#I read his wiki page but god that was a mistake

[amiphitri]

Explaining the mythological origins and namesake of Mithra (MHYK): a very long and probably unnecessary post by a mhyk obsessed mythology nerd

Let me just preface this by saying that I haven’t gone through any formal education in ancient history or religions (yet) and even if I’ve researched it quite a bit I’m still bound to make plenty of mistakes. Also my expertise lies in grecoroman myth and I only have very surface-level knowledge of the other religions I mention here, although I’ve recently gone down a rabbit hole in regards to specifically their portrayal of the mithraic figure because goddamnit those wizards have me in a stranglehold and if I can’t combine my two current hyperfixations what’s even the point.

As there is gonna be quite a few different Mithras mentioned I will be referring to the fictional Mithra as “Mithra (mhyk)”. If I mention any other Mithra/Mitra/Mithras assume I’m talking about the deity.

Also this text is quite long so read more under the cut:

As you may or may not know if you’ve read through Mithras (mhyk) wiki page he takes his name from persian mythology! However this is a bit of an oversimplification as Mithra actually appears in pre-Zoroastrian Persian myth, Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Roman myth and Mithraism, although with slight variations in his name and more significant variations in his role and portrayal.

Unfortunately since I have no knowledge of japanese and am entirely basing my interpretation of mahoyaku off the english translations I can’t attest to if the romanji of his name is accurate nor if japanese translations of mithraic texts make any differentiation between the names of Mithra in the different religions in which he’s present, but going off the romanisation i’ve seen used his name is spelled “Mithra” which is the spelling used for the Mithra in persian mythology and zoroastrianism. In roman mythology and mithraism hes called “Mithras”, and in hinduism he’s called “Mitra”, so Mithra (mhyk) using that particular spelling for his name would imply that he’s more based on the pre-zoroastrian and zoroastrian Mithra.

However after reading about all different Mithras from the different religions I can find possible links and references to all Mithras in Mithras (mhyk) writing so I’m gonna talk about all of them anyways! I’m mostly gonna focus on Zoroastrianism and Mithraism tho since those are the ones I’m able to find the most information on!

The first mention of Mithra comes from 1400 BC where he is mentioned as a Vedic deity (gross oversimplification but Vedic religion is a sort of pre-cursor to Hinduism) and referred to as “Mitra”. He then seems to have spread to ancient Persia where he is adopted into the Persian pantheon, and when Zoroastrianism takes over as the dominant religion in Persia he continues to be a prevalent figure.

Zoroastrianism is (is not was because it’s actually still practiced! fun fact Freddie Mercury was a Zoroastrian) a dualistic religion that focuses on the fight between good and evil, with a supreme being commonly referred to as “Ahura Mazda” and an evil spirit referred to as “Angra Mainyu” whom he stands in conflict with. Gods from the earlier pre-zoroastrian religion are incorporated into Zoroastrianism as beings called “ahuras”and “daevas”, with a few divinities called “yazatas” standing directly under “Ahura Mazda”. One of these “yazatas” is Mithra!

Scholars argue whether Zoroastrianism should be considered a monotheistic or polytheistic religion but many choose to refer to yazatas and by extension Mithra as divine beings that are underneath god rather than actual gods (think like angels), with “Ahura Mazda” being the only true god. However wether or not Mithra counts as a god there are still some scholars that believe that he was worshipped kinda like one!

In Zoroastrianism Mithra is the yazata of justice, the sun, light, friendship (“Mitra” actually means friend!!! it can also mean “that which binds” or oath/contract/covenant), pacts, covenants, contracts and most notably for our purposes oaths. Yep, oaths. As in promises. Sound familiar?

As the keeper of oaths he observes the world and makes sure no-one breaks their promises, and if they do they suffer his wrath, which may have caused him to also sometimes be viewed as a god of war according to some scholars. Mithra follows the path of the sun during the day, and during the night he fights evil demons with a spiked club, which is why the sky is red at the break of dawn (as he smashes the demons to pieces). So yeah the deity Mithra doesn’t get any sleep either, although I find this more likely to be a coincidence than intentional lol. Mithra rides a chariot drawn by four horses with no shadows and gold and silver hooves. He’s described to have millions of eyes and ears that can observe any oath-breakers and arms that can stretch and aid his followers all throughout the world (reminds me of Mithras (mhyk) signature teleportation magic a bit).

