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nataliesscatorccio · 8 months

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Dead cabin guy and his technicolor dreamcoat have haunted me since the wardrobe reveal in season two, and today im going to make it everyone's problem.

Travis wears the coat first. He and Natalie take the blessing and go out to look for Javi. Travis hallucinates (prophesies?) that Javi is dead and buried beneath the snow, but Natalie shows him it's only a fox. Travis finds the strange, mossy tree stump. The next day Travis has strong feelings about which direction is best to search for Javi in, and we don't see more of him until Nat reveals the bloody pants. Not that weird, all things considered. New season, new wardrobe additions. Hiking on a caloric deficit with PTSD, you'll probably hallucinate. Pretty standard stuff.

Then Nat wears the coat. She takes it to lay Jackie's bones to rest at the crash site, and while she wears it she sees (hallucinates? prophesies? I'm not sure!) the white moose that they'll later lose to the lake (ergo the hunt, ergo Javi dies for real but more on that later).

We get to Old Wounds, the hunting competition, and Lottie wears the coat now. You see where I'm going with this but just to be thorough: she enters the realm of death dreams, talks with Laura Lee, almost freezes to death.

Episode five. Melissa wears the coat. Maybe that's not important! Maybe it's just to show that they all share the wardrobe, and that the side characters are as equally All In This Together as the main characters are. Or it could mean something that a peripheral character, wearing important wardrobe, framed in antlers (not unlike Travis in 2.01), has the line "maybe he did die, and that's his ghost." It's a little suspicious, and at this point starts to feel like a pattern.

Who wears it next, who wore it best!? That's right baby, it's Paul! For his dreamworld drifter, hallucination hunk Coach Ben Scott. Nicholas Urfe himself. Ben spends almost all of his time in a dream, until *drumroll please* Paul, very pointedly, takes the coat and walks out the door. "Where do you think you are, Ben?" he puts the coat on. "You had to have known you couldn't stay here forever. [...] What matters now is that you aren't welcome here anymore." Following Paul means committing to death (to dream), and until interruption that's the choice Ben makes. Because letting Paul (and the coat) go would mean committing entirely to reality.

Of course, the pièce de résistance is something I didn't even notice until I went looking for it. The first dozen times I watched, I thought that after Lottie's beating Shauna brought her a blanket. "Lottie's cold." But she doesn't. She brings her the coat. Lottie is laying with it when, in a fever dream, she witnesses/hallucinates/prophesies parts of the hunt.

It's there again (on the back of the chair) when she sits by the fire and speaks for the wilderness, appointing Nat their queen. Ben watches, having woken from the dream himself, as they all bow to Natalie and leave reality behind for good.

Of course, there are a lot of times when characters hallucinate strange things in the cabin while not wearing the coat, because they're all starving to death and traumatized. Mari. Shauna. Akilah. But in addition to that, it seems like a pattern worth noting that in each instance where a character wears the technicolor coat, the line between the real and the imagined seems to blur with more ease. Does dead cabin guy's technicolor dreamcoat help the Yellowjackets connect to the dream realm?

I'll be brief here with the biblical parallel: blah blah Joseph is the favorite son (you were always its favorite), his father gives him a technicolor coat (they're nothing special, they don't change color in the cold or anything). blah blah Joseph starts having prophetic dreams etc etc his jealous brothers throw Joseph down a pit (the wilderness chose) and bring his bloodstained coat back as false proof of his death (hanging on a branch. a couple miles back). You get my drift.

Does it mean anything? Who knows. But in a series where wardrobe is such an integral part of the storytelling, it felt worth paying attention to.

#yellowjackets #long post #travis martinez #lottie matthews #natalie scatorccio #melissa yellowjackets #paul yellowjackets #yellowjackets meta #javi martinez #shauna shipman #ben scott #akilah yellowjackets #mari yellowjackets

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sapphicthunderhead · 15 days

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TMA SPOILERS AHEAD:

I think it’s time for an Annabelle Cane retrospective because I will. Never. Be over her.

She is the neglected (Jon parallel) youngest child of a large family. She ran away (Jon parallel) in a bid for attention. Mother of Puppets marked her (Jon parallel) through an incident involving an old woman, a place she wasn’t meant to be, and a giant motherfucking spider (Jon parallel).

Years later, she’s at Surrey University. She’s probably a psych major, probably nice to janitors, definitely has an eccentric sense of style. (I heard her character description for the first time— heard “vintage clothing store exploded on her”— and that, I think, is when I began to fall for her.)

She volunteers to participate in a crackpot experiment, the details of which she knows very little. (Was there a control group mentioned? No. There never is when it comes to testing “psychic abilities.” Were the other participants made to sign NDAs so they couldn’t disclose details of their part of the so-called experiment to the public or to Annabelle, leaving her suggestible, and thus making the whole enterprise susceptible to producing skewed results? Evidently not.)

Through this “experiment,” she becomes a receptacle for fear, a vessel for the essence of the Web. Of course she does! She has some severe mommy issues, as established in the statement she left in the house on Hilltop Road, and the Mother of Puppets has decided to treat her like the favorite daughter she always wanted to be. It is an ideal arrangement for both parties.

Now she feeds. She nearly dies. Her apotheosis is a resurrection. She is full of spiderweb. She escapes; she disappears.

Onto the creation of Chelicerae. She functionally becomes a serial killer. She fills people up with spiders.

She finds her brother in the ranks of the Mother of Puppets’ forces, Neil Lagorio, and catalyzes his final transformation into the spider monster in Creature Feature. (That’s either him or the director, but I lean towards the former.)

She uses every means available— the internet, entertainment industry, her own skill at interpersonal manipulation— to instill the fear of helplessness, of futility, of autonomy being denied or never having existed in the first place, in the hearts and minds of mankind. She does all this in order to engineer an end that benefits her. She becomes the epitome of selfishness and of cruelty, but also of cunning and resourcefulness. She possesses a foresight of such clarity it seems as if she’s become the Web’s prophet. She possesses qualities of a folk hero, a demigod, a biblical figure. (I am as in awe of her as I am delightfully frightened.)

When the end comes, she is prepared. She has accounted for all possible outcomes. Only one variable remains independent: the plus-one to her parallel— the one card she was never able to play, the piece she could never take for herself. That’s because Martin Blackwood is an active participant, not a pawn. By the time they finally confront one another face-to-face, he knows the rules of the game almost as well as she does. Both he and Annabelle have always moved in the shadows, but his intent was to be underestimated and hers was to inspire fear, and he does not fear her (not like he feared his mother, or being unloved, and he has conquered both of these).

So she doesn’t fill him with spiders. She grows, she changes, she adapts. She becomes truly monstrous; her physical form at last reflects her inner self. She places her bets, plays the last card up her sleeve, and waits for her opponent to make his move.

And she wins.

(Marry me marry me marry me you can have my heart I would treat you so well Annabelle pretty please marry me marry me—)

#the magnus archives #tma #tma annabelle #annabelle cane #i’m in love #mother of puppets #tma web #tma entities #tma fears #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #TMA neil lagorio #tma martin #tma jon #tma spoilers #parallels

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beebopboom · 5 months

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The Second…….Ball?

A bookshop, Eden, and something more?

In part 1 we discussed

the structure of the bookshop being similar to 17th century French gardens, a maybe hidden Tree of life, the idea of timestreams relating to the roads and rivers, and all that to just say the bookshop perhaps all of Wickber Street is their version of Eden

Part 1.5 was just a couple theories that have been floating around my head concerning

the book of life

the rings and a fly

the bookshop

a coffee

honestly I'm probably going to do a little editing. It’s not a necessary reading

But finally made it to part 2 where I'm going to dive into some out of order events and two different parts of the same story being played out at the same time plus the actual main plot, specifically in the last two episodes - though there is probably more earlier in the season

you can imagine the jumble that has been brain and why it took longer than I wanted to get this out.

Background Info

In part 1 I mentioned that the Tree of Life was mentioned in two particular books in the Bible - Genesis and Revelations. Now we’ve discussed the Genesis part - Eden - and now we are going to talk about Revelations - New Jerusalem

The Book of Revelation is the only apocalyptic book in the New Testament and it's where the Second Coming comes from - written by a John. It was mentioned in season 1 and I’m going to be making a lot of references to it throughout this.

New Jerusalem is the place where all true believers will spend eternity with God and is said to have pretty similar features to Eden - the rivers, the Tree of Life, the wall, and a square shape. Something that this place is also said to have is 12 gates.

The New Jerusalem. Armenian manuscript by Malnazar and Aghap’ir in New Julfa bible, 1645

Oh lookie there mighty similar design to 17th century french gardens

But anyway want to take a guess at what has 12 windows?

*I used the fire to show what windows are connected to the bookshop*

Ok but let’s get into the actual point of this I’ve talked enough about set design

Have we already seen a version of the Second Coming? Why yes we have

In episode 5 we are following two different stories cutting back and forth between the two - Aziraphale’s and Shax’s

Now before I get into this I’m just going to say that I know Good Omens is a parody to actual Biblical events and who knows what is actually going to happen in season 3 besides the man himself. We do know that this season was setting up for the next and that parallel scenes are a favorite. So these are just some parallels I noticed if you place some characters into the roles of others and it could very well turn out to be wrong

Shax’s Siege

The thing about Shax’s character is that she is always looking for opportunities to get ahead and make connections that could benefit her later. We see it in 1941 and between then and now she has worked her way up from desk duty to Hell’s rep on earth.

And when she finally gets permission to attack the bookshop she actually takes up another role. Or shall I say multiple.

It is very obvious that once Shax gets to Earth she is out of her league - bitten off more than she can chew so to say - and yet she still wants more and is very good at manipulating beings to get there.

So she wants to storm the bookshop with legions of demons but only gets about 70. The thing that is interesting about there approach is you have demons coming from all four roads and she arrives last. And this is where we jump into Revelations.

In chapter 13 it talks of two beast - one from the sea and one from the land. The beast from the sea is said to have 7 heads, 10 crowns on the horns, is like a leopard with feet of a bear and the mouth of a lion, and one of its heads is said to have a mortal wound that is healed. This description has been likened to the four beast in the Book of Danial chapter 7 which were symbols of the four kingdoms - Babylon, Medes-Persia, Greece, and Rome. Some say this beast is the Antichrist as it is empowered by Satan to persecute Christians, blasphemy against God, and cult-like worship.

But all that to say I think that the arrival of the demons from all four sides was meant to kind of represent this. With the four beast representing the four kingdoms arriving on our four rivers roads. It’s not a perfect parallel but it is not meant to be - it’s meant to be a shitty rendition of what is basically Armageddon.

