#mythological allusions and discussions

[blackcur-rants]

TO FIND YOUR WAY ON THE PATH UNWINDING

“¿Quien es tu?” Sebastian Noceda asked the mysterious figure who approached him out of the mist and fog.

The stranger stayed taciturn, his pale face motionless as he looked at Sebastian. He was a tall man dressed in garb that could been from any time between Shakespeare and Ford. 

He spoke with the same calm and measured diction of the old Reverend back in Gravesfield.

“Do you know Doctor Richard Wittebane?” Sebastian asked at last, voice trembling with curiosity.

The stranger smiled. 

“No, my friend” the stranger said after much trepidation, “He could be a cousin of mine, born long after my time in Mortal Realms. Our surname is not a common one, to be quite honest. It is a very specific name for a highly particular occupation”. 

“Was that…weaving or wood carving, by any chance?” Sebastian asked again, “The Reverend’s son Joseph took up wood-carving not long before the fire that took me away from my wife and child”. 

“Killers” the stranger replied, his voice trembling with grief and self-directed rage, “My father, Reverend Samuel Wittebane, and my uncle, William Wittebane, and my grandfather, Edgar Wittebane…they were all Witchfinders in the Old World and the New. My brother Philip and my cousin Roger also wanted to join in on our family crusade…but they were too young to wield more than sticks and fake torches. And Uncle Edward was too much of a drunken lout to be of much use at anything, to be quite honest”.

“That’s very interesting, mi amigo” Sebastian said, “My family came from Spain. We were Jewish, and the Inquisition drove us from our homes when the Catholic Monarchs came to power over Granada. One of my ancestors was Jaime Noceda, a name cleverly disguised…”

“How so?” the stranger asked.

“Well in Hebrew” Sebastian responded as he summoned a can of Coca Cola into his hand, “Hayim means life and sounds like the Spanish name Jaime, while Noceda sounds like “No ceda”, or “Does not yield” in Spanish. So it sounded like it just meant “James of the Walnut Grove”, but it actually meant “Life does not yield”. It was a subtle reminder to the Monarchy of Spain and to the Inquisition and to the Church as well that we would never surrender our faith or our true souls to the false image of the Cross”.

“Once I thought I would be like that in what I thought was the Realm of the Devil. My father named me after one of the spies whom Moses sent into the Land of Canaan to scout the cities of the Gentiles” the stranger said whilst refreshing himself with the gift that Sebastian had given to him a few minutes ago, “and for a while, I thought it was my destiny to bring the Witches down from within”. 

“So your name is Joshua, then?” Sebastian asked the stranger, “My father was a big fan of  the author Sebastian Keith and all of his corny old mystery stories. So when he met Mama in college, they decided on that name because of how much they loved those silly books. It’s funny, isn’t it Josh, where parents get the names of their children?”.

“My name is actually Caleb” the stranger sighed out at last with a slight chuckle, “Think it means “Dog” in Hebrew”.

“Good solid name” Sebastian responded, “It evokes the sense of a loyal person who sticks true to their principles no matter what the squalls of common idiots say and regards those they love with the utmost affection and steadfast loyalty”. 

Caleb chuckled lightly to himself.

“I think my father gave me that name to set my life’s path as that of a hunter who would not be swayed off the trail and would chase down and kill Witches like a dog kills foxes and rats and rabbits to bring to its master. And Philip was named so that he would come to love the steadfastness and dogged determination of the old workhorse that ploughed our fields back home. Our father…Oh how he loved symbolic names like that”.

(No one tell him that horses were the sacred animal of the pagan deity Poseidon, he who might very well have been Lord of the Underworld in Ye Olde Mycenaean Times).

“I’m not immune to symbolic names myself, to be quite honest. My father in law, old Arturo Marchena, was named by his father Samuel Marchena after old King Arthur of Logres, as a reminder of the heroic struggle he and his friends were fighting against Trujillo. And I think Cami’s own mother named her in honour of an old Arabic word for “Beauty” because she and her husband both regarded Cami as the most beautiful thing in their entire lives. They…were both sentimental like that”.

“What about your siblings?” Caleb asked.

“Neither of us had any siblings, to be quite honest” Sebastian responded, “We were both only children and so was our precious Luz…”

“I know of her quite well, Sebastian” Caleb said.

“Tell me, is she…okay?” Sebastian asked, “I have not seen her in a long time”.

“She has definitely won my long-dead heart” Caleb said back, “If you wish to know, she also won the heart and loyalty and saved both the life and the soul of one of my descendants, good old Edalyn, the Owl Lady of Bonesborough, Boiling Isles. I don’t know if my descendants would ever have reconciled without Luz’s help”.

“Beg your pardon?” Sebastian asked, remembering his little Luz as a fussy little thing who needed to be stopped from eating puzzle pieces, had to be read at least two fairy tales per night before she would go to sleep, and had just brought explosives and wild animals just to act out her Azura book report the last time he’d seen her. 

“See, when I fell in love with Tabitha Clawthorne and carved my Familiar Flapjack to celebrate becoming a Witch, Philip declared the both of us to be abominations before God, and he tried to cut open Tabitha from head to groin in order to kill both her and our children in the womb. I couldn’t let that happen, and so I fought against my own brother and he struck me down in cold blood. The last thing I heard before I died was Philip declaring loudly that Babylon would fall before Tabby successfully fought him off”.

“Yet sadly, Philip...could not be stopped. He schemed to acquire the knowledge to exterminate the Boiling Isles like the Lord wiping a dish. And so he learned of that strangest and most ridiculous of all the Servants of the True Dark Lord…Gallitzur the Collector of Souls. And it was this Fallen Cherub who taught my brother a spell to drain the Life Force of an entire nation. To help him accomplish all this horror, Philip took my bones and mixed them with stolen pieces of magic to make Grimwalkers, enslaved clones that he alone could control. And with these mindslaves whom he nevertheless always killed, destroyed, and obliterated in the end, Philip rechristened himself Belos the Wise and broke the Children of the Isles, destroying their cities and using our father’s old rhetoric about Satan, Hellfire, Brimstone, and Damnation and the Papist Tricks nearly used against the London Parliament to get them to sell their souls to him and his…Golden Guard. He then sealed their magic into Nine Schools, with one of them just being for the purple goop substance the Witches of the Isles use to create what your folklore calls “Golems”. Then he further set everyone against one another by making his own Emperor’s Coven the only one that could use All Nine Schools. So cunning and insidious was this manipulation that Eda’s own older sister Lilith cursed her own younger sibling with being fused to a primordial Owl Beast unto the End of Time. And over time, the Owl Beast consumed more and more of Eda’s essence, till she would have become the creature permanently and in all likelihood would have been captured and petrified by Philip’s hideous government…until Luz caused Lilith to see the truth of her actions and though she could not undo the Owl Beast Curse forever…she did choose to share the curse with her sister so that it could become less bad”. 

Sebastian was left a little shook by Caleb’s words, and he breathed softly in and out and out and in as he tried to control his emotions, which ranged in magnitude and intensity from wanting to punch Lilith Clawthorne in the face as soon as he met her to thanking the Lord that he himself had never been given any siblings. 

“Philip was too distracted by his thoughts of destruction to pay much attention to Luz’s deeds in Bonesborough, but though she didn’t attack him directly after she saved Eda from execution, Luz changed the hearts of the people from within. When she met the school mean girl at the Hexside School of Magic and Demonics, Amity Blight, they did not get along. In fact, Amity almost had her killed. It was only later on that Luz discovered the sadness inside Amity’s heart. Did I mention that in addition to giving Amity the love and therapy she needed to overcome her lifetime of trauma and also helped her reconcile with her best friend Willow Park and did I mention they defeated an all-powerful Shadow Fear Monster with nothing but a dance and some plant magic!?”

“This is a lot to take in, to be quite honest” Sebastian said, still trying to wrap his head around finding out the objective existence of Witches and Demons and Magic, “I need to rest. Still can’t believe my daughter is accomplishing all of these things”. 

“She is a beautiful thing” Caleb said to Sebastian, “A child of wonder. Strange to consider her past”.

“What do you mean?” Sebastian asked.

“A child born into a Jewish family and raised by a single mother after the loss of her father. A young person who never fit in her community of origin and decided to go on a journey that brought her to the point of descending into the Underworld and which I do believe has repeatedly involved her sacrificing herself and/or nearly dying so that others may live. And then there is the way that love for her changed the hearts of at least three or four (depending on how you count the Son of the Titan) souls who could be considered ‘Fallen’ in one way or another…and if I remember my Latin correctly and the story that you told about the name of your ancestor Jaime, I do believe her name can be translated as “Light does not yield” or “Light does not surrender” or “Light does not give in”. And then you get my brother Philip, who just threw together all that he hated whether it be Pagan or Papist or Witchy that he essentially slapped on himself the Greek form of the name of the Great God of Old Babylon (or maybe it was the French word for ‘Beautiful’. I honestly don’t care to remember) as what he thought was a way of pandering to the Witches of the Boiling Isles. Yet all he did was set himself up as a false god in a gilded sepulchre, a hideous mix of Belshazzar and Caiaphas unable to see the symbolism of his own actions”. 

“Would you stop…” Sebastian called out in exasperation, “forcing your own Puritan cultural lens onto my family and culture!? You must know that is not how we generally think about the Messiah”.

“My deepest apologies, Señor Noceda” Caleb responded as he sat down upon a stump with a sad, long sigh, “Tabitha actually talked to me about the insensitivity of doing that when I tried to do the same comparison between the Lord of my people and the Titan of her people. Stars know it isn’t always a wise idea”.

“You are forgiven” Sebastian said at last, “Besides, I read a good deal of comparative mythology in my youth as a big Star Wars geek, and let’s just say the idea of a Child of Light who drives out the Darkness of Ignorance and heals people of their sins and sufferings is not a rare thing in either the Demon Realm or in our Human Realm”. 

Caleb chuckled to himself and commented on the Roman deity Sol Invictus. 

“Pretty sure that was just a fancy term for the Sun overcoming the Winter Solstice” Sebastian quipped, eliciting another chuckle from Caleb, “You know, another fun fact. Camila’s dad Arturo studied Ye Olde Kabbalah in his youth, and in that belief system, Ur, the Hebrew word for “Light”, is used to describe the emanations of Ha-Shem’s divine majesty, wisdom, and power. Some of those guys even call the Divine essence “Ur Ein Sof”, or “Light without end”. Guess you could interpret that as “Light that does not yield” if you wish to do so. Never thought my daughter could be seen as an emanation of the Divine Light from before the beginning of time. It’s a weird sensation for a parent to think about, to be quite honest”.

“Whether there’s a connection between Ur Ein Sof and Sol Invictus and La Luz que no ceda, I do not know for sure” Caleb said at last, “All things are coincidences in the end, a chain of extremely convenient things happening until the end of time brings all things to their conclusion. Yet I also believe that things happen for a reason…that somewhere out there, beyond the bright starlight, there is a Singular All-Parent who watches over all of us and guides us towards that which leads us to become our truest selves. Forgive me if I seem skittish, dear friend Sebastian. I don’t always know what to say that, no matter how slight, won’t be misunderstood”. 

“It’s fine, Caleb” Sebastian responded, “I like to think Ha-Shem guides us to our right paths just like you do”. 

Caleb laughed and then he and Sebastian hugged each other as they sat together on that stump of wood.

“Ultimately though” Sebastian continued, “We are but the sum of our choices. At any point in time, your brother Philip could have realised he was about to become as terrible as Cain and stopped himself from killing you. His heart could have chosen to throw the knife and stop the hating, but he did not do so. Yet you chose to be better, just like Luz chose to embrace love rather than hate with Amity. What would be beautiful about love and goodness if humans and Witches alike did not also have the opportunity to be selfish and hateful and cruel?”

“And that contrast between someone who chose to do good in pretty much the same circumstances as someone who chose to do absolute pitch-black evil is why I adore Luz so much. Where Philip is death, she is life. Where he is night, she is day. She is the glory to his sorrow. Where he brings grief, she creates joy. Where he is dust, she is gold. Where he is fire, she is air. Where he is a creature of rage, she calms and soothes those around her. And for all of the loss that Philip creates, Luz allows those who follow her to feel true glory awaken”. 

“That’s genuinely beautiful, Cal” Sebastian said as he wiped a tear from his right eye, “She is an amazing girl and I am so glad someone else loves her the way that I and Cami both do”.

“If I ever get to meet your wife” Caleb said, “either here in the Realm of the Dearly Deceased or in the Mortal Realms, I would love to have her meet Tabitha. We would both compliment her on raising such an amazing and wonderful girl”. 

Sebastian Noceda reached out to hug Caleb Wittebane once again and Caleb was extremely happy to reciprocate.

“So what happens to my girl next?” Sebastian asked, “Tell me, Caleb! Tell me!”

“That’s hard to say” Caleb sighed, “That aforementioned pest Gallitzur will probably send his mightiest magic against her and her friends and try to destroy them all, for they have been cast adrift from the Boiling Isles like Noah in his Ark. We can only hope that the Cosmic Principle will grant them salvation before all that’s left of the Boiling Isles is a skeleton crew. They will have to do their best, and even if it is not good enough, it will have to do”. 

