#michael hirst does NOT understand

[period-dramallama]

I've been on a bit of a Korean period drama/sageuk bender and I think the English period drama scene would benefit from straight up inventing new royals and general fuckery with the royals.

Like, my fave Bloody Heart is set in a vague Joseon era with an OC king but it manages to capture the vibes and power dynamics of the time so authentically.

Also, I've seen queer themes done better in sageuks. For example: trans woman prominent side character in Under the Queen's Umbrella and the general gender fuckery of Mr. Queen.

TL:DR: English period dramas should fuck around with history more but tastefully

Ah, I see. I think some historical inaccuracy can work (Anne of a Thousand Days and A Man For All Seasons are powerful and moving films) and I love comedies like Life of Brian that come from a deep understanding of what they're making fun of. I'd like anachronisms in period drama to just.... be more creative. The best creators understand the thing they're using artistic licence to change. So if Tudor showrunners understand what they're doing and why, they can successfully 'fuck around with history'.

[alexhoghdaily]

Alex’s Instagram Live interview with Tommy DiDario for #LetsStayTogether

Once again this got extremely long. Because as usual I cannot grasp the simple concept of ‘Highlights’. I basically wanted to write every single sentence down. Forgive me.

(note: this interview contains spoilers for the Vikings finale!)

The comments are turned off. This sets a relaxing mood for the interview.

Alex starts by asking if he’s getting through alright, Tommy is in New York and Alex is in Denmark. Which can make the time difference and connection difficult. He was confused about the actual time of the interview. His email said the show would be at 9pm, but the instagram countdown was set for 7pm. He’s not a technical person so he got a little nervous and was very happy to be live.

Tommy mentioned he started the show #LetsStayTogether during covid to give people a place where they can turn to for some joy, hope and inspiration. A place to just have fun. He said Alex brings all that and more so it was a pleasure to have him on the show.

He spoke about his character and the show Vikings, and asked him What made him want to play the part of Ivar on the Show. Alex answered the question with him being a ‘nobody’ when he came into the show, and he was very thankful to get the opportunity. He didn’t think about wether or not he liked the character, for him it was more like “I’m going to be an actor on Vikings? Are you kidding me? That’s a solid yes.” He didn’t even know what character he was going to play. It started with a regular self-tape of him doing weird accents and weird lines and then multiple auditions for all of the brothers. He said it was an intense audition. He remembered coming into the room and immediately noticing that the people present there were very important.

Tommy mentioned the darkness he brought to the show, the rise and fall of Ivar and how people were rooting for him in the end, and then asked Alex what he loved about playing such a great character like this. Alex answered with the ups and down’s, those are always fun for an actor to get into. Ivar is complicated and that’s always fun to take on as an actor. you always have to defend him [Ivar] even despite him making that very tough. “When he started burning people for a living I was like Michael Hirst are you kidding me. How am I supposed to make people still kind of love him?” It was challenging and fun.

Tommy asked Alex if he was protective of him [Ivar] because he felt like he had to figure out a way to make people like him. Alex answered with: Absolutely. He needs to be, because he always has to understand him and never judge him. And if he would struggle with that, the audience would absolutely 100% too. He has to be the last line of defense. He explained his thoughts and reasoning behind Ivar’s decisions. If he can reason with his thoughts and feelings behind it, it can completely change how he says his lines. It’s all in the little details and that’s what makes the job fun.

He didn’t get his script long ahead of time, only a week, so when he was still rehearsing his lines for one episode he already got his lines for the next and that was really though.

Tommy asked him why he [Alex] thinks is the reason fansresponded so well to his character even with his darknes. Alex answered this wit that he thinks it’s because he’s an antihero. You like rooting for someone who isn’t always perfect because we as human beings are also not always perfect. (He compared it to him liking batman over superman because batman is more flawed than superman.) He also said that he loves that he’s [Ivar] complicated. Every time you create a character that has a lot of depth to them, you challenge the audience and force the audience to always question him and ask themselves what they think about him and his actions. Why is he doing what he’s doing? That keeps people invested and engaged with the story/character. That’s his job.

Favorite scenes: Alex’s favorite scenes are 5x03 where Ivar is yelling, covered in blood in York. (He repeated his iconic Icelandic line as usual.) Another favorite scene was the one where Ivar said goodbye to Baldur in the woods. It is a scene that is really close to his heart. This is because Ivar was honest and vulnerable. Usually he’s doing crazy stuff and yelling and killing people. Alex likes the quiet moments more where he’s just in his own head and having a heart time. He loved the scene because it was so real.

Tommy asked Alex how he views Ivar’s relationship with love. (Absent father, overprotective and smothering mother, a tragic marriage, how does Ivar view love after this.) Alex said that he understands why Ivar does not understand love. After his absent father, smothering mother, tough love from his brothers, he was so blinded by Freydis’ love and his love for her that she could fully manipulate him. It was a complete disaster. When they started season 6 Alex thought that Ivar had completely given up on love. He had discussed this issue with Michael Hirst and the directors. Alex found him to be a sociopath and not an actual psychopath. Because he understands emotions, and he has a lot of them. He does have love and he does have empathy. He thought it was great to focus more on that in season 6. Showing more of Ivar’s human side was very important to him. He has many emotions and he was never just a crazy guy, Alex never thought he was crazy, nor that he was a god, he believed that Ivar knew better than to actually view himself a god. He thinks Ivar is an actor, and he is more broken on the inside than on the outside. The whole “I’m a god” act was all fake, and it was Ivar’s defense mechanism.

For his journey in season 6, Alex asked Michael Hirst to take it down a notch for Ivar. in season 5, especially 5B, he was challenging to like and Alex was struggling to defend him. He wanted to turn that around. He said that after losing his wife, his throne, and being on the run really makes him think. He says Ivar was smart enough to learn from his mistakes. He loved to come to a new place and start from the beginning. He did say that even with the new beginning Ivar was still plotting and manipulating and smart. He is still Ivar the Boneless. Alex was always amazed by his smarts when he read the scripts. He loves season 6 because Ivar was more human and humble.

They discuss Ivar’s death in the final episode. Alex said that he was on top of that. It was completely his idea. He wanted him to go out with a bang and not survive. He told Michael Hirst he wanted a death scene for Ivar. He also discussed with Michael that he loved the idea of Ivar being scared in the end. That he showed himself to be extemely human in his very last moments. Which Alex himself thinks all of us would be. Ivar is the guy who has been yelling that he’s a god, and he loved to contrast of him showing who he really was in the end, and just being afraid. He wanted him to be human in the end, the little boy that he really is. He needed him to show it in his last moment. He thought it was a beautiful brotherly and honest moment. Quote: “I like honesty.” He said that it was also one of his favorite scenes.

Tommy asked what it was like for him, and Alex said that he was bawling his eyes out. He cried the entire day. It was the end of 3,5 years of Vikings, the end of a very intense period of his life and it had been extremely challenging. He was happy to go but he also knew he was going to miss everyone. They were like family. It was the very last scene he shot, and it was magical to finish filming the show with his death scene. After it he was like I guess it is really over. He got a microphone and a signed shield with little messages. He was crying and everyone was gathering around him in a circle, which made him very nervous. It was a regular day with many extras and crew members and performing for them is no problem but when it get’s personal it’s more difficult. It felt like a very private moment. It wasn’t until he got home 14 days later that he fully understood what happened.

Tommy said that he understood that after such an intense role it would take a bit to come back from that and realize what he’s done. Alex agreed 100%. He said it can really feel like an empty dark hole, because you’re so used to working with so many people around him and he’s in a groove and all of a sudden it stops.

He mentioned that he was in his studio, and that he has a band. “That’s what’s happening in the background here.” It’s a fun hobby, nothing official. It’s just them doing decent cover songs. When Tommy asked if we would be able to hear any of them Alex answered with: “Absolutely not”. He joked about it being a secret passion and that it’s not supposed to be talked about. Tommy said no one would be opposed to them releasing a single.

After tommy asked about on set relationships Alex said they were all really close like a family. Filming was tough, not the best circumstances, 15 hour workdays, no breaks, eating the same cold food in between takes and the only way to get through it is because you’re with family. He said he worked with incredibly beautiful and talented people and that helped getting through it. He says he keeps in touch with a lot of people, not just cast members. He said that this is the beautiful thing about this job, you get families all around the world. He mentioned that there were a lot of food battles between the actors.

They moved on to the most popular fan questions.

Who would Alex play if he wasn’t Ivar? In return Alex asked if he could pick anyone and it wouldn’t matter. He jokingly said Lagertha, then said he would actually like it. Then he said Floki because he loves both Floki and Gustaf. (insert little floki laugh.) He also said Ragnar and King Ecbert.

What was the experience like filming Ivar’s genetic disorder? Alex said it was such a challenge. Especially physically because had to crawl around. He thought it was very important to him because he studied OI for his role and he said it’s an awful disease. It was important to him to make it as authentic as possible and show the struggles people who have that disease go through every day. Tommy said that people really appreciated the honesty that Alex brought to that portion of the character and he saw a lot of comments from people in the disabled community saying that they appreciated seeing someone go through that on a mainstream show because they can relate to it. It’s very powerful. Alex had also received some messages from people suffering from OI and it was very inspirational and humbling. It made the experience even better because he likes that he can give people the extra confidence to go out there and do things.

The third question was if Alex would ever be interested in doing a prequel about Ivar’s life. Alex said that he would want to. He jokingly said: “Why not? if the money is good enough.” Of course he would because he loves his character. He also said that even though he would love to, he also has to admit that his character has been a big part of his life and he would like to do portray other characters. (They joked about a lot of people wanting to see Alex in a romantic comedy and Alex mentioned it’s not his favorite thing to do).

Is there a behind the scenes secret that people would be surprised to know about? Alex said that on Vikings they were allowed to write their own lines once in a while and that’s not very common.

Alex’s screen froze and he suddenly left the livestream, but he finally was able to come back after a few minutes. (Insert embarrassed face and him apologizing for being a technical disaster).

He continued about writing their own lines. They really had a say in their own lines and character’s storylines and that was amazing. It helped getting a better sense of understanding characters.

Tommy asked him if he had a favorite line or scene that he’s written. Alex told about the scene where Hvitserk and Ivar meet each other again in season 6 after being separated for a long time. Marco and himself wrote the tiny scene together where they sit together next to the river where Ivar says to Hvitserk: “You look like shit” and Hvitserk replies with “I feel like it.” Followed by “What are you wearing?” Alex loves that little moment because after everything it brings them straight back to their original relationship.

The last fan question was actually not a question, it was a happy early birthday! Tommy asked Alex how he would celebrate and what he would like for his birthday. Alex answered the question with Less COVID and peace in the world. It’s really the time to stick together. He can talk about it and use his platform but that’s all he himself can do. He said he’s happy and priveleged, everything is good. Copenhagen is opening up. Because cafe’s are opening up again he can go out to have lunch and a beer. But there are so much places around the world where circumstances are horrible and it would make him happy if everyone could get a little closer together. Tommy agreed that it was an important message to put out there.

They joked about his band again, Alex not committing to putting anything out. Alex said it’s absolutely noted. He also jokingly said he would tell his bandmates that they should put out some originals.

They spoke about Alex’s photography. Alex said it’s a side thing and a hobby, a way for him (when on set) to relax and focus his mind on something else. He also thinks it’s so much fun to capture moments. He likes to capture moments in front and behind the camera, that’s what photography for him is about. Capturing moments and telling stories. It’s a pleasure to bring his camera on set because he can capture so many different things. He likes to keep doing it. He also said he’s working on a photography book but he wants to wait with releasing it until he has enough good material from a lot of different projects to include.

Finally Tommy asked him what he would like to say to everyone who tuned in and who stood by him for all these years. Alex answered with: “Thank you very much for all the support throughout the years, he literally couldn’t have done it without you [the fans] because that’s why they keep doing another season and another episode. Because you tune in every single week and do that for several years. It’s all for the fans. Sure they do it for themselves but in the end it’s all for you and they are proudly trying to make it as good as possible because of you, and because you are watching. Thank you for doing that.”