Now the second beast is mainly referred to as the false prophet. The only description is that it comes from the ground, two horns like a lamb but having the voice of a dragon. It has all the authority of the first beast and makes the inhabitants of earth worship the first beast, it breathes life into the first beast. It performs great signs like making fire come down from the Heavens to the Earth and causes all to be marked with the mark of the beast. Some call this beast the antichrist because it is performing miracles similar to that of Jesus.

This is the role I think Shax is trying to play - somewhat successfully. She arrives coming up out of the lift and through actions we see later kinda fulfill some of the rest of these points.

She also kind of jumps back and forth between these two beast with her authority - almost like she is not actually meant to be here, that they are all out of order. Mainly trying to be in the Antichrist position.

Shax is working the best with what she got.

But let’s switch over to our other story before we get to the confrontation

Aziraphale’s Ball

In his part of the episode we have been following him around as he invites people to this “meeting”. Crowley is also there for a little bit until he is brought back to reality so to say by Nina and eventually goes to confront Gabriel.

But back to Aziraphale who is going shop to shop in alphabetical order as is on the list on his clipboard. And this is where we start to get some Revelation parallels.

Whereas the Shax parallels started in chapter 13 Aziraphale joins in at the end of chapter 20 with the mention of the Book of Life - or in other words the list of names that are let into this New Jerusalem, that were God’s people.

Aziraphale having a list of people that he is inviting into his bookshop, a notorious place where he doesn’t want humans I feel is pretty significant. But all doesn’t go smoothly and he has to convince some people to come - I could go into each person he talks too but mainly he is using books and christmas lights to convince the people who don’t want to come. But what could those represent?

Books - eternal life for authors

Christmas Lights - the light that Jesus brought back into a world of darkness

Giving out the books/fruit of the Tree of Life so people will come to the ball/paradise hmm Aziraphale?

Interesting that we don’t see Mr. Brown’s shop on this list isn’t it? Keep that in mind.

But we continue on to Aziraphale decorating the Bookshop. With two scenes of him doing this one - moving the bookcases, or interior walls, and two - bring the chandelier down

In chapter 21, John is said to have seen New Jerusalem and New Earth descend from the Heavens - noting that there was no temple,

This could be paralleled to the scene where Crowley is looking into the Bookshop watching as Aziraphale has a chandelier descend from the ceiling.

It’s also important to note at this point that Gabriel arriving quite literally upended their lives and inadvertently set off the very same events he didn’t want to happen, The Second Coming. With him acting as a Jesus parallel.

But back to what is happening with Aziraphale. People are starting to arrive!! And he is changing their clothes?

Revelation 22:14 - Blessed are those who wash their robes, so they may have access to the tree of life and they may enter the city by the gates.

Washing their robes is meant to symbolize a full cleansing from sin that they must be free from to enter New Jerusalem

So Aziraphale is changing (washing) their clothes to make them acceptable for the ball (New Jerusalem)

Now you may be wondering how would you even prove that it happened? The seamstress conversation is how.

On one side it probably was how people from the time period Aziraphale is trying to create talked but it’s also removing the nature of the “sin”

Aziraphale does not even know what she technically does and yet it is still changed. When Mrs. Sandwich later tries to say what her job is she can’t actually say it and has to describe it - all using sewing terms. She even calls out at one point that the “devil may take it.”

But why? Aziraphale doesn’t even know and if he did I doubt he was care very much - unless something else was at play here.

Heavens standards - which in this universe includes adultery as bad, as a sin. We see examples with the references to Solomon and Gomorrah and “Thou shall not commit adultery Pulsifer”

The way she describes it as well leans towards this angle as well. With the “in want of the tender attention of a wife”

But back to Jim though who throughout all of this has been our Jesus parallel - he is out mingling with the people for the first time dressed in a wonderful blue suit.

Revelation 22 - The throne of God and the Lamb are in the city, and His people worship Him. There is no night and no need for other sources of light, for the Lord Himself gives the light, and they reign forever.

God and Jesus finally walking among and interacting with their people - and Jim seems to be having a grand ol time

yes i’m putting Aziraphale into Gods position- tricky business there i know

There is also some more references with the Candelabra’s that are around the shop - both the 3 and 7 versions. These guys have a bunch of different meaning but the ones that really stick out is The Holy Trinity and the Seven Angels or the Seven Churches

(I also had this whole bit planned about the temple which is said to be destroyed in the Second Coming of Jesus because it now holds no place in Jerusalem because God and Jesus are now among them and relating it to the Second Temple. I’m a bit iffy about it though just with some of reasoning but that was the basics of it - I might end up coming back to this at some point)

But all this to say that Aziraphale has basically made his version of paradise - unintentionally mirroring what is said to be the real one

The Collide

And our two stories meet….somehow. We left off with Shax in chapter 13 and Aziraphale in chapter 22 so quite a bit has to happen to get them to the same place - and it does a little bit out of order

Things come crashing to a stop quite literally when the demons throw the brick? wall piece? through the window. Shax makes her threats particularly to the humans. Perhaps because they don’t have the Mark of the Beast? Which they would need to buy things and as we know from Jim earlier, they aren’t selling

But the next big event is Jim walking out of the bookshop

which has been linked to this pose

and continues Shax’s story into Revelations 14

Revelation 14:14 Then I looked, and behold, a white cloud, and on the cloud sat One like the Son of Man

but he is also start Aziraphale’s story back up when he goes back into the shop - just going backwards now

Revelation 20:5 The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were completed. This is the first resurrection. How fortunate and holy is the one who has a share in the first resurrection!

Mr. Brown then gets grabbed and thrown out of the shop, remember how his shops name wasn’t on the list? His name is not in the Book of Life therefore he is thrown into a Lake of Fire

Crowley then brings the humans back outside telling them to go back to their shops thus removing them from New Jerusalem and reversing judgement

and then he exits the stage as well and our jumping around really begins with episode 6 - so quick-fire

Shax gains confidence in her attack as soon as she notices Crowley has left and while this is happening Aziraphale put the chandelier back…. from wherever it came from. Effectively undescending New Jerusalem and putting that behind them as they work to meet up to where Shax is at in the story.

Aziraphale starts setting up the portal and tells Shax she is not welcomed here

Revelations 14: 9-11 - Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, “If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation. He shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.”

Demons throw trash into the bookshop and Aziraphale runs off to tell Jim to hide leaving Maggie and Nina to deal with Shax

Revelation 14: 17-20 Then another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven, he also having a sharp sickle. And another angel came out from the altar, who had power over fire, and he cried with a loud cry to him who had the sharp sickle, saying, “Thrust in your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for her grapes are fully ripe.” So the angel thrust his sickle into the earth and gathered the vine of the earth, and threw it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trampled outside the city, and blood came out of the winepress, up to the horses’ bridles, for one thousand six hundred furlongs.

Maggie is then manipulated by Shax to let the demons in the shop

By this point I think the true role of Shax has come into play and it’s a nod back to Madam Tracy. The role is in Revelation 17 - The Whore of Babylon - the epitome of sin, ruler over 7 kingdoms, quick with her tongue and good with her words, draped in the finest clothes of purple and scarlet

Demons start to enter the shop and Aziraphale activates the portal - Shax discorporates Eric and we see Jim’s position on the stairs above everyone

Revelation 15 - The Seven Plagues - yes I know they haven’t quite got to anything else besides the portal and even then they don’t use seven different things but this chapter really is just setting up for the next and I wanted to mention one thing before moving into the next

Revelation 15:8 And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power, and no one could enter the temple until the seven plagues of the seven angels were completed

the smoke coming from the demons discorporating and the fire extinguishers while Jim is absent

Demons start stepping into the portal - Maggie, Nina, and Aziraphale have to come up with another plan - Demons push book selves over and Maggie and Nina start with the fire extinguishers

They have now gone up the stairs to the second floor of the bookshop for the first floor has been over taken by the demons - Aziraphale charges Shax to leave this place - Shax starts to insult Aziraphale

Revelation 18:2 With a mighty voice he shouted: “ ‘Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!’She has become a dwelling for demons and a haunt for every impure spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable animal.

Jim is sent away after asking if anyone wants hot chocolate

I don’t have anything to compare this to. I just think it’s interesting that Aziraphale(and Maggie and Nina) were offered hot chocolate and declined, especially with all the talks about coffee vs death

Maggie and Nina continue with the fire extinguishers - and then they start with the books - no more fire extinguishers or books and Aziraphale pulls out the old Halo trick

Revelation 16 - Bowls of Wrath - now the chapter with the actual description of the seven bowls. By now we have seen all of the moves Aziraphale, Maggie, and Nina pull but I really wanted to point out the comparison of the last bowl particularly what happened afterwards and the Halo so,

Revelation 16:17-20 The seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air, and out of the temple came a loud voice from the throne, saying, “It is done!” Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has ever occurred since mankind has been on earth, so tremendous was the quake. The great city split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. God remembered Babylon the Great and gave her the cup filled with the wine of the fury of his wrath. Every island fled away and the mountains could not be found.

All demons are discorporated with Shax unconscious on the couch

Revelation 19:2 for true and just are his judgments. He has condemned the great prostitute who corrupted the earth by her adulteries. He has avenged on her the blood of his servants.

Revelation 19:20 And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who in its presence had done the signs by which he deceived those who had received the mark of the beast and those who worshipped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur.

and with that it is over

so yeah that was a lot and it’s not perfect but remember when it was mentioned back in season 1 it was among prophecies that were not entirely accurate and that it was a rushed, only kinda planned attack. So really I just view this as very quick run down version of the Second Coming where there is not enough players

plus you have Crowley’s side to this story which seems to be the reality - dealing with the actual problem that has been going on throughout the season (Gabriel) instead of hosting a Ball or trying to make a power play

but if you made it this far have a little treat in the spirit of the holiday season, or if you don’t celebrate anything than just for getting to the end of this

New Jerusalem was also described as "the bride, the wife of the lamb” - and we all know that Ball was for Aziraphale and Crowley, as much as he may deny it, so really Aziraphale was saying “let’s get married, I’m your wife now”

#good lord this got long #I tried to interpret things the best I could #but I had like no background knowledge #my brain is mush #good omens #good omens 2 #good omens meta #good omens analysis #good omens theory #aziraphale #crowley #good omens shax #good omens maggie #good omens nina #good omens gabriel

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amplifyme · 7 months

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Going to keep this short because A. life and B. not a ton of progress made! :DDDD

Cat and Mouse

It’s an even richer reading experience now that I have faces and voices to put to each character. Correct me if I’m wrong, but Sam was the man killed in the episode Snow, right?

Nan’s extrapolations on Vincent being named after a saint makes me wonder if perhaps I did hit on a grain of an idea by drawing parallels between the injuries of Jacob from the biblical canon and Jacob Wells/Father. At the very least, I’m going to pat myself very prematurely on the back. XDDD

Mitch, unlamented? Was he the criminal in S1? If so, great callback, Nan!

Nan’s notes on Cullen are really incredible, honestly-- she sets so much up already by going backwards in time. Great reread.