@elphabaforpresidentofgallifrey @daphneblakess @riverajocabed1 @theofficialkai517 @koshercosplay

#The Owl House #The Owl House fan fiction #fanfiction #death cw #religious talk cw #afterlife cw #afterlife conversation #Caleb Wittebane #Sebastian Noceda #Luz Noceda’s father #Mr Noceda #long post cw #existentialist #mythological allusions and discussions #Mentions of murder #attempted murder cw

[anthurak]

So this is almost certainly going to be an unpopular opinion for some, but for a long time now I’ve been feeling that the RWBY fandom puts just a bit TOO much stock in the various fairytale/mythology/literary allusions of the characters when it comes to theory-crafting. It feels like people find out that a certain character A is an allusion to another character B from an already completed story and go ‘Well that must mean that Character A is going to turn out just like Character B!’

Which of course completely ignores that these are allusions and references. Ruby Rose might have strong parallels and similarities to Little Red Riding Hood, but that does not mean she IS literally Little Red Riding Hood. Just as Weiss Schnee is NOT literally Snow White, Penny Polendina is NOT literally Pinocchio and Oscar Pine is NOT literally the Little Prince. Ultimately, whatever allusion a character might have comes SECOND to who they are as an actual character, NOT the other way around.

Whatever allusions a character has might inform what could happen to them, but that should still be treated as secondary to what we actually see them do in the show.

For example, I see a LOT of ships in the RWBY fandom that people seem to largely use interpretations of the characters’ allusions as ‘evidence’, rather than what the characters actually DO in the actual SHOW. Like has anyone noticed that discussions of ships like Bumbleby, Renora, Nuts and Dolts or White Rose have historically not involved much interpretation (relatively speaking anyway) of the potential ‘complimentary allusions’ of these characters? Because there is no NEED to, because all the evidence for these ships is right fucking there on the screen. Meanwhile we’ve got ships (and I am NOT naming names) that people will swear up and down are TOTALLY going to be canon for really-realsies where most or even all of the ‘evidence’ consists of people effectively playing some kind of matching game with their allusions. Or saying nothing more than ‘Character A kinda-sorta resembles the love-interest of Character B’s allusion’.

And ALL of this doesn’t even take into account the biggest factor which I keep getting the impression that WAY too many RWBY fans still having gotten the memo on:

The fact that RWBY literally NEVER plays its allusions STRAIGHT.

All the way from minute one when we saw an allusion to Little Red Riding Hood cutting down a horde of Big Bad Wolves, RWBY has ALWAYS been subverting, inverting, flipping, twisting and otherwise playing it’s allusions, references and archetypes literally ANY way but actually STRAIGHT.

Little Red Riding Hood hunts the Big Bad Wolf. Snow White is equal parts Princess AND Knight in Shining Armor. Cinderella is a tragic villain origin story. Pinocchio was always a real girl. The Great and Powerful Wizard Oz is far more powerful than anyone thought, but is ALSO far more of a fraud than anyone thought.

So when people use these characters’ allusions as some kind of rigid road-map to theorize what might happen to them, it’s not just that this detracts from their identity as their own characters; the story itself isn’t even using that map!

I mean speaking personally, that’s what has always made RWBY theory-crafting FUN. Trying to guess how the writers might twist and flip the allusions they’re using. But that also means that the allusions of the various characters simply DON’T actually provide ANY kind of accurate ‘road-map’ for where they might be going. Instead, the best we can do is use what the actual show has actually shown us to get any kind of idea where the characters are headed.

Ultimately, I feel like too often I see that when people are making theories about RWBY characters, they are treating them more like the characters they are based on, instead of the characters they actually ARE.

#rwby #rwby theorizing #rwby theory-crafting #rwby allusions #rwby analysis #rwby fandom #fandom criticism #the only way rwby won't play its allusions is STRAIGHT #i'm amazed there are so many people who seem to have NOT gotten that memo yet

[umbralstars]

Kemetic Influences on Fire Emblem Three Houses (Part 1)

I know I have made a more unstructured post regarding this before; however, I am certain in my assessments that the influence of Ancient Egyptian mythology had on 3H is vast and more varied then I, personally, have seen people discuss. Yes, we know of the etymology behind Sothis and Seiros' names, but I believe these connections go much deeper than the surface level. This will be structured with me discussing what I am most sure in to what is more interpolation on my part. This part about Sothis is so long that it needs to be it's own post entirely. Sothis is based on Hellenistic/Roman period worship of Lady Isis

As we know, Sothis' name can be traced to one of the names of Sirius, specifically the Hellenized name of Sopdet the goddess of said star. However, this is surface level. Sopdet was often syncretized with Isis during the Hellenistic period and in Lady Isis, I believe, there are more clear allusions to Sothis and how she acts as a deity within 3H's world. Lady Isis is an Egyptian deity who was worshiped across the Mediterranean during the Hellenistic and Roman period. Sothis in her mythology, actions, and how she is depicted in-game shares remarkable similarities to Isis. The images and sources I will be using as a reference come from Dr. Andrew M. Henry's (ReligionForBreakfast) video on the topic and FEDatamine for everything regarding 3H.

Sothis and Isis are both "great mother" deities who act as supreme goddesses to their followers.

Even before coming to supreme status in the Mediterranean, Isis was an incredibly important goddess within Egypt. She was the bringer of magic, a guardian of women, a compassionate goddess who wished to relieve all human suffering, and much much more. All of these traits are extremely close if not direct parallels to Sothis. We know that magic within Fodlan is directly connected to Sothis through the visual of all the magic circles (save for Agarthan dark magic) and it can be postulated that, like Isis, Sothis magic was beyond the capabilities of other humans or other deities. Faith magic in particular is directly correlated with the ability to heal and protect, which is one of the main domains of Lady Isis in antiquity and modern day. She was the healer of the sick and injured, so much so that she often traveled in human form so that she could aid those who called out to her. I don't believe it is a coincidence that healing magic was reskinned as faith in this game given that context. And the connections continue beyond that. Consider this text from a temple to Isis in Cyrene:

During the Hellenistic period, Isis' power and prominence grew to wear she became a supreme goddess within these polytheistic societies. She was believed to be the ruler of time and fate itself, and, as stated here, one of the creators of the cosmos who first set time to course. She was often depicted holding a steering rudder or with the planet beneath her very feet as the goddess through which all fate flows.

Next, take this quote from Lucius Apuleius: The Golden Ass a text from a satirist, but nonetheless believed to hold elements of truth to Isis' worship during the Roman period.

Once again, we see the language that would describe a supreme, cosmic deity. Compare to similar wording in The Book of Seiros Part 1: "The goddess is all things. She is heaven above and the land below. She is eternity incarnate. She is the present, the past, and the future. Her eyes see all. Her ears hear all. Her hands receive all."

Due to this language, it is believed by some religious scholars, and presented within the video, that within the mysteries of Isis there was an element of henotheism at play. A philosophy within religious practices where one god is worshiped a supreme deity whilst not denying the existence of other gods, and such a system of worship is what I believe to be happening within Fodlan's religious context. Other gods are known to exist, they are spoken of in the Book of Seiros; however, Sothis is supreme goddess of Fodlan.

Now, I ask, what is Sothis' primary characteristics within the Church of Seiros and as depicted in game? She is the supreme Goddess of Fodlan, who's depicted with having control over time and fate itself (literally divine pulse), spoken of as a savior not only in the past but also through the actions of her vessel Byleth, who created all life (or at least the Nabateans) as "The Beginning", and the arbiter of souls as an explicitly afterlife related deity.

All of these traits are direct parallels to Lady Isis, and I am not even finished listing all the similarities. First take this quote from The Book of Seiros Part 2: "In the beginning, amid the great cloudless ocean, Fódlan came to be. At the end of a long journey, the goddess glimpsed that land and there alighted. Upon that sacred ground, she breathed life into the world and created all of the creatures upon it.

By the goddess's hand, plants took root, birds took to the sky, and animals roamed the land. Last of all, she created humanity." Within multiple Egyptian creation myths one of the prevalent and constant features is the primordial ocean of Nun. It was place of nothingness and chaos all at once, a "cloudless ocean" if you will. And from that ocean came the first land, the benben, and from there any number of gods created all life. This includes Isis, who within the inscriptions at Philae, is described to have created all life and the cosmos itself (Žabkar 1988, pp. 134.): "Indeed, she is the Lady of Heaven, Earth, and the Nether World, having brought them into existence through what her heart conceived and her hands created..." Both of them are related to the afterlife and are explicitly called out as deities of fate. Once again from the story of Apuleius:

Lady Isis' connection to the afterlife as she who guides the soul to it's fate goes back even further in Egyptian texts and she has been a funerary deity all the way back in Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts. Take that in context with Rhea's line of Sothis being the "arbiter of souls" and much of her cosmology in-universe revolving around the afterlife you have another link between them. Isis was said to be able to prolong a person's life if they were to follow her mysteries as she knew the lifespan of all people and could manipulate it with her magics. She also typically interacted with her followers via dreams. This is something Sothis is shown to do constantly with her appearing in Byleth's near death moments, within their dreams (at the beginning of the game and later during her speech regarding Fodlan's plight. And can I say, Sothis being aware of the blood being split and awakening Byleth to explicitly put it to an end is a very much like a savior goddess). Then, in Rhea's backstory, she said that she heard Sothis' voice within the Holy Tomb (or within Enbarr) and that is what lead her to take up the name of Seiros and begin to fight against Nemesis. Sothis inspiring the creation of the Adrestian Empire through Seiros, and Byleth's place to chose the fate of Fodlan, directly correlates to Lady Isis' role as a goddess of kingship. Her protection was explicitly called upon both during the defense of Egypt and during campaigns of military conquest, and that she alone was comparable of armies of soldiers. Isis and Sothis both are also transparently related to nature. They are callers of the rains (cited in the Philae Hymns for elsewhere and in-game for Sothis) and related to bounties of the harvest. In this way, Sothis may also cross into the sphere of Osiris who was more explicitly a fertility god and the ruler of the dead/judge of souls. An interesting similarity can be called to the myth of Osiris' death and dismemberment at the betrayal of his brother Set, Isis' incomplete resurrection of her husband, and Horus' becoming king of Egypt after contending with his uncle where he avenged his father; with how Sothis herself was killed and dismembered for her power, then Seiros' creation of Adrestia (where he also chose the first king) to avenge her mother, and her inability to resurrect her due to Sothis' body being scattered and incomplete (at least, until her ib/Creststone was placed within the intact khet of Byleth). But that is an aside for now. I want to finish this off with a look of the physical similarities between depictions of Isis and Sothis. Once again from Apuleius:

"Firstly her long thick hair in tapering ringlets was loosely spread over her divine neck and shoulders, and her head was crowned with a complex garland of interwoven flowers of every kind. At the centre, over her brow, a flat disc like a mirror or rather a moon-symbol shone with brilliant light. Coiled vipers reared from the right and left of her coronet which was bristling with erect ears of corn. Her multi-coloured robe was of finest linen, gleaming here pure white, here a saffron yellow, there flaming rose-red, with a woven border flowing with flowers and fruit, and what dazzled me most of all was her jet-black cloak with its full sheen, wrapped gleaming about her, slung from the left shoulder, knotted at the breast, and sweeping over her right hip. It hung in sweetly undulating complex folds down to a tasselled fringe, and along its borders and over its surface fell a scatter of glittering stars, round a full moon at the centre breathing fiery rays. And she bore a host of emblems." To me, there are some similarities between this and the depiction of Sothis plus how Rhea dressed and Byleth's Immaculate One outfit. The floral motifs of lotus flowers, the crisp white of Sothis' mural appearance and those of Rhea and Byleth, the crowns of flowers and star motfis, the way Isis bears many emblems around her, much of it bears some similarities to Sothis. But this is not the only depiction of Isis, let me show you some visual representations. Let us compare this mural of Sothis to some depictions of Isis:

Here are two of Isis from Pompeii with one being a mural and another a famous reconstruction of a statue:

Again, while not 1:1 there are some visual similarities in design. The white linen of her dress and the cut of it are fair similar, as are the wings that are associated with nearly every depiction of Isis. To show and example from Egypt:

The fact that Sothis is shown with feathered wings in particular feels important given her other similarities with Lady Isis. Plus the throne hieroglyph that represents Isis and often often seen above her head looks exactly like the throne of Sothis as seen in the Holy Tomb. Lady Isis is also known as the "Lady of the Throne" just like how Sothis is called the "Girl on the Throne." The amount of connections between them does not feel like coincidence to me. If you want to take the Romance into account as well, both Sothis and Isis are associated with floods in that case, especially with floods that are said to be caused by their sorrow. Sothis is a savoir deity who protected and saved from Fodlan from the destruction of the Agarthans; she is said to have caused a flood in the one, possible, Agarthan account we have. Her name is Sothis, transcribed from Sopdet, lady of the blue star, who was syncretized with Isis who also became manifest within Sirius. I think I will make one more note: the Rite of the Goddess' Rebirth is transparently related to Wep Ronpet, the cosmological new year in Kemetic religious practice. Both take palace in late July (or into early August for some dates of Wep Ronpet), both are related to the rising of a particular star (the Blue Sea Star is based on Sirius, this fact), both are related to the rebirth of the world and the gods, and both are a day of celebration with family and friends. As one final aside: in Kemetic practice, worship of the gods has always been an intimate and close affair, both in antiquity and in modern practice. Gods are active and immediate presences within the world, and they are presently felt within physical parts of the world. Ra, Aten, and other solar deities are all the sun, Nut the sky, Shu the air and wind. Various "truths" about natural phenomenon could all be true at once and created a multi-facted view of existence. So Sothis having the Blue Sea Star as her "home" are acting as her spiritual double entirely makes sense within this framework. Sothis' laws are also fairly similar to the Laws and philosophical underpinnings of Ma'at; however, delving into that is outside the scope of this post. So I will need to leave things off here.

