#if i was born in very olden times i would have been so in demand but no

[brutal-nemesis]

fucked up and evil that i cannot put "skilled at coming up with the worst fucking torture methods" on my resumé it is one of my greatest talents and yet

[realityhelixcreates]

Lasabrjotr Chapter 79: The Rites of Blood and Knowledge

Chapters: 79/?

Fandom: Thor (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: pg 13(Blood)

Relationships: Loki x Reader

Characters: Loki (Marvel),Thor(Marvel) Wanda Maximoff, vision, Bruce Banner

Additional Tags: Post-Endgame: Best Possible Ending (Canon-Divergent), Party Time, In Reference To Blood Mixing Mentioned In The Eddas

Summary:  The great ceremonies begin.

The dreams were powerful that night, whisking you off to far away places, off to the increasingly familiar form of the gargantuan space artist. There was a strange nostalgia out here that you were slowly coming to recognize as being not your own. How could it be? You had never physically been here, only visited in dreams.

With green and blue sparkling at your right and left, you drifted along in their orbit, yet another asteroid in a primordial star system.

First Wielder.

The concept filtered through your mind, trailing a warm and wistful longing behind it.

Peace. Eternity. Creation.

Before battle. Before separation. Before imprisonment.

Before all.

The star system was strange: every time you came here, the sun was a little different. A variable star, its brightness oscillating, it was still young and new.

There was only one planet in this system, located fairly close to the star. The presence of the colossal giant perturbed the asteroids and gas around the star, but their great mass prevented them from coalescing.

Comets formed in great numbers from the gas and ice beyond them, whizzing past them, inspiring new drawings. Asteroids clumped up against them; a brush of their great hand sent them flying, to collide into one another, to spin away from their unstable orbit, and join the comets on their cross-system journey, to crash into the singular planet.

The colossus watched with the patience of true immortality, as the planet burned and erupted, filled up with water, and clouds, and sky.

Thoughtfully, they regarded an asteroid they held in one hand, then, with their color-stained fingers, they began to draw.

The wistfulness and regret reached their peak, and you woke up in the empty bathtub, with a thought ringing in your head.

The Wielders always came to a bad end.

                                                                            ******

Loki was somewhat disgruntled to discover that you'd been having these dreams without him. He didn't scold, but his concern was clear. You described them in as much detail as you could, but, to your dismay, he didn't have any explanation for what you'd been seeing while you slept.

It would just have to remain a mystery. The upcoming day was going to be far too busy to dwell on it.

Both you and Loki had dressed in your absolute finest, your armor polished bright, your skirt covered in embroidery, your chest and neck festooned in beads of carved gold and pearl. You still felt a little bit like you were so buried in finery that you became invisible, but you tried to carry it with pride. All of this had been put together especially for you, and that hard work deserved to be shown off.

Loki was so magnificent in his fur-trimmed cloak, and elaborate helmet, you had to firmly tell yourself not to spend the whole day just staring at him all moon-eyed.

Maybe just a few hours.

Today, the Second Feast, was really the main event, as far as this Buridag was concerned. At noon, you would participate in the Blood Taking ceremony, wherin you would 'mingle blood' with the royal brothers, in order to be formally adopted into Asgardian high society. This would cement your status as high enough to advise Loki as one of the most important members of his personal entourage. And before the evening feast, you would perform the ritual that would confirm you as an official Seidkona.

But before that, you would have the time to run around and enjoy the festival.

It was set up like a combination job fair and reenactment fest. Stalls lined the streets and filled courtyards, peopled by the crafters of Asgard. Smiths, armorers, and carpenters, goldsmiths, lapidaries, scrimshanders, and glassblowers. Weavers, spinners, leatherworkers, and dyemakers, artists, musicians, chefs, academics, mages, stonemasons, construction workers, scribes, dancers, and cheesemongers. All the sights, and sounds, and scents, and flavors that made up Asgard were being demonstrated and celebrated.

Your Father and Tara joined you in the streets, and Loki reluctantly released you into their care, having some preparation left to do.

Tara, flouncing around in an apron dress and domed brooches very much like your usual style, gushed over how beautiful you looked, and your father, rather sheepishly dressed in an Asgardian greatcoat and cowl, agreed openly.

“You look like a princess.” he said. “A real one. You...You walk different now. Talk different. You look so strong.”

“Is it me, or are all these people following us?” Tara asked, not very quietly. A few chagrined people in the crowd that flowed in your wake down the street peeled away, and wandered in different directions. The rest either had less shame, or had orders to keep watch over you.

You spared the group a glance. There appeared to be a solid mix of Asgardians and humans, several of which had their phones out. You surmised there would be a new wave of photos of you on the internet over the next few days.

“Keep your cowl up dad.” You advised.

“Want me to run them off?” he offered.

“Nah. I don't really mind if they take pictures of me. Can't really hurt anything.”

“Wasn't so great last time.” Tara pointed out. “I spent a lot of time stanning for you.”

“Well, last time was sensationalized bullcrap. This time is a nice festival. I mean, check out that guy!”

That Guy was a glassblower in his stall, spinning a huge, bubble thin amphora of rose pink glass. You had seen its like before, but never seen one made.

“Oh, they age crystal mead in those! The pink lets in the right wavelengths of light that give it it's shimmering quality.”

“What's crystal mead?” your father asked.

“Don't try more than a few sips, if anyone offers.” you warned. “Asgardians have iron guts. Their booze is way too strong.”

“Yeah, they warned us about that on the plane.” Tara said. “And yesterday, it looked like they had everything divided up by species, so no one got the wrong thing.”

You took them around to various demonstrations: spinners spinning yarn, brewers preparing several of Asgards many alcoholic beverages, apothecaries showing how basic medicines were made, a cobbler putting together a nice pair of boots.

“So, Asgard's really advanced, right?” Tara asked. “Why is everything like Ye Olden Times?”

“Asgard's never had that big a population, even at it height. There just isn't that much demand for mass production. Most things are bespoke, or self-made. Quality depends entirely on the maker, so that, of course, becomes a competition. And that, in turn, becomes a matter of cultural pride. Also, they have thousands of years to get good at what they do, so Asgardian made goods are super high quality, and they judge personal worth by that. I don't think they'll ever automate; it would go against a lot of what they stand for.”

You snagged the three of you a traditional Asgardian snack; fat sausages, wrapped in savory pastry. You thought it might be good to have something else in your stomach before the first ceremony.

Tara called them Asgardian corn dogs, which you couldn't wait to share with Loki, if only to watch his nose wrinkle with disdain over the undignified term.

“So when do we have to let you go?” Tara asked.

You checked your phone for the time, stuffing the last of your sausage into your mouth.

“Eh, I've got a few minutes left. Better start heading over though.”

Your winding path through the courtyards took you past minstrels, impromptu dances, and games, to a large, tall dais that had been put together as a temporary mirror to the throne room. It towered over the City Hall courtyard like a ziggurat. You'd be up there soon enough, but currently...

“Who's that?” your father asked, pointing at a man standing at the top. “Doesn't look like Thor.”

You squinted up at the figure, his bright armor shining in the rarefied sunlight.

“Ah, That's Heimdall. He's the Guardian of Asgard, and god of...uh, sight? I think? Vigilance? It's not quite that neat and simple, you know? The whole 'God Of' thing is a bit more complicated than that.”

“So that's a god?” your father asked. “How can you tell? Are they all gods? What does that even mean?”

“All good questions. Mostly because they are very hard to answer.”

Your father and Tara jerked at the sudden new voice, and, not for the first time, you found yourself amazed at how easily a man of the sheer size and importance as the king of Asgard could sneak up on people.

“Your Majesty.” you said calmly, inclining your head. Your father and Tara dipped into awkward bows, a little awed by the mythical figure before them. Thor didn't necessarily demand obeisance, but he didn't exactly discourage it either; he let people act as they felt appropriate.

“Not every Asgardian is a god.” Thor explained. “Those that are go by the term 'Aesir', a common name through most of the realms for beings of that type. You are born Aesir; you cannot become one by outside influences. However, Aesir nature doesn't always become apparent at birth, it often doesn't manifest until adolescence. As for what it means to be Aesir...that doesn't have so straightforward an answer. I leave it to the philosophers, who, incidentally, are in booth seventy-eight.

Anyway, I have come to collect your daughter for the ceremony. There isn't much time left, so we'd all better get in place. If you go through those two poles there right now, you can get very good seats.”

“This could get a bit weird.” You warned. “It's a ceremony more ancient than any recorded human practices, so it's probably going to seem archaic.”

“Oh, it's not so bad.” Thor said. “It's been updated and refined over all those years. For instance, everyone remains clothed now, and there are at least seventy percent fewer entrails used.”

Your father coughed, and you rolled your eyes. Thor's sense of humor was difficult for you to understand, considering how serious he was about everything. The thing about Thor's jokes was that he might have been joking about something that had really happened, or he might have been joking about something he'd completely made up, but he would never specify which.

“On that note, I've got to go.” you said. “Entrails to sort, and all that.”

Your father coughed again, Tara patting him compassionately on the back.

“Good luck!” she called to your receding back.

                                                                                ******

“Now, you've been fully briefed on what will happen during this ceremony, correct?” Thor asked, as the two of you loitered near the back stairs of the temporary dais. People were filtering in to seats and standing room around the courtyard, waiting for things to start.