[pomegranates-and-blood]

νοσταλγία (Prologue)

(Gif credit to @honestsycrets​)

νοστα��γία Masterlist

Pairing: Ivar/Reader (eventual)

Summary: This is a retelling/romantization of the Greek myth of Persephone’s abduction with Ivar as Hades and you as Persephone. The Reader character is a Greek/Byzantine woman, follower of the Greek Pantheon/Religion, and a devoted follower of Persephone. This takes place after 5A, but the universe of this is a little changed in relation with the series, of course. Thank you for giving it a chance, hope you enjoy!

Word Count: Like 7k, I’m sorry

Warnings: As usual, mentions and descriptions of blood, death, torture, injury and people being burnt alive. Mentions or allusions to rape. If there’s anything else I didn’t mention, please let me know. Fair warning that the Reader Character may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but please give her a chance.

A/N: So, in this universe, bc fuck Michael Hirst, Sigurd is alive (tho Ivar did throw the axe) but married and away, Bjorn is still somewhere sunny, and Dublin was founded in Saxon land by Hvitty, Ivar and Ubbe, but it is the latter the one in control, prompting Ivar to eventually return to Kattegat and take the throne form Lagertha (she is alive just like in the show, only Bjorn is not here -I like to think he would understand his brothers wanting to avenge Aslaug?- and Floki departed bc he didn’t want to have to choose between supporting the kid he raised and an old friend), leaving him as King, Ubbe as ruler of Dublin, Hvitserk in Kattegat for now like in the show, Bjorn getting a tan in the Mediterranean, and Sigurd alive and happy cause goddammit killing him was a stupid choice. Sorry and btw this isn’t my creation, this is based on some exchanges I saw on reddit and a lil bit of me lol)

The warrior hesitates before letting you enter the tent, but you do so quietly and without a word, like it is expected out of you, and the men discussing war take no notice of you as you slip into a seat and watch them discuss.

Narses, still in the armor of a Byzantine Strategus despite his back having been turned to the Empire for a long time, turns to look at you as you enter. He doesn’t say a word, but in his green eyes there’s a plea for you not to speak, one that you must obey with gritted teeth and bitten tongue.

He understands, and there’s relief in Narses’ eyes.

Your friend. Your confidante.

Your fool.

His lips are pressed into a thin line, his hands supporting most of his weight as he leans on the war table.

“Our numbers are strong enough to hold until support from Strepshire arrives.” The Christian you recognize as Leofric -a bishop? Cleric? You have no idea anymore- speaks, his voice not much unlike the sound of the Byzantine soldiers’ armor plates rustling together as they march down the streets, burning idols and slaying the poor fools that believed the Gods would save them.

“If we retreat, we can-…” Narses argues, but is quickly interrupted.

“You belong to us!” Leofric barks, and you startle at the sudden aggression, “You have made a deal, Greeks. You must honor it.”

“I am aware. I am also aware you Saxons would sacrifice everything for your revenge.” Narses scoffs back, interrupting the Saxon and your train of thought at the same time.

“You want the same, boy. Is it not why you insist on gaining our support?” Stithulf, the leader, states, leaning back on his chair and resting his hands on the back of his head.

His posture screams of arrogance, his young age of a boy with too much power, his scars of a monster eager to fight.

You could use someone like him leading your army. You have seen too many of the so-called soldiers in your home bend the knee to a false Emperor. Maybe you need a monster on your side, someone with the same thirst for blood Greece left you with, someone willing and able to bring the Gods down from the very Olympus for retribution.

And as he leans back he catches sight of you, his expression tightens into a scowl, and you discard the remote possibility.

Not only is he a Christian, the same brand of men that burned your home, your mother, and years later you as well; but he looks upon you like all you are to do is be one of more of virginal maidens for his strange pantheon.

“What is the witch doing here?” He asks out loud, and you swallow down the words you want to say, but still holding his gaze.

“She is to be my wife, I trust her advice.” Narses sentences, sending you a glance that you return with a grateful one of your own.

“I didn’t know you Greeks were ruled over by your women.”

“Greek women are the only ones to birth real men.” You quip before you can stop yourself, reminded with the bittersweet feeling of nostalgia of when your father told you those exact words.

“Is that what your Goddess tells you, Heathen?”

Even the cadence of Leofric’s voice is enough to get you to twist your lip as you turn your gaze to him, but he remains stoic, a quiet sort of anger bubbling behind his eyes. You could swear a small smile tugs at his lips, as if he truly believes a simple word is enough to silence you.

The loud interruption of Narses’ fists colliding with the table stops his mocking, and the man’s eyes shift to his Byzantine ally within a moment.

“Do not call her that.”

“It is not an insu-…” You start, but your friend turns to you once again, begging you in silence to keep quiet. Biting down a sigh, you lean back in your chair and return your eyes to the map.

A long way from home, setting tents alongside Christians, and shutting your mouth because a man told you to. For all the visions and counsel the Gods have sent you through the years, a word of what was to become of your integrity would have been appreciated.

The sound of the curtains of the tent flapping open and closed makes you lift your gaze from the map, and you see Stithulf’s retrieving back.

Narses sighs, not looking at you when he concedes, both to inform you and the rest of the Saxons and Arab mercenaries in the room,

“We will hold.”

A cold hand grips your heart and the names of the Goddesses you seek for guidance and comfort are at the tip of your tongue, shaped by your lips but never spoken.

The Christians leave you two alone, and you walk to the soldier hunched over the war table. Your native Greek feels like a soft song evoking nostalgia as it dances past your lips:

“You cannot…”

“Please, my love.”

Anger bubbles within you, and you stand up straighter as you meet his eyes, “Narses, the Varangians will overpower us, you know we lost too many already, the support from Ivar the Boneless’ incoming army will crush us, you know h-…”

“This is a matter of war, love, let me handle it.” Narses interrupts, to which you frown.

“I know of war Narses! And I know this is a foolish move!”

“Do you know how to lift a sword?” He retorts, a challenge in his voice that does not go unnoticed.

“I…” You clench your teeth, looking up at him with narrowed eyes. “I do not need to fight to…”

He laughs bitterly, interrupting you, “Are you hearing your own words?”

“Are you hearing yours? The Varangian King has a crown made of bones and blood, Narses, don’t be foolish. Athena rejoices when he wages war, his army carries her favor.” You spit out your words, trying to make him understand. Narses remains impassive, though, eyes on the map and jaw clenched tight.

“You cannot argue of battle if you have never-…”

You interrupt him with a scoff, pointing an accusing finger at him even when he doesn’t meet your eyes, “I do not need to know how to kill to know the Varangians will swallow you whole. And you’ll drag our people with you.”

At your last words, his head snaps up, eyes facing yours with ferocity and more than old anger, “What choice do I have, huh? We will freeze or starve come winter, we need to move for Eleusis soon!”

“Our people…” You start, but he interrupts you again.

“Our people chose to follow me, and they will.”

“They followed me, they believe in me,” You correct without hesitation, teeth bared, “You followed me, Narses, and I let you, because you promised me an army.”

For a second he hesitates, takes you in with what seem to be new eyes. He seems to have forgotten there’s more than a meek priestess to the woman he followed from Attica. He seems to forget the bloodied hands and hungry smile that greeted him when you gave him the choice to be at your side.

“And I followed you because I love you, because I believe in you!” He exclaims, making shame and regret churn at your insides. You deviate your eyes from his, gritting your teeth.

“I begged you not to force our people to fight against these Norsemen, and you didn’t listen,” You grit out after a few breaths, anger returning to your voice, “Where was your love, your trust, when you chose to ally with these…Christians?”

He takes one of your hands in his, and the touch feels cold.

“You must trust me with this,” He intreats, warm eyes looking for something in your own you don’t think he can find. “Can you trust me?” A small pause, and you taste your own regrets in your mouth, “Love me?”

You press your lips into a line, and because you cannot say anything else, because the lie has gone on for too long and you might as well offer a truth before you entreat your soul to Hades, you whisper,

“Once, I could have.”

But he shakes his head, fervent and certain as he finds your eyes again,

“I promised you Attica, and it will be yours.”

But his words are empty. You do not care for that kingdom if the people that you love are not alive and prospering in it.

“Pray to the Gods you are killed by the Varangians, old friend. I will sacrifice you to Hades myself if you dare return alive from the place you are condemning my people to die on.” You sentence, unable to keep from showing the curl of disgust in your lip, the ancient pain in your eyes.

Narses walks closer to you, eyes searching yours and hands on your shoulders. You clench your jaw. He is gentle, he always is. Gentle, but so were the men that held you as their brothers in arms dragged your mother out of that temple.

You take a step back, but Narses speaks still, ignoring your discomfort,

“These Christians care not for their God, they just want Ivar the Boneless and his brothers. We give them to Stithulf, and they will march for Eleusis with us.”

You shake your head as you watch him believe his own lies.

“Even if we succeed, you are exchanging one master for another, Narses.” The words are your farewell as you turn your back to him and walk towards the entrance of the tent.

____

You walk into your tent and are greeted with a language these Saxons want to have you killed for speaking. The tongue of savages, of barbarians, of Vikings.

“Did they threaten to burn you yet?” Sieghild asks, and you can hear the smile in her voice even if her back is turned to you as she tends to the fire.

“Narses and Stithulf command us to remain,” You confess instead, voice breaking, “Kattegat’s army will be here in a day’s time to aid Dublin’s, but we will not retreat.”

The gasp she lets out forces you to shut your eyes tight in hope of keeping the tears at bay.

You both remain silent for a few instants, and you let yourself fall to the log she brought as a seat. Taking a seat next to you, she places a motherly hand on your knee, squeezing lightly until you look back up at her.

Blueish ink traces ancient marks on the skin of her face, and she moves a lock of your hair away from your face, the rattling sounds of her bracelets and trinkets reaching your ears and filling you with a sense of nostalgia you have difficulty explaining.

“If we must, we will die. Resisting, like your mother and I taught you.”

“This is not the war I will die fighting on!” You yell back, closing your hands into fists as they start shaking. “I will not see my people die fighting a cause not their own, Sieghild. I can’t.”

She takes your head in her hands gently, and, pressing cold lips to your forehead, she gives you the comfort only a mother can.

“Even if we die tomorrow, the Gods are with us. They have been close to you since your birth. You will understand soon.”

“I will certainly see Hades soon.” You smile bitterly, but Sieghild doesn’t falter.

“Then challenge his throne.” She states, and the feral, hungry, look in her eyes makes you think she is not speaking of your God.

You do not even believe in the same Gods, and yet Sieghild remains at your side, you at hers, since she found a crying child clutching a wooden carving of Persephone.

“They want me to give them up, but I won’t.” You argue stubbornly, as the red-haired woman cleans your face with a warm wet cloth. She smiles.

“Arguing about Gods is a matter for adults, little one,” She silences your next argument with a single finger, inked and painted like her face and arms. “They cannot make you believe in their God.”

“But…Mother’s altar, th-they…”

“Those are merely worldly things. The Christians fight with fire what Logi and Glöð themselves have created.”

“Who?”

She chuckles, fingers going through your hair and places a finger on your chest.

“Your faith, your legacy, remain here.”

And at dawn, when the men sound the horns and ready for a battle they must know will be lost, you whisper a prayer to Athena and Enyo, your heart griped tight by the cruel mistresses of Fate.

Even all the tales travelers and mercenaries told you about the army of Kattegat, the sheer strength, the flawless tactics, the barbarian-like warriors; none of that prepared you for the display of forces, however small considering his actual army, Ivar the Boneless has displayed before you.

You catch a glimpse of Narses and Stithulf approaching the King, you hear faintly of the Viking’s taunts.

“Narses is a fool.” You bite out, anger poisoning your voice even as tears clogging your throat make the words wobble.

“A Byzantine Strategus doesn’t fall without a fight, girl. Do not grant my countrymen their victory just yet.”

Even if you hide it as you lower your face, a surge of pride for the foolish warrior that followed you to the ends of the world makes a small smile blossom in your face.

“Do I hear you admitting us soft citizens stand a chance against your brutes, mother?” You mock with a smile, even as you discuss the imminent danger that the Norse men represent to you and your people. Maybe it’s because of the way Sieghild, with all her harshness and tough lessons, comforts you even facing death itself. Maybe it’s the Gods that have guided you your whole life embracing you as you near your descent to Hades.

She laughs, raspy and warm, as always. “I’m saying your boy may give the sons of Ragnar an entertainment.”

A crow flies overhead, cawing loudly and taking your gaze away from the soldiers ahead and into the sky. Something within you, something primal and asleep seems to follow its path in the skies with more than just your eyes.