Cullen needing to be more cautious with the children around. Kanin not yet knowing all the ways of Below. Vincent telling Father but not telling him about Cullen's deal of silence. All interesting.

I prodded sis about her thoughts on Nan's "version" of Father. Sis: “I still think she does Father really funny.”

“Better to volunteer, he thought, than to wait for the inevitable to be forced, however courteously, upon him.”-- OOoooooh, like The Alchemist and The Outsiders. Cool stuff, Nan.

“Vincent slid his palm across, beyond the timber-reinforced doorway, were water-carved: this slightly tilted, tall cavern was a section of the channel of a lost subterranean river. No one knew why or when the river had stopped flowing.” Is that… is that a reference to the INCIDENT in Part III when Vincent lets the water loose? “Where a river had been, a river might suddenly return. The possibility of flood couldn't be ignored.” IT IS A REFERENCE.

“He ruefully slapped his bad hip—an old injury, aggravated by arthritis.” So, Sis relayed to me about Roy's story at con about the origin of Father’s injury coming about because of Roy’s back luck with hips and swimming pools-- which, that’s perversely hilarious and makes moments like the above hit a little bit different (aside from Nan’s backstory, of course.)

Btw, sis inhaled most of the con and has been telling me bits and pieces. Thus far, I’m hooked on Nan and she’s hooked on any BATB 1987 bts content.

“Accept my warm welcome to the ranks of the chronically uncertain.” What a hilarious line from Father-- and what weight this conversation has, especially with Nan’s backstories she will continue to unfurl in the coming chapters. LOVED it.

Father and his chess and Vincent’s “Sixty-two… if one happened to be counting” was exquisite.

Vincent pondering over the boy huddling in the dark, hungry and alone, for “reasons he could put no name to”-- incredible.

Gotta scuttle off! Be back soon with more~! :DDDDD

Hey! Sorry for the delay responding. I just pulled myself out of the rabbit hole.

Let's Talk about Cat and Mouse, one of my favorite "Young Vincent" stories.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but Sam was the man killed in the episode Snow, right?

I think that's safe to assume.

Mitch, unlamented? Was he the criminal in S1? If so, great callback, Nan!

Yep, Mitch Denton from the episode The Beast Within. He also plays a small but important role in my fic The Possibility of Being. Nan and I shared a certain curiosity about a few of the one-off characters on the show.

I prodded sis about her thoughts on Nan's "version" of Father. Sis: “I still think she does Father really funny.”

Like funny as in amusing, or funny as in not in character?

“Better to volunteer, he thought, than to wait for the inevitable to be forced, however courteously, upon him.”-- OOoooooh, like The Alchemist and The Outsiders. Cool stuff, Nan.

And on many other occasions over the years, I'm sure. There's just so much fodder for fanfic in the BATB universe, so many unanswered questions, so many missing years.

No one knew why or when the river had stopped flowing.” Is that… is that a reference to the INCIDENT in Part III when Vincent lets the water loose? “Where a river had been, a river might suddenly return. The possibility of flood couldn't be ignored.” IT IS A REFERENCE.

Another of the many seeds Nan planted from early on. She had a remarkable gift for that sort of thing. She was very much a gardener. I'll post a quote from GRRM when I'm finished here, where he distinguishes between two types of writers.

Btw, sis inhaled most of the con and has been telling me bits and pieces. Thus far, I’m hooked on Nan and she’s hooked on any BATB 1987 bts content.

I wish there was more video of Nan. She was a blast to hang out with. But your sister certainly has lots to discover and enjoy with all the con videos.

I love Nan's Father. Yet another character that she absolutely nails. There are some fans who don't care for Father and I've never understood that. I always loved him as his own person, as well as the relationship he and Vincent have. You'd have to be blind not to see how much they love and respect each other. That's part of why the events of the trilogy was such a blow to Vincent's peace of mind.

Father and his chess and Vincent’s “Sixty-two… if one happened to be counting” was exquisite.

Though we don't see it often on screen, I'm convinced Vincent has a very wry sense of humor and he and Father likely took affectionate shots at each other all the time. Life Below couldn't possibly have been all drama and angst. These folks liked to have fun too.

Vincent pondering over the boy huddling in the dark, hungry and alone, for “reasons he could put no name to”-- incredible.

Perhaps a bit of Buster's memories of abandonment bleeding through to Vincent? That's what I've always thought anyway.

Okay, time to wrap this up. I've got to do one more read-through before I post my new V & D fic. 😁

#beauty and the beast 1987 #fanfic #acquainted with the night 1 #cat and mouse #discussion

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stanfordsweater · 1 year

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happy wincest wednesday, ava!! what are your favorite samdean edits you've made so far? (top 5 or top 10)

thank you vicky 🥺 i'll do top 5! i'm sorry this is so late but wincest wednesday is more a state of mind, right???? RIGHT!

starting this off with my soft rock playlist because i'm gonna fail to ever make one of these posts again--i had a really good time putting the playlist together with several discord pals, which was essential help! i have limited knowledge of the genre and i was able to find some gems with their help, so: thanks to y'all <3 i like the composite feel that comes with the several images of different dimensions + i tend to shy away from these paler/overlaid filter style edits, so it was nice to push outside my (very shadowy) comfort zone.

fourth is a tie between this edit from one of my long time favourite songs and this dead in the water gifset! i couldn't decide because i like the first one for the fun narrative switch right at the end that takes it from sam's POV to dean's, but the second one is one of my favourite episodes and has a fun grimy look to it. all good things...

my third fave is unclean in the biblical sense because it really is the sam thesis, as i see it. it's simple, it's clean, and it distills several very important parts of his character in those early seasons into four gifs, which i'm quite proud of! i've seen other versions of this quote with various scenes but none of them have really gripped me and had me nodding along, so i had to make my own.

#2 is this season four parallels post because a. it's the first gifset i finished and thought that i might actually be... good at this... and b. not enough people talk about these VERY deliberate parallels!!!! i LIVE for them.

my this is how you lose the time war post is my number one. i am really proud of the colouring being so different for the different eras but still looking cohesive in the full post, in large part because it's fucking HARD to try to match the colour from kripke era to later seasons. this one was a unique challenge because it's important to me to match my edits with the vibe/theme of the original work, and that book handles time non-chronologically in a way i knew i had to echo with my edit. i felt i had to try to capture the way sam is so cordoned-off, even to the number one person in his life-- sam kept the amulet for YEARS. that is INSANE. his expression when dean finds out he had it this whole time is brain bending. having that in the script was such a beautiful way to illustrate the way sam works, which is that he has his own way to keep himself accountable and to remember the things that shaped him, ways he would never bring up to another person-- the amulet symbolizes his love for dean, his rebellion against john, his personal failures in season 4-- it's in his pocket every day to remind him of what he and dean were-- and then in season 11, with his sentimentality stripped bare in front of dean, it becomes what they are, here and now. and that's really neat.

#thank you 💘#wincest wednesday #many weeks late #.ask #alaynestone

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lily-moon-art · 2 years

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Venti is Jesus?????

***Disclaimer: I don't think Hoyoverse put this much effort into this, I just went to a Christian school and want to overanalyze something. Also I'm not trying to convert people or anything. I'm figuring my beliefs myself, and simply am applying the religion I grew up with to some media I enjoy. Don't read too much into this***

So with the latest addition to the Archon quest, I realized that all of the Archons have some theme that also relates to the Christian God. With some more thought, the Archons not only parallel many aspects of God in both the new and old testaments but also that they fall short in these aspects. Venti seemed like an outlier, but after reading more into it, he actually fits the best and he is my favorite so I'll be talking the most about him.

Freedom is not the first thing to come to mind when you think of Christianity, but for many sects and denominations, the freedom to choose to love him is the most important, because you cannot truly love something if you cannot choose to. Venti gives Mondstadt the freedom to do what they want and govern themselves. However, this does not work out because Venti is weakened by his lack of control and he even mentions that he didn't give his people the freedom to choose to be ruled by him.

With the Ballads and Brews event, we learn that Venti is somewhat of a parental figure for the people of Mondstadt, even if they do not know it. It is a running joke in the fandom that Anemo visions are given to people who have lost loved ones, and from what we can see, very few if any playable Mondstat characters have present, living parents that they have a good relationship with. As we see with Razor, Venti leads him to find the truth for himself of his parents, but also helps the people at the festival, even if only as a bard.

Another similarity is how Venti reveals himself to people, but they still do not believe. He is merely a bard and while he isn't too afraid to tell people he is Barbatos, no one other than the traveller believes him. He does miracles and easily could appear in his archon form, but still no one believes him, similarly to how people denied the miracles that Jesus did.

Looking at the lore of Venti, he also delivers Mondstat to freedom from Decambrian, who kept them imprisoned, similarly to Moses saving the Israelites from Egypt or Jesus saving people from sin.

Zhongli is more straightforward: he makes contracts, and God made covenants. Zhongli saved his people from the other gods and is known as the warrior god. There are many biblical references to putting on the armor of God. Zhongli can take on many different forms and is genderless, as evidenced by the line in the archon quest in Liyue where Paimon says the perfume for Rex Lapis's funeral is the kind an old woman would use, and Zhongli said that Rex Lapis could also have appeared as a woman at one point. Despite what many may say today, the Christian God is not exclusively male and has no gender. In fact, there are references in the old testament to a motherly aspect.

Ei is also quite simple, she wants to build an eternal nation and rules from a different realm using the puppet to enact her will, however the puppet does horrible things like the vision hunt decree in the name of eternity.

Nahida is all knowing and quite powerful, but her people instead worship dead gods and do not acknowledge her. She also reveals herself mysteriously to let the traveller find out for themself and she seems weak in the form of a child, like Jesus.

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lemonluvgirl · 2 years

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What do you think about Hijacked Peeta storyline in Mockingjay?

Is it narrative-ly satisfied for Peeta's arc?

Thank you,

@curiouspeetamellark

I think it was a big narrative risk that Collins took with his storyline. In many ways it is extremely relevant for his character growth, for the surrounding characters, (especially but certainly not limited to, Katniss) and for the deeper themes present in the novel itself. One of my favorite things Collins consistently does is bring polarizing issues of war, and it's affects, to the forefront of the reader's mind to shed light on issues like treatment of POWs.

Peeta in particular, goes through a kind of bizarre crucifixion parallel when he is captured by Snow and the Capitol. Complete with a betrayl (Haymitch and the rebellion not only leaving him behind but also leaving him out of the escape plans) being publicly humiliated and tortured (Propos with Ceasar, which bear a strange resemblance to Jesus's trial with Pilot) and a period of time spent in hell/purgatory after he refuses to deny/succumb to the will of his captors (Peeta's last coherent act before the hijacking completely took over was to warn District13 of the bombing raid). Instead of emerging from hell (capture) victorious and vindicated (like traditional Christ and biblical canons) Peeta instead emerges from his ordeal broken and having lost faith in his purifying and sacred purpose, to save Katniss and love her no matter the cost to himself.