“I think so.” you said. “If I've got this right, there's going to be a special dance-”

“The Alignment of the Celestial and Worldly bodies, yes.” Thor said. “It symbolizes everything that must come together to bring the 'adoptee' to the greater 'family'. In this case, it will tell the story of how you came here to join our family.”

A soft warmth crept up your neck, and heated your ears beneath your helmet. You knew it was all socio-symbolism, but the notion of 'joining the family' hit differently now that you were on intimate terms with Loki.

“And then all the braziers will have some kind of incense thrown in, and in the smoke, we'll all go up the stairs like we're magically appearing. Honestly, it sounds like it'll look really cool.”

“All ceremonies contain a bit of theatrics.” Thor agreed. “Perhaps that is the most important part. Or that's the part that makes it important. I wish we still had some of the traditional ceremonial incense, but we just don't have access to the materials anymore. You would have liked it; it was much more floral than most of what you have here. We did manage to get some lavender though. That should be nice.”

“Maybe one day, when the Bifrost is more stable.” You said. It did sound very nice. “Loki said that you, and he, and Heimdall will sing a blessing song?”

“Yes, a divine blessing from a trio of Aesir. It's got to be three. And then...”

“Yeah. And then.” Loki had told you about the bloodletting. He had been very frank about it. “I know. I'm nervous, but not afraid.”

Thor nodded. “Sometimes there are unforeseen effects, but never anything bad. You'll be perfectly safe.”

“I know. The nervousness just comes from knowing it'll hurt. Even if just for a short time.”

You buckled under Thor's hand when it came down on your shoulder, enveloping the whole thing.

“Loki would rather slice out his own guts than draw your blood, trust me. He's been trying to figure out how to get around it for weeks. Unfortunately, the blood is the most important part of the magic. It carries all of the power. It's very old magic: according to him, this is practically the only part of the ritual that has remained unchanged from the beginning.”

“Did there really used to be entrails and naked people, or was that a joke?”

“Ehhh, well, yes and no. This ceremony originated with the Vanir, and they are not opposed to nakedness under certain circumstances. In this case, everyone who attended was expected to leave the clothes they came in at the door, and wear a special loincloth instead. This was actually to prevent violence, by barring hidden weaponry from being brought to ceremony grounds. So rather than pure nudity, everyone was dressed as scantily as was possible.

As for entrails...unfortunately yes, that was also a part of it. A seer would perform a divination using the entrails of a slaughtered animal. That practice was going out of fashion, even before the war, and I don't think anyone today even remembers how it was done.”

You shuddered. Yes, it was a different culture, and a long time ago, but it still grossed you out.

“I'll have to remember to thank Loki for trying to get me out of it, even if he wasn't successful.” You said. He really did put in a lot of effort behind the scenes. If only he were more open about some of that effort, so you could appreciate it more.

“He was adamant about the bull.” Thor said. “Demanded a private ritual the night before. Put your helmet up on the pillar, then sacrificed and butchered the beast himself. Insisted on it. Did our ancestors proud, but you know he knows his way around a knife.”

“I wish he'd told me. I was really stressed about that whole thing. I'm glad, in the end, that he was thinking of me, but I really wish I'd known. I wouldn't have lost so much sleep!”

“It was a little last minute.” Thor admitted. “I approved it the instant he explained, but we had to do it pretty much immediately afterwards. He really should have told you, but I fear my brother is usually more invested in the making of plans, rather than what to do once they come to fruition. I feel you will be a positive influence on him, though.”

Even though he was wearing his eyepatch, rather than the mismatched prosthetic, his one blue eye was open and sincere.

“I think so too.” you said. You already were influencing each other. It was impossible to live so close, to sleep in the same bed, without doing so. But Loki did have a bad habit of assuming things, a by-product of his upbringing as a leader, you supposed. You would simply have to speak up more.

Perhaps you had gotten too comfortable. But perhaps you wanted to be too comfortable. It might be a holdover from your year of struggle, but having someone who wanted to do so much for you was very tempting. You knew it would be better to strive for a balance, but you also knew that, unless Loki somehow diminished himself severely, the two of you would never truly be equals.

But you admired that greatness, and somehow, those all too common flaws in him made him easier for you to love. They made him so real.

An ambling drum beat started up, accompanied by the brassy ting of zills, and a flute. Loki joined you and Thor in peeking out around the dais, just as a group of dancers spread out around the courtyard.

You'd been told that the dancers represented personages from history and legend. You were pretty sure that the three women who orbited the dance stage equidistant from one another must be the Norns, and you assumed the cluster of people standing beneath a glittering tree branch and clanging their zills were probably meant to be the ancestors of the royal family.

The dance told a story of a woman dressed like you, and a man dressed like Loki, wearing silver bells at their wrists and ankles that jingled with every step. They made everything look so much more graceful and sensual than it really had been: Holding hands like the rune branding had been on purpose, dancing circles with each other, like everything had been friendly and not at all awkward from the very beginning. How elegantly 'you' swooned into 'his' arms, while the assassin was caught. How triumphantly 'you' defended 'him' against the Huldra. And how beautifully 'he' clasped 'you' in a romantic, yet properly chaste embrace.

There was none of the blood, none of the fear, or anger, or petulance, or confusion. No loss, or loneliness, or uncertainty.

But that was how it worked, wasn't it? None of those things could be shown to the general public. This was ceremony. This was spectacle! This was what would be remembered.

The pair danced away, out of sight, the ancestors retreated, and the Norns raised their arms in unison. All around the courtyard, attendants dumped incense into the torches and braziers, sending thick smoke and mysterious perfume wafting over the entire area.

“Show's on, darling.” Loki said, grasping your shoulders, and leading you up the stairs. A new wave of anxiety washed over you as you rose above the sweet smelling clouds like a legend. Heimdall stepped aside to let you pass, Loki and Thor leading you right up to the edge of the elevated platform, where waited a podium, upon which rested a brass bowl. An unfamiliar rune was stamped on its bottom. So that was where the magic would happen.

Thor held his hand out over an unlit brazier just in front of the podium and concentrated. Scarcely a moment later sparks danced between his fingers and jumped to ignite the fuel. The light illuminated the clouds of incense, obscuring the audience. Cut off thus from every other person out there, you didn't flinch as the trio of gods each placed a hand on you, and began to sing.

You couldn't help but wonder if they had done this before. It was a complex song, with rising and falling harmonies, parts layered over one another, something that couldn't have been easy to learn. As their voices dipped and flowed, you felt the power rising, just like out in the camp, months ago. Why could you sense divine power? Was it because of your magic? Was there anyone out in the crowd that could feel it too?

Thor's good eye had begun to sparkle with crackling white energy, the power of the blessing he was singing into you. You assumed Heimdall, behind you, was lighting up orange, and when you turned your head to glance at Loki, you were suffused with the gentle glow of the blue light from your dreams.

All of the anxiety drained out of you at the touch of that light, your arms dropping to your sides as relaxation took over.

Everything was all right. Loki was right beside you. Thor and Heimdall were with you, their voices reverberating through you, their blessing upon you. The rare winter sun filtered down over you like a blanket, as the last notes of the Aesir's song filled your head.

Loki gently took your hand, gazing earnestly into your face as the calming light faded from his eyes.

“Forgive me, my love.” he whispered.

A sudden, painful jab, ripped you out of your cocoon of sunny calm. With a sharp cry, you turned to stare at your fingertip, pierced deeply by the tip of one of Loki's knives.

Loki held your hand over the brass bowl, letting the blood drip, enough to cover the rune at the bottom. Then he tenderly bandaged the tiny wound, lines of regret around his eyes. Thor held his hand out for a slash, and then Loki turned the blade on himself. Blood slowly filled the little bowl, as a light throbbing started in your head. Every drop that rippled its surface was like a giant heartbeat within you.

Once it was full, Thor and Loki began singing again, lifting the small bowl between them. They held it up to the sun, and then poured it onto the burning brazier. The fire sputtered, sizzling, sending a huge cloud of smoke directly into your face. You gagged on the scent of burning blood, practically bathed in it, a layer of death-scent on your skin. The song cut through it, thrumming in your ears, an echoing promise of cherishment and fidelity.

The blood burned down into nothing, the smoke slowly clearing. All of the people in the courtyard came back into view, the upturned faces solemn. The dancers below picked up the chorus.

And you understood them.

Loki took your hand and lifted it up, flourishing to the crowd. They cheered, while you stood there, stunned. You understood what they were saying, their enthusiastic calls, their songs. The blood smell lingered in your nose, the throbbing swiftly receding from your head.

He led you to the stairs down as you wobbled, but you never made it all the way down. Dizziness overcame you, and you collapsed into Loki's arms.

[halcyondigger]

So, the lore for Mega Man Legends is hella deep and pretty much all contained within the sequel -- which is the game less people know about for some reason. 

In the interest of that, for anybody curious and wanting a better understanding of just what I go on about, I’ve created a handy chonological bulletpoint sequence of events! Read on, if you’re so inclined! 

Elysium is Born

Following one of Mega Man X5′s endings, Mega Man X, last creation of Dr. Light, chooses to finally ensure the safety of the surviving humanity after the fall of Eurasia by beginning work on the space colony “Elysium”, meant to be an artificial paradise where people could live in safety. 

