot L4T3NCY, creative lead at Riot Forge, confirmed for me that this and the blindfolding of MF were both extremely conscious choices in her skin design here:

Good feature number three: Miss Fortune's own pirate aesthetic is entirely supplanted by Viego's Camavoran army aesthetics. There is no hint of the Bilgewater fashion left here, everything that was Bilgwater about her has been torn away, which again is good, solid, basic storytelling showing us that she is mind-controlled and subverted.

Good feature number four: I am definitely reaching here, but I quite like that the hands that grasp her guns are the most wraith-like and corrupted. It is Miss Fortune's grasp for power that is corrupting her, and it is the trauma of the loss of her mother, a gunsmith who is intimately connected to her weapons, which is ultimately the source of the paranoia and power lust that has destroyed her. Is this intentional at all? I have no idea, but I like the idea.

Good feature number five: It is still sexy. Not in as blatantly pin up-ish a way as the base game Ruined Miss Fortune is, but there's some solid Hot Mean Evil Lady appeal in that cleavage and armored bustier. MF has always been a flirty, sexy character (albeit definitely too much so in the past *shudders in League Judgment*), and that aspect is still present here, without being distracting from the character storytelling of the skin.

I think Miss Fortune being ruined by Kevin McKilledbyhiswife of Camavor is a bad idea on the whole, I think it gets catastrophically in the way of her much more interesting base story of slowly being corrupted by the structural violence and brutality of Bilgewater itself, reducing it all down to a "Sad Woman Very Angry About Dead Mom" personal grief narrative (which is honestly a little too eager to paint her desire to see justice done to Gangplank for his crimes as a bad thing.)

But if she has to be Ruined, at least do it with some gosh darn character storytelling as part of the skin. If she has to be Ruined, at least do it in a way that thematically reflects on and interacts with the general themes of the Ruination event as a whole.

Don't do it just for a D-tier generic hot lady fanservice skin.

[goodqueenaly]

Thank you so much for your amazing reply and the amount of effort you put into it. I did not recognize the Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Guinevere parallels here until you brought it up, but it probably will check many of the boxes. Lancelot was considered the Queen’s champion by many. I’ll be severely disappointed if the ‘love potion’ is foreshadowing of a Lancelot and Elaine sort of thing instead, though. I really hope they flesh out Daella’s personality, or preferably both the sisters.

You're very kind! (original post here)

I wouldn't worry too much about the "love potion" aspect of it. While GRRM certainly likes to explore and play with the tropes of chivalric romance, he's not usually one to go with strict 1-1 parallels with real-world literary tradition (or, for that matter, real-world history). The author doesn't need to repeat beat by beat the story of Tristan any more than he does the story of, say, Lancelot or Amadis or Gawain or any other hero of chivalric romance; rather, he can pick and choose which tropes of chivalric romance he wants to play straight and which specific plot points he wants to borrow from the rich trove of such stories in the real world while also potentially examining and questioning certain other tropes and plot points. If anything, perhaps GRRM was inspired by that aspect of the Lancelot and Tristan stories to have young Rhae put a love potion in Egg's drink, so that he would marry her instead of Daella (although it's not like love potions are unique or original to chivalric romances); perhaps in turn GRRM will tease an allusion to the Tristan and Isolde story by having Daella, in conversation with Dunk, reference the childhood love potion Rhae tried to use on Egg (with maybe the implication that she and Dunk need no such potion).

Of course, it's also worth pointing out that the author has consistently written Dunk to be very attractive to a number of people throughout the stories. Naturally, Dunk himself was very much attracted to both Tanselle (who certainly seems to have liked him in turn) and Rohanne Webber (who flirted heavily with Dunk throughout "The Sworn Sword", particularly at the end), but Daemon the Younger gives the love letters of James I and the Duke of Buckingham a run for their money in a complete lack of subtlety regarding his attraction toward Dunk; even at Whitewalls, Bloodraven-as-Maynard Plumm notes that "[t]hose girls up on the dais cannot seem to take their eyes off you", and when the newly married Lady Butterwell sees Dunk ready to tilt, she "pushe[s] out her chest in a way that turn[s] him red beneath his helm". (And again, it remains to be seen what happens at Winterfell, given that Dunk was smooching someone in the godswood.) Given that setup, I don't think we need anything like a love potion to believe that Daella is attracted to him; I'm fully prepared to believe that Daella will find Dunk very attractive on his own.

In any event, I certainly hope that Daella and Rhae both get lots of characterization in future Tales. Given that their marriages were teasingly left out of the family tree for TWOIAF (and Aemon's memories do strongly suggest that both did in fact marry and have children), and given that the reign of Maekar was barely noted in that book, I'm hoping the author is saving lots more details about Egg's family members for later Tales. (Too late for Egg's own mother, of course, but that's a separate point.)

[officialwagnerrant]

Wagnerrant Review #4 - Mishaps and Emotion

Work: Tannhäuser House: Bayerische Staatsoper Date of performance: 11.07.2021

Team Director: Romeo Castellucci Conductor: Asher Fish With: Georg Zeppenfeld, Klaus Florian Vogt, Simon Keenlyside, Dean Power, Andreas Bauer Kanabas, Ulrich Heß, Martin Snell, Lise Davidsen, Elena Pankratova, Sarah Gilford, Soloists of the Tölzer Knabenchor

Review: @dichterfuerstin

With Jonas Kaufmann’s Tristan debut right next to Anja Harteros’ Isolde debut (Watch the stream on staatsoper.tv, July 31st, 5PM CEST, it’s worth it), it’s hard to believe that the event I was looking forward to the most in the 2020/21 opera season was a performance of a four-year-old production that I’ve seen online before. But it was and so I did everything to get my hands on tickets for this season’s only performance of Tannhäuser at Bayerische Staatsoper. I cannot describe how happy I was when I got them and how sad I am now that it’s over. I hope that writing this review will help me revive those five hours at Bayerische Staatsoper – truly a special evening.

The best part of the entire production is the opening scene. Romeo Castellucci uses the fairly long overture and Venusberg music to visualise Tannhäuser being lured to Venus. A group of topless woman shoots arrows at a picture of a human eye, later the picture changes to that of a human ear, bewitching Tannhäuser’s senses until he gives in. A Tannhäuser-double walks on stage and climbs up the backdrop. This entire scene is choreographed flawlessly, every arrow compliments the music, and their placement on the backdrop is planned in a way where it works both for the picture of the eye and for the ear.

Castellucci did everything himself in this 2017 production of Tannhäuser. He directed, designed the sets, the costumes, and even the lighting. Solely the choreography by Cindy van Acker isn't his work. The result is a stunning unity of visuals on stage. It’s those that tell the story, not the characters. Elena Pankratova, who returned to the production to replace Daniela Sindram, pretty much only had to sit around as Venus, but she doesn’t have to move. It’s the mountain of flesh she’s sitting in, and the fact that both her and her lovers seem to melt away in fat and skin, that explains to the audience that Venus is a personification of both Lust and Gluttony. In act two, the singers could just stand in the wings to sing their lines. Not their acting tells us how they define love, but a single word written on a cube serving as altar and speaker’s desk at the same time. When Tannhäuser finally bursts out the confession that he’s been with Venus the words disappear and instead black colour gets spray-painted around in the cube. The black, forbidden aspect of Tannhäuser’s soul. The entire production gradually becomes blacker. While act one is even fairly colourful – fleshy pink for Venus, and bloody red for the Wartburg-knights’ costumes the deer they’re hunting, act two is white with only implied skin and nudity, though a lot of it, and act three is black until the curtain-call. This third act is the most impactful part of Castellucci’s production. It doesn’t raise nearly as much questions as act one and two – why do the knight’s costumes look like BDSM-fetish outfits? Why are there feet all over the stage during the Sängerkrieg? It shows the passage of time in the most impactful way. While more and more ridiculous numbers appear on the black screen – millions and millions and millions of year pass, the audience is shown the process of corpses rotting. And it’s not Tannhäuser’s and Elisabeth’s corpses, the names on the graves are those of the singers – Klaus and Lise. The message of this image? Tannhäuser and Elisabeth can’t be together in this timeline, but their story surpasses their lifetime. But no matter how powerful the imagery: Once again the singers do pretty much just stand and sit around while the stage speaks for them. Thus they can’t convince through their acting choices, but have to put everything into their voices.

And they do. Especially Georg Zeppenfeld convinces as Landgraf Hermann. He is probably the most reliable singer of our time, he doesn’t seem to have off-days. And as always he’s at his best in this performance. His voice carrying easily through the performance and singing a dignified, powerful Landgraf. And no matter what happens, he always remains calm.

The opposite of calm is obviously Tannhäuser. Klaus Florian Vogt debuted the role in this back in 2017 and hasn’t been replaced for even one year ever since. With good reason: His unusually light voice is a perfect fit for the sometimes too self-assured, sometimes insecure Tannhäuser. In addition to this, Vogt noticeably puts his whole soul into his performance, even though he apparently did not have the time to fully revise his, which led to a kind of sad “In ihr liegt in Maria” instead of the famous “Mein Heil liegt in Maria” and other mishaps. He makes up for his mess-ups by making his Tannhäuser especially emotional. He’s not afraid of letting a character’s emotions influence the sound and spices up the Romerzählung by singing with a different voice when quoting the pope, in comparison to when he’s just Tannhäuser. Lise Davidsen as Elisabeth is equally impressive. Having heard her as Sieglinde just some weeks before, I remembered her sometimes not being loud enough to get over a Wagnerian orchestra. This time however, she was in perfect form and every single one of her notes reached the audience, even the more quiet and scared lines in act three. I loved those especially. Davidsen dares to give her Elisabeth an insecure, questioning tone for “Sie sind’s” and “Sie kehren heim” and thus makes the audience really understand how much she fears Tannhäuser not coming back. With their voices harmonizing perfectly, with their acting skills, their creativity and emotion, Davidsen and Vogt make a great duo and we can only hope to hear them together in many more productions – next up is Die Walküre in Bayreuth.

The most impressive performance, however, delivers Simon Keenlyside as Wolfram von Eschenbach. Stepping in for another singer with just one day’s notice is hard, especially if this singer is Christian Gerhaher, munich’s favourite baritone. But Keenlyside, most well-known for his Mozart-interpretations mastered his unexpected Wagner-Challenge with ease. He acted as if he’d been rehearsing the production for weeks, and his big voice filled the Nationaltheater with ease, while always embracing Wolfram’s character. Not once he slipped into just singing his lines. Of course one could criticise that he never seemed to keep his hands still, unusual, when you’re used to Gerhaher’s interpretation of Wolfram von Eschenbach, but let’s be honest: This would be nothing more than beckmessering. Keenlyside is not the only one stepping in, though the others had about two weeks to prepare for their roles. Elena Pankratova, returning as Venus for Daniela Sindram, who was supposed to take over the role this season, and like Zeppenfeld and Vogt an original cast member in Castellucci’s production sings, as if she had planned to come back to Venus, her strong Soprano outshines the unflattering costume her director gave her.