Mithra is also one of the three judges in the afterlife. When someone dies the zoroastrians believe the soul remains in the body for three days, after which it goes to the Chinwad bridge. Mithra, Srosh and Rashn judges the soul and if it’s deemed to have lived a good life the bridge widens and the soul can pass through with ease, but if it’s deemed to have lived an evil life the bridge becomes narrow and the soul falls down into the abyss below. The associations with death really aren’t as strong in Mithra as they are in Mithra (mhyk), but its still interesting to see that they’re there.

Mithra is also associated with fire and running water, both of which are considered holy in Zoroastrianism. (Old zoroastrians used to dispose of corpses by tying them up and letting birds eat them as the body is considered impure after the soul departs and thus can’t be cremated or risk getting near running water (as fire and running water is holy). thats not really related to Mithra I just think that’s interesting lol.)

Like many other deities Mithra was later picked up by the romans, where he became known as Mithras. Mithras shares very few similarities with the zoroastrian Mithra aside from etymological links and a connection to the sun, and it’s widely agreed that Mithras is simply the case of romans seeing the worship of Mithra and adopting the name rather than any actual zoroastrians spreading their worship to Rome. A lot of the time in antiquity people would make connections between gods that have similar roles from different cultures and associate them with eachother, and because of this Mithras became linked with sun gods such as Helios, Apollo and Sol. He also became known as “Sol Invictus” which means “The undefeated sun god”! Poor Mithra (mhyk) kinda failed the whole undefeated thing..

One of the most famous mystery cults and an early competitor to christianity was actually dedicated to the worship of Mithras. A “mystery cult” in antiquity refers to a cult which only those initiated are allowed to take part in, and “cult” when referring to ancient cults doesn’t have the same connotations as modern day cults and simply means a sub-sect of a bigger religion with it’s own teachings and rites. Although i’m not gonna lie the cult of Mithras is kinda giving me scientology vibes so. Yeah. Maybe it is a cult cult.

The cult of Mithras, commonly referred to as Mithraism by modern scholars, was a popular cult around the first to fourth century CE. Mithraism was mostly popular among soldiers, merchants and slaves and it’s worshippers consisted mainly of men. I’ve seen split opinions among scholars on wether women were allowed in the cult, but even if they were they most likely didn’t have the ability to climb the ranks in the same way men did. Mithraism had a rank system, where members could do work or pay probably (hence the earlier scientology comment) to learn more of the secrets of the cult and gain higher status.

There were 7 different ranks:

Corax (raven), Nymphus (bridegroom), Miles (soldier), Perses (persian), Heliodromus (sun-runner) and Pater (father), and each rank had their own protective planetary god and symbols.

Mithraism had some sort of an initiation ritual, however we don’t know exactly what that ritual entailed. It’s referenced as including both extreme heat and extreme cold, and inscriptions have been found where an initiate into the cult writes about having been “born again”. Christian writers have described the initiation ritual as being extremely brutal, but this likely isn’t true as those sources are incredibly biased with many christians standing in direct conflict with Mithraism.

The worship of Mithras took place in underground temples known as “Mithreums”. These Mithreums were often formed like caves, and had several altars, seats, a place to prepare food and several reliefs depicting Mithras in his various myths. The most central myth to Mithraism seems to have been a tauroctony, or in other words a slaying of a bull. All Mithraums have a depiction of the tauroctony in them.

In the tauroctony Mithras is shown grappling a bull and stabbing it with a dagger, with several animals almost always including (but not necessarily limited to) a dog, a raven, a snake and a scorpion surrounding them. Wheat grows out of the bulls tail, and grapes well out from the open wound in its throat. Watching down on them is Sol (a sun god heavily linked to and sometimes synonymous with Mithras) and Luna (a moon goddess), and two twins named Cautes and Cautopates stand on either side holding torches, with Cautes torch pointing upwards and Cautopates torch pointing downwards.

Unfortunately since Mithraism was a mystery cult there is not much written down about it’s teachings from actual practitioners, and most written sources we have are either heavily biased, written way after Mithraism stopped being practiced, or both. Most of the information we can gather thus comes from these reliefs, so interpreting what the myth is really about is a bit challenging.