This project is eventually completed, and all remaining human life is migrated from the devastated planet’s surface into the care of the units housed on Elysium. 

Centuries pass, with life support systems allowing humans to live well beyond their projected life expectancy, technology advances to the point where reploids end up phased out in favor of biomechanical units with biology similar to carbon-based lifeforms hybridized seamlessly with cybernetic components.

The new units become part of Elysium’s Master System, a colony-housed society with hierarchy amidst the units there, all centered around the ideal of caring for their human wards. 

The Master System becomes headed by two sister “Mother Units”, Sera and Yuna, who produce and oversee further others to serve the Master System, upon which all subsequent units emerging after are as their subordinate offspring. At the same time, the Purifier Unit line to succeed the Maverick Hunters from olden days is formed, in order to deal with “Aberrant” units who malfunction or otherwise become a threat. Amongst this number is the First-Class Purifier Unit, Mega Man Trigger. 

Over time, the human life aboard Elysium begins to naturally dwindle and die out. In order to combat this threat, Sera and Yuna take DNA samples of all that remain to be stored in a genetic Library in the heart of Elysium, a chamber charged to Sera personally to ensure that no existing force could threaten them. 

In an attempt to ensure human life will flourish once more, Sera and Yuna coordinate with the oldest-living human, the Master, in creating a fodder race in the image of humans using the Master System units’ design as a foundation. They mass-seed the Earth, now referred to by codename of “Terra”, with with these life forms, thus creating the Carbon race. 

The Carbon race eventually leads to unsatisfactory results in proving mankind can once again live on Terra. In order to reset the process and try again, Sera creates the Carbon Reinitialization System -- a process by which all Carbon life is erased from the planet to create a clean slate. 

The Master, Trigger, and the Mother Units

As the Master loses all other human companions and becomes a revered existence within Elysium that no one dares to regard personally, he seeks out another in the form of Mega Man Trigger, chosen personally to be his attendant functionally while in reality for the purpose of becoming his close companion. 

As Sera and Yuna repeatedly attempt to see if Terra is suitable for life periodically, the repeated extinctions cause the remnants of each Carbon line’s budding civilizations to coalesce with the lingering traces of the ancient human race, resulting in countless ruins becoming strewn across Terra.

As the Master and Mega Man Trigger spend greater time together, becoming inseparable over the years, the Mother Units’ behavior begins to alter. Yuna comes to adopt an affectionate, personally-invested attitude between Trigger, the Master and her sister, acting as the group’s compass and mediator. Sera, however, grows frustrated, as the Master never seems to regard her efforts the same way he does Trigger’s company. This causes her to develop a jealous rivalry of Trigger, while at the same time growing more complicated feelings towards him.

Three thousand years after the Mother Units were created, the Master has finally grown tired of his forcibly-extended life. Without the other two noticing, the Master charges Mega Man Trigger to take him in a pod down to Terra’s surface, so he can behold the forming of early Carbon society with his own eyes -- not disclosing to Trigger that he would be unable to survive outside Elysium without its life support systems. 

Making landfall on what would in the future become Calbania Island, the Master is humbled seeing how the early people coming together, finding simple pleasures in life, and comes to realize the cold, sterile luxury of immortality he’d been sheltered by was fundamentally wrong. Coming to accept the Carbon race as humankind’s true successors, the Master gives Trigger a “good luck charm” containing his genetic code-- the key to managing the Library’s computer, to either begin the mass-cloning of humanity on Terra, or to erase it all. He makes a final request of Trigger to do the latter, to put an end to the Master System so that the Carbon race would be free of Elysium’s godlike control over them. Then, peacefully, the last human passes away. 

As Mega Man Trigger returns to Elysium in order to fulfill the Master’s last wish and put an end to the system, Sera reacts violently upon discovering what has come to pass. Unable to accept what she believes to be the Master discarding her, she decrees Trigger the highest-priority Aberrant for aiding in the Master’s death, declaring open war on him with all of Elysium.

The End of Elysium

Untold years of battle between the endless forces of Elysium and Trigger alone begin. Yuna, for her part, finds herself conflicted in holding love for both her friend and her sister equally, on top of being torn between siding with family and siding with the one she knows would know best the Master’s wishes. Unable to take side with either, she removes herself to be a neutral overseer -- taking with her the keys Sera would need for clearance to activate the Carbon Reinitialization Program for the planet. 

Trigger and Elysium’s battle eventually makes its way to Terra. On a locale called Kattelox Island, Bureaucratic Unit Third-Class Mega Man Juno decides to activate the Carbon Reinitialization Program for his territory specifically, calling down the tower of Eden from orbit to rain fire on the island. Mega Man Trigger makes to stop this, facing Juno in single combat and dispatching him handily, sealing him back in the Main Gate and closing off all paths to it. 

Sera finally loses all patience with Yuna as well as her own failing forces, and ventures to Terra herself to eliminate Trigger with her own hands. Trigger and Sera have their final battle on the unnamed landmass in the polar north, largely destroying the island in their clash before mutually striking each other down, both mortally wounded. 

In order to preserve himself, Mega Man Trigger backs up all his personal data into a small, monkey-like storage unit named “Data”, before an automatic restoration function kicks in. With most of his body destroyed, what remains undergoes a total biological regression, self-reincarnating as an infant. 

Sera manages to remain conscious in her condition, as Yuna arrives in the aftermath of their battle. Once more, she demands Yuna give her the keys for the Library so she could fulfill her purpose to erase all Carbon life and restore humankind, but Yuna refuses. Having accepted the Master’s will, Yuna seals Sera into a prismatic stasis field, doing the same with the resetting Trigger and Data. Trigger and Data are then sent away, transported deep into the aquatic ruin of Nino Island. Yuna then chooses to remain with Sera on the polar island for all time, manipulating the weather to create a blizzard too harsh for any living thing or transportation to pass through. The island would eventually come to be known as “Forbidden Island”. 

Unbeknownst to either, early Carbons had been in the area. They had missed the final battle with Trigger and Sera, but arrived in time to witness what transpired between Sera and Yuna. The two would become regarded as goddesses, with Sera known as the “Goddess of the Sky”, who “guards the record of ages”, while Yuna became known as the “Goddess of the Earth”, who “guards the keys”. 

Pre-Legends

Centuries later, famed Digger couple Banner and Matilda Caskett chose to be the ones to penetrate the barrier of Forbidden Island and uncover its secrets. Leaving their infant daughter Roll with Matilda’s father, Digger legend Barrel Caskett, the two embark on a dropship meant to penetrate the very epicenter of the perpetual storm, where one can successfully break through. 

The expedition turns for the worst, as the pair are unprepared for the Reaverbots guarding the island. Matilda ends up fatally wounded, while Banner loses an arm and vanishes, eventually turning up on the Calinca continent with all memory lost from physical trauma. 

Yuna discovers the dying Matilda in her territory. Feeling responsible for what has befallen her, Yuna decided to save her by means of nanotechnology and portions of her own being to heal her wounds. However, the procedure ends up compromising Yuna’s own body. With no other recourse, she transmits herself in her entirety into Matilda, becoming one with her and putting Matilda’s consciousness into dormancy while she lives on within her. Yuna’s body is then put into the dropship the Casketts arrived in, sealed within a barrier for safekeeping.

Upon hearing what has befallen his daughter and her husband, Barrel Caskett resolves himself to retire from active Digging to raise his granddaughter. However, he decides to embark on one final digout before being done for good -- one within the Nino Ruins. 

At the bottom of the Nino Ruins, Barrel discovers the stasis prism that had been buried there ages before. Touching it, the prism disappears, revealing a brown-haired infant and a small, robotic monkey. Unsure what to think, Barrel decides to take the boy home with him for the time being. 

Upon bringing the boy home, the unknown baby comes into contact with the infant Roll, who immediately displays favor towards him. On seeing this, Barrel decides to take in the boy just as well. However, recognizing the child is clearly abnormal and bizarre circumstances may arise in the future, he opts not to adopt the boy into their family, but to raise him alongside Roll as his apprentice. The infant boy is given his own name: Rock Volnutt.

