#Cruciamentum

[drondskaath]

Cruciamentum | Obsidian Refractions | 24th November, 2023

International Death Metal

Artwork by David Glomba

[metal-patches-vinyl]

New patch day: Cruciamentum and Gatecreeper.

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

ℭ𝔯𝔲𝔠𝔦𝔞𝔪𝔢𝔫𝔱𝔲𝔪 - 𝔑𝔢𝔠𝔯𝔬𝔭𝔥𝔞𝔤𝔬𝔲𝔰 ℭ𝔬𝔪𝔪𝔲𝔫𝔦𝔬𝔫

[radiophd]

cruciamentum -- abhorrence evangelium

[lesdeuxmuses]

Cruciamentum - Charnel Passages (Me Saco Un Ojo Records, Profound Lore Records, 2019)

[proofhead]

Chaos Magazine 11. ve 12. Sayılar

Aylar önce Chaos Magazine’in geri dönüş sayısının haberini yaptıktan sonra, yıl bitmeden bir yeni sayı ve devamında da yepyeni bir 12. sayı daha yayımladı Lainmeun – Murat Chaos Gökbulut. Derginin 10. sayısıyla birlikte başlayan renkli ve ciltli bookazin formatı öylesine sevildi ki geriye dönüp yıllar önce siyah beyaz çıkan 9. sayıyı bile “yalandan renkli” bastı. Dolayısıyla bu yepyeni renkli ve…

[triste-guillotine]

CRUCIAMENTUM "Obsidian Refractions" LP 2023

1. Charnel Passages 2. Abhorrence Evangelium 3. Necropolis of Obsidian Mirrors 4. Scorn Manifestation 5. Interminable Rebirth in Abomination 6. Drowned

"Quietly the tides consumed Taking hold, their cold embrace Enveloped and overwhelmed Drifting, interred within the food

Dragged by the tide to the deepest abyss Where shadows dance in the lightless gulf

With each breath, a deluge, An inexorable force Lungs overwhelmed and immersed Stifled, fading beyond

Adrift, carried by the tide Veins filled with sediment

The body erodes like leaves in the wind At the pull of the undercurrent

To the end, dark waters carry me forth Spread across the abyssal plains"

CRUCIAMENTUM on "Obsidian Refractions" are : C.E. – Lead Vocals / Bass D.L. – Guitars/ Keyboards / Backing Vocals D.R. – Guitars M.H. – Drums

Artwork by David Glomba. Mixing and Re-Amping by Greg Chandler at Priory Recording Studio. Mastered by D. Lowndes at Resonance Sound Studios.

Obsidian Refractions | CRUCIAMENTUM | Cruciamentum (bandcamp.com)

[coraniaid]

It's somewhat criminal that Faith wasn't there in Checkpoint to be able to appreciate Buffy dressed in a black leather jacket (or, honestly, any of Buffy's various mostly-black outfits this episode) or Buffy coming close to killing a human being in an alleyway after a fight (and helping herself to a cool new weapon afterwards) or Buffy threatening the Council when they tried to give her orders or Buffy throwing sharp objects at members of the Council when they tried to interrupt. Because, you know, these are things Faith would have understood the appeal of.

It's somewhat fitting, on the other hand, that this was the one episode to air in a continuous run of almost one thousand days (well, 938 days exactly, between Season 4's Restless and Season 7's Bring on the Night) in which the writers remembered Faith even existed Buffy said Faith's name. And that she does so by bringing up the time when she "was" Faith.

[oveliagirlhaditright]

You know what's sad? Even if Kendra hadn't been killed by Drusilla and had survived season two, there's a good chance she wouldn't have survived her Cruciamentum when it eventually came up--since a Slayer, without her strength there, needs to be clever and to be able to think outside the box, in order to do so: everything Kendra had been raised and taught not to do, while living within the Council's strict guidelines the Council had imposed onto her life from her birth.

Maybe there's a chance she could have survived, if she had gotten to spend more time with Buffy--as we did see that Buffy was already starting to have small influences on her--but I don't know.

[metal-patches-vinyl]

Cruciamentum – Obsidian Refractions (2023). I discovered this way late in the year, so I’ve only been able to spin it a couple of times. But this is really good. Reminds me of early Decapitated in a lot of ways. Production is so good! Highly recommended.

[ohrevienssoleil]

If Jenny had survived the events of Passion I am confident she would have gotten Giles into Even More Trouble with the Council by immediately leaving the library in the wake of Buffy's test to go and warn Faith about the Cruciamentum.