“Odin is watching. History will be made today.” Sieghild whispers behind you, but you cannot take your gaze away from the black feathers as you answer.

“Apollo sends us an omen. The Gods do not favor us.”

She laughs quietly, shaking her head as she rests a heavy hand on your shoulder

“Your Goddess surely revels in this, dear. The spilled blood of those who will be to arrive at her kingdom waters her flowers, after all."

Flashes of a life before chaos blossom behind your closed eyes, images of a life under the spring sun, of fertility festivals and your mother’s warm laughter as she honors the Daughter of Nature.

And for a second, with the warmth of nostalgia encompassing you, you want to argue that Persephone looks after life; but when your eyes open and all you see is war and cold, you realize maybe she wasn’t the one captured.

Maybe she was not a stolen maiden, but a bloodthirsty usurper.

“May she rejoice, then, and be merciful when we reach her Kingdom.” You whisper.

The war cries reach your ears before you can even see the warriors attack, but soon chaos follows the chariot, that marches not with the set pace of Apollo’s, but free and leaving chaos and death at its wake.

With a heavy weight on your stomach, you hold your place as the battle begins, the injured and dying falling back to the area you look after with Greek soldiers at your back, granting a safe haven for the fallen, either to give them another chance to fight or a merciful end.

_____

It’s been days and the Saxons still push for victory, despite the losses. And, despite their losses and bloodshed, the Vikings push ruthlessly for death.

The camp of healers you have set by the entrance of the woods is so filled with the stench of blood and death that you fear you will never be able to smell a flower again. The warriors come and go, the drachmas in their eyes or in their hands. Your heart dies a little with every familiar face you send off to Hades.

You are working on pressing down with the poultice of herbs to stop a soldier from bleeding from the wound on his back when you hear, past the yells and death and fighting, your name.

You would know that voice anywhere, and you leave the safety of the healing camp to follow the hoarse call.

Narses’ figure stumbles and crawls as he tries reaching you, and, not caring for battle, you run the space separating you. Your knees dig painfully into the earth as you kneel at his side, but the pain in your heart drowns it all.

“No, no, no,” You sob, shaking fingers tracing his bloodied cheeks as he gasps in pain in your arms. His eyes are focused on you, and you cannot deny him the answer of yours, even if battle still goes on around you. With another broken gasp, you whisper, “You fool, you fool.”

Galla calls your name from somewhere at your side, and you turn blind attention to her, murmuring to have people take him to the healers’ tent. She agrees, and you start to pull away from your childhood friend.

Narses opens his mouth to speak, but only blood pours out. You silence him with trembling fingers against his lips, granting the kiss you cannot. Your heart begs you to do something, anything, to keep him alive, to take away his pain, to…to…

But all you do is remain kneeling on the ground, and you cannot take your eyes off his shield. Splattered with blood and mud, left behind a few feet away from you, on the cold and unrelenting earth.

Your mother’s last words to your father, you remember them as if it were yesterday, as if you could still see the warmth in her gaze, the hardened adoration in his. Her delicate hands offering him the shield with Sparta’s symbol on it as he prepared to storm Macedonia, her words a murmur that meant come back to us, my love even when her sentence was other.

Return home with it, or on it.

With it, or on it. With it, or on it. With it, or on it.

But Narses never returned home, none of you ever did. He never returned home, he didn’t die for your home, he died for…for…

You hear hurried footsteps coming towards you, the feeling of having Varangian eyes on you makes you turn just in time to see the warrior approaching. You grab Narses’ shield from the ground, moving as fast as you can to guard your back and block the Viking’s strike with the metal shield.

It is sheer anger and grief, nothing more than the desire to hurt back, that pushes you to take an arrow from the quiver at your back and drive it through the warrior’s knee with your bloodied hand.

He falters, stumbling away from you, but you don’t let go, holding on tightly to the shaft of the arrow and inflicting as much pain as you can. When he finally hits the ground with his back, you crawl over him, sitting on his stomach and bashing his face with the shield.

With your weight upon him, his axe cannot find a home in your skin and instead meets the shield. Over and over, metal meets metal. With a growl, the Viking lets go of it and grabs your hair, pulling roughly and forcing your blows in his face to stop.

You let go of the shield, and your eyes focus on the skies above for a moment before you find the strength to fight.

A yell leaves your lips, and your hungry teeth find the tender skin at the inside of his arm, forcing him to let go of your hair. Blood fills your mouth and almost makes you gag. You spit the flesh from your mouth and with a snarl you drive another arrow through his eye.

He screams as your whole weight leans on the arrow, making sure the projectile you use as a spear kills fast. Your hands keep slipping from the shaft as the blood you have tried to keep from spilling and the blood you have spilled wets your hands.

When he finally stops moving, you know you should feel nothing but emptiness and dread.

Looking with frantic eyes for Narses and Galla, you find him being carried by two of his soldiers back to the tent. You should follow, but you cannot bring yourself to do so.

You look down at your dress. Red, the color of a bride’s veil, stained with the blood of the man you just killed. Your ears ring, your eyes cloud with tears as you realize what you have done, and you scurry away from the corpse as if your breath cannot get into your chest because of your proximity to him…to it.

You know what you should feel, you know what a Priestess, a woman, ought to feel at the sight of death, you know. But dread and horror are not the only things you feel. A part of you is satiated, like a snake curling satisfied and vindicated after injecting its poison; you taste the blood and feel alive.

When you lift your gaze to the battle again, you catch the eyes of the Varangian King. You know who he is, you have heard the tales and even without the chariot he sits on you would still recognize the eyes of the man that rules over Kattegat.

Ivar the Boneless.

He looks at you for a few moments, and you fear he is to call for his men or kill you himself, but he doesn’t. A slow, cruel, ruthless smile starts curving at his bloodthirsty lips, and when he regards you, you feel he can see through your eyes and into whatever it is that made you kill that man.

He lifts his arm not on the reins, bloodied axe held in his hand and slowly, with the same terrifying grin still on his lips, the King points towards you and grants you a curt bow of his head. If it’s a recognition of your kill, a promise to kill you himself, or something else, you cannot know.

You scurry back to the woods, fearing an axe to your back that never comes.

____

Whatever advantage the Christians were so sure to have quickly dissolves like mist, and within days the Vikings push forward with no regard for the lines your people or your unwanted masters wanted to protect.

There’s three injured men under your care when you hear the warning that a group of enemies is coming your way. A quick glance towards Galla, the childhood friend that followed you from Eleusis into this cold hell lets her know what to do.

Her dark eyes fill with understanding before you can even utter a word.

“Lift them up, we are retreating.” She barks at the other soldiers, bow held tightly in her hand betraying her fear, her pain. The men accompanying her hesitate, looking at you for a second before turning to her.

“I may not be able to fight like a Strategus, but I can distract them enough for you to run.”

“Our people…” One of them starts, but you interrupt with a shake of your head, reaching forward with a courage you do not believe to truly possess and take his sword from its holster.

“Our people live on in you,” You promise, and even as your voice wavers you still try not to show how fear grips at your throat or how unbalanced you are with the new weight in your hands. Galla’s eyes lock with yours, and you give her a nod, “Go.”

I pray you find Sieghild on your way out of this slaughter.

“You better make it out alive.” She threatens in good will, and you find yourself smiling. Just before she is to take off with the others, you call out.

“Galla,” You hesitate, feeling like asking to deploy this would be an acceptance of your death. Still, you take a deep breath and say, “Once the dust settles, send some of your people to Thebes, Constantinople and Sparta.”

“What for?” She asks, but in her tone you can hear she understands your words: she is to protect your people, she is to lead them. Because you will not be alive to do so.

“You’ll need spies. When the time comes, you’ll know what to do with them.” You sentence, and after a moment of hesitation you hear the girl’s footsteps fading behind you.

Galla’s hoarse yells in Greek to call your people to retreat become the rhythm at which you let loose arrows to find the Viking warriors. You tell yourself it’s just like hunting deer, you tell yourself it is not men and women you kill. Brothers, sisters, friends, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters.

You tell yourself it is just like hunting, but the tears clogging at your throat and making pain and rage accompany your moves as you let the arrows loose show you that you don’t believe your own lies.

It doesn’t matter how fast you move, how efficient your shots are, there will always be more of them. And you know this, and fear has a cold grip on your heart, even as you continue trying to take out any straggler that chases after the retreating Greeks.

So, the bodies dropping and the injured yells bring the attention to you, and you buy Galla and the others as much time as you have arrows and legs to run on.

Running helps when the Vikings can be distracted by something else, but after you took down some of his countrymen, this warrior seems to only have eyes for you. You scramble to lift the sword you took from your warrior before they took off, and, cornered as you are, you are forced to face the offending Viking.

The Viking strikes first, but you block his attack with the sword. The blunt force of his swing makes it so that the axe stops just shy of the intended blow to your head, opening a deep cut on your forehead as it is slowed by the sword.

Wincing past the pain you hold your ground, facing the hungry gaze of the warrior with your own, although you are forced to close one of your eyes as the blood from the cut in your forehead starts dripping down your face.

The man’s attack has failed, but he smirks, though, before wrenching the weapon from your hands with a twist of his axe.

You can do nothing but stumble back, you Goddess’ name on your lips as you face him with wide eyes.

He mutters something in his own language before discarding your sword and moving to strike again. This time you are defenseless, and can only step back and try and dodge his continuous blows with increasing panic.

Blood, probably his own and his enemy’s, stains his mouth, his face, his hands. He still smiles, and you wonder if bloodthirst becomes more literal than what Sieghild explained in her tales of her people.

His movements stop suddenly, though, and he falls limply to the ground, a small axe protruding from the back of his head.

“I told you you’d need to know how to fight, little one,” Sieghild boasts as she approaches you. The axe leaving the dead man’s skull makes a horrible sound, but she’s not bothered by it, choosing instead to say, “Even you Greeks must see the advantage of fighting like a Viking.”

An arrow in his knee, you feel the iron piercing the muscle, the bone, the tendons. The edge of the shield breaking the bones in his face, the sound it makes. Screams of pain, that you silence with another arrow in the eye.

The King’s hungry smile when he spared you.

You shake your head, returning your thoughts back to the moment, and regard the woman in front of you with a smile.

“Galla told me you chose to stay behind.” She states, and years knowing her let you know of the reprimand shining past the gruff tone. Her hand, bloodied as it is, reaches for the cut in your forehead, inspecting it with the eyes of someone that saw countless wounds and fought in countless wars.

“I wanted to distract the warriors from the path they took.” You offer in explanation.

“For someone so…small you sure take a lot of risks, my child.” She sighs. You’re about to answer when the thrumming of the ground underneath your feet stops you. Sieghild’s movements stop, your breath dies in your lungs.

Bees swarming. You remember an Arab merchant telling you about Varangian armies, and he spoke of chaos and deadliness and bloodthirst. And as you watch the Varangians flank the battlefield, archers at the ready, warriors beating their shields, while the King that crossed the sea to assist his brother commands them to hold with a single gesture; you cannot help but think why didn’t the merchant talk about the grace of it all, the beauty in the blood.

“That boy carries his father’s cleverness with him. And his mother’s favor.” Sieghild mutters in the strange calm that settles as Ivar the Boneless and his brothers taunt Stithulf, dare him to continue the fight and face certain death or retreat.

“You knew that before.”

“So did you. You tried to warn Narses against facing him, little one.” She says, and the name makes a pit of guilt and grief form in your heart.

“Maybe my warnings are the reason he is dead now.” You bite out, voice quivering and eyes burning.

The shieldmaiden turns to you, lips parted and eyes wide. You offer her a nod and a tight-lipped smile, a small sign that it is okay, that…that it is Fate.

You promised Narses you’d kill him yourself for sending your people to die, and grief and pain do not stray you from that resolve. He sentenced your people to die at the hands of these Varangians, it is only right he leads them to the Underworld.

It doesn’t help the pit of pain and absence and fear and cold that forms at your chest, but…but it makes it easier to burden.

Murmured words in Norse startle you out of your thoughts, and you find Sieghild’s eyes still on you, expression still stunned and in a mix of awe and terror.

“When the last of the chains of nostalgia fades away even as she clutches it in her arms.”

“What did you say, mother?” You ask, taking a small step closer and looking into her eyes searching for any answer.

