#she is more than a servant

[telestorm]

the dynamic between drolta and erzsebet is so fascinating to me because at first glance, you assume that the former is solely the top subordinate when, in actuality, it’s drolta who wields the power in the dynamic, not erzsebet. the entire plan to turn erzsebet into sekhmet hinges on drolta’s approval, not hers. every vessel is expendable in her eyes if their bodies fail to hold the goddess’ power, and we see that unfold countless times. what makes the whole relationship even more compelling is that there is an unrequited emotional connection that erzsebet has that she assumes is reciprocated. she is heartbroken over drolta’s death, rages at the abbot for even suggesting that she cannot be revived, and is very happy when she is. never once does it occur to her that drolta’s loyalty and love is conditional, nor does she stop to consider that not only does drolta’s loyalty to sekhmet supersede her loyalty to her, because that’s the only person drolta truly cares about and has genuine love and loyalty for.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

M'lady, doth this harlot bother thee?

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[dewwshi]

princess of mithral hall

[blujaydoodles]

I can't remember whether I ever posted this guy? Drex 'Pooka' Berenockt is Melliwyk's homunculus servant, because she may already have two familiars and the tiny servant and unseen servant spells but none of those things have hands and an intelligence higher than 2. he has wings modeled after an earwig's origami'd into a back panel and he curls down into a sphere when he's deactivated. he is also A Leetol Guy and I love him 😌

[rainbowsandwhumperflies]

The Winged Servant - 11

content warnings: vague medical care, narrator who does not realize he was a victim of violence, unreliable narrator who believes in the divine right of a monarchy, fantasy discrimination against angels, I swear this is actually much less political than these warnings make it seem

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The thing about angel wings was that humans didn't know much about them. Prince Ryan had done some research, early on, just in case, he'd said. From the look on this doctor's face, though, I didn't think she had done the same.

The other thing about angel wings was that I didn't know much about them either.

I wasn't an angel angel, of course. Not like the ones from the bible with eyes all over themselves, begging people not to be afraid of them. I was the type of angel that hadn’t been too different from humans, way back in the early days. Back when people paid egregious amounts of money for the ability to fly. Humans and angels were only separated by a surgery worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, still all called humans, until the scientists had learned to change the genetic code of children before they were born.

Wings got a lot less valuable once kids could be born with them. It didn’t help once people couldn’t control if a kid was born with them or not.

“Angels” was a nickname first, and it spread, although I never was sure if it was just the wings or if it was the idea that angels would come to the earth while the world was ending. It didn’t matter. Everyone thought that the world was ending, and maybe it had. But people still ate and slept and laughed and cried, and the world went on.

And once the angels started to show differences from humans, humans stopped caring to know about them.

I knew very little about my wings besides the fact that they weren’t the wings of a bird. Prince Ryan, while in one of his better moods, had explained some of it to me once. Bats were mammals, like humans—easier to attach, easier to maintain. Of course, the prince was human, and I was not, and I would never be able to have his level of understanding with matters like these.

There were humans in this castle, though, that also didn’t seem to have his level of understanding.

The doctor that Kieran had brought me to had taken one look at me, smiled politely, and left me alone to talk to Kieran outside the door. “Just stay put for a minute, sugar,” she’d said, voice strained, a southern accent bleeding through her words as she left me to avoid eye contact with the guard who’d had to help me walk down the hall.

Her voice was less strained when she’d returned, but she still didn’t seem pleased that I was there. I shrunk back onto the cot I’d been left on.

“Onyx, Ma’am.”

“Alright, Onyx, that’s good. Do you mind telling me what happened to your arm?”

“It got hit by a sword, I think, Ma’am.” My memories of the night before were hazy, but it was a sword, right? My arm had been… it’d gotten hurt when we were in a hallway, in an endeavor to get us out of that hallway. And Prince Cardan had pushed me in the way. Maybe.

“Mkay. Looks like you got lucky and it just nicked you, hun. Won’t even need stitches. I’ve just gotta disinfect it and bandage it. Would that be alright?”