#fe3h #fire emblem three houses #fire emblem #sothis fire emblem #fe3h meta #stars rambles #i'm sorry if this feel unorganized i've been trying to synthesize my thoughts for days #sothis having all these allusions to lady isis has been very obvious to me for years #so i'm happy to have post laying it all out #and obviously this isn't the only influence #but one that i feel doesn't get talked about enough #and it's important to me #so with that #dua lady isis

[merrivia]

There’s something I find quite curious about the Captive Prince trilogy.

The lack, or paucity, of any references to religion. Or mythology or folklore. I find that a really interesting creative choice, because I think most readers feel the shapes of the fairytales and myths and beliefs that lie, like bones or the foundation of a building, under the surface of the story.

So let's discuss.

Firstly, belief systems. We know Akielos, much like the Ancient Greece it’s modelled on, has philosophers, even if we never hear about them in any detail.

We know there are Veretian and Akielon rituals regarding death. Aleron and Auguste are entombed, and so is Damen's faked body with Theomedes.

Akielon rituals are told to us in more detail via Nikandros:

There is an Ancient Greek death ritual called the ekphora, a “ritual procession of the deceased’s body from where it had been laid out to the place of burial”. The prefix ek meant ‘out’ and phora ‘to carry’ so it literally denotes the carrying out of the body to be buried. I couldn't find 'ekthanos' as a real extant word, but with the same logic ekthanos means out + thanos- a word that can mean immortal or death depending on how you might interpret the etymology of it.

It sounds like Nikandros completed a mourning ritual and lit something (a votive lamp?) symbolically (perhaps it symbolises the leaving of the spirit, as that which removes or leads out the immortal soul from the body, hence ekthanos?). I would assume it was a funeral pyre if it weren't for the fact that Damen's body was interred (could it have been ashes that were interred? That would be safer if you're going to fake someone's death, but that's honestly me very much extrapolating from nothing. Also damn, Nikandros loves Damen. My heart honestly feels so warm about him. If that happened, and he stepped up to light the pyre when Kastor didn't, than he really is his real brother).

But for all this, there is no sense of an afterlife nor praying to deities.

More after the jump:

Edit: Unless you count Jokaste’s note to Damen, which seems to point to Greek ideas of metempsychosis/reincarnation.

Regardless of that though there are no powerful institutions, no churches or temples, no religious figures to appease.

At first I thought there were no mentions of gods at all.

But there is.

Firstly in the very first description of Laurent in the baths:

And secondly, in the Akielon epic Erasmus sings:

There’s also an unusual mention of Nereus who has a collection of statues in his garden. At first, because Nereus was a Greek god and because it felt faintly familiar, I took it for a classical allusion then swiftly realised on googling that it wasn’t. Or at least I don’t think so? Someone enlighten me, and I'll edit if I'm wrong.

So I think we can safely assume Akielos once had gods, but the religion died out perhaps (thought not due to the rise of Christianity). And their pantheon may have been pretty much been the Greek one as the influence might linger in names like Nereus, literally a god of the sea (and Damianos from Damia, a minor goddess of fertility, and Nikandros which has a root in Nike, goddess of victory…).

Edit: having now read The Training of Erasmus, Nereus is a slave owner, and his gardens a place for young pre-pubescent slaves to have their initial training. Sigh. Reading that story really is just heartbreaking.

Keeping to the topic I suppose (even with the lingering sense of disgust that ran through me while reading it) did he collect statues that were relics of the times before and keeps them in this garden? You can see statuary fitting into this strange rarified space for the most beautiful youths. It could be some echoing of Roman pleasure gardens which generally had that sort of statuary? Or is it a mirroring of Renaissance Italy where they tried to recreate Roman gardens, taking classical statues from ruins to restore and place in them? Who knows!

Without being explicit, Pacat makes it clear that beautiful Laurent is classical-statue-beautiful. Greek god beautiful. A Ganymede, perhaps or an Adonis. And slave beautiful, too.

And, of course, Damianos has so many parallels to Achilles, from his unparalleled strength and prowess on the battlefield, to his ability to strategise as if Athena is guiding him, to how he can become blinded by rage. The warrior-hero.

Ultimately, I guess what’s interesting is Pacat’s choices. It’s really hard to avoid any religious references in writing, as these allusions are baked in so deep to language. Damen being made a slave is called a “living hell”. Laurent presents an “angelic countenance”. Damen "prays" the training arena is empty so he can escape. Orlant thinks that Akielos sounds like "paradise". Interestingly, all those quotes are from Captive Prince, and it seems as if, as Pacat went along, she steered away more and more from any kind of religious reference.

I mean, I get wanting to steer clear of religion. After polytheistic religions came the monotheistic- and then suddenly we have a whole heap of reasons why homosexuality is a sin. If we cut that off, and there is no spread of Christianity across Europe, it seems we get the bisexual culture of Vere and Akielos and Patras.

[Edit: But also sex as a sin in general does not exist. The policing of heterosexual premarital sex came into being to control reproduction, which in turn helps secure bloodlines in a patriarchal society. And so Pacat very neatly invents another social taboo as a substitute; the fear of bastardry, which means no heterosexual premarital sex EVER, and thus bisexuality becomes the norm (Damen is against this seeing it as potentially leading to situational sexual behaviour which doesn’t feel right to him).]

I also think it may have distracted from Pacat’s pared down yet evocative writing style. And added layers of unnecessary complication as the Veretian version of the Church would be another tricky, powerful and corrupt institution for him to battle and there really is no room for that in the narrative.

And just as a mini musing of a postcript, we know Laurent reads illuminated manuscripts:

We know these surely can't be prayerbooks, so I think we can assume that they are histories and works of poetry and stories.

Stories of courtly love perhaps? Fables, legends and folklore? Old Akielon myths? I would love to know what he read.

There are two French/European stories that do come to mind when I think of Laurent.

Beauty and the Beast, of course, with Laurent-the-beautiful and Damen-the-'giant-animal', and the trope of the kind-hearted lover who thaws the heart of the one who has grown cold and cruel.

And Reynard the fox, the trickster figure, whose "sly amorality" is "sympathetic as it is needed for his survival".

And whose main antagonist is, of course, his uncle.

#captive prince #meta #just my meandering thoughts #damen of akielos #laurent of vere

[dolphin1812]

We’ve reached the first Grantaire ramble! Here are some interesting and/or funny lines:

“Ecclesiastes says: ‘All is vanity.’ I agree with that good man, who never existed, perhaps.”

We’ve already read about how Grantaire is contradictory and his disrespectful attitude toward religion (his jokes about the cross in his introduction). Here, we get an example of both of those at once. He questions if Ecclesiastes (also a part of the Bible) was real, which would probably offend the religious sensibilities of more devout Christians, but he’s agreeing with him as he does so, thus affirming the words of the text. 

“Caligula made a horse a consul; Charles II. made a knight of a sirloin. Wrap yourself up now, then, between Consul Incitatus and Baronet Roastbeef.”

I don’t understand the reference with Charles II, but the wordplay is at least entertaining.

“ As for the intrinsic value of people, it is no longer respectable in the least. Listen to the panegyric which neighbor makes of neighbor.”

This suggests that he’s upset by the lack of community and callousness toward others that he observes in his daily life, but that his response has been cynicism rather than action. He even makes a reference to cynicism as a philosophy later on, joking about Diogenes’ cloak.

“Virtue, granted, but madness also. There are queer spots on those great men. The Brutus who killed Cæsar was in love with the statue of a little boy. This statue was from the hand of the Greek sculptor Strongylion, who also carved that figure of an Amazon known as the Beautiful Leg, Eucnemos, which Nero carried with him in his travels. This Strongylion left but two statues which placed Nero and Brutus in accord. Brutus was in love with the one, Nero with the other.”

Given that so much of Grantaire’s introduction was about his adoration of Enjolras and was filled with allusions to ancient Greek figures associated with homosexuality, it’s not surprising to see what appears to be another reference to queerness. It’s also not surprising that Grantaire’s attitude here is unclear, as he’s always full of contradictions. On the one hand, Brutus’ love for a statue of a boy is portrayed as a “spot” on his character, marring his image of virtue. Grantaire, though, just questioned the meaning of virtue itself, claiming that it was linked to violence (the “slayer”) and was determined by the victor, not by one’s character. Moreover, Brutus’ love of the statue of the boy is equated with Nero’s love of a statue of an Amazon (a woman), suggesting some level of equality between their loves. Consequently, this story could be less a commentary on queerness from Grantaire and more an instance of his general rejection of love, mocking Nero’s affection through the comparison with Brutus’. It could be a continued criticism of virtue, too. If “virtue” is violence and destruction, then love is a “spot” on virtue, even though love is typically thought of as a better trait.

His cynicism is a product of despair as well, as we see from his admission that he’s “sad” in between all his other statements. He’s still very petty, though, continuing to speak even after Bossuet silences him.

I admit that I don’t follow the references to theater and law in the other discussions (aside from the Charter), but it does give us an idea of the range of interests here. Les Amis may be bound by republicanism, but they not only have different opinions within that, but different hobbies and priorities. Grantaire’s in his own category (disavowing politics and also ranting in a very specific way), but Jean Prouvaire’s interest in mythology is really distinct from the focus on mistresses in Joly and Bahorel’s group, which is also different from the definitive political focus of Courfeyrac and Combeferre here. This isn’t to say they couldn’t all discuss these subjects - Grantaire is definitely knowledgeable about mythology, and Combeferre is basically interested in everything - but it still says something about how they choose to spend their time when they’re not doing activist work. It also gives us an indication of who’s closer to whom, even if they’re all friends. On top of that, the list of discussions (theater, politics, love, etc) gives us a feel for what a Parisian café was like at that time. It’s a wonderful way of giving us a sense of place while helping us get to know the characters.

Courfeyrac burning the Charter in the middle of all this is so funny. Combeferre, with his belief in gradual progress through education and small social changes, really tried to defend it (albeit “weakly”), but Courfeyrac was feeling chaotic, and the fire was right there.

#les mis letters #lm 3.4.4 #grantaire #courfeyrac #combeferre #I don't think there'll ever be a day where I'll read a Grantaire rant #and understand it #I don't think HE understands his rants #and that might be the point? #but there are so many references there that trying to analyze it is always tempting #it just falls apart really quickly too

[pearwaldorf]

There is a new Hozier song from the upcoming album called Swan Upon Leda. Andrew discusses some of the impetus behind it, and how the news of Roe came through when they were mastering the song.

I thought it might be useful to talk through the references and allusions a bit. Also I'm never going to pass up a chance to word vomit on Greek mythology.

Leda is, of course, mother to two sets of twins: Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, and Castor and Pollux; fathered by Zeus in the form of a swan. It's unclear if the union was consensual (Hozier seems to think it's not for the purposes of the song), because Zeus, but the through-line of women's/daughters' lives ruined or sacrificed for the ambitions of men is pretty clear.

Helen is kidnapped by Paris from her home in Sparta, and used as an excuse to start a war. (There's a whole mutual aid pact that figures into this and makes it messy as hell, but it's only tangentially relevant to this discussion.)

Clytemnestra's daughter Iphigenia is sacrificed by Agamemnon (Clytemnestra's husband and Iphigenia's father) to raise fair winds to Troy. The becalming is in retaliation for Agamemnon killing one of Artemis's sacred stags and his assertion he's a better hunter than the goddess of the hunt herself. So Agamemnon sends for his daughter, saying she will be married to Achilles. There are versions of the story where Agamemnon is horrified at this and is forced to go along with it by other leaders of the Greek army, including Menelaus (his own brother and Iphigenia's uncle), but regardless of intention, she is sacrificed. This sets off a whole chain of some of the messiest family drama in Greek mythology and I would say literature in general.

The most intriguing thing I learned from this Genius annotation is that the Republic of Ireland recognizes Palestine as a nation. It is very much in keeping with the Irish state's tradition of solidarity with other oppressed peoples around the world (the Choctaws and the Hopi/Navajo being one example). So tying Mona Eltahawy's work into all of this wraps a surprisngly neat bow around the whole thing.

It's a lot of information and allusion to stuff into a song that isn't very lyrically dense, and I feel like the music tries to take up the slack in a way that doesn't really work for me. The first time I listened to it I found the instrumentation overwhelming, to the point where I could barely make out the lyrics. And like. Andrew has a beautiful voice ("Cherry Wine" is probably the prettiest song about domestic violence you'll ever listen to), a fine instrument in intself. The only parts of the song that approach workable for me are the verses. You don't need the gaudy instrumentation to tell you this is a Story of Significance. Words and voice should be more than enough.

