#why are people so invested in ravana anyways?

[blackknight-100]

Going to just say it because I saw a bunch of YouTube videos this is seriously getting out of hand. Every time I see someone saying things like "oh no <insert opinion> is invalid because it's a later addition/interpretation!" I lose faith in humanity because people do realise right, that the Mahabharata and Ramayana at large are and have been passed down by word of mouth, and most people don't read KMG or BORI or Valmiki Ramayana? And these books came much later (BORI, for instance, was published in the 20th century), so it's not like they were accessible to the vast majority of people throughout the ages in the middle, or even now to those who can't read or don't have internet. People told tales about the characters of MB and RMYN, and yes, they added new things, which became a part of folklore and incorporated the struggles of the locals, because most literature and oral traditions are a mirror of the society. So everytime a folkloric opinion is dismissed because it's not "in the original version", we are effectively dismissing the history of those people and the fluid nature of storytelling. And yes, this includes TV and media - they are absolutely influenced by current political situations and mass opinions.

That being said, some people are waaaay too obsessed with whitewashing their MB blorbos or obsessing about Ravana and it's ruining the environment. WHY ARE PEOPLE TRYING TO WHITEWASH RAVANA? In most versions everyone hated him. There is probably NO ONE in all of Lanka who wanted him to win. The only reason Mandodari was supposed to be devoted is because Mandodari was his wife and the only way to represent good women, as we all know, is to make them good wives.

As for MB, any major male character, except the sages maybe and the last generation of Kurus, 90% of the time has something awful in their resume. And you know what? Good for them! LET THEM COMMIT CRIMES IN PEACE GOOD GODS.

[starswallowingsea]

Book Review: Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel

I ended up giving this book a 3/5 star rating based on just a craft perspective but as soon as I finished reading I ended up looking at reviews by Hindus online and well. Let's discuss below the cut.

So Kaikeyi is a retelling of the Ramayana from the perspective of Queen Kaikeyi. The Ramayana is a very important text in Hinduism and thus, assuming that Patel grew up in a Hindu household, one would expect her to be familiar with it in the same way I, as someone who grew up in a Catholic household, am familiar with the Bible.

Before I get into all of that, I would like to actually talk about the content of the book, since I am the target audience as an outsider to Hinduism looking to learn more about the stories that make up its foundations. I don't know anything about the Ramayana and I found this retelling to be very off, at least from a historical perspective.

One of the biggest issues I have with historical books is that authors really love to put their modern, 21st century views and ideals onto the narrative. It happens on all sides of the political spectrum and as a historian it makes me want to tear my hair out. I know it's unavoidable that our own perspectives shape how we write, but I wish that more people would take a step back and see how their ideas of feminism, in this case anyway, would actually have looked in the time period their book is set in.

Kaikeyi is the third wife of Dasharath and gives birth to his second son, Bharata, whom has been promised upon their wedding to ascend the throne. Kaushalya, Dasharath's first wife, also gave birth to his first son, Rama, of whom the Ramayana is actually focused on. However, while their children are growing up, we get a lot lot lot of the pushing of 21st century ideals in a historical setting. Kaikeyi is very invested in the ideas of women's rights which is fine? I guess? But it is very very hard for me to believe a woman of her standing, quite literally as the Queen of her nation, would be so class conscious and care this much about the average woman in her country without much reason.

Every single time Kaikeyi devolves into a rant about the Patriarchy and Feminism, it feels like this book would have been better suited to a modern retelling of the Ramayana rather than a historical one, though I can imagine it would still come with a lot of the same baggage re: an apparent lack of understanding of anything in the original Epic. The whole thing feels forced and like if Kaikeyi doesn't care about all women then she can't be a feminist character or reclamation or a "girl's girl" as the kids on tiktok are saying these days I think. Honestly I'd rather have a meaningful examination of her biases that are certain to actually be there if she were written to be like a person rather than a perfect ideal of Patel's feminism.

The first 2/3 of the book also felt like everything was just handed to Kaikeyi on a silver platter with very minimal pushback which just made her such an unbearable character to be in the headspace of for that period. I feel a lot of that space could have just been used better to show her stubbornness in the face of adversity that shines towards the end of the novel rather than just. Letting her passively have all of her goals handed to her with very minimal work on her part.

As a reading experience, the last 150 or so pages were probably the best to read as Kaikeyi's actions finally have real, tangible consequences for her but this is also the point where I saw a lot of Hindu readers had such an issue with this retelling of the Ramayana. Rama being portrayed as a misogynistic, war hungry prince and the erasure of Ravana's history of raping and kidnapping women were the two biggest points of contention for Hindu reviewers. I don't see why either of these changes were necessary to adapt this story for a modern, Western audience. By doing this, I believe Patel, intentionally or not, is playing into colonialist narratives about Hinduism rather than fighting them. It's also a disservice to present the Ramayana this way to both Hindu and non-Hindu readers, given that Hindus will be able to spot all the changes and disregard them, and non-Hindus are none the wiser to all the liberties Patel took with her retelling and are bound to spout them as fact if they don't look into the original.

