Reading something about "why won't the CoS open the borders will Almyra?"

Disregarding the fact that the only CoS controlled territory is Garreg Mach and the Locket is located in the Alliance, why won't the Alliance open the border and welcome Almyrans with open arms?

Well, it's basically showcased (tfw show not tell) in a certain paralogue in FE16.

To start, this is one of the few "defend" maps in the entire game, iirc we have this one, the "protect GM" version of chapter 12, Shamir's paralogue and, iirc, Chapter 14 when Randolph tries to earn "merit".

Basically, the objective of this map is to protect the locket from Almyran forces who are raiding them for some reason.

Hilda starts with :

"Most of our allies have fallen."

So confirmation that Almyran forces aren't only coming with mock weapons to play bowling with their Fodlan neighbours, or are asking politely if they can pass, House Goneril's allies were killed.

"He's not here?! Oh... I'm sorry. You must have been absolutely terrified."

She tries to reassure her random (a Goneril soldier) that she will help, so they don't need to be afraid/to panic anymore.

"That's you, Professor. Please help us save our allies and protect Fódlan's Locket."

The first thing she says is to please "save" her allies/her randoms, and then to protect the locket. Emphasis again on "saving" lives, because Almyrans are raiding not only houses to bring souvenirs, but take lives too.

"Support! We're saved!" "Ah, things are looking up. Let's keep going, and save the others!"

Yep.

If a loldier dies :

"Oh no! They got one...but we can still rescue the others!"

Hilda still wants to "rescue" the others. She worries about the lives of her soldiers who are defending the Locket, but not only the locket!

If they all die, a soldier says this "We must defend here, or else... Our house... The Alliance...".

And if the line is breached, an Almyran soldier will say this :

"Yeah! We took Fódlan's Locket! With this, we'll be able to invade, no problem!"

:(

So bar this chapter blowing a hole the size of a 7 floors building in Claude's character across both games, we see here that, well, Almyra uses weapons and isn't afraid to kill Goneril soldiers who want to protect their homes and houses to "invade".

So who is behind Fodlan's general apathy towards Almyrans, the CoS like Claude says in both games (even if he seems to reconsider after discovering water is wet in VW), or Almyrans themselves???

Or, in other terms, who are we supposed to believe, Claude who tells us the CoS is the reason why Fodlan people don't like people coming from Almyra, or the game, showing us Almyrans are trouncing Fodlan people to happily invade ?

Tom Holland shocked his fans last month when he announced he would take a year-long break from acting to look after his mental health after playing Danny Sullivan in Apple TV’s The Crowded Room. At first, it was difficult to see why — the show, following a young man accused of attempted murder as he reveals his dark past, was hammered in the reviews, and the series didn’t really seem to make a splash.

However, many reviews alluded to a big “twist” in Episode 7. Now that twist is common knowledge: Danny Sullivan is a Host in a Dissociative Identity Disorder system, and the crimes were committed not by him, but by his “alters.” Characters whom viewers thought were Danny’s friends and protectors were actually part of his internal life, and in later episodes, we see them “front,” or present themselves in Danny’s behavior. His accent, posture, and whole personality switches.

This wasn’t much of a twist if you knew where to look. The entire series is loosely based on the real-life case of serial rapist Billy Milligan, who pled insanity due to DID and was found innocent. Daniel Keyes’ book The Minds of Billy Milligan is even credited in the opening sequence, making the late twist a bit less shocking than intended.

What isn’t surprising, however, is how another fictionalized story of Dissociative Identity Disorder is tied with murder. From Dressed to Kill to Split, fictional examples of this disorder are often shown as dangerous, violent people, and The Crowded Room seems to perpetuate that.

“Whenever there's any kind of media that surrounds DID, I lead in with a cringe almost every single time now because it's so misrepresented in media,” Kelly Caniglia, MA, LCMHC, LMHC, CCTP, tells Inverse. Caniglia is a board member of An Infinite Mind, a non-profit that provides resources and advocacy for those living with DID.

Dissociative Identity Disorder, previously referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder, is a trauma response where an individual undergoes something so traumatic that memories, feelings, and traits are fragmented and spread across multiple identities. It’s a surprisingly common occurrence. “1.5% of this population is living with DID. That's more than people than there are redheads,” Caniglia says. “It is so much more common than people realize. And so this is a whole genre of human that we're essentially spotlighting and trying to make a quick buck on.”