Some scholars have interpreted it to be a sort of creation myth (kinda Ymir style if you’re familiar with norse mythology), which could be further cemented by the possible similarities between some iconography in Mithras birth and Orphic (another cult (although not a mystery one) don’t even get me started we’ll be here all day) creation myth.

Speaking of Mithras birth, he gets born out of a rock! Sometimes as a child but usually as a grown man, and often the torch-bearing twins are present at his birth too. This is also gathered from mostly reliefs and short inscriptions so we really don’t know much about it.

There is also reliefs of some sort of water miracle where Mithras shoots a rock with a bow and arrow and summons water from it, depictions of Mithras hunting the bull, a banquet where Mithras and Sol feast on the bull, a handshake between Sol and Mithras, and Sol and Mithras ascending to the heavens in a chariot. There is also a statue of a lion headed god with a snake wrapping around its body that commonly shows up in mithreums, however we don’t really know who this god is.

Mithraism seems to be heavily linked to astrology and many believe the figures in the tauroctony to be representative of different celestial bodies and star signs, however theres a lot of disagreement in regards to which figure represents what. Some even link Mithraism to some sort of astral ascension, but this is hotly debated.

Mithraism is also believed by some to have inspired christianity, with Mithras often being compared to Jesus. I personally don’t really buy this and see other mystery cults such as those surrounding Dionysus to be more likely to have been inspiration for Jesus, but it’s at the very least possible that Mithraism influenced christmas to be on the 25th of December. According to some scholars Mithras birthday was celebrated the 25th of December (others argue it was more a general celebration of the sun) and early christians may have chosen to put christmas on that day to directly compete with Mithraism. Additionally, many mithrean rituals have been compared to christian rituals and were described by christians at the time as evil imitations of christian practices.

When christianity became the state religion in rome Mithraism quickly declined, but during a good while Mithraism was just as widespread and popular as christianity and some believe that had things gone differently Mithraism could’ve ended up being an important world religion still to this day.

Now all of this is really interesting, but if you came here for Mithra (mhyk) it may not be all that relevant. Lemme tell you what’s more relevant tho: The bull is the moon. Or well more accurately, some scholars believe the bull to represent the moon.

Bulls were sometimes a symbol for the moon in antiquity due to their crescent shaped horns and their association with the moon goddess Selene/Luna. This, in combination with the imagery of Sol and Luna on opposing sides of the depictions of the tauroctony has made some believe that the scene depicts Mithras triumph over the moon and by extension death and darkness.

Additionally, Mitra (the Vedic Hindu version of Mithras) actually has a similar bull slaying story in which he reluctantly participates in the sacrifice of the moon god Soma who takes the form of a bull, so yeah multiple Mithras may do moon slaying. Ig Mithra (mhyk) fights the moon in every universe.

There’s obviously a lot more about all these deities I haven’t gone over but finding credible sources is unfortunately a bit difficult and if I continue I may be here for weeks so!! That’s all for now! I doubt Mahoyakus creators actually knew about all this, but I still think its really neat they chose Mithra as the name for their character considering hes such an interesting mythological figure!! Also ig the Cult of Mithras lives on in all the crazy Mahoyaku fans simping over Mithra (mhyk)..

[vespaer77]

You just did the impossible. You changed someone’s opinion online. I can see Gale now. Thank you!

Listen, I'd be the first to forgive anyone if they didn't share my feelings. Gale is the worst about filling in the gaps in his story, and I filled a lot of them by suddenly taking an interest... and then going out to the Forbidden Realms wiki pages and doing supplementary reading on Mystra and Blackstaff Academy which made me first go, "Oh." And then, "OH." And then finally, "Oh my god."

It's like the same criticism I have about Star Wars, haha =) In order to know the whole story, one has to have seen x and y shows and read z comic book. Otherwise you wouldn't know that Kylo Ren wasn't actually responsible for the destruction of Luke's temple, which is somewhat critical yet relatively hidden information.

I *hated* Gale in early access. He was my dead last least favorite character. They changed him somewhat in full release (not to mention he was infinitely hotter, lol), but it wasn't until damned near the end of the game when I was like, "Wait... wait a minute." I think that's also why they did to Rolan what they did - in the same place, even. While we were completing Gale's companion quest. Rolan was the clue, the tip off. Another insufferably egotistical wizard. Suffering abuse. They laid the parallel out so plainly and I still walked right past it until Gale read the book and suddenly took a very surprisingly dark turn. And I felt so silly that it surprised me so.