#word vomit #hozier #greek mythology #swan upon leda #hozierposting

[mmmmalo]

Speaking of needless complexity, I've been humoring a reading of Jade's entry item: what if it represents the pineal gland.

The entry item is a piñata, a word originating from the Latin word for "pine cone", pinea. The modern piñata seems to have evolved from a conical pot, or else from the application of the phrase to other containers. The pineal gland is likewise pine cone shaped, hence the name.

The piñata is shaped like Bec, who intermittently functions as a gate keeper of forbidden knowledge -- he keeps Jade away from unpleasant information and when Jade merges with Bec she is unable to tear her eyes away from traumatically intense light, much to her distress. Jade being blindfolded is not just a cultural artifact of the piñata, but an extension of motifs of sight with which Bec is enmeshed -- ultimately, the blinded Jade is only able to find her target because this externalized eye guides her target. The pineal gland is regarded the physical site of the third eye among some modern mystics.

Additionally, the Greeks regarded the pineal gland as the site of the Pneuma, the divine breath, that which animates the otherwise inert body. Jade fears and resents this uninvited intrusion of God, a sentiment expressed in her fear of lightning (connected to Frankenstein), her distaste for reader-interactive segments (an assault upon personal autonomy)...

Within the context of Slurquest, the focus on Aztec mythology in Hiveswap leads me to believe that Mexico is being grouped with Indigenous cultures for the purposes of trope accumulation. The third eye is likewise grouped under Native cultures via deliberate slurring of SE Asian Indians and American Indians -- and in turn the third eye is linked to mind control via the Zodiac sign placed upon the forehead of those under another's sway. Mind control is further associated with Natives via the pneumatic command arrow that dictates all character action and the candy corn horns of trolls, which are hinted to act as psychic antennae (arrows and corn are, like the piñata, our stereotyped signifiers).

Egbert’s sense of vocal alienation in Act 1 – insisting desperately that a fire BELONGS in a fireplace as the prose becomes uncharacteristically florid, the quotes wrongly attributed – lends itself to June readings insofar as feeling like your voice is out of joint with your body maps well to a certain experience of dysphoria. In that same spirit, I’ve wondered if John’s blue apple was not only an allusion to the Fall of Man as a narrative (and with it John’s fear of heights, notions of the apple as a symbol of Truth, Eden as a figure of nostalgia, etc), but also to the Adam’s Apple as a (somewhat false, but culturally resonant) symbol of sexual difference. Like even the entry item was a provocation akin to Karkat’s planet of red blood… and while I have kept the discussion minimal here, there is ample reason to believe that Jade would be similarly provoked by the medium of the Pneuma. So while I don't have a clue what this might imply for Rose and Dave's bottle and egg, I'm increasingly attached to the notion that entry items could map to a body part.

So, that's where I'm at

#homestuck commentary #jade

[edwardseymour]

(from other blog!)

🔥 choose violence ask game 🔥

3. screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

shan't be posting a screenshot, but the take that ‘defending katherine parr is defending thomas seymour’ is actually repugnant. her actions wrt elizabeth can and should be criticised — but within their proper context. katherine was a brilliant woman but she was also a woman, and legally, socially and culturally her husband overpowered her. she lived in a patriarchal society. she was negligent, at best, complicit, at worst — but she did warn ashley to keep an eye on thomas and elizabeth, did berate her husband for his ill-treatment, and did ultimately send elizabeth away. she was also pregnant with his child and the pregnancy seems to have been difficult. and elizabeth loved her; she was more her mother than anyone else. putting her on the same level as thomas seymour is just so gross to me.

8. common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

i PROMISE you anne boleyn does not receive the ‘worst’ historical abuse of the six wives/female historical figures. the idea of an evil, manipulative, promiscuous anne boleyn is nowhere near as culturally prevalent and pervasive as you insist it is. she very much does not have it anywhere near as bad as is claimed.

people simply do not care about anne boleyn, far more than they actively hate her — and where she does get treated with misogyny, it’s on a similar level to other female historical figures. it’s not distinct to her. moreover, what is unique to her is the level of revisionism and attention she gets. as another post has already put it: “anne's reinvention has been the most powerful and vocal in historical circles. anne is the center of almost all revisionist efforts in tudor historiography”. none of the six wives have been researched, revisited, reimagined and rehabilitated or simply discussed even a fraction as much.

we've already been over this. at this point i honestly believe insistence over this simply comes down to people looking for a thing to feel persecuted and exceptional over, while lacking the academic curiosity, talent and integrity to actually go and find something more tangible than the single most popular person in tudor history.

10. worst part of fanon

the hypocrisy/doublethink is truly something in this fandom sometimes. ‘monarchy was sacrosanct’ so therefore the commons unfailingly accepted the divine right of kings, except for all the times when they didn't and all the numerous recorded instances of royals being slandered/revolted against... but simultaneously, recognising the use of myth/prophecy and mysticism/faith in discourses of the time is ‘lionising’ historical figures, so we can't talk about henry vii and allusions to y daroganwr or king arthur but we can compare anne boleyn to classical mythology. sure!

13. worst blorboficiation

i recently saw that michael hick’s ‘the self-made king’ book about richard iii (which i haven’t read, so for all i know is very good but the title has always put me off) in a bookshop, and it reminded me how profoundly intellectually dishonest ricardians are. whether or not hicks’ book is sound, the popular/fandom approach to idealising richard iii is legitimately insane. truly i believe the only reason for mutilating the historical richard like this — to turn him into some fantasy merrie olde englande caricature of a medieval king — is to appropriate him into a racist, xenophobic, classist conservative ideal of monarchy. for as much as they might talk of him being ‘self-made’ or ‘socialist’ (as professional-at-failing-upwards matt lewis described him), they clearly do not care for such ideas, because they are centering them around (a fundamentally flawed understanding of) medieval monarchy. it's so ugly.

14. that one thing you see in fics all the time

i don’t read fanfic, but i see posts abt them and edit aus a lot and a consistent thing that i just cannot understand is the ‘fix-it’ narratives that have the women having numerous pregnancies. why? especially because the dates given essentially prove that in these aus, women never get to spend any time not pregnant or getting impregnated — including the historic protocols of lying in, churching etc., or religious conventions (sex was forbidden on certain days etc). it all basically creates an image of a husband who disrespects his wife by constantly trying to impregnate her, and a woman forced to endure the physical demands of constant pregnancy/labour with no regard for any other facet of her life/personhood. especially since these aus give these women a diabolical amount of children (including forcing twins/triplets on these women). it’s just so blatant that queenship/womanhood = being a broodmare. and, worse, these aus have the nerve to give these children horrific names.

25. common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

not directly what was asked but it’s genuinely exhausting how predominantly complaints about katherine howard being called a stupid slut have become wrapped up in this idea that katherine can only be worthy of sympathy if she did not willingly have sex. so often people trying to defend her, and criticising misogyny directed at her, ultimately constrain her to a fundamentally sexist idea — that sex can only be something done to her, as an unwilling participant. otherwise the implication is that comments about her intelligence or promiscuity are justified. there is no benefit to whitewashing katherine’s sexuality, and the insistence on characterising her almost exclusively as a victim is distressing. and it’s tiring having to repeatedly point this out. it simply feels like katherine howard is talked a lot but rarely as a fully actualised person in her own right.

#💌 #i needed to get this out of my drafts uffffff

[jessamine-rose]

꒰Disjecta Membra - Author’s Note꒱

Read Disjecta Membra here!! ヽ(´∀｀)

Read Chess Piece here!! ヾ(๑╹◡╹)ﾉ"

Aaahhh thank you to everyone who read my recent fics!! Mere words cannot describe my joy whenever I receive your sweet comments. Cheers to more readers rotting over enjoying the Jester’s twisted story  (´｡• ᵕ •｡`)

To my old followers, y’all know the drill. In this post, I’ll discuss my characterization of Yandere! Pierro and his darling, my creative process, and bonus content from the rough drafts. Now let’s go behind the scenes~

“Cursed with your divine burden and lost hope for the future, you have accepted a melancholy life of solitude. By some stroke of fate, however, you encounter a kindred spirit who will save you from the depths of your sorrow.” (AO3 Summary)

꒰ Introduction ꒱

♡ For starters, I want to say a big thank you to @frogchiro and @seakicker!! Aside from giving me the brainrot which caused all of this, Kin shared some notes on her characterization of Pierro. And Juju inspired this whole fic with her amazing Pierro x Fertility Goddess AU!! I’d also like to credit @mirdance’s glorious fic Innamorati for aiding my character study and speech analysis of Pierro~

♡ Originally, the Jester’s story was going to be a short post and not my regular longfic + side story. But after getting too many ideas and developing Savior! Darling’s character….…rip my word count. The idea of Pierro subduing a fallen goddess was too powerful u_u

♡ As always, you can thank @diodellet for another amazing peer review. She’s been a big help since my first Harbinger fic, and I appreciate all that she’s done for me. Without her, my Genshin works wouldn’t be the way they are now (´∀｀)♡

꒰ Characters ꒱

♡ It’s official. Pierro is the most difficult Harbinger I’ve ever written for. Forget his dialogue, I died balancing his “hot and cold” attitude. I headcanon Pierro to be a possessive, controlling yandere deeply influenced by his trauma. His main strength is his intelligence, as shown by how he strategically orchestrates and manipulates events to his advantage.

♡ Among the Harbingers I’ve written for, Pierro is the least outwardly affectionate. He has strict expectations for his darling, such as her full loyalty and education, and will always prioritize the Tsaritsa/ Fatui over her. That doesn’t negate his soft spot for his darling—he simply has greater responsibilities as the Jester.

♡ Savior is my kindest and oldest darling. She’s a foil to Pierro in the sense that her grief left her with self-hatred, survivor's guilt, and a passive attitude. I gave her a veil for the mystery/ bride vibes + it fits in with the Fatui’s mask aesthetic. Her intellect and divine powers make her a formidable darling, and I enjoyed writing the scenes where she challenges Pierro >:3

♡ My thought process for making Savior the God of Mist was, “clouds/ mist can obscure one’s vision.” Her character references the Greek goddess Achlys simply cuz I’m a slut for mythology and symbolism. While she can create regular harmless mist, she can secretly claim “territories” via special mist made from her blood—an allusion to her self-sacrificial nature. I personally imagine her to be around 4,000-5,000 years old.

♡ Additional notes on Savior’s powers!!

♡ My own name and appearance for Savior

♡ And how could I forget my babygirl Oizys?? Like Savior’s other friends, he is named after a mythological deity. I wanted to make him similar to his namesake/ different from Pierro, hence their comparisons and his emotional, outspoken personality. He’s very close to Savior, as they are each other’s last surviving friend. In his final moments, all he wanted was to go home to her ;-;

♡ My appearance + doodles of Oizys

꒰ Literary Motifs ꒱

♡ Godhood/ Power – hahaha so for Pierro, I wanted to highlight the power imbalance between him and his darling. Before he became a Harbinger, he relied on the pity/ mercy of Savior. But after?? He views Savior as someone beneath him and wants her submission + praise. This desire also applies to their bedroom activities~

♡ Grief — as mentioned earlier, Pierro and Savior are foils to each other. Both of them have lost everything to traumatic events and thus find it difficult to move on. But while Savior succumbed to her grief, Pierro actively stepped up to seek justice and “improve” the world.

꒰ Chapter Titles ꒱

♡ Latin quotes – I thought they would give a nice dramatic touch to Disjecta Membra since it’s about Pierro and a fallen god. I purposely started the fic with i. memento mori and ended it with ix. memento vivere to compliment the full-circle ending and Savior’s character arc. Scroll down for the translations!!

♡ Chess pieces – at that point, I was just tired of spending so much time picking/ googling section dividers. I used chess pieces in order of rank since it is a recurring theme in their story. Beyond that, idk sh*t about the game -.-

-

Disjecta Membra - “scattered fragments”/ “surviving fragments of ancient poetry, manuscripts, and literary or cultural objects”

i. memento mori - “remember you must die”

ii. mea culpa - “through my fault”

iii. damnatio memoriae - “condemnation of memory”

iv. oderint dum metuant - “let them hate so long as they fear”

v. nitimur in vetitum, semper cupimusque negata - “we strive after what is forbidden, and always desire what is denied”

vi. amor et melle et felle est fecundissimus - “love is rich with both honey and venom”

vii. dulce est desipere in loco - “it is delightful to play the fool occasionally”

viii. flectere si nequeo superos, acheronta movebo - “if I cannot bend the heavens, then I shall move the powers of hell”

ix. memento vivere - “remember to live”

꒰ Deleted Scenes ꒱

Goodbye/ Blessing Kiss

♡ Originally, Savior could bless people with fortune through her kisses. That idea was an excuse for her to kiss Pierro’s forehead before he left + for Pierro to request her kisses. I think their first kiss scene turned out much better <3

Conversation with Zhongli

♡ Sooo Savior personally knows Zhongli!! While they are nothing more than acquaintances, they can relate to each other as old gods who outlived their friends. Similar with Pierro and the Tsaritsa, Savior admires Zhongli but feels pathetic compared to him. I originally planned to write their conversation but decided that it was enough to just mention it.