Peeta becomes, as Johanna aptly puts it, the capitol mutt version of himself. Where all the normal aspects of his personality (kindess, selflessness, and peace making) become inverted. He becomes cruel, callous, and volatile, seeking to cause discomfort and division among his friends and allies. This causes many people around him to fear and distrust him, including Katniss herself, and it is a form of death Peeta undergoes, and stays trapped in for quite sometime. His old self essentially is considered dead, killed by Snow and his minions, and all thats left is a broken shell of the brave and noble man many admires. Peetas resurrection is a slow and gradual one, and is is not miraculous or even complete. The last chapter of Mockinjay makes it clear that the scars of the hijacking and the PTSD enduced from the summation of all his terrible experiences is something Peeta has to live with everyday.

In a way, I kind if hate that Collins took that direction with his character. It seems like the worst kind of thing someone could do to a person like Peeta Mellark, who valued his morality and his autonomy and always maintained an unwavering surety of self that most people couldn't even comprehend when faced with the life altering and soul shattering experiences he lived through. Child abuse, two Hunger Games, and a rejection from the girl he loved didn't destroy his inner kindness and strength, but trackerjacker vemon and brutal torture did.

I still don't entirely forgive Collins for doing it, but I understand why she did it. To highlight the internal costs of war and violence on the human phsyce, and the collateral damage done to the most innocent and blameless. She's brilliant because she makes you feel it when the darkness and hatred of the human heart goes a step too far. The consequences of war hit you as close to home as possible, because after all, she spends three novels getting the reader to fall in love with Peeta for so many unconventional reasons and then she rips him, and any easy, clear cut happy ending he may have had away.

For that reason I find it hard to call Peeta's hijacking and subsequent character arc narratively satisfying. But I don't think his arc was supposed to be completely satisfying. I think it was supposed to feel slightly unfulfilled because the damage can be overcome but not undone. Peeta survived but like all the other characters the war took its toll and nothing was ever the same. Life moved on and happiness was found again but the nightmares remained. I do applaud Collins for is writing his character's conclusion realistically. That she did not gloss over the trauma and the after effects helps the story maintain its integrity. And it forces readers to acknowledge that while war may be justified it is never without its costs.

That ending theme, more than anything helps to bring closure and gravity to Peeta's character development. His ending, although not as bright or as unblemished as I would have hoped for, is still valid and well earned.

Sorry about the long nature of the reply. I hope this answers your question 🙂

#thg #characters #thg character study #peeta mellark #hijacking #character arc

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fabdante · 3 years

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Not to keep on with this but right so I made a post about Vergil and Bernini and in that post I mentioned what art works and pieces I think represent the other parts of the DmC trio, Kat and Dante. And I just wanted to follow up on that with more focused posts because yall have no idea, I’m very into this whole thing.

First up: Dante

So Dante I go into a good deal in the Baroque essay already so some of this is a rehashing but I just wanted to go more in depth about Dante and Caravaggio’s Davids.

(David and Goliath, 1599)

(David with the Head of Goliath, 1607)

(David with the Head of Goliath, 1610)

More about Dante, Caravaggio, and especially that last David under the cut! This one got a little long.

Ok so first things first, like discussed in the Baroque essay, Dante is Baroque and the game is based around Caravaggio’s Baroque to a point where many of his paintings are directly referenced. That last David in particular is referenced directly in the game. See below:

so I’m not really saying anything the game hasn’t really done itself here. Dante is the main character, he is represented by Baroque and Caravaggio. That’s his vibe, that’s the parallel. And it’s a very intentional one I mean in Talexi’s art book he discusses picking Caravaggio as an influence and the overlap between Dante’s whole deal and Caravaggio’s own. But I’m like really into Caravaggio’s David’s and want to talk about that and the neat way this plays with Dante’s whole deal so, let’s do it.

To quickly summarize Caravaggio and the background of his last David: Caravaggio was an angry guy who worked in Rome during the Baroque period until he killed a guy for Reasons (probably a bet, possibly a woman, possibly a tennis match or something, probably the bet). He gets kicked out of Rome, does some stuff (joins a knighthood? at some point then leaves the knighthood?), gets word that the pope wants to pardon him. He goes back to Rome with some art but dies on the way at the ripe age of 38. One of the paintings with him that makes it on this trip is the last David.

What I like about Caravaggio’s David’s is how different they are then other David’s that come up in the art history canon. Just for comparison I’ll share the famous David but also Bernini’s David from the same time period.

(The David, Michelangelo)

(David, Benini. Pain to get a photo of s2g)

The first key difference is I mean, all three of Caravaggio’s David’s are wearing clothes which I think is neat in that I imagine he would be wearing those given the situation. But beyond that, what strikes me about Caravaggio’s David’s is their youth. In the biblical story, David is more the age Caravaggio consistently depicts him at. Which is about approximately preteen or teenage. The second thing that strikes me is the confidence and power displayed in Bernini and Michelangelo’s David’s evoke. But Caravaggio’s are not confident, not the way these one’s are. And especially that last one.

Caravaggio’s David is unsure. He’s just done this thing, killed this man, but he doesn’t seem to have quite processed it in the first two. But in the third, he is processing it. And he’s not processing it well. This is a David who is unsure. This is a David who seems to pity the man who’s head he now holds by the hair. This is a David who is not strong and unwavering and confident and elegant, this is a child who just killed a man. This echo’s in the games interpretation of the scene, that same worry echoing in Dante’s brow that’s in Caravaggio’s. It’s a sympathetic David in that he seems to be unsure if this choice was worth the personal toll but also in the sense that the viewer is sympathetic to him, they feel bad for this child who has just been forced to make this choice.

Reboot Dante’s life is not one about choice, it’s not really something he seems to be able to do often. Sparda put him into the orphanage and the orphanage put Dante into the foster care system. And ever since then Dante has had to fight. Not by choice, but by necessity. It show’s in his combat style, in his clearly untrained movements focused on power and strength rather then tactics. Vergil, if you watch him fight, he’s much more elegant, his style reflecting practice and technique. Dante, though, throws everything into his movements to kill as fast as possible. That if he just swings hard enough, this’ll all be over faster. He even stumbles in his combat because he’s put so much power into his swings, it’s my favorite little detail.

In the game, it’s mentioned that Dante’s first recorded demon kill was when he was eight years old. It was one of the ‘caretakers’ at the facility he was in. I often wonder if that’s the moment that they were trying to depict in this image, the moment after that. I'm not really sold that he looks eight here but I mean you be the judge of that but bare with me. It’s the mood, that moment right after he’s been forced to enter his new reality for the first time. That he is going to have to fight like this the rest of his life. That bewilderment and regret and just general disbelief that he’s done this, that he’s just killed something. That sorrow for the Dante he was before, like that sorrow that David must be feeling for who he was before as well.

But there’s a second layer here I haven’t gotten to yet. And that’s how Caravaggio’s David is also thought to be a self portrait. No, he’s not David. Caravaggio has painted himself as Goliath. A portrait of Caravaggio for reference:

(Caravaggio as depicted by Ottavio Leoni in 1621)

Usually this is read as a tongue and cheek thing to the pope, like Caravaggio is offering himself in the ultimate repentance for his crimes. He’s sorry, here’s his head on a platter. But there’s something about it being a self portrait coupled with David’s pity for this Goliath that feels kinda...sad in a way.

Further context to this is Caravaggio, on the run or not, did not have a studio. He was a solo artist, which is a bit odd for the period at his level. He did not take students, so his techniques died with him. No one else worked on his paintings, they’re all by his hand. This in particular David was not commissioned either, it was done as a gift. So this was a deliberate thing entirely thought through by him, painting himself as Golith, painting David so full of pity and grief.

It’s sort of this idea of pity for the monster when you yourself are the monster as well as a sort of self hatred. Which reboot Dante is familiar with. Either Dante, preboot or reboot, kind of has this arc about trying to cope with being half demon while hating being half demon. It’s not a part of himself that he likes. The reboot goes further with this though because he doesn’t even have the solace of being half human, he’s also half angel. Reboot Dante goes from seeing himself as a human being to being told no, your not, your the things that you hate and it’s your job to protect people anyway. You are both the out of control monster and a threat, but also their protector.

In either reboot or preboot this isn’t like the most explicit character beat, though it does come up. In the reboot we see it peak through in moments like Dante’s interactions with Phineas. The ‘my father was a demon and I’m nothing like him’ mentality. The reboot makes this more pressing to in that like, the reboot makes it clear that demons are not a hive mind. While they seem to vary in intelligence and free will and all that, the game does not imply that Phineas and Sparda are alone in their grievances where as the preboot paints demons like Sparda and Trish as complete oddities. But part of either Dante’s rejection of Sparda is always rooted in ‘Sparda is a demon, and I’m nothing like the demons.’

This is interesting in the reboot because, unlike Vergil, reboot Dante is always visually contrasted with demon imagery. His world is very red. His color is red. The colors on him, even the blacks and grays, are warm tones. His devil trigger is designed in such a way that the abundance of reds in it are even more prominent then his initial design. The only time he’s not is the scene with the graffiti where he’s positioned on the side with the angels. But visually it’s still made clear. Dante is the demonic twin, Vergil more angelic. On top of that, characters in the reboot love to point out how Dante reminds them of Sparda. Phineas does it and Mundus really does it (the ‘just like your father, too big for your fucking boots’ line). Which further puts Dante at odds with his identity. As much as he thinks he is nothing like Sparda, he’s his fathers son. He’s the demon half of this twin relationship.

I think to like Caravaggio’s David’s just...they don’t want to do this. They’re just kids. They don’t want to kill their Goliaths. But they have to. Which is the spot we see reboot Dante in. He doesn’t want to save the world. He doesn’t want to fight for his life as often as he does. He doesn’t want this. But he has to do it. He might say he doesn’t give a shit, but what’s his choice? When has he ever had a choice? He’s the unwilling savior.

This runs through the game to. Dante doesn’t really want to be here. He makes that clear a lot. And his bravado is constantly a cover to keep him from being too vulnerable, too exposed. But it’s that last fight with Vergil where it all falls apart. He did this because Vergil asked him to, and Vergil didn’t even tell him the truth. And just like everything else, Dante doesn’t want to kill Vergil. He doesn’t want to fight him. But he’s provoked him anyway and got himself in this fight and he can’t let Vergil take the throne. David can’t just let Goliath go.

It’s the end of the game where we finally have Dante completely free of his walls and completely bare and entirely unaware of who he is and what he’s supposed to do next. It’s the same sort of vulnerability that I feel is abundant in that last David. Who is he now after all of this? Does he like this person? What’s he to do now that he knows what he’s capable of, knows what he’s done?