And I was so disinterested in Gale at the time that I saved his companion quest for basically the last. Sort of. I think I did Gortash after him. But I got to watch all the other companions face their abuser and win. I got to help Wyll break his contract AND free his father. I got to help Shadowheart free herself from Shar and return to the open arms of Selune. I got to help Halsin fix his past mistakes and return Moonrise to its former self. I got to help Astarion face his abuser at long, long last and free himself for the first time in his own memory, along with thousands of others. And Sebastian <3 And then I even helped Karlach face her abuser and bring him to justice.

But what did Gale get to do? Where was his freedom? His catharsis? When he faced his abuser, the only thing that happened was her expressing her disappointment that he was still alive, that he didn't choose her above his own self-inflicted demise. And then she subjected him to yet another new pact that still indebted him to her. Because he's a wizard. No matter what he does, as long as he draws breath and casts spells, he'll always be indebted to her. And it just felt so... hollow. Unfair.

it made me FEEEEEEELLLLLLugh things haha! And then I was like, fuck. No, I do. I like this character.

OKAY I LOVE HIM, ALRIGHT? THERE. I SAID IT.

So I unbelievably and totally and with full chest and face understand and respect it. Not every character is going to be to everyone's tastes. If anything? It just proves how well these characters are written. That this team of writers were capable of such subtlety and depth. I'm not sure I could do the same justice to a fictional creation of my own. I'm just in awe of Larian Studios =)

[teejaystumbles]

I finished reading Sandman and thought that that was it for all canonical Hob content. Then I found on his wiki page that he appears in Dead boy Detectives. So, I read the first comic for Dead boy detectives and sure enough there he is. Interestingly enough, he does frequently talk about Dream, mistaking Charles and Edwin as working for Daniel, and screaming out to Dream for help when he's attacked. Found it very interesting that the French guy (fully forgot his name) had to specifically put a spell on Hob so that Dream wouldn't be able to hear him, which means that Dream totally could and would come to his aid otherwise. But also like, how the hell did they know that he would come and help Hob, if this had happened before I'd imagine it to show up in cannon at some point.

Oh my god, I had no idea!! That sounds delightful!! I'll have to read that someday! My theory is that, well, Hob is Dream's, isn't he? And it's not unknown. I'd guess that in the world of immortals, gods and other entities, it may be common knowledge that the Dreamlord has a standing appointment with a protégé/friend (? You dare??) on June 7th every hundred years and that you better not expect him to clear his calendar for you on that day. Or they simply know he's Dream's because Hob is not secretive about it.

On the other hand, you have to consider that Dead Boy Detectives is probably not written by Gaiman and therefore not officially Sandman canon and someone, like you and me, thought it would be great if Daniel had a better relationship with Hob, to a point where he knows his name and would call him for help.

[yamayuandadu]

do you have any info on the obscure hittite deity Kurunta? according to his wiki he was a god of hunting and wild animals who rebelled against Tarḫunna and became king of the gods forcing "humanity against the gods" but was later overthrown by a coalition of gods and animals. according to that same wiki he showed up at the telepinu myth and was apparently worshipped in Carchemish.

By Hittite deity standards Kurunta is the opposite of obscure. Kammamma or Zulki are obscure, Kurunta isn't. The length of wiki pages not updated in 10+ years is not a metric of obscurity.

The article is ineptly written compared to the one on the German wiki, though both have the same problem with incredibly faulty approach to myths only translated into Hittite, and with rendering logograms in general. More under the cut.

Kurunta is essentially the type specimen for the category of tutelary deities, which in the context of Hittitology refers to any deity whose name could be represented by the logogram LAMMA. This sign can also be read as KAL; since the Mesopotamian Lamma deities are female and the Anatolian ones generally male and consistently more major some authors favor the latter option to stress the difference. For the history of this debate see here, for an earlier view see here. The most extensive study of this category remains Gregory McMahon’s The Hittite State Cult of the Tutelary Deities from 1991.