[grindskull]

Shit that fucks me up #1 - Toxic Masculinity and being a “man”

Gotta have some way to organize my random thoughts here. I’m going with the obvious thing - Shit that fucks me up (STFMU). This is about me and my experiences. It is not my intention to discredit or question other human experiences. Sharing in the hopes of connecting with others who may have feel similar in their own skin. There are things here that others may define as triggers so read at your own risk (rape, abuse, and this fucking world). ---

Here is me being vulnerable.  I am putting myself out there by discussing masculinity and how I often do not identify with the larger concept of “being a man” in any positive way. You can call it toxic masculinity if you prefer. It’s acceptable shorthand for something that is just as nuanced and difficult to wade through as anything gender related.  I read this article on The Atlantic yesterday and there were some things that really resonated with me and my experience as a man/male (he/his/him). You can read it here (sorry there is a pay wall if you read more than 4 articles a month) but I will also be quoting some of the article below.  If you have time to read the article I’ll wait. It’s a bit long (many articles on The Atlantic are) and kind of academic at times. It’s okay if you don’t agree with everything in the article. Just read it.  Done? Okay let me set the stage a bit for how this shit fucks me up. ---

I’m male. I have always identified as a male/boy/man in my life. Unfortunately my experience with other males/boys/men has been mostly negative. It started at an early age when I had a hard time connecting with other boys my age. I was not interested in typical “male” interests like sports, violence, competition, and achievement. I had few (usually 1 or 2) friends at any one time and they typically had some kind of unhealthy power dynamic over me where I was subservient to my “friend” in some way.  I have some thoughts on reasons why this happened. The short version is I lived in poverty (often extreme) and I was searching for help and support in order to survive. At home I had abuse (mental, physical, verbal), drugs, addiction, and neglect. It was not a safe place to be so I did whatever I could to not be there. It was not unusual for me to eat maybe one meal during the day (typically what I could get from others at school or their home). Winter was the worst as we often did not have heat. Some of my “friends” used this as a way to hold power over me and make demands of my personality, time, and attention. Imagine finding yourself in this situation - you have to actively work to not be yourself in order to appease others for your very survival. Of course as a youth I didn’t identify it this way - my “friends” were just bossy or demanding. All of my male role models were basically assholes who did not give a fuck about anyone except themselves. This was a huge part of the 80′s zeitgeist in popular culture at the time as well. In some ways nothing has really changed. “... when asked to describe the attributes of “the ideal guy,” those same boys appeared to be harking back to 1955. Dominance. Aggression. Rugged good looks (with an emphasis on height). Sexual prowess. Stoicism. Athleticism. Wealth (at least some day).“ Under this common definition of “masculinity” I do not see myself. I am loyal, honest, caring, and sweet (to those I love). I love my body though I am non-athletic and have been most of my life. I am an attentive and talented lover but I have had very few sexual partners in my life and never saw them as moments of “conquest”. I was dirt poor most of my life but now live comfortably in my own home with my long term partner. So while not “wealthy” it is far beyond anything I could have imagined I would have in my life as a boy. Stoicism I have down. That one was easy. For me it’s just a nice way of saying “I have completely disconnected from my emotions and not having feelings or emotions is the best way to be a man”. I believed that for a very long time - it’s only in the past 2-3 years I have begun the work of breaking that down and reconnecting with my own emotions. It’s all tied up in trauma, depression, and anxiety so it takes a bit of fucking work but it’s very much worth it. If you are a man/male who thinks it is normal to not have emotions (or that emotions make you feminine/weak) please listen to me - THAT IS BULLSHIT. YOU OWE IT TO YOURSELF TO HAVE EMOTIONS.

“... young men described just one narrow route to successful masculinity. One-third said they felt compelled to suppress their feelings, to “suck it up” or “be a man” when they were sad or scared, and more than 40 percent said that when they were angry, society expected them to be combative.“

Emotions are not weakness. You are not weak for having them, feeling them, or connecting with them. There is great strength in connecting with yourself and understanding your emotions. Don’t let anyone tell you different. They are delusional at best and actively trying to harm you at worst.

“While following the conventional script may still bring social and professional rewards to boys and men, research shows that those who rigidly adhere to certain masculine norms are not only more likely to harass and bully others but to themselves be victims of verbal or physical violence. They’re more prone to binge-drinking, risky sexual behavior, and getting in car accidents. They are also less happy than other guys, with higher depression rates and fewer friends in whom they can confide.”

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How did we get here!? Have men always been this way? What about the good ole masculinity of ye olden times? It was a simple time where men were men right? A man’s man? “According to Andrew Smiler, a psychologist who has studied the history of Western masculinity, the ideal late-19th-century man was compassionate, a caretaker, but such qualities lost favor as paid labor moved from homes to factories during industrialization. In fact, the Boy Scouts, whose creed urges its members to be loyal, friendly, courteous, and kind, was founded in 1910 in part to counter that dehumanizing trend. Smiler attributes further distortions in masculinity to a century-long backlash against women’s rights. During World War I, women proved that they could keep the economy humming on their own, and soon afterward they secured the vote. Instead of embracing gender equality, he says, the country’s leaders “doubled down” on the inalienable male right to power, emphasizing men’s supposedly more logical and less emotional nature as a prerequisite for leadership.”

Take a minute to read that and really take it in. Like many things in the US (and the world) the effects of industrialization and war shaped our current version of accepted masculinity. More specifically the leaders of this country (and leaders in other countries) used their positions of power to strengthen men and this new masculinity in our institutions. Then we were taught that this was the “right way” to “be a man”. FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

“Today many parents are unsure of how to raise a boy, what sort of masculinity to encourage in their sons. But as I learned from talking with boys themselves, the culture of adolescence, which fuses hyper-rationality with domination, sexual conquest, and a glorification of male violence, fills the void.“

Here we have the core of what I experience as a man when it comes to the current socially accepted version of masculinity and why it fucks me up. I don’t identify with any of this shit! It does not feed me. It does not make me feel fulfilled and happy. It doesn’t make the world better for anyone it simply dehumanizes us all. 

“In a classic study, adults shown a video of an infant startled by a jack-in-the-box were more likely to presume the baby was “angry” if they were first told the child was male. Mothers of young children have repeatedly been found to talk more to their girls and to employ a broader, richer emotional vocabulary with them; with their sons, again, they tend to linger on anger. As for fathers, they speak with less emotional nuance than mothers regardless of their child’s sex. Despite that, according to Judy Y. Chu, a human-biology lecturer at Stanford who conducted a study of boys from pre-K through first grade, little boys have a keen understanding of emotions and a desire for close relationships. But by age 5 or 6, they’ve learned to knock that stuff off, at least in public: to disconnect from feelings of weakness, reject friendships with girls (or take them underground, outside of school), and become more hierarchical in their behavior.“

I’m not going to get into the topic of my own father (that’s another post in this series for sure) too deeply but I will say I completely identify with these ideas. Emotional distance, only expressing anger, telling me having emotions was weak. This was reinforced societal norms throughout my youth through today. Don’t talk about your problems or feelings. Ball them up inside. Wall yourself off from the world. Connections = weakness that others will exploit. You must control every situation and hold power over others. FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

---

So when did I wake up? When did I start to see through this shit in some way? When my younger sister was born. It was really obvious to me that she was treated in a different way and expectations of her as a girl/woman were not the same as the expectations others had for me. Mostly I just saw the negatives in this. It took me time (and lots of communication and experiences with my partner and others) to recognize the root of this was more fucked up socialization. 

“Girlfriends, mothers, and in some cases sisters were the most common confidants of the boys I met. While it’s wonderful to know they have someone to talk to—and I’m sure mothers, in particular, savor the role—teaching boys that women are responsible for emotional labor, for processing men’s emotional lives in ways that would be emasculating for them to do themselves, comes at a price for both sexes. Among other things, that dependence can leave men unable to identify or express their own emotions, and ill-equipped to form caring, lasting adult relationships.”

Read this carefully. Nobody is responsible for your emotional well being but you. If you are a male/man this is especially true - females/women are not responsible for managing your emotions and your reliance on them to take care of this is a form of abuse. They are not responsible for your emotions. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR OWN EMOTIONS.

It can be really hard to see this. It was a blind spot for me for way too long. Don’t let it be one for you. Connecting with and taking responsibility for your emotions is one of the biggest things you can do to improve yourself as a human being. If you are sad you can cry. If you are happy you can laugh. You have a wide range of emotions and they don’t all lead to frustration or anger.

“As someone who, by virtue of my sex, has always had permission to weep, I didn’t initially understand this. Only after multiple interviews did I realize that when boys confided in me about crying—or, even more so, when they teared up right in front of me—they were taking a risk, trusting me with something private and precious: evidence of vulnerability, or a desire for it.“

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Okay so putting aside all of the reinforcement we get from our parents and institutions and our lack of emotional vulnerability why do we all buy into this dumb shit? Who convinced us all this is what masculinity is? And why do we listen?

“What the longtime sportswriter Robert Lipsyte calls “jock culture” (or what the boys I talked with more often referred to as “bro culture”) is the dark underbelly of male-dominated enclaves, whether or not they formally involve athletics: all-boys’ schools, fraternity houses, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the military. Even as such groups promote bonding, even as they preach honor, pride, and integrity, they tend to condition young men to treat anyone who is not “on the team” as the enemy (the only women who ordinarily make the cut are blood relatives— bros before hos!), justifying any hostility toward them. Loyalty is paramount, and masculinity is habitually established through misogynist language and homophobia.”

Sounds familiar right guys? Don’t kid yourself. This is what being a man looks like in almost all situations in which we feel “safe” to express our self right? You are either with us or against us. Anything different or anyone questioning this behavior must be “othered” as they are clearly not “on the team”. FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

This was my entire experience as a youth. As someone who did not fit into this group (nor wanted to) I was immediately “othered” and deemed a “pussy” or “fag” or “homo” or “weirdo”. My friend group reflected this - mostly others who also were “not on the team” like women, gays and lesbians, and men who also did not identify with this version of masculinity. Which just made it easier to group us all together and identify us as the enemy. 

