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sapphicmsmarvel · 24 days

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the beginning of your life with Azriel

Tw: bad mental health mentioned. Mentioned r*pe and murder of said r*pist

buckle in friends, we got a long one ahead of us. (long for me to write okay)

tropes: friends to lovers, taking care of future S/O, fluff to angst then back to fluff

When Azriel had met you, he had no idea just how important you would become to him.

You were Feyre’s beautiful friend from the mortal world, a friend that was taken with her sisters. A friend that fought against Hybern every step of the way. A friend that drew blood from the High Lord of the Spring because he hurt Feyre and you knew the truth. You had smacked the shit out of Tamlin.

So when your High Lady and High Lord asked you to be the Night Court’s Justice, you readily agreed.

It was…nice to get that anger out on people that had harmed your loved ones.

So you began training, you originally were training with just Cassian and Azriel, then when Nesta needed some outlet, you extended the offer to her.

Well, it wasn’t really an offer.

She was bitter towards you for it for the longest time. But she eventually, apologized to both you and Feyre for her bitter words, but you both obviously forgave her.

You knew how bad shit had gotten when you were first turned. Bitter, angry, resentful. But instead you went to different coping mechanisms. You poured everything into helping others, to the point where you were neglecting yourself. Rhysand had pulled you out of it, but that’s a story for another day.

(read about that here)

Azriel saw the shift in you then, the day you killed your rapist and brought peace to the survivors. He watched as the pathetic man pleaded for forgiveness.

Since then, as stated earlier, you began training so you’d be able to fight. When you became the night courts justice, you and him developed a partnership. You were work partners. You two only trusted each other completely unconditionally. It was a hard relationship to build. But after a year of countless missions where every single one was successful, it became pretty easy.

Late nights eating in a dingy inn room. If you stayed in an inn room that had only one bed, he’d say he was going to take the floor but you eventually persuaded him to just climb into bed with you.

You two never split up unless it was vital to the mission. You two trusted each other to do things on your own, but sometimes two was better than one.

You learned the most intimate things about each other. How he doesn’t like when beds are too soft because it feels weird (from ya know sleeping on a dingy floor his whole youth). You can’t sleep unless you bathe every single day. You snore and talk in your sleep while he sleeps perfectly still like he’s laying in a casket.

When you go on separate missions, he can’t sleep because he doesn’t know if you’re safe or not. You can’t sleep because you miss the brooding bat.

You helped train the valkyries, hell, you were even taken to the blood rite.

He had never been so nervous in his life during that time. You were his partner and he couldn’t be there to help you. Frankly, he’d call you his best friend. Rhysand and Cassian knew him extremely well, but you were something else to him entirely.

The second he saw the four of you walk out, he was so relieved he nearly fell to the ground and thanked the mother.

You guys had been close before the Rite, and now you were even closer.

A lot of times, you tried to face your nightmares alone. However sometimes it was difficult so you’d walk to his room to sleep there. His body and shadows were so attuned to your movements that he never jumped when you crawled into the bed. He knew the second you opened the door that it was you.

He can’t explain it, it was just a sixth sense. Like, you guys would be out and about and he would just know you were about to do some stupid shit with Cassian.

He started realizing what he truly felt for you after the Blood Rite. How his heart felt lighter when you were in his sight. How he always chose to sit next to you, or be by you.

Cassian finally had enough, so did Feyre apparently because the both of them ambushed him one night, “so when are you finally asking Y/N out?” Cassian demanded.

Azriel looked like he got caught stealing cookies from the cookie jar. “What?”

“Feyre and I-”

“No, you dragged me here.” Feyre corrected her beloved brother in law.

“Because you’re her best friend!”

“Which means I shouldn’t be hearing this because I am legally obligated-”

“Legally?” Azriel questioned. “By Girl Law-“ She cut a look at Azriel who held his hands up in an “I surrender” position. She pointed at him. “This is shit I have to tell her if I hear it. So la la la la.” She plugged her ears and walked away.

Cassian shook his head at her retreating figure. “Crazy woman.” He looked back at his brother and smacked him on the chest. “You need to make a move!”

“What.” Az simply stated.

“You. Need. To. Make. A. Move!” After each word, Cassian hit Azriel in the chest.

Azriel swung at him to get him to stop. “Ack!”

“She’s head over heels for you, idiot!”

Azriel hesitated. “I don't think so.”

“Dude, she literally smiles the biggest when she sees you come in the room. She always stays by your side, she constantly shares her food with you.” Cassian explained.

“She does that with everyone.”

“No! No she does not! I tried to take a roll from her yesterday and her fork almost impaled my hand.”

“Bread and butter is one of her favorite things. You’re an idiot for that.” Azriel deadpanned.

“See! Another thing, you two know each other as intimately as lovers.”

Eventually, he got Cassian to stop, but that night he just could not stop thinking about you. Your smile lights him up from the inside. Especially your genuine smile. The one where your gums are showing, your teeth, your nose scrunches and your eyes squint.

He loves your laugh, it is the song his shadows dance to. You have variations that he memorizes as if they’re the chords to his favorite music.

He groaned into his pillow, his shadows silently laughing at him as they saw their master lovelorn.

Although, even they knew you had feelings for the shadow singer. Their master, while one of the deadliest in Prythian, was a moron.

The feelings for each other didn’t get exposed until later. Much later.

You two were on a deadly mission, one that even Rhys was worried to send you on. You had completed the task, but the cost?

Your health.

One of the arrows was poisoned. You couldn’t move a single muscle below your neck. You were tired. You just wanted a warm bath and snuggles with Azriel.

“Y/N, please stay awake.” Azriel clutched your cheeks. “The healer is on her way. She’s running to you, baby. Please stay awake.”

You felt water drop onto your face, you looked up at the sky wondering when it had begun to rain.

It hadn’t. Your friend, your partner, was crying.

“I love the stars.” You whispered. “My favorite one is right in front of me.”

“Yeah? Which constellation is that?” His voice was gravelly. He sniffed. He looked up then back at you, as if the idea of letting you out of his sight would seal your fate.

“You. You are my constellation. You are my galaxy.” You whispered. “If I'm going to die, I want you to know that.”

“You’re not going to die.”

“We don’t know that.” You said. “I wish I could move my hand, so I could touch you.”

“I’m right here.” His hands were on your face.

“No, I want to hold your hand.” You whimpered.

He looked taken aback but abided by his dying love's wish. He held your hand tightly.

“If I am your galaxy, you are my moon.” He put your foreheads together. All you could see was the hazel of his eyes. “You ground me. You keep me in rhythm. You are my constant companion. And I vow, you will survive this and we will be together, okay? You are my strength, my salvation and you will live.”

Your eyes slipped closed right as the healer reached you.

——————-

When you awoke, you felt a presence next to you. You looked to the side through your groggy eyes and saw Azriel laying next to you. His hand was still intertwined with yours. His shadows dancing around your bodies. They got visibly excited when you awoke.

One shot towards your face as if to cradle it and your hand that wasn’t holding Azriels, shot up in reflex. It twirled around your fingertips.

You could move again.

Azriel’s eyes shot open, they were incredibly bloodshot. “Oh love.” He said. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I got hit by all of Feyre’s abilities at once.” You groaned. “Throw Rhys in there too. And you and Cassian.” You sighed. “Frankly, it feels like everybody hit me with their full powers.”

“The Healer, Tatiana, said you’d feel that way.” He stroked your hand. “Completely normal for the dose of poison you received. She even threw in five bottles of the antidote and instructions for us to give to Madja, so our home healer has information.”

You sighed. “Anything for this pain?”

“No. Nothing will help. You just have to ride it out.” He looked depressed giving you that news.

But you couldn't hide how you felt. How much pain you were in. You were safe enough with Az to crumble your walls.

And that’s when your tears started. “It hurts so bad.” You whimpered.

“I know.” He brushed them away. “Rhysand is sending a carriage to transport you back home. I was told not to risk winnowing or flying. It’ll be here tomorrow morning, I assumed that you’d want to go home as soon as possible.”

“What if I didn’t wake up now?”

“We still would’ve transported you. I want to keep you comfortable. Tatiana says there is little risk of your sutures opening from where you were shot. Plus, she says the effects of poison won’t flare up after 12 hours and we hit that about five hours ago. So you’re pretty much on track to recovery. We’re just taking a carriage to minimize the risk of you bleeding out or vomiting all over a city. Cause guess what? that’s a symptom too.”

“Fucking shit.” You said leaning against the pillow. “Where are we?”

“An Inn, Esther the inn owner found us in the woods and ran back to get a town healer. She won’t let me pay at all.” He seemed kind of pouty about that. “But I’m gonna try again tomorrow.”

He brushed your hair back. “Are you hungry?”

“Eh.” Was all you said, and then. “Bread and butter sounds nice right now.”

He snorted and you cried indignantly. “Hey I am ill-“

“Oh relax. I’ve already prepared for this.” He squeezed your hand and got up.

When he let go of your hand and you’d be damned if you showed how sad you were about that.

You were pouting.

He used a knife to slice open some rolls and put them by the lit fire. “I know you like warm bread and cold butter but you’ll have to settle for room temperature butter.”

He brought you over a plate and glass of water. The bread was even spread with an unholy amount of butter. Just the way you like it.

He got you set up against the headboard. You downed the glass of water and he quickly gave you a refill. After your belly was full and you felt a bit better, you looked over at him.

“So you wanna talk about what I said when I was….” You trailed off.

“Did you mean it?” He whispered.

“Yes!” You whispered enthusiastically back. “Az, since the very first day I met you I have had a crush on you.”

“Really?”

“Yes!” You cried, your head hitting the headboard. “Gods, Cassian and Feyre wouldn’t let me breathe about it. Same with Nesta.”

“I didn’t know.” Azriel said.

“I know.” You sighed. “I’m sorry if me saying that stuff on my deathbed pressured you into saying anything.” “It didn’t.” He took a deep breath. “I have been infatuated with you for far longer than I ever knew.” He clutched your hand again. “I found you beautiful as a mortal, endearing. But when you were turned, it amazed me that you somehow became ethereal. You were so angry that you smacked Tamlin with your nails. You made him bleed. When he snarled at you, I was ready to jump in. But Feyre beat me to it.” He smiled, a bit sadly.

“When you went to the Rite, I knew you could do it. Yet, I felt fear that I haven’t felt in a long time. When I saw you, I almost lost it right then. Confessed everything.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“I don't think I can handle your rejection.” He whispered.

“I will never reject you, Az.” You clutched your joined hands. “You are everything I've ever wanted. Ever needed. I would be honored if you’d accept me-“

“I already have.” He whispered looking at you.

You put your hand against his cheek and pulled him to you. Your lips met and it was everything you’d ever wanted. All your fears and love were put into that kiss.

You knew you both would be okay, as long as you had each other.

And right as you thought that, the mating bond snapped.

——————————

#acotar #acofas #acomaf #acowar #acotar x reader #azriel x reader fluff #azriel x you #azriel x reader #azriel shadowsinger #azriel acotar #acotar fanfic

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clericofgale · 5 months

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Spoilers for Patch 5 and the whole game.

I posted my thoughts about the new ending Gale got in patch 5 on Reddit first, but I might as well post it here with some revisions. I'll say it, I love the god Gale ending. But it is NOT his good ending to me. Before I would never have pursued it, but now it is tantalizing to say the least. I'm into it though Gale the mortal is still my preference.