Kurunta is the Hittite form of the name, but Piotr Taracha in Religions of Second Millennium Anatolia argues he originally belonged to the Luwian cultural milieu, which would make the form Runtiya the basic one, though this is not universally accepted (ironically, the Runitya wiki article is pretty solid in contrast with Kurunta’s). This debate aside, the use of the logogram LAMMA to represent Kurunta  was so well established that you will quickly notice referring to him (and many of his peers) as LAMMA or “tutelary deity” is more widespread in scholarship. Today logograms are generally rendered in all caps but that wasn’t always the case in the past leading to the awkward situation on the German wiki, with NIN.URTA treated as the actual Ninurta and not an Anatolian deity represented by his name.

Kurunta’s primary roles seemed to be those of a nature god keen on hunting, though as a royal protective deity he also had warlike leanings. His symbols include a stag and a spear. He occupies an elevated position in the Hittite state pantheon, appearing as the #3 behind the weather god (Tarhunna) and the sun goddess of Arinna in standard enumerations.

Another major mistake on the wiki is that today it is the consensus position that the god worshiped in Carchemish was Karhuha and not Kurunta. Same logographic writing, similar iconography, but these are not interchangeable. I also have no clue what the wiki means by "saving deity". Some ungodly calque or automatic translation from German Schutzgott? That's "tutelary god" in English. 

The myth you mention, which seems to be someone’s personal faulty interpretation of a part of the Kumarbi cycle, also stars the tutelary god of Carchemish and not Kurunta. The most up to date treatment of this problem is Archi's Orality, Direct Speech and the Kumarbi Cycle. Archi accepts that a Hittite reader would probably read the logogram as Kurunta, but stresses the myth, due to its Hurrian origin and connection with Carchemish, can only be a narrative about Karhuha. I think his arguments are sound. McMahon outright rejects a Hittite reading. For more background on these myths in general and their cultural context see here (+sources linked), I wrote a lot about this last year so I do not think I need to repeat myself here. Most notably, the theme of kingship among the gods was a firmly Hurrian concern, not Hittite.

Kurunta/Runtiya has notably proven himself to be one of the most long-lived Bronze Age Anatolian deities, and in Cilicia and Pisydia was worshiped well into the Hellenistic period. This is actually fairly unique, as only a handful of other, mostly fairly minor, deities made it past the Bronze Age collapse across the region.

[kirbles]

Why do you like Mystra so much? I prefer dnd mystra to bg3 mystra, so I'd love to see a new perspective :)

hi :0 oouuu this is kinda hard to put into words but i'll try my best!

i'll preface this by saying i have literally 0 dnd knowledge, i've never played it before. bg3 is my first real 'venture' into it. all my knowledge of mystra comes from gale's personal quest/origin story and living on mystra's wiki pages for a few days.

rambling under cut oops. it's gonna be a lot of my own interpretation, headcanons and opinions so... if you read it and don't agree w me pls be nice i'm just a lil guy who likes morally grey women.

firstly. i can understand why it can be hard for ppl to view gale and mystra's relationship with nuance when we don't have the basis of mortal/deity relationships irl to compare it to. i don't doubt gale's adeptness in magic wasn't cultivated to be of use to mystra by her for the majority of his life, but to see it as starkly black/white i think fails the narrative that larian tried to establish.

mystra as a goddess isn't inherently evil at all, or purposefully seeking out to be malicious towards gale. imo she is indifferent and self serving, which honestly? i think is far worse in the context of a romantic and sexual relationship between mortal and deity. i can imagine gale falling in love with her after years upon years studying under her in her domain, and being so worried she'd cast him away because he has feelings for her. but in the grand scheme of things that is redundant to her. she cares about what he can provide for her and that he doesn't overstep the bounds she has set for him and every other mortal.

i have absolutely no doubts that mystra cared for gale in her own weird way, he WAS her chosen after all. but she is a god, incapable of mortal thoughts and feelings. any love gale felt towards her was not returned in the same capacity. it is more narratively appealing to me that she would encourage their relationship developing to what he wanted it to be because it made gale a better wizard if they're 'in a relationship'.

she made the mistake of allowing gale to stand beside her at the absolute crucible of magic. he, a man hungry to learn more and be better, got to witness the magic that he would never be able to wield. and when he begged mystra to allow him, that it would be put to good use and he wasn't like other mortals, she told him to be content with what he had.