“Just because some young men now draw the line at referring to someone who is openly gay as a fag doesn’t mean, by the way, that gay men (or men with traits that read as gay) are suddenly safe. If anything, the gay guys I met were more conscious of the rules of manhood than their straight peers were. They had to be—and because of that, they were like spies in the house of hypermasculinity.” Without the ability to connect with and express my emotions I often reacted in anger. I started fights. I got violent (with words and writing mostly). I returned this “othering” and treated them all as the enemy. I had other reasons for this (being abused by men as a boy) but at the crux of the issue I had no trust for men. This helped me connect with women and my gay friends as they also experienced this distrust in similar (and different) ways. 

Years later I found myself in a job where I managed a group of men (100 or more at any time) working as a team (video game industry) and totally unable to connect with any of them as a human let alone a man. It was at this time that I realized this was a problem beyond my own experiences and when I started to understand my own participation in this system. 

I tried to question things as they came up. I tried to hear my teammates and help them navigate this murky sea of masculinity to find their own place in it. Most people didn’t want to participate. They learned to keep their mouth shut if I was within earshot of their typical “bro talk”. They learned to act differently around me so as not to incur my wrath (using my anger and position of power to punish them for being sexist, racist, or intolerant). I felt powerful and I tricked myself into thinking I was making a difference. I was wrong. 

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“Recently, Pascoe turned her attention to no homo, a phrase that gained traction in the 1990s. She sifted through more than 1,000 tweets, primarily by young men, that included the phrase. Most were expressing a positive emotion, sometimes as innocuous as “I love chocolate ice cream, #nohomo” or “I loved the movie The Day After Tomorrow, #nohomo.” “A lot of times they were saying things like ‘I miss you’ to a friend or ‘We should hang out soon,’ ” she said. “Just normal expressions of joy or connection.” No homo is a form of inoculation against insults from other guys, Pascoe concluded, a “shield that allows boys to be fully human.”

It wasn’t long before my “making a difference” spread into our hiring, training, and management of the team. I brought in women who wanted to work in the game industry. I tried to shut down any of the bro culture bullshit that came up and used it as an opportunity to teach other men why it was fucked up. It worked for some (maybe 5-6 people out of hundreds) but the majority either quit or tried to get me fired. Most did not change their behavior in any way. 

The women said they knew what they were getting into. I don’t believe they knew what it was like to actually be in the middle of the situation. I assume women in the military probably have a lot of experience like this. In short - it’s fucking toxic and disgusting. Like other males/men they too have to fall in line and “become one of the boys” or risk being antagonized and ostracized for being “different”. It’s Lord of the Flies. It’s fucking mob mentality. It’s masculinity at it’s absolute worst. And this was in a “progressive” creative city working for a small company with a woman CEO. Men simply don’t give a fuck and it’s almost always easier to go with the flow. FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

My first experience with a trans individual in a work setting occurred was while I was managing this team. One of our long term employees made the transition and I had to watch how they were treated by the “bros’. Jokes were made, memes were shared, snickering and fucked up behavior was rampant. I had to talk to, discipline, and fire many individuals. These were men I thought were “on the team” and working to be good examples of masculinity. I should have known that was just part of the act - their way of surviving and showing subservience to me as a man in a position of power over them. My trust was further eroded in masculinity. 

Putting yourself over others is not power. It is dehumanization and it stems from hate. We can be different without being better or worse than someone else regardless of who they are. Not everything has to be a competition. It took me way too long to undo the damage done to me by these ideal of toxic masculinity. You can do it too - you just have to start today. 

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Beyond the negative effects this version of masculinity has on us as males/men it also fucks up our interaction with women and sexual partners and it’s certainly done so to me. I’m actively working on unfucking my fucking and aware that many of my heterosexual ideals of sex stem from the same shit I have been actively fighting against most of my life. Connecting emotionally with your sexual partner takes things to a completely different level.

“It’s not like I imagined boys would gush about making sweet, sweet love to the ladies, but why was their language so weaponized ? The answer, I came to believe, was that locker-room talk isn’t about sex at all, which is why guys were ashamed to discuss it openly with me. The (often clearly exaggerated) stories boys tell are really about power: using aggression toward women to connect and to validate one another as heterosexual, or to claim top spots in the adolescent sexual hierarchy. Dismissing that as “banter” denies the ways that language can desensitize—abrade boys’ ability to see girls as people deserving of respect and dignity in sexual encounters.”  

This is the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear the term “rape culture”. As men we are taught that to be masculine is to claim “wins” in sexual conquest. Sex is property and we can collect it. Even if it’s with our long term partners or spouses. Ever tried talking to men about this? Ever questioned others on how it’s fucked up? You probably heard about how it’s all in jest. Just a joke! I’m just joking!  “When called out, boys typically claim that they thought they were just being “funny.” And in a way that makes sense—when left unexamined, such “humor” may seem like an extension of the gross-out comedy of childhood. Little boys are famous for their fart jokes, booger jokes, poop jokes. It’s how they test boundaries, understand the human body, gain a little cred among their peers. But, as can happen with sports, their glee in that can both enable and camouflage sexism. The boy who, at age 10, asks his friends the difference between a dead baby and a bowling ball may or may not find it equally uproarious, at 16, to share what a woman and a bowling ball have in common (you can Google it). He may or may not post ever-escalating “jokes” about women, or African Americans, or homosexuals, or disabled people on a group Snapchat. He may or may not send “funny” texts to friends about “girls who need to be raped,” or think it’s hysterical to surprise a buddy with a meme in which a woman is being gagged by a penis, her mascara mixed with her tears. He may or may not, at 18, scrawl the names of his hookups on a wall in his all-male dorm, as part of a year-long competition to see who can “pull” the most. Perfectly nice, bright, polite boys I interviewed had done one or another of these things.”

Let me be clear in case you are confused. This shit isn’t funny. Laughing at other people’s misfortune is a long standing human tradition yes - and it still dehumanizes everyone involved. That doesn’t make me laugh but maybe you are still amused? Why?

“At the most disturbing end of the continuum, “funny” and “hilarious” become a defense against charges of sexual harassment or assault. To cite just one example, a boy from Steubenville, Ohio, was captured on video joking about the repeated violation of an unconscious girl at a party by a couple of high-school football players. “She is so raped,” he said, laughing. “They raped her quicker than Mike Tyson.” When someone off camera suggested that rape wasn’t funny, he retorted, “It isn’t funny—it’s hilarious!”

The classic toxic masculinity force field present in my life has been the “just joking” phrase with the ultimate no consequence phrase “it’s hilarious!”. Say something you don’t want to manage the consequences for? Just a joke! People still question you or your morals after saying some heinous shit? No.. it’s cool... it’s hilarious! You just gotta laugh! FUCK. THIS. SHIT.

“Hilarious” is another way, under the pretext of horseplay or group bonding, that boys learn to disregard others’ feelings as well as their own. “Hilarious” is a haven, offering distance when something is inappropriate, confusing, depressing, unnerving, or horrifying; when something defies boys’ ethics. It allows them to subvert a more compassionate response that could be read as unmasculine—and makes sexism and misogyny feel transgressive rather than supportive of an age-old status quo. Boys may know when something is wrong; they may even know that true manhood—or maybe just common decency—compels them to speak up. Yet, too often, they fear that if they do, they’ll be marginalized or, worse, themselves become the target of derision from other boys. Masculinity, then, becomes not only about what boys do say, but about what they don’t—or won’t, or can’t—say, even when they wish they could. The psychologists Dan Kindlon and Michael Thompson, the authors of Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, have pointed out that silence in the face of cruelty or sexism is how too many boys become men. 

I feel like I may have already gone too far into this dark hole of shit that fucks me up around toxic masculinity. I hope I didn’t lose you. I hope you have questions and thoughts about how this impacts your life. Perhaps ways that you make a change today to fight against this bullshit. You may be asking yourself “what can we do!?” At the end of the day its up to males/men to change this culture. It’s not about self-hate or self-abuse. We gotta name this and own it. We need more men to step up and say ‘It doesn’t have to be like this”. Our collective mental health requires us to be more flexible and connected to ourselves and emotions. We need to find ways to deal with our anger, frustration, and desires in ways that don’t hurt ourselves and others. We need to teach ourselves (especially youth) that it isn’t enough to only talk about things we shouldn’t (and hopefully won’t) do. 

If this shit fucks you too you can do something about it. Start with yourself. Question these things when they come up. And not only when you feel “safe” to do so. Do it consistently in ways that are non-confrontational (they will probably lead to confrontations with most men anyway - sorry). Be okay with not always “winning’ in these situations. You’ll be surprised who you might connect with in the process. Hopefully one of those people will be yourself. 

[the-light-followed]

THE LIGHT FANTASTIC (1986) [DISC. #2; RINCEWIND #2]

“What shall we do?’ said Twoflower. ‘Panic?’ said Rincewind hopefully. He always held that panic was the best means of survival; back in the olden days, his theory went, people faced with hungry sabre-toothed tigers could be divided very simply into those who panicked and those who stood there saying ‘What a magnificent brute!’ and ‘Here, pussy.”

Rating: 5/10

Standalone Okay: No

Read First: ABSOLUTELY NO.

Discworld Books Masterpost: [x]

* * * * * * * * * *

If The Colour of Magic is a bad place to start reading Discworld, The Light Fantastic is 100% worse.  Not because it’s bad, because it’s absolutely an improvement on its predecessor.  It’s just that The Colour of Magic ends on a cliffhanger (only in the metaphorical sense; in the literal sense, Rincewind has just fallen off the cliff).  The Light Fantastic picks up exactly where it left off, with only a little exposition or explanation to soften the shift from one to the next.  I tend to think of The Light Fantastic as more like The Colour of Magic: Part 2, Now We’re Getting Somewhere, because, well, now we’re getting somewhere.