What makes him any different then this head in his hands?

#dmc devil may cry #dmc reboot #devil may cry reboot #dmc reboot dante #devil may cry reboot dante #reboot dante #fab talks meta

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hitter-loner-angel-trickster · 3 years

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More Sabrina part 4 thoughts/complaints.

1) who the fuck is running hell? Lucifer and caliban are in the void, Sabrina Morningstar is dead, and Lilith doesn’t have any power/is mortal now. Please don’t tell me it’s in the hands of that last prince of hell...he was an idiot.

2) did they ever stop hell/heaven/earth from colliding? They said the three “false worlds” were consumed by the void but made no mention of the other three worlds being safe. Is that still a problem? Whose Gonna fix it?

3) why did Robin not go in and use his Hobgoblin super speed to at least HELP rescue the people in the void? With his quickness maybe Sabrina wouldn’t have bled to death waiting for everyone else to come out.

4) why weren’t Theo and Robin given more/better storylines? I’m sad Theo didn’t get more screen time in general but what was the point of setting up a sub plot of other hobgoblins and fae going to the fairy realm if they didn’t plan on using them? I sincerely thought Robin and Theo would convince the fae kind to help them seal the void or help get other Sabrina out of the parallel realm since they clearly knew how to create and seal doorways to other realms. Instead they had angst for half an episode when Robin was gone and then immediately summoned back and asked to stay. Such a waste of a B plot that could have been useful to the main storyline.

5) why did Sabrina need those crutches when she was with Faustus? Was the void weakening her cause she had nothing to “feed” on? How did it “feed” when everything in it was still alive? None of it made sense?

6) someone please explain to me the use/purpose of Judas and Judith? Faustus was SO obsessed with finding them in the previous season and they did absolutely nothing in this season. Literally nothing.

7) why did the entire season have such a vast, biblical and existential storyline, for the whole thing to just boil down to....”who your dating is the most important thing”??? Sabrina had such a life and an arc that to whittle her down to her existence being solely about her romantic partner was such a disservice to her character.

8) what the entire fuck was the point of Sabrina and her witchy gang competing in the battle of the bands? That was supposed to be a moment for Fright Club, a band that has been established throughout the series. Not a moment for a bunch of people who never practiced together and hated eachother up until a few episodes ago. Harvey was trying to save his dad. That was HIS storyline. Why snatch it and make it about her AND have her win? If they wanted her to sing so bad they could have just added her to Harvey’s band. They could have done their spell and release the prom Queen ghost WHILE Harvey’s band was preforming. It was such a weird thing to add to that episode.

9) Not having Nick Bakay voice Salem was a sin I never will forgive the show for.

10) having the original Zelda and Hilda was a delight. I loved how they introduced them as characters, I loved the bizarro world, I loved the idea of the endless and the existentialist idea that stories never die. I LOVED that episode. I think it’s my favorite of the series. However, they could have utilized the endless better in the following episode. But that’s on my previous post.

11) at first I didn’t like the idea of Roz being a witch. I liked that she was a mortal with psychic powers, but then they made her a new Weird sister and I loved it. I like that she got to be even more of a badass. I like that she has a sisterhood with prudence and Agatha (and formerly Marie)

This is my second post about this season and I only finished it half an hour ago. I’m sure I’ll have more thoughts.

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fire-and-light · 2 years

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Tips for Getting Through “Dry Spells”

This is inspired by @windvexer ‘s post about personal seasons, and getting through “Dry Spells” or “Dormant Seasons.” Of course, these are just suggestions, and everyone ought to do as they see fit for themselves, but for the folks that get antsy about having a Dormant Season in the craft or literally anything, I have a couple tips:

Generally the way I look at my magical and mundane Dormant Seasons, is I take this time to revisit the fundamentals. I allow myself to be a beginner again. I do this with art (back to figure drawing and film studies! Time to animate walk cycles and bouncing balls!), and I do this with magic. I focus on meditation, energy work, protection magic, cleansing, and I study, study, study! I re-read old books, or if I’m feeling ambitious, I’ll read something completely new just to shake things up. I’m used to doing folk magic... maybe it’s time to look into ceremonial magic. Wonder what those Thelemites are up to! What about Saint Work? Hoodoo? Planetary magic? Maybe I’ll try looking into Agrippa. There is a huge variety and history of magic to research. Even if it’s a tradition you likely won’t integrate into your practice, it’s still fun to learn about what other people are doing.

That’s another idea-- research history! The history of alchemy, the history of witchcraft in [insert place here], research theology, philosophy, science! Botany, astronomy, geology, meteorology, anthropology! All those things can definitely educate and broaden your practice!

Here’s my absolute favorite thing to research, and one of the reasons I love being a folk practitioner and an artist so much: Stories!! Ugh! I love putting stuff aside and giving my full attention to fairy tales, mythology, superstitions, and even modern media-- because today’s media are modern fairy tales! I love listening to creepy pastas! I love watching movies about monster-human relations! I love ghost stories! I love Biblical stories and finding parallels with other mythologies! Stories are the lifeblood of every magical tradition, and they’re a wonderful way to feel ignited about your practice!

Maybe you find you can’t focus long enough to read or go through the fundamentals. Maybe you just need a break. Maybe you need to focus on the mundane right now. Sometimes when our heads are buzzing, we need a period of time to do monotonous, grounded work. Whether I’m working on a story, a comic, an essay, a spell or ritual and I’m struggling to progress, it’s a sign to step away from the desk or altar, and go for a walk or clean your area, or cook a meal. And here’s the trick: you’re not allowed to think about it either. You have to remove yourself physically and mentally, or you’re not really taking a break. This is something I still struggle with, but you have to have that distance. Then you’ll be refreshed and ready to tackle things once more.

You don’t have to dread dormant seasons. I LOVE dormant seasons, because it gives me permission to be messy. I’m going to give one more parallel to my life as an artist:

I found THE most helpful thing to get through art blocks was having a separate sketchbook I dubbed my ‘shitbook.’ My shitbook is a sketchbook where I get to be messy. My figures are allowed to be out of proportion, I get to make ugly faces, ugly characters, storyboards that don’t flow or make any sense-- and I draw it ONLY in ink, crayon, or colored pencil so that I don’t have the option to erase. No erasing allowed, I’m to live with my mess and work with it, and while it starts off frustrating, it becomes very freeing. Have that relationship with your magic. Allow your magic to be messy. Work on stupid spells. Have ugly sigils. Sing gibberish to your spirits, and give yourself permission to not hear them accurately. Be terrible at divination, make a hokey potion, this is your time to be experimental and not give yourself shit for being shitty-- because it’s SUPPOSED to be. Allowing yourself to be shitty is a wonderful thing that I hope everyone does every so often.

#witchblr #Getting through dry spells #personal #my spells #sort of

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zukkaoru · 3 years

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thoughts after rewatching the first two episodes of sk8:

- miya's phone case is the colors of the pan pride flag

- shadow's phone case has flowers on it

- is miya's favorite food fish bc cats like fish?

- why is adam shirtless while watching the races in the first episode. like,, what is up with that

- so when cherry shows up at S in the first episode, the reactions make it seem like he hasn't been there in a while. everyone's like "omg is that cherry?? the ai skater????" and they all seem rly shocked to see him. but then when the camera pans to joe, there's no surprise that he's there and we never see shock at him being there. how long pre-canon had joe been going to S alone? what if matchablossom secret exes but their relationship ended only a few months pre-canon????

- but also why does joe act like he doesn't know carla's name? like there's no way he and cherry haven't had that exact argument over "her name is carla!!" a hundred times before

- also also with that argument i think it makes joe's comment about "of course you named your skateboard after a girl since you can't get one yourself" infinitely funnier if he knows cherry is gay

- oka deserves more love

- cherry also shows up without his mask in the first episode, and i'm p sure the only other times we see him in his S costume without the mask are in the intro and post-his race against adam. my guess is he didn't wear it bc he knew he wouldn't be skating but i feel like there's potential for some deeper analysis with cherry & his mask

- we deserved to see more cherry on his motorcycle throughout the show

- i'm having Thoughts™ about the biblical imagery / parallels in the show but i will not ramble about them all here bc there's so much and it's still pretty incoherent at the moment

- very intrigued by the way cherry very gently helps langa up from the ground in the first episode, only for him to then immediately be like "langa must race and i do not care if he's been on a skateboard literally once before now :/ sucks 2 suck"

- i forgot how much i love miya!! they're easily my second favorite character but like. i forgot just how great they are

- and. as always. i adore cherry blossom so much like this genuinely cannot be healthy i love him

#grace rewatches sk8 #<- feel free to block that tag if you don't want to see my sk8 rewatch thoughts lol #anyway i'm having very many Thoughts #i love this show #sk8 #hello grace here #take me back in time (to love you)

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heccapeach · 3 years

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Since it’s Valentines Day, I guess it’s time for me to share the fictional crushes I’ve had on characters throughout my life:

My Fictional Crushes Throughout History:

Shadow The Hedgehog

Shadow was the first fictional crush that I had as a kid and the one that I can mention at the top of my head with some bravery and expectation of confusion and humiliation from others. I guess after learning of his existence in Sonic Riders (my first Sonic game) and onwards into the Sonic series (and a bit of Smash), I started to develop a crush on Shadow thanks to his design and personality after learning more and more about him. I believe that his portrayal in Sonic X especially had an effect. I mean, I wasn’t the only one to have a fictional crush on Shadow, considering how many fan girls he’s had over the years.

Mephiles The Dark

And then after Shadow, I eventually developed a fictional crush on Mephiles from Sonic ‘06. I believe I was 12 or 13 at the time that I did. I’d say this one is even weirder than the Shadow crush. But if it wasn’t for my interest in Mephiles and well, Solaris as a whole, I probably wouldn’t have discover my interests in the sources that beings like Solaris is based off of, like biblical mythology and other forms of mythology, space-time itself, and the sun and the moon. Therefore, they have been an important and influential character to me as unique as that may be to others. Delving more into Solaris in ‘06, I started to believe that he wasn’t the true villain of Sonic ‘06 as he was an entity whose power was being misused in the wrong hands of a very desperate and selfish human. That being the Duke of Soleanna, who wanted to save his wife from whatever presumed death that she had by harnessing Solaris’ power over time itself and even find a way to give humanity the power of time-travel in order to correct their past mistakes which mind you, is a bullshit and an absolutely dangerous, selfish, and idiotic idea. Perhaps one of the worst ideas I have ever heard in my life. Humanity absolutely does not deserve to be in possession of such abilities at all, PERIOD. Imagine all the recklessness, greed, bickering, fights, and just flat-out stupidity. Ugh, you’re just giving humanity the ability to not only make more mistakes, but potentially worsen their past mistakes. LIKE, WHAT THE HELL WAS HE THINKING?!?! I mean, when you learn that, it’s absolutely no fucking wonder why Solaris got all pissed and went batshit crazy throughout space-time. I mean, I would’ve too if some fucking idiot tampered with my power and form like that. And it didn’t help that Eggman was obliviously trying to repeat the same stupid action that the Duke did. I swear mad scientists tend to be the true evil and the creator of evil in existence. They’re one of the archetypes that do a great job at pissing me off. Well, they’re not called “mad” for nothing.