she, the goddess of magic, wanted to keep balance in the realms. gale, her chosen, who was a prodigy, was not allowed special treatment because she had to keep the status quo.

gale himself did the research into 'a lost piece of weave' and he incorrectly assumed that it was a piece of HER weave that she had lost after the second sundering. he went out of his way to get it, not because he wanted to benefit her, but because he wanted her to be SO impressed by him and what he was capable of achieving that she would disregard the bounds she put up and allow him access to the power and magic he deserved.

but this isn't me hating on gale at all. on the contrary, his hubris is extremely fucking human of him, and something mystra could have dealt with in a FAR more gracious way than she did. consider the weave in the book he found was karsite weave, that was made with the intent to destroy mystra's weave. that would scare her absolutely shitless!!! but is it not petty that she did not think to tell gale that it wasn't a piece of her? not even warn him it was dangerous, BEFORE he opened it and had it latch onto him??

she had told gale, her chosen, to be content with what he had. (and he had a LOT more going for him than most mortals or wizards could dream of.) instead of listening to her, he went out of his way to seek it out anyway, completely disregarding the order's of his goddess. she likely felt justified in punishing him in the way that she did, even tho it was overkill.

mystra herself is not without blame. while she may not be out to get gale, she was clearly VERY petty in how she went about punishing him for a very, very human act of folly - a folly that, had she immediately alleviated from him, he might not ever endeavour to repeat again.

and in peak petty fashion she banishes him. he is no longer considered her chosen. his magic is slowly being drained by the netherese blight in his chest, which he still has no explanation for when you keep in mind that he thought it was MYSTRA'S weave in that book. so why was it eating at the magic inside of him, when it belonged to the goddess he adored all his life? mystra purposefully hides the truth that it was karsite weave from him, even though she knew from the start. she let him suffer the aftermath as the orb ate his magic when she honestly could've cured it the entire time.

she only bestows the charm to halt the magic feeding from him to instead feed on her weave, when she is under the impression that it is temporary, and that gale will utilise the bomb in his chest to get rid of the crown of karsus that threatens her very existence. which, by the way, she purposefully dressed it up in the term 'the heart of the absolute' and did NOT mention it being the crown of karsus - something gale learns RIGHT before he has to make the decision to blow himself up.

she paints it as a holy missive to make him feel important and bestow forgiveness she has no right to grant, just so he will do it. because though he is no longer her chosen and he is lost, he is so clearly devoted to her still and she NEEDED that devotion in that very moment! his existence was incredibly convenient, and she was willing to 'forgive' him if he followed one last order from her. for was it not his disregarding her order that got him in this mess in the first place? the weave was lost once before, it would be detrimental to everyone if it were to happen again.

it was gale's own hubris that lead him to possess the orb, and i think gale fans that focus more on him being a victim do his character a great disservice by not recognising that his want for more power, whether for mystra's benefit or not, was his own undoing. it's a complete disregard to his character to just say 'mystra groomed/abused him! he did nothing wrong!' when he was a grown man who ignored the warnings from his goddess.

but also. mystra had no empathy for him. he made one mistake and she punished him and withheld information from him, and when she does begin communicating with him again its through a messenger. even in act 3, mystra commands gale to come to HER. as soon as he made one simple careless act she discarded him. but i think that's what makes her so interesting to me is how fucked up and flawed she is.

mystra and gale are both flawed and not faultless, but gale was absolutely taken advantage of, and while his act of hubris was the result of his own hunger for power, he was also weighed down in the same environment for decades, with an overbearing goddess that he dare not disappoint.

mystra (and i think by extension most gods) may not be 'evil' but they are so very fucked up in how they use mortals for their own benefit with almost no regard for their mental and physical wellbeing.

the ketheric thorm quote 'we are copper pieces in their belts, tokens to be traded for scraps, you may have beaten me, but the gods beat me first.' it's so very, VERY raw and real because it relates to majority of companions. but especially so in gale's case.

ugh this got more rambly than i intended it to. it's hard to talk about (bg3) mystra without talking about gale too and vice versa because their stories are SO interwoven. i only rly talk to a couple ppl abt her but. she is just so very interesting when you look at her as a former mortal turned goddess who cares about self preservation and will use her devotees as a means to an end, as opposed to boiling down to gale's crazy ex gf. idk idk she is incredibly flawed and fucked up and i just think she slays

[ravenking1771]

Nona the Ninth is Frustrating Boring and a waste of your time

Before I begin my Rant, Spoilers for The Locked Tomb

I have read Gideon the Ninth

Gideon was an amazing fun read with a protagonist who was dynamic action packed and emotionally cathartic.