But the shieldmaiden is quick to put on a smile on her face,

“You told me before you had no interest in what Lady Freyja has to tell me, little one.” She mocks, but there’s a shadow in her expression, a strange darkness looming behind her eyes.

A familiar one.

“You are the one that taught me-…”

“I taught you to be your own woman!” The Varangian roars, and for the first time you realize exactly the kind of fire the women from her homeland have, that made them capable and free. “I taught my daughter better than this!”

“What choice do I have? We need the support from Narses’ army, we need someone to lead the men into battle the way I know will grant us victory!”

Two long strides, and the tall and imposing shieldmaiden is standing before you, a mix of reluctant softness and angry stoicism in her inked face.

“You fight. You fight against the notions these men have about you, you fight against that boy that only listens to what you have to say when you promise him love in exchange,” Her green eyes burn into yours, “You fight, little one. That’s what I taught you to do, what you were born to do.”

“Narses is a good man, mother. I will not fight him.” You reply, as calmly as you can even as your chest caves under a strange pressure, as evenly as you can even if the words leaving your lips taste like lies.

“You wouldn’t give your love without a fight though, minn dóttir.” Her hand grasps at your chin, and there’s a strange storm in her gaze, “I won’t lose my daughter to that boy’s whims.”

“I am not lost to any man.”

Her lips curve into a smile, a little savage, a little Viking.

“I know. You are my daughter, after all.”

“He was a good man, mother.” You offer quietly, and even if the binds to Narses, the binds you set on yourself and your mother hated the most, are gone, there’s still the same dark desperation, that same stubbornness you saw in her eyes that day you told her about your choice to marry him.

“Not good enough,” Is all she replies, and her eyes focus somewhere past the two of you, on the center of the battlefield where everything seems to have stopped. Sieghild sighs, “And your Gods and mine know that, little one. Your Mistress may have touched your soul, but Freyja lays claim to your heart.”

With your eyes on the thick of battle, you watch Stithulf and his trusted men lay down their weapons, and slowly retreat. You have been defeated.

____

“I told you only death would follow,” You say, your back against the foot of a table as you sit on the cold ground, your bloodied hands in your lap, motionless. You allow yourself a small laugh, manic and broken as it is, “You fought for so long, sacrificed so much, and you couldn’t even make the Varangian King bleed.”

You followed the Saxons back to their decadent city, and now sit past their walls awaiting the death that will follow. The city may have held for long enough that the Saxons could secure an escape, back when your people were with them and they didn’t have more corpses than soldiers.

But now, now it is just a matter of time before the Varangians return to finish it all.

Stithulf turns to you, cold fury shining past his gaze, but you hold his stare. The man walks over to you, armor rustling and making a sound that rings in the ears that have heard nothing but war for so long now.

He bends down to be at your level, face close to yours and lips set on a snarl.

“You ordered your people to pull back.” He accuses, but you shrug in response.

The pretense of what a good little fucking woman you ought to be to make these fools content with their idea of supremacy is long gone from your mind. You will die without masks, and if it means earning a few deserved hits from these Saxons for not shutting your mouth, then so be it.

“It was never our war, Christian.”

“Where have they gone to!?” He asks, ignoring your words. His fascination with how the Greek forces work shines through his bloodthirst and anger as he regards you. You know the reason why he went to Narses for an allegiance in the first place is because of the tactics, the fighting style, of your people; and you know he longed to make them a part of his own army.

But you will leave your own under the boot of a Christian the day Persephone calls for your soul to become one of her Furies.

“You will never find them.” You promise through a tired and battle-worn smile, morbidly delighting yourself in the way he seems to grow more enraged.

“How are you so certain?”

“The Varangians, Vikings, will find us first. They will kill us all, and you know this.” You sentence, standing up. You cannot help it when your eyes fixate themselves on the drying blood staining your hands.

You wish you could say most of it was Christian, or even Varangian.

But no, the blood of Greeks stains your hands. The blood of thousands, even if only less than eight hundred died today.

“And why are you so certain?”

“If you had retreated before that King came from across the sea-…”

“Narses told us your mother is Viking, how are we certain you did not plan this, plan to betray us?” One of his trusted men speaks out, limping from his place by the war table. You watch the deep and bloodied gash in his thigh, wondering why that old man survives being incapacitated while in battle but Narses is to fall.

You shake your head mutely before offering him a hollow chuckle.

“Me betraying you would imply I ever faked loyalty for you, or pretended to care for your survival.”

“You live, witch. Any sane man would question why.”

“You think…what? That I have helped any of the sons of Ragnar defeat you?” You let out a small laugh. “No, I did not. I will not let you blame me for your own weakness.”

You move to leave the tent, but Stithulf’s hand wraps around your arm. His voice is low when he speaks.

“If you tell your soldiers to fight with us, I can-…”

“I am not Narses, you cannot fool me with empty promises,” You interrupt, wrenching your arm from his grasp. Less than two hundred Greek warriors still remain in this city, and the Saxon wants still for every last drop of their blood. “The Greeks that remain here will not die quietly, but do not fool yourself into thinking you can ever command them.”

He stalks even closer, looming over you with enraged factions, and you cannot help the pang of fear that the murderous intent in his eyes sends through you.

His sword leaving its holster startles the room of men into silence, and you feel their attention set on the two of you. The blade finds a home right under your chin, piercing mildly at the soft skin.

Your breath quickens in fear, and when you swallow past your dry throat you feel the tip of the sword inflicting sharp pain in your neck.

Stithulf smiles darkly, “I could kill you now and leave them leaderless, heathen.”

But you refuse to let him see the fear in your eyes, instead promising, “Make me a martyr and you will not survive the night, Christian. The Greeks will kill and die for me.”

Even as you leave the tent behind, you hear the heavy footsteps of the Saxon behind you. A call of your name, and you stop. Not your title -Anassa, Hiereiai-, not an insult -heathen, pagan-, not your lineage -Daughter of Athens, Daughter of Sparta-. Your name.

“If you wanted to kill me you would have done so in front of your men.” You state without turning around, and the Christian reaches your side with his sword holstered.

“I don’t want to kill you,” He insists, shaking his head, “But I should do it regardless. You are a smart woman, which makes you dangerous.”

Not even a muzzle would keep your next words from leaving your lips, “Dangerous? Is a man dangerous for being knowledgeable?”

“If he has nothing to lose, like you, yes.”

“What are you saying, Stithulf?”

The Saxon sighs, an act of regret and humanity you don’t believe for a moment.

“I’m saying you should know that you have forced my hand, Greek, that I had every intention to have you wage war alongside us, had you chosen to do so.

_____

Hi, I’m kinda amazed you got this far down lol, but thank you so much for reading! This is one of the first projects in a while that I am really loving to write, and I hope you like it!

Please let me know what you think, I am one needy fuck when it comes to feedback :)

[aion-rsa]

Vikings Season 6 Part Two Review (Spoiler-Free)

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This Vikings season 6 part two review is based on all 10 episodes and contains no spoilers.

Vikings has always been Ragnar Lothbrok’s (Travis Fimmel) story. First, we witnessed the rise of the man himself from farmer to visionary to earl to king to legend. Post-Ragnar, the show became an exploration of how Ragnar’s legend suffused and inhabited his sons, and the consequences of its interpretation upon enemies, frenemies, kith, kin and Kings the world over. And, now, the saga comes to an end with the second half of Vikings swansong sixth season, ten episodes that drip with all the blood, battles, tears, seers, fears, and philosophy you’ve come to expect from the History Channel’s flagship show (though this season will premiere on Amazon).    

It’s tough to write a spoiler-free review of a show like Vikings, especially here at the show’s conclusion where it won’t be surprising to learn that the blood flows like wine. Who lives, who dies? Who returns, who stays away? Even acknowledging the presence or absence of a surprise within a certain context could constitute a massive spoiler. As a consequence, much of this review will read like the ravings of the show’s very own seer, a web of insinuations and mystical mumbo jumbo designed only to make sense once the prophecy has been made flesh. 

Early in the season, Gunnhild (Ragga Ragnars) remarks: “Perhaps the Golden Age of the Vikings is gone.” This is a perfect distillation of the thematic ground covered by this half season. Here we have the fall of an empire, the erosion and sometimes amputation of the old ways, and the savage geo-surgery of a flailing world in flux. Absolute power corrupts absolutely; only the truly mad would seek to be king. The battle between paganism and Christianity, always at the forefront of the series, reaches its culmination here, and the episodes are awash with rich religious imagery and symbolism. There is also an answer, of sorts, to the question of which of Ragnar’s sons best embodies and encapsulates his legacy. Each of them carries a chunk of their father distilled within them: Ivar (Alex Høgh Andersen), his wrath, his thirst to conquer; Bjorn (Alexander Ludwig), his galvanizing spirit, his authority, his legend; Hvitserk (Marco Ilsø) , his pain, confusion and predilection for self-destruction; and Ubbe (Jordan Patrick Smith), his sense of adventure, his vision. Series creator and showrunner Michael Hirst knows that you come to these final episodes laden with ideas and expectations surrounding this philosophical set-to, and does a sterling job subverting or confirming them. His skill is in making the surprising seem inevitable, and the inevitable seem surprising.

Most of the Vikings’ world is bathed in blue and grey, an endless twilight of death and despair. Within these grim parameters the direction and cinematography never fails to evoke the beautiful, misty emptiness of the world: the howling of the wind on desolate hills; silence, smooth and dark, stretching towards the pale horizon. There are lots of sweeping aerial shots, which cast you, the audience, as Gods looking down on the action from above. The emotional distance this creates, especially above battlefields, reinforces the absurdity and futility of the bloodshed, something we’ve been encouraged to feel in every season, but never moreso than now. 

The season is front-loaded with some thrilling sequences (including a suitably chilling use of CGI), and at least one moment that will make the hairs stand up on your neck, and hot tears fall from your eyes. The mechanisms of plot necessarily predominate in the early episodes, as machination piles upon machination, twist upon turn, and the pieces of the tragedies and double-dealings to come are moved into place upon fate’s great chess-board: a broken Bjorn has tough choices to consider following his people’s defeat at the hands of the Rus; Ubbe embarks on a westward quest in search of the promised land; Ivar and Hvitserk continue their uneasy alliance with each other within the fraught principality of the maladjusted, half-mad Oleg (Danila Koslovsky). 

An accusation often leveled at Vikings is that it became a lesser show once divorced from Ragnar’s immediate orbit; that when he died, so too did the interest of many of the audience, who never quite took to his sons with the same level of enthusiasm. I can understand the hole that Ragnar’s exit left in the hearts of fans. He was a compelling, larger-than-life character, channeled with great charisma and presence by Travis Fimmel. But although this series is ostensibly about Ragnar, the story is also far, far bigger than him, a point this final season doesn’t fail to ram home. In fact, it’s the whole point.  Besides, the performances of Alexander Ludwig, Jordan Patrick Smith, Marco Ilsø, and Alex Høgh Andersen have always been uniformly excellent, generating more than enough presence, individually and collectively, to carry the show in Ragnar’s name. 

If there is a mote of truth in the accusation it’s probably attributable, in part at least, to the challenges of satisfying such a sprawling ensemble. One of the beneficial things about the show having shed so many characters over the past few seasons is that the sons now have proper time to grow, develop and, ultimately, crystallize. In particular Hvitserk, who was always the sketchiest and most ill-defined of the brothers, finally coalesces into something greater than the sum of his parts. Even his unhealthy attachment to Ivar begins to make sense, and comes to play an instrumental part in much of what makes the final stretch work so well. 

Ivar himself has always been a joy to watch – surely one of the greatest small-screen monsters – but occasionally he could be one-note, albeit largely thanks to his predilection for painting himself into a corner and then having to fight his way out again. Ivar’s relationship with, and to, the young Rus heir Igor (Oran Glynn O’Donovan) helps to humanize him, allowing him to recreate the better aspects of his own relationship with Ragnar, this time sans grand, King-busting plan. Ivar even demonstrates, from time to time, something approaching humility, which can’t be easy for a self-proclaimed God. Plus there’s a moment between Ivar and Katia (Alicia Agneson) that’ll have you punching the air in triumph, and then thinking strangely of yourself for having fist pumped such a thing. 