Last but not least, Asher Fish conducted the performance for Simone Young. While it would have been nice to see a female conductor for diversity’s sake, opera is a world still very much dominated by men, one cannot complain about Fish’s conducting. He works out orchestra parts that are hardly noticeable, sometimes works them out too much, like when Tannhäuser is discovered by the Wartburg-society in act one he pronounces the more rhythmic parts so hard the music ends up sounding like traditional dance music you’d expect at German fairs. But just like Vogt seems to have finally found his libretto in act two, the conducting gets more balanced and with sensible dynamic- and tempo choices Fish gives the opera the amount of tragedy and sadness it needs, together with the mixture of euphoria and anger Tannhäuser’s descriptions of love in act two need.

Even if not everything went well – the choir could have been more balanced, the very first set change in act didn’t go as smoothly as it’s supposed to go, and not everyone knew their lines – the performance was touching, very nice to see, and fantastic to hear. I’m so glad to have been there, and cast and crew deserved all of the applause they got – certainly more than ten minutes of clapping and cheering.

[bforbetterthanyou]

I’ve always been curious about what got you so interested in Tudor era history. My love of the Enlightenment era was started by the Hamilton musical believe it or not. That newfound love of history along with Six: The Musical got me interested in the Tudor era and caused me to do some research into it, now the Tudor era is my second favorite next to the Enlightenment era. Is there anything in particular that inspired your interest in the Tudor era? Or was it more of a gradual thing that branched off of a different interest?

Kind of both.

I’ve always loved history since I was a kid—something I think I inherited from my grandpa—but his interest is in 20th century military history (specifically from the American perspective); which is ironic because nowadays I’m really not that interested in military or American history lol.

But when I was like 11-12 my sister, whose 5 years older than me, went through a phase where she was really into period dramas (this was 2008-2009) and she made me watch all the movies and shows with her. She made me watch all sorts like the 2005 Pride and Prejudice and the Tristan + Isolde movie with James Franco and Sophia Myles (which I actually re-watched recently out of nostalgia and it sucks but a pre-Tudors Henry Cavill plays a minor character). But the two she made me watch that really stuck with me were The Other Boleyn Girl and The Tudors. When I first watched TOBG, the story went completely over my head—the only thing I took away from that movie after the first time was I loved the aesthetic (the clothing and architecture) of the period and my hopeless romantic adolescent brain became obsessed with the scene where Mary is taking care of Henry after his hunting accident and that’s how he fell in love with her (the wounded soldier/caretaker trope; the first piece of historical fiction I ever wrote was based on that trope). But, again, the characters and the overall plot went completely over my head at the time so I didn’t do any research or anything (keep in mind I was like 12: I don’t even think I realized the movie was based on real people and I couldn’t even pronounce ‘Boleyn’ correctly.)

It was like a year later that my sister made me watch The Tudors (my sister was like 17 and I was about 12 or so—in hindsight, it was probably highly inappropriate for us to watch that but our parents weren’t really around much so they pretty much let us do whatever we wanted). But again, I don’t think I realized at first that the show was based on real people (or that it was the same people as TOBG) all I remember is that I liked it enough to keep watching it even after my sister got bored of it and stopped watching. It wasn’t until the first time I re-watched the series when I was 14 that I started to actually get more interested in the behind the scenes and that’s when I learned the show was based off these real people and events. And then after that, it slowly turned into me doing research on the period and for a while it kinda faded in and out of my consciousness—sometimes I’d be really interested and do a lot of research and then sometimes it would sort of go on the back burner and I’d be more interested in other things. But even when I was more interested in other things I’d still re-watch The Tudors sometimes (I distinctly remember once when I was 17 we had a friend of my parents living with us and I wasn’t happy about that and I knew she was really religious so there was this one time we were watching TV together and she told me I could choose what we watched so I intentionally put on The Tudors knowing that the sex scenes would make her uncomfortable; I was a real fucking bitch when I was a teenager).

Then when I was 20 (so about 4 years ago) I started this blog. And at the time, I was interested in Anne Boleyn and Tudor history but I didn’t realize how much of a novice I was until I started discovering other Tudor blogs and really it was through Tumblr that my interest skyrocketed and I started learning so much more than I ever did in those 6 years just doing my own independent research.

Sooo….that’s my story lol. It was one thing specifically that sparked my initial interest but after that initial spark, my interest (and knowledge) grew very gradually.

[c0rpsedemon]

i am curious, as someone who’s only exposure to arthurania was reading jane yolen’s young merlin as a child, would you mind saying why hnoc is a bad adaptation? i’m super curious but no worries if not <3

this has been sitting in my inbox for months bc i kept telling myself i needed to write a full essay with proof from medieval lit to make myself feel smarter.  however, since i’ve recently lost all credibility bc i can’t articulate points to save my life, and since i’ve realized that i could answer this in a just a couple paragraphs, now seems like the right time to answer this ask. sorry for the wait.

under a cut bc length

also warnings for mentions of racism bc this is hnoc we're talking abt and sexual assault bc this is med lit we're also talking abt

the basic problems are pendragon polycule itself, the story beats of the album, the fridging and lack of characterization of morgan le fay, the clear influence of pop culture arthuriana, and whatever the fuck happened with gawain/e.

pendragon polycule is... just not a good take.  there’s a bit in the lancelot-grail abt arthur viewing lancelot like a son (and lancelot not giving a shit abt him).  also arthur knew his parents for years before lancelot was even born.  plus lancelot just Doesn’t care abt him and i can’t stress this part enough.  arthur repeatedly tries to have guinnevere killed, mostly in the lancelot-grail, and guinn didn’t really have any say in marrying him bc she was a teenager.  lancelot and guinnevere is a lot better but that’s not saying much.  guinn doesn’t exactly treat lancelot too well... like at all, BUT it’s not intrinsic to their relationship and is completely caused by medieval misogyny and i’m all in favor of modern retellings saying fuck that.  but also lancelot has multiple pseudo-canon boyfriends (this is med lit after all), and one pseudo-canon husband so like... there were better options.  (also lancelot’s husband is basically in a lavender marriage with guinnevere’s maybe girlfriend who most authors just eventually forget abt as the story progresses).

this next one is a problem with a lot of modern arthurian works bc the inclusion of elayne of astolat is too much to ask apparently.  the grail quest isn’t tied to the fall of camelot, it just happens to be one of the last grand adventures the knights of the round table have.  the event that traditionally sets off the fall is the death of the maiden of astolat/the lady of shalott/elayne of escolat/she has a lot of names, her story has a few variations but usually she either is cursed to stay in a tower and weave and only be able to see the outside world through a mirror positioned across from her window, until lancelot rides by and she rushes to see him out of the actual window and her mirror shatters, setting off her death, or she lives with her father and brothers and takes care of lancelot bc he was injured for a time and she gets to go on adventures to find him and she’s friends with gawaine and she dies bc lancelot rejects her and this version’s a lot more fun but also more happens which makes it harder to explain.  the way her story ends however, is that she dies after she makes arrangements for a glorious boat to drift from astolat to camelot carrying nothing but her dead body and a letter explaining that she died of love for lancelot du lac and the court mourns the death of such a beautiful and young maiden (her age varies a lot but i’ve always read her as a young teenager at most).  but the important thing is, camelot is doomed from the moment she washes up on its shore bc she’s an omen of the end and has symbolic meaning and all that, the maiden of astolat washes up on camelot’s shores, the court mourns the loss of a maiden in her prime and she marks the end of camelot’s prime as well, morgan le fay reappears after being presumed dead and warns arthur of guinnevere and lancelot’s affair, aggravaine and modred conspire to bring lancelot and guinnevere’s affair to light, they succeed but lancelot escapes, guinnevere is to be burnt at the stake and lancelot rescues her, killing aggravaine, gaheris and gareth (gawaine’s brothers) in the process, gawaine drags his uncle and camelot to war bc he was driven mad due to the loss of his brothers, lancelot accidentally kills gawaine, his best friend and maybe boyfriend (i have RECEIPTS), and gawaine forgives him on his detahbed while lancelot and guinn rejoin arthur, meanwhile modred, who practically had the throne handed to him, usurps and invites the saxons in, camlann happens, and camelot is destroyed.  no where in there is the grail quest.

morgan le fay is honestly the most questionable part of the album bc there’s not a single text where she dies.  like....  at least with eurydice in udad she died in the original... there’s no basis for morgan dying.  also she is NOT modred’s mother and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar, she interacts with him once in the vulgate bc she had three of her nephews over and that’s IT.  it’s a horrible take which originated in the mists of avalon by marion zimmer bradley who is an honest to god monster for reasons i don’t want to trigger tag this post for.  also she’s one of the most dynamic and thought-out characters in the entire canon and they just made her a watered down morgause (modred’s actual mother, morgan’s sister, canonical milf)... there was no reason for it to be her apart from the fact that she’s more well known......

pop culture arthuriana is,,, one of my least favorite things.  no, morgan wasn’t modred’s mother, no, morgause wasn’t abusive but her husband sure was implied to be, no, aggravaine didn’t kill his mother, that was gaheris, he loved his mother, you’re only saying that bc he has a reputation as the “evil” orkney, no, the once and future king is not a good descriptor for arthur, stop making me read it, no, morgause wasn’t the one to initiate the thing with arthur resulting in modred, no, lancelot and arthur weren’t friends, no, tristan wasn’t a self-centered asshole, tennyson is a fucking liar, no, galahad didn’t have sex or want to, he’s one of the first ever explicitly asexual characters out there, no, galahad’s conception was NOT consensual, lancelot was tricked, and no, elayne of astolat wasn’t galahad’s mother, she’s implied to be younger than him.  those are just the big glaring ones, but i swear it’s bc of arthuriana’s reputation as a mythology and the connotations belonging to that word (no one true canon (which is true but there are still things that just AREN’T canon, not completely written down, passed by oral tradition) that causes ppl to see mediocre modern texts and go “oh. well this is abt as close to the original as i’m going to get” and don’t bother to look into so much as malory (who i only name bc he’s one of the most well known medieval authors with the most commonly used storylines, don’t read malory kids, he’s a mediocre-at-best writer even by medieval standards).  the big perpetrators of modern arthurian tropes are the books the once and future king by th wh*te, who is a shitty person and lets it bleed into his writing (which isn’t like... nice to read or anything, seriously why do ppl love this book so much it doesn’t have redeeming qualities), and the mists of avalon by marion zimmer bradley (it’s poorly written, the story is a mess, and mzb is honestly a monster and one google search will tell you that), and unfortunately the writings of tennyson, which are mostly good but he clearly didn’t read the povest (a later text that’s also my favorite, known for significantly improving ppl’s opinions on tristan, isolde and co.) before deciding he hated both tristan and isolde and he has HORRIBLE takes on them.  high noon over camelot is SEEPED in pop culture arthuriana and i think it would have been so much better if the band had read so much as a SUMMARY of the events of le morte.  it’s evident in the song “the once and future king” bc it’s,,,, literally named after one of the worst books in existence.  it’s shown in the morgan le fay thing, and it’s shown in the pendragon polycule thing.  and hell, i think you can even explain away the lack of elayne of astolat with pop culture arthuriana, bc ppl have had bad takes on her ever since th wh*te combined her character with that of ela*ne of corbenic, and the band probably went “huh, let’s write lancelot’s abuser out of this” and they would’ve been right to do so if that’s who elayne of astolat was.