Folks, we finally have a cohesive, over-arching plot! We have stakes greater than “let’s not get killed by this latest thing that wants us dead!”  We have purpose, and drive, and successful barbarian heroes so old they lack teeth and have to make dentures out of diamond, and I love absolutely every bit of it!

In what will quickly become obvious is the norm for him, Rincewind’s life continues to be a series of upsetting things happening one after the other.  Some highlights from The Light Fantastic include:

Being forcibly teleported (back) onto the Disc by the parasitically-attached Great Spell living in his brain, after falling over the Rimfall.  Reality is completely rewritten to do this, but everything remains exactly the same except Rincewind’s new position clinging to the top of a pine tree.  (Twoflower gets dropped back onto the Disc as well, but that seems mostly incidental.)

Going to the land of Death while still alive, picking up his mostly-dead friend, and running right back out to the land of the living.

Camping in the mouth of a giant troll the size of a mountain, while being held captive by mercenaries.  Somehow only the mercenaries end up dead.

Being attacked by wizards and Things from the Dungeon Dimensions, and fighting said wizards and Things in life-or-death battles.

Using the most powerful magical book on the Disc, possibly the most magical item full-stop, and then afterwards, allowing said item to be eaten by the carnivorous sentient Luggage for safekeeping.  Rincewind ends up owning the Luggage before the end of the story—so technically, he still has this wildly dangerous book.

Oh, and saving the world, of course.  He also does that.

I love, love, love the way Pratchett writes ‘heroes’ vs. how he writes his protagonists.  Absolutely none of his protagonists are the stereotypical hero, and his stories are better for it.

Quick sidetrack to define terms: when I say ‘stereotypical hero,’ I’m talking about the kind of lawful good protagonists you see in most high fantasy adventure stories or superhero comics, the stuff with worldwide or even cosmic stakes.  They’re typically well-trained or have some kind of special skills, or they acquire special training/skills along the way.  They almost always set out specifically to save the world, and typically do not have any ulterior motives beyond it being ‘the right thing to do.’  Usually, they’re strong and rugged manly men with impressive jawlines.  I’m talking Aragorn from Lord of the Rings.  I’m talking Captain America and Superman.  I’m talking the real Boy Scout types.

Truth, justice, and apple pie—or whatever the regional-specific pastry of choice might be!

Pratchett’s heroes are not that.  They’re cowards.  They’re scared or confused or unprepared, or making the whole thing up as they go along.  They’re fools, alcoholics, con men.  They’re salty old ladies and know-it-all young girls.  If there is a stereotypical hero-type character, they’re going to be a foil for the actual main character, and they won’t stay perfectly pure and uncomplicated for long—I’m thinking specifically Carrot, though we’ll talk about him later when we get to the City Watch books.  

Here, what we get is Rincewind.  And he is as far from a stereotypical hero as it is possible to be, probably because he would have started sprinting full-speed away from the thought before anyone finished saying it out loud.  Rincewind doesn’t save the world because he suddenly found his courage, or developed bonus superpowers, or found some kind of magical sword to do the fighting for him.  (He actually found the sword back in The Colour of Magic, hated every second of it, and got rid of it as soon as possible.  Goodbye and good riddance to Kring the magic sword.)  He hasn’t secretly had the courage inside of himself all along.

Rincewind saves the world because he’s got nowhere left to run, and that’s excellent.

I’m going to save a lot of my rambling about Pratchett’s deconstruction of the concept of ‘heroes’ for when I get to Guards! Guards! and later City Watch books, since Carrot is, like I said, both the main example and the central thesis.  But it is very important for everyone to understand: for me, nothing is more satisfying from a literary perspective than knowing that, at the end of the Discworld series, coward and hero-only-by-accident-or-mistake Rincewind is one of the two people in contention for the spot as ‘ultimate savior of the world, the universe, and all of existence.’  The other is a teenage girl.

Honestly, the only reason I think Rincewind might edge her out for the title is because he technically saved a slightly larger slice of reality with this whole escapade.  In Tiffany’s defense, I’m 98% sure she hadn’t been born yet when this whole thing went down, so we really can’t blame her for not solving it first.  If she were there, she’d have it handled, and that’s just objective truth.

But Rincewind.  Rincewind.  At the end of The Light Fantastic, the dude’s spent two whole books screaming and running whenever something tries to kill/maim/eat/threaten him.  The audience has absolutely figured out by this point that while he’s smart and sarcastic and surprisingly speedy, he’s totally useless in a conflict.  His priority is saving his own skin, not dashing feats of derring-do or whatever it is heroes are supposed to do.

And yet with the end of the world looming, his back against the wall, and no real place left to run, when the Big Baddie demands that he give up the last Great Spell, the one last thing preventing the immediate destruction of everything and everyone, we get this from Rincewind:

“If it stops anywhere, it stops here, thought Rincewind. ‘You’ll have to take it,’ he said. ‘I won’t give it to you.’”

And that’s it.  That’s what saves the world.  Not a stereotypical hero, not a hero of legend, not a mythic champion showing up for a final glorious battle—it’s a Pratchett hero.  It’s an everyday guy, a coward and a failure, dragged in by accident and against his will.  It’s an average person, nothing really special, who looks at something that he knows is wrong and that he’s sure will hurt him for disobeying.  And yet he still says no.  It stops here.

Even rats fight back, as Rincewind himself says.

This is the moment that really sells me on Rincewind’s character, every time.  Even before Pratchett was really taking Rincewind or the Discworld seriously, even while the whole thing is still one massive joke more often than not, he’s still given the readers a POV character who feels believably real.  He’s scared shitless, he’s tired, he’s sarcastic, and he doesn’t want to be there.  But that’s too damn bad, because he’s the one there, and if he doesn’t do this, no one else will.

And maybe Rincewind’s not Superman, but he still does it. He succeeds, he saves the day, and—despite everything—he’s somehow the hero of this story.  Screaming all the way, maybe, but he still gets it done.

[Paul Kidby does incredible Discworld art, including some of the amazing cover art for the books.  You can find a lot of it on his website— www.paulkidby.com.  This one,The Colour of Magic, stars Rincewind, Twoflower, and their dramatic escape from the Wyrmberg.]

While we’re on the subject of heroes, we can’t skip over Cohen the Barbarian, who makes his debut here in The Light Fantastic. Now, Cohen is technically a hero, but this is still not in the ‘stereotypical hero’ sense—it’s literally his job.  It’s the thing he writes in the little box marked ‘Occupation’ on his tax forms, or at least it would be if he actually paid any taxes.  Or if he actually wrote things down.  

For Cohen, being a hero is how he makes a profit and pays the bills, and he is very, very good at it.  That’s 100% objective truth, and I know that for sure, because the man is old as the hills and still gets into life-or-death fights about twice a day, and that’s the sort of thing that gets you dead very quickly if you aren’t very good at what you do.

But Cohen still isn’t a stereotypical hero.  He does a lot of looting and pillaging, and his body count over the Rincewind books is—wow, it’s up there.  It’s a real doozy.  It’s hard to call his work heroism when it’s hardly a smidge to the left of repeated, outright murder.  I’ll probably circle back around to this in Interesting Times and The Last Hero, because there are some really interesting points made there about the ways that Cohen and his contemporaries play at heroes and villains like they’re a sort of performance they’re putting on rather than a moral act or a choice made out of necessity. But I will say now that putting Cohen in the same storylines as Rincewind really does put both characters into a more complex and interesting light.  Rincewind, the coward-not-hero, and Cohen, the fearless warrior, can kind of play off of each other.

It just goes to show Pratchett’s grasp of people as people, and not unidimensional cardboard cutouts.  Nobody’s always right.  Nobody is always wrong.  And real people don’t always stand up to perfect, pure concepts of what we think they should be.

Also, since Cohen is about a billion years old, we get little gems like his toothless lisp before he picks up some dentures, a concept that Twoflower brings with him from the Counterweight Continent.  (Or, as Cohen calls them, dine chewers.  That, friends, is a pune, or a play on words.)  Also, because he’s Cohen and therefore a dramatic bastard, the dentures are solid diamond.  It’s not as if the man can’t afford it, I guess?

I do want to take a little side trip into some other new details that pop up in The Light Fantastic, specifically the more in-depth stuff about Unseen University and the wizards.  The wizards are a lot of fun in the early Discworld books, specifically if you’re really bloodthirsty, because up until Ridcully arrives in Moving Pictures there’s quite a lot of turnover in Unseen University staff. The wizards are backstabbing bastards early on, and it’s almost jarring to compare the shifty, power-hungry jerks in The Light Fantastic and Sourcery to the fat, lazy hedonists they’ll become. We do get an impression of them as a collective that will stay pretty consistent as we move forward: their values, their skills, the way they do magic.

This is important not only because it establishes a lot of lasting detail for stories involving Rincewind, the University, and the city of Ankh-Morpork, but also because we’re about to get our first glimpse of the witches.  (Hey-o, here comes Equal Rites!)  With a lot of this stuff mapped out in advance, it makes it easier to run a compare-and-contrast of what’s going on with the two main schools of magic users on the Disc, what’s different between them, what’s the same—and the positives and negatives in them both.  (Again, hey-o, Equal Rites!  That all is about to be the whole damn point.)