[evermore-grimoire]

The Evermore Grimoire: Slayers

Nikki Wood was a Slayer based in New York City during the 1970s and was trained by a Watcher named Crowley. She was notable for being one of the few Slayers known to have been a mother. In 1973, Nikki participated in her Tento di Cruciamentum, much to the disapproval of Crowley, who was appalled that the Watchers Council forced her to undergo it as she was pregnant at the time. Upon surviving her Cruciamentum, she gave birth to her son named Robin. She didn't know exactly who his father was as she "didn't take names when blowing off steam." Crowley arranged for Nikki to go into hiding and live a normal life with Robin. Nikki took Robin and lived in South America as well as Mexico for a while. However, she couldn't dismiss her calling, and returned to New York and her duty as the Slayer. Sometime in 1977, the vampire Spike tracked Nikki down, wanting to challenge and kill his second Slayer. They met and fought in Central Park for the first time with Nikki's young son Robin watching from behind a park bench. The fight came to a stand still and Spike fled the scene. Before he left, he complimented her coat. In the same year, Nikki and Spike had their final showdown inside a New York City subway train. Nikki was able to pin Spike to the floor and repeatedly punch him, but, as the train went through a dark tunnel, Spike took advantage and switched positions. Nikki begged to be able to return home to her son, but he strangled her, before breaking her neck and stealing her coat which he wore until its destruction 26 years later.

artwork by bofenglin

[herinsectreflection]

But You're Just A Girl (Helpless)

The test that Buffy undergoes in this episode – in which she is stripped of her powers, locked inside a house, and forced to fight a mentally unstable vampire – is named in the script as The Cruciamentum. Giles describes it as “an archaic exercise in cruelty”, and it’s difficult to think of a description that could be more accurate.

The word Cruciamentum is an invented declension that roughly translates from Latin as “result of torture”. Quentin Travers – making his first appearance here as the Head of the Watcher’s Council – defends the practice as a necessary rite of passage, meant to make a Slayer stronger, but this reasoning falls apart under scrutiny The scenario is so heavily weighted against the Slayer, robbing her not only of her powers but the knowledge that she is being robbed at all, that it makes more sense to view the Cruciamentum not as a test, but as a method of control, designed to kill off Slayers that reach adulthood and so gain more independence from the Council. At the very least, it demonstrates the Council’s control over the Slayer, holding the implicit threat of taking away her powers again over her head for the rest of her life. As is the case with many unjust systems, the cruelty is the point.

The Cruciamentum is the Council’s most clear and obvious cruelty, but it is not by any means their only one. Cruelty is their origin story, as we see in Get It Done how they forcibly created the first Slayer through metaphorical rape. It is baked into the central idea of One Girl In All The World – a system which relies on the deaths of an infinite chain of young women. Its current setup, with one Watcher in the field and apparently dozens sitting safely away in England, leads to an inevitable cruelty of indifference that Giles calls out in this episode. There are cruelties of incompetence – failing to alert the field about the firing of Gwendolyn Post, sending the underqualified Wesley to Sunnydale. But perhaps their most impactful cruelty is also their most subtle. It came the moment that Buffy Summers, sitting outside her school in 1997, was called to be a Slayer. This act not only changed Buffy’s life, but caused an irreparable crack in her psyche. It splits her perceived self into two component parts – The Girl and The Slayer – twin selves that she spends seven seasons trying to reconcile.

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[duckwnoeyes]

Having thoughts about the effects of Merrick’s ‘not-quite’ existence on Buffy and Giles’ relationship again:

Part of me believes that one of the reasons Buffy is able to get on with Giles when she meets him, and doesn’t blame him all that much for the whole ‘forced to fight vampires and die young’ thing, is because she’s already placed all that blame on Merrick.

I think Giles gets away with so much, in regards to how he treats Buffy (ie: the cruciamentum), because Giles wasn’t the one to introduce Buffy to the world of evil. Giles wasn’t the one to turn up one day and completely turn Buffy’s life upside down, he wasn’t the one to teach how her to stake a vampire, he wasn’t the one who had to do the actual heavy lifting in making Buffy start slaying. That was all Merrick.

When Giles meets Buffy she’s already capable, already aware of the risks and all the baggage that comes with the job. This makes Giles’ job (and conscience) a hell of a lot easier bc Buffy’s essentially a pre-made slayer. But it also means that Giles doesn’t have to be the one to tell Buffy she’s inevitably going to die soon. Bc I just can’t see Buffy getting as close to Giles as she does in canon if he was the one the break that news to her.

I think Giles can only fill the role of surrogate father because Buffy already had a watcher. Merrick is the scapegoat in their relationship, the person Buffy internally blames for all the horrible things the council does to her so that she doesn’t have to blame Giles. Merrick who she never mentions, who died to save her, who (according to the comics) treated her in a very similar manner to Giles in season 1.

Merrick haunts Buffy and Giles’ relationship, and here it’s that Buffy and Giles are only able to have a relationship because Merrick is haunting it.