Savior’s Cold Hands

♡ In Chess Piece, Pierro prefers Snezhnaya’s climate due to his experience with Celestia’s sea of flames. Originally, he compares the latter to Savior’s low body temperature as a mist deity. It was going to be one of Savior’s insecurities since she can’t provide comforting warmth for humans……an inhuman trait which is perfect for Pierro.

꒰ My Favorite Scenes ꒱

“I shall overthrow the gods of the Old World, starting with you.”

♡ Catch me simping as I finally wrote Pierro’s glow-up and their reversed power imbalance. Yes, it was necessary for him to kabedon Savior and bring her to her knees. Yes, he secretly enjoyed that moment. I can’t say that my mind was pure when I wrote that scene =w=

You kneel on the floor, hands clasped together. “O, Lord Pierro, I humbly thank you for saving an undeserving creature such as myself! Had it not been for your benevolence, I would have been doomed to a life of sorrow. Your greatness is unparalleled. You have brought glory to Snezhnaya. The Tsaritsa—”

“That is enough.”

♡ Congratulations, Savior, for getting on Pierro’s nerves!! I greatly enjoyed writing this quote and the overall scene. One thing which sets Savior apart from the other darlings is her ability/ willingness to challenge her yandere, from irritating Pierro to strategically claiming her prison to semi-successfully escaping. It makes for an engaging dynamic between two smart immortals.

“Jester, I come bearing a report on our latest Archon Residue experiment.”

♡ Forget Pierro, Dottore steals the spotlight in iii. bishop. I didn’t originally plan for him to show up in another Harbinger’s fic, but he is simply that powerful. After 16.5k words of Pierro, it was very refreshing to reunite with Dottore’s chaotic energy. Since my Yandere! Harbinger fics are in the same universe, I referenced Dottore’s darling for funsies (๑･̑◡･̑๑)

꒰ Pierro x Savior Playlist ꒱

With a couple as angsty as Pierro and Savior, the 3rd and 4th songs were necessary. At least we end with an uplifting song ^o^

♡ Si Deus Me Relinquit – Kuroshitsuji OST

♡ Envy Baby by Kanaria ft. GUMI

♡ Gehenna by wotaku ft. Hatsune Miku

♡ Kyu-kurarin by Iyowa ft. KAFU

♡ Dear Answer by TRUE

♡

And that’s it!! Once again, thank you so much for reading Disjecta Membra + Chess Piece. I didn’t expect so much love for Pierro and Savior, and I truly value all of your messages. Pls don’t hesitate to share your feedback with me, and may more readers catch Pierro brainrot ♪(๑ᴖ◡ᴖ๑)♪

#pierro #pierro x reader #yandere pierro x reader #yandere pierro #yandere fatui harbingers #fatui x reader #genshin x reader #yandere genshin #tw: yandere #fem reader #jessamine-writing

[azurish]

Pyrrha Dve and Pyrrha of Thessaly: Survivors of the Flood

“If I’m God, I can start over. The flood, you know? You can wash things clean. That’s all the end of Earth was … making things clean.” --Nona the Ninth, p. 435

“You want Gideon the First, and Gideon the First is dead. He’s not coming back. Oh, God, Gideon,” said Pyrrha, suddenly. “Gideon … G—, you died for nothing.” --Nona the Ninth, p. 390

tl;dr: Pyrrha Dve shares a name with Pyrrha of Thessaly, one of the only two survivors of Zeus’s great deluge in Greek myth, which might connect to why Pyrrha alone seems to remember G1deon’s real name from before Jod’s “flood.” Unpacking this allusion brings to light other suggestive parallels between the two Pyrrhas’ stories, including:

Zeus and Jod’s destruction of the Earth with the intent to replace flawed humanity with a new, pious version of humankind who would worship them as gods

how the Greek Pyrrha survives without Zeus’s knowledge by hiding in her husband’s “chest” (sound like someone we know?)

Pyrrha of Thessaly’s role in repopulating Earth by disturbing her “mother” Gaia’s grave and casting her bones (aka stones) to the ground, from which arose the new human beings (who else disturbs “Earth’s” Tomb?)

and some other more out-there parallels, including a connection to the tower in the River; some thoughts on Zeus, Jod, and cannibalism; a verrrry tangential connection between Pyrrha and Gideon Nav; and thoughts on other survivors

So, following the release of Nona the Ninth, we’re now all familiar with Jod’s conception of the end of the Earth as a literalization of the flood myth with him as God.  Afterwards, he claims he brought back all his friends without their memories – and, based on his discussion of renaming Ulysses and Titania and the fact that the Lyctors’ old names are all dashed out, many of us have assumed with new names.  But somehow, Pyrrha Dve seems to remember her necromancer’s original name.  What’s going on with that?

I don’t have an explanation, but I do have a very interesting parallel, which is almost entirely not the same thing while still justifying writing meta! :P  (I mean, if you’re looking for an explanation, my best guess is that Jod talks about altering memory through changing the brain’s biological structures, suggesting that the soul still remains a blind spot of his.  Pyrrha no longer has her physical corporation/brain and is solely existing in Gideon’s body, so maybe there’s something there?  Soul memories, idk lol.)

Lots of past meta I’ve seen about Pyrrha Dve’s name has focused on Pyrrhus of Epirus, who gave his name to the term “Pyrrhic victory”: a victory whose losses were so severe as to call into question whether such a “victory” was really worth it at all.  On that reading, Pyrrha’s name is a nod to how attaining Lyctorhood was a Pyrrhic victory for Gideon and the other Lyctors, because they had to sacrifice their most beloved companions (brother, wife, best friend, etc.) to achieve this “lesser”/imperfect Lyctorhood.  I’ve also definitely seen people point out how the name Pyrrha itself comes from the Greek adjective “πυρρός”, which can mean flame-colored or redheaded: clearly apt for our girl/my wife Pyrrha.  I think all of that is right, and also I think tazmuir was drawing on yet another mythological parallel for Pyrrha’s name: that of Pyrrha of Thessaly, survivor of the Flood.

Pyrrha of Thessaly and Pyrrha Dve

In Greek myth (well, more or less, depending on the version – I’m quoting Dryden’s Ovid here, so Roman reception, but I’ll stick with Zeus to make things easier), Zeus decides to wipe the Earth clean after judging humanity irredeemable.  When he shares this plan, the other gods immediately complain that, should he destroy humankind, “Neglected altars must no longer smoke,/If none were left to worship, and invoke.”  Interestingly, he immediately reassures them: “Lay that unnecessary fear aside:/Mine be the care, new people to provide./I will from wondrous principles ordain/A race unlike the first, and try my skill again.”  In other words, after the cleansing flood, he’s going to create a new crop humanity to worship him and his pantheon at those neglected altars … sound like anyone we know yet?

However!  Two humans survive Zeus’s deluge: Deucalion, ruler of Phthia in Thessaly, and his wife Pyrrha.  Here’s where it gets especially intriguing, because depending on the version you read, this Greek Noah and his wife survive for different reasons!  Ovid’s Metamorphoses has them surviving because they’re the two best people around – the most holy, upright, worthy, etc.  But in other accounts, such as that in the Bibliotheca of Pseudo-Apollodorus, they actually sort of sneak past Zeus.  Deucalion’s father is the Titan Prometheus (whom you may remember from other Zeus-defying escapades like “giving humanity fire”), and Prometheus instructs Deucalion on how to build and provision a chest that will survive the flood.  Thus, when Zeus goes to destroy humanity, Pyrrha survives inside Deucalion’s chest until the flood ends and the two reach dry land and propitiate Zeus.  (OK, so it’s an actual physical wooden trunk, BUT ALSO Pyrrha survives by hiding in her husband’s chest I’m just saying.)

After surviving, the two ask the gods (usually Zeus through an intermediary) how to repopulate the planet.  They are told to “throw … your mighty mother’s bones” to the ground – a suggestion that horrifies Pyrrha, who refuses to defile her mother’s grave, crying out, “Forbid it Heav’n, said she, that I shou’d tear/Those holy reliques from the sepulcher” (we’re back to quoting Ovid here btw).  But after carefully pondering their instructions, they find a different meaning: perhaps, Deucalion suggests, “This Earth our mighty mother is, the stones/In her capacious body, are her bones.”  So they gather up “Gaia’s bones”, i.e. rocks from the ground, and when they cast those stones behind them, new human beings spring up from where they fall.

Pyrrha’s calling Gaia her mother, her disturbing Gaia’s remains from their “sepulcher,” and Gaia’s “bones” repopulating the Earth are all very interesting!  It probably goes without saying that there’s a Gaia-Alecto connection here (in fact, I think you could even say John makes that connection fully textual when he calls himself John Gaius, if you read it as a Lyctoral name).  I read the Greek Pyrrha’s identifying Gaia as her mother as a neat inversion of the parental relationship between Pyrrha and Nona (note that in the myth, Gaia isn’t Pyrrha’s actual mother – that’s Pandora, while her dad is Prometheus’s brother, Epimetheus (which technically makes Gaia her paternal great-grandmother)).  Our Pyrrha is, obviously, involved in unearthing (heh) Alecto’s body from the Tomb, just as the Greek Pyrrha felt she was being called to disturb her mother/Gaia’s resting place.

Alecto the Ninth Speculation: Gaia’s Bones and the Resurrection

All of the above I think is reasonably textually supported, but with the last “parallel” – the repopulation of the planet from Gaia’s bones – I’m going to step off the deep end, lol, and move away from literary analysis of existing parts of TLT to pure speculation about the future.  First off, the key caveat is that, obviously, I don’t think Tamsyn Muir is trying to write a literal beat for beat version of the Greek flood myth with Pyrrha Dve, so I think the actual likeliest explanation here is that the actual limit of Pyrrha Dve’s connection to Pyrrha of Thessaly is just that both (sort of) survived their respective divine “floods.”  But I do have a couple thoughts about directions that “Gaia’s bones” and the resurrection could point at, which I’ll list roughly from most to least likely; and I’m also interested in hearing others’ ideas.

I think this parallel could pay off in one of two directions: either the Resurrection in the past or something in the future, in Alecto, involving a collaboration between Nona/Alecto and Pyrrha.  In the past, we obviously don’t know yet how the Resurrection actually went – John’s confession in Harrow’s Alecto-dreams didn’t extend that far – but it’s easier to speculate (and to pick out speculative parallels).  It certainly seems apparent that Jod’s going to be majorly drawing on Alecto’s power to do it – just as Zeus claimed he was creating a whole new crop of humanity to worship him, but was actually digging up Gaia’s bones to make the magic happen.  Making bodies from earth and stones is a classic mythic motif, so I don’t think the Pyrrha flood myth is necessarily being referenced here, but there sure is something neat about John’s making Alecto’s body “from the dirt, my blood, my vomit, my bone.”  Beyond that, some versions of the Greek flood myth suggest that humanity’s nature was changed by being reborn from stones, with Ovid writing, “Hence we derive our nature; born to bear/Laborious life; and harden’d into care” (the Greeks were generally huge fans of the pun possibilities between λαός (people) and λᾶας (stone)). You could maybe connect that to the suggestion that there seems to be something slightly off in Jod’s new version of people – the sickliness that affects necromancers?  (I don’t think that’s quite right, though, because you’d expect stones to be harder, not brittler and easier to break.)

But the myth isn’t just about how Zeus uses Gaia’s bones to resurrect humanity – it’s also about how Pyrrha and her partner (Deucalion/G1deon) bring back humanity.  Maybe the importance of Deucalion in revitalizing humanity via Gaia could pay off if it turns out G1deon has a key role in the Resurrection (Jod keeps talking about how he has “big plans” for Gideon’s arm, and he even says that “G—’ll be easiest” to bring back, although in context I think he just means that he won’t have to wipe as much of his memory because he wasn’t even at the compound)?  I think that’s a reach, though, and that the arm is just important so he has biomaterial on hand (lol).  But the reachiest possible connection here is to say that maybe Pyrrha’s going to play a role in some future Resurrection: something in Alecto the Ninth that resolves Jod’s “missing math” (the people he didn’t bring back, possibly the souls clogging up the river?) and brings more people back, or brings back people “correctly.”  Certainly, in terms of any role Pyrrha could play in collaborating with Alecto/Gaia in something like a resurrection or rebirth of humanity in the next novel, it’s worth noting that she is now strongest remaining link from Alecto back to Nona, with all of Nona’s compassion and love.

Remaining Errata

OK, that’s all for immediate parallels from the meat of the Greek flood myth! But there are some remaining pieces of the myth that caught my attention, so those get to go at the end of this piece of meta.

The Tower

Whatever’s going on with the massive new Tower in the River is obviously going to be important!  I have a LOT of thoughts about this, but that is for another meta.  What I’ll say here is that, while I think the clearest reference there is to the Tower of Babel (what with Nona being the only person who can still understand all languages), another famous mytho-religious tower-y structure often identified with the Tower of Babel is the towering pile of mountains that the Greek Giants built to reach the gods when they tried to challenge Zeus et al.  Per Ovid, observing the Giants’ building this tower was one of the things that made Zeus despair at the current state of the world and decide to set off the flood that Pyrrha survived in the first place.

Cannibalism

Other reasons Zeus was angry enough to flood the earth: eating human flesh! One of the impieties that drove Zeus to damn the first version of humanity was King Lycaon daring to test whether Zeus was truly omnipotent by serving him human flesh.  Go on, dive in, I know y’all are thinking of that bit in Harrow where Jod says, “Ten thousand years since I’ve eaten human being, Harrow, and I didn’t really want an encore.”