"Gale Dekarios cuts a poor figure next to the wizarding prowess of 'Gale of Waterdeep. You like so many things about me I'd have sooner discarded…"

By ascending Gale, you are killing Gale Dekarios. The nerd that hits on you in front of everyone while you're covered in zombie blood, procced to infodump an entire tangent to complement you, and yet somehow stick the landing to hit you with the most romantic poetry you've ever heard. A sensitive man who wears his emotions on his sleeve and wants to make the world a more beautiful place. An artist of the weave and a poet. The owner of the most overbearing tressym in the world. The moment the spell was complete, Gale Dekarios died and Gale the divine was born.

Even then, why is god Gale now so enticing to me unlike ascended Astarion? Because he loves you. He wants you by his side as an equal. It's actually sweet and romantic, just like all of Gale's romance is. I'm nothing if not a sucker for a romance.

"Follow my Lead" "Show me more. Show me it all." "I want you to seize the crown and make us a new world"

BeMyGod is the name in the data file for the boat scene where Gale asks you if you'll be with him when he seizes the crown. I know file names can be arbitrary, but if you agree to his proposal, you really are asking Gale to be your god. It's so easy to say yes. You're in the stars, Gale says I want to show you so much more, but it's not worth it without you. All you need to do is say yes. You're angry at Mystra who demanded so much of Gale, caused him such suffering and won't lift a finger to help. So You say yes. You love him. He loves you.

When Gale ascends, even in 6 months he is a different entity. The devs indicate: "His posture/demeanor here should feel slightly more aloof/detached than the regular Gale - he's been immortal for six months, his ego is as powerful as his magic. The real Gale's insecurities still lurk beneath his godlike confidence, as does his love for the player, but this is clearly a Gale setting out on a darker path."

The Gale here is a twisted version of the one we loved. His flaws are worse, he good traits have mostly disappeared. Namely his kindness and tolerance to deprecating humor. He no longer tolerates any perceived slight or jab. He doesn't let go of his bitterness towards Mystra. His ego is large yet fragile. You saw a glimpse of it at the ritual circle scene if you succeed in upstaging him in magic. Now it's only gotten worse. Yes even his insecurity. If you rejected him after accepting the proposal, Gale says this.

Tav: No, I think it's the end. What happened to the man I once loved? Gale: He's the god he deserves to be. I achieved everything we hoped I would, and still I'm not good enough for you?

He's also lonelier than ever. His last 6 months were in isolation, with nobody he could trust while dealing with the crown and celestial politics. Immortals don't really have friends. They have allies and lovers. He stops talking to his mother who was so dear to him. He develops a spell to polymorph people into Tara, his oldest friend who rejects him after ascension. He then develops a spell that summons Shadowdark ale and forces people to dance and be happy, just like the vignette he told you about the Yawning Portal. The third spell is Power word: Ruin. he's finally back to speaking death into being with a single word, just like he used to.

Gale wanted to be a god to make a better world, but now he's a neutral god answering prayers from any alignment. He doesn't care if they are Thayan wizards aiming for lichdom or unscrupulous Amnian merchants. Ambition is a neutral idea. Ambition also drives healers to develop a cure. For adventurers to slay monsters.

What's the most noticeable remaining good trait in Gale? Gale still loves you. He's much nicer to you if romanced. He refuses to be with you if you don't go with him because he doesn't want to hurt you. He admires your good heart if you want to honor the pact with Raphael. He calls you my love just like before. He will fulfill the promise sealed that night in the astral sea. All you have to do is say yes. And the ascension cinematic is a callback to the romance scenes from before.

"Follow my lead. Close your eyes. I have so much more to show you."

And you know what. I'll go with you. Even if we will eventually lose both our humanity in our folly, and dreams become nightmares. Even if I'll come to regret that night when I said yes to the mortal you, I don't want you to be lonely. Where ever you go, I'll go. You'll always have me. And I'll always have you.

As God Gale would say… "A toast then, to our myriad ambitions. May we each get what we deserve."

#gale of waterdeep #gale dekarios #god gale #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 spoilers #Gale thoughts #Love makes fools of us all #Frankly I think the fact his love is genuine is genius #1k+ words

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thedomesticanthropologist · 3 months

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Would you be willing to do an analysis on Karlach and how she seems to compartmentalize a lot of extreme feelings? Like she gives me the sense that that was how she coped in Avernus to stay alive and reduce the odds of exploitation by devils, but it's fascinating to see how fast she seems to shut down anything negative to the point that she disapproves of Tav/Durge questioning the ethics of using soul coins.

I haven't done the Karlach origin, so I may be missing some context or information. That being said LETS GOOOO 👏👏👏

Karlach has a reputation in fandom for being a cinnamon roll, but she is so much more than that. Her personality is really complex, and her history is full of decisions and actions that reflect her upbringing and the situations she was forced to survive. That history helped shape how she sees and responds to the world around her.

On Soul Coins: Soul Coins are small, coin-shaped objects forged of infernal iron into which a single mortal soul has been bound. They are used as currency in the Nine Hells, and can be used to power infernal engines such as the one in Karlach's chest

They contain an entire MORTAL SOUL. The full essence of a person, and once used in Karlachs engine, that persons soul is destroyed in a way that makes it irretrievable.

What does this mean? Can souls in coins be saved? Yes! From the forgotten realms wiki:

It was possible to release the soul within a soul coin. This could be achieved by casting an anti-curse spell, such as remove curse, on the coin. Once a soul was freed, the coin began rusting and was eventually destroyed. If the soul was of a good alignment, they were transported to the realm of their deity. If the soul was of an evil alignment, they were transported to the Styx and transformed into a lemure (dang yo lol)

Karlach sees the coins as a tool to enhance her power. If the player reminds her that soul is a person, she gets very angry and says she /knows/ that. She still believes that they should be used to juice her up. You can obtain quite a bit of disapproval from Karlach by questioning the use of the soul coins in Act 1.

Additionally, Karlach has unique dialogue with Mattis the tiefling child in the Last Light Inn. She essentially encourages the kids racket scheme, and if the player pipes up to say her advice isn't moral/ethical/a good suggestion, she has a strong disapproval and puts the PC in their place by saying you have NO RIGHT to intervene on her opinions of how a (poor, displaced) tiefling child should act to better their personal situation.

We are also aware that in her past, At some point Karlach lived in the city of Baldur's Gate in Faerûn, where she worked as personal bodyguard for Lord Enver Gortash. Personal bodyguard is key: this implies she was at his side, whenever he did whatever he was doing at the time. It is also stated that she "would do anything for him", and was betrayed by him. Her anger with him is based on what he put her through, and I do not believe she expresses anything about what he had her do while she was a bodyguard.

Karlach is not a "morally pure: character prior to Avernus, nor was she one during her time in Avernus, nor is she one when she escapes. The game never implies that she is.

However! What Karlach is is extremely loyal, and a SURVIVOR. She has the mentality of 'do what you need to do to survive', and she WILL do what she needs to do to survive. She came from a poor upbringing, she did the best she could with what she had, and now that she's escaped Avernus she wants to CELEBRATE and experience as much joy as possible before she burns up.

This makes her very sensitive to anything that might 'kill the vibe'. She doesn't want to face things like her impending death (she tries very hard to get you to stop talking about it) she doesn't want to question the coins, she doesn't want to deal with big moral questions when the bare bones of the situation are that that kid probably needs to be a thief in order to make it by, "morals" be damned.

Karlach went through hell. Literally. She was incredibly abused psychologically and physically and used as a weapon. She doesn't have the TIME to do anything other than be glad that she's not there anymore. She wants to smell the grass, drink the ale, laugh, love, make friends, enjoy as much as she can while she can. Is she a good person? I'd say so, yeah. But is she a paragon of virtue? No. She was never meant to be, nor was she ever given the opportunity to be.

She knows that reality is a lot harder and a lot more in your face than any higher 'ideals' that may be the best looking on paper. This may be an unpopular opinion as well, but I think if Gortash hadn't sold her, she very likely would have ended up on a path where she would happily do some pretty sketchy shit.

I'm not sure I'd say she compartmentalizes so much as actively chooses to avoid addressing things, to the point where it pisses her off if you try to push her. It's an avoidance of choice, maybe even a rationalization situation.

You do the best you can with the hand you're given. She always did. And now she's only got a few minutes left to enjoy what time she has, so... she does.

#baldurs gate 3 #bg3 #bg3 karlach #karlach cliffgate #karlach

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lemmeurs · 2 months

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okay. here is my 1600+ words essay on raphael. if anyone would like to adress anything from it, please do but keep it civil! i am so damn invested in this topic, i wanna hear everyone's thoughts

raphael rant

(DISCLAIMER: this essay was not written in order to justify Raphael as a character or any of his actions or intentions. i am completely skipping any point of morality, whether my own or just in general, i simply wanted to somehow try and write my feelings and thoughts down while looking at the whole thing from a subjective point of view, analyzing the design of the game, the plotline and his whole persona and just.. idk i wanted to see whether anyone else felt the way i do because i have been going INSANE over this for the past few days)

hi. i have come here today to express my thoughts and feelings on Raphael the cambion and "his final act". this is being randomly and spontaneously written in my notes app so please excuse the absolute chaos that this essay will be (no i won't be rereading it, fuck it we ball) (CONTAINS BG3 ACT III SPOILERS!!)

first of all — i am so beyond devastated that he gets killed. and not just by anyone, he gets killed BY US. THE PLAYER. WE AS THE PLAYER DELIVER THE FINAL BLOW THAT ENDS HIS EXISTENCE. not only is that very upsetting (because come on, hot devil man, obviously i don't wanna kill him??) but it also makes me feel so.. awful. like, everything about this is wrong and i hate the fact that there is no other option.

because let's review the course of the story in the house of hope:

- we barge into his house unannounced, uninvited, while he is absent

- we invade his privacy by entering what's his own personal space (yes, i know he stole it from Hope in the first place but that is not the point here — whatever his devil business is, it's still HIS, you know?? like he is a devil, this is the kinda stuff they do and honestly? i didn't want to stick my nose into it. but obviously i did because tHe sToRy etc etc. but still, it was his own thing that basically doesn't affect the player in any way so TECHNICALLY you dont have to free Hope. you can, if your character's moral compass advises so, but it doesn't affect the main plot.)

- we then proceed to walk around his house freely, lie to his archivist in order to look at the stuff we're already planning to steal

- we meet his personal incubus whom then we have the chance to either use or kill (i fought Haarlep so that's the point of view i'm looking from at this here, in which case i also robbed their corpse) and we rob his safe. and his whole bedroom actually. we read his journals. we use his bath.

- then obviously we go and rob his entire archive which includes all of his most precious possessions

- upon stealing, we slaughter every single creature in his house, fighting our way through to get to Hope's prison

- we then kill the two spectators he has guarding her (they were probably super hard to obtain??) and we just. free his prisoner. because yeah, that is the right thing to do, IM NOT SAYING THAT'S WRONG, but let's say we skip morality for a second, let's just focus on the fact that we have no ulterior motives in freeing Hope. we just wanna mess with HIS business because why not since we're already ruining all of his plans.