I'd probably skip this book unless you're really into hashtag girlboss feminism retellings of fairy tales and myths, since so many of them miss the point of the original story. I can see the potential here for Patel as an author and am on the fence about trying her book coming out next month as the writing itself wasn't awful, but I'm not sure if I trust her with another myth retelling. At the very least, I suppose I can thank Patel for making me interested in reading the Ramayana at some point in the near future, so this review might have an update eventually.

[sjofn-lofnsdottr]

I happen to be ~both~. And I can talk at length about both ships, so. I will be kind and use a break! Because I assure you, this shit is going to be L O N G.

The tl,dr though: dusk/estinien and dusk/farron both make me very happy whee

First, Dusk's NPC ship:

These two fucking dorks. I started shipping them as a bit of a joke. Dusk is this big helpful golden retriever weirdo, and here this edgelord wannabe batman comes flying out of nowhere, insults him, and then leaps away like he thinks he's cool. Estinien's introduction for me was hilarious, and I decided I absolutely needed to mentally push these two barbies together and make them kiss.

Even Nidhogg shipped it.

What was delightful for me was that I felt like the game kept ... agreeing with me, in a way. Estinien being Way Too Intense About Everything while also trying to Keep His Distance made it feel like he was struggling with getting too invested in this big stupid blonde, that he can't help but blurt things that are meant to sound bad-ass and important but come across as the world's edgiest flirting. You don't tell a man it's destiny to defeat your biggest adversary together without it meaning something, not when you have literally spent your every waking moment since your family died thinking about how you're going to murder the shit out of that dragon. You don't add an extra person into that revenge fantasy unless there are feelings, I'm sure of it.

I had no idea how important he would be in the actual MSQ, so I was a little sad at the end of the level 50 dragoon quest (I hadn't even finished 2.0 yet when I finished DRG's quests), where he has his little meltdown and disappears. Imagine my delight when he strolled back onto screen, trying to be so cool and mysterious. Imagine how he was probably privately dying inside, thinking to himself, fuck, it's that guy, that guy who saw me have a little Nidhogg Episode, that guy that I definitely do not have a crush on. Imagine him realizing wait, THAT guy is the guy Aymeric's been talking my ear off about any time I visit his office? Fuck!

That's right, play it cool.

Anyway, I was definitely pleased to see him again, and pleased to see he was still this tremendous way-too-intense weirdo. Forget the other elezen boyfriends being tossed Dusk's way, I only had eyes for the murder hobo in the silly armor whose face I'd never seen. Because their early dynamic kept making me laugh, the way they had very different ways of interacting with the world, yet still had enough stuff in common to Get Each Other. Even their stupid armor reflected it, since I insisted on glamming the blue dragoon set onto Dusk for most of HW. Dusk is much more cheerful and optimistic than Estinien, but ultimately they're both Ishgardian Intense about protecting people, and that was good enough for me to be entertained, at first.

And then the asshole did this, after Alphie says Ravana isn't a problem, because Dusk will murder him:

This was one of the first times anyone had suggested that maybe deciding "it's fine, Dusk will fight it" without knowing much about the threat, or volunteering Dusk without even asking, isn't cool. It meant a lot to Dusk, way more than I think Estinien would ever realize.

And just like that, the ship turned into a serious one for me (although it still makes me laugh sometimes, of course). Because it drove something home for me that I'd already been thinking about. At this point in the story, Estinien is pretty much the only person Dusk knows who kind of understands what it's like to be the Warrior of Light, since he's the Azure Dragoon. They both get a lot of expectations piled onto them that they're expected to just accept without complaint, to be the best living weapon they can be. Neither one is technically fighting their fight alone, but they're each respectively The Guy. And it's just ... nice knowing there's someone else who understands what it's like being The Guy.

And I think that's why he's the one who gets Alphie to realize how he's been kind of a shitty friend to Dusk with this comment. I know Alphie talks about the firewood all the time, but I think this is the actual first Big Influence Estinien has on him, the firewood is just the stand in because he can tangibly show having learned that at the drop of a hat. It's a lot harder to show 'I realized I was treating this person I admire like a tool and taught myself to stop doing that.'

I could write a lot about Heavensward in general and why that made me go ride or die for this ship, but suffice to say, I really enjoyed Estinien's devotion to protecting Ishgard extending beyond 'murder dragons,' even if he wasn't very patient with 'hang out with a heretic and try her plan first.' He still did it. I enjoyed that he told everyone they weren't allowed to come on his dragon killing date with Dusk. I appreciated that he didn't fight accepting the truth of the war when it was revealed to him, trusting what Dusk told him he saw was true, even though it meant what he'd been honed into was based on a lie the entire time. A lot of people wouldn't have.