Read more

TV

Why Vikings Is Ending

By Michael Ahr

Once the heavy gears of plot have cranked into place, the season dips into ennui, as characters drift, break down and take stock. This can make the season a slog to get through, especially if you’re binge-watching; like mainlining misery directly into your blood-stream. Even knowing that this was undoubtedly a deliberate structural choice – to make you feel the characters’ helplessness, heartache, angst and boredom; to understand what drives them to do what they do when Gods and men fall silent – you’re unlikely to emerge from the middle-to-end section brimming with vim and good cheer. Here, another central question is tackled: is there any escape from the seemingly endless cycle of death, destruction and revenge in which Viking society finds itself mired? What hope have Ragnar’s sons of escape when Ragnar himself, the most vocal advocate for a new way of doing things, ultimately perpetuated the cycle by posthumously siccing his sons on his enemies? 

The final act makes everything worthwhile. Think of the middle act like purgatory before Heaven (or should that be Valhalla)? While not every storyline feels like it has an equal place and weight in the pay-off – the latter sections in Kattegat, especially, feel perfunctory and will probably struggle to elicit much interest – most of the series’ overarching narrative and thematic threads come together perfectly in the end, giving a deeply satisfying sense of simultaneous closure and open-endedness.   

There are many surface similarities between Vikings and Game of Thrones, in terms of their stock-in-trade themes, settings, cast-counts, body-counts and bundles of R-rated violence. Where they differ significantly is in Vikings sticking the landing, and not just with the final episode – which is beautiful, elegiac and haunting – but over and throughout the whole final half of the season (give or take a few minor missteps).

Game of Thrones’ once stellar reputation will perhaps forever be sullied by an ending, and a final season that many felt was flat, rushed and cack-handed. This is not the fate that will befall Vikings, which, although it never attained critical, commercial or pop-culture success on anything like the same scale as Game of Thrones, now joins the pantheon of shows whose exemplary endings have cemented their legacies. Vikings can hold its head high among such luminaries as Rectify, The Affair, The Deuce, The Wire, The Sopranos (divisive as its ending proved), The Shield and Breaking Bad (pre El Camino, at least), having offered up a finale that is so resonant, dream-like, and profound that it serves retroactively to render all of the good things about the series better, and wash away any and all misgivings and doubts. It’s a gorgeous ending that will stick in your soul for a long time.

Bon voyage, Vikings. It’s been emotional.   

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[philomaela]

Michael Hirst: Ivar is a cripple, you have to understand what that means... it means he is crippled. So maybe he does evil things but that’s only because his soul is as crippled as his body. Can’t you see that he’s a cripple? You have to have sympathy for that and understand that all the evil things he does are because he is a  c r i p p l e.

[ensifervm]

Ivar told Hvitserk that he would have liked to burn her girl alive. Hvitserk leaves Kattegat with the clear intent to betray Ivar and does not think that maybe he should bring his girl with him. Clever. 

Can someone explain me what is the whole point of Floki’s dumb island storyline? Yeah, they are killing each other since the begin of season 5, but I still cannot understand to what purpose.

After all his girls and wifes, Bjorn found love in a character who is in the series from two episodes. How cute. Judith told Alfred she killed his brother in cold blood. He became the incredible Hulk, smashed two tables and then in the next scene he is completely cool. Ok.

How in the hell would this stupid character be Alfred the Great? His mother must discover the cospiracies and kill the traitors, Ubbe must lead his army at his place and solve the battles for him. Ugh, Alfred the Great from Last Kingdom, a very underrated and low budget show, is a complex and beautiful character. Why this Alfred cannot be the same? 

Aud killed herself because she could not accept that her father was a killer. But-- he is a viking, he killed-- how many people before?  This is all from Michael Hirst's most dumbest show ever. I am so happy that the sixth season will be the ending season, considering that he ruined Vikings enough to make me hate it. 

[lisinfleur]

I agree with you about Freydis except one thing, it is not Alicia's supposed "bad acting" it was intentional from Michael Hirst, he always said the Freyvar love story was one sided, Ivar loved her in his twisted toxic way but we are never shown that Freydis loves him, actually she played him and gave him a taste of his own poison, lies and betrayal, maybe she loved him at some point but she hated him for killing Baldur and I loved her when she got revenge, she didn't care Ivar killed her.

I disagree, but even then, I respect your point, sweetie. 

I see the history one-sided, but not from his side, but for hers.

Ivar doesn’t know what is love. In his distorted vision, love is what he received from Aslaug, who did everything he wanted, covered every single one of his mistakes taking out the blame from him and lived for him no matter what circumstances, denying all the others for his sake. 

He can’t see love as a bilateral thing. For him, someone who loves him does everything for him, agrees with everything he does and takes the blame out of him always. You see it at the moment he blames Freydis for Baldur’s death saying she did it by delivering him a deformed child. He cannot understand how she could blame him since “the fault is never his for the ones who love him, right?”

I think Ivar will learn more about love in the next season, and I’m truly hopeful that he will end up understanding and growing up from this spoiled brat who can’t admit being wrong. I think he grew up a little by admitting his mistake and asking for forgiveness from Freydis - even it happening too late - but I wait to see Ivar becoming a man before this season ends.

[ossseous]

anyways im watching vikings 5b because i’m a dumb bitch but LEGIT ubbe getting in alfreds face and then alfred’s weird turned on sigh when ubbe finally leaves then judith coming in because she was listening the whole time and then her sitting in ubbe’s seat and TOUCHING THE CUP UBBE WAS DRINKING OUT OF IN THAT MEANINGFUL JUDITH WAY OF HERS and alfred watching her touch it like “ugh fuck here we go” and judith BLASTING alfred for talking to ubbe instead of his FUTURE WIFE and basically telling him to get his gay ass in line and PRETEND to be straight its too much like please just fucking punch me in the face i am, ONCE AGAIN, assuming michael “the worst writer on the planet” hirst is going to carry out a story line to it’s full potential rather than conclude it in the most unimaginative and boring way like he always does because apparently i have to set myself up for disappointment

“at least PRETEND...... to be interested”

“mother, you have NO idea--”

“NO. I understand more than you will ever know, and I REFUSE to let you feel sorry for yourself. You are a king--start behaving like one” 

no offense but if this isn’t about alfred being gay im gonna fucking throw a pie in michael hirst’s face my god damn self im tired of his bullshit.

[cortegiania]

Hi, have you seen The Tudors, and if you did, what is your opinion about it, and who is your favourite character and Why?

Hi anon, of course we have! It’s still one of our favourite Renaissance shows, if not the single fave.

 It’s heavily flawed, true, trashy in some of its parts especially in its early seasons and you might not pass your history test based on it, but it has several points in its favour which I’m going to list after telling Mary I would write a short answer

 One of the best things about it is it doesn’t oversimplify the good and the bad and it manages to paint sympathetic morally grey characters. Do you really never feel for Anne even if her relationship with the king pains Katherine? Do you never really feel for Wolsey even if both Anne and Katherine are out to get him? And I could go on, as I’m a person who cried for Cromwell just as much as I did for Anne. Another brilliant thing the show did from this particular point of view is depicting Thomas More as both a good family man and a fanatic. It wasn’t easy and in fact it was pretty brave. Compare it to the glorified Wolf Hall, where he’s a caricature of a villain as opposed to a practically spotless Cromwell. The truth is The Tudors worked where good storytelling is supposed to work, which is in making characters that are realistic, understandable and actually relatable without trying to make them “closer to us” in anything other than hairdos and clothes. And they’re 16th century characters! Who often want to kill each other!

Which brings me to my next point, historicity. I won’t be writing too much on this, I’ll just observe that more often than not the characters from The Tudors think like people of their time: they’re God-fearing, often unfortunately but realistically sexist and never anachronistically shocked to be marrying someone they don’t love or they never met. Compare it to… anything recent, really, but I could mention our very own The Borgias.

Which again brings me to my next point. Those women. I feel like recently there’s been this trend where a woman from history has to ride a horse, wear an armour and shout proto-feminist tirades while rallying troops in order to be a worthy “strong” female character, nevermind if she never did that in history. This is usually added to a dumbed down male counterpart, like Henry’s dad Henry VII was on The White Princess. Well, every single wife and sister of Henry VIII was amazingly powerful and fucking fierce on this show without ever doing any of that. This is another aspect of good storytelling Michael Hirst and his team rocked: show, don’t tell. I love all of Henry’s wives and daughters and women. Like Shonda Rhimes said, there are no dumb weak women. The Tudors shows that.

It’s actually more historically accurate than people think. If you ignore the mess they made with some characters in season 1 and little to major adjustments to the personal lives of some other throughout the other seasons, major events are generally respected. It’s more than I can say about The Borgias, which was never called out on its lack of accuracy for some reason. (fewer tits?)

I rewatch the whole thing every two or three years and every time I get a different reaction to certain things or characters. For instance I couldn’t stand poor Katherine Howard when I was younger, but know I find her story impossibly heartbreaking. I don’t want to exaggerate the value of this show, but I must say again that speaking to an audience in various stages of their life is what good storytelling does. 

On a more technical level, the cast was really strong, the costumes weren’t always appropriate for the period, but damn if they weren’t gorgeous, the sountrack is probably Trevor Morris’s best ever (Wolsey Commits Suicide/A Historic Love is out of this world). It’s just worth watching and much better than most critics will ever admit. 

Our favourite characters are Anne, Katherine, Mary and Margaret(/Mary) because again those women (see above), plus Thomas Cromwell because James Frain is entirely mesmerizing. I (Laura) personally have a soft spot for Jane Seymour as well, I thought she was intriguing in her own way.

TL;DR: Ignore the critics, The Tudors is actually a pretty good show. People out there are still trying to replicate it with mixed results because that’s the original and the one and only.

[kidslovetoys]

What our children’s art can teach us

All children love to draw and paint, but why do they do it and what can their creations tell us about them? Dr Helen Jones explores the meaning behind the art and explains how to help your child’s creativity flourish:

Table of contents:

Art is personal

Realism vs expression

Modes of expression

The cross disciplinary nature of art: how it teaches us about other subjects

Final word

Art is personal

At the very earliest stages of evolution our forebears were making art. 

In 40,000 BC, creative symbolic artworks were being handcrafted from shell, stone, and primitive paint by homosapiens. But it begs the question: why?

Why has there been an enduring drive, spanning our entire existence, to leave marks, to make our trace in the world, to create?

It is one of the few things which distinguishes us from animals. We have this wonderful yet mysterious power to create distinctly personal and individual remnants of our existence and personality.

Art is a discipline that champions our individualism. It allows us to show and share our experiences of life, without hiding who we are.

‘As we have changed, our art has changed, and how we have defined our art has changed, but that fundamental instinct to play experiment, repurpose, test and reimagine has always been central. Just as play is a deliberate pushing of the boundaries, so art has refused to be solely defined by one idea or one set of people.’ (Michael Rosen.)

We’ve all heard ‘No one is you. That is your superpower.’ As an artist, and head of art, I’d argue that nowhere is this superpower more visible, than in our visual creations.

Art prizes the original. It prizes the unique.

It says if you don’t comply with a conventional norm, then good on you. I love telling children in my lessons, that in art there is no right answer or wrong answer.

Yet very often we can act, even subconsciously, as if there is. Forcing our children into a straightjacket of neat and realistic depictions of reality. 

Parents will ask me why one child can draw so much better than theirs, when perhaps they should be asking why we assume that child’s style of drawing is better.

There is a deeply-entrenched tendency to measure children's drawing by its ‘lifelike’ standards. But as John Matthews suggests in Drawing and Painting: children and visual representation: ‘The idea that the representation of objects is at the heart of drawing is completely wrong.’

Art is a cacophony of ideas, expression and imagination. What would the world be like if it were all logical, realistic drawing? Salvador Dali, Picasso, Pollock, Hirst, not to mention thousands of other artists, would never have dazzled us with their unique ways of seeing.

Perhaps we need to consider representation as ‘re-presentation’. Because as Matthews asserts: ‘what is ‘realistic’ to the child changes with age and context.’ Perhaps it is important to your child to draw you as a humongous, overly tall figure, because to them, you seem much bigger. Thus our adult definition of art doesn’t always align with our child’s way of seeing the world.

What’s more, there are many more forms of drawing than we often realise. Drawing through stitch, drawing in sand, drawing with a sparkler, drawing with wire and so on. Contemporary artists make drawings in all sorts of ways, in non traditional media, with unconventional tools. This allows them to express things they couldn’t have in any other way. 