- and then we have the audacity to try to leave before he comes back and act like we were never there while his entire house is turned to shit.

now let's look at this list again but this time keep in mind the fact that at that point, he hasn't done A SINGLE THING to us. like, he has never harmed us, he treated us with (let's call it) "respect" and politeness, he was fine with our hesitation towards his deal and was willing to give us time. he was never aggressive towards us, he was never "the enemy".

and now you can say - okay wtf is wrong with you, that man literally admitted his intention of conquering the worlds, enslaving all mortals and basically becoming the tyrant of all while also most likely stealing everyone's souls for his own pleasure.

yes, he did, and yes, that's bad. but just because those were his intentions does not give us the right to do all that shit to him AND THEN KILL HIM. AS IF WE HAD THE RIGHT TO SERVE JUSTICE HERE?? YEAH HIS PLANS ARE EVIL BUT IT IS NOT UP TO US TO DICTATE HIS CONSEQUENCES. HIS PLANS WOULD ONLY SUCCEED IF WE GAVE HIM THE CROWN IN THE END, SO JUST- DON'T?? LIKE DO YOU GET WHAT I MEAN. IM NOT TRYING TO JUSTIFY HIS ACTIONS OR INTENTIONS, BY ALL MEANS. i'm just trying to express how weird this all made me feel because not everyone decides to play as the selfless, lawfully good hero of all, protecting the world from all evil, ever! this is roleplay, afterall!

and them obviously he comes home. he is furious, as he should be. but mostly he's betrayed because, as weird as it may be, he trusted us. he admitted to growing "quite fond of us, in his own way". he thought we were some weird sort of.. acquaintances? friends maybe? (again, i know most of our relationship with him is mostly just him manipulating us but still, it's quite clear he wasn't expecting this betrayal) and we just barged in there and disrespected him in the worst way possible. so obviously he wants to kill us now and obviously we can kill him since he's just a boss in a game. and that's what we do. and then.. that's it. we're the good guys. we ruined a man's whole career because we needed one of his toys, murdered him in his own house and just left. and we're supposed to be the good guys.

i think the source of my problem is that Raphael is never introduced as evil. we don't meet him as the big bad villain that we know we'll have to kill at some point. i swear to god, at the beginning of act 3 i trusted that man way more than i trusted the Emperor and i was so close to agreeing to his deal just because i felt like i could trust him and he would keep me safe (for some reason, let's blame it on those wonderful eyes of his).

we meet him so early on in the game and he follows through all 3 acts, making it feel like he's gonna be some key character that will matter in the end - turns out, no! we were just supposed to rob and kill him. and that's literally it. talk about wasted potential.

when i first met him i got the "unofficial narrator" vibes from him, as if he was only supposed to seem intimidating and "evil" but you could sense there was so much more to him and i was dying to see how his story would unwrap. i was so ready for a redemption act, a plot twist, anything. man was i disappointed. because how cool would it be if he turned out to be a part of the "gather your allies" quest?? imagine having him as an ally and an ACTUAL friend in the end??

and don't even GET ME STARTED on what the orb in Helsik's shop shows you after you kill him. the fact that he's not even dead yet but ABOUT TO BE DEVOURED BY MEPHISTOPHELES. ABOUT TO BE DEVOURED. BY HIS FATHER. HE. WHAT. THATS THE ENDING HE GETS. and we are the ones that served it to him when he got RIGHTFULLY pissed at us for doing all that shit to him. and im supposed to just be fine with it?? i'm supposed to feel like this was the ending he deserved and i did the right thing??

god what i would give for a different way. idk. striking a new deal with him. saving him from Mephistopheles afterwards. REDEMPTION ARC?? ANYTHING?? NO? THATS IT THEN?

now i know that you dont HAVE to kill him, you can either agree to his deal or just ignore him and the house of hope altogether. but that just defeats the whole purpose of this character?? agreeing to his deal and giving him the crown at the end results in a pretty bad ending and ignoring him means that yeah, you don't have to kill him but you also don't get anything else from him anymore. like he has no other endings, just either death or his big evil plans. and for a game with so many choices and so much branching, it just feels almost weird that that's all he is there for. then why do we meet him in act 1? why does he follow through to act 2? (yeah, astarion, i know, but i cant help but feel like they could have put a completely different way to read his runes there if they didnt want Raphael specifically to help us) WHY ARE WE ALREADY SO USED TO HIM BY THE TIME HE PRESENTS HIS DEAL? if the whole hammer business is the only thing he's in the game for, then we may have as well been introduced to him only in act 3 during the whole Voss quest. but we knew him already and he felt like some sort of a.. friend lets call it? idk. this just does not make sense to me and makes me genuinely so sad.

as i'm writing this, it's the third day after ive completed the house of hope and i literally can not think about anything else. like my mind is just going on and on about this and i cant get over it!! im actually GRIEVING a fictional devil and i dont know what to do with all these.. thoughts.

so now i actually genuinely MISS THAT MF. I MISS HIM. GIVE HIM BACK. I WASN'T DONE AND NEITHER WAS HE. PLEASE PLEASE LARIAN I CAN FIX HIM—

okay i think thats it for now. idk i wrote this so chaotically i already forgot what i said and didnt say. im just. im feeling so many things. im so fucking sad and mad that this is how it ends. rest in peace hot devil man i will never forget you.

#bg3 act 3 spoilers #bg3 raphael #bg3 spoilers #raphael the cambion #raphael #bg3 #baldurs gate 3 spoilers #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 act 3 #larian studios #bg3 essay #baldur's gate iii #bg3 discussion

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essektheylyss · 1 year

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I do theorize that Ludinus is intentionally obscuring the exactitude of his age and hearkening back to the images of the Calamity in order to bolster the importance of his cause, and here's why:

What Ludinus specifically said could be applied precisely to the Greying Wildlands, Molaesmyr, and the Veluthil Forest, from which he is said to have been from.

He talks about the world burning; he talks about the destruction left in the god's wake, and their self-preservation at the expense of all else. Per the EGTW, the Greying Wildlands burned for almost a century after the Divergence. The gods quite literally set the world ablaze and then abandoned it—because they would have continued until they destroyed Exandria entirely, sure, but also because they themselves had been threatened and nearly killed. Lolth, Ioun and Sehanine were all struck down almost to the point of destruction. It is easy to imagine the questions: that perhaps if they hadn't felt the threat of mortality, they would've continued indefinitely; that perhaps when they claimed they'd left for the good of Exandria, it was a manipulation, if not an outright lie.

The Veluthil Forest was a single sanctuary of untouched forest within the ashes, and that was the place where the wood elves of Wildemount rebuilt. The description given is this:

"This small patch of idyllic green endured, a sanctuary for the surviving wood elves that held fast and hoped for a miracle. Sensing that the blessings of Melora and Corellon had kept the heart of this forest alive until the fires burned out, the elves began to build a new home among the ancient trees and groves."

If Ludinus is old in 842 PD, he would very possibly have been born when those fires were still burning to elves who, evidently, were still putting their faith in the gods. Even in the vacuum left of divine power immediately after the Divergence, they "held fast." But a person growing up and knowing nothing but the destruction may not have maintained as much faith.

Still, Molaesmyr thrived for centuries, beyond the fires burning out. "Druidic forces and powerful fey enchantments" were used to protect the city, likely referring to the followers of Melora and Corellon respectively. Until one day those protections did nothing to stop another catastrophe—nearly instantaneously, an unknown corruption wiped out their protected home. Whether Ludinus knows what happened to it or not, this supposedly-divine sanctuary was wiped out without any riposte from the gods themselves. Mortals had been left to their devices, and were still relying upon divine blessings for their protection; what good were those blessings then?

When Ludinus says he's "old enough," sure, it's possible that he did see the Age of Arcanum. But I think it's far more likely that he is old enough to have witnessed the worst of the Calamity's ruin, before the rebuilding had even began—and to watch what they had built in its wake be wiped out without any gods to seek recourse from.

Whether he believed his elders' faith or not, whether he saw the Divergence or not, he also experienced what was left in their wake, with only glorious stories of the past to strive toward—and it's even possible that stories were enough for a while.

But when you live long enough to see the world around you and most of the survivors of the previous destruction fall to ruin yet again, it would be all too easy, even reasonable, to fall back on the bitterness of an abandoned child.

#I will NOT stop talking about this sorry #you cannot pay me enough money to shut up about it.#I called out of work with a migraine and I will make it EVERYONE else's problem #I just think he's a bastard who has his reasons!!!#critical role #cr meta #cr spoilers #ludinus da'leth #long post

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popatochisssp · 7 months

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Apparently I haven't been checking here enough because there's so many new boys I didn't recognize in the sibling post!!! And they all sound so cool and interesting!!

Thank you! But you’re probably not as out of the loop as you think—I’ve been a little shy about sharing my stuff lately, so I actually haven’t posted about any of those guys before!

If you want a quick rundown…

Transcendtale: The result of a never-ending cycle of RESETs with a No Mercy sort of human. Monsters gradually became aware and eventually resorted to extremes to put an end to the cycle, sacrificing themselves to create one single vessel powerful enough to kill the human for good. In the aftermath, most of monsterkind is gone…physically, but still persist as consciousnesses recorded digitally instead. (Sort of a cyberpunk aesthetic answer to Dusttale.)

Spectr (Transcendtale Sans): The unlucky bastard who got tapped to pilot the ultra-powerful human-killing vessel and one of only a few physical monsters remaining. His new body is entirely robotic but similar to what he had before—the only thing missing is a soul. He’s coping in the aftermath of Everything about as well as could be expected, but pretty heavily dysphoric and doubting his identity and his personhood as…whatever he is now.

PapAIrus (Transcendtale Papyrus): A virtual consciousness, a snapshot of the previous ‘original’ Papyrus, his thoughts, his feelings, his memories, his entire sense of self… AKA, Papyrus, just detached from a physical body and soul. He considers it a major upgrade, really—he’s eternal, everywhere, everything… Maybe a slight god-complex about it, but can you blame him? He can interact with the world directly via hard-light projections of himself if he chooses, so it’s hard for him to see a downside to his new state of being.

Ascendswap: Another never-ending cycle of RESETs with No Mercy to be found, but after a bargain is struck with an entity beyond mortal ken, a small inner-circle of monsters is granted awareness of the cycle, and access to deeper, older, more powerful magic in order to put a stop to the human’s reign of terror. Most of monsterkind is only peripherally aware of all that happened, but a select few have been Elevated beyond what they once were.

Xanth (Ascendswap Sans): He’s the one who struck the eldritch bargain and consequently gained power and magic, as well as the ability to share it with anyone he chooses. It’s come at a significant cost and large swathes of him have been lost, dissolved into pure magic. He’s also now one who’s seen beyond the veil, the ant who has perceived the circuit board so to speak, and he’ll never be quite who he was. Still, he’s happy, and far more attuned to souls and magic and energy than he ever was before, so he’s not complaining.

Piper (Ascendswap Papyrus): One of the beneficiaries of his brother’s meddling, a newly-minted boss monster with full awareness of RESETs and much stronger magic—including an ability to push intent into his words as he speaks them, making their influence stronger. Due to the nature of its source, there’s only so far that little trick can go, but between being far more persuasive than he ever hoped he could be, his increased power, and more than a few timelines of experience, his confidence is through the roof and stress over what people think of him is a thing of the past.

Underfell Fruition: The Royal Scientist is never erased from reality. He continues his work as planned, without interruption and continues experiments which produce marvelous innovations for monsterkind’s eventual conquest of humanity. Two of his most impressive achievements are a device which allows the user to produce magic seemingly limitlessly, from thin air without drawing on one’s own energy, and a war machine that attacks on command—both of which are frequently lent out to the Emperor and the Royal Guard to serve the crown’s purposes. …Until a bit of poking around uncovers some…moderately…alarming monster rights violations, amongst other charges, which lead to the Royal Scientist’s conviction and execution.

Carmine (Underfell Fruition Sans): Captured during his attempt to escape from Gaster with his brother, and due to a consistent pattern of disobedience, locked away—permanently. Altered to produce magic at a significantly higher rate and used as a magic battery, he’s got plenty of energy and a whole lot of living to catch up on now that he’s out of the (barely metaphorical) box. What he lacks in worldly experience, he makes up for in luck, intuition, and a cocky can-do attitude, all too ready to make up for lost time.