I think it’s also fun to note that The Light Fantastic features the brief run of Galder Weatherwax as Archchancellor of the Unseen University, A.K.A. He Who Dies So Granny Weatherwax Can Have His Frankly Excellent Name.  Granny Weatherwax is the steel-souled spine of the witches, and the driving force of their run of books, and it’s kind of hilarious to think that Terry Pratchett did the writer’s equivalent of digging through a graveyard to give her a name.  This theft is later lampshaded and then ignored; Granny says something briefly about Galder Weatherwax being a distant cousin she barely knew, and the whole thing is never mentioned again from then on out. I can’t exactly remember where, and it might even have been in a short story or one of the side books Pratchett eventually put together, not in a novel.  Honestly, who cares—Granny Weatherwax is such a force of nature that it only takes a few minutes to forget that her name ever could have belonged to anyone but herself.

But Granny Weatherwax is not a discussion for The Light Fantastic.  It’s time to move on to Equal Rites!

* * * * * * * * * *

Side Notes:

This is the book where the Unseen University Librarian is changed into an orangutan.  It happens early on in a magical accident, as the grimoire containing the Eight Great Spells attempts to save Rincewind and the spell trapped in his mind, and he is never reverted to human form.  

He is referenced but does not appear in The Colour of Magic.  

At no point anywhere in the Discworld does he appear in human form.  At no point does he have lines in human language.  He is never named.  At no point is he described as he was prior to this change, except that the orangutan he becomes is initially said to look “like the head librarian,” so presumably he was already a bit orangutan-ish. 

For something as weird as this is, and for something with such long-lasting repercussions, it is treated in the moment as a thing of very little importance—except, of course, that now he has to be paid in bananas.  I find this absolutely delightful.

Tim Curry plays the wizard Trymon in the BBC miniseries The Colour of Magic, which combines The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic.  Trymon only appears in The Light Fantastic in the books, and I can’t read it anymore without picturing Tim Curry in his ridiculous robes and shoes, with his ridiculous overdramatic murder plots, working his way up to the top just to die a ridiculous death.

No, really. Look at this hat.  Look at this goatee.  Only Tim Curry has the acting chops to pull this off.

Death once again appears, and this time we also get to see his house and his daughter, Ysabell!  I can see why it didn’t take long to go from here to Mort: the concept is way too good to leave to little snatches and side appearances.

Krysoprase the troll shows up for the first time in this book.  Later, he’ll be known as Chrysoprase, and will make appearances in several other Discworld novels: Feet of Clay, Wyrd Sisters, and, notably, Thud.  There’s also a troll named Breccia in The Light Fantastic; Breccia will become the name of Chrysoprase’s gang in Ankh-Morpork.

While going through my copy of The Light Fantastic to work on this post, I glanced at the cover and briefly thought I was losing my mind.  At the bottom, there’s a blurb talking about beloved Discworld character “Conan the Barbarian”—but up until that moment I was 100% certain the beloved barbarian on the Disc was named “Cohen.”  Turns out I’m not crazy, it’s just that the literal cover of the book decides to make a reference to the character that Cohen is parodying rather than to Cohen himself.  And this is the 2008 print edition, not an early run or a badly-assembled e-reader edition, which means it’s being released by a professional publishing company a full 22 years after the original novel came out.  It’s not like nobody’s had time to look over the material and do some copy-editing.

* * * * * * * * * *

Favorite Quotes:

“The important thing about having lots of things to remember is that you’ve got to go somewhere afterwards where you can remember them, you see? You’ve got to stop. You haven’t really been anywhere until you’ve got back home.”

“Do you think there’s anything to eat in this forest?” “Yes,” said the wizard bitterly, “us.”

“Not for the first time she reflected that there were many drawbacks to being a swordswoman, not least of which was that men didn't take you seriously until you'd actually killed them, by which time it didn't really matter anyway.”

“Are you a hero, actually?” “Um, no. Not as such. Not at all, really. Even less than that, in fact.”

“What shall we do?’ said Twoflower. ‘Panic?’ said Rincewind hopefully. He always held that panic was the best means of survival; back in the olden days, his theory went, people faced with hungry sabre-toothed tigers could be divided very simply into those who panicked and those who stood there saying ‘What a magnificent brute!’ and ‘Here, pussy.”

[thea-harman]

❝  I get so caught up in protecting the people I love that I forget to protect myself.  ❞

☽ The Wi☨ch is in The Details ☾

Name:  Thea Sophia Harman Age:  17 ( May ## ) Zodiac:  Taurus ( ♉ ) Gender:  Female ( ♀ ) Species:  Witch ( Daughter of Hellewise ) Clan: Hearth-Woman ( Harman(s) ) Parents: Daniel Avery ( father - deceased ) & Sophia Harman ( mother - deceased ) Relationships:  Blaise Harman (cousin), Edgith Harman (maternal grandmother), Naomi Flores (great great great great aunt), Eric Ross (soulmate) Extended Family: Redfern(s), Iliana Dominick (distant cousin), Gillian Lennox (unknown cousin), FC:  Olivia Holt ( x )

☽ Personality ☾

☑  caring, courageous, free-spirited ☒  emotional, self-destructive, quiet

☽ The Past ☾

Thea and Blaise grew up differently than most kids.  Being an only child born to Daniel Avery ( Witch ) and Sophia Harman ( Witch ).  However, when she was still very young, Thea and her cousin Blaise lost both their parents in a tragic ritual accident.  Inseparable as ever the girls are basically sisters.  Because of this, they grew up surrounded by witches often living with their different relatives, mostly due to the antics of Blaise.  Blaise was never happy in one place for too long.  Because of that, Thea got used to a life of always being on the move. Having been expelled from seven to eight different schools since they were freshmen.   

Her cousin would regularly get into trouble for taunting and playing with the local human boys and Thea would take the fall with her.  At their last school in New Hampshire, Blaise got a boy named Randy Marik to burn down the school gym for her, leading to her and Thea's expulsion.  They were then sent to live with Grandma Harman, their maternal grandmother.

☽ The Present ☾

Running out of relatives to take them in.  Thea is determined not to get expelled or any trouble this time, as she doesn’t want to disappoint Grandma Harman - or be sent to the Convent for misbehaving.  Beginning their new school, Lake Mead High.  Things go awry right from the moment she arrives at school, however.  Before she can even go inside, Thea hears a lot of fuss, after investigating she discovers that students are crowded around a snake.  Thea telepathically connects with the snake and tries to convince it to leave to avoid getting the snake or any students harmed.  However, her concentration is broken by the students throwing stones and a boy named Eric Ross.  The snake bit him but only they knew.  The two then carry the snake out to the wilderness.  Thea heals Eric without him noticing.  Using magic to heal the bite, though she tries to pass it off as the snake having missed its mark. When Blaise notices Thea possibly liking Eric, she intends to use Eric like all of her 'boy toys.'  To stop her, Thea summons an old witch, a forbidden spell. She learns later that because she did not create a ring around the summoning, the spirit got to lose.  Not wanting Blaise to get to Eric, Thea says she will use him. He takes her to the dance, but when one of Blaise's old toys shows up and causes drama the two left.  Eric took her to the animal clinic he volunteers at.  When Blaise's attempts to take Eric from Thea it fails, she eventually deduces that Eric is her soulmate, but this gives her nothing but grief, due to Eric being human and therefore forbidden to her. 

Eric also takes Thea to the gym, where the Halloween dance is set up.  The theme consists of old witch hangings and torture methods.  Disgusted with it Thea had Eric get a camera so that they can write a complaint in the school newspaper.  While he is gone, Thea discovers the body of Kevin Imamura - a boy Blaise was toying with - is found strangled and hung with witch dummies.  Connecting the dots, Thea realizes that the murder was committed by the spirit she set to lose.  A witch victim of torture in the olden days, who was forced to watch her family die before she did.  Thea realizes that the spirit will attack again on Halloween.  Eric also connects the dots that Thea is a witch and demands that she let him help stop the spirit. Thea plans, with Eric’s help, to lure Suzanne’s spirit to a natural stone circle in the desert and send her back to the afterlife.  She intends to carry out the plan on the night of the Samhain celebrations.  Eric waits for her at the circle, whilst she attends the party.  Unfortunately, Thea, Blaise, and Dani are summoned by the Inner Circle and accused of performing forbidden spells.  Thea, realizing Eric and the human students at the high school Halloween dance is in danger, flees the house and drives to the circle, getting there just as Suzanne is about to kill Eric. 

With Eric's help, Thea prepares the ritual and sets it in motion. Suzanne's spirit is strong and tries to attack Thea, but she calls upon her "power as a daughter of Hellewise" - allegedly something no witch has done before - and finally gains the strength to send Suzanne back beyond the veil.  Together they re imprison the spirit, just as all of the witches arrive.  Now knowing that Thea is in love with a human, the witches decide to make them both lose their memories rather than killing them.  Eric and Thea are given a forgetting brew.  However, when drinking it, Thea realizes that it is just tea and that Blaise is letting her keep her memories.  After escorting Thea and her soulmate outside, Blaise - bid them farewell.  Thea had an emotional goodbye with her sister Blaise and Aradia suggests she and Eric seek out Circle Daybreak, where they might be accepted.  Fearing for their life she and Eric fled in his jeep but they never reached their destination to Circle Daybreak headquarters like they planned.  Engulfed in a sudden flash of light there whole worlds changed.