I nodded jerkily, not expecting the question. Prince Ryan had told me what he was doing to me, sometimes, but not like this. Dr. Charlotte had been smiling the whole time, soft and kind. Prince Cardan smiled at me sometimes, but it was always due to amusement on his part. Of course, that was his right, because I was a servant, but Dr. Charlotte had been smiling as if it were for my benefit. She’d asked before touching my arm. That wasn’t… how people were supposed to act about angels and servants.

“I’m afraid I can’t do much about your wing, sweetheart,” she said once my arm was bandaged, and I nodded. I’d expected that much. “I haven’t ever worked with angel wings before, and I wouldn’t want to make anything worse because of my lack of experience. But I can find someone who knows more about it, alright?”

I nodded. Dr. Charlotte seemed like the type to tolerate questions, probably. “May I ask a question, ma’am?”

“Sure, hun.”

“Why do you want to fix my wing?”

She blinked, and then laughed lightly. “Well, I’m not quite sure what you mean. I mean, I think everyone should get medical assistance that caters to them. You don’t mean to give up on that wing just because I wouldn’t know where to start with it, right? We’ll find someone else. Do you not want it fixed?”

I frowned. “Good servants don’t have wants, ma’am, other than serving the royal family. Her Majesty has always had my best interests in mind, including when my wing was broken to prevent me from flying. And I don’t have a preference, of course, but I don’t know if she wants it fixed.”

“Her Majes- Are you talking about Lucia?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Dr. Charlotte’s willingness to refer to the queen with her first name was dangerous, to say the least, and I tried not to let my heart rate spike.

“Okay, well, I’m not sure if she mentioned this to you, but she hasn’t ruled a country for the better part of the last decade. Last night was a pitiful attempt to get the country back under her control. Bless her heart, she might have actually believed it would work.”

I stared at Dr. Charlotte. I wasn’t supposed to contradict the things said by people who ranked higher than me, which included everyone, but holy shit. Holy shit. Talking about the queen that way was treason of some kind, without a doubt, and also flat out wrong. Sixteen generations—the monarchy had been theirs for sixteen generations. “Are you sure you aren’t misinformed, Ma’am?” I settled on eventually.

“Quite sure. Have you ever actually seen Lucia with any of her subjects?”

No, but I wasn’t a traitor and I knew that I was supposed to take the royal family’s word on things. I was a good servant and I would act accordingly. Except-

Except I had just left a room of the entire royal family, tied up together. Except we had murdered three guards to get into this castle, and we’d lived in a house with three bedrooms. Except that the royal family had a total of two servants working for them, and neither of us had been allowed to leave the house.

“Her Majesty’s family has been ruling the country for sixteen generations,” I said weakly.

“Yeah, well, no one wanted Lucia to rule because she’s a dick and hates everyone. So we did something about it. I can’t get you to start hating her—that’s up to you—but you should probably know the facts, and the facts are that she’s not a queen and she never will be again.”

And that was- not my decision to make. Nothing was ever my decision to make. Of course political affairs like this wouldn’t make sense to me; I was an angel and a servant, and my only job was to do what I was told.

That was what Prince Ryan had said, even. Do what they tell you. Don’t get hurt. Even if this Dr. Charlotte was wrong about things, I was supposed to do what I was told.

“Hey,” Dr. Charlotte said softly, and I glanced back up at her. “I’m sorry for overwhelming you, dear. Now that your arm’s all fixed up, Kieran’s got some questions for you, if that’s okay.”

Do what they tell you. Don’t get hurt.

“Yes, Ma’am.”

~

Taglist: @kaleidoscope-of-thoughts @toyybox @rainydaywhump @risk606

[irenespring]

I'm reading character rankings and Downton Abbey and apparently we are supposed to be annoyed at Branson when he shows up for....being right about class issues? Being a socialist? Annoying the Crawleys by making them think about the ethics of their money? Like seriously what am I missing here?

Multiple articles talk about him like he only became a good guy once he shut up and became one with the Crawley Aristocrat Horde but honestly I found him kind of boring when he didn't have a love interest. And speaking of, when he did have a love interest---the way poor Sarah was talked about jfc. When she showed up I was like "okay great I love her and her finally calling him on losing his socialist principles once the palace doors were opened to him, she's going to bring him back to his morals" but instead she was thrown out and treated like the absolute devil incarnate and all the protagonists joked about how obviously evil she was because as Mrs. Hughes said "heaven forbid we contradict the holy Family."