Tank (Underfell Fruition Papyrus): ‘Raised’ alone by a cruel ‘father’ whose only use for him was as the pinnacle of his project to create a perfect living weapon for the war against humanity, he is extremely new to a lot of concepts—making decisions, having opinions, being a person… None of that was allowed while he was being developed…er, growing up, so in spite of being tall, intimidating, and built like a truck, he’s hesitant around new people and situations where he needs to do any more than just follow orders. Tentatively starting to branch out and discover what being a monster (instead of a monster-shaped weapon) is all about now that his creator is out of the picture and the brother he thought he’d only imagined is back in it.

Swapfell Fruition: The Royal Scientist is never erased from reality. He continues his work as planned, without interruption and continues experiments which lead to the development of a black ops division for the Empress, a secret service of sorts to serve the interests of the crown and to do the unsavory dirty work involved in maintaining an empire whose citizens are prone to corruption and violence. Espionage, blackmail, and quite a few assassinations are carried out by the unknown team managed, equipped, trained, and modified by the Royal Scientist. …Until one day, he happens to turn up dead and it’s uncovered that the ‘volunteers’ for the program were less willing participants and more lab-grown experiments who were given no choice otherwise. Bearing in mind what’s come to light about the circumstances, the black ops program is disbanded.

Vi (Swapfell Fruition Sans): Stopped during his attempt to murder Gaster and escape with his brother, and because of his clearly duplicitous nature, far more tightly controlled and observed and forced into obedience to his creator after. Used primarily as a handler to debrief, control, and monitor the real asset, he developed a keen eye for detail and skill in fact-finding, being secretive, and lying…which was probably a tactical error because he devoted himself wholly to playing the long con and waiting for the perfect opportunity for another attempt to free himself and his brother. A little late…maybe too late…but better than never.

Hunter (Swapfell Fruition Papyrus): The asset and field agent, a thoroughly trained and heavily mentally conditioned assassin, operant on a small library of trigger words and phrases which compel him to follow directives and alter the functioning of his mind and body. He’s extremely competent when working, charming and ruthless and efficient, but off the leash, impertinent, impulsive, and impossible. He does as he pleases whenever possible which, now that his boss/creator/dad is dead, seems like it’ll be all the time. On some weird footing now with his erstwhile handler—his brother—who was apparently less complicit in said boss/creator/dad’s bullshit than he’d thought, but y’know. He’s out of the cage either way and can chase his whims wherever they take him.

Descendtale: A Horrortale variant, a human’s passage through the Underground has left monsterkind without their king, without any of the human souls they’d gathered to break the Barrier, and without a handful of citizens. The long-lost queen returns to lead her people and pivots toward survival, weathering the long-haul trapped Underground with dwindling hope and resources. An alternate food source is the highest priority as monsters are already starting to go hungry in the wake of the chaos, and one is found…though not without its…side-effects. Light sensitivity, slowed metabolism, darkening of extremities, thorn-like growths on the body, and some mental changes and personality drift among other metamorphoses. The Underground takes on a deep-sea quality—slow, cold, dark—monsters subsisting on what they have and waiting patiently for the next whalefall to swarm.

Kohl (Descendtale Sans): The human’s disappearance has left him more than a little bitter (betrayed, though he’ll never admit that). His opinion of humans (or anyone new) is quite low after what the last one did to them all and he’s not keen on trusting or believing in any, anytime soon. He’s chilly, selfish, and reluctant to engage—though he does have a slight mean-spirited streak, and is greatly amused by creeping out or otherwise agitating humans by his presence. Coping with the changes they’ve all gone through and settling in to his new normal, but very stubbornly digging in to the small pleasures that his altered biology makes more difficult. Determined to live much in the manner of a cockroach: through just about anything and regardless of the opinion of those who’d prefer him not to.

Bram (Descendtale Papyrus): The human’s disappearance has left him confused and hurt. He’d thought they were friends, but well…then they did all that and left, never to return. There’s…a lot of conflicting emotions in there and he probably shouldn’t try to unpack it all—he’s just focusing on being the best friend possible from here on out! He’s a little bit clingy with new friends and people he’d like to become new friends but as much as possible, a perfect gentleman, host, and conversationalist. Some strong emotional outbursts from time to time, and his tendency towards unintentionally unnerving statements do make that a bit difficult but he’s very amicable and unlike his brother, only creepy on accident, so…he can still be popular, right? …Right?

If anybody’s interested in a full lore dump for anything, I can draft something up, but that’s the gist of all the brand new ones!

Sorry for all the words! 😅

#anonymous #headcanons #transcendtale #ascendswap #descendtale #underfell fruition #swapfell fruition #t!sans #t!papyrus #a!sans #a!papyrus #d!sans #d!papyrus #uff!sans #uff!papyrus #sff!sans #sff!papyrus

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hotdamnitsmoony · 3 months

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what i think the marauders favourite tv show would be - based on my favs :)

james - stranger things. he’d watch it because everyone was raving about it and then become emotionally invested in the characters. he thinks the concept of the monsters is really cool but also very terrifying. he’d definitely make everyone else watch it too, and he’d be mouthing along the lines while they did. his favourite character would be steve harrington, because i think they’re pretty similar. the episode he’d like the most would be s4 ep6.

regulus - the rain on netflix. it’s a kinda disturbing show about an apocalyptic world where the rain literally kills you if it touches you and there’s a whole thing with sibling betrayal and i just feel like he’d eat it up. his favourite character would be lea or kira. he would really love dystopian and apocalyptic shows in general tbh. his favourite episode would be the cult one, because it explores religion in an apocalyptic world.

sirius - greys anatomy. i’ve said this before but he would secretly LOVE greys, even if he won’t admit it. his favourite character is addison montgomery, closely followed by mark sloan. the episode he likes the most is the musical episode but if you ask him, he hates it. also he would so do the superhero pose amelia shepherd does before her surgeries before he does anything important.

remus - the society. it’s a dark, weird and kinda obscure show that only had one season because of covid but he’d love it. he’d bring it up in conversation with everyone and ask them what they’d do if all adults suddenly disappeared, which would obviously have varying responses. he’d complain about not getting a satisfying ending to it all the time. his favourite character is sam or kelly definitely. he can’t choose a favourite episode because literally so much happens in every one.

lily - the good place. i’ve also said this before, but i just genuinely think she’d love it. it’s a show that she would watch while knitting or studying, because it’s easy to follow and funny. she’d definitely quote it a lot and it’d create some great & healthy conversations between the marauders about mortality, morals and death. her favourite character is janet!

pandora - a series of unfortunate events. she’d love this show wholeheartedly. it’s so messy and reminds her of the odd things that seem to keep happening to her. she’d know the “that’s not how the story goes” song and sing it all the time, though she’d change the lyrics to fit whatever situation or drama is going on. her favourite character is sunny, and she started wearing more bows in her hair because of violet! her favourite episode would be s2 ep3!

mary - desperate housewives. she would love the drama, the betrayals and the overall storylines. she’d know every little thing about it, from all the names of lynette’s children to mrs mccluskey’s backstory. her favourite character is gabby solis and she will take no criticism. her favourite episode is the one where carlos’ mum falls down the stairs.

marlene - glee. i genuinely believe she’d know every single big song and wouldn’t stop singing them. you hear “Don’t Stop Belivin’” being sung (badly) in the hallway? it’s marlene. her favourite character is santana lopez and she knows the entire monologue that she says to kurt in season 6. she constantly complains about this show but really does love it. her favourite episode is the klaine & brittana wedding!

dorcas - heartbreak high! she’d love the petty drama and storylines that happen in this show, and she’d so create her own “map” but put concealment charms on it because unlike harper and amerie she’s smart enough not to get caught. her favourite character would be ca$h or harper, and the episode she likes the most would be ep4.

barty - how to sell drugs online (fast)! this show is so hilarious and i really think he’d enjoy it. he’d smell the plot twists coming a mile away but he’d still love it, and probably make evan watch it with him. his favourite character is moritz because he’s just such an idiot and he sort of reminds him of himself, though i feel like he’d love lisa too. he would say that he doesn’t have a favourite episode because he loved it all.

evan - the umbrella academy. he would compare the dysfunctional family to the marauders nonstop. he’d love the way it explores time travel and superpowers, and would spend hours in the library researching if it was possible because he’d get hyper fixated on it of course. his favourite character is klaus (no surprise there lol) and he literally cried during that one episode in season 3. his favourite episode is the first ever one.

(as always, these are my own opinions!! i’ve personally watched all these shows and love them all very much!! this took a while to make but we move who needs a sleep schedule anyway. )

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lazenby · 1 year

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What does the myth of Medusa mean?

Medusa is not easy to talk about because she is not a single thing. Instead hers is a long, thin shape that worms its way through time. Once she was one thing, then this was repeatedly modulated by the various people to whom she has meant something.

The oldest form of the myth has her as one in a set of monstrous triplets, the product of incest between a titan and his sister. In this myth Medusa is virtually as old as the world itself and was born a monster to sea monster parents. Much, much later, in what they call the Archaic period of Greek history (800-480BCE) Medusa was promoted to having once been beautiful, but cursed by Athena for an unspecified insult. Eight years into the common era this strand was taken up in Rome by Ovid, just before his mysterious banishment to a town on the Black Sea.

Ovid makes the version of the myth that has become canonical. Medusa was a beautiful woman with fair hair who had taken a vow of celibacy. This sexual unavailability attracted the sea god Poseidon, who rapes Medusa in a temple to the goddess of wisdom. The virgin Athena, no stranger to violence, is so horrified at the sight of her home being defiled that she actually covers her eyes. The goddess then punishes Medusa for Poseidon's crime by making her hair a nest of snakes and her gaze capable of turning flesh into stone.

At this point an illegitimate son of Zeus called Perseus enters the story. By a complicated chain of events Perseus and his mother Danaë are sealed in a box and tossed into the sea by her father, Akrisius, the king of Argos. Zeus asks Poseidon to save his lover and son, which Poseidon does by making the ocean as glass and gently delivering the box to Seriphos, a hundred miles away. Here Perseus is adopted by the local king, Polydektes, as an opening gambit in the king's designs on Perseus' mother. Danaë spurns the king. Perseus, being the son of Zeus, is not thrilled by the prospect of her marriage to a mortal stepfather either.

Polydektes hatches a plan to kill Perseus and marry his mother without offending Olympus. The king announces a fake marriage to a noblewoman as an excuse to extract congratulatory gifts from everyone he knows. In his attempt to be clever, Polydektes demands the head of Medusa from Perseus. In response, Zeus recruits most of the Olympic pantheon to equip Perseus with magical armament, including Athena's own shield. Perseus uses these advantages to find and behead Medusa, approaching her by watching her reflection in the polished inner surface of the goddess' shield. Perseus then defends his mother's right to choose a spouse by turning Polydektes and his entire court into stone after they ask to see Medusa's head.

Back at the stump of Medusa's neck two "grandchildren" of Poseidon wriggle out of her body and into the world. The first is the famous winged horse Pegasus and the second is a human infant called Khrysaor, born holding a golden sword in his hand. Reflecting Medusa's original purity as well her curse, these offspring lead radically different lives. Pegasus gives long and devoted service to Olympus while Khrysaor's fate is to be the progenitor of most of the monsters that populate Greek mythology.

According to Hesiod's Theogony, Khrysaor sleeps with a sea nymph who then gives birth to a three-headed son named Geryon and a daughter called Echidna. That daughter is "half a nymph with glancing eyes and fair cheeks, and half again a huge snake, great and awful, with speckled skin, eating raw flesh beneath the secret parts of the holy earth." Echidna in turn has children by "the terrible, outrageous and lawless" serpent called Typhon.