I spent most of Heavensward expecting him to turn somehow, especially since I knew he'd lost it once already in the DRG quests, and was ready for some Dusk Angst to come from it. But he never really did, he was fully committed the entire time, and you could tell he trusted Dusk completely (and Dusk trusted him). At the end of Heavensward, I let my guard down about two seconds before Estinien himself did, which made that hit harder. Got my angst after all. :D

I have already rambled at length, and I don't really need to go over Estinien's whole arc. I think he's had a lot of growth since we met him, while keeping stuff I have liked about him since the beginning. And the game gives me every reason to think Estinien and the Warrior of Light are close, if I want to, and I very much do want to. For me, even if I look at the relationship platonically, I think they helped each other grow. They'd both been seen as tools to solve problems with, and had both gotten more complacent with the idea than they should've been. It's easier to see how unfair that is when it's happening to someone you're friends with, rather than yourself, and I think seeing that reflection in each other was really important for both of them. And that's going to form a certain kind of bond they just do not have with anyone else.

But also you can't have these two keep looking at each other like this every time they see each other for the first time in a while and expect me not to ship them. You simply cannot.

I won't ramble quite as much (probably) about Dusk/Farron, because I am way more likely to talk about that ship in general.

So I've been close friends with @petitfarron for years now. We met each other not long after we started playing FFXIV in early 2019 (I started in February, he started in April). Sometimes you just meet someone you click with, and Petit turned out to be one of those someones.

About two years ago (god), he was starting to get back into RP, and wanted to 'practice,' for lack of a better word. I hadn't RPed in FFXIV at all, but I was happy to volunteer. I had been learning anamnesis making silly shippy pictures of Dusk and Farron already, and he's always liked Dusk as a character to start with (I didn't RP, but I sure did talk A LOT about Dusk as a character to anyone who would listen), so although I said it didn't have to go that route if he didn't think it would make sense, the ship between Dusk and Farron set sail pretty much immediately.

And I'm really glad it did! First, there's the shallow, obvious reason. They are simply adorable together:

But I also really enjoy their relationship, because I think they compliment each other really well. Since the RP is just the two of us, Petit encouraged me to RP Dusk as the Warrior of Light instead of Random Adventuring Elezen #9263586. Farron, on the other hand, is just a guy. A guy who met Dusk after 6.0 ended, and got to know him as Dusk, rather than The Warrior of Light, and that is incredibly important to Dusk.

He can pipe up with is opinion if he wants, but from my perspective, Farron helps remind Dusk that he's actually still a normal person, capable of just doing normal things, with normal person wants and needs. He's protective of Dusk, worries about people starting to treat him like the solution to their problems again, worries about Dusk feeling pressure to fling himself into danger. At the same time, he loves how easily Dusk gives his time and care and kindness and love to people, and he trusts that Dusk truly wants to help them.

Dusk loves that Farron is kind, in spite of all the shit Farron has been through in his life. He loves that he's so curious about the world around them, and the people they meet. Dusk is too, and he's excited to share those sorts of experiences with Farron. He even loves visiting places he's been that Farron hasn't, because he gets to learn what Farron thinks of those places, and it gives him a new perspective on them! He loves that Farron's a stubborn optimist too, and that while he worries about Dusk, he will never try to convince him to be someone he simply isn't. He'll never ask him not to help, not to adventure, not to fight. He'll only make sure it's something Dusk really wants to do, something Dusk wants people to consider.

I also just enjoy poor normal-ass Farron learning to deal with his partner's extremely not-normal life. He's doing his best!

For a while, these two ships existed in different spaces for me.

In MSQ-land, Dusk and Estinien are ... complicated, never saying outright how much they care about each other. There are times I was like 'oh they totally made out here,' mind you, but I also think that after it was out of their systems, they go right back to pretending they're just bros, and thinking they're definitely pulling it off. They are wrong, of course, but no one's had the heart to point it out yet.

In RP-land, Dusk and Farron are engaged and nigh-inseparable. They're rarely apart, and most challenges they face are external, rather than conflict between them or their relationship styles. They're very much on the same page, and so fuckin' happy and sappy with each other. They are free serotonin for me, always.

Keeping them separate makes sense, right?

Except Petit and I will definitely be writing a lot of RP stuff based on whatever happens in Dawntrail, so it'll be MSQ-tastic.

Except Petit has also really loved the Dusk/Estinien ship, ever since I'd started talking to him about it years ago.

Except I have always thought of Dusk as polyamorous, ever since I made him up for a completely different game.

Except Petit thinks of Farron as polyamorous, because of how viis and viera are.

Except Petit also really loves Estinien as a character.

So fine, the two concepts can collide a bit. As a treat.

Another random WoLQotD/OC question

I thought I'd ask this while I worked on my other questions. :)

If you're a WoL x NPC shipper, what drew you to that ship and why? What makes that ship the pinnacle for you and your oc? Is it that you love the canon character you write them with, you find their dynamic interesting or something in between?

If you're not a WoL x NPC shipper, but you have a ship with another person, how did that come about? What makes that ship fulfilling for you? Has the ship impacted your relationship with that other person? Feel free to gush, I wanna hear it!

Oh, and pictures are a must (if you have them).