the final big issue is gawaine, the closest thing the genre has to a protagonist, he’s pretty much canon bi and, in some texts, arospec, he’s a dashing knight of great reknown and he derails every romance to steal hearts, commit murder, and make out with every knight and lady mentioned.  and in hnoc he’s... racist.  that’s it.  it’s,,, almost completely unfounded by the arthurian canon and shows a major misunderstanding of his motivations (like i said earlier, he wants to avenge his brothers bc there’s a reoccuring motif of how much the orkneys value family).  i say almost bc in one text it’s his motivations for killing palomydes but i’ve never heard it mentioned by name bc that’s just what it’s known for.  most arthuriana fans just look away from it except when critiquing hnoc but that one text is an outlier, shouldn’t be counted, and i highly doubt the mechs made hnoc gawain how he is bc they found this text.  it’s just a bad text.

hnoc has,,, quite a few more minor issues, such as villainized ladies of the lake (their ONLY crimes were sealing away merlin bc he tried to assault teenage nimue/ninniane (proto-nimue/vivianne from the vulgate), and that one time vivviane/ninniane kidnapped adopted baby lancelot), assigning brain to merlin (y’know,,, the predator who helped arrange the [redacted] of arthur’s mother and tried to assault a teenager,,,) although merlin is portrayed in a positive light throughout modern arthuriana so i don’t think they knew, giving a song to pellinore, who my perception of has been forever altered bc i was introduced to him through malory and the explanation of torre’s conception, which you can just look up “sir torre arthurian” to find out abt if you can’t just Guess, if they wanted a song abt the questing beast palomydes was Right There AND has been associated with the questing beast for longer, but once again i don’t think they knew.

also namedropping a bunch of knights in the fiction is... it Suggests a bigger world full of all these other stories but they just don’t work bc the world of hnoc wasn’t designed in a way where the appearance of half these characters would make sense.  like,, tristan is referenced as dying in the grail quest in the same sentence as bedevere (one of the characters who is known for almost always surviving), but tristan Isn’t one of the knights who dies on the grail quest, his possible deaths (ignoring the potentially happy ending of the povest for a second) are either being murdered by his uncle, king mark (bc mark married tristan’s gf to try and get tristan killed and also to spite him), bc he was driven into a fury bc of tristan and isolde’s affair, or he’s injured and only isolde (the best healer in the world) can save him so he sends for her and if the ship he sent for her is supposed to fly white sails if she’s there, or black sails if she’s not, and the ship flies white sails but his wife (also named isolde) says it’s black sails (the why depends but usually comes down to jealousy), and so he gives up bc he thinks all hope is lost and usually succumbs to his injuries, either way isolde dies of a broken heart over his body.  there’s no way for the tristan and isolde story to play out like it’s supposed to in the world of hnoc, just as there’s no way for any story with gawaine (and Oh Boy are there a lot of stories with gawaine) or pretty much anyone else, without severely altering the canon.

of course, there are still parts of hnoc i like a lot, most of the music i adore and i just like the idea of space cowboys and the secret good hnoc that lives in my head.  and it has one of my favorite characterizations of galahad, even though galahad hnoc is nothing like galahad arthuriana.  it’s not GOOD but i like it and it’s fun to turn my brain off too, and i’ll always value it as my introduction to arthuriana.

also there are modern arthurian tropes i do like such as characters being genre-savvy/knowing they’re fictional/knowing they’ve done this before (which hnoc does wonderfully!) and bedevere-as-the-storyteller (everyone say thank you lord tennyson).

WOW that was longer than expected, i feel very passionately abt this, when i was planning to write a fully sourced essay i meant to include a bit at the bottom with recommendations to get into better arthuriana and i think i’ll keep that in this post.

if you like hnoc for the arthurian music i’d like to suggest heather dale’s arthurian music to you, she does occasionally fall into the trap of modern arthuriana (some parts of lancelot and arthur being close, morgan as modred’s mother), sometimes she’s just wrong (galahad at lancelot’s trial, a lot of tristan and isolde), and her stuff is kinda straightwashed sometimes (sir gawain and the green knight, for example) but i’d be lying if it wasn’t catchy, and it’s not quite as bad as hnoc adaptation-wise.  culwch and olwen is pretty accurate (albeit abridged bc culwch and olwen has SO many tangents), as is lily maid (it’s abt elayne of astolat!).

if you liked hnoc for king arthur... in space! then may i recommend to you my own fanfic? it's not posted yet but the second i finish writing the first chapter i'm going to make a Big Deal out of it that'll be impossible to miss!

if you want to learn abt arthuriana through tumblr-osmosis like i did at first, i’d like to recommend the love of my life @acegalahads, first and foremost (it’s me on a sideblog i’m just obsessed with myself), and i can’t recommend my arthuriana mutuals over there, @/gringolet, @/merlinenthusiast, @/jcbookworm, @/elayneofshalott, and @/elaineofascolat (the elayne urls have been popular recently), also i know for a fact that my mutual-in-law, @/itonje makes great arthuriana posts that i look forwards to whenever i open the tag.

here are a few good reference posts, a quick guide to the characters, a guide to characters of color, and a much more comprehensive intro to arthuriana post with even more texts linked to it.

if you want to ease into med lit, i’d like to introduce you to pre-raphaelite poetry, alfred lord tennyson and william morris are my favorites, although tennyson can’t be trusted with tristan and isolde.  the poem the lady of shalott is basically a rite of passage for arthuriana fans, although when it comes to tennyson’s writings abt elayne of astolat, i prefer lancelot and elaine, which is part of his much larger story, idylls of the king.  for morris, don’t trust what he says abt aggravaine killing his mother, but my favorites of his are sir galahad, a christmas mystery, which sounds like a shitty disney sequel, and palomyde’s quest, which i blame for my love of palomydes (that and the one bit of the povest where he asks tristan to be his greatest enemy and that he wants nothing more, gay ppl,,,,).

if you want to read abt lancelot and his husband, there’s the lancelot-grail cycle, which i believe was taken off of archive dot org and i think i found it on @/tobeisexhausting’s blog but don’t quote me on that.

the povest, which was a religious experience for me and i can’t reccomend enough if you want to like tristan and isolde, is here, i don’t know who scanned it but i think i found it on @/lanzelet’s blog

the dutch texts are just good in general, here’s a link to their section of a(n unfinished) site for hosting various texts by my former mutual @/reynier (who’s no longer on tumblr).  i’d like to recommend lancelot and the white hart specifically bc it’s mainly just just gawaine being gay for lancelot.

if you want older works, here’s my scan of the history of the kings of britain, and here’s culwch and olwen and pa gur.

oh wow this is even longer than i thought it would be so i’m going to wrap this up by saying that i always love to talk abt arthuriana more than anything if you have any questions or just are curious!

[juliandev0rak]

Friends 🐑 🧶

Six: Friends – who was their best friend when they were younger? Did they have a friend group? Were their siblings their friends?

echoes of the past event

@arcana-echoes​

Willa Clary, she/ her

Armara, a village in the south

18 years before the events of The Arcana, Willa is 9

Words: 1740

Warnings: none

It’s been a dreary morning, the rain nearly constant as it often is this time of year. Willa’s been stuck inside all day, helping her mother wind yarn into skeins. The wool is itchy against her hands and Willa is bored but it’s not like there’s much else to do on a day like this in Armara. 

Willa decides to play around with her magic while she works, she knows she’s not supposed to but it’s too fun to resist. With a flick of her finger the entire pile of yarn by her feet winds into a neat ball. She smiles at her work proudly but her mother’s disapproving look has her back to winding the next skein by hand.

When she’d first started showing signs of magical abilities her parents had been  frightened. As far as they know there isn’t anyone in the family who can do magic, and it was quite the surprise. In their village, magic is regarded as dangerous and her parents had told her to hide her powers. The people who live in Armara are superstitious, and though they used to believe in magic it had been many years since a magician had lived there and feelings had changed.

Her brothers are upstairs in the loft playing, and she tries not to feel bitter that she’s doing chores while they play. When the yarn is done her mother moves to the kitchen and Willa is put to work canning preserves and salted fish to put aside for the winter. The work never stops, her mother likes to be prepared and as the only daughter it’s up to Willa to help.

The rain finally stops around midday and her brothers immediately run outside to enjoy the sun, joining the growing group of neighbor children in the village square. Willa looks out the window somewhat wistfully, she knows there’s too much work to do for her to be able to join them. 

Her mother notices her at the window and says “Well go on then, go play.” Willa turns around in surprise and stares at her mother.

“Really?” She says, not waiting for an answer, she’s already halfway out the door. She runs out to join the rest of the kids. They’re busy playing a game with a ball, two teams each trying to kick the ball through their team’s goal post.  She watches her brothers and a dozen other children play, and no one asks her to join. Willa decides she isn’t one for games like this anyways so she takes a seat on the still damp ground, pulling at the daisies that grow in the grass. 

Her hands start to weave the stems into a chain and she busies herself with the process, trying to ignore the laughter and loud chatter from the other children. She’s always enjoyed alone time, but she has to admit it would be nice to feel included. Any chance of that had been quelled when word of her magical abilities got around. Parents had forbidden their children from playing with her, and even her brothers had been on thin ice until it was deemed safe enough to play with the non-magical Clary children. 

Armara is small and tightly knit, only around six dozen families live there. One of the neighbors had learned of her magic and soon enough the whole village knew that Willa was a “witch”. When she first heard the name, Willa was excited, being a witch sounded like great fun, but she soon learned that they meant it only in cruelty. 

The few village girls she’d been close to had swiftly stopped asking her to play, and her mother had been more than happy to keep Willa inside to help with the work. Her only friends these days are the sheep and the other animals she finds in the forest. Deciding she’s had enough of watching the other children play, Willa decides to go in search of these friends.

Armara is situated on a cliffside above the sea and most people are shepherds or fishermen. Willa’s family are the former, their small flock of sheep graze in the meadow behind her house. Behind the meadow lies the forest, a cheery place that seems diffused with light even on gloomy days. Amara is a safe place to grow up but it’s boring and, Willa thinks, stifling. 

The only place she’s able to practice her magic is in the forest, with the odd wandering sheep for company. She’s always understood how animals feel better than most, but in the last few months she’s been able to actually understand them. At first she thought she might be making it up, but when the animals started replying to her she knew it was just another magical ability, another thing she’d have to hide. 

“Niamh?” She calls as she approaches the meadow, searching through the grazing sheep to find her favorite. Her parents think she’s silly for naming the sheep, but the sheep seem to like having names. None of the animals she’s talked to seem particularly bothered that she can understand them, and most of the time they don’t respond even though Willa knows they can hear her. She doesn’t hear full words, more vague ideas and emotions. 

“Friend!” Willa hears as the sheep who most frequently talks to her makes her way through the crowd of other sheep. Willa immediately leans down to pet her, Niamh affectionately nuzzles back.

“I know all of you hate the rain, I’m glad it’s stopped for a bit!” Willa smiles, thinking of all the sheeps’ complaints she’d been privy to over the last few weeks. She continues to babble on about her day, and though Niamh doesn’t say anything back she can feel her understanding and contentment. Some might think it rather sad that Willa’s only friend is an old sheep, but Willa couldn’t ask for better company, even if she is mostly silent.