This union first produces a hound named Orthus for her uncle Geryon. Orthus is soon joined by another brother, also a dog, the fifty-headed Kerberus who ends up guarding Hades. The third child of Echidna, Hydra, also has a huge surplus of heads. The fourth is Chimera and the fifth is actually the product of Echidna having sex with her first son, Orthus. That incest creates the Sphinx, who takes the suppression of the city of Thebes as his life's purpose, as well as the Nemean Lion, who does something similar on the peninsula that would become Sparta.

In thinking about the rape of Medusa by the sea god and her punishment for his transgression it would be easy to rattle off things like,

"Don't rule out spite. Poseidon made it extremely personal when he forced Medusa in Athena's home—and not just home, the place where Athena is fed. You can imagine for yourself the additional layers of disgust and violation you might feel to find your home not just broken into and robbed but used to stage a sexual assault."

Or that,

"Medusa's particular curse makes sense to me as a punishment, but only as a punishment of Poseidon. It takes her off that god's roster for good, then mocks him by ensuring that Medusa is forever untouchable—forever "his", and never another's. If there is a rapist's punishment in the myth, this is where it is."

And then to remark, grimly,

"You get an all too clear image of Mycenaean Greece through this keyhole."

But there's a good deal to think through before I could take seriously anything this concrete. After all, what wisdom is being expressed when Athena punishes a woman for having been raped? And what does the first version of the myth mean, where Medusa is a survivor from an era of monsters?

There are endless ways to play cat's cradle with the Greek myths until they have whatever shape you like. In one sense that sort of constrained mental fiddling is the purpose of any comprehensive mythological system—To provide a brake on revolutionary thought by denying this thought the one thing it must have to proceed: a vantage point from without to properly view the social contradictions that give it rise. You could argue that having such a vantage was what made Jesus a revolutionary compared to say the Maccabees, whose vantage on Judea was firmly rooted in an imagined past.

This brake gives the society that labors under it a special intellectual and cultural stability, a stability for which we have no real reference nowadays. I think you can see it very hard at work in that letter Ptolemy wrote for his patron Syrus, with which he opens his astronomy textbook, the Almagest. The one where Ptolemy implies that astronomy is a tool of moral self-cultivation even more than it is an attempt to depict reality from an independent point of view. Even the most advanced astronomical textbook ever written could not then be completely separated from the ends of piety, or for that matter the requirement to flatter your patron. (It goes without saying that "exegetic meaning" and the rest of the Straussian decoder ring project stems from a craving for the various stabilities [political, cultural, intellectual] granted a society with such a mythological system at its core.) That is to say, when you're interested in an individual myth I think it's helpful to imagine the conditions under which its first patterns were woven.

It is extremely important to remember that the Greek myths—and even the religious pantheon itself—are a Bayeux Tapestry. I mean that they were made for one set of people by another, who had established themselves hierarchically above the first. If the Greek myths are a shared cultural heritage covering everyone from Thrace to Crete, then the real heritage is the slightly more ancient domination that united them all in the first place.

What we call Greek mythology and its pantheon date to a thousand formative years. These are the years between the Indo-European conquest of the Aegean and the beginning of a Mycenaean world, that is, 3000-2000BCE. This was the millennium when at least three waves of invaders on horseback permanently disrupted the Neolithic farmers who had occupied the Aegean.

The entry of the Indo-Europeans—and their decision to stay—set in motion a series of events that culminated for our purposes with horse-riding, Indo-European-speaking invaders from the North (the Greeks) storming the Aegean peninsula. Their invasions set off a thousand years of tribal warfare, and the final wave of Dorians triggered a cultural dark age that lasted another twelve hundred years, until 800BCE. These invasions shifted the egalitarian indigenous social arrangement into something far more hierarchical, and eventually centralized.

Greek mythology and its pantheon are processed remains. They're all that's left of the indigenous Neolithic culture. The Greeks later called the people they overran the Pelasgoi. The name has no known origin and if it comes from anywhere it's probably like Basque or Etruscan—a relict of the Neolithic Europe that was all but erased by the horsemen and their language in the 2000's BCE.

The actual Pelasgoi were an egalitarian (and probably matrilineal) group of agriculturalists. They lived on the Aegean peninsula as the Indo-European invasion reverberated through their corner of late-Neolithic Europe. They'd probably been thereabouts for 10,000 years. The Greeks conquered and then settled among (or rather, "above") the locals. This dominion created a successor culture to that of both the local Neolithic and the invasive, Indo-European-derived Greeks.

As far as the Greek pantheon and its myths are concerned, this successor culture was Mycenaean (c. 2600-1177BCE). You can think of it as a Neolithic culture that has been digested to suit the requirements of pacifying and administering a particular group of conquered people. This much goes a long way to explaining why Agamemnon (c. 1700BCE) was still notable as a giant prick for Homer one thousand years later.

You could go even further if you wanted to, and see the martial fate of the Peloponnesus itself as a kind of runaway-refinement of the obsessive hierarchy, domination and paranoia depended on by every conquerer. At the very least you should think of Classical slavery, and Spartan slavery in particular as direct consequences of the Indo-European invasion.

Slavery is something like the culture of conquest itself and is not attested in the Aegean by low-status burials before the Greeks invaded. Further, you don't have to be a sociologist to see Sparta's secret police (the Krypteia) and their annual war on the enslaved Helots as a kind of domestic, institutionalized conquest. I realize there are 2,300 years separating the Indo-European invasion of Greece from the reforms of Lycurgus in Sparta; I'm only noting that there was a 10,000 year old, egalitarian Neolithic social fabric, that it was utterly destroyed by the men on horses and then replaced in waves by something far more violent. A process that terminated, in the case of Sparta, with something you could call ur-fascism without the slightest fear of anachronism.

There is a quality of succession (as opposed to "fusion") in Greek mythology. This comes from its absorption of a previous vision of the world. The easiest way to see how Greek mythology is the result of one thing consuming another is the genealogical rat's nest of its early denizens. There are primordial versions for almost all of the Olympian gods. There are even duplicates of these primordial gods: two sea gods, Pontus and Poseidon, two sky gods, Ouranos and Aether, and so on. There's also an extremely unclear line of succession connecting them all to the Olympic pantheon—the foundation of which, we are told, hinges on Zeus' rebellion against his father, Kronos, himself a usurper of his own father. This is all very strange for someone used to the forever-supremacy of a Judeo-Christian deity. To me, it reflects a requirement to absorb an indigenous culture for the purpose of administering "civilization" to its members.

Succession is also a feature of the history internal to Greek myth. Overt fertility imagery, something that certainly animates indigenous Neolithic agriculturalists, is banished to a world that was ancient even to the people telling the myths. Among other things, this is why Ouranos gets to spray cum left, right and center as he populates the primordial world but the origins of Theban aristocracy lie in Kadmus sowing dragon's teeth.

Medusa and her sisters take part in this successional process too. Each, we are told, is descended from the titans whom Zeus overthrew. As everyone knows, all three sisters have euphemisms instead of proper names: the Greek name Medusa means "the Protector", Euryale is "the Far Ranger" and Stheno is "the Robust." These are probably the epithets of pre-Greek female deities, reused as euphemisms once the women they named were demonized in the strict sense.

This is something that also happened to Pazuzu, the Babylonian demon who was the ultimate antagonist of "The Exorcist." Pazuzu was probably a god of fair weather out of the Neolithic world that was overrun by the earliest civilizations of Mesopotamia. The mythology of that area is complex and successional in a way that recalls what I've been saying about the Greeks. Tellingly, Pazuzu is the brother of Humbaba (another demonizee) whom the notable avatar of civilization, Gilgamesh disposed of in the wilds of Lebanon. The upshot is that nobody knows what Pazuzu's real name is because he was so thoroughly euphemized by his culture's successor as to have been rechristened. This is likely also the case for many of the things that get called monsters in Greek mythology.

It seems important to note that the collective term for Medusa and her sisters, "Gorgons," is an Indo-European word meaning "those with grim gazes." This is to say that if Medusa and her sisters do represent pre-Greek deities then it was certainly the Greeks who renamed them. The use of gorgons as protective architectural features right up into the Classical period also strongly reflects the original and benevolent forms taken by Medusa and her sisters. Forms bent to Greek purposes after subjugation to the new, Olympian order.

It's also important not to go overboard when it comes to Medusa's original form. Trying to recover the original nature of feminine deities is an extremely large and sticky trap for modern people. Ever since the beginning of the Modern era there has been an intense desire to see prior societies as somehow antidotes to the way our own has developed. The prospect of ancient matriarchies excites this desire. For example JJ Bachofen and his Der Mutterrecht (1861), or Otto Gross and his idea that the Freudian superego is identical with patriarchy.

Gross said explicitly what many women (and a few men) still feel: that my self-consciousness, the means by which I regulate my desires and impulses by measuring them against what is "expected of me," is where patriarchy lives and my awareness of "what is expected" is the means of patriarchy's transmission through time. Gross thought the organization of the human mind not only changed though history but that its present organization recorded this history in the same way as ocean sediments. Gross believed that the unconscious was the psychological correlate to life under matriarchy and the superego its comparatively recent lid—a lid that covers our collective memory of what it was like to live in a society modeled on the benevolent dominion of child by mother. Gross' determination to remove this lid in himself through a rigorous program of polyamory and cocaine was a mixed success. The close association of patriarchy with a zealously applied, regulatory self-consciousness (the type required when one has a specified place in a male-dominated, urban hierarchy) is much more difficult to dismiss.

I said before that Medusa was probably a pre-Greek deity before she was "demonized in the strict sense," but this is not quite right. Greece didn't have demons, only monsters. I find this fascinating. I would never refer to the Gorgons, and much less Scylla or Charybdis or Python, as "demons," no matter how much their appearance or behavior fit the term. Why is this? Is it just because of the rehabilitation performed on ancient Greek culture by everything from the Renaissance to the D'Aulaires? Or is it a real distinction?

In Greek myth monsters seem to be checks on progress or development because they impede notable figures from completing their stories (Oedipus, Herakles, Kadmus etc.) On the face of it this is very different from a demon's purpose, which is to reassert the Natural or Divine order for the benefit of anyone foolish enough to challenge it. Is it just that monsters are alive, i.e., mortal, in a way demons are not? Is a monster just a demon who can be killed? Even if that's true (and mortality is a trait that basically every single monster in Greek mythology shares) what does it mean that creatures who would be eternal menaces in any other culture are, in Greek mythology, seemingly there to be vanquished?

Unlike demons, each monster in Greek myth is a holdover from the primordial world. Nobody says that Mephistopheles or an Oni is an isolated renegade from some prior era. Even if both are extremely ancient they each have an obvious and divinely ratified dominion over their corner of the present world: You see it in their respective licenses to tempt Faust and eat Buddhist pilgrims. But it is exactly a questionable dominion over the world and a loss of divine ratification that unite all the monsters of Greek myth.

One way to understand this is to say that a monster is a demon who has had its spiritual existence scraped out. The result is not just mortality but exile to the same plane of reality that humans inhabit. Monsters can be killed—and their deaths serve as capstones to heroic acts of faith—in a way that even the fight against a demon will never yield. Demons have an intact spiritual existence, granted them by divine ratification. This gives them the ability, or rather, the right to escape attack via their non-physical form (as Pazuzu does at the end of "The Exorcist.") That "right of spiritual escape" is the substance of a demon's immortality, and its loss in the case of monsters is sometimes the only obvious difference between the two. This is best seen in the fact that Greek monsters cease to exist once killed, and their shades are never encountered in Hades. When a monster loses the right to escape via a spiritual existence they acquire their other major distinction from demons: unnaturalness.