Solaris is just a misunderstood entity who just needed better guidance and treatment in existence. It’s why I even imagined the possibility of Solaris being saved and given a better chance towards redemption and understanding. After their backstory, I felt so sympathetic towards them as a character. Sure, Mephiles plan could’ve made more sense in the script by being less convoluted and more simple in the script alongside the time-travel plot itself, but we can’t forget that ‘06 was indeed rushed in development so it’s no surprise that writing for the game’s story was also rushed and didn’t have enough time for some scenes and decisions to be reconsidered.

But regardless, Solaris holds a special place in my heart and the inspiration they have given me has been a gift. So even if they’re outside of the existence of the Sonic universe, I shall never forget about them.

Crazy Hand

There was a time where I got really interested in Master Hand and Crazy Hand from Super Smash Bros. After discovering Crazy Hand’s existence in Melee, I suddenly started watching more videos featuring him and Master Hand, even if it was the same few videos. Like I was deeply analyzing the two hands in action. I was so fascinated, yet pretty intimidated by them. I believe that Crazy Hand had fascinated me the most, given the way of how he parallels Master Hand and his personality. Then all of a sudden, I started crushing on him...How utterly weird of me to be crushing on a giant floating disembodied hand of chaos and destruction....

Daxter

Daxter was my top favorite character of the Jak and Daxter series. Not to mention how much the series is a childhood icon to me. I also loved the design of ottsels/precursors. It inspired me in terms of anthro designs. I know, I’m pretty much a furry at this point with these crushes. I guess that I can now relate to Tess, who eventually became an ottsel/precursor just to officially be Daxter’s girlfriend.

Joker (P5)

Back when he was announced to be included as a fighter for Smash Ultimate. It was my first exposure to Joker and Persona 5 itself. And back when his Smash fighter self was still in development, I felt interested enough to research Joker then eventually look into Persona 5. I started to adore his design and silent protagonist self. His fluffy looking hair, glasses, phantom thief design, and personality, and that smile made me develop a crush on him. He’s pretty much the only fictional human character that I had a crush on out of all the crushes here and that’s saying something.

A Fan-made Genderbend Waifu Nightmare From Kirby

Okay....how the hell do I explain this..? So back when I had a peak interest (and fear) in one of the most underrated Kirby characters and final bosses, Nightmare, I looked up fan art of him and discovered this sorta genderbend waifu interpretation of him on the Internet. I was interested in the design, enough to make an original character of mine have their design inspired off of it and that’s mainly where my crush was targeted on. Knowing that this had to do with Nightmare from Kirby of all characters, this is perhaps the weirdest and most embarrassing crush of them all. This would just be the beginning of me getting invested into oneiric (dream) characters.

NiGHTS

When I was starting to really invest into the NiGHTS universe and NiGHTS themselves, I started to appreciate their design and personality to the point where I found it attractive and relatable at times. This crush hasn’t been a constant nor lasting one though, so I see it as a small crush instead.

Wizeman and My Own Fan-made Gender Bend Waifu Parallel of Him, “Wize-Chan”

Ah jeez, here we go again. So, um, like Nightmare, I had a notable interest in Wizeman as a character and was also greatly intimidated by them at the same time. I eventually started thinking that he was a bit cute in the first game. Seriously, why I do I eventually develop crushes on the same characters that I get scared of? Am I a psychological masochist or have Stockholm Syndrome or something? In order to ease my fear, I made the jokes on this platform on Wizeman and the other NiGHTS characters. Sometimes, fear can be a great motivator and that already scares me alone. One of those jokes involved redesigning Wizeman as a Waifu named “Wize-Chan”:

When humanizing the design, I wanted to maintain the surrealism of Wizeman’s design, so I made sure not to humanize it too much. That’s why the shadowy legs are phantom-like and the robe acts more like a cloak than a robe with a presumed shadowy phantom body underneath. Probably think of it how Darkrai from Pokémon has these slim legs that it can make to stand on something. Idk. Jokes aside, I felt that this was an embarrassing thing to make. But recently, I’ve looked back on the design and I started to develop a fondness over it. She was just too adorable to ignore. It motivated me to draw more of her and establish a personality. She still maintains Wizeman’s personality and god complex, but with a tsundere touch to it. She also uses the insult “degenerate” occasionally since I imagined Wizeman in Journey of Dreams using it. (Example: “Eh? You want me to step on you? Ugh, DEGENERATE.”) She can get accused of being a furry, but she gets offended and denies it. There’s never a place for violence in a relationship, but Wize-Chan differs. I suppose Wize-Chan here can be compared to Bowsette, since it’s taking a villain and turning them into a Waifu character. You could look at it that way if you wanted to. Wize-Chan also likes to bully Owl whenever she gets the chance.

Speaking of Owl, I recently designed a Waifu form of him—

Arceus

Just a little bit. It was a minor crush. Afterwards I changed my mind and started seeing them as a mother figure instead. I like to refer to them as “mom”, “mommy”, “Mama Llama”, "o-ka'a-san" (Japanese for mom), and “Mother”. Arceus just naturally feels like a mother figure to me, as weird as that sounds. I mean, it makes sense, considering that they’re Pokémon God and God is always interpreted as referring to his creations as his children. That’s been interpreted the same for Arceus. I mean, it’s okay for your mother or father to be your valentine, right? That, and why am I so invested in creator entities/deities so much?

So over the years, I’ve had fictional crushes on 1 anthropomorphic artificial hedgehog with alien DNA, an anthropomorphic otter and weasel hybrid that also belongs to a race of ancient beings that run the universe as its god, a sun god of time, a giant floating disembodied hand that’s the destructive god of the Smash universe, Pokémon God itself until I started seeing it as my Pokémon mother, a Waifu form of a personification of nightmares, a disobedient nightmaren then eventually just their creator as well as a Waifu parallel of him, and 1 human..huh.

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pocketsizedquasar · 4 years

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So.... I followed you in the wee beginnings of my giant moby dick obsession and I've been avidly consuming your comic. But TODAY I found your writings on the musical and... oh my gosh that part with Fedallah . just. you make all the good points there! And its like... I saw it at ART before my giant obsession took root, but so much of it confuses me! and moby dick is a book with some pretty explicit sections about race (if not a big coherent Take) 1/?

so to take it and then make it all about how some white man is ruining the voyage (ahem, the US) is so strange to me!? Like there ARE sections about whiteness, and there are parts where Ishmael totally turns protestant evangelizing ideas on their heads (queequeg as being tainted by christianity, also the part where queequeg says something along the lines of ... poor ishmael, so confused). Idk maybe i'm just a purist. 2/?

I have to say though... the song version of the reverend's sermon at the beginning absolutely takes my breath away (and i'm sad that I don't have any audio version...). Do you have a take on all the prophet imagery/stuff going on in the book? (elijah, ahab, jonah &c).ANyways, I've been rambling. tl;dr: your comic is So Good and I have opinions about the 2019 musical. 3/3

hhhh first off thank u for following & for ur kind words!! i’m so glad to be a part of Whale Obsessions & i’m glad you like my comic!!

& ohhh boy. the musical. the musical the musical. i actually have a more distilled, shorter post in my drafts about my problems w the musical bc my existing review is kind of long and unwieldy but YEAH, tl;dr a white man trying to take a story already very intrinsically about race and modify the racial aspects to make it “more relevant” to “modern america” is. dumb and shitty and not his place as a white man to do and i’m Not a Fan. you don’t need to try to make md relevant to modern day america! by virtue of the fact that it’s already about race and racialized dynamics in the 19th century US -- dynamics which still exist -- it’s already relevant to today! especially when he takes away a lot of the existing racial commentary in favor of adding his own lukewarm white takes on racism! like what abt the time ishmael learns he fucked up wrt queequeg on his own, without queequeg having to pull some bs “i’m just like you!!” moment like so many characters of color in white narratives are forced to? what about ishmael drawing comparisons between the pequod and colonialism/imperialism, and talking abt how the act of whaling at sea mirrors US colonialism on land? what abt the fact that all of the officers on the pequod are white and most of the sailors are poc (which is mentioned in a brief throwaway line in the musical but otherwise not meaningfully discussed bc the officers are played by WOC)? there’s like. so much to work with already that you can build off instead of just... eschewing that to insert your own opinions lmao. and it’s less work!! to just work with what already exists and build on it!!

and !! yeah the sermon song is absolutely fantastic. there are several really really good musical moments in the show (which makes the problems w it all the more frustrating imo). it’s a lovely lovely song sung beautifully and a really wonderful opener. psst if you want an audio boot of the show dm me i can link u to one that my friend took the night we went together

but yeah re: prophet stuff in the book-- i live for that shit. the sermon chapter is probably one of my favorites in the story, both for its beautiful language and for how much it foreshadows everything! something i think a lot of adaptations (not just the musical) get wrong about Moby Dick is the exclusion of the on land chapters. and, like, I understand why people do it -- they want to get to sea and the adventure as soon as possible -- but the problem is those first 20 or so chapters exist to frame the story in a way that we can’t really when we get to sea. there’s so much foreshadowing and tone-setting and groundwork that’s done in those early chapters that we miss out on if we just skip them (not to mention the adorable character interactions btwn Ish & Queequeg, Ish & Peter Coffin, & really just the only time we actually get to see Ishmael be a character).

putting the rest under a cut cause this is getting long lol

but yeah so much of what shows up in the latter half of the book is explicitly referenced in those opening chapters. aside from the obvious biblical connotations of the names (ishmael, elijah, ahab), connotations that the narrative itself is well aware of and comments on, there’s so many little things that just... really nicely hint at what comes in the end.

like, okay. ishmael getting saved by queequeg’s coffin at the very end? in what can easily be interpreted as ~divine~ or ~angelic~ intervention (esp if we consider the biblical origins of his name)? okay, cool, look at this line that ishmael yells when he first sees queequeg in peter coffin’s inn:

(ID: “Landlord, for God’s sake, Peter Coffin!” shouted I. “Landlord! Watch! Coffin! Angels! save me!”)

or how about the swinging lantern in Jonah’s cabin that shows up in the sermon?