After catching Niamh up on the village gossip and promising to come back tomorrow she heads into the forest to practice a few spells she’s been working on. Willa’s magic is intuitive, she can make things happen but she can’t always replicate the action, she’s been dying for a sunny day to practice outside.

A few steps into the forest she grins and walks over to a pile of leaves, time to practice. She’s been trying to levitate objects whenever she has the chance, but anything heavier than a leaf just wobbles and stays put. She sits down on the ground again, suddenly remembering how muddy it is and that her mother won’t be happy that she’s stained her dress. But the damage is already done, she turns to her magic instead.

She stares intently at the pile of leaves, willing any of the leaves to move. Just when she thinks she might be almost there a voice behind her startles her. 

“What are you doing?” 

Willa turns around to see Isolde, a shy girl about her age who she hasn’t talked to much before. Isolde lives alone with her grandfather down by the cliffs on the outskirts of the village. They usually keep to themselves. The other children in the village pay no attention to her because she isn’t often around, and she doesn’t talk much when she is. 

“Oh, hello Isolde, you startled me!” Willa says, hoping Isolde will drop her question.

“Are you doing magic?” Isolde asks, tilting her head to the side. She has dark hair and dark eyes, an uncommon trait in Armara where most people are blond or red haired, it’s another reason she’s treated as a bit of an anomaly. Not quite an outcast like Willa, but someone different than the rest. 

“Uh.. yes?” Willa responds, unsure how the girl will react. 

“Well let’s see it then.” Isolde says, sitting down next to her. Willa takes a deep breath, she’s even less confident with an audience now, and wills her magic to her hands. She can feel the rush of tingling warmth that always accompanies her magic and tries to focus on just one leaf. 

Her eyes lock on the bright red leaf and she exhales and imagines it lifting into the air. To her delight, the leaf does just that. She turns to grin at Isolde, forgetting that she’s supposed to be afraid that someone just watched her perform magic. Isolde is smiling back just as big though. Something in Willa sighs in relief, finally someone who isn’t afraid of her.

“Can you do it again?” Isolde asks, so Willa does. 

From that day on the two of them are inseparable. After her daily chores Willa practically runs to Isolde’s house on the cliffs. She finds that Isolde’s grandfather is much kinder than he seems from the times she’s seen him in the market. He makes the girls cups of cocoa and tells them stories of his hometown in the north, regaling them with the time he saw a kraken or when he accidentally insulted a pirate and narrowly escaped with his life. 

The girls play together as children do, creating stories of their own and making daisy chains for the sheep. Isolde doesn’t think that Willa’s magic is weird or scary and Willa thinks that Isolde is an excellent listener, even if she doesn’t talk much. She even tries to teach Isolde a bit of magic, Isolde doesn’t seem to have much talent for it but she’s always excited to try.

Willa’s mother is relieved to see her daughter finally coming out of her shell and talking to people instead of sheep. For the winter solstice she even knits Isolde and WIlla matching sweaters with their initials on it. The girls wear them nearly every day when they meet up to play. The spot they meet at in the forest becomes their clubhouse, they use tree branches to make a fort and it’s their castle, their pirate ship, their playground. 

Best of all, Isolde and Niamh get along and it even seems like Isolde can understand the sheep sometimes. Willa counts herself the luckiest girl in Armara to have magic and two friends to call her own. As the seasons change and the rain turns to deep snow Willa still feels warmer inside than she has in a long time, the stares and whispers don’t matter to her as much when she knows that someone is finally on her side.

[stupidsexyfandom]

Atonement

@helsa-summer-event

Rated M: Mature themes, SFW // Angst

CONTENT WARNING: Major Character Death, Suicide

Twenty-five years later, a body washes up in Arendelle. 

Written for Prompt #4 of Helsa Summer: Gorgeously tan. 

The morning after the storm dawned cool and gray. Queen Elsa rose even earlier than usual after a night plagued by insomnia. She stood on her balcony, watching as the city began to stir. The sea lay still as glass, slate blue and impenetrable. She wished she could stand staring at it forever. Her mind had been greatly troubled, and today, she did not feel like speaking to anyone.

Unfortunately, she reminded herself, being queen left no room for fits of pique. She would have to go downstairs to tend to her duties eventually, as she had every day for the past twenty-five years. Casting a last longing look at the gray sea, she steeled herself to face the world.

Breakfast with Anna, Kristoff, and the children could always lift her spirits, even on such a dour day as this. Elsa supposed she should no longer think of them as children en masse. The oldest, Isolde, would be twenty-one in the spring. Watching her niece, Elsa could hardly believe she had become queen at that age. She seemed so young. Surely she herself had not been such a child when she had taken the throne? But perhaps she had been so young once. In any case, it was her prerogative as a doting aunt to remember all her nieces and nephews as babes in arms no matter how old they got.

After breakfast, she reviewed her itinerary for the day. The bulk of her time was occupied by a foray into the city to assess storm damage. The high winds and heavy rains of the previous night had wrought havoc on structures private and public alike. Beyond the usual cleanup, Elsa had to decide where to allocate funds for repairs and assistance.

She was accompanied on her inspection tour by the castle’s steward, Kai. He had worked in the castle since her father had been crowned. Although his hair was now white, he seemed to grow shrewder with each passing year. Elsa valued his opinion more than those of most of the diplomats and aristocrats on her advisory council.

Together they walked through the streets of the city. Elsa was pleasantly surprised. All told, Arendelle had weathered the storm much better than she had feared. She knew her people were strong, but the wind and rain had been particularly fierce. When the pair reached a damaged building, Kai would make note of it in his little book, and Elsa would do her best to help. Where shingles had blown off the baker’s roof, she created a patch of ice to keep the rain out. Where the upper story of a tenement sagged, she created an icy scaffolding to support it until repairs could be made. All throughout the city, she did what she could. It was times like these when she was thankful for her powers, and she could tell that her people were, too. Every snowflake was an atonement for what had happened so many years ago.

There was a small crowd gathering at the top of the cliffs overlooking the sea. They appeared to be looking at something caught on the rocks below. Elsa thought the wind must have blown something over something over the edge in the night, perhaps a signboard or even a cart. Perhaps she would be able to get it back for them with her powers. She and Kai joined the townsfolk in peering over the edge. At first, Elsa could see nothing. Then she caught sight of a flash of red and felt suddenly sick. There, where the waves were lapping at the rocks, lay a body.

She immediately conjured a staircase to the foot of the cliff, careful to give the treads an anti-slip texture. Kai was the first down it, moving nimbly despite his advanced age. Elsa followed. When they reached the bottom, they had to pick their steps carefully along the slippery rock. The body lay face down. Its hair had been the red that caught her eye from the clifftop. Kai knelt to check its pulse, although they both knew it was a vain gesture. Sighing, Elsa created a broad platform of ice beneath the three of them. She raised it into a pillar until they were even with the head of the cliff. Two fishermen rushed forward to carry the body onto solid ground.

They lay the dead man face up on a patch of grass. For the first time, Elsa could see his face. A chill of recognition ran through her, and she wrapped her arms around herself instinctively. When she looked down, she was shocked to see spirals of frost covering her cloak. She had not lost control of her powers like that in decades.

“Is something wrong?” She could feel Kai’s keen eyes upon her. With anyone else, she might have been able to pass it off as the shock of seeing a dead body so close. But Kai had known her for too long. He had seen the recognition in her eyes.

“I know this man,” she said haltingly.

“Oh?” Elsa had to think fast. She couldn’t let anyone know what she knew, not even Kai.

“I saw him yesterday. He told me the last time he was in Arendelle was for my coronation, and he wanted to pay his respects after twenty-five years.” This was not exactly a lie, although it was far from the whole truth.

“Did he tell you his name?”

“I believe he said it was Anderson. Hans Anderson.”

-

She had seen him in the town square. All around, the city of Arendelle was bustling with preparations for the oncoming storm. He was standing at a produce stall, examining the varieties of fruit. She might not have recognized him if not for his eyes. He wore the garb of a simple sailor, and his face was tanned and weather-beaten. But she would know those eyes anywhere.

She paused for a moment, uncertain of whether to approach him. Part of her wanted to ask why he had come here, or how he dared to show his face here at all. The other part of her wanted to turn away and forget she had even seen him. She had learned long ago the value of letting sleeping dogs lie. But soon enough the choice was made for her. He had seen her.

“You haven’t changed,” he said by way of greeting, and Elsa hated that he was right. Age had taken its toll on her, but its price had been lighter for her than for most. Her hair had always been white, and her time indoors had kept her skin smooth. He could not see the achy joints and stiff muscles that lay beneath the surface. Nor could he see how she had grown, no longer fearful and isolated. She had learned to be strong for her people, to make difficult decisions and navigate stormy seas.

“You have,” she told him, although she was not sure that it was true. He dressed coarsely and had clearly spent the last twenty years working under the sun, his red hair streaked with gray. He still carried with him a certain air of refinement, but his face held an open simplicity she had not seen before. Still, she was wary. He was an expert pretender, and it was likely the same frozen heart lay beneath this roughhewn exterior.

“I need to speak with you.”

“Then speak.” Her tone was chilly.

“Not here. Somewhere private.”

“I have nothing to say to you.”

“You only have to listen.” Elsa wanted to dismiss him out of hand, to tell him that she didn’t have to do anything. But there was something in his eyes that was both dangerous and desperate. She found herself assenting. He tried to give her his name and current ship, but she brushed them away. They would meet on her terms.

Sitting at her dressing table that evening, Elsa mulled over her choice. She was not going to allow herself to regret it. So much of her life had been stolen away by fear and regret. As she had grown older, she had learned not to let them dominate her thoughts and actions. But that evening, those emotions threw her back to the day she became queen. What’s done is done, she thought. And although she could not eliminate her regret, she could keep moving forward.

Lost in thought, she removed the pins from her updo and began brushing her hair. As she braided it for sleep, she realized the actions were pointless. She would be going out again anyway. But seeing the braid over her left shoulder gave her an idea. Standing, she replicated the first ice dress she had ever made. She had not worn one like it in many years, finding it too daring to be taken seriously at court. Now, she remembered the power she had felt when she first created it. Perfect, she thought. It was the same dress she had worn that day on the fjord. She wanted him to remember what he had done.

-

The wind whistled as she stole down to the side entrance. Elsa could see the backs of the leaves, but no rain yet fell. When she opened the garden door, she was surprised to find him already waiting.

“Did the guards see you?” The last thing Elsa needed was for anyone to know about their secret assignation.

“I climbed over the wall,” he said, gesturing behind him. Elsa could barely make out a patch of ivy growing over the stonework, and she made a mental note to have it cut back later. But tonight, it had been her ally.

She led him to the chapel. None of the lamps were lit, so the only illumination came from the moonlight streaming in through the windows. She set the lantern she carried on the dais. The flame cast weird shadows across the flagstones.

She whirled to face him and said, “Why did you come here?”

