#who doesn't want a kel army

[lilac-gold]

Looking back on my first plan for the Gravity Falls/Omori AU, Episode 7 was honestly so wild. The summary was literally:

'Kel feels lonely and chaotic, so when he and Aubrey get into their biggest fight yet over something silly, he decides to get revenge by making an army of Kels to support him. So, he goes to a group of witches named Medusa, Molly and Marina who can apparently do magic science. He agrees to pay them back after they make him a hundred Kels, planning to unleash them at the tofu fundraiser that night. At said fundraiser, Aubrey accidentally falls in love. Whoops. After realising that he’s going to ruin her chances with Kim, Kel turns against his clones, fighting them to the best of his ability until he manages to lead them back to the Slime Girls. He tries and fails to give them back, the sisters not wanting the clones, but rather payment. It’s at that point that Jawsum comes to pull some strings and the clones are doused in water. Commence death and Kel getting grounded.'

...I have no clue what was going through my mind when I wrote this.

[dukeoftheblackstar]

Update on my Plo Koon army who will continue to block the view of my extended monitor while I work but have not the heart to not put them in view's way.

I now have Season 1 Plo beside Hasbro!Plo and I got another Hoodie!Plo (I hid the hood for safekeeping) which has the Council's logo because the other one doesn't (thems two between Winter!Plo) and Commander Wolffe!!!

Oh and the HOME art by @amorfista remains my browser background ♥ Forever.

Oh! And the custom crochet!Plo that I might just name Kiv and Koa from @veny-many's Post-66 AU with Kel Dor bebbies ♥

And yes, Vader is still there because I don't want him lonely on the side.

The goal is to essentially get so many Plo Koons on my desk dashboard so I'd have absolutely hindered visibility and render my extended monitor useless except for displaying Plo Koon art.

I love him a normal amount. A very normal amount.

@saengak @amorfista @exosorcery @plokoonsdisapprovingeyebrows @ghostperson69 @battlekilt @starrrgazingbunny @kimiheartblade @sofir-kefir @76historylover @sinisterexaggerator

[pierrotwrites-hc]

soo... luca consistently refers to the lady in his pov chapters. his people's religion/spiritual beliefs/tendency towards human sacrifice seems to play a big part in branding them less than human by their enemies. i'm wondering whether luca somehow resisted being brainwashed out of the religion he grew up with, or did they just... introduce him to ganymene and called it a day, without bothering to figure out what exactly he might already believe in? it sticks out as very noteworthy considering how thoroughly most of his culture was taken from him. i always thought luca's little patchwork belief system was interesting (the lady as the true goddess in his mind who would not help him and ganymene as the guy painted on the wall of the training house who's probably more inclined to listen to his prayers... at least that's what it read like to me) and i wonder whether we'll get more insight into it. i've always assumed that he came to the conclusion that the lady abandoned him on his own, but maybe that's what he was told and it just... didn't stop him believing in her? then again, solasans don't seem to know about her to begin with and probably wouldn't care to. i've been thinking about this for a while, haha - have a nice day!

oh, I love this question.

so, the Solasan empire has no interest in religious conversion. there isn't even an official religious infrastructure within Solas, because Roland the Conqueror liquidated it in order to fund his wars abroad.

Toby and Tybalt discuss this in Part II Ch17:

“Well, my great-grandfather Roland got rid of all the priests, you see. And took their property and gave it to the Midland lords, and melted down all their gold and gave it to the lords of Lyonesse. And the priests had been around for positively ages. Much longer than three hundred years. But when Roland got rid of them the common people stood about amazed and said to each other, oh, what a thing, now we don’t need to give all our money to the temples, we can give it to the Crown instead.”

Tybalt looked like he was struggling with several responses to this. He settled on “Some commoners do still make offerings at the remaining temples, you know, even if there aren’t any priests to bless them for it.”

Toby waved this away.