A demon can certainly be terrifying, but the terror it causes is embedded in, indeed terrifies on behalf of the Natural order. This is to say that demons terrify, but that this terror is not personal. Humans, the variety of soul indigenous to this plane of reality, are terrorized as a class by demons, not as individuals. In fact one could argue a direct connection between this and, for example, the millions of ticketholders who made "The Exorcist" such a fabulous box office success.

On this understanding, demonic terror is felt not by individuals but by their bodies, the thing all humans have in common with each other. This terror is each body reminding its occupant of the order of things. That's the nature of the enforcement performed by a demon's fearsomeness. This is easier to see in the pre-scientific account of altitude sickness: the way you feel the higher you climb is a direct experience of your assigned place in the hierarchy of Nature. Altitude sickness is your very body speaking to you, saying, in the voice of Nature, "You aren't supposed to be here dummy; This is for the gods." Every hair raised by a demon retrenches a hierarchy to remind humans that they are not at its summit.

When a demon (or for that matter a god) "loses its license" and must become a monster, unnaturalness and a type of criminality is what follows. The terror created by the Theban dragon or the Sphinx was chaotic. It served no purpose except to constrain human destiny, by keeping Kadmus from founding Thebes or Oedipus from ruling it. What does it mean that Ancient Greece had a disordered spiritual landscape filled with monsters who live only to thwart the aims of destiny and Nature?

It's very tempting to think that this is because the rule for what was 'Natural' and what went against 'Nature' had been recently changed—namely by the Greeks, their gods and the new order. You could call Greek monsters "heretics under polytheism"—recently-mortal refugees from a divine war, shorn of immortality but with their actual coups-de-grace left as tests of faith for the most pious and violent humans. The heroes (in Greek the word means the same thing as Medusa, "protector.") Hence the ensouled champions of Olympus slaughter the soul-less and unnatural monsters. This slaughter concludes a monster's demotion from the spiritual realm and it then enters the least permanent plane of existence, that of corpses and human memory. This is the fate of all casualties in a war of mythological succession.

The hero in the story of Medusa is successional in several ways. Perseus has a mandate to kill monsters from the ancient world, and so recreate (in acceptable miniature) his own father's rebellion against the titans. This may only be a fancier way of saying that Perseus is a minor son of Zeus and is assigned a mopping up operation at the tail-end of his dad's throne war.

But there's also a successional quality in the way Perseus is made heroic. Perseus is heroic because he is the very tip of Olympus' will: he is sired by them, clothed by them, armed by them and disguised by them. The hero is a human, composited into semidivinity by the gifts of the pantheon. Any which way Perseus presents himself, whether visibly or not, he's a reflection of Olympus. And this is to say nothing of his shield, whose literal reflection of Perseus is presumably the only place Medusa ever sees her killer's eyes.

Perseus is not only protected by Athena's shield: his face appears inside it. Medusa's head is later put on the outside of the shield. This is a little parable about fucking with Athena: "There are two sides to this goddess, an inside where you are defended from apparently invincible enemies and an outside, where Athena becomes an invincible enemy herself." That may be the the full extent of the "wisdom" on display in the Medusa myth, which is really an Athena myth: the wise live long because they don't screw with Athena. (The fact that Perseus defeats the barbaric Medusa through his powers of reflection, and in the name of the goddess of wisdom, is a cerebral valence the story probably acquired later on, in Roman times.)

You can also think of Medusa's death in the light of succession. The stump of her neck yields two "grandchildren" of Poseidon, Pegasus and Khrysaor. One is a giant man born holding a golden sword and the other is a domesticated animal who conquers the air. Pegasus becomes a kind of mercenary in Olympus' war against the primordial past, as when Athena lends Pegasus out to Bellerophon so they can wax Chimera (who is in fact the grand-nephew of the flying horse Bellerophon uses to kill him.) Khrysaor's real legacy is of course as donor of the human phenotypes that add another layer of monstrousness and perversity to the creatures Herakles must dispatch during his labors. It is intriguing that the human component of Medusa's existence finds expression in Khrysaor, progenitor of a dozen mythological monsters, while everything noble in her body comes out as a beast of fabulous utility.

In a word, the Olympian order mandates divine violence against the remaining chaos-monsters. Further, these monsters are refined by that violence into something that benefits mankind. Seen from this angle, Medusa's death at Perseus' hands (or the dragon's at those of Kadmus) is something close to a sales pitch for a Greek world: "We're getting rid of those monsters. We're harnessing their primordial energy for the benefit of the city-founding horse-lords!"

When you look at it this way the early version of the myth shows Medusa as a bridge to the chaotic, primordial world. In fact it is precisely her status as a monster of the ancient world that provokes Polydektes into selecting Medusa as a challenge. Polydektes thinks he's being extremely clever by asking Perseus for Medusa's head. He imagines he's dooming an irritating rival by telling him to go tete a tete with the daughter of a titan. But his turns out to be exactly the kind of backward, even heretical thinking that doesn't understand how overmatched the primordial, barbaric world is when it squares off against Olympus. It's worth remembering that by the end of the myth Polydektes and his entire court become all too firm believers in what can be achieved with Olympus' backing.

Like almost all the great monsters of Greek mythology Medusa's existence symbolized an intolerable check on the progress of Hellenization. Olympus therefore facilitates her murder. The easy answer as to why Medusa was the sister chosen for death is that she was, for some reason, the only mortal one among the three. But this seems extremely post-hoc to me, like the rest of the Ovidian interpretation. To my mind Medusa was always a gorgon, because she was always a Neolithic deity; Ovid was the person who could translate her Bronze Age fate into more urban, even modern terms.

I think you can see what I'm getting at here: the Medusa story is a single battle in a much longer-running war between what Olympus represented and the indigenous world of chaos-monsters it aimed to replace. This had enormous consequences for the Western world.

That replacement occurred along an axis which had never before existed in Mycenaean society: The axis with "Barbarian" at one end and "Greek" at the other. Their whole mythology is a snapshot of this process of replacement. This probably dates, as I said, to the beginning of the Mycenaean world. And as the Mycenaean world became more centralized and urban you can see something of the mechanism that produced this "successional" mythology:

The foundation of cities is a major consequence of killing monsters in Greek myths. Perseus founds Mycenae after killing Medusa. Agamemnon only has a city to lord over because Atreus inherited it from the line of Perseus, to say nothing of the case of Thebes, its dragon or the Sphinx.

This new axis was a force majeure opposition between Greek things and Barbarian things. When laid over the imperative to found cities, this axis set up a kind of cultural siphon. Under this mechanism all the things emphasizing order and what we would call centralized government eventually became "Greek" (whatever their actual origin). On the other hand, the uncivilizable elements of human life were mythologically deported to a barbaric past, the one that preceded the conquest and domination of "Greek" religion by Olympus.

It's important to point out that this was a synthetic process. I mean that the things which facilitated hierarchical, settled civilization were drawn from both Greek and "Pelasgian" sources, while those that did not became associated with a primordial world whose successor was at hand. This is how barbaric Greek raiders of the 2nd millennium BCE went from unwashed nomads of Thrace to the first word in philosophy. In fact it is one of the ways cultures do what they call "schismogenesis," the sociological equivalent of speciation.

Of course, human beings are not perfectly suited to civilization, and this mechanism could only proceed (indeed, has only proceeded) so far. Perhaps reflecting this, the Barbarian-Greek axis had become the Irrational-Rational axis by the time philosophy first got written down. Nevertheless, right into the Classical period it's easy to see an uncivilizable residue lending its ineradicable tint to Greek life. Sophocles' Bacchae is more or less solely concerned with this tint, and is one of the biggest milestones on the road to a Western idea of "humanity." That is, "humanity" as something not only shot thru with irrational, Bacchic chaos, but "humanity" as this way by nature. It can be a very crooked path to get to a concept as obvious to us as the "Natural."

Or at least this is one of journeys I take myself on to imagine the birth of our concept of "irrationality." To recap this journey's stages,

A. Settled Neolithic agriculturalists are dominated by barbaric horse-riding invaders & their patriarchal deities.

↓↓↓

B. Settled Greeks and their contempt for anything that stands in the way of centralized, hierarchical power.

↓↓↓

C. The mental tendencies of life under civil order gathered into a concept of 'rationality.'

↓↓↓

D. And finally the conversion of civil order's antagonist from 'barbarism,' the thing outside the city walls, to 'irrationality,' the barbaric element latent within each human.

(I should say that seeing the intellectual dynamism of Classical Greece as rooted in, or even kicked off by, an invader's mentality toward their conquered subjects is a whole other can of worms.)

Perhaps the idea that Medusa is "mainly" a casualty of Olympus' war on the barbaric past is disappointing to you. I would also like Greek mythology to have a level of internal consistency such that you can turn the crank of thought and arrive at an internally consistent explanation (a "lesson.") But Greek mythology is the collision of at least two cultural systems—a collision that reflects an agricultural, matriarchal, and egalitarian way of life complexly overlaid by another, whose sources lie with nomadic, horse-riding raiders from the North.

Medusa's story seems to me one that straddles the interface between those two, often-incompatible systems of cultural understanding. Hers is a story about how the fight for mythological supremacy takes place along the fault line separating—depending on which era of the myth's development (ABCD) you find most eyecatching—subject from master, heresy from piety, barbarians from Greeks, chaos from order and, in its final form, irrationality from thinking as we "ought to."

Many of the Greek myths are an account of cultural conflict transposed to a mythological plane. The ahistorical "moment" from which most of these stories are told dates to some point after the outcome of this conflict, and the victory of Olympus became a foregone conclusion. But the arrangement of forces in this conflict continued (continues!) to reflect something long, long after the thing it originally reflected—the conquest of Neolithic farmers by horse raiders from Asia—had passed from view. The Greek concept of irrationality is still utterly essential to us and still contains within it the coiled historical elements outlined above.

I realize that arguments from history are often only another kind of argument from myth, and sometimes even easier to puppeteer. Even so I think we all have to live in hope that Al Hirschman is right when he says the most we can expect from History, and from the History of Ideas in particular, is not the retirement of issues but only a raising of the level of debate.

Having thought through all of this, and with the qualification that I don't think any of what follows is historically justified, I do have a few thoughts about the particular myth of Medusa. These are what you might call literary observations on her story as we get it from Ovid and the Romans. Their version of the myth shifts focus away from the, by that point long-settled question of mythological supremacy. The Roman myth of Medusa is far more social, more urbane and even what I would call humanistic. It's about a particular woman being raped in a particular place and how these facts and their consequences dominate the rest of her life—indeed, collude to end it.

Medusa's petrifying gaze is much more complicated than I thought as a kid. For example, Medusa does not have the equivalent of laser beams shooting out of her eyes. That is, getting turned into stone by Medusa is something that occurs essentially by the victim's choice. In order to become a stone of yourself you must: 1) look directly at Medusa while 2) she directly meets your elective gaze. I think we can deduce this much from the story of the polished shield. In other words her "petrifying gaze" is really an automatic and unstoppable consequence of choosing to look at Medusa and of then receiving her eye contact. There is something close to a supercultural (that is, "humanistic") understanding of us at work here: we are the animal that can't not look.

Formerly, the beautiful Medusa was subjected to many more gazes than she could personally meet. That's what it is to be a beautiful person among others. In a certain type of society, which, for Ovid, Greek mythology was taken to represent, a woman's role among others is to be the object of those gazes. From a public perspective a woman is someone who cannot return every gaze that falls on her, in fact modesty decrees she shouldn't even try.