“You don’t know? I came to beg for your forgiveness.” A cold wind blew through the chapel, extinguishing the lantern. Elsa swore under her breath, any cutting response forgotten. She knelt to fumble with the wick, realizing she didn’t have any matches. That was the biggest problem with this ice dress: no pockets.

He was beside her in an instant, proffering a matchbook from his waistcoat pocket. As she reached out to take it, their hands brushed, and Elsa realized neither of them wore gloves. She wondered if it had been as long for him as it had for her. She struggled to light a match, finding the striking pad slick with ice. When a flame erupted at last, it fizzled just as quickly in her cold hands.

“Here, let me,” he said, gently taking back the book of matches. She watched silently as his tanned, agile hands lit the wick. They sat side by side on the edge of the dais, staring into the shadowy corners of the chapel.

Suddenly he said, “I hear the princess is married.”

“Yes,” said Elsa, “Happily married for more than twenty years now.”

“To the iceman?”

“Yes, to the iceman, Kristoff. They have several lovely children.” Elsa was stalling, not eager to return to the subject that had brought them there.

“Children? Will you tell me about them?” It occurred to Elsa that Anna probably would not want her to. Anna probably would be upset that she was speaking to him at all. She was ready to ask him what business the children were of his when he held up a hand.

“Please. Let me hear about the children that could have, in another life, been mine.” His words stung Elsa, especially because she often thought the same thing. She loved her nieces and nephews as though they were her sons and daughters. But sometimes, she imagined an alternate path, where she had loved and married and had children of her own. So she told him. She started with Isolde, who would be queen one day, and worked her way down. He listened with rapt attention, but his eyes held a sadness she knew too well.

When she had finished (with Wilhelm, age nine, avid collector of frogs and turtles), he asked, “And you? You have never married?”

“No. I discovered long ago that it was better to keep power for myself than to trust too easily and share it with anyone whose motives were uncertain. You taught me that. I suppose I never found anyone whom I could trust.” He barked a dry laugh and leaned back on his arms. Elsa studied his face among the harsh lamplight shadows, and she could see his expression soften.

“It is a shame, your Majesty, all that we have missed in life.” She wanted to tell him that he was wrong, that she had missed nothing. But instead she just sighed. They sat in silence for a while.

“You’ve never married either?” asked Elsa. She felt suddenly ridiculous. Here she was, making polite conversation with the man who had once tried to kill her. She wasn’t even sure what to call him. ‘Prince Hans’ seemed out of the question, for she was fairly sure he had been stripped of his title. Just ‘Hans’ seemed too familiar, implying a closer relationship. What else was left? The false name he had given her? But ‘Mr. Anderson’ seemed stiffly formal, like she was addressing a stranger. And whatever their relationship was, they were certainly not strangers. His voice interrupted her reverie.

“No. I’ve been at sea for many years, you know. No time for a wife.” Something in his tone told Elsa there was more to it.

“Many sailors marry.”

“Perhaps I was always too obsessed with what happened in Arendelle. I dreamed of it every night. Even in my waking hours, I could never be free of it. Each wave crashing against the hull seemed to call me to repent. Eventually, I could bear it no longer. I thought it might drive me mad. Perhaps there was a kind of madness in my coming here. But I knew that I could not rest until I saw you again. I could not go on without asking for your forgiveness.”

Elsa stood slowly, feeling stiff from sitting so low to the ground. She almost pitied him. Despite what she knew of him, he seemed genuinely repentant. Perhaps he had learned something in the past twenty-five years. That was what made this so hard.

“Do not ask for my forgiveness.”

“What?” He froze midway through standing up.

“Any wrongs you have committed against me pale in comparison to what you did to my sister. It is her forgiveness you must seek, not mine.”

“Then let me speak to her tomorrow. I won’t expect anything to come of it, so long as I have the opportunity.” His expression was tinged with eagerness verging on desperation. Elsa steeled herself. She had to protect her sister. She had been unable to do so twenty-five years ago when they had first met Prince Hans, and Anna had suffered for it. Now, Elsa finally had the chance to atone for that failure. She would not fail again.

“Princess Anna is happy now. She has a life and family of her own. The last thing she need is for you to dredge up the past.”

“But—”

“I sympathize. Do you think I don’t understand self-recrimination? She has finally managed to heal from what we’ve done to her. I won’t let you disrupt her life.”

Her words proved to be too much for him. He knelt before her, pleading desperately. She thought there was a touch of madness in his eyes.

“Please, I beg of you! If you will not let me see your sister, at least consider my plea for yourself. I don’t know how I can go on otherwise. I cannot live this haunted life.”

“I cannot help you. You must seek absolution elsewhere.” Elsa wished that things could be different. But she of all people did not have the right to grant forgiveness for what had happened at the coronation. Not when she herself had played such a large part in her sister’s suffering.

He threw himself at her feet like a child. She felt his hand on her leg, grasping at it like a lifeline. He buried his face in her skirts, and Elsa felt overwhelmed by his emotion. She noticed snowflakes drifting slowly downward and waved them away with her hand. Perhaps she was being selfish, letting her final act of atonement block his only chance at the same. But Anna’s happiness had to come first.

“Get up,” she said softly, pushing at his graying hair, “Hans. Get up.” He looked up at her, eyes moist but unwavering. Slowly he disentangled himself from her skirts.

“I can’t give you what was never mine to give. The most I can do is let you leave here in peace. I will not alert the Southern Isles, nor will I alert Arendelle’s guard. I have left you with your life. You must be content with that.” Her tone was kind, but she spoke with a sense of finality.

“A cursed life such as mine hardly qualifies. You have left me with nothing at all.” His eyes looked hollow, as if there were nothing behind them.

-

“Give us your best account of what happened last night, Captain,” said Kai. The body was laid out in the castle’s chapel. Because the dead man had no local family, Elsa had volunteered to take charge of the remains. Now a small group had formed there to try to figure out the cause of death. Elsa and Kai, her eternal shadow, stood on one side. The doctor and the bishop stood on the other. The captain of the St. Winifred, who had been found based on Elsa’s information, was the final member of their party. Elsa had worried that they might realize Hans’ true identity, but her secret seemed safe for the moment.

“The night watchman says Anderson returned around midnight, just about when the rain started. He didn’t go below decks right away, saying he wanted some fresh air. By the time of the one o’clock patrol, he was gone. The watchman say he thought Anderson went below deck, but the storm was getting intense by that point, so he wasn’t paying much attention.”

“Do you think he could have fallen overboard? Or could a wave have washed him away?” asked Kai. The captain considered for a moment.

“I would say either of those were possible, if not likely. Anderson was a competent sailor and very cautious. I doubt he slipped and fell. But in a storm like that one, anything may have happened.”

“Was he well liked among the crew?” Elsa could tell Kai was trying to be diplomatic.

“Yes, he got along with everybody. He was quiet and kept himself to himself. But he was always willing to pick up the slack, and that made him popular. I had offered him a promotion several times, but he always turned me down. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to harm him.”

Elsa was finding it difficult to keep her mind on the proceedings. She found herself staring at the corpse several times, fixated on how it compared to the Hans of her memory. Beneath its suntanned skin lay the pallor of death. Its eyes were closed, but she knew they must hold the same hollow look she had seen the night before. She longed to reach out and touch it. Would it be cold as ice? Would she even be able to tell? The bishop was speaking for the first time, and Elsa tried to give him her attention.

“What we must know is this: could he have done this to himself? We cannot move forward with the burial until we know whether he is worthy of consecrated ground.” The other three men looked distinctly uncomfortable. Elsa got the feeling this was a possibility they would all have gladly ignored.

The doctor spoke first: “All I can tell you is that he drowned. There were some abrasions from the rocks, but they were clearly postmortem. His body can give us no evidence aside from that.”

“I wouldn’t believe it for a moment,” said the captain with a bit of added bluster, “He just wasn’t the sort. Sure, he had his troubles, but so do we all. Doesn’t mean he’d do something so drastic.”

“Queen Elsa,” said Kai, “you spoke to him the most recently out of all of us. Can you shed any light on his state of mind?” Elsa had only a split second to decide what to say. She knew her evidence would be damning if she answered truthfully.

“It was only for a few minutes. He just told me how little I had changed since my coronation. He seemed in good spirits, but of course I didn’t know him.” She hoped her lie would be convincing. It was the least she could do for him.

-

The investigation was over. They had reached a consensus that it had been an accidental death. Elsa was glad to be finished with it. At least she had spared Hans the final indignity of an unconsecrated grave. Despite the bishop’s protestations, she had insisted that he be buried in the royal plot. She was not sure what lay beyond the grave, but she hoped his spirit would be able to find some peace.

Now, she walked along the beach, looking out over the slate-colored sea. She turned, hearing footsteps behind her. It was Kai.

“May I join you?”

“Of course.” They walked together in silence for a while.

“You went to a lot of trouble to arrange a burial for that man,” said Kai. He was dangling the bait in front of her. She wondered how much he knew.

“A queen’s duty is to take care of her people. Besides, I feel partially responsible for his death. He only came to Arendelle because of me.”

“Queen Elsa, listen to me,” Kai stopped walking and turned to face her, “this was not your fault. If it was not an accident, he made his own choice. I suspect he made his choice many years ago. You don’t need to hold yourself responsible.”

Elsa appreciated Kai’s kind words and common sense. She hoped that this time she would be able to follow his advice. After so many years, perhaps she did not need another reason to atone.

***

Author’s Note: This fic is brought to you by the letter C. C for Cadfael, an endless source of inspiration for me. C for Culturally Catholic, which bleeds through into my writing sometimes. C for Content warning, which is not something I usually need for my fics. Oh yeah, and C for Completely missing the spirit of the prompt, sorry guys. 

I had to rewrite the entire middle portion because I thought Hans was coming across as too mentally well-compensated. Tomorrow I begin my apology tour. Thanks so much for reading! <3

[scentedflowersong]

The Swan-Mills Saga Annual Couples’ Awards

Ladies (and in broader sense gentlemen), welcome to the most prestigious event of the year - The Swan-Mills Saga Couples’ Awards!

Tonight, we are going to celebrate the accomplishments of love. A jury of thoroughly selected individuals cast their votes and you are welcome to witness their picks of the best couples.

Following rules were chosen for this year’s contestants:

1. the couple must feature in Sins of the Past, The Once & Future Queen  (by the ever so talented @swanqueeneverafter​) or both,

2. during these two stories, the couple must pass a major relationship milestone.

We sincerely hope you’ll enjoy our picks...

!!!WARNING - SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Rocky Road to the Chapel of Love

Pairing: Ella of Valencia/Henry Swan-Mills Status:  married Henry and Ella Swan-Mills went through a bit of a rough patch with Henry letting his fianceé go on an adventure alone (or well not alone, which was half of the problem), but in the end, they managed to overcome all hurdles and as far as we know are happily married and living in a house of their own.

The Star-Crossed Lovers

Pairing: Tristan/Isolde Status: Isolde is dead Quite the opposite fate awaited the pair(s) in our second category. Before Romeo&Juliet there were Tristan&Isolde. Although not exactly the milestone most couples want to go through, the death of Isolde brought the pair immortality AND a place in our contest (which makes it almost worth it in the eyes of our jury).