(ID: “Screwed at its axis against the side, a swinging lamp slightly oscillates in Jonah’s room; and the ship, heeling over towards the wharf with the weight of the last bales received, the lamp, flame and all, though in slight motion, still maintains a permanent obliquity with reference to the room; though, in truth, infallibly straight itself, it but made obvious the false, lying levels among which it hung. The lamp alarms and frightens Jonah; as lying in his berth his tormented eyes roll round the place, and this thus far successful fugitive finds no refuge for his restless glance. But that contradiction in the lamp more and more appals him. The floor, the ceiling, and the side, are all awry. ‘Oh! so my conscience hangs in me!’ he groans, ‘straight upwards, so it burns; but the chambers of my soul are all in crookedness!’”)

that image, the rocking, swinging lantern, reappears again and again in Ahab’s cabin throughout the book! it’s there in the beginning when we see Ahab charting their course for the first time, it’s there when the ship sees the mysterious spooky Spirit Spout TM and Starbuck finds Ahab sleeping in the cabin, clinging to a rocking lantern, it’s there when Starbuck has his existential crisis over whether or not he’s going to kill Ahab (another Jonah parallel -- killing the captain would save everyone else).

or how about when queequeg saves that racist dumbass on the schooner to nantucket, and ishmael literally tells us queequeg’s going to die?

(ID: All hands voted Queequeg a noble trump; the captain begged his pardon. From that hour I clove to Queequeg like a barnacle; yea, till poor Queequeg took his last long dive.)

there’s just a ton of really lovely little nods and details and symbols in the early chapters that lay down the foundations for what comes later. those chapters, and elijah and ahab and jonah and the sermon and peter coffin, have a job to do: they’re there so we know how this ends before we’ve even started. before ishmael ever sets foot on the claw-footed pequod, we know, at least on some level, she’s destined to sink.

remember, ishmael is telling us this story in hindsight. he knows how it ends. he doesn’t deceive us, doesn’t try to hide or avoid it. he makes it very clear from the beginning that this is a story where everyone dies.

sorry that got so long! thank you for the asks i always love an excuse to ramble about Dick

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lastoutpost · 3 years

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sam stan ask game!!!! @stanfordsams thanks for tagging me!

Sibling status (younger, middle, older, only child…) - Only child!

How long have you been stanning for - I started watching in 2012 and stopped watching after I finally watched s8 on boxset, around 2013/2014 sometime? (I *begged* my dad to take me to Walmart so I could buy it the day it was released) and after binging the whole thing I just... thought it sucked really bad....and started to fall out of the fandom. 2020 slingshotted me back into old obsessions though. I can have a little sam winchester to cope

Favorite Sam era - sam is my baby in every single season BUT hence the URL, i love bitchy sanctimonious grieving psychic awakening sam from s1 SO much. baby faced coconut head bangs king <3

Favorite spn season, but if the only criteria was Sam’s hair - season 2 or 3 definitely. he has a rough patch while it’s growing out for a couple seasons and it finally looks good again in like, season 11, but peak sam is short haired sam. he looks like a lesbian and i love it for him <3

Favorite Sam-centric episode - does croatoan count??? that’s an absolute banger of an episode from start to finish....the codependency....the crying....i love everything about it. if that doesn’t count tho then born under a bad sign, jared is SO good at acting unhinged. honorable mention to playthings, the greatest episode of all time (jirt)

Any ships you may like to mention - samruby. why? genevieve padalecki sexiest woman alive and sam drinking demon blood was his RIGHT he DESERVED a hot girl summer. one of the fundamental reasons i get obsessed with this show is the extremely fucked up character dynamics and samruby really fits the bill

Favorite song you would/have put in a Sam playlist - numb by linkin park............this is so chaotically embarassing of me and i don’t even listen to linkin park anymore but that song is such a sam song, esp around s4/s5, that i have to believe it was written about him only

If you could steal one thing from Sam’s wardrobe, it would be - purple dog shirt!!!! i actually used to own one and outgrew it and when i finally get another stable job i am going to order another one <3 it’s my right as a lesbian and as a s1 sam stan

Complete the sentence: If Sam cishet, why... - if sam cishet, then why unclean in the biblical sense?

Favorite unhinged Sam moment - full on ugly crying-sobbing about having to kill werewolf gf in heart and refusing to let dean do it because she asked *him* to, and how this parallels the season arc of sam begging dean to kill him if he has to

You must have some intense headcanons you need to talk about, tell me one Sam hc that drives you insane - in the spn that lives in my head, sam is a lesbian so....that is my favorite headcanon i love to imagine lesbian sam struggling to put up with misogynistic dean and his femaleness/homosexuality heavily contributing to her feeling of being unclean and fundamentally wrong/sinful. in terms of headcanons that fit the actual show i love how multifaceted we know sam to be, even though we see so little of it on screen -- he’s smart and nerdy but into health and fitness and is kind and compassionate, likes children and animals, etc. when dean dies and sam settles down with his family, he gets & trains a therapy dog (that looks a lot like riot who he had to leave behind with amelia) and takes it to help sick kids in the hospital <3 ALSO after leaving the hunting life he becomes a nurse since he’s basically been a field medic since birth. oh and ALSO he loves to cross-stitch even though his ginormous hands make it hard <3 OK I AM DONE but i could definitely keep going. oh and btw he’s gay and his blurry wife was actually a man. dean jr is the biological son of a hunter that gets killed on a hunt. OK IM DONE FOR REAL

Tell me something about the hbo Sam that lives in your brain - i’m gonna be honest i’ve never seen hbo in my life so i don’t really want to say anything inaccurate but i wish in a more gritty or grimdark version of spn sam’s mental illnesses and his suicidality, disordered eating, etc would have more screentime.

Oh no, the writers forgot to give Jess a personality! Now it’s up to you. Tell me, what was Jess like - I feel like jess was the epitome of an all-american girl. I bet she was raised solidly upper-middle-class with two parents who loved her and had respectable jobs. she has a sister who lives in a different state who she is close with but in a normal way. and part of what sam adores about her is she’s just so...Normal...she’s like his embodiment of his ultimate fantasy and desire to live the American dream. i feel like that’s exactly why demon brady introduces her to sam, because he knows she is sam’s perfect fantasy of an apple pie life. And despite being so Normal she’s supportive, kind, insanely witty, and sees through sam’s defenses and deflections instantly. she knows there is something Wrong About His Life and doesn’t care. even if he can’t tell her the truth about his childhood he knows she would believe and love him if he could tell her, and he loves that about her. she pushes him outside his comfort zone a little bit to make him enjoy college a little bit more and always beats him at any game they try and play. i miss jess and i hope she and sam get to reunite in heaven!!!!

)Biggest injustice Supernatural committed against Sam (be as brief or as ranty as you desire) - i’ve only watched up through the first part of s11 so i don’t know what else bullshit will happen in the course of the show, but as of right now I would say gadreel possession. sam was ready to give up his life to shut the gates of hell and dean stopped him, had gadreel take his form to trick sam into agreeing to be possessed, and then lied/gaslit/emotionally abused sam about it for weeks (months?) and gets extremely upset when sam has the gall to be mad about it. after how much he has suffered being a vessel for lucifer, for having no autonomy over his life at all, this was just so cruel of dean and i’m so mad that the show never lets him get really fucking mad about it!

And finally, just say something about him that makes you smile ♥ - he has so much faith in everything and everyone despite how hard his life has been and how much he has been punished for his faith repeatedly throughout his life. he is a good man who will give himself up for others or the greater good in an instant. and he looks like a very huggable puppy despite being extremely muscular <3 sam is my ultimate comfort character.

i tag, anyone who follows me and wants to do this but hasn’t yet! tag me in your responses so I can read them if you do it <3

#sam winchester #sam stan ask game #long post #about me #c speaks

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random2908 · 4 years

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Ok, it's time for my crack Locked Tomb interpretation that I've promised... the two people I've been reading these books with. I will say first, the theory isn't itself a crack theory--in its general form I actually stand by it as a serious prediction. But some of the textual evidence I'm going to use is way out there, so don’t take this too seriously--I certainly don’t. Spoilers for Gideon the Ninth and Harrow the Ninth behind the cut. Sorry it’s long.

Ok, first, the theory, simply put: I think Alecto/AL is a Resurrection Beast. Personally, I found this "insight" fairly uncontroversial the moment the thought occurred to me, but one of my two friends who've been reading these books with me disagrees on the basic evidence; the other friend has embraced it wholeheartedly, though. So, ymmv, I guess.

The basic evidence starts with: well, what the hell else could she be? She's not human. The older Lyctors call her a monster. There is a missing Resurrection Beast: nine were born, five were killed, three are loose, and the narrative actually calls attention to this numeric discrepancy while glossing others (e.g. the number of Lyctors, which does eventually get explained). John presumably can't just kill Resurrection Beasts himself, or he would have (maybe?? who the hell even knows what his abilities or grand plan are at this point). There aren't really other monsters that have been presented other than revenants (of which Resurrection Beasts are the biggest) and heralds (which are spiritually part of Resurrection Beasts), and the third book of a trilogy isn't really the time to introduce them. (This, by the way, is also my argument that it wasn't aliens who destroyed the solar system in the first place--even though everyone else seems to have come to that interpretation (where by “everyone” I mean my two friends who have read this book). Being Doylist, it's kind of a cheap, lazy argument on my part, but whatever, I still stand by that as a prediction: no aliens.) And Alecto must be something much more powerful than a human because John is so much more powerful than a Lyctor. Finally, the stoma opens for John, and it only opens for Resurrection Beasts--it opens for him because he holds part of Alecto's soul and she is a Resurrection Beast.

The potential counter-evidence is the older Lyctors are confident they know her origins (but that doesn't necessarily make her not a Resurrection Beast), and the [other] Resurrection Beasts are drawn to her as much as to John according to Mercy (although in that case why haven't they attacked the Tomb? and also, again, that doesn't preclude her being a Resurrection Beast--we don't know their relationships with each other, and anyway, their attraction to her might have something to do with the Lyctorification process).

Ok, all that's fair enough. Let's delve into the crack interpretations now. I'm going to start with an irrelevant introduction, though, to explain my frame of mind when I came up with this. In the Appendices of Gideon the Ninth, Muir mentions that Isaac is named as foreshadowing for Gideon's sacrificial death, as in the Christian interpretation of the Bible, the Biblical Isaac foreshadows Jesus. My copy of the e-book did not have the Appendices, but my best friend's did, and she shared screens with me. It's slightly embarrassing that my best friend and I, reading this together, did not even guess from this, not even as a joke, that Gideon's father might be God. I mean, it's not... generally embarrassing--no one reading this should be embarrassed for themselves--it's only embarrassing if you know the two of us, know how good my best friend is at this sort of thing (she guessed the entire murder mystery in GtN a little more than halfway through, including that Dulcinea was dead and had been replaced by a Lyctor in disguise who had philosophical problems with God and was rebelling), and know what sorts of in-jokes and ridiculous speculation we tend to bandy around with each other--know just how often we, respectively and together, joke that some character or other is Jesus. And here it was right on the page, we read it out loud to each other and discussed it, and we didn't even see it. We were both completely taken in by the Gideon Episode One red[-haired] herring (as was, to be fair, Gideon himself). This speculation that I'm about to present came right on the heels of the two of us debriefing over this, because I was primed to read way the hell in too much into Biblical references.