Gideon Nav as Pyrrha Dve’s Achilles?

Finally, Phthia, which Deucalion and Pyrrha ruled, was later Achilles’s home. You could possibly say something here about our Pyrrha and G1deon as not-parents to Gideon, who ~invaded~ the planet of Priamhark Noniusvianus, just as Achilles invaded the city of Priam in the Trojan War.  I think that’s probably squinting too hard, buttttt you could still make the case.  Also, that takes us full circle back to the other Pyrrhus that Pyrrha could be named for, because Plutarch seems to suggest that Pyrrhus (he of the Pyrrhic victory) got his name from family tradition because Deucalion and Pyrrha were the first rulers after the flood in Epirus.

Other Flood survivors?

OK, I have no idea what to do with this piece, but obviously Pyrrha isn’t the only potential “survivor” of Jod’s “flood” – the fleeing trillionaires (or potentially other human outposts?), etc.  Similarly, some versions of the Greek flood myth suggest that in addition to Pyrrha and Deucalion, a few other humans slip through, such as Cerambus, grandson of Poseidon.  This seems kind of tangential, but hey, if someone named “Cerambus” shows up in AtN and seems to know a lot about Earth without Jod’s blessing, we should probably listen to him! ;)

Sources

Ovid’s Metamorphoses The Pseudo-Apollodorus Other Greek and Roman flood accounts overview Pyrrha and Deucalion in Greek and Roman writing On Pyrrha, Deucalion, stones, and puns

#tlt meta #pyrrha dve #john gaius #nona the nonth #alecto the ninth #gideon the first #alecto the first #nona #alecto speculation #nona the ninth spoilers #ntn spoilers #the locked tomb #the locked tomb meta #meta #pyrrha of thessaly #i have no idea what else to tag this. huh. #locked tomb

[shakespearenews]

This approach—all those allusions and Easter eggs—might have been merely clever. But Shakespeare in Love is not merely making references. It is also making arguments. Pop culture, typically, portrays the literary genius as a solitary figure: alone at a desk, perhaps, searching his mind, confronting the blank page. The cliché assumes the same thing that Shakespeare does at the beginning of the film, as he seeks his muse: that inspiration is introspective. But Shakespeare in Love rejects that premise. It is not solitude that leads Will to his greatest poetry; it is being with other people, learning from them, interacting with them. The world is his writers’ room. Over the two hours’ traffic of the film, its audiences become privy to the hectic alchemy of genius. Art, in its vision, is not the stuff of one mind catching fire, but of many minds and many flames. It is an ongoing dialogue. Shakespeare, the film suggests, is simply better able than most to translate the conversation.

---

Shakespeare’s great talent, in this context, is not mysterious, nor is it muse-reliant or stoked by solitude or any of the other things that the mythology of genius might have us believe. Instead, it is a fusion of the poles that are typically invoked when people discuss the repercussions of our own technological revolution: the capabilities of the human, versus those of the computer. The Shakespeare of the film is thoroughly, vividly, deliriously human. His intelligence is as well. But his world also resembles, in its way, the workings of generative AI. His London is a corpus of data. His art comes to him, eventually, with a reliability that is almost algorithmic. The film does not just invent an origin story for Romeo and Juliet; more specifically, it imagines the series of inputs that led to its creation. Shakespeare’s wisdom is as synthetic as it is singular: He takes in the information, processes it, analyzes it, reworks it, makes new sense of it—and, in so doing, writes the poetry that would become symbolic, for many, of poetry itself.

#shakespeare #william shakespeare #bard #ai #shakespeare in love #shakespeare on film #creativity #london #data

[bethhiraeth]

Surviving High School English- A Guide

We've all been there: It's the night before your essay is due and you haven't even cracked open the book. You are staring down at a blank word document.

English can be a very hard subject, particularly if you are taking it at advanced levels such as IB or AP. English happens to be my favourite subject, so I thought I share a secret:

99% of English is bullshit.

So, I suppose this post is simply a guide to bullshitting effectively. I am going to focus on English, but it can be applied to other humanities subjects like history as well.

Sparknotes and LitCharts are your best friends.

I get it. Reading is hard. I personally love to read, and always try my best to reads the books for class, but I get that that is sometimes not possible. So just jump onto Sparknotes or LitCharts. Both have full summaries of most classic books, and a lot of popular contemporary books that are used in schools. The page for each book also has chapter-by-chapter summaries, character breakdowns, analyses of major themes and motifs, and even essay ideas.

Seriously. Use them.

2. Audiobooks

I love audiobooks. I get at least half my reading done through them. I like using Audible the best (no affiliate link. I just love it!). You can get your first audiobook free, and they have a whole catalogue of books that are included if you are a member. Seriously, normalise audiobooks. They have saved my ass so many times when I have had to read a big book in a short amount of time. The best thing about them is that you can listen to them while you do other things. Doing chores, driving, making dinner, even going for a run. And if you have dyslexia, it will be a lifesaver for you.

3. Know a few things, but know them well

Do a close reading of a few chapters. Know examples of one motif by heart. Having vague knowledge is no good to anyone, least of all yourself. Hone in on a few key points, and know them inside and out. You can afford to do this in English. Again, Sparknotes and Litcharts are great for this. Choose one theme, and read their page on it. It's as simple as that!

4. If your text was set in/ published in a different time era, do some very basic research on that period

For example, Of Mice and Men (a great book, btw) was both published and set in the 1930's. It is set in California. This is important because many of the story's main themes and motifs are based around this. The themes of the American Dream and minority rights are very prevalent throughout the book. Steinbeck was trying to make a statemnt. And if we didn't know the social context of the time, we would not be able to analyse it. So do your research, even if it is very basic

5. If you are not sure, it is probably a reference to the Bible, or Shakespeare, or Greek Mythology

Literally. Give me any classic book, and I could point out a hundred references to these three. Your English teacher will certainly give you extra points for picking up any allusions of this sort. Once again, on both Sparknotes and Litcharts, most books have a page dedicated to the literary allusions present in them. Use. This.

6. Utilize Tumblr

It sounds silly, but you are much more likely to remember what happened/major themes if you read them from shitposts. Engage people with discussions! Talk about your thoughts on the book, ask them for theirs! There is a very good chance that practically every book has been fandomised on this hellsite. I recently had an incredibly interesting and insightful discussion about the phenomenon of Sherlock Holmes and its effect on modern fan culture. Wouldn't that make a great essay?

7. If you can find any evidence whatsoever, then to your English teacher it is good enough.

If you can successfully argue a point, then you will do well on your essay! Anyone seen that post about the person who wrote an essay that Hamlet was partially blind, and they ended up getting a really high mark for it? That is what I am talking about! Argue that Jay Gatsby was gay, that Sherlock Holmes was autistic and that Dorian Gray had ADHD. Write a whole essay proving that George was in love with Lennie or that Heathcliff is a werewolf. Claim that everyone in Pride and Prejudice is an alien. I don't care (although I would love to read the alien one!). Seriously, I have talked to my English teacher about this: as long as you can find evidence and defend your claim, it is true in the eyes of your teacher.

8. Actually listen in class

I may just be lucky, but every English teacher I've ever had has supplied the class with a lot of the information above, such as the historical context of the story.

9. Start early and over-outline

If your essay is an assignment and not an exam, my advice is to start as soon as you know what the task is! Even if you write the title, and start mulling it over in your head. Write down any ideas you have immediately, take quotes from the book, the author and even others. Once you have your ideas, outline, outline, outline! This is my greatest advice for any subject you need to write an essay for! Don't make the outline rigid, but put down all your ideas. Be silly with it, using abbreviations and swear words and memes. Just get your points down. This fights procrastination too, becuase you think you are only outlining. Once you have everything out in a rough order, all you have to do is open up a blank document and put it into formal and pretentious language. I usually find that if my outline is a bit less than half my word count, then I will be good to go once I have typed it all up. The ratio might be different for you. See what works.

And there you go! You have just written yourself a world-class essay with all of your knowledge of the book! I'm so proud of you!

I hope this has been helpful. These are the ways I personally work. If I think of anything else I will add it on.

Happy reading! (Or Sparknote-ing lol)

#english #literature #lit #poetry #bookworm #bookish #ap literature #literary #dark academia #high school #studyspiration #studyblr #school #collage #sherlock holmes #sherlock #the great gatsby #jay gatsby #the picture of dorian gray #dorian gray #of mice and men #pride and prejudice #wuthering heights #spark notes #litcharts #essay #essay writing #shakespeare #light academia #romantic academia

[anthurak]

The Ravens’ Odin

So one thing I’m particularly happy with that happened during this latest round of ‘theory-crafting about Norse Mythology allusions in RWBY’ is finally realizing a plausible solution to one of bigger conundrums surrounding Ruby being an allusion to Odin.

That being: If Ruby is meant to be an allusion to Odin, then why were Qrow and Raven, who are allusions to Odin’s ravens Huginn and Muninn, effectively ‘created’ (ie; given their powers) by Ozpin? After all, that’s one of the biggest reasons people have considered Oz and allusion to Odin over the years.

But here’s the interesting bit, using RWBY’s trend of twisting or flipping the script on it’s allusions and references: As I discussed in this recent post; I think Ozma/Oz as a whole is actually an allusion to Baldr, with the destruction of old humanity by the gods being Remnant’s equivalent to Ragnarok, and that Ruby and Oz represent a role reversal of Odin and Baldr.

With all that in mind, I think the whole story of Remnant starts feeling like the Norse myth-cycle effectively playing out in reverse. With Ragnarok being the BEGINNING of Remnant’s story instead of the end, and Baldr (Oz) being among the ELDEST of the Aesir while Odin (Ruby) is among the youngest.

So if the lore of RWBY represents a bunch of the beats of Norse mythology playing out backwards, I’d say it only makes sense that in this version of events, it is not Odin who creates/molds Huginn and Muninn, but rather Huginn and Muninn who mold/create ODIN.

And wouldn’t you know it; Qrow is a longtime mentor and father-figure to Ruby.

And as for Raven... well, let’s just say I may have a theory or two on how she ‘created’ Ruby XD

#rwby #rwby analysis #rwby theory #norse mythology allusions #Ruby Rose #ozpin #Qrow Branwen #Raven Branwen #odin #baldr #huginn and muninn #ruby is odin #ozma is baldr #rosebird parents #rosebird parents theory #okay i lied #the thing i'm ACTUALLY most happy about is finally figuring out how 'ruby is odin' ties to 'raven is ruby's dad' XD

[texasdreamer01]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love 🤍

Oooh, hmm. I don't have anything in the Stargate Atlantis fandom posted yet, mostly because I'm… not done writing anything and plot bunnies keep cropping up, but let's see what I rummage through, in no particular order:

Baku-Ra, YGO DM, 2k, Bakura Ryou, Millennium World, Dreameater AU, Peri-Canon

Summary:

The figurines on his shelf had grown dusty. And, frankly, Ryou had plenty to say about that.

Restoring Force, Quantum Leap, 3k, Sam Beckett/Al Calavicci, Sam Beckett Leaps Home, Genderfluid Ziggy, Discussions of Quantum Mechanics, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, First Kiss

Summary:

"In physics, the restoring force is a force which acts to bring a body to its equilibrium position. The restoring force is a function only of position of the mass or particle, and it is always directed back toward the equilibrium position of the system. The restoring force is often referred to in simple harmonic motion. The force which is responsible to restore original size and shape is called restoring force." "See also: Response amplitude operator"

Hiraeth, Kingsman, 15k, Harry Hart | Galahad/Merlin/Gary "Eggsy" Unwin, Celtic Mythology & Folklore, Resurrection, Canonical Character Death, Butterflies, POV Merlin (Kingsman), Supernatural Elements, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Magical Realism, Time Loop, Welsh Mythology & Folklore, Literary References & Allusions, Not Kingsman: The Golden Circle Compliant, Inspired By Real Places, Morally Ambiguous Character, Character Study

Summary:

May the wings of the butterfly kiss the sun, and find your shoulder to light on.

ešretū of a burglar, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), 5k, Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Fix-It, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Dwarf & Hobbit Cultural Differences, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Bilbo Baggins Destroys the Arkenstone, Bilbo Baggins Destroys the One Ring, Mentioned Aulë | Mahal - Freeform, Mentions of the Fell Winter, Grief/Mourning

Summary:

The hoard of gold is cursed. Bilbo looks at Thorin and suspects the Arkenstone is, too. This beautiful, thrice-blasted stone weighs heavily in his hands and he would like nothing better than to give it to another’s. Whose hands, he thinks bitterly, could hold the Arkenstone without breaking under its thrall? No mortal being, and that is certainly the truth.

meḥ ȧb menkh, Stargate SG-1, 31k, Jack O'Neill/Teal'c, Jack O'Neill & SG-1 Team, Bra'tac & Jack O'Neill, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Marriage Contest - Must Win in Ritual Combat Against Potential Spouse, Marriage of Convenience - To Extend Legal Rights/Protections To Partner, Wedding Night – Consummation, POV Jack O’Neill, Smart Jack O’Neill, Worldbuilding, Politics, Jaffa culture, Tok’ra Culture, Families of Choice, Team as Family, Family Shenanigans, The Love Is Requited They’re Just Idiots, Yearning, Romance, Love Languages, First Kiss, Declarations Of Love, Foreplay, Sexual Content

Summary:

Egyptian, "perfect filler of the heart, a title".