Honourable mention: Zelena Mills/Robin Hood 2.0

The Old Married Couple

Pairing: Xena/Gabrielle Status: engaged Contrary to what the title of this category (and their behaviour of the last 50 years give or take) might suggest, the Warrior Princess and the Battling Bard of Potidaea have yet to seal the deal. Finally, at the end of TO&FQ Xena asked her soulmate for to marry her, and I think it’s pointless to say that the jury is crying tears of joy even now.

Cottage Core/Teashop AU

Pairing: Tinkerbell/Tiger Lily Status: dating With a few twists in the timeline caused by an impromptu trip to the past (of which more later), the couple taking our next award are literally a pair of your fairy aunts who will sell you delicious herbal tea spiced up with fairy dust in their newly opened shop. Not counting X&G, Tink and Tiger Lily are quite possibly together for the longest time of all the couples featured here. Certainly a very pleasant surprise.

The Fresh Meat

Pairing: Drizella/Dr Whale Status: dating And from the ‘oldest’ to the very freshest twosome in the United realms. With both of her sisters married, Drizella decided that she’d like to put a ring on it too. The jury could not be happier fo her and Storybrooke’s hottest surgeon, Dr Victor Whale, to find love after their past hardships. Perhaps we’ll even get invited to their wedding soon...

The Wholeass 10-course Meal with a Cherry on Top

Pairing: Merida/Anastasia Status: married Speaking of weddings, this one was the titular cherry on top. Where to even start with Anastasia and Merida? They got it all, meet cute, crush/flirting without noticing but everyone else knows phase, the meet the dead relatives stuff, True Love’s Kiss AND a wedding/coronation! Looks like Scottish lasses know how to get thing done, eh? (the jury hereby asks for a step-by-step instructions)

Once Upon a First Time

Pairing: Emma Swan-Milla/Regina Swan-Mills Status: married Before you start to protest against Swan Queen getting awarded despite already going through all the standard relationship milestones, let us point out a very simple fact - thanks to the aforementioned trip back in time Emma, Mulan and Tiger Lily were forced to make, Mrs Swan-Mills met a pre-Evil Queen version of her wife and managed to be Regina’s first lover. Thus making their night of passion in a tent their first time thirty years before they officially meet in the “You’re Henry’s birthmother?!” scene, which is by the jury unanimously seen as an award worthy relationship milestone (not that Emma needed any more reasons to be smug little shit about it).

Something to Talk About

Pairing: Lena/Zelena Mills, Lena/Kara Danvers Status: unknown And so we’ve come to our last category. As the title may suggest both of these pairings are about to be the talk of the town for weeks, if only we knew which of them. During her journey from darkness, Morgana Pendragon left behind (among other things) her name and chose a fresh start where else than in Storybrooke as a new mayor. It goes without saying that as such, Lena is one of the best catches in the United Realms, the question is, who is gonna capture her (literally magic-filled) heart - the former Wicked Witch who saved her life, or the cunning new reporter with Daily Mirror? ;)

Now, thank you all for reading, let us know what you think of our picks.

A special thank you goes to the one and only @swanqueeneverafter​ for giving us all of the pairings above and much much more (just through the course of SOTP and TO&FQ twice the number of couples were featured).

May we meet at another celebration of The Swan-Mills saga again soon!

[veridium]

5 Questions for Writers

Tagged by the great @teknon to answer some questions about writing. Thank you so much for including me!

Passing it along, I tag @bitchesofostwick, @local-thembo, and @star--nymph to join in the fun if they wish to. (Really I’m just a fan of ya’ll so anything I get to see of your process is terrific).

1. Do you have a favourite character to write? Who and why?

These days Olivia is still probably my favorite. Though, I have to say, the more Fire in Her Mouth goes on and expands into my other OCs’ storylines, the more I enjoy alternating their perspectives. It was always the plan to start off squarely in Olivia’s POV and then gradually extend branches out through the girls and canon characters in the Inquisition ensemble. 

I echo a similar sentiment to Trish’s: I just really enjoy getting to write women and non-binary characters for all of their troublesome possibilities. I like playing around with the idea of “good” representation. It’s incredibly cathartic to write characters who are profoundly wounded, jaded, and prone to hurtfulness, but who are also incredibly strong, wise, convicted. 

2. Do you have a favorite trope to write? Or one you want to write?

I mean, there are certain tropes I work with by virtue of taking on a DA:I longfic: the reluctant hero, for example, is present in the way Olivia grows in her role. I think tropes can be useful as basic frameworks but I find more fun in playing around with their rules than I do following them. 

Maybe here I’d say I’m referencing more stereotypes than tropes. For example, I try to dispute the idea in Olivia’s storyline that she, like so many worldly heroes, craves a remote, domestically tranquil life at the end of the line with the kids, spouse, and picket fence. That’s not to say to do so is wrong or foolish; I just wanted to write a character who always wants some sort of skin in the game when it comes to the world’s events. Even if it costs her everything, she’d rather say she devoted her all. I think sometimes we give those kinds of iconic happy endings to characters because it makes us as authors and audiences feel a lot better about the trials they endured regardless of whether those endings fit their journey/personalities. What are we making ourselves feel better for, though, when we do that? Are we trying to reconcile the idea that our characters can be hurt and still be “deserving” of that kind of ultimate, normative end? What happens when we dare to imagine something else, somewhere else, as their endgame -- a place that subverts the notion that all we’re trying to do is be deserving or “whole” enough of something we might not even want?

For me, I’m more interested in the ways in which life’s solaces arise in and out of our lives, rather than in a solid destination after we have “suffered enough.”

3. Share your favorite description you’ve written?

This always changes for me! Especially when I’m leaning on prior passages for inspiration/tie-in for themes on what I’m currently working on. Right now, I’m still pretty hooked on Chapter 100, “A Serpent’s Parable” from FIHM. It’s partial monologue, but the parallel description is something I’m very proud of: 

Isolde then sighed and pushed over her chalice. It fell loudly, and after the initial impact, it melted down and elongated into a serpentine shape. Extending both ways until a head, erect and pointed towards her, formed with slithering tongue and all. Pure black even in the eyes, its belly scales looked like opals as it wound towards her.

“For the purpose of this, let me introduce a parable. When you are faced with the task of fighting evil as we have been, it is all rather easy...in fact, fun, to think you are victorious by virtue of distracting the creature that holds the venomous bite.”

The smoke-born rats and vermin with pronounced front teeth billowed in the air around it, scattering and circling it. In random turns they began sneaking jabs, biting and scratching away, and cowering just in time into amorphous plumes. The snake hissed in pain and turn around in every which direction the assaults came from. With every attack it grew more frustrated, more incensed at the ghostly antagonists. Eventually it became too preoccupied to advance.

“Over time you learn that they learn. Spats and skirmishes, illusions and petty diversions, they only do so much. You realize that the snake, though made angry or even miserable at your actions, still grows. Your bravery does not stop it taking someone you love, it merely means that they become tomorrow’s meal rather than today’s, for you and your kind were made forever its source of power. Its sustenance for which you must give your life so that the rest of the world makes sense.”

The snake’s shadow stretched farther and farther until Olivia could nearly reach and place her hand within it if she wanted to. The vermin spirits crept in and out of shape, sniveling and striking as they had before. Their growing enemy, sadly, no longer bent and writhed in reaction.

“You are faced with a choice: continue being the hero who’s deeds become songs and silly secrets, suck poison from wound after wound until your mouth no longer waters, pretend that your adventures keep people as safe as you feel you are in your anonymity. Maybe you have saved a child or feed a few hungry mouths. Yet the snake’s fangs are sharper with every year, its mouth so wide it can consume more and more of what is dear to you without hope of salvation. Unless you decide enough is enough.”

Olivia had lost focus on the snake in favor of Isolde. By the time she halted her speech it was almost too late: the snake, offensive once more, lunged for her. In the same sharp moment as it split its mouth to fill itself with her, a blade broad and tipped like that of a staff's swung down. Its sound and shine blinded her to the gore of the head's severance before it fell upside down, gaping with a now limp tongue. A last remaining hiss lost to the sound of the blade cutting the air.

With every last drop of bravery in her body she withheld a scream. Her heart nearly erupted under the weight of its many terrors. Much like her nerves, the snake’s body contorted, until its muscles no longer lingered with life. The rats no longer trifled their foe. Nothing but death had been served on the table.

“At last,” she finished, “you cut the head off once and for all.”

4. Share your favorite dialogue you’ve written?

This also changes so often! Dialogue is one of, if not the, most fun part(s) of writing for me. I convey my message and themes most starkly in the way my characters talk to each other, and it’s where I put the most forethought. One of the ones I most often return to is the back-and-forth between Veronica and Cybel in Chapter 98: “Humoring Stars.” -- 

“Are you really so sure that everything that does not meet your eye is simply lies? That you, a Mage who spent the majority of her life in a Circle where knowledge was a controlled resource rather than a respected right, are the best person for determining such things?”

Oh, you son of…

“Just because I lived in a Circle does not mean I am without independent thought,” Veronica refused. She was a hard shell to crack but even she was not immune to the coerced inferiority years of Circle life embedded. No one who experienced their captivity was. And to call it out in such a way only made it more painful.

“I did not say that. What I meant was—”

“Shut your mouth. I do not give a shit about where you come from or how special you think you are. You are not going to stick a knife where you think it will hurt me into believing your stories. And if you try to do the same to Gem, then…”

Cybel’s eyes narrowed. “Then, what? You will kill me?”

“I m—”

“You know, Veronica...and that is your name, so I will refer to you as such.” Cybel took on an air of confidence, re-approaching with stiffened shoulders and tilted chin. “Either you have a thirst for death that is beyond the likes of which I have seen anywhere, meaning that deep down your motivation is not merely the safety of your friend and leader; or, as I reckon, you think being a predator cornered is more powerful than a predator caged.” They continued their advance, so stern and so suddenly cold that Veronica’s need to keep eyes on their hands turned into her backing up in sequence with them. It was enraging.

Veronica was backed against the rail, ass and waist pressed like paper. Her hands gripped either side. Cybel looked as they did back when they were threatening her with an arrow to her neck. Curls of hair around their face, tough bottom lip, appraising the validity of a shot yet fired. They halted so close to her that their freckles were countable, as well as the weathered loose strings on the edge of their tucked scarf.

“So what is it then?” they asked when Veronica had no salted quip to offer. “Blood lust, or bloody fearfulness?”

Who are you?

Veronica’s breath caught on the rigidity of her chest. She could be stabbed or choked right then and there. She could be tossed over the edge. Maker, she could be poisoned even if Cybel’s hand was quick enough with a vial or cloth dusted with the right material. Everything about her expedited training was about evaluating what dangers were posed both in front of her nose and beyond all senses. It was intoxicating to think in such a way when previously you were kept like a lamb to a flock, the shepherds heavily armored and sword-wielding rather than gentle guides with sticks. But blast them for thinking it was their right to point it out.

“I will say it again,” she answered with an unprecedented humbleness to her voice that even surprised her, “I do not fall for your attempts to strike at me until I am too weak for your lies.”

Cybel’s irises raised and lowered between Veronica’s eyes and mouth, their own lips parted with their tongue pressed against the back of their teeth. “And there I have my answer.”