What would it mean to use this state of affairs as the basis for a curse? First, the obvious ironic reversals and perversions. Medusa goes from a woman (whose status as a woman—and again this is Ovid's world—is predicated on her inability to return every gaze that finds her) to a monster who compulsively seeks out the gaze of anyone she comes across. There's also an obvious gender reversal, whereby the cursed Medusa becomes both the pursuer in and the victor of non-consensual encounters with men. But also a more subtle reversal, aimed at somebody's idea of feminine pride, whereby once-beautiful Medusa becomes famous, indeed pursued, for her ugliness.

This gender reversal shades into the punitive "blessings" built into Medusa's curse. First among these is of course the petrifying gaze that "protects" Medusa from ever being raped again. (The snakes presumably defend against kisses from the blind.) Eye contact often betrays a man's intention towards a woman. This is one of the reasons modesty discourages it. And so what was once the place and moment where a woman understood her vulnerability, and a man his power, becomes an instant of unpleasant surprise for Medusa's victim.

You could go further with this and say that the rocks of men Medusa leaves behind are in fact statues. And that each models the same man in a parody of arousal. A parody of the moment when a man, and you have to imagine a Roman man here, first sees a gorgeous woman: wide eyes, slack jaw, ah-wooogacus forming on his lips and so on. The fact that the visage of lust is identical to that of terror probably says more than you'd like to know about Roman sexuality.

There is also a quality of being damned-to-fame in Medusa's curse. This goes beyond her famous ugliness. Medusa leaves a trail of sterile human pillars behind her. It mocks the way she once made men hard—an overtone I don't think would have been lost on a Roman audience. Medusa is the nightmare of a certain idea of female modesty.

In that vein, I think there is also a message about the Roman conception of men and women latent in Medusa's hideousness. This, Ovid is saying, this is what would be needed to protect a woman from the way men are. Only by permanently immobilizing him and covering your face with snake venom for good measure could any woman have stopped a man from raping her. The fact that Medusa's curse is presumably an effective defense against future encounters with Poseidon is probably beside the point. What matters is that Medusa's terrible, bestial appearance shows how much women would have to change to end the phenomenon of rape. There's a dark and inverted humanism at work here, one that is very much still with us. One that sees rape as a supercultural phenomenon descending from a male's presumed helplessness when it comes to looking at certain things.

This is to say that Medusa, by being presented as a woman who is finally safe from rape, telegraphs the inevitability of men raping any woman who is less ugly than the ugliest woman who has ever existed. In the world this myth was meant to service the kind of woman who won't get raped is the kind who can't even be looked at in the first place, let alone approached.

Living out this inversion of holiness is also part of Medusa's curse. As is her soullessness, and the mocking, second virginity Athena forces on her. Medusa being made too ugly to rape probably had ironic overtones to a Roman audience, who would have seen Athena as having metaphorically abducted Medusa to keep as a temple virgin ("raped" as in Sabines.)

In the way of all literary analysis you can keep cats-cradelling away with this myth and its history, but I am unsure as to how helpful these somewhat facile reflections are to a person trying to think deeply about Medusa and her story.

Gorgons were often carved on temples, where their petrifying gazes drove home a very practical theological doctrine: behave in this place or become part of it. The myth of Medusa explodes this arrangement with a floridness typical of pre-Christian ideas about divinity. Medusa walks the earth as Athena's involuntary virgin and leaves statues behind her everywhere she goes. Each pillar that used to be a person is another monument raised to Athena, or at least to the wisdom of not testing her where she eats.

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dramavixen · 2 years

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Chang Heng: The Man Who Deserves to Be a Male Lead, But Absolutely Should Not Be One

(i.e., I found the opportunity to dunk on Ten Miles of Peach Blossom’s Ye Hua after spending far too long harboring a simmering resentment for that giant man baby)

**Spoilers for: Love Between Fairy and Devil and Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms

I was around 19 years old when I watched the renowned xianxia drama 三生三世十里桃花 (Three Lives, Three Worlds, Ten Miles of Peach Blossoms, A.K.A. Eternal Love or TMOPB for short). I was smitten with the worldbuilding and music, but especially with the male lead. To this day, Ye Hua holds the crown as one of xianxia’s most beloved characters. Not that he did anything super cool—unless you consider bawling over his dead wife revolutionary.

It was a couple years and many more dramas later that I realized I had been conned. Beneath the pretty tears and fantastic dubbing, Ye Hua represents an absolute disaster of a man, an apocalypse for the poor lady on the receiving end of his heart-eyes. How could I, a supposedly mature adult, have been so blind to his deadly flaws (ironic, given what he does to his wife)?

This epiphany blessed me with an instinctual aversion to the xianxia genre. Everywhere I looked, I could only see the shadow of Ye Hua within the male characters who took up his torch—none of these xianxia men are worth shit. And then I learned that the same often applies to xianxia women. All of them need an intervention.

So when Love Between Fairy and Devil’s Chang Heng graced my screen and started exuding extreme Ye Hua vibes, could you blame me for thinking “oh hell no”? I was not ready to get hurt again. Over the course of the drama, I learned to heal and love again, but because of a single caveat: Chang Heng is destined to never get the girl.

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The Walking Red Flag

As with all good science experiments, we need to establish the control element. Ye Hua will act as that today. What about Ye Hua is so unforgivable, yet allows him to remain as one of the faces of xianxia?

TMOPB was met with explosive popularity upon its release in 2017 and remains one of the most well-known C-dramas to this day. It’s not a reach to say that its success prompted the wave of xianxia dramas released in its wake, nor to claim that its influence inspired a new formula for the genre’s plot structure. It wasn’t entirely original in concept, but its impact on pop culture shouldn't be understated.

The drama’s primary selling point is the love story between esteemed goddess Bai Qian and Heavenly Crown Prince Ye Hua. Through a series of unfortunate events, Bai Qian loses her memory and powers, becoming the “mortal” Su Su. Ye Hua is the smitten deity who really, really wants to be with Su Su even though their relationship is strictly forbidden due to Reasons That Definitely Exist and Are Valid.

Dramatic irony is also at play. Bai Qian and Ye Hua are betrothed to one another long before they fall in love in the mortal realm, but are unaware that their beloved and their future spouse are one and the same person. Their love is essentially a fated relationship disguised as a wild goose chase.

Once Su Su “dies,” Ye Hua deteriorates into a lovesick shell of himself. His longing, guilt, and grief over her death have since established themselves as the picturesque representation of tragic elements inherent to the xianxia genre. Ever since Ye Hua did it, everyone and their grandmas think it’s the new hip thing to get their lovers killed and then cry over it.

Ye Hua could take one step into my house and I would kick him to the curb, install new locks, and file for a restraining order. I fear this man far more than I fear the typical drama villain. Because imagine what he’d do to someone he hates, if this is what he does to the person he loves:

I’ll give him a pass on some of his early flirting techniques, which includes shenanigans like injuring himself to elicit her care and attention and also sleeping in her bed without her express knowledge. (Off to a promising start, aren’t we?) He's a lovestruck fool, ignorant to proper methods to woo the ladies.

After Su Su takes an interest in him, he tricks her into marrying him. Fine, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But he doesn’t see anything wrong with marrying her while she’s unaware of his true identity. He doesn’t even pipe up about it after she gets pregnant. Meanwhile, Su Su marries him because she’s lonely and trusts that he’s someone who can always be there for her—you know, like a good spouse tends to be. He is not that.

Ye Hua thinks he can outsmart the heavens with his amoeba brain and tries to fake his own death so he can be with Su Su. He fails miserably.

Su Su finds out who Ye Hua truly is after she’s captured by his Heavenly Lord grandpa, who fully intends on punishing her for their relationship since she’s a “mortal” and easy to bully.

Ye Hua fears that openly expressing his love for Su Su will get her killed. To avoid this, he comes up with the ingenious solution of pulling the whole “I have to treat you like garbage to protect you” bullshit. Dearest Ye Hua, please name me one scenario in any drama where you saw this method working out well enough for you to try it for yourself.

For obvious reasons, Su Su starts doubting that Ye Hua truly loves her. This doubt peaks after manipulative female support character Su Jin accuses Su Su of pushing her off the Zhu Xian Tai (“Fairy-Executing Terrace”) in an attempt to kill her, a plot that results in Su Jin going blind. Ye Hua, in another effort to “protect” Su Su, personally digs out Su Su’s eyeballs as retribution—even though he knows that she didn’t do anything wrong, and even as she sobs and begs him not to do it.

Blind and abandoned, Su Su explores the palace every day through touch and commits its layout to memory. After giving birth to her son, she uses that knowledge, finding and leaping off the Zhu Xian Tai to kill herself.

She doesn’t die, of course. She regains her memories as a goddess, but is so tormented by what she endured that she decides to wipe away the memories of the entire relationship. Then they reunite and fall in love again, yada yada yada.

All of that content makes for great angst. I still need a tissue box or two to make it through the episode where Su Su throws herself off the Zhu Xian Tai. If anything, my frustration toward Ye Hua makes me cry even harder because goodness, the audacity of this asshole. He acts purely out of selfishness, desiring to keep Su Su at his side at any cost, even if she’s the one paying it. This isn’t to say that Ye Hua gets off scot-free. He also willingly takes punishments in Su Su’s stead and wants to follow her after she dies. But so what? Does his suffering reduce Su Su’s pain at all? Does that change any of what he does to her? And he doesn’t even get her eyes back for her afterward; she has to do it herself!

What makes Ye Hua truly irredeemable in my eyes is that he still ends up with Bai Qian. Her forgiveness is only natural, as her love for him exceeds her hate. That sounds romantic, but only if you ignore how he caused her enough pain for her to prefer death. And even if she forgives him, why does she have to take him back? Unless she so desperately needs a reason to jump off the Zhu Xian Tai again.

While I understand that the show is more marketable when the lead couple has a “happy” ending, it doesn’t sit well with me that that’s the end result for Ye Hua and Bai Qian. Ye Hua expresses remorse, tons of it; otherwise how could so many viewers readily forgive him? But it’s simply not true that once we show enough remorse, we should earn back the things and people we lost. Once some things are over, they’re truly over. If that applies to anyone, it should definitely apply to someone like Ye Hua.

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Wake Him Up Inside

And so we arrive on the subject of Chang Heng. Oh, Chang Heng. I see his tiny face and I just want to wrap him up in a blanket and feed him s’mores.

Chang Heng’s character shares many foundational similarities with Ye Hua: he crushes on someone while unaware that she’s actually his long-lost fiancée, has too many responsibilities, and struggles to balance those two problems. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the writers had Ye Hua in mind while creating Chang Heng. Every single word of wisdom he utters is a not-so-subtle jab at Ye Hua’s erring ways. It’s the sweet honey of vindication, I tell you.

Before he gets to that point of self-awareness, Chang Heng treads the same path as Ye Hua. He wipes Xiao Lanhua’s memories of him without her permission. He doesn’t dare reveal his feelings for her because that would be counter to his duties. Even after painstakingly creating medicine to help with her dysfunctional spiritual root, he ends up pretending that he never did such a thing. In his deepest subconscious, he believes his love for Xiao Lanhua is a weakness. The main difference between him and Ye Hua is that Chang Heng has the decency to distance himself beforehand, knowing that he is in no position to have a relationship with her.

Two things prevent Chang Heng from transforming into Ye Hua 2.0: 1) he isn’t the male lead and 2) Dongfang Qingcang’s existence.

Imagine a world in which Chang Heng is the male lead. When Xiao Lanhua is accused of being a traitor, he would almost certainly pull a Ye Hua move and negotiate with his brother. “I know she’s innocent, but I also know that you must punish her, so please just spare her life”—that type of thing. (The reason I think this isn’t just possible but probable is because later in the actual drama, he enthusiastically agrees to a plan in which he and Rong Hao would kill Xiao Lanhua’s body with DFQC trapped inside, and simply build Xiao Lanhua a new shell to live in. Bro, what the hell.) Because Chang Heng doesn’t fully understand how useless he is, that would be the limit of what he can do for her. He would seriously believe that he has no other choice in the matter.