#spurious #thanks for the ask! #this was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be haha

[shoggothkisses]

I've had this blog for a bit now so I think it's time to make a proper introduction post for my pinned!

Basic Info

ari, they/them, Old™️ (25+)

my birthday twins are Xingqiu and Squidward Tentacles

my genshin mains are Hu Tao, Scaramouche Wanderer and occasionally Nahida

i have adhd and am currently being treated for (relatively mild) chronic illness that can affect my energy levels, so my posting frequency may fluctuate wildly

Credentials/Interests

degrees in neuropsychology and mental health

10+ years working in libraries

relevant interests include horror & weird fiction, existential philosophy, Gnosticism, Buddhism, and amateur mycology.

going down research rabbit holes is life's one true joy

Disclaimers

as stated in my blog description, i have no interest in discussing ships or shipping on this blog. i may occasionally reblog fanart that catches my fancy, but none of it will be ship related. if you attempt to discuss shipping with me through replies or asks i will ignore you, and if you continue to push the topic, I will block you.

due to the nature of history, mythology and psychology, some of the topics i discuss on here may have allusions to racism, queer/transphobia, sexual themes and other uncomfortable subjects. while i will be examining these through an objective research lens, these references will be tagged with a cw and a read-through at the beginning of the post. please use your discretion and curate your own online experience. i will not be held responsible for anyone reading something they feel they shouldn't have.

i have not played Honkai Impact 3rd or Honkai Star Rail, and so i will not be addressing any of the similarities or references between Honkai and Genshin (even if the few I know about seem pretty neat). i'll be sticking to what i know for these posts.

i try to reblog or hyperlink past posts with similar topics wherever appropriate. if you have a certain tag or post you'd like easier access to, let me know in my asks and i can make a tag specifically for those posts! (if i get enough tags, i may even make a masterlink page in the future. :9)

#slime mod speaks #pinned intro

[tyrantisterror]

Wizard School Mysteries Trivia

My fourth novel, Wizard School Mysteries Book 1: The Meddlesome Youths, released a few months ago, and I didn’t do a trivia thread for it like the two ATOM books because... I forgot, honestly.  I mean, I did do a couple posts about its inspirations and how it plays with the mystery solving teens genre tropes, but I didn’t do an ATOM-style “here’s a bunch of my silly little allusions and in-jokes.”

But since there’s a TV Tropes page for it now, I think it might be fun to go ahead and do that.  I mean, it definitely will for me, but maybe also for you!

Warning: There will be a great deal of discussion of Harry Potter, because in some ways Wizard School Mysteries is to Harry Potter what Lord of the Flies is to The Coral Island.  Also there’s a lot of spoilers ahead, so, you know, read the book first if you’re worried about that sort of thing.

Read on after the cut!  Or don’t.  I’m not your boss.

- One of the reasons I decided to make this the first Midgaheim novel I published was that the school setting naturally lent itself to showcasing a great deal of Midgaheim’s various quirks as a setting.  But we could probably do with some elaboration anyway, right?

- Midgaheim is divided into countries in the medieval sense rather than the modern.  Each country is further divided into kingdoms, which are divided into various duchies, earldoms, baronies, etc., which are further separated by the vast amounts of wilderness separating individual towns and cities from each other.  It results in a somewhat different relationship to nationality than most of my readers are probably familiar with.

- The countries in Midgaheim are primarily based on different European mythologies: Germanor = Norse Mythology, Ruslovak = Slavic Mythology, Mediterra = Greco-Roman Mythology, Celpict = Celtic Mythology.  The sort-of exceptions are Francobreton and Castalan, which are based more on variations of folklore than specific mythologies.  Like, there were a LOT of different mythologies in Spain during the middle ages, because Spain was this big travel hub, so you get stuff like Basque mythology intermingling with Arthuriana and Celtic mythology and the result is really too fascinating to easily summarize, so rather than try to separate those ingredients I decided to keep its Midgaheim counterpart this wonderful melting pot of different cultures.

- Francobreton/Francane and Bretonce is simultaneously two countries and one country because the folklore traditions it’s inspired by were so intricately tied up in the weird on-again off-again relationship France and Britain had with each other in the middle ages.  Like, Arthuriana is probably the most authentically British folklore around (even if it was originally ripped off from Welsh legends), and yet a huge part of Arthurian canon comes from France, because during all the times France and Britain were united by way of royal marriages, the nobility of France REALLY liked these stories of knights and round tables.  And, again, the real life stuff going on behind the evolution of the folklore seems too interesting to me to cast aside, so we get Francane and Bretonce, aka Francobreton, the will they/won’t they country/countries.  I even decided to be cheeky and reference it in how the countries are named - Bretonce is basically Britain with the “ce” of France, and Francane is France with the “ain” of Britain.  People in Francane speak Frankish (France + the ish of British), and people of Bretonce speak Bretonch (Britain + the “ch” of French).  Of course, Frankish is already an archaic way of referring to people/things from France, but eh, it still works well enough for me.

- The Mediterran Empire's many wars of conquest are inspired by the Roman Empire, which repeatedly tried to conquer all of Europe, and which historians have romanticized for centuries for some fucking reason (and subsequent empires have tried to imitate it with less-romanticized results).  Unfortunately for them, Magic adores underdogs, so the Mediterrans have never reached the same level of success in world-conquering as their real world inspiration.  But they keep trying, the little imperialist shitheads!

-  The prologue of book 1 is called “He’s Leaving Home as an homage to the Beatle’s Song “She’s Leaving Home,” which also gets directly referenced by some of the action in the chapter.  It’s one of my favorite songs because it has so many different feelings in it, and which is most prominent kind of depends on your mood.  It’s also, you know, the story of a young person running away from home so they can finally be the person they want to be and live the life they want to lead, which is more or less James Chaucer’s situation at the start of the book.

- Ok, first of the “This is a Harry Potter rebuttal” bits: I wanted to handle the nature of abuse differently in this story than Rowling did.  Both James Chaucer and Harry Potter come from abusive households, but while the Harry Potter series revels in showing this over-the-top, Roald Dahl-style exaggerated caricature of abuse, I decided to just... not show it, at least not explicitly.  Like a lot of effective horror, I decided to keep the gruesome details in your imagination rather than in the text.  We get glimpses from disquieting things James says when he slips and lets his trauma seep out in normal conversations, which hopefully is enough.  I feel like that’s honestly a bit more of a common experience for people than seeing an abusive family at its worst - I’ve had a number of friends from bad home situations, and honestly the moments when they accidentally described some traumatic shit they encountered in a blasé tone as if it’s something everything experienced was horrifying enough for me to grasp, and hopefully it works that way for the reader as well.  I don’t think fiction needs to recreate trauma in agonizing detail to show the effect it has on people.

- James Chaucer, our protagonist, is obviously a riff on Harry Potter, with his glasses and messy black hair and abusive domestic life.  His first name is the same as Harry Potter’s dad’s, but that’s not the only reason I chose it - it’s also a reference to King James, who was terrified of witches and wrote one of the most important texts about magic in Britain as a result of it, Demonology.  James Chaucer’s last name is a reference to Geoffrey Chaucer, the author of the Cantebury Tales, which is hugely important piece of Medieval British literature.  James Chaucer’s deadname follows this pattern: Elizabeth was the name of the monarch of England that preceded King James, and Marlowe is the name of a British playwright who probably would have been the most famous of his time if he hadn’t died young and been outshined by a young upstart named William Shakespeare.

- Helseng, the ambiguously (in?)human character wearing blue who offers helpful if cryptic advice to the main character is, in fact, a reference to the Persona series.  She was almost named Inga, because all the blue-clad ambiguously human advice givers in Persona are named after characters from Frankenstein, with their leader being called Igor while the rest are named after characters from the books.  Since the Persona series has gone on long enough to be running pretty low on characters from the book to take names from, I’ve wondered if later installments will have to take from Frankenstein movies instead, and thus almost decided to name my blue-clad advice giver after a character from Young Frankenstein.  But that seemed a bit too close to the inspiration, so I decided to switch gears and draw a name from a different Gothic Horror novel that has just as much influence on culture, i.e. Dracula.  ‘Cause I fucking love Dracula.  I then warped the spelling a bit, and so Helseng got her name.

- James meeting Gretchen (a nerdy girl with bushy hair) and Ivan (a goofy guy who’s kind but also very insecure and a little clingy) on the way to the wizard school is a pretty obvious riff on Harry Potter.  The aim was to feel familiar, but off - Gretchen is significantly more acerbic than Hermione, yet also integrates into being a friend to the other two way quicker, and while Ivan shares Ron’s insecurity, he’s, you know, not a jealous dick about it, and James takes a leadership role out of the three not because he’s a famous chosen one, but because he’s charismatic and driven in a way the others recognize.

- Yes, Gretchen is trans too.  It’s not as explicit in this book as James’s trans status because she’s not the protagonist of the series, but it’s something I plan to explore more in later entries.  Both James (the equivalent of Harry Potter’s titular main character) and Gretchen (the equivalent of Hermione, aka J.K. Rowling’s self insert character) being trans was a choice made both for thematic reasons and for sheer, petty spite towards J.K. Rowling.  I transed your wizards, bitch!

- So, in Slavic folklore, the name “Ivan” has roughly the same connotations as the name “Jack” does in British folklore, i.e. it’s a common name for everyman protagonists who, while unassuming on the outside, prove wily and quick-on-their wits when confronted with a supernatural obstacle.  That’s the sort of character I wanted Ivan to be: a simple small-town boy who’s capable of a lot more than anyone (himself included) thinks he is.  His last name, Muromets, comes from a more specific hero in Slavic mythology, Ilya Muromets.

- I was trying to think of names that sounded both nerdy and either German or Scandinavian for Gretchen, and arrived on her first name without fully understanding why it felt nerdy to me.  It was only when I was about halfway through draft 1 of the book that I realized Gretchen was the name of the nerd girl in Disney’s Recess, a show I put on as background noise in the morning during middle school.  Her last name, Pappenheimer, comes from a real life family that was found guilty of witchcraft and executed in Germany.

- Gernderf Dermberder is a satirical deconstruction* of the “wise wizard mentor” archetype, as subtly hinted by the fact that his name sounds like two of the most famous examples of that archetype if you tried to say their names after stuffing your cheeks full of marshmallows like some sort of human squirrel.

*I say “deconstruction,” but one of the oldest arguably the most famous examples of this trope, Merlin, isn’t too far from Gernderf in terms of overall incompetence, as most versions of Arthuriana show Merlin to be a well-intentioned but ultimately flawed teacher whose own inability to truly understand goodness is instrumental in Camelot’s downfall.

- Harry Potter Rebuttal 2: Albus Dumbledore is one of the worst school administrators in all of fiction.  He’s SUPER good at grooming a child into becoming a loyal assassin to use against wizard Hitler, sure, but when it comes to running a school he’s just absolute dogshit.  He hired Gilderoy Lockhart!  He allowed Snape to routinely abuse students without any repercussions!  He threw Hagrid, a first-time teacher, to the fuckin’ wolves after giving him no real training in education AND no safety net!  As the main administrator of the school, all of these and other bits of fuckery fall on Dumbledore’s shoulders, and the narrative more or less glosses over it.  I bring this up because in many ways this is the crux of Gernderf Dermberder’s character: what would the wizard school narrative be like if we acknowledged how shitty it would be to have an admin who cares more about his vendetta against a cartoonishly evil supervillain than actually running a good school?

- Speaking of Dumbledore, the sleazy, used car salesman-esque take on him from A Very Potter Musical definitely had more than a little influence on how I wrote Gernderf Dermberder.  It’s a fun take!

- I wrote Gernderf’s lines with Matt Berry’s strange vocal inflections in mind, so there’s a little gift for you when you read the series from now on.

- So, remember in the second Harry Potter book where the ghost of Voldemort’s teenage diary reveals that he picked his supervillain name by creating an anagram from his real name - “Tom Marvollo Riddle” becomes “I am Lord Voldemort” - and how that’s, like, hilariously stupid and asinine for a character who is later more or less Hitler if he was a wizard?  I peppered Wizard School Mysteries with characters whose names are anagrams as a fun little riff on that.  For example, take Lord Dhenregirr’s name, remove the word “lord,” and rearrange the letters!  You might find something illuminating about his role in the narrative!

- You can also find a fun anagram in the first name of Lornwig Kayjay, the student in Fair Folk Studies class who seems to actively antagonize the professor with her steadfast commitment to the idea that people and creatures belong in strict categories that can be written off as pure good or pure evil depending on her whims.  Heck, the last name might also be illuminating, albeit not as an anagram.