[masqucradings]

hold!  who  goes  there?  why  ,  is  that  𝒄𝒆𝒄𝒊𝒍𝒚 𝒈𝒘𝒚𝒏𝒏𝒆  the  𝒕𝒆𝒎𝒑𝒕𝒓𝒆𝒔𝒔  of  𝒓𝒆𝒅  𝒌𝒆𝒆𝒑?  they  do  look  𝒅𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒆𝒓𝒐𝒖𝒔  for  a  𝒘𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒏  of  𝒕𝒘𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒚  -  𝒔𝒊𝒙  years.  don’t  they  call  𝒉𝒆𝒓  the  𝒄𝒂𝒑𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈  𝒂𝒏𝒅  𝒂𝒔𝒕𝒖𝒕𝒆  𝒒𝒖𝒆𝒆𝒏  𝒐𝒇  𝒕𝒉𝒆  𝒏𝒊𝒈𝒉𝒕?  i’ve  heard  they’re  also  𝒄𝒐𝒍𝒅  𝒂𝒏𝒅  𝒘𝒊𝒍𝒚  though.  don’t  take  my  word  for  it  but  they  do  look  an  awful  lot  like  𝒃𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒆 𝒌𝒐𝒌𝒅𝒆𝒎𝒊𝒓.  (  pinterest  /  google  doc  )

BASIC  INFO

NAME  :  cecily  gwynne

PRONUNCIATION  :  ses  -  uh  -  lee   g  -  w  -  ih  -  n

TITLE  :  courtesan  at  the  dovecote  brothel  (  in  actuality  ,  she  is  a  spy  and  assassin  ). 

AGE  :  twenty  -  six

PLACE OF ORIGIN  :  red  keep  ,  elysi

FAMILY MEMBERS  :  her  mother  ,  isolde  ,  and  a  slew  of  aunts  and  cousins  she  left  in  red  keep.  her  father  ,  nicholas  ,  passed  away  when  she  was  young.  her  older  sibling  distanced  themselves  from  the  family  when  they  were  eighteen  (  see  wanted  connections  ).  

PHYSICAL  DESCRIPTION

HEIGHT  :  five  foot  five

HAIR COLOR  :  brown 

EYE COLOR  :  dark  green

GENDER  :  cis  female

BUILD  :  soft  curves  ,  lean  muscle  in  her  arms  and  legs

DISTINGUISHING FEATURES?  :  striking  eyes

ANY HEALTH RELATED ISSUES?  :  not  physically  ,  but  cecily  deals  with  anxiety  sourced  from  her  own  paranoia.  

PERSONALITY

for  a  woman  who  makes  her  wealth  by  offering  her  company  ,  a  coldness  radiates  off  of  cecily  gwynne.  under  her  poise  and  cunning  is  a  woman  desensitized  to  violence  ,  a  stranger  to  warmth.  cecily  works  incredibly  hard  to  sculpt  her  reputation  into  one  that  reflects  seduction  and  mystery  ;  the  queen  of  the  night  ,  not  a  title  to  scoff  at.  those  who  find  themselves  in  her  company  are  entertained  by  a  witty  and  blunt  courtesan.  she  does  not  sugarcoat  things  for  her  regular  clients  and  typically  they  appreciate  her  (  what  appears  to  be  )  honesty.  around  friends  and  at  events  ,  she  carries  some  of  her  courtesan  charm  over  ,  but  she  feels  free  enough  to  embrace  her  dry  sense  of  humor  and  carefully  crafted  insults.  she  likes  the  drama  of  things  and  will  never  say  no  to  indulging  in  her  bad  shopping  habits.    

at  her  core  ,  cecily  feels  hollow.  everything  she  does  is  for  her  family  and  yet  she  is  so  far  away  from  them  that  she  has  no  one  to  anchor  her  to  the  person  she  once  was.  sneaking  along  in  the  shadows  or  aiming  a  knife  at  someone’s  back  is  when  cecily  feels  at  peace  ,  for  at  least  she  has  a  purpose.  she  likes  to  feel  powerful  and  smart  ,  but  her  inflated  ego  has  turned  those  into  weaknesses  ;  for  she  always  thinks  she  has  the  upper hand.  it  is  difficult  for  her  to  maintain  friendships  that  are  deeper  than  superficial  since  her  loyalty  is  hard  won.  

POSITIVE  TRAITS  :  clever  ,  poised  ,  intelligent  ,  charismatic  ,  thoughtful  ,  patient  ,  strategic  ,  captivating  ,  observant.  

NEGATIVE  TRAITS  :  arrogant  ,  indulgent  ,  insensitive  ,  cold  ,  stubborn  ,  untrustworthy  ,  dishonest  ,  dangerous  ,  paranoid.             

ADDITIONAL  INFO

HER  ESTRANGED  SIBLING  :  her  sibling  had  always  disapproved  of  cecily  and  her  mother  ,  especially  their  dabbling  in  low  magic. they  left  the  home  to  pursue  magical  studies  when  they  were  eighteen  and  cecily  has  not  seen  them  since  ,  making  it  almost  ten  years  of  no  contact.  cecily  remembers  them  striving  to  climb  up  the  social  ladder  properly  through  the  magaesterium  and  assumes  that  they  remain  with  them.  for  cecily  ,  her  sibling  is  a  distant  memory  she  tries  to  forget.  there  is  a  deep  seeded  anger  she  stores  just  for  them.  she  resents  them  for  abandoning  their  family  just  because  they  didn’t  like  what  the  gwynnes  did.  the  sibling  is  two  years  older  than  cecily  &  would  be  twenty  -  eight.  

HER  MENTOR  :  they  found  cecily  pickpocketing  in  red  keep  ,  her  fingers  attempting  to  lift  the  pretty  watch  wrapped  around  their  wrist.  they  promised  to  train  her  for  a  life  that  would  lead  to  riches  and  prestige  ,  not  to  mention  her  mother  would  be  taken  care  of.  when  cecily  agreed  ,  she  and  her  mother  were  sent  to  a  remote  farm  where  her  mentor  trained  cecily  and  others  in  the  art  of  espionage  and  killing.  this  person  raised  cecily  out  of  nothing  and  she  owes  them  far  more  than  she  would  like.  they  keep  contact  mostly  through  letters  but  from  time  to  time  ,  cecily  drops  in  on  her  old  home  at  the  farm  to  visit  both  them  and  her  mother.  her  mentor  will  also  stop  by  the  brothel  ,  pretending  to  be  a  client  when  really  they  and  cecily  are  sharing  a  cup  of  tea.  

HER  MARKS  &  CLIENTS  :  nobility  who  frequent  her  courtesan  house  ,  may  they  be  regulars  or  new  to  the  dovecote.  cecily  picks  her  clients  carefully  so  to  only  have  to  put  up  with  those  who  definitely  have  information  she  wants.  when  her  main  business  was  not  serving  her  well  ,  she  took  other  clients  and  those  are  the  few  she  has  amiable  relations  with.     

CURRENT  HANDLER  :  submitted  to  the  main  as  a  wanted  connection  but  if  any  other  muses  fit  hmu  !!  cecily  was  recently  hired  by  the  house  this  person  is  either  a  member  of  or  loyal  to.  the  person  was  then  chosen  to  be  cecily’s  handler  ,  which  means  to  meet  her  in  glasswater  keep  to  receive  her  reports  and  to  also  keep  an  eye  on  her.  they  have  a  back  and  forth  rapport  /  frenemies  kind  of  dynamic.  i  can  see  this  dynamic  developing  in  a  few  ways  so  i’m  open  to  anything!     

HISTORY

the gwynne women were purveyors of fortunes and other low magic. they served with a knowing smile , as if they already had your whole future laid out in front of them and they were laughing at what was to come of you. cecily came from a long line of these women who never married but instead took lovers and bore them children. the partners were always welcomed to stay and raise the children among the gwynne’s , but they rarely stayed. cecily’s father surprised her mother by refusing to leave. when he did go it was unwillingly. she remembers his scratchy beard and thundering laugh , and then she remembers her mother’s sobs released in the dead of the night after he died. in the day , her mother wore a bright look , eyes gleaming with excitement and curiosity. cecily adored her more than anything in the world. she wanted to be her when she was just a child , wishing she could grow up faster so to follow her to wherever she went. 

soon , she did grow up and was allowed to join her mother as she swept through the streets of the red keep. cecily treasured those stolen moments in between job , her mother would entertain her with stories and anecdotes , all to keep a smile on the young girl’s face. all she wished was that her sibling enjoyed the outings as much as she did , and that her father was there too. but the lines had been drawn in the sand and cecily grew distant from her older sibling when they decided to pursue magic. they thought cecily and their mother inferior for involving themselves in lowly magic, but it was all the gwynne women knew to do . . . until cecily’s sibling left home to properly study what they called real magic. cecily’s mother was distraught , though she wouldn’t say it to cecily. the girl , only sixteen at the time , knew her mother’s tells and the walls of their apartment were just as thin as when her father died . . . though this time her mother’s cries were softer and more hollow , as if she could not believe someone else left. 

the gwynne family maintained their business of fortune telling as the years went on , but they lost some of their regular clients and money became tight. cecily and her mother always knew how to cut corners to survive but this was an even tighter corner to cut. cecily took to pickpocketing in the busy areas of the city and got fairly good at it. her desperation to care for her mother led her to the path that changed her life. she attempted to lift a fine bracelet off of someone when they caught her wrist. cecily thought she was going to lose her hand but instead the person laughed and admitted she had attempted to pickpocket a rather skilled thief. they took an interest in her and her mother and would return to talk to cecily every day , often with a loaf of bread or fresh fruit to share. eventually they offered to take care of cecily and her mother. cecily had been suspicious , never really trusting someone she met on the street , but the person explained they would be teaching cecily a trade. 

the trade was not what she expected when her mother and her were brought to a remote farm north of red keep. she had not cared what it was going to be , only that her mother would be cared for and that cecily would get a job out of it. when it was presented that she would train to be a spy and assassin , cecily was of course shocked but she did not leave. rather , she dedicated herself to the training and came out a superb fighter. she trained at the farm from seventeen to twenty - one and harnessed her natural skills of stealth and persuasion , while learning the grittier parts of the job. she didn’t at first have the stomach for the killing , not even when they went out to hunt. it was her mother , who helped in the kitchens , who reminded her it was all a matter of survival and to think of how she was raised — her mother and father tried to give them security but the gwynnes never rose out of poverty in red keep. nobles would walk by the slums and gawk but never help. the reminder of their arrogance and lack of compassion made something in cecily snap : why should she care whether another noble lives or dies . . . they didn’t care what happened to the common folk. if they wanted to pay to kill one of their own , cecily would not stand in the way — in fact , she would happily help them along. 

her mother gave her the encouragement she needed to throw herself completely into training. when she turned twenty - one she had a job waiting for her in the northlands and then in another part of the world and another. cecily realized she and her mother would never starve again. while she traveled to carry out jobs , her mother decided to remain at the farm and take responsibility for the kitchens and other household duties. cecily was sure that her mother would be safe and free. they lost contact with her aunts after her mother made the decision and cecily, to this day, still aches for her family. in the past when she visited red keep she would sneak around their neighborhood just to catch a sight of a cousin or aunt but she kept her distance , for their own safety. 

cecily spent a fair amount of time traveling to do her job but three years ago realized that she could serve a greater purpose by installing herself in one of the capitals where there was sure to nosey nobles who wanted secrets sniffed out. she came up with the idea of posing as a courtesan — she felt no discomfort with the job as she had spent her early twenties training to kill people. she was used to the uncomfortable. besides , she knew if she collected a group of clients and established herself she would have more access to the nobility. there was the downside of the total isolation. she was far away from her makeshift family when she settled in glasswater. it made her cold and distant. no longer did she have someone reminding her of who she was before she got into the business of espionage and murder. 

most recently , cecily has taken up a contract with the (tbd) house , gathering information on their behalf and then sending it to them. it pays well but she knows she’ll trade loyalties as soon as someone offers a heavier coin purse. she has little investment in the growing rebellion. though as she was originally from red keep and had looser morals instilled in her , she finds their sentiments against interracial marriage to be in bad taste to say the least. though she can’t help but be enamored by their dreams of choosing their own ruler. cecily has her own share of distrust of the current establishment , but she knows who pays her bills and she cannot afford to lose her biggest clients. cecily is prepared to become a wartime spy and assassin , not to choose sides but to survive.