But someone else is the male lead. When DFQC comes along to rescue Xiao Lanhua, there’s no compromise to be had. He’s taking her with him and that’s the end of it. I, for one, have never felt so validated as when DFQC beats Chang Heng to the floor and then just...walks away, like he’s making a stop at the supermarket.

DFQC: Are you going to save her? Or are you going to save your Shuiyuntian?

That someone can behave this way is a major culture shock to Chang Heng. How can someone just do whatever they want? What about rules? Watching DFQC whisk Xiao Lanhua away serves as loudest of wake-up calls: DFQC intends to put Chang Heng in his place, showing him that he does have a choice in the matter. But he can neither defeat DFQC nor abandon his responsibilities. Until he can overcome those obstacles, Xiao Lanhua will always be out of his reach.

While Xiao Lanhua sparks love in Chang Heng with her desire to protect him, DFQC is the one who makes him question his priorities. Exactly what should he be doing that he currently isn’t? How is it possible that he’s a god of war, yet can’t protect the one he loves?

Chang Heng realizes that distancing himself from Xiao Lanhua accomplishes nothing but forcing her further out of reach (proud of him for realizing that one because let’s be honest, we don’t love Chang Heng for his brain cells). He also has an extreme edge to him, so he hops straight over to doing the exact opposite, rebelling against the arbitrary rules of heaven, constantly trying to bring Xiao Lanhua home, and openly expressing his feelings for her. Later, even if it means becoming a mortal, even if it means letting her go to someone else, nothing is off-limits.

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The Fine Line Between Helplessness and Incompetence

A lot of xianxia plots depend on characters being helpless and subject to the fates. In my childhood memories, xianxia dramas commonly had at least one main character who was a low-ranked human or deity. Bullied and unable to fend for themselves, their journeys to improve themselves and protect what mattered to them were ones that touched and inspired people who could relate to their common identities. These characters aren’t given many choices in such situations, yet they consistently choose to fight back.

This zero-to-hero trope has become less convincing over time as the trend turned into telling the stories of “chosen ones.” There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, except now all of these dramas are trying to convince us that these gods with unlimited power are...powerless. They’re all hero-to-even-bigger-hero tales, if you will.

It’s not impossible for gods to be forced into making certain decisions, but it’s quite rare that a xianxia persuades me into finding it believable. If we look at Ye Hua again, he gets outsmarted by some random woman who's jealous of his wife. He also snubs Su Su to placate an old man. You’re trying to tell me that that’s the best a dragon crown prince can do? If I lived in the heavens, I’d live in fear of a revolution every day if those are the capabilities of my future leader.

When it comes down to it, Ye Hua is not helpless like our heroes of old—he’s incompetent. And it’s hard to sympathize with a guy who loses everything not because outside forces overpower him, but because he himself sucks major ass.

LBFAD, a drama where every one of the three leads is someone of super high rank, is the only xianxia in recent years which puts into perspective how huge power translates into huge responsibility, and why that pushes characters into feeling like things are out of their control. Be it DFQC’s and Chang Heng’s duties to their people or Xiao Lanhua’s destiny to save all life, it’s hard for any of them to decide when to give in and when to rebel against the heavy weight of destiny.

Chang Heng is a pleasant mixture of both helplessness and incompetence. Is it not endearing the way DFQC easily crushes him, yet he still goes flying into enemy territory proclaiming that he’s going to save Xiao Lanhua? I don’t know where his confidence is coming from and I don’t think he does either, but it’s heartwarming to watch him try and fail with flying colors.

When Chang Heng hops over to Cangyan Sea to bring Xiao Lanhua home without a solid plan, DFQC is again the guy to remind Chang Heng that he still needs to do better. Good intentions are a solid starting point, but are worthless if he can’t convert them into something practical.

CH: Xiao Lanhua, is someone threatening you? Do not be afraid. Tell me, and I will protect you.

DFQC!XLH: No one has threatened me, and no one has forced me. [...] I am also no longer the inconsequential lowly spirit that you all take me for, nor am I a traitor or a spy in collusion with the Moon Tribe. I can happily be myself. Compared to my days in Shuiyuntian, when anyone could step all over me, this is over a hundred times better. [...] Suppose that I go back with you. Can you guarantee that you will clear my name from collusion with the Moon Tribe? Suppose that your Lord Yun Zhong insists that he will not pardon me; would you dare go against him? Suppose that he uses that heavenly rule nonsense to ask you and force you; could you promise my safety? Suppose that anyone dares to harm me or blame me; could you reduce them to ashes?

Aside from making Xiao Lanhua understand that Chang Heng’s mainly just a pretty face, this interrogation forces Chang Heng to consider what’s at stake. Protecting Xiao Lanhua and following the rules are mutually exclusive decisions. His struggle to circumvent this issue isn’t trivial, seeing as it’s challenging his entire belief system. But he can either start questioning what he’s capable of, or let Xiao Lanhua get hurt again.

What stands out to me about this interaction is when DFQC also tacks on that Chang Heng “cannot even tell [her] something [she] wants to hear”; that he won’t even claim that he can keep her safe. Maybe I’m just that jaded, but his refusal to tell pretty lies is what I adore about Chang Heng. It’s a matter of life and death, and if he can’t promise her safety, he won’t. If he lies to her and to himself, then he could never become the straight-shooting Chang Heng we all know and love.

DFQC might be his inspiration, but Rong Hao being simultaneously Chang Heng’s best friend (potentially more; oh what could’ve been) and a foil to his character is an enormously overlooked dynamic. Rong Hao frequently tells Chang Heng that they’re the same type of people, that their love for their respective ladies is what corners them into making less-than-optimal decisions. Each time, Chang Heng’s instinct is to rebuff him.

RH: Because the two of us are the same. I have no choice. And you, ultimately, will also have no choice.

CH: You do not have a choice? You chose to conspire with my brother, to disturb matters, to catalyze the three realms’ largest war in the last tens of thousands of years!

Chang Heng’s newfound philosophy is that everyone has a choice. You may be dealt an awful hand, but you can still choose to play or fold. His friend’s decision-making comes off as foolish arrogance to him.

But Rong Hao is right in one respect. They are similar: if Ye Hua represents an alternate universe version of Chang Heng in which DFQC doesn’t exist, then Rong Hao is suffering a version of Chang Heng’s future in which Xiao Lanhua/Xi Yun sacrifices herself for the greater good, yet is forgotten by those she dies for. Chang Heng can remain optimistic because the person he loves is still alive and loved by others. Rong Hao is comparatively hopeless. He can only wait to witness the impending devastation before realizing that the harder choice is oftentimes the better one.

We will never know how Chang Heng would react if in Rong Hao’s exact position. But whatever he would choose to do, he would not absolve himself from responsibility by claiming that he had no other choice. The results may be out of his hands, but the initial choice is what he can decide for himself.

Chang Heng reminds me much more of traditional xianxia protagonists. Every obstacle they face only drives them to seek enough strength to change the status quo. While Chang Heng may never win against DFQC, he’ll keep trying. (Or he’ll convert him into a brother; that works too.) Everyone will say he doesn’t have a choice, but he wants one and he will get one. Ah, my heart is so full. I don’t want perfect characters. I want characters who strive to do better, especially in a world that pushes them down, and he suits that to a tee.

Meanwhile, Ye Hua over here blinds his wife due to...societal expectations? My god. He just keeps getting worse the more that I think about him.

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I’m Sorry. But At Least I Love You!

There always has to be an arc where the lead couple’s relationship splinters because one party draws back in order to “protect” the other. It’s accompanied by an intentional lack of communication, so the other person thinks that they’ve been left behind. Remember when this trope used to be cool? Yeah, I don’t either. Because it never was.

Ye Hua might have some fun with this, but LBFAD doubles it by making both the male lead and second male lead utilize this strategy: DFQC, in order to force Xiao Lanhua to fall out of love with him and spare her life in the process, and Chang Heng, who refrains from pursuing Xiao Lanhua in the beginning in order to keep her out of his brother’s view.

I’m tempted to be lenient in both cases. DFQC’s predicament is written well enough that he does seem truly out of options in that situation—every possible choice is wrong. He either breaks her heart and she survives, perhaps so he can explain his actions later, or he lets her die. Or, you know. He could communicate like she asked him to, and they could try to find a way out together. Instead she stabs herself. So you know what, no free pass for DFQC, but at least he makes up for it later.

(I have to get another jab at Ye Hua in here. When Xiao Lanhua commits suicide, she does it to save DFQC. It’s an act of love and sacrifice. Su Su literally seeks death out of unadulterated heartbreak and betrayal. Big difference there, huh?)

I mentioned that Chang Heng’s actions are out of responsibility, so it’s hard to fully blame him. At the same time, the reason Chang Heng can’t win over Xiao Lanhua is because he doesn’t act on his feelings until it’s too late. Simply “protecting her” is not enough: people don’t love others in the hopes of being protected. They love someone to walk alongside them through all the good and bad in life, together.

Chang Heng shines in the ending episodes. He still wants to protect Xiao Lanhua, but he also becomes the one person who understands and accepts her own desires. Knowing from experience that acting one-sidedly is but a temporary solution to a much larger issue, he listens to and considers what she wants. When the two tribes are on the brink of war and Xiao Lanhua doesn’t want to return to Shuiyuntian with him, even after learning of her lost identity as the Goddess of Xishan, he respects that. When, as Xi Yun, she confides in him that she’s pretending to not remember DFQC, he is hurt by how cruel she is being to him, but in the end chooses to understand her.

CH: Your life will truly be in danger this time, Xiao Lanhua. I absolutely cannot let you go back there.

XLH: Lord Chang Heng, are you really going to stop me? My lord, you are a god of war. I am merely a plant with a damaged spiritual root. If you insist on stopping me, then there is nothing I can do. But I will definitely not give in.

CH: You will die. Is that right? [...] You and Dongfang Qingcang love one another. You would rather pretend not to know him than to harm him in any capacity. Then what about me? How could you...how could you ask me to marry you and then personally send you off to die? Did you consider me at all?

XLH: Chang Heng...I am sorry.

CH: I do not want any of your ‘sorry’s. You clearly know that what I want is not for you to say sorry. Are you going to tell me that you do not have a choice?

XLH: That is not true. It was me who chose to live with the Goddess of Xishan’s destiny. Chang Heng, you are the only one who can help me.

Oh, Chang Heng. He’s come to his senses, but everyone he loves and respects falls apart. Saving DFQC from his dreamworld, bringing Xiao Lanhua back from the dead, sacrificing Xiao Lanhua, burying his best friend...what a rough schedule. Scratch giving him s’mores, he needs a drink or two.

Everyone in this drama grows into a better version of themselves, but Chang Heng practices the deepest empathy of any of them. To be hurt is to understand others’ pain, and he really does learn to understand.

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Such is the beautiful tragedy of Chang Heng and his love for Xiao Lanhua. It’s bittersweet that Chang Heng knows to let go, but comforting to recognize that they’re better off not being together. Only with them apart can Chang Heng’s love stay as pure as it is.

Take that, Ye Hua. I’ll admit, I appreciate Ye Hua for showing me the perfect example of a guy that I should not even spare a glance at. Otherwise, Chang Heng supremacy declared; respectfully, please get that other man away from me.

#苍兰诀 #love between fairy and devil #三生三世十里桃花 #eternal love #three lives three worlds #scribbles*#chang heng has liberated me #i feel so free after finally badmouthing this guy after all these years lmao #ahem no hard feelings ye hua #you were a good part of my c-drama history

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