#the ruin of angels

[hubristicassholefight]

Swordswoman Showdown Round 1 Part 4

Red (Transistor) vs Gal (The Ruin of Angels)

(Better here in a "preferred character" sense, not "who would win in a fight")

Propaganda below cut

Red

Has a sword that is also the key to her reality’s code, can use it to command the robots that maintain reality. Uses it to stop time and defeat her enemies in the meanwhile. Small woman, hugeass sword. Manages to defeat the original owner of the Transistor in a one on one reality warping sword duel. The sword contains the echoes of the people it’s slain, and also her dead boyfriend; She is full of so much righteous anger I love her. Carve a path through the city girl. A singer whose voice was stolen.

Gal

Gal is a member of a heist crew who spelunk through their city's shattered strata of reality to retrieve books and artifacts from the version that died in the God Wars, but before any of that she was a Knight of Camlaan - a glorious hero of myth armed and armoured in shining light, exiled from her order because her unbending commitment to the moral standards expected of a Knight was not, in fact, what they expected of a Knight in an order that's more like a special-ops arm of an imperial power than a circle of romantic heroes. She has a sword, and is frequently described drawing it; it seems likely that what this actually means is that she manifests a blade of incandescent light in her hand whenever she needs it; Gal's arc in the book is largely seen through the eyes of another character, Raymet, who's hopelessly in love with her but doesn't dare to say anything - the book as a whole is a heist thriller, but read for these two it's a romance. After the two of them are captured by their enemies, they finally have to talk to one another in a chapter that's a contender for the most sword lesbian thing I've ever read (and I've read the Locked Tomb). It's got some of the most beautiful prose I've read in my life, and a resolution that made me whoop with joy as a confession of love between two women transfigures something that looked hopeless into joyful hope as Gal demonstrates the very pinnacle of knighthood.

[morkaischosen]

Gal shouldn't be here.

The Craft Sequence is a very contemporary fantasy, and one with a realistic- if not cynical- view of power. Again and again our protagonists find themselves up against gods and corporations, establishments with the very most established positions, and have to use every edge at their disposal just to keep some kind of hope for something better alive. There aren't any knights in shining armour coming to save them. Except...

The Ruin of Angels deftly sketches in a picture of Camlaan - an insular island with Imperial dreams, spinning tales of love and heroism as it sends its thugs to project its will outside its island borders. It's a familiar picture to me as an English reader, and its mythology is so clearly a justification, a comforting self-deception for the iron fist of an immortal queen. You can't say "a true knight wouldn't-" because the knights who would are real, and the ones who wouldn't just a story they tell. Except...

The Ruin crew are thieves. They have their motivations and dreams, and they're risking life, limb and legal process to score artefacts, and for all Raymet's preoccupation with scholarship and heritage, that seems to be a side-hustle to the crew's overall goal: profit. And yet, somehow, one of the crew is a storybook knight with an unbending code of honour. It's not that she's a hypocrite, not exactly - the climax of her arc with Raymet wouldn't make any sense, wouldn't have remotely the same emotional impact, if I didn't feel in my heart that what Gal's willing to justify (what she feels is just) is the most important limit on her behaviour - but she's like an invader from another story, too wild and pure to live by the rules of this world.

And all of that is vital to her place in the book.

We see her, largely, through Raymet's eyes, and our sense of genre brings us right along- how are you even real?

But the book carries on, and she keeps being like that, and eventually Raymet curses her out, and the people who made her into someone who just doesn't fit the world that really is, and- "I don't understand this. I don't understand you."

Gal reads like the intrusive work of another, better world, and part of me resents her for that; but once I accept that she really, truly is only and completely what she seems, the only word for such a senseless thing is miracle.

It's a book about love. It's a book about a lot of things, but when I read for Raymet and Gal, it's a book about love. Disbelief, and fear, and the blossoming of joy as you realise this is real, you're here, all the reasons you shouldn't be just don't matter because you are.

That's how it feels, sometimes.

-----

This week's campaign of Galposting is brought to you by @swordswomanshowdown and my discovery that I'm willing to put a whole lot of effort into trying to get people to vote for a character I adore in a Tumblr poll tournament.

[rienafoutre]

[yourangle-yuordevil]

[Birds of a feather AU] Absolutely incapable of asking each-other out normally in every single universe <.<

[pinkiepig]

Wanted to practice doing comics, still have a lot to learn but it was fun regardless :3

[harvocel]

trigun stampede is a good show

[maiko-coy]

You're my angel Angel baby, angel You're my angel, baby Baby, you're my angel Angel baby

[bunninophia]

My fellow huskerdust shippers I offer you this

Ahh I love them, and their dynamic...i need more of it

I want them so badly to become a healthy couple that boosts each other up, to help them heal together. Remember what husk said in the pilot? This whole ship is how he learns how to love again AGHHHHH I WISH

🌷🕷️🐈‍⬛🪽

[kpchrs]

Anyway, Buffy used to be an "I'll die for you" girlie but then she became an "I'll live for you" girlie, if you care.

[vintage-ukraine]

Apotheosis by Hryhorii Nechyporenko, 1994

[fireballazalea]

[myokk]

She chances a glance at Sebastian before getting out her copy of Divining the Undivinable from her bag and wishes she hadn’t. He looks uncomfortably big sitting on the tiny tea chair across from her, barely any hints of the boy who had completely swept her away two years ago visible on the sharper planes of his face. When had he - had they - grown up?

Sebastian Sallow was - is - charming, and that had been her downfall. She had successfully avoided his charms the year before, and she isn’t going to let that happen this year, no matter how much her body rebels against her mind and resolve. Because, as she reminds herself, Sebastian Sallow is also manipulative, and cold-hearted, and selfish.

“Well,” she says archly, opening her book. She will not look at him. “I suppose I am still quite ignorant of the practice of Divination, so do forgive me if I have to double-check my readings in the textbook.”

He says her name as she opens the book, and she ignores him. He says her name again. She continues to ignore him. He grabs the book from her hands and puts it the correct way for her. She was looking at it upside-down. Her cheeks heat up and she continues flipping through the pages, as if nothing has happened. She finds page two-hundred and thirty. She pretends to be interested in what she sees.

(Divination is unfortunately not interesting.)

Oh, fine.

“Do you want to start, or should I?”

These are the first words she has voluntarily spoken to him - not including the events of last week, which do not count as they were most decidedly not voluntary - since he called her ignorant a year and a half ago. He somehow looks surprised to see that she has addressed him, and for some reason this fills her with rage and a strange sort of confidence. Why shouldn’t she be able to talk to him?

“Here,” she says, putting her hand out towards him, palm up, ignoring the strange fluttering feeling in her chest when he gently grabs it with one of his. Sebastian looks up at her, waiting for her to continue speaking, and were she not looking at him so intently she would have easily missed the bob of his throat as he swallows nervously. “Show me how it’s done.”

from my oneshot, clumsy🫶🫶🫶

[j0celynh0rr0r]

[carlestin]

dumping all my huskerdust here that ive gathered

[little-buzz]

Husk (and Lucifer) wanted to hug the others but Alastor had to come in and ruin the moment😭😭

[aroveri]

dumb idea i had based on this things document

dawg was getting shot at and really just stood there lmao