Realism vs. expression

Simply forcing children to draw from life doesn’t aid artistic expression. We need our children to communicate what they are thinking, imagining and feeling in many languages, verbal, spatial, gestural, musical and visual. We want them to embark on a ‘representational adventure in which meanings are given sounds, actions and images.’ John Matthews

I tell my art students ‘a camera is for capturing a realistic copy of the world around you. Art is for capturing your interpretation of the world and for expressing your unique individuality’. Often this falls on deaf ears, so prevalent are beliefs about the hierarchy of representational depiction. But what is realistic? How do things look really? Unfortunately our fixed assumptions to these questions can, at best, hinder learning possibilities, or at worst, damage our children’s self-efficacy[LINK]. So often children have fallen prey to adults working from a deficit theory - looking for what’s ‘wrong’ or ‘missing’ from their artworks. This can really corrode a child’s confidence, but more than that, it’s not necessarily right.

We unconsciously place realism at the top of the ladder, and all the other steps below it are often relegated as scribbles or ‘nearly corrects’. As children climb this ladder, (often in standardised educational settings), they get less and less opportunity to draw freely. Spontaneous drawing which serves the intentions and interests of children is becoming increasingly hard to find in schools.  According to Matthews,  this is detrimental to children’s emotional and intellectual development, ‘The child's own spontaneous visual representation and expression has been devalued in favour of a fixed, acceptable, cultural standard’

So how can we avoid this?

Perhaps we should spend more time listening to what their drawings tell us. Just as we as adults use hand gestures, facial expressions, tone range and movements as we talk, children use these features in their artwork.  For instance, mark making can represent experiences of hide and seek, people leaving us and coming back into our lives, movement, such as going through tunnels, hiding underneath something, the feel and motion of swimming, and, importantly, it can reconcile traumatic encounters.  Art is a processing of these happenings, through thoughtful gesture and mark making, which is quite different than mere representation. Thus the ‘re-presenting’ might not look like what the child is responding to, but what is occurring is a significant translation of that event.

Modes of expression

Children capture different types of information, often following different intentions or modes of thinking in their work, some of which I have simplified for ease of understanding. 

Intellectual realism.

Sometimes children draw unrecognisable shapes and claim they are a certain person or object. While this may not be realism in the sense we know it, it could be ‘intellectual realism’ in that for the child it represents their internalised view of that object or person.  It shows what the child knows, rather than what the child sees.

Symbolism and representation.

The vast majority of learning is based on signs and symbols, such as language and maths for instance, and even social interaction. Drawing is an idealised way to grasp this nature of symbolism. Discovering that marks on paper can stand for things turns a cornerstone in one's mind - a huge developmental shift.

Emotional.

Art and feelings go hand in hand. Matthews says: ‘Children’s drawing actions are sensitive to fluctuations in mood, both their own and those of people around them. The child imbues drawing with emotion and representational possibilities.’ Perhaps this is why art therapy is so successful - emotions are made tangible as they are inflected on the surface of the paper and the surface of their minds.

Grouping.

Children might group together different types of marks such as dots or dashes or marks at the beginning or end of these lines - separating out their shape vocabulary and becoming adept at matching their actions to shapes. By grouping marks according to type, he is beginning a process of classification. This is the start of maths.

Art as play.

Art can be nothing short of imaginative play. Sometimes there is no intention, other than sheer joy and exploration. I often see children use three-dimensional objects and toys in a similar way to how they use drawing - reconstructing comparable scenes and dealing with related issues. This shows that mark making is tethered to all of our experiences, especially play which has creative overlaps.

The cross disciplinary nature of art: How it teaches us about other subjects

If we listen to our body closely enough we know what it needs. I also believe if we listen to our mind closely enough we know what it needs. And children are no exception, in that they subconsciously know what they need to learn. 

‘The child is constantly, actively, purposely, seeking out those particular experiences which will promote growth.’ John Matthews

Children are always in pursuit of learning, whether they realise it or not. For me, nowhere is this more visible than in their art. It makes their learning observable, and holds the power to teach a range of subjects and disciplines, and to make them fun.

Music and sound.

Listen to your child as they are drawing - what sounds do they make? I’ve seen children blend sounds and drawings together time and time again. My daughter's experiences with music - the tempo, beat, and patterns within the song - form a backdrop to the patterns and pulsating lines she produces.

Body awareness.

‘Proprioceptive’ information about the position of our joints and limbs, balance, posture and stance are heightened in art making. When making with our hands we learn how things move, how our body moves, and how shapes can be coordinated and controlled in a dynamic, swiftly changing format. Although I would argue that not only does art make us more aware of our physical selves, it helps us reveal our inner souls.

Mathematical.

The American professor of maths John De Pillis writes: ‘‘When learners have the opportunity to use their artistic skills and draw scenarios, they can more easily visualize and figure out math problems.’ Angles, geometric shapes, measuring, proportions, ratios of paint to water, scale and perspective are some of the mathematical gifts of art.

Linguistic learning.

Art is a visual language. A universal language, that anyone can speak. We all recognise certain shapes and symbols and know what they represent. Learning the language or art support language learning in all other areas. Being able to speak visually goes hand in hand with general communication.

Science.

Children can grasp some quite unfathomable scientific concepts in their art. For example, by attempting to represent invisible events like wind, music, suction, or showing clouds moving, rain coming down, spilling from a cup, or documenting movement trajectories. They learn how to organise space, time, patterns and sequences of movement which share characteristics with what they see in the outside world. They can translate experiences of crawling through tunnels, pouring liquid through tubes, looking through cardboard rolls, into their art. Children explore and rationalise all this through drawing.

Perspective.

In more sense than one. Children can gain mental perspective on the bigger picture in life, on personal issues and dealing with trauma, as well as exploring physical perspective. As you draw ideas occur, whether that’s how to deal with or respond to a certain situation, or logical constraints such as how things get bigger towards you, and smaller further away. This shouldn’t make sense in the minds of our little young ones, but through art it does.

Final word

Perhaps we need to ask ourselves what we believe is the major endpoint in drawing or painting. And not just to consider the destination but the journey. Realistic drawing is one way of approaching art in a multitude of possibilities.  So let’s stop looking for it as a ‘what’s missing’ from our children's art and encourage some freedom of expression for all.

When I consider my daughter's mark making, I can see that each image is saturated with communication, thinking and emotion. And that, for me, is far more valuable than a ‘picture perfect’ outcome.

from One Hundred Toys - The Blog https://ift.tt/3lXERpP

[panicortega]

This will be a little long.

I have long been keeping to myself how despicable I think Mr. Michael Hirst is, until the beginning of this season my biggest "revolt" with him was about how some characters had a nonsensical development and about the clear nepotism that there is on the show.

So I never really wanted to express myself because I thought that because I am "just a fan" of the show I had no right to think anything about it, because production really does not have to follow the will or the thoughts of the fans, I always thought it was a personal opinion so I should just keep it for myself and not go around talking.

But after this episode I have to express myself because it is already the second time in this season that something like that happens.

In the first episode this season there was a scene where lagertha raped King Harald, I understand that some people might think that it was just another sex scene, because even while I was watching I did not quite understand what I had just see, but after seeing the scene again and seeing how many people stood against it I could see that it was not just another sex scene, it was a rape. Because yes women are also capable of rape.

So we have the new episode where the character Freydis sits on Ivar's lap and places his hand between his legs. Once again I did not understand what this scene was about, so when I looked at it I could see that it could be considered an abuse, but despite Ivar being so smart him was manipulated and he was "touched" in a inappropriate way.

My biggest question right now is: how important are these two scenes?

Why are women being represented this way?

And I reply that it's because Michael hirst is a sexist, he manages to make great male characters stand out for their intelligence, their strength. But when it comes to a woman in this show she is simply treated like garbage. Lagerta an incredible, strong character, a character who in the first season was almost raped, now become someone capable of raping to show how “powerful” she is?

Why do that? Why in Vikings can women not be as great as men?

[tatastreehouse]

Watch "The Wethouse" on YouTube

Penny Woolcock



THE WET HOUSE (2000)

I hate walking past homeless people on the street as most of us do. I feel embarrassed, ashamed and helpless. So I decided to close the distance between us, look people in the eye and have them look in mine. Initially my idea was to make a documentary about rough sleepers (which I did 10 years later – see On the Streets). My assistant Rachel Das and I did wander around the streets and parks for a couple of weeks and I can’t remember how we heard about Providence Row, a wet house in Bethnal Green. A wet house is a hostel that does not require residents to stop drinking, offering safe accommodation and meals to those who can’t or won’t stop. Most of the residents at Providence Row were fragile and would have died quickly if they were left outside but there is a school of thought that by allowing the residents to drink all day they will die sooner than if they are on the streets. I don’t know what the answer is.

Our first visit was unforgettable. Rachel and I were taken towards to the main communal area but as we approached the door a tall skinny man with badly fitting false teeth and a crooked toupee – we later knew him as Willy the Wig - staggered up to the doorway declaimed, “Bah bah bah bah bah,” as his trousers dropped down to his ankles.

Willy lurched off and we emerged into the large communal room to see Jimmy unsuccessfully trying to stand up, Belfast Tommy yelling abuse, Jamie Blue sucking at her blue glue bag with her sweet face and doleful eyes and Michael Chandler a man with a hideously charred face and hands burnt to black claws stumbled up gently took my hand. His nose was dribbling. I can’t remember anything he said because I was in shock. I looked to one side and saw Rachel frozen, staring into space next to me.

A residents meeting was called a few days later to see whether in principle they were interested in being filmed.

Chairs had been laid out in rows for about thirty residents. I had prepared a speech but with the men yelling at each other and falling off their chairs I stuffed it in my pocket and kept it simple. “I would like to make a film about you for Channel 4. If you don’t want to be in it I promise not to film you. Rachel and I want to spend some time getting to know you first. Does anybody have any questions?” There was a rumble of agreement and Rob’s hand shot up with a question. He stood up. “Yes I have a question. I like the cunt and not the arse!” There was a wave of disapproval and demands that he sit down. “But I do!” Rob protested but sat down.  There was a unanimous show of hands and we were on.

We spent the next two months at the Wet House, getting to know people and making sure they understood what we were doing while Providence Row went through a lengthy process to see whether they would give us official permission to film. The a challenge was getting informed consent from people who were always paralytically drunk.

Rachel and I took the Central Line to Bethnal Green every day and then a five minute walk up the road. By the time we caught the tube in the evening we could clear a tube carriage, even at rush hour. The chairs that lined the big room where we spent most of our time had soft cushioned seats that soaked up piss. We’d sit down and slowly our trousers would get damp and then very wet. People who are very, very drunk tend to fall over a lot which means they have no front teeth and that means they spit a lot when they speak. And there’s a lot of snot flying around too. Personal hygiene is not high up the list of anybody’s priorities. So by the end of every day Rachel and I were liberally coated in spit and snot and reeking of piss . I remember saying to Rachel early on, “I must tell you that you stink.” “So do you”, she retorted. At the beginning we had to overcome our instinct to recoil but as time went on we both moved through those scarred, injured faces into a recognition of our common humanity. I looked forward to going in every day.

Our standards dropped. In the tube one night I asked Rachel, “What’s that green line on your fleece?” “Nothing,  Willy the Wig licked my back”, she said airily. I nodded and we continued talking about something else. Others were not so understanding. When I visited my son I was banished straight into the garden and not allowed to hold the baby. So I’d go home, straight into the bathroom, drop my clothes and stepped into the shower.

I loved my two months at the Wet House and formed close relationships. Michael Chandler was a lovely man – his story is in the film so I won’t tell it here but he was haunted by a set of photographs. Jamie Blue the glue sniffer was destroyed by her habit but there was a sweetness about her that was irresistible. Uncle Tony, the Brickie, Belfast Tommy and Carpark George all live on inside me and in the film. They are all dead now. We left Annette on a high note, sober and shiny but years later I was told that when she watched the film she fell off the wagon, went back to the booze and died. I had made a special extra filming trip to film Annette clean when the film was almost edited so she could be proud of seeing the change she had achieved. If it was the film that destroyed her, what was it about seeing herself as chaotic as she had been that drew her back? There is a stone in my heart. And Annette is dead.

I don’t know. I don’t know. I thought I had been careful and fair.