To the show’s credit, it’s clear the minds behind The Crowded Room took a responsible portrayal of DID in mind. “We read Daniel Keyes' book, we read articles that align with the topic, we watched films and documentaries, we spoke to experts and specialists in this field,” Tom Holland told Inverse’s Hoai-Tran Bui during the series’ press junket. Caniglia does point to elements that show this research, like the depiction of Danny’s internal space as the eponymous “crowded room,” a space where alters convene and discuss what to do going forward. This internal space is something experienced by some (but not all) DID systems.

But it’s hard to get behind this show as a thoughtful, considerate reflection on this disorder when it’s treated as a “gotcha,” like a narrative twist that’s full of shock and awe, not something that is simply a part of who the character is. Still, Tom Holland defended the choice. “What's really important about our show is to understand that there's more to Danny than just his DID. We wanted audiences to get to know him as a human being before people make assumptions about this mental health issue, this affliction that he has,” he said.

To Caniglia, the twist was low-hanging fruit. “There are so many pieces to DID that are not widely understood,” she said, “So it's fascinating to those that don't know it and it's fascinating to think about, ‘What? This one body has 50 people inside of it? What does that look like? How does that work?’”

So what could this series do to portray this disorder in a more sensitive light? For Caniglia, it could be as simple as a disclaimer that this is one DID story, or any other way of using this show’s high-profile platform in order to spread awareness of just what DID is in our world beyond the violent stereotypes.

She also pointed out there are other works that are working against this archetype, like filmmaker Dylan Crumpler’s short film Petals of a Rose, or even Marvel’s series Moon Knight. It was still a violent portrayal of a DID system, but it showed a hero as someone living with DID. The population finally had positive representation they could look to: a literal superhero. Considering the past depictions, that’s a big step.

The Crowded Room is a gripping story that does attempt to show that DID is nothing more than a self-preservation technique, but it’s still perpetuating harmful stereotypes, even if it’s based on a true story.

“Representation is so important,” Caniglia says, “And this population is already so marginalized that though this piece is entertaining and has points of great execution, it still reinforces the rhetoric of people with mental illness, in this case DID, are dangerous.”

First of all, your art is beautiful. Secondly, I was surprised to find someone who ships Agamemnon and Cassandra since the usual interpretation of their relationship is quite negative to say the least. Would you mind sharing some of your thoughts around this relationship? I’ve actually been working on an Agamemnon novel and am struggling with handling his relationship with Cassandra tactfully but as accurately as possible. Thank you so much!

Hi! Thank you so much <3. Unfortunately, nearly all modern interpretations villainize Agamemnon, therefore people think it's impossible that Cassandra can have a bond with him, but for the ancients it was different. I had written before about this and here is my CassandaxAgamemnon master post, but I will summarize some things:

Homer's Odyssey and Aeschylus' Agamemnon are proof of how these characters had a special bond. In the Odyssey, the soul of Agamemnon remembers Cassandra's death as the most pitiful one; she was meaningful to him. He doesn't describe anyone's specific death but hers. He thinks of her, even after he is long dead. And something SUPER important that people always forget!! Agamemnon DIES trying to save Cassandra. He tries to stop Clytemnestra from murdering Cassandra and tries to lift his arm to take the sword away, but he dies before he is able to save Cassandra. For the ancients, the fact that Cassandra was on top of Agamemnon or holding him when she was murdered was something "visually" meaningful, like, they're united by their deaths (this is something scholar Gina Salapata mentions). It's also important that this shows how Homer took time to honor Cassandra. Philostratus The Elder describes a painting that was based on the Odyssey, and he says that Cassandra, in the painting, is shielding Agamemnon and putting her sacred priestess garlands on him, as a way to protect him and saving him from getting murdered. So, there was a tradition of seeing Cassandra and Agamemnon as a couple, and in Amiklai they received religious / hero cult as a couple.

Then, somehow when people claim to have read Aeschylus' play, they absolutely ignore or forget that through the entire play, Cassandra is shown as very loyal to Agamemnon, and totally compassionate for his fate. She feels sad because Agamemnon ignores his coming death (and she is unable to warn him) and she even says she will go "cry" his death and her own, she cries both as equal things. And Cassandra curses her and Agamemnon's murderers (if she hated Agamemnon she wouldn't care to avenge him by cursing his killers). Instead of running away, she is brave and goes inside the palace to join him in death (*as far as I recall, women in Greek myth who die for a man are always either i) relatives of that man or ii) romantic partners; I don't recall a woman offering to die willingly for a man who means nothing to her). She complains about Apollo's mistreatment, but she never complains about Agamemnon in any way.