☽ The Current Story ☾

Now?  Thea and Blaise’s story is on a twisted re-peat but Thea has no recollection of of what had happened.  Just that where her story began.  With them running out of relatives to take them in.  Thea herself is determined not to get expelled or in any trouble whatsoever this time, as she doesn’t want to dissapoint Grandma Harman - or be sent to the Convent for misbehaving.  Beginning thier new life in browning harbor, massachusetts in a small town.

Timeline—

2019

( Sept. 24th )  Arrived at Browning Harbor Massachusetts to live with their Grandma Harman.

☽ Abilities ☾

☽ Basic Powers ☾ 》Spell Casting: Thea has the power to cast Spells. 》Potion making: She also can make magical potions. 》Cartomancy:  Tarot reading doesn’t have the power to change future events, but it can help anticipate them.  》Sigil Creation: Thea can inscribe or paint a symbol that’s considered to have magical power.   ☽ Individual Powers ☾ 》Advanced Telekinesis ► Thea can control and manipulate the movement of objects and persons through mental influence. 》Telepathy ► Thea has the power to hear the thoughts and read the minds of another person. 》Electrokinesis ►��Thea can create, shape, and manipulate electricity. 》Advanced Geokinesis ► Thea can create, shape and manipulate earth and `earthen` elements. 》Hydrokinesis/Cryokinesis ► Thea can create, shape, and manipulate water, ice, and cold.. 》Pain Infliction ► Thea has the ability to inflict great pain onto a person by causing their blood vessels to burst and thus giving them multiple aneurysms 》Advanced Healing ► Thea can heal minor wounds such as poisons, cuts, bruises, and light burns.  Along with healing external wounds, including fractured bones and deeper burns, disregarding of severity.  Lost limbs can be re-attached.  Minor damaged internal organs may heal, but more severity may be beyond repair and may take more time to heal.

[naiylabrouillard]

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[akissatmidnight]

You guys really liked my first History Behind Voyager post (that you can read HERE) so I thought I’d keep the Voyager party going with a new little installment. Now, if you’re strictly a show watcher, or haven’t read Voyager yet, then this post will contain some spoilers!

You have been warned. This is the spoiler zone. Happy reading!

Chinese Immigrants in Scotland

Gary Young-Mr Willoughby

Painting of a Chinese man by Jens Juel (late 1700s)

Yi Tien Cho, or Mr. Willoughby as we know him, has been quite the controversial figure recently, with some saying that he was akin to a racial caricature. But as with many characters in Diana Gabaldon’s books, there’s still a bit of history tucked away in Mr. Willoughby, regardless of his fondness for feet and training birds.

The British began their regular trading with China in the 1600s. While the increase of tea and silk imports helped the Chinese economy, it also kept the ships sailing in regular intervals. But, not every Chinese sailor went home. They settled around the docks, often sending for their wives and families once they raised enough money for their expensive passage. But the population didn’t explode overnight, it was more of a slow trickle with only a few dozen Chinese immigrants officially living in Great Britain in the early 1800s. That explains why old Mr. Willoughby was all by his lonesome in his new country…well that and he had been on the run!

Turtle Soup

Once on their transatlantic voyage, Claire gets her first taste of turtle soup, complete with a generous amount of sherry. While the dish was popular in Singapore and in the US due to a large snapping turtle population, the savory stew holds a special place in England’s history. It was considered the meal of England’s nobility, but it didn’t stop the common man from buying the meat at the local butcher shop or trying to catch their own in the local waters.

Historically, sailors would catch green sea turtles in the West Indies and keep them aboard ship for a constant supply of food. But by the 1750s, the mass hunting left the population a little skimpy, making it an even more sought after dish. Luckily, there was still a nice little population around Bermuda, giving sailors like Jamie and Claire the ability to catch some for the famous turtle soup. If you’re interested in getting a bowl, it’s not like it was in the olden days when it was readily available for a pretty penny in all the finest tea shops. But if you can find some turtle meat of your own, HERE is a recipe!

The Voyage

Claire and Jamie spent some time in ships cabins during their trip, but what were luxury accommodations on regular passenger ships really like? Well, if there were 8 foot ceilings and walls, as well as a straw stuffed mattress, it was considered basically 1st class. I mean, even the captains on most passenger ships only had a small room with the basics to call their own. Having a small writing desk was also something that only passengers with private quarters and some sway would obtain. But no matter the class you were in, you can bet your petticoats it was going to stink. With fresh water being carefully rationed for the journey, cleanliness took a backseat. The scent of unwashed bodies, vomit and other bodily fluids, and possibly living livestock would be pretty overwhelming.

BTW this is a replica crew cabin of a ship (1768-1771ish), but it’s close to the passenger quarters the common man would be in.

Meals were usually served in the common areas of each class, the food being directly brought up from the galley…unless you had to bring your own food for the journey as many boats stipulated. But for meals provided by the ship, there would be ale, salted meats, tack cakes, and fresh meats and vegetables in the beginning. And of course there would be turtle soup, if they could catch it.

Ship’s Doctor

No matter where Claire is, she’ll end up nursing a doctoring men and women from all walks of life. So it wasn’t a surprise when Claire had to crack open her medicine box aboard the ship. Historically, she would actually be much more qualified to be a ship doctor than most men, and it wasn’t just because she was a literal doctor from the future.

Unless they were working for the Royal Navy, the ship’s doctors rarely had any formal medical training at all. They usually learned their trade on the job from the older “surgeons” and learned how to generally keep the sailors and passengers alive. The most common things they would have to deal with was venereal disease, minor lacerations, and rope burn. There was also usually a dedicated sickbay on board that was well ventilated for the doctor’s use. The floor of this room would also be sprinkled with sand to keep people from slipping on the blood that would accumulate. Safety first!

British Fashion in Jam

Jamaica became a British colony in 1655 and the white population was bolstered by the English sending Irish and Scottish indentured servants or prisoners to the island. By the 1700s, the sugar plantations were in full swing and the money was flowing…to the British plantation owners at least.

Anyways, the climate in Jamaica was obviously vastly different than that in England. But the heat didn’t stop modesty or the use of fine imported fabrics. Silk and satin were still the fabrics of choice for well-bred ladies and gentlemen in the evening hours when dressing for dinner or attending a grand event, as well as a powdered wig. Usually, a touch of powder on the face and a beauty mark would complete the look. During the day, ladies would wear dresses of thin muslin in pale colors and carry umbrellas to ward off the sun.

(c) Canterbury City Council Museums and Galleries; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

In season 3, I expect to see very few kilts, plenty of old-school breeches, powdered wigs, men in heels, and the fabulous silk violet gown that Claire famously wears as Mrs. Malcolm! But overall, much of what we’ll see will be like a toned down version of the costumes from France, just a little less plaid.

The Maroons

The Maroons have a long history that goes back to the first slaves in the Americas. Basically, the Maroons are escaped slaves that built independent communities away from their past captors. The would try to form safe towns where they would maintain their heritage, plant crops, and try to stay alive. But it wasn’t easy, as they were constantly at risk of being forced off their lands, captured, or even killed,

In Jamaica, the Maroons were constantly at odds with the colonists that took over more and more land to plant crops, pushing the Maroons out of each small town they created. But the Maroons began to fight back and demanded lands for their own colonization. After the First Maroon Wars that ended around 1738, the British government granted them land and safety. So, surely that was the end of their oppression? Wrong.

The Maroons in Jamaica had to fight the British government several more times until finally gaining peace in the 1800s. Today, there are still 11 Maroon settlements that maintain their own cultures and identities that they managed to maintain since the 1730s. Their rich heritage was formed from combining all the different backgrounds of the escaped slaves. They formed their own religion, spirituality, and way of life. It’ll be interesting to see how the show brings their history to life!

Mayer Rothschild

We recognize this historical figure as Mayer Red-Shield, the coin peddler who connects the Duke of Sandringham with some Jacobite gold. The real Mayer is just as interesting, as his legacy created the famous Rothschild banking dynasty.

Born into a large, poor, Jewish family in Frankfurt, Mayer really had to work his way to the top of the banking world. He started as an apprentice and after a time, became a dealer of rare coins. He amassed such a collection, he gained the patronage of princes all over Europe. By the time his sons were of age, he had expanded his banking business into London and France where he invested in such things as textile production. The gangly boy with the bag of coins we meet in Voyager would grow up to build one of the most powerful financial dynasties in history.

That’s it for my mini history chat! For more Outlander fun, check out our Outlander page HERE! And if you like my articles, you’ll probably love my books!

Queen of Emeralds is a thrilling historical Scottish romance that takes you on a journey through London, deep into the Highlands, and into the arms of a laird. You can order it HERE! The Non-Disclosure Agreement shows what happens when a small town girl and a hot shot billionaire mix business and pleasure. This book is available HERE!

The History Behind ‘Voyager’ pt2 You guys really liked my first History Behind Voyager post (that you can read HERE) so I thought I'd keep the…