As I said the issue of how to secure informed agreement from people who were paralytically drunk was crucial and I trusted that people were capable of making that decision. We spoke to people individually and eventually I decided to ask everyone to sign a release form – something I rarely do as when you film over a long period consent is clearly implied. But I wanted to be sure that the residents thought about it properly. I explained that although they might not care whether strangers saw them on television their families, children or brothers and sisters might see the film and be shocked to see the state they were in. I remember Big Sean replying, “It doesn’t matter to me. I’m a tramp and I don’t care who knows it.” We learnt that his sister really wanted him to move in with her but he wanted to be free to keep drinking Tenants Super with his friends. A few weeks later Sean turned bright yellow and died while we were still filming.

A couple of men were clear they didn’t want to feature from the start and we made sure that we continued socializing with them. But Jock, a former soldier, had a think after signing his form and said he had changed his mind because he didn’t want his sister to seeing him like this. I ceremoniously tore up his form in front of everyone and then made a point of continuing to talk to him so people would know there were no consequences to making that choice. Jock turned yellow and died before we started filming. Like many of them Jock had been in the army, a heavy drinking culture with all your needs catered for that doesn’t prepare people for life outside. Men like Belfast Tommy and the Brickie had been in the UDA, loyalist paramilitaries from Northern Island and they drank to deal with the PTSD – late at night Tommy would punch the air, fight invisible enemies and talk about bodies and guns he had buried. I later realised that boys who are in care often go into the army because they are not equipped to deal with civilian life. And when that’s over they have nothing. War. What is it good for?

We shot the Wet House on super 16mm film over five consecutive days (apart from the extra day we filmed Annette in her rehab). After five days I knew I had a film and I didn't just want to keep filming people dying. I think it’s my only film that came in under budget and we gave some money back to Channel 4.

Brand Thumim and I edited it over 8 weeks. (Or six, I can’t remember exactly.) We started off with some of the quieter, moving scenes but it was unwatchable and depressing. The key was found by Brand who suggested we start with a cheerfully chaotic scene, less shocking than my first visit to the Wet House but still with a voyeuristic allure, a kind of car crash. And once we had reeled in the audience, lured them in with disaster porn, we were able to humanize those they were gawping at.

One of the big revelations of this film was that far from being a danger to anybody else street drinkers and homeless people are attacked by others, those they call members of the public. We often flip things around – seeing those we persecute as a danger to us so we don’t have to feel guilty about what we are doing to them.

The film was chucked out with no previews at 11.30pm but still managed to gather massive viewing figures and scored very high with young audiences, in the top ten that year. It was referenced in a Ben Elton novel and Damien Hirst gave away 100 dvds to his friends. I mention this because there is still a prevailing belief among schedulers that young people only want to watch other scantily clad young people cavorting around.

They don’t.

[aion-rsa]

Vikings Season 6 Episode 20 Review: The Last Act

https://ift.tt/2X3TgVF

This Vikings review contains spoilers.

Vikings Season 6 Episode 20

“I left when the sadness became too much.”

There’s a certain sadness that accompanies the moment we must say goodbye to the beloved characters of a television series that captivates so much of our emotional capital and also demands we examine our own spirituality and moral principles. Vikings has reached the end of its run, and while some may find the conclusion somewhat dissatisfying, the acknowledgement that the past must be left behind resonates powerfully not only throughout the series finale, but the entire back half of the season as well. 

Some fans of the series left after the death of Ragnar Lothbrok arguing that the writing suffered and the remaining characters lacked the ability to carry the narrative. I am not among them. As a reviewer, I tried to judge each episode on its merits within the context of the overall series, not against the historical accuracy it may or may not have achieved. That said, like many series’ finales, “The Last Act” brings with it a bittersweet close to the glimpse we’ve had into the gradual transformation of the Vikings during the latter stages of the first millennium. Nevertheless, Vikings creator and writer Michael Hirst leaves viewers with three story arcs that reach natural and compelling closures.

Even though viewers have much more investment in the exploits of the sons of Ragnar, the situation in Kattegat bears examination and a bit of praise. With Harald, Ivar, and Erik now dead, Queen Ingrid’s rise to power is now complete, and if the cries of “Long live the queen” are a true indicator of the people’s feelings towards their new leader, we can only speculate what changes lie ahead in Kattegat. We have no doubt that Gunnhild would have successfully led the village into the future, but the question we’re left with is whether the witch Ingrid not only deserves to wear the crown but possesses the wherewithal to carry out the duties the people deserve. Will she rule through fear or love? Have her experiences and those of her freed slave partner given them the insight and compassion to rule for the good of the people? I guess we’ll never know.

We don’t really need to go to the history books to know how the battle in Wessex is going to turn out, but this chapter of the Vikings saga is as much about the growth of King Alfred as it is about Ivar the Boneless and his brother Hvitserk. When Ivar requests a parley with Alfred and admits “we are still fighting like our fathers did,” there’s a brief moment when we think this might turn out differently than expected. Interestingly, before giving his answer to Ivar, Alfred looks to Elsewith as if he’s not certain how to respond. She’s made plain her feelings about her husband’s apparent weaknesses, and whether her steely stare buoys his spirits or not, his refusal reminds us that this is the man who eventually carries the label “the Great” along with his name. 

Read more

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A good portion of the episode is devoted to the battle with Alfred’s Saxon army, and while there’s nothing new here, Hirst, once again, delivers a solid action sequence that makes judicious use of slow motion and quick flashbacks that provide a call back to pivotal moments in the characters’ lives. However, it’s the moments of doubt both Alfred and Ivar struggle with that stand out as they question whether their god is truly with them in this life and death encounter. Ivar remembers the pain of Hvitserk’s desertion to Ubbe only to have his older brother jump ship at the last moment to stay with him in Kattegat. Though he fears the All Father has abandoned him here, we see he still holds out hope that the tide of the battle will change with Divine intervention.

The Lothbrok brothers have enjoyed a tenuous relationship, but as both sense death just around the corner, we’re given a moving exchange when Ivar tells Hvitserk to leave the battle and save himself. This simple gesture is likely the catalyst that propels Hvitserk onto his new path, but it also appears to give Ivar the strength to make his last stand. As he cries out “I will live forever,” it’s difficult to forget the similar ravings of Prince Oleg just before his death at the hands of his nephew. And even though we really don’t need the explanation, it’s a nice touch to have Hvitserk recount that “one day everyone will know of Ivar the Boneless.”

Entering this battle we are fairly certain King Harald doesn’t plan to return alive to Kattegat, and while Ivar’s death doesn’t come as a complete surprise, it’s narrative execution does. We see his leg and will give way several times during the battle, but it’s his final stand that’s a bit puzzling as he allows a young Saxon soldier free rein to kill him. “Don’t be afraid,” Ivar tells the man, but the complexity of this brief scene also includes Alfred who witnesses the event from mere yards away. Despite viewing the Vikings as savages, Alfred watches the tender scene as Hvitserk holds his dying brother in his arms. “Just leave me here with my brother for a moment,” he tells the now kneeling king, who is so moved by what he sees that he immediately crosses himself.  As the camera zooms out to an aerial shot looking down on the three men and Alfred’s burning cross, we can’t help but view this as the Christian God and the Norse gods looking down on these brave soldiers.

However, the larger twist to come out of the Wessex battle occurs when Hvitserk talks to Ivar’s grave and tells him to “enjoy Valhalla, brother, while it still exists.” While leaving the old ways behind has clearly been a central theme of the episode, this statement acknowledges that even their religious beliefs may need to be re-examined. We get our first hint that something’s afoot with Hvitserk when we see him brought to Wessex on a cart after his wounds have clearly been carefully dressed by Alfred’s surgeons. The flash forward to his decision to embrace Christianity and leave the Norse gods behind fits nicely with his father’s curiosity of faith. And how perfect that Alfred tells Hvitserk that from now on he’ll be known as “Athelstan, our brother in Christ.” The call back to Ragnar’s relationship with his Christian friend just works.

And while matters in Wessex and Kattegat get settled, at least for the time being, it’s Ubbe’s new world that holds the most promise moving forward and ends up as the most compelling aspect of the saga. We finally learn Floki’s fate, and while there were likely logistical reasons for Gustaf Skarsgård’s (Floki) absence during the last season, Hirst comes through with a perfectly acceptable explanation while at the same time giving Ubbe a hand in learning to live with the Native American tribe that welcomes them. However, it’s once again the tie-in to Ragnar that can’t be overlooked. “This is what he [Ragnar] was searching for,” and Ubbe understands that they cannot continue in the old ways. 

Nevertheless, when Naad asks about gold, we know where this is headed, and Ubbe’s response to the murder of the young tribe member is sure and unambiguous. What’s left to ponder is how the leader Pekitaulet (Carmen Moore) will react to this violent act. There seems to be no question the punishment will be swift and severe, but the initial choice of the Blood Eagle contradicts Ubbe’s desire to move forward rather than look to the past. Had he carried out the punishment, its savage brutality and cruelty may have had the opposite effect Ubbe intends. Fortunately, he changes tact and slits Naad’s throat instead, calling on the “eye for an eye” system of justice. It’s a wise decision.

With Ubbe and Torvi at the helm, it seems likely that the two groups will not only peacefully coexist but actually thrive as they openly share their collective knowledge. Still, it’s wise that Pekitaulet explains her stance in no uncertain terms. “When we said you were welcome to this place, we did not mean you were welcome to possess it.” Even so it’s what happens next that shows the untapped potential inherent in this land. So moved by her words, Torvi hugs Pekitaulet with such emotion that it’s clear, not only do the two women understand each other, they’re in total agreement. It’s a truly beautiful moment.

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We knew Vikings would eventually bring an end to its various story arcs, and has typically been the case, “The Last Act” seamlessly blends the three Viking tales into a coherent whole. Perhaps Floki’s advice to Ubbe says it best: “Let the past go.” And so we shall. 

The post Vikings Season 6 Episode 20 Review: The Last Act appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[whenimaunicorn]

I think Ubbe and Ivar going their separate ways will be the best thing for the show. If Michael Hirst wants Ivar to be similar to the Ivar the Boneless from the sagas, then he must make him cruel and ruthless, and incredibly intelligent. His intelligence can easily be shown through him now becoming the leader of an army. What we have seen of him so far, we know he is cruel, but personally I see his temper as somewhat child-like [..1..]

[..2..] ...So, to truly turn him into the infamous Ivar we had read about, I think it makes perfect sense to take away the one person left who seems to love him. I am sure Hvitserk loves him to - but I do not think he cares for him so much. So taking Ubbe away from him, well... What does he have left? Who does he have to stop him? To tell him it's too far? To reign in his impulses? To help calm his temper? No one. He will be ferocious and unstoppable...

[..3..] I understand Ubbe gave him some humanity that we wouldn't have seen otherwise. But I also believe that his struggle as a cripple will continue, crutches or not, and his torment over women in general will allow us to see enough of his vulnerable side to keep us rooting for him. Personally, I am more than excited to see him become somewhat of a beserker. I think it will be refreshing to see a viking on the show who is truly truly terrifying... Sorry for rambling! I hope you don't mind!

I love this, sunglasses guy! I do think a time apart will do exactly what you say. Then I would add that bringing him back to his brothers would heighten the contrast and the drama as they see who he has become without anyone monitoring him or trying to keep him in check...

[michaeltrevino]

WARNING: Spoiler Alert! Do not proceed if you have not watched Wednesday's episode of Vikings.

After the death of Travis Fimmel's Ragnar Lothbrok halfway through Vikings' fourth season, the series' successor seemed to anyone's game. But after Wednesday night's explosive season finale, the question wasn't who will succeed Ragnar, but rather how far he will go, as Alex Høgh Andersen and his character, Ivar the Boneless, took charge.

ET hopped on the phone with 22-year-old Andersen ahead of the shocking finale, where he opened up about what he learned from Fimmel before the star's series departure, the pressure of joining the History Channel show and his character's "violent" future.

"You can't really overthink the whole thing, because otherwise you will screw yourself up, because it is that big," Andersen said of joining Vikings with only a few Danish TV credits to his name. "You just have to go with the flow, and rely on the people that are there to help you."

"I am pretty new and green, and I didn't quite know what I was getting into, and it has been such a learning experience and it still is," he added. "Working with Travis, straight from the beginning, that made everything for me."

Andersen only filmed a few episodes with Fimmel before Ragnar's death, but says the short time they spent together was "advice in itself."