The key line is something my best friend caught, not me. She wasn't even done with the book yet, but the line was bothering her (I'd completely glossed and then forgotten it--never let it be said that my bad grades in English Lit were undeserved). Page 327 (and I'm so glad to have an ebook so I can do word searches), Teacher is talking to Harrow in the dream bubble...........

To their silence, [Teacher] added: “I believe we are now being punished for what they did. Even the devil bent for God to put a leash around her neck … and the disciples were scared! I cannot blame them! I was terrified! But when the work was done—when I was finished, and so were they, and the new Lyctors found out the price—they bade him kill the saltwater creature before she could do them harm … Oh, but it is a tragedy, to be put in a box and laid to wait for the rest of time.

"Saltwater creature" stuck with my best friend. She had no idea what it meant, other than that nearly every mention of saltwater (or salt water, two words, the text is inconsistent) in Harrow the Ninth is alluding to Alecto in some capacity (we confirmed this by searching--again, I love ebooks for this kind of thing). But I was like... wait, I might know! This is my favorite Bible lore!

Muir is working from the King James Bible (based on the quotation at the end of Gideon the Ninth) which is impenetrable and also is a translation of the Latin Vulgate, which is mostly a translation of the Septuagint, which doesn’t even have an extant Hebrew version, so ugh all around. But for this purpose it’s close enough, so I guess that's what I'll use for my English version. Here is how the KJV starts:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

Ok, that word there, "the deep." What it says in the Masoretic text (the Hebrew Bible used by both Jews and Protestants) is "tehom," which is not quite a hapax legomenon, but neither is it a word that shows up very often, and importantly it only shows up in very few contexts that reference each other. It is certainly not the usual Hebrew word for sea, and importantly, in the Hebrew there is no "the"; it actually says "darkness was on the face of Tehom" like it's a proper name [capitalization mine for illustration, since Hebrew doesn’t capitalize]. Notice also how on the second day basically the only thing God accomplishes is cutting this thing, this "Deep" made of water, in half, sending one half up into the sky. This is a quick retelling of the defeat of Tiamat (linguistically cognate with Tehom) in the Enuma Elish. Tiamat, the Goddess of the Saltwater Deeps, Mother of Monsters and Dragons, is justifiably angry with the other gods and sets out to kill them; Marduk, the aspiring new head of the Pantheon, cuts her in half. Half of her he leaves on Earth to create the oceans (or just the Earth itself? been a while since I read it), and half of her he throws up into the air and it becomes the sky.

There is a lot of old Jewish writing, some of it predating Christianity, that just starts to touch on this, without daring to delve too deep (...as it were) and pull on the pan-Middle Eastern polytheistic roots of Judaism. (They had enough problems with people still worshiping Asherah, who in southern Canaanite tradition was the sea-and-mother goddess who was the wife of Yahweh the storm god, and who gets mentioned in the Bible a whole lot, without also bringing Tiamat into it.) The Gnostics really latched on, though. They said that this "deep" obviously in the text there predates God's creation, and used that as the foundation of quite a lot of their theological argument: that God (who they call the Demiurge) didn't create the universe ex nihilo (out of nothing) but rather that there was a being even more powerful that came before. And they named this more powerful, older being Bythos (among other things), which means "depth" in Greek. They changed the gender, but they brought Tehom the saltwater goddess back as the most primordial and powerful of all beings.

Bringing this back to Harrow the Ninth... Insofar as it's Biblical allegory (which isn't much--less than Narnia and even Narnia doesn't strictly adhere to Biblical narrative), I think we should take the Resurrection committed by John to be the Biblical Creation not the Biblical Resurrection. First of all, John becomes God by performing the Resurrection, which is a much better parallel to Genesis than to Isaiah or Revelations or whatever. Second of all, after the Biblical Resurrection, everyone who gets to be resurrected is supposed to live in eternal peace in Eden. In contrast, in Genesis, after the creation, people start out in Eden but are quickly expelled and then bad things happen. This matches the story much better, where the expulsion from Eden is due to Lyctorhood--the Resurrection Beasts come for the Lyctors and they have to leave Eden; in this respect, I guess John is really the snake as much as he's God, lol. (Worth noting that in some parts of Christian tradition--although I can't remember about Catholicism specifically--the snake is supposed to be Satan. This also ties back to Gnosticism where the Demiurge is malevolent; John, insofar as he did not actually create the universe on his own, is a much better match for a demiurge than a true god.)

So, anyway, taking John's act of Resurrecting all those people as the initial Creation rather than the Resurrection (the fact that Augustine doesn't remember his pre-Resurrection self, is effectively a new person, also points to this being effectively an initial Creation), the Resurrection Beasts actually come before Creation. They come from the dying of the planets. They predate John becoming God. Furthermore, Alecto is a “saltwater creature,” and she keeps her body after she's Lyctorified, meaning she's split in some way between John and her old body; she is Tehom. Back to the Gnostic idea, Tehom is a more-powerful being who predates God, and the only creatures predating God in Harrow are the Resurrection Beasts who must be comparable to him in power to create such fear: Alecto, then, must be a Resurection Beast.

The problem with this theory is it's a little Jewish and it's very Gnostic but it isn't Catholic. In the Gideon and Harrow, Muir draws references in her language from practically everywhere. But as far as I can tell she only draws allusions and allegory from two mythologies: Greco-Roman and Roman Catholic. And although Jews and Gnostics are drawing on a lot of the same source text, the understanding is different, and the expansive side stories are different. Although, then again, who am I to say that Muir isn't also drawing on Gnosticism and this isn't our big clue; I've half convinced myself as I wrote this, with the whole John-as-Demiurge thing. It's a fun theory, anyway, and so I thought I'd share it.

(I'm aware that I've completely ignored any connection to Greek mythology, despite her name being Alecto.)

#locked tomb trilogy #locked tomb spoilers #harrow the ninth #harrow the ninth spoilers #harrow spoilers #hopefully that covers the important tags people might be blocking #I learned while writing this that I don't know how to spell 'resurrection'#I tend to put too many letters in #it seems like whenever I make theories about books it's always some weird religious thing #this write-up is SO much more Gnostic than what told my best friend over the phone a few weeks ago #(now that I've done more reading on it)#I knew there was bound to be at least one homestuck reference in these books but I did NOT expect it to be dream bubbles

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readtheworld2021-blog · 3 years

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United States

One of my goals in the pursuit of this reading project is to create a list of books I deeply appreciate from countries all over the world. Selecting books that were meaningful to me from US authors was an easy task and, if anything, it was difficult to limit myself to only a select few. The works I selected are books that are not only important to me personally but are also works that I think have cultural significance.

The Color Purple Alice Walker

Alice Walker's The Color Purple was so important to me as a young girl. This story was formative for me and I continue to reread it about once a year. This book taught me that I should always strive to better myself, to connect with the people I love, and to persist in the face of hardship. As a girl, no one taught me to pay any mind to ethnicity or race so it didn't occur to me that this tale of African-American women in the 1930s should be a strange story for a young white girl in the early 90s to so deeply cherish, an oddity that was later pointed out to me repeatedly. On a less personal note, this representation of African-American life in the Southern United States is a story about America's past and therefore an important novel about American culture.

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East of Eden John Steinbeck

East of Eden was another important novel for me as a young reader. I cared little for the biblical parallels, it was the struggle of the characters that fascinated me, however the persistence of Christian thematic elements is not something one should ignore when talking about US culture. The elevation of the voice of a white male is also a popular trend in US culture and the tone of Steinbeck's writing always felt emblematic of white, male America to me, but I took strength from his novels when I was a girl. His characters fought to be respectable men who could shoulder their burdens without complaint. I wanted to emulate this behavior.

Dawn Octavia E. Butler

Dawn is part of a series that is one of my favorites by Butler, though the Patternmaster series comes in a very close second. Butler's novels always feature a strong female protagonist. This lead character is typically involved in some process of remodeling existing human hierarchies in a way that discourages violence, suffering, and intolerance. The new communities Butler creates in her novels are most often matriarchal with the value of social ties and the health of the community as a whole (without regard for lineage, ethnicity, or even species) being of the highest esteem. My favorite feature of these narratives is 1)that they never suggest such changes will be simple or comforting and 2)the center figure in this new community always seems to be a survivor who is unable to recognize her own strength or doesn't want the burden of leadership and is therefore reluctant to take the lead. From a cultural perspective, I think that Butler's stories are representative of an increasing minority of progressive US citizens who wish to dispense with intolerance and/or with aggressive forms of patriarchal leadership. I think her lead characters are also representative of US citizens who feel underqualified to take power and step up to leadership roles despite the benefits the entire nation would experience if more individuals could recognize and seize the power of their voice within the democratic political structure of the US which continues to be dominated by conservative, wealthy, power-thirsty, white, male voices.

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The Complete Maus Art Spiegelman

Maus is the story of the author's parents' experiences during the Holocaust. The story also delves into Spiegelman's difficult relationship with his parents. The Holocaust makes up an important part of world history, and Jewish culture is a piece of the melting pot of US culture. On a more personal level, the survival of hardship and the lasting impact of it are always appealing literary themes to me. This graphic novel therefore has a special place in my heart.

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In addition, I later read a study about the affect of trauma (like the trauma experienced by Spiegelman's parents) on DNA:

"...researchers taught male mice to fear the smell of cherry blossoms by associating the scent with mild foot shocks. Two weeks later, they bred with females. The resulting pups were raised to adulthood having never been exposed to the smell. Yet when the critters caught a whiff of it for the first time, they suddenly became anxious and fearful. They were even born with more cherry-blossom-detecting neurons in their noses and more brain space devoted to cherry-blossom-smelling.” (Kim)

How does this speak to the populations (not just in the US) descended from traumatic histories: slaves, World War veterans, attempted genocide survivors, Cold War survivors, Vietnam veterans, etc? What sort of unresolved or ignored traumas and anxieties are being passed on from one generation to the next, not just by culture but through possible epigenetic changes?

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References

Kim, M. "Study finds that fear can travel quickly through generations of mice DNA." Washington Post. 7 Dec. 2013. https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/study-finds-that-fear-can-travel-quickly-through-generations-of-mice-dna/2013/12/07/94dc97f2-5e8e-11e3-bc56-c6ca94801fac_story.html. Accessed 5 March 2021.

#world literature #Alice Walker #John Steinbeck #Art Spiegelman #The Color Purple #East of Eden #Dawn #Xenogenisis #Patternmaster #Wild Seed #Maus #United States

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