[shawneesmith]

Which continuity do you prefer, legends or canon?

legends by a sizable margin

i won’t echo everybody else’s complaints about the sequel trilogy – i’ve sworn off complaining about disney star wars because i’d been doing it for years and i’m tired of it. there’s lots of little things about canon leia that i like, like her relationship with han and the events of bloodline, but the circular nature of the films is just disappointing to me. also i don’t believe han and leia would’ve had only one child!

legends isn’t perfect at all: there’s a book set after rotj in which han shoots leia with a tranquilizing dart and kidnaps her because she considers marrying a prince for political reasons. plots dictate that leia is a very absent mother – she’s hardly around for the first three years of her children’s lives. but i love the story of the solo family. i love eu characters like winter retrac and prince isolder. i love the throwaway lines that reveal that han and leia have sex on the floor. most of all, i love jedi and chief of state leia. she’s a total badass while still retaining her flaws. not every portrayal of her is perfect, but i love eu leia just as much as, if not more than, ot leia

if you’re asking because you’re interested in reading works from one canon, don’t let me stop you! my qualms with disney canon are mostly with the films. there’s plenty of books that i really like that are set before tfa. feel free to ask for suggestions!

[enricodandolo]

Can we please stop reading Wagner's operas as complete sausage fests?

(Cross-posting from /r/opera for the five people browsing the #opera tag on tumblr)

Inflammatory title, check. Typing this fresh out of the shower inflamed with righteous indignation, check. References to YouTube comments, check. That's right, it's rant-time (or, as Wagner calls it, "act 2").

So this is something that has been on my mind a lot but that I've never really bothered to write down. I don't think this will come as a surprise to most of the people on here, so this is gonna be somewhat self-indulgent. Obviously, big shout-out to the 2005 Copenhagen Ring, which was my first introduction to Wagner.

In a lot of the literature, and certainly in the popular imagination (hello there, angry YouTube commentors), Wagner is all about the men. *Meistersinger* productions almost always hinge on the director's perspective on Hans Sachs and what a cad he is. The *Ring* is usually told as either the story of Wotan, whether he be a visionary master manipulator or a villain in disguise. *Tannhäuser* is about Heinrich dithering about for three hours like a latter-day Hamlet who can't decide between Betty and Veronica (wait, what?). This is not to say Wagner's big female characters -- Brünnhilde and Kundry being the prime examples -- don't receive attention in those productions or analyses. But they're usually ancillaries of the men, in some way or another, and not the focal points of the action.

But that's not at all what we can see in the libretti themselves, let alone the music! If anything, I'd argue that in all of Wagner's mature works -- Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Tristan, Meistersinger, the Ring and probably Parsifal -- it's the women that drive the plot, and the women that make the most use of their agency.

I think the best example for this is probably Walküre, and in fact listening to the first two acts this morning brought this on. When the Copenhagen Ring had Sieglinde pull Nothung from the ash tree rather than Siegmund, I saw a lot of reviewers tut-tutting. According to a not very scientific study of the comments on the YouTube upload, that seems to be a point of more contention than the deaths of Loge and Alberich in that production, or Hunding getting away scots-free. I note that the Met Ring has the twins pull out Nothung together, hand in hand, which is cute and doesn't seem to arouse nearly as much dissension.

But in fact, Sieglinde is far from the helpless damsel in distress that some people seem to want to paint her as. Hell, her very first line goes: "A stranger -- him, I must ask." The clear implication that she has some sort of plan in mind -- which, though never spelled out, becomes pretty clear over the course of the first act -- doesn't exactly characterise her as helpless victim waiting for her saviour. It is Sieglinde who, at risk to her own safety, forces Hunding to grant Siegmund shelter by literally calling him a coward. Later, it is Sieglinde who -- on her own initiative -- drugs Hunding and directs Siegmund to the sword, not just to save him but also herself. Rather than Siegmund saving Sieglinde, this is a transaction between equals: Sieglinde gives Siegmund the means to defend himself from certain death at Hunding's hands, and in return Siegmund bodily protects Sieglinde from her abusive husband.

Throughout the act, the equality between the twins is emphasised. In part, of course, that's for foreshadowing that sweet, sweet twincest, but one line always gives me pause:

HUNDING Wie gleicht er dem Weibe! Der gleißende Wurm glänzt auch ihm aus dem Auge.

I've seen some pretty bizarre translations of that (that deceitful serpent, really?), but I think this might be the most literal:

How like to the woman is he! The same gleaming (radiant? bright? searing?) worm (almost definitely: dragon rather than earthworm, cf. Fafner) shines in his eye.

I don't really think you can get much clearer on what kind of temperament Wagner had in mind for both Wälsung twins than comparing them to a freaking dragon.

Later on, too, it's Sieglinde who first realises just who this dashingly handsome stranger is and goes "eh, fuck it" and proceeds to basically spell it out to her brother. By this point, we've seen Sieglinde pretty much run the first act, directing events to her advantage from a position of supreme weakness. No matter which of the twins draws Nothung from the tree, I think it's pretty clear that the first act is Sieglinde's self-actualisation and emancipation more than anything else.

The theme continues in acts 2 and 3, in my opinion. Sieglinde takes the backseat here as the overarching mythological plot dominates the action, and the focus shifts to two other female characters: Fricka and Brünnhilde. Now Fricka seems to be positioned perfectly to be played under the "shrewish, overbearing wife" trope who just doesn't understand Wotan's greatness and is keeping him down, man. Wotan and Brünnhilde certainly seem to share that opinion in how they talk about her. But regardless of how she is portrayed on stage, Fricka completely dominates the confrontation with Wotan despite the supposed master-manipulator and patriarch's sweet romantic ideas on how to deal with the Wälsung twins. This is one sharp lady, and she doesn't waste a second before reminding Wotan that he's bound to enforce the divine law she set down. Musically, too, Fricka's sharp soprano lines seem to easily overpower Wotan's explanations in all the recordings I've heard, another common theme.

Brünnhilde of course is the poster-child for any feminist reading of the Ring for obvious reasons. Not only is she, apparently, her mother's equal in wisdom and magic (so says Erda, at least -- later on Brünnhilde bitterly mocks her lack of wisdom, so your mileage may vary). Over the course of the three operas she's in, she

wilfully defies Wotan's orders despite being literally created as his instrument in attempting to save Siegmund

convinces Sieglinde to live and (on the day of his conception, most likely) bestows a seriously programmatic name on her son, with the clear implication that she's doing this as her own way of fixing Wotan's broken master plan

transforms her punishment into an unishment by tricking Wotan into letting her set the conditions for her spouse-to-be, and it's pretty clear from the swelling Siegfried motif just whom she has in mind

musically overpowers brash Siegfried not once, but twice (the love duet and the oath scene in Götterdämmerung) -- I don't think it's a coincidence that Brünnhilde enters Siegfried fresh and ready to shatter every glass pane from Walhall to Niflheim while Siegfried himself has something like three hours of intensive singing behind him

hands out magic items and boons to a departing Siegfried like a mellow dungeon master just before a big-ass boss fight

after being forced into marrying Gunther, immediately turns around and moves to take down Siegfried hard, including by making alliances of convenience with her direct personal enemies Gunther and Hagen. No lovesick puppy here.

burns down the fucking world and kills all the gods

So much for the Ring (haven't touched on Gutrune and Waltraute, who I also think get a bad rap as an uninvolved accessory to her brothers' plot respectively a walking flying plot device). It's not that different in Wagner's other operas, but I'll run through them more curtly.

Tannhäuser: Elisabeth shuts down a mob of angry men about to lynch Heinrich, then cleverly leverages her reputation for piety to give him a way out that will, at the very least, save his life and has a chance of restoring him to the court's good graces. By contrast, Heinrich himself doesn't really *do* all that much.

Lohengrin: Ortrud runs the whole show here, and she would have gotten away with it too if not for those meddling grail knights! Telramund is something of a tool by comparison who doesn't even seem to be aware his wife is manipulating him. Elsa comes off as something of an ingenue, but she's got a will of her own and I like to headcanon that much of her behaviour in act 1 is deliberately performing saintlyhood and Christian mysticism as a legal defense strategy. Sure, a grail knight does come along, but if he hadn't there are worse ways to be perceived by the audience than a consumptive martyr. Big shoutout to Carolyn Walker Bynum's Holy Feast and Holy Fast here, aka the grossest book about medieval Christianity I've had the pleasure to read.

Tristan: sheesh, it's Tristan. Nothing much happens but what little plot there is is set in motion by Isolde deciding to avenge her late husband and kill herself to avoid to unwelcome marriage to a political and dynastic enemy. (Then the date rape drugs come out.)

Meistersinger: Obviously Hans Sachs gets most of the credit for plotting, but really, most of what he does seems to be prompted by Eva at least in part. Realising that her father has gone insane, she uses her limited agency to make the best of a bad situation by first trying to make Walther a Meistersinger (roping in Lene and David) despite his eminent incompetence and psychopathic temperament, then settle for a friend if not a lover by encouraging Hans Sachs to woo her instead. She also manages to keep Walther from murdering anyone on-stage which is quite a feat.

Parsifal: Like with Tristan, there isn't too much plot in the traditional sense, and the characters are hyperstylised archetypes -- excepting Kundry, who is of course one of the most multilayered and complex characters in all of opera (which ... isn't saying much, but still). While Kundry doesn't do all that much to drive the action on-stage, it seems to me she's expressing her agency by helping the grail knights as an attempt at restitution and trying hard to subvert Klingsor's magically-binding orders to the end of her own redemption.

So, yeah. Wagner may have had a massive thing for muscular pretty boys with big swords, but it's really the women who drive the plots and tell the muscular pretty boys what to do, and I wish more directors / reviewers / etc. would pay closer attention to that. Rant over.

TL,DR: just because Wagner was an antisemitic shithead, that doesn't mean he wasn't a crypto-proto-feminist!