[clonerightsagenda]

Something that frustrates me whenever I watch or listen to British media is that I know there's a wealth of information about people's class and background encoded into their accents, but I can't catch most of it because I wasn't raised in a situation where making those distinctions mattered. It's like something being lost in translation even though it's still English. There are Layers here and I am missing them.

[stylosha]

i am a firm believer in that akasha is marius' mother figure and their relationship is intentionally meant to parallel him and his human mother

[fideidefenswhore]

Do you think Catherine and Arthur of Aragon had sexual intercourse?

well, yes!

[palaceoftears]

Omg I didn't remember this. THE NERVE

[hasarjunadoneanythingwrong]

i am confusing kali and durga but you did make design of fgo her right? can i ask you to repost it bc i scoured your archive and i still cant find it

It was kali! The actual post is here but I’ll post some of the pictures here as well

I’ve been planing on doing proper ascension-like art for her for a while now, just haven’t found the time between work and making my normal content for the blog ;v;

[not-so-superheroine]

Since it's not going in my article due to space constraints, i'll share a bit about Jane Manning James here. It won't be superfleshed out atm bc it got cut. I plan to do more later. As I am *Reorganized*, writing this for a Community of Christ publication, i researched Ld-S shared history to the point of Nauvoo. my article doesn't follow west (technically). the main resource was an LDS one (thank you v much for your freely available archive) asking about her time with the prophet of the Restoration.

Jane Manning James

A significant Black Latter Day Saint from the early church was Jane Manning James. A woman from Connecticut notably made the walk from Buffalo, New York to Nauvoo, Illinois on foot, with most of her family. This was only after being separated from the group of recently converted latter day saints in Buffalo, possibly due to their race. Jane was baptized in 1842 by missionaries in her home state of Connecticut. She recorded these things about her journey and arrival to Nauvoo and her faith when asked to recall her life living with Joseph Smith in 1905.

“When I went there [Nauvoo] I only had two things on me, no shoes nor stockings, wore them all out on the road… They [Joseph and Emma] was looking for us because I wrote them a letter. There was eight of us, my mother and two sisters and a brother and sister-in-law, and we had two children, one they had to carry all the way there, and we traveled a thousand miles.”

She was sure in her belief of the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ and Modern Prophecy. She says in her recollection, after seeing that Joseph Smith Jr was indeed the man in her vision in Connecticut, that “This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ and there will never be any other on earth. It has come to stay.” Sister James would later go west with the saints under the leadership of then Apostle Brigham Young.

--------

me tumblr posting again:

thank you for the example set Sister James on faith, dedication, and perseverance. She also had spiritual gifts, such as speaking in tongue and faith healing. She believed following the gospel, knowing it was a key to a better way of living life (for her.) it wasn't easy for her, and yet, i think the faith community i observe today (and mormonism in general) is better, just for her having lived it.

may she be at peace, and in a manner God, Sister Jane herself, and her family she led that meant so very much to her, see fit.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

when sonic and co find out who nova is (and after she’s sort of welcomed back in the friend group bc of her qpr situationship with sonic and also saving their lives) they like immediately stop watching anything super violent when she’s around and put on like. steven universe. bc like they assume she'll be fucking weird about murder and want to steer her on a better path in a very fourteen year old not really understanding way. but then they’re faced with the reality she finds ultra violent films boring bc they’re inaccurate and she could just go do that irl and she's immediately going to obsess over a show she can in any way relate to her experiences so she spends hours infodumping about pearl steven universe at three in the morning while everyone else is trying to sleep.

[omarwolaeth]

I will say; it is very cute that the one thing that defeats the card Azamina is the ability to put her in the backrow as a spell, where her effects stop working - the mechanic of the first archetype of the Diabell storyline. Not sure how the lore works with that mechanic translation, and also not wholly sure that's how she's defeated in lore, but still.