“Silly peasant superstition. Anyway, my brothers say that people of quality don’t give the old rituals the least bit of consideration.

as usual, Toby doesn't get it quite right. the Midland lords were given property previously held by the temples in order to ensure their fealty and cooperation; ditto the lords of Lyonesse with the fungible assets. of course, a lot of that gold went into building up the army and navy and equipping and provisioning them during the takeover of Kel -- a massive one-time cash infusion that future kings would never be able to match (though they've tried by raising taxes at an ever-increasing rate, leading to a corresponding increase in poverty, debt slavery, and general resentment of the crown).

since priesthood as a caste was abolished, religion in Solas has become completely decentralized. the few temples which remain are run by the devout. belief in the gods remains widespread, however, particularly among the lower classes.

so that's Solas. let's talk about Kel. you're absolutely right that their zealous religiosity and practices like human sacrifice are perceived as primitive and even subhuman in Solas. at the same time, Solasans just don't care about converting the barbarians. it isn't part of their imperial project for the simple reason that they get nothing out of it. Solas isn't really interested in "civilizing" the barbarians, in part because they see the barbarians as inherently and irreparably uncivilized. they're just interested in exploiting barbarian land and labor. sure, the Solasan occupiers outlawed some traditional practices, but they aren't motivated by religious or humanitarian concerns. they just want to weaken group identity and, in the case of human sacrifice, prevent the deaths of potentially productive members of the workforce.

this is all to say that there has never been a concerted effort on the part of Luca's captors to stamp out his faith in the Lady. he can have whatever silly little beliefs he likes as long as they don't impede his usefulness.

at the same time, Luca's own experience of his faith has been shifted and reshaped by trauma. he believes in the Lady, but also thinks himself no longer worthy of her attention or protection. the Kel have a warrior culture; the Lady is a warrior goddess. Luca's entire existence in Solas is defined by conditions of defeat and subjugation. the Lady is still the goddess, but she can no longer be his goddess. Ganymene fills that gap. he's a more immediate, accessible divine presence, and having himself been mortal and victimized, he can understand Luca, accept him, and watch out for him. the Lady is all-powerful, but remote; Ganymene is local, amicable, and welcoming. Luca worships both because each offers something he badly needs (Ganymene, acceptance and hope in the present; the Lady, connection to his past and his people). it's a highly syncretic belief system that has helped keep him alive.

[underestimated-heroine]

There are a lot of characters--particularly characters gifted in the art/skill of hand-to-hand combat--who fall into what i call the "Inigo Montoya" problem where a lot of people debate whether or not they're smart and end up in small-stakes yet irreconcilable discourse wars, because "they are smart" and "they are dumb" are, in fact, both correct statements about the character.

Inigo explicitly (and accurately) points out that he is not intelligent: "I need Vizzini to plan; I have no gift for strategy."

He does not understand the politics of their plan, needs parts of their plan re-explained to him (multiple times, if Vizzini's griping is anything to go by), and frequently drinks himself into even deeper stupidity.

But what we cannot forget is that Vizzini also needed Inigo. Because while Vizzini had a high IQ and was strategically gifted, he couldn't fight. The ability to win a physical fight does not just require athletic skill. The ability to fight well also requires tactical intelligence

"Tactics and strategy? I thought they were the same thing," Kel commented. Neal shook his head, a comma of hair flipping into his eyes. Kel longed to touch it but kept her hands locked behind her. "Tactics, my dear girl, is what you did with those bandits. It's immediate planning for the immediate problem. Strategy is the long view, the movement of armies and a plan that covers an entire battle or war." - Tamora Pierce, Page

Without the intelligence to judge when to move closer to or further from his opponent, change ground, retreat, attack, or even do something as small and quick as parry or feint, Inigo couldn't be a swordsmen of such a high caliber.

Of course, I am applying a pretty strong lens to a character from a book/film whose themes don't really have to do with the technicalities of fighting, but then again neither do most of the characters who wind up centered in these sorts of discussions. Besides, I think Goldman (and the movie made from his book) kept his character in line with someone who has the spatial awareness (Inigo was the one that noticed the ship following them) and dynamic cleverness--

"Inconceivable!" "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

--of someone gifted in moment-to-moment mental and physical adaptability.

In the words of Jessica Page Morrell:

"It's simple, really. Fictional characters are bigger than life, bigger than death; they say what we dare not say in real life, jump higher, run faster, make love more often, and also usually mess up more than we do in the real world." (from Thanks, But This Isn't For Us)

Unlike real people, characters are emblematic. Simplified. However, that doesn't mean writers simplify them so much that their intelligence exists only on a dichotomy: "Smart, or dumb?" If that were true, we wouldn't be able to relate to them or their stories at all! Characters, just like real people, are smart in their own way--if the writer is good, anyway.

Not that knowing this will stop this kind of discourse (or that I even want it to actually lol) but I think this is worth remembering, especially if you're a writer.