Even if someone thinks the romantic part is up for debate, the sources are very clear about how empathy, compassion, and loyalty were key themes for Agamemnon and Cassandra's relationship. Their relationship was never depicted as one based on hatred and mistreatment. The only "twist" to the traditional portrayal was Euripides' Trojan Women where Cassandra takes her union with Agamemnon as a ritual inversion of marriage, she appropriates his death as a heroic act to avenge Troy's fall. But Euripides’ take is "revolutionary" in this topic, this was not the traditional portrayal, and his play was meant to be a criticism against war (because of his specific life context). Other Euripides' plays though, don't show Agamemnon-Cassandra as being hostile to each other (in Hecuba we're told that Agamemnon is in love with Cassandra and willing to protect her, and her family too; and even in the Trojan Woman we're told Agamemnon is in love with her).

Juliette Davreux and Sabina Mazzoldi are scholars who wrote specialized books about Cassandra's myth, and both say that the ancients did think of Agamemnon and Cassandra as a couple; the difference is that Davreux claims the love bond was already present in Aeschylus; she says that Cassandra was "secretly" in love with Agamemnon, while Mazzoldi says Aeschylus' play is not that obvious on the love part which comes in later traditions. I personally agree with Davreux, because a woman willing to die along with a man is usually a wife or a concubine, besides, it's a historical fact that Aeschylus didn't like turning his plays into love dramas like Euripides does, even Aristophanes joked about it (like Euripides complains to Aeschylus that "there is no Aphrodite in your plays"). So, I think that Aeschylus gave hints for Agamemnon and Cassandra being much more than a master-slave, but Cassandra's feelings are shown in a noble and sober way. :3 hope this helps.

HP1C3

Letters From There's A Sender On The Letter This Is Just Misleading Titling

We start this chapter with some more Harry abuse, and more Dudley hate. This chapter lets us know that Harry is going to a bad school, and Dudley going to a private one, again to layer on the whole abuse thing. I'll make a brief aside here to mention that there's a character named Mrs. Figgs that Harry doesn't like, although we're given no real reason to believe she's a bad person. The Dursley's send him to her when they want to leave him out of something, so maybe he's bitter at that, but it's kind of odd to spare a paragraph to dumb some hate on what sounds like some old retired woman with cats. The author might just not be a cat person.

Vernon and Petunia both heap loads of love on their son, which I think we're supposed to interpret as bad because if they were good parents, they'd be disciplining their son for being an asshole. But, like, it's hard for me to hate someone for showing unconditional love for their child. Yes, the abuse is bad and unforgivable! But I don't think the inverse is true, where if a bad person like, shows love to a small animal, I'm supposed to...hate the animal now? Like, it's twisted for sure, but it's not quite as clear cut as I think the author wants it to be. I would have preferred Dudley not exist at all, and the Dursleys just abused Harry because they hated children or something. What we're shown is not just that the Dursleys are miserable, angry, evil people (which they are), but that they are also fully capable of being loving and caring for one another. That's kind of weird, innit?

Anyway, a letter shows up, and Vernon sees that someone knows he's been abusing Harry, and panics, as is understandable. There's one line in here that I think is telling. The scenes and the following scenes are supposed to show escalating stakes as the Dursleys try to hide the letters from Harry. But what ends the scene is Vernon saying he wants to stamp out 'that dangerous nonsense'. As a first time reader, you don't really know what he's talking about, but if you're rereading you know he's talking about witchcraft and wizardardy and all that. Which, for those who might not be informed, IS actually incredibly dangerous nonsense! The seven books are basically nothing but dangerous nonsense. Vernon might not even be aware of how dangerous, but he knows Harry's parents were killed because of their affiliation with magic, and that Harry himself is possibly a magnet for that kind of danger. With this in mind, him being ridiculously scared of the letter comes off not so much as blind bigotry but like, a legitimate fear of the unknown. The magical world IS terrifying. A natural response to being told you're being watched by omnipotent reality benders who do not respect personal privacy, property, and answer to no one, is fear! That's a very reasonable thing to be afraid of!

Anyway, we're basically treated to slapstick for the rest of the chapter. With a different tone, all this would be the start of a horror short story. We're treated to totally not stalker levels of harassment as 'No One' continues to send letters to the Dursleys. He finally takes them out to an isolated cabin where of course, they'll all be murdered one by one, because that's what happens in stories like this.

The door bursts down and in walks the maniac, so you can play the jump scare track now.