[randomnameless]

The phrase “we have been aware of the high levels of competency from KT's writers, especially with their work for 3H” is worrying; i'm not going to shit-talk them just for thinking that 3H has a good story, especially when someone's standards for what makes a story good or not is subjective and could be different from ours, but KT's story-telling skills are never going to improve if people keep only telling them that Three Houses' deeply-flawed story was actually a narrative masterpiece, instead of a self-contradicting mess with plot points it introduces solely as gotchas and has no intention of ever following up on in any meaningful way, characters getting assassinated left and right to try and argue that female Ashnard might actually be right and not so different from them in terms of morality and goals (while they're in the middle of fighting for their lives and watching their friends die in battle because she decided to invade their home unprovoked and solely for a landgrab), and an over-powered villain group that should have ended the story long before it even started because the writers decided to give them a stockpile of magic nukes they can launch at anywhere in the world, which was also introduced solely for shock value and without them realizing how much of the story is ruined by making it so that the villains who want to kill everyone and take over the world can just nuke anyone they want (that isn't inside Garreg Mach when they launch it) with no consequences.

I just don't like what it means for the future of FE stories if the worst story in the series keeps getting praised as one of the best, even by separate developers, is all.

Wait and see anon!

For what it's worth, while Engage's sales are apparently not as stellar as Houses in the same timeframe (like House after month 1 and Engage after month 1?), Nopes totally crashed.

Amazon isn't the only market in the world, but in some places in the world (tfw not for amazon.fr) Nopes is now sold at around 15 bucks, which is ridiculous considering older games released on consoles still being in circulation are more expensive than this thing that is barely 1 year old(even the first FEW?).

Also, Engage was supposed to have been released earlier but Covid and Houses being released later than planned meant it was delayed, but Engage was supposed to be Fodlan's antithesis, at least writing wise - you'd think IS would have tried to retrofit more Fodlan themes (maybe more uwu maybe some villains aren't BaD and earl grey because they luf u) but they didn't.

Imo, fwiw, while KT apparently loved how Fodlan was received, IS is aghast and doesn't want to touch it within a 10 meters radius, only if it means selling units in FEH and even there, they sometimes retcon Fodlan units (hello F!Billy/Sothis) or challenge them in various FB (Brave!Supreme Leader, but also in the most recent one, Sylvain harping on his Crust being BaD...) clearly showing how they don't really want to follow KT's direction regarding those units - at times, it's almost as if the CoS receives more development in Heroes than in both Fodlan games!

So I'd like to see what IS has in store for the next FE games (or the next non remake FE game), even if in my opinion, given how Heroes has to retcon/finish the writing (Mercedes reveals more about her Adrestian family in FEH than in two of her games!) for characters just to sell them in the gacha game ffs, speaks volumes on what they think of Fodlan's writing.

On top of that, FE16 was the first game where people received surveys/mails from Nintendo/IS asking them if they understood the game... - so despite Fodlan selling well (better than expected?), imo it's clear the writing isn't to praise, at least for IS, and they don't want anything to do with it (Nopes' DLC was scrapped, when shiny!Rhea's sprite was datamined, so either they made an useless sprite, either this sprite might have been used in a future DLC?)

They can still butcher a future remake (plz no jugdral) by adding pointless supports between units and trying to uwu more than needed the red emperor - or add an OC waifu du jour who will sell merchs and try to uwu her if she is on the side of the red emperor - but I feel like we will see where they will go with a brand new game (since Heroes's writing is... as consistent as a fog and basically circles around "women sad'n'lonely*, men evyl", female playable OC simps after the avatar and is useless in the resolution of the plot because Alfonse will finally find a mc guffin way to defeat the villain of the year).

*i truly hope Vero isn't any indication to what the writing of the future games will be, like heavy retcons from her first apparition to "i was brainwashed and akshually everyone supports me from my home even if i send them to death against askr because the voice in my head told me to do it" because that'd suck, but vero is a young woman, thus she could be monetised for alts, figurines and even DLC content in a main game!

[fideidefenswhore]

[Henry] had asked Lady Shelton whether Mary [was] persisting in her obstinancy. Hearing that she was, Henry became certain that she was being encouraged by secret communication from Katharine. Lady Shelton thought the only possible messenger was Mary's chamber woman. In this she was correct. The maid had been smuggling letters in and out. She was dismissed, as was Mary's confessor, to be replaced by one whom Chapuys characterised as 'Lutheran'.

The King’s Pearl: Henry VIII & His Daughter Mary, Melita Thomas