- Harry Potter Rebuttal 3: the whole idea of being sorted into houses that are defined by easily digested character traits was a huge part of Harry Potter’s toyetic appeal, and while as a young Harry Potter fan I did buy into the conceit, I also always thought it was weird that people only were friends with kids in their same house (until the later books, anyway).  I mean, it makes sense in a plot structure way, as it gives all your hero kids a quick reason to always be together and whatnot, but it just feels counterintuitive to the nature of people, especially kids.  When an authority figure tells you “you have to be friends with these random strangers we’ve assigned to you,” the natural impulse is to say “fuck that” and go find people you actually like on your own.  With this in mind, I had my sorting ceremony specifically break up the core trio - James, Ivan, and Gretchen all end up in different dormitories and are forced to room with people they haven’t pre-established a relationship.  It’s intended to continue playing with the expectations Harry Potter set up for wizard school stories - rather than belonging to the Hero House, our three heroes end up in separate places, and have to build their friendship in spite of lacking that commonality connection.

- A more shallow riff on Harry Potter also occurs in the sorting ceremony, with the sorting hat being replaced with four fairy corpses whose restless ghosts call out to students when they’ve decided which dormitory they belong to.  I think magic should have an inherent creepiness/danger to it, and I thought this was a quick way to establish that Midgaheim is a setting where messing with the arcane if fucking dangerous.

- Polybeus Antony is obviously a riff on Draco Malfoy, being a pompous blonde boy who looks down on our hero’s first male friend while also demanding the hero form a friendship with himself instead.  As some readers have noted, James bucks tradition by refusing to take Polybeus’s enforced rivalry seriously.  I wanted the pair of them to have a similar dynamic as Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, with Polybeus trying too damn hard to make trivial drama happen and James undercutting it with trickster shenanigans.  Really, Polybeus is more akin to the Very Potter Musical version of Draco Malfoy than the actual canon version.

- Polybeus’s first name comes from the urban legend video game cabinet, Polybius, with just a slight change in spelling to make it feel more Greek Mythology-y.  His last name comes from Mark Antony from, uh, real life world history, for no particular reason other than I wanted each Meddlesome youth to have at least one name that felt kind of modern and normal, even if it’s spelled a bit weird.

- James Chaucer’s roommate, Rodrigo Cervantes, takes his last name from Miguel Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, which is one of the first and most famous works of literature that is an explicit parody of a specific fantasy genre.  His first name has no significance, I just think “Rodrigo” is a cool name.

- Harry Potter Rebuttal 4 (I told you there’d be a lot of these): there’s no shortage of bad teachers in Harry Potter, both because J.K. Rowling made a lot of them terrible on purpose and because she clearly doesn’t know a lot about education and made many of her “good” teachers pretty terrible on accident as a result, but the narrative generally seems to think this is just an inevitability that no one needs to do anything about.  Snape’s out here traumatizing kids so bad that magical creatures who become a person’s deepest fears turn into him around certain students, and he’s never faced any disciplinary action for it?  What the fuck, dude?  I mean, yes, this is definitely something that occurs in the real world, but the fact that all the “good” characters feel there’s nothing to be done about it is pretty screwed up, and as a person who’s worked in education, it feels like a huge missed opportunity for a story about kids in a school where some of the teachers are abusive to just... do nothing with that plot point.  So that’s where the Sorcery Studies plotline of this book came in - if we’re going to bring in abusive teachers, then let’s actually treat that abuse as a serious problem.

- Alys Evelina is... well, not a deconstruction per se, but a... riff, I guess, on Severus Snape.  Like Snape, she’s highly knowledgeable on the subject she teaches, has a clear prejudice against certain people that she’s very vocal about, has a personal grudge against one student in particular that she gets increasingly obsessive over, and is well-liked by the chief administrator of the school and as such gets a free pass to do whatever she likes, more or less.  Most of the ways she’s different actually make her a bit less awful - Alys is actually pretty good at teaching when not bullying a student, forgoing the lectures that Snape (and most of the Hogwarts teachers) utilize in favor of a more student focused teaching style that allows for greater participation on the class’s part.  She’s genial to most of her students, breaks down her subject in an easy to digest way, and can be very good at positive reinforcement.  She just also happens to be a bigot who bullies people that don’t fit her narrow view of what a “good” student should be.  Like a lot of real-world bullies, Alys thinks she is in the right because the victim of her abuse has broken an unspoken social contract by existing in a way she doesn’t find proper, and feels both morally justified and entitled to bully her victim as a result.  While it’s not necessarily more realistic than Snape’s general purpose assholery, I do think it’s more chilling in some ways to see Alys act genuinely kind and nurturing to most of her students while simultaneously being unthinkingly cruel to the one who doesn’t fit her standards.  And while Snape’s flagrant abuse of his students is just, well, a character quirk I guess, Aly’s abuse is a prominent subplot and force of conflict that has to be resolved.

- Actually Lord Dhenregirr could also be considered a riff on Severus Snape, since he’s the obviously-evil character introduced early on to draw your suspicion only to prove more or less harmless (I mean, Snape isn’t harmless, but the narrative treats the harm he does as trivial for some fucking reason).

- Margot d’Francane’s first name comes from Margot de la Barre, a French woman who was accused of witchcraft, while her last name is a reference to Marie de France, a poet who wrote several excellent ballads, including Lanval, a satirical romance about the shittiest knight in King Arthur’s court.  Shortening the “de” to d’ is an homage to Joan of Arc/Joan d’Arc, another woman who was accused of witchcraft, and also just a huge historical badass who accomplished amazing things in spite of others’ bigotry.  The early name for Margot was even Joan d’Francane, making the Joan of Arc homage more explicit, but then I realized that Joan is very close to Joanne, i.e. the “J” in “J.K. Rowling,” and I just couldn’t have that, so a different witch’s name was subbed in.  Margot’s a more fun name, anyway, showcasing the French Language’s weird obsession with not pronouncing consonants.

- Margot’s uncontrollable magic is intended to be read as a disability, albeit a fantastical one without a direct analogue in real life.  Magic is capable of removing so many problems in a narrative, so I feel it’s kind of necessary to show that it also causes some problems as well to balance things out, and part of the fun of imagining a world with supernatural bullshit is speculating on how different aspects of our world would crop up within that supernatural framework.  So Margot has a literal magic disability - part physical, part psychological, requiring both a material prosthetic AND a great deal of mental fortitude to overcome.  It’s not a straight allegory/metaphor, but a more messy sort of symbolism.  I wanted this to be tied to the “bully teacher” storyline because students with disabilities/special needs are the most likely to be abused, purposely or not, by teachers, often for the very same reasons that Alys Evelina uses in the story to justify her treatment of Margot.  It’s much more common than a teacher picking on a kid because he wanted to fuck that kid’s mom, at any rate.

- Oomlowt Schwaa is based on a D&D character I played.  His name’s sort of vestigial at this point, as the original Oomlowt Schwaa was a kobold who became an adventurer after being exiled for trying to learn about the languages of non-kobold cultures, and as such his name is two different linguistic terms: an umlaut and a schwa.  WSM Oomlowt isn’t a kobold linguist, but he is an academic who’s also a diminutive dragon, so the spirit of the original character is still there.

- As a competent yet outspoken teacher, Oomlowt probably owes a bit to Remus Lupin, one of the few teachers in Harry Potter who doesn’t completely suck ass at his job.  He definitely owes a lot to many of the real life teachers I’ve had who were fantastic, though there’s not any one in particular who I could cite as his chief inspiration.

- James getting obsessed about a project to the point of suffering extreme sleep deprivation is based on real life experience.  Multiple real life experiences, actually.  College all-nighters are fuckin’ brutal, man.

- Charlotte Bolshe the ettercap continues my goal of making spiders more likable to general audiences.  Her first name is obviously a nod to Charlotte’s Web, while her last name is an anagram of Shelob, perhaps the most famous spider in fantasy fiction.  It’s also similar to the word bolshy, which means “rebellious” or “radical,” which Charlotte certainly is.

- Fafgander the dragon has a name that’s a portmanteau of two of the most famous Norse dragons: Fafnir and Jormungandr.  I originally used this name for my first dragon in the web-game Flight Rising, which I sadly stopped playing once I reached the point that doing anything required me to send the game-makers, like, fifty bucks a day or whatever.  Though it’s far from the most original name, I have affection for it, and thought it was a good fit for the AAAM’s cantankerous dragon groundskeeper.

- All of the Meddlesome Youths are designed to fit different wizard aesthetics.  James Chaucer is kind of the standard D&D adventuring wizard, Ivan is the bumbling sorcerer’s apprentice, Gretchen a “wicked” witch, Margot an armored dark lord with dangerous magic powers, Rodrigo the magic chancellor with a hidden agenda, Charlotte a pleasant little “good” witch, and Polybeus a warrior wizard.   Serena Takeuchi, then, is a fairly obvious homage to the magical girls of Japanese pop culture.  I wanted one of the main characters to pay homage to the tradition of Japan’s own unique takes on Medieval European Fantasy, since those made a huge impact on how Midgaheim came to be.

- Serena’s name is specifically a Sailor Moon homage, with Serena being Usagi’s name in the English dub, and Takeuchi being the last name of Sailor Moon’s creator.  In terms of costume design and personality, though, she takes more after Lina Inverse from Slayers.

- Mr. Mackers the nuckelavee takes his name from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which, because of its supposed curse, is sometimes referred to by the nickname “Mackers” to avoid incurring the wrath of evil spirits or whatever.  A horrifying Scottish play provides the name for a horrifying Scottish fairy.

- A lot of modern media is leaning very heavily on the idea of “Seelies = good fairies, Unseelies = evil fairies,” which I dislike both for its oversimplification of fairy folklore and for, you know, just being a trope where one side can be written off as Always Chaotic Evil.  That’s why I decided to have one of the most benign fairies in our story be a nuckelavee, one of the most evil-coded Unseelie fairies in folklore, and to have the main villain be a classic pretty boy elf from the Seelie court.

- A lot of modern fiction also likes to portray the Fair Folk as unanimously evil and terrifying, in the same way that people like to believe like Biblical Angels were intended to be morally ambiguous eldritch abominations.  I didn’t want to fall into that trope either.  The Fair Folk in Midgaheim are strange, with different customs and values than those we’re used to as a result of living in a world where the laws of reality are easily bent and broken, but they’re ultimately people at the end of the day, with all the moral complexities that brings.  Some are nice, some are cruel, some are in between.  The fairy threat in WSM is a result of one bastard in charge deciding to do something horrible, and a bunch of the people forced to work for him carrying out the order, regardless of whether they agree with it (which some do, and some don’t).

- The line about royals producing “jelly-boned blob babies” is inspired by an actual real life medieval text about a deformed prince (literally called “the blob baby”) that I heard discussed at a Medieval Studies Congress in college.  The obsession with producing pure-blooded royal heirs led to a lot of incest, which in turn led to some horrible genetic defects among royalty that it took an astoundingly long time for royals to realize might mean they should stop doing so much incest.  It’s one of those horrible details about the reality of the middle ages that never shows up in fantasy fiction that claims to be realistic because of how un-sexy it is.

- Fairyland takes a great deal of inspiration from both Wonderland and the works of Dr. Seuss.  If you read the descriptions closely, you might spot the lawyer-friendly cameos of the Trufula trees from The Lorax.  I wanted it to feel dangerously whimsical, the kind of place where the stakes are simultaneously really high and really ridiculous.

- The Queen of Night takes her name from the antagonist of The Magic Flute, though she’s otherwise her own character, more or less.  The rest of the Francobreton Fairy Court’s names spun off from there, with a dash of the card and chess courts from Alice in Wonderland put in for good measure.  It worked well for the villain of the book, as most stories depict summer as an idyllic time, when in reality its an overly hot, humid, and nasty little season that’s had too much good press for far too long! ...in my humble opinion, anyway.

- Someone on this hellsite made a story prompt post ages ago about a trans person selling their dead name to the Fair folk and my brain latched onto it as a great story beat, and that ultimately became the climax of this book.  While I may have initially made James Chaucer trans out of spite, I tried to make his status as a trans boy as structurally important as possible, to the point that you couldn't’ remove it without irreparably damaging both the plot and themes of this novel.  The entire climax hinges on it.

- One of my favorite tropes hails from one of my least favorite genres of fiction, police procedurals.  It’s the trope of the authority figure who’s butted heads with the heroes for most of the narrative finally seeing their value at the end when the heroes have saved the day - the “You’re a loose canon, but you get results!” moment.  It’s just a good moment!  Hell, the original teaser trailer for Mulan (the cartoon) used that moment as its audience hook.  So I used it at the end of this book without shame.  But for my sake, please know the Meddlesome Youths are not cops.  They’re private detectives.

- One of the details I still like from the Harry Potter books were the times when Harry chose to stay at Hogwarts during winter break rather than return to his shitty home, and especially the times when Ron and/or Hermione chose to stay behind with him.  It’s just a very sweet detail that makes you feel for the protagonist and the setting, that for all its peril, the wizard school has succeeded in becoming a loving home.  So I will cop to the fact that I kinda stole that outright, without any satirical bent or counterargument attached.  But, to be fair, it’s also a very common part of the college experience.  I know I felt a huge attachment to my life at school and my friends there, and I actually liked my original home.  College became my second home, and even to this day I pine for it sometimes.

That’s all I can think of at the moment, but I’m sure there’s stuff I forgot - most likely a bunch of joking little references to things in dialogue, because I pepper a lot of little homages and allusions in there for my own amusement, and WSM has a lot of dialogue in it.

#Wizard School Mysteries