"Working on the scenes on the day with him, some days the day before, just talking to each other over the phone about it was a game changer," recalled Andersen, now filming season five of Vikings. "I really quickly picked up how everything was going down, how you work on the scenes and how you talk about them, what you could get through as an actor, having your own thoughts about the character and the scene and all that, because it is a creative process and you have to compromise with the director and [creator/writer] Michael Hirst."

Fimmel's creative process -- which Hirst previously told ET included inventing scenes, discussing every line of dialogue with him before rehearsals, and even choosing to go a whole episode without saying anything at all -- quickly rubbed off on Andersen, but perhaps not by coincidence.

"He's a plain genius, and he taught me to believe in myself and my own ideas and keeping it logical and real. Especially for us to work together on episode 13, when we are alone in the forest in England, that was just awesome. We both agreed that we wanted to make it relatable and light and create a contract to all the other scenes in the show, just between a father and son, really."

The actors exhibited clear chemistry throughout the show, though it wasn't that connection that scored Andersen the part of Ivar. In fact, Hirst told ET that he cast the young actor, who came to audition for the parts of Ragnar's other three sons, after he exhibited an expression in his eyes that reminded him of Fimmel. "Thanks Michael, no pressure at all," Andersen cracked when he heard of Hirst's comparison.

"I'll never forget [my audition]," Andersen laughed, describing the 30 minutes he had in the hallway after Hirst requested he audition for the character. "I had no idea who Ivar was, and I had never read any of the scenes that he had… I was sweating. I had never sweat that much in my life."

"It was a scene between Ivar and Ubbe (Jordan Patrick Smith, who coincidentally read with Andersen in the audition), and we rehearsed the scene without the cameras rolling, and I got through the scene. I was like, 'OK, I got this. Just calm down, relax, breathe.' And then of course when they press the little red button the camera, I forgot the first time, I forgot the second time!" he yelled. "But the third time was apparently the lucky one, and I can remember Michael clapping his hands while I'm walking out of the room. It was just a weird day."

Though Andersen remembers clamming up in front of the camera, Hirst said that it was through the camera's lens, observing the gentle pain of a crippled Ivar through his eyes, that showed him Andersen was the one.

"That's interesting," Andersen said, "because it may have helped that I didn’t know anything about Ivar. I was just going logically into the whole thing."

"I walked into the room and asked, 'What's up with Ivar? Is he in constant pain?' and [Hirst] said, 'Yes, I would think so.' So in my mind, I was like, 'Well, if he has been suffering from this disease for his entire life, being in constant pain, he is used to it, so he wouldn't act it,'" he recalled. "So I put my legs a little to the side, but I was acting in pain through the eye. That's what I did and apparently that's what they went with."

Though Andersen says he's now used to all the crawling around he does on the show as a result of his character being paralyzed, playing Ivar the Boneless didn't excuse him from the cast's intense training.

"They did get the four brothers a personal trainer, and he killed us for like six days a week for three weeks. My body has never been in that much pain before," the Danish actor confessed, adding that he now has an exercise plan to keep up with on his own. "I have to be honest about this, I do skip leg day once in a while."

"It's tough, but every single time he's crawling, it's a signal to the audience that he is dealing with something that they probably won't fully understand, and that he is different, so I prefer to have him crawl once in a while," Andersen said. "I work a lot on keeping his disease in the minds of the audience."

In the final few episodes of the season, however, Ivar finally gets to join in with his brothers, strategizing and leading the Great Heathen Army from a chariot in a battle sequence that included more extras than Braveheart.

"To be a part of it, personally, it was absolutely outstanding. The amount of extras, the amount of work put into this whole thing, it was a crazy experience. It was a great reminder of what you're doing and how big it is, because you can forget that a little bit when you're just standing in a studio. So it's cool when you get outside with 300 extras and five cranes and six cameras and trucks everywhere," Andersen mused. "It was just f**king mental."

As for the more nuanced aspects of his character -- notably the anger, arrogance, and confrontation with his brothers -- he exhibits in the season's final episodes, Andersen says it comes from struggle.

"Every single thing he does is a compensation for his disease, and him struggling all the time to prove himself," he explained, noting that Ragnar verbalizes his faith in Ivar before he dies. "He is struggling with being crippled and not being the picture of someone who could lead an entire army, the fact that they won't see his brilliant mind. It's the most annoying thing, when you've got the answers, but you're not heard."

Of course, as viewers witnessed on Wednesday, Ivar's frustrations get the best of him when he dives an axe through Sigurd's (David Lindström) chest, killing him in front of the entire Great Heathen Army.

"It's a major, major scene… he would be the absolute weapon if he could control his anger, and that's something he will struggle with, even in season five. He hates it, because he lost control," Andersen offered. "Despite all the experience he has gained, he has become more of a man, definitely, but still struggles with that little kid inside of him that is just so angry, so hurt."

The audience will also see Ivar attempt revenge on Lagertha (Katheryn Winnick) for killing his mother (Alyssa Sutherland) in season five. "He will never forget that," Andersen stated. "She's the one woman who ever loved him, so he will never, ever be able to settle down with Lagertha alive."

As for how Andersen would describe the Ivar yet to come, he says, "Determined, still angry, violent, but also in love."

"He's completely out of touch with reality and his emotions," he promised.

[laurietgbarron]

Michael Craig-Martin - Transience, Serpentine Gallery, London

Installation view. Courtesy of Michael Craig-Martin and the Serpentine Galleries.

Untitled (iPhone purple) (2013)

Acrylic on Aluminium 122 x 122cm

Courtesy of Michael Craig-Martin and the Serpentine Galleries

Untitled (light bulb), (2014) Acrylic on Aluminium 122 x 122cm Courtesy of Michael Craig-Martin and the Serpentine Galleries

This is a review of the exhibition, Transience, consisting of recent and older works by artist Michael Craig-Martin (b. 1941) at the Serpentine Gallery in Kensington Gardens, London from November 2015 to February 2016.  The Serpentine Gallery is a public institution that holds exhibitions of prominent single artists separately such as Jeff Koons in 2009, Jake and Dinos Chapman in 2014 and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye in 2015. Craig-Martin was notably a tutor of the generation of Young British Artists (YBAs) at Goldsmiths College in South-East London in the late eighties including Damien Hirst, Gary Hume and Sarah Lucas. Their neo-conceptual practice was closely woven with desire to become successful in the art market; critic Julian Stallabrass described their work in his book High Art Lite, 1999 as shocking but without sufficient critical acuity to be justified as High Art. Craig-Martin taught his students about self-promotion, marketing and business sponsorship. His earlier works such as later discussed, An Oak Tree, 1973 secured his place in a history book conceptual avant-garde. This exhibition is of later paintings and drawings, a revert back to much more traditional means of making art, but with a conceptual outlook on the objects he represents.

Craig-Martin studied painting at Yale University in North America; he was influenced by the minimalists such as Robert Morris and like many others moved from minimalism to conceptualism.  This study of painting was at a time when many artists regarded the medium as problematic because of it’s associations with art critic Clement Greenberg’s modernism and its associations with painterly, gestural painting and full abstraction, painting as a two-dimensional wholly autonomous and (notably) male process. The paintings are incredibly neat and considered, much unlike the spontaneous mark making the work of the Abstract Expressionists such as the drip paintings of (Greenberg championed) modernist painter Jackson Pollock. The paintings in the exhibition produced no emotion of shock and leave the viewer to read into them, they are calm and tranquil. This feeling is helped by the modernist white cube gallery style.

The exhibition is comprised of figurative drawings and paintings of ordinary and vernacular objects including laptops, Apple iPhones, headphones, electrical plug sockets, bankcards, batteries and cassette tapes. Sometimes they are painted alone and sometimes they are assembled into groups of overlapping objects together both on canvas and onto the gallery wall directly. The objects are simplified to their most basic line and there is no painterly style to the work, they are all pristine with black outlines. Craig-Martin has painted them in a selection of twelve bright colours. He does not paint freehand but makes use of slide projectors and more recently, digital projectors to ensure the correct proportions are made in the images. The depicted consumer products in block colour and simplified line look very similar to the Pop art screenprints of artist Andy Warhol (1928 – 1987) who also depicted vernacular products such as Campbell’s Soup and Coca-Cola in large series. But the similarities with Warhol are few; Craig-Martin works alone and paints his pictures himself. He also does not paint from found imagery, he carefully chooses what for him is the most important design classic of a type of object such as an Eames chair, Xbox game controller or Apple Macbook laptop. In his work Untitled (Macbook) he paints only a section of the object, because viewers will instantly fill in the gaps because of the objects iconic design. Craig-Martin has used plywood boxes, mirrors, milk bottles, buckets, venetian blinds, house paints, clipboards and neon lights in his other works, also all everyday objects. This use of found object is an artistic device first used and received with much negative attention at the time, but now general critical acclaim, by Marcel Duchamp in his 1917 work, Fountain. Craig-Martin has previously drawn a urinal, a reference of Marcel Duchamp’s use of found vernacular object. This and Craig-Martin’s other works bring to question traditional notions of fine art’s association with beauty and the aesthetic sublime such as in the landscapes of JMW Turner and Thomas Gainsborough or art’s uniqueness as a unique way in seeing the world. Duchamp’s Urinal is a pure mimetic representation while Craig-Martin’s use of simple and saturated artificial colours as well as simplified line and two-dimensional image are in fact very far from a mimetic representation.

The exhibition has recorded the transition from analogue to digital technology. He describes his painting of the iPhone as, “It’s the most iconic of all the new objects and it’s the one that’s replaced all the analogue objects” as well as saying “it’s the most bland of all objects, and yet it is the richest.” He is referring to how the iPhone has many capabilities beyond making phone calls such as being a camera, notebook, torch, calendar, personal computer, map, bank card and gaming device. Other electronic objects included are the light bulb in Untitled (light bulb), 2014, acrylic on aluminium, 122 x 122cm. This an object so crucial to everyday life but often hidden behind shades and coverings yet has undergone huge transformation in appearance from filament wires to, curved fluorescent tubing to LED strips. Here the fluorescent version is presented in saturated hues of steel blue and tomato red and lime green, with no visual clues at to the actual purpose of the strangely curved object and it’s light radiating properties.

Michael Craig-Martin has said of his work, “I’m making something that isn’t anything like the actual thing in the picture, the object I’m making and the object you see are not the same.” These paintings of everyday objects can be compared to his earlier conceptual work An Oak Tree, 1973 currently on show at the Tate Britain, London. The work consists of a clear glass of water on a clear glass shelf protruding high of a wall, with a plaque below and to left describing this glass of water as being an oak tree, along with other questions on the nature of the artist calling it an oak tree. It is a work that visualised the Catholic notion of transubstantiation, where you see one thing and understand it as another. Like the conceptual work by Joseph Kosuth (1945- ), One and Three Chairs, 1965, Craig-Martin’s work questions what the essence of an object is, whether it is the verbal definition, the actual experienced object or an idea of an objects essence, in which all objects of the category will fit, a virtual phenomena. “The objects we surround ourselves with are more descriptive of us and our values. They transcend differences in language and culture.” (Januszczak, 2014) The categories of objects and technology that Craig-Martin simplifies, enlarges and saturates will resonate, as with many still life paintings, very differently to different people.

A problem that could be attributed to the work is it’s strong aesthetic resemblance to that of the work of artist Patrick Caulfield (1936 – 2005) and his simplified colourful still lives such as Lampshade, 1969. But, going back to some of the problems associated with the peak of modernism; the idea of an artist have their own unique and recognisable style like that of a brand can also be seen as problematic.

In conclusion, Transience, is an exhibition with a visage of simplicity and lack of conceptual reasoning – a bright and relatable visual dictionary of mass-produced, everyday consumer products. A dictionary where even works of only two years age seem out of date, fading from contemporary human consciousness. The work questions objects and relationship with their definitions, the relationship between technology and its rapid advancement of our language. Craig-Martin hybridizes his early experience of minimalism with a later conceptual acuity. The curatorial choice to accumulate recent with older works was to emphasise and strengthen the exhibitions key message of modern technology’s degradation and renewal. The exhibition’s lack of text and nationalistic reference suits the Serpentine Galleries public status, where the visitors are from many cultures yet will still have certain associations or nostalgic interpretations with the objects that Craig-Martin presents. Like the practice of the YBAs he taught, Craig-Martin provides visual art for the masses to enjoy.