I have read Harrow the Ninth

The book and plot was an igneous puzzle with a great payoff for some of the mysteries of this book and last and set up incredible possibilities for the third book

Nona the Ninth is frustrating and boring,

This issue is that this book is boring and frustrating because we follow a boring frustrating character who has no internal development.  The plot is disconnected from the previous book to such an absurd degree that I who just finished reading Harrow the Ninth the night before had to reread the ending to make sure I hadn’t missed something.  Nona is amnesiac with no history or personality and only a few strange gifts.  The first half of the book involves interesting characters waiting around on Nona to fucking remember anything or do anything interesting.  I never want to reread this book again because it is some much saccharine filler with only a couple of interest morsels for me.

The dominant mechanic is for reader to follow a mentally damaged Nona around who anytime she starts to hear or participate in something interesting is yanked off to go to school with Muir’s attempt at writing adolescents (not teenagers but kids who haven’t even reached puberty).  There is so much potential going! An interstellar rebellion against an immortal god-emperor! Revolutionary infighting! An approaching elder god monster thing! Which we only see through the eyes of disinterested uncomprehending and passive child.  Yes Nona is a child, she is written like a child and had all of the experience of a child.  There is absolutely no emotional connection to Nona only the most basic superficial and above all obvious emotional manipulation ever practiced.  Ever heard of save the cat (or dog in this case) that’s all over the first half of the book.  The manipulative aspect is so bad I felt my eyes rolling out of my head and is basic and formulaic that it boring.  Of course she loves animals and is kind and loving; god forbid she a personality beyond a bowl of white sugar. Gideon was raging fire straining against the hell she was born into.  Harrow was a self-destructive genius coming to terms with the abuse she suffered and the abuse she inflicted.   Nona is sweet, loving and kind to animals and

I have some simple rules with writing if the reader is bored you the author have failed.  If the reader is frustrated you the author have failed.  This book inspired boredom and frustration.  I read it quickly not because I like Nona but rather to finally figure out what the fuck was going with everyone.  Rather than enjoying the writing and events and the plot I started treating it like a wiki or a reference book; skipping until I reached the stuff that was important.

This unfortunately brings me back memories to another book. I had to slog through the boredom and frustration that was “A Feast for Crows” 750 pages of GRRM bad idea.  It is possible to be great writer and  make really bad decisions.  GRRM’s writing? Excellent! His characters? Great! His Plot? A mistake, anauthor getting lost in his theme and neglecting to progress his narrative and wasting the audience’s time. 

 Now I am not calling George or Tamsyn a bad writer, but they both made a boneheaded series of decisions.  Muir decides to radically change the entire style and characters for each book.  Actually when put like that Muir is crossing over M. Knight Shyamalan territory, using the change in main characters as a trope crutch the same way he used twists. She managed to pull this off in book two because we had grown to know and care for Harrow in Book 1 and thus when got to book two with an incredible examination of a brilliant yet fractured mind you got novelty but also a sense of progression and insight into the event staking place in the story.  But Nona never appeared in book 2 save as a nearly mute apparition. Thus in my case my frustration began to show through when I didn’t connect with that puddle of sugar water and I became bored with her class room antics and her little clique of rote friends.  I was sold with Gideon the Ninth and I raged when Gideon sacrificed herself to save Harrow and I was excited when Gideon reappeared at the end of book 2 and then nothing.  Forgive me for thinking the main protagonists of books one and two would make a significant appearance.  I loved Gideon and Harrow I endured the naivety and passivity of Nona.  Gideon and Harrow had relatable experiences and emotions, Nona had a nonsensical and alien and utterly relatable existence created through magic and plot contrivance.

I had to endure years of reading bullshit form supposedly smart people telling me that A Feast for Crows and a Dance with Dragons was anything other the author dropping the ball. His editor should have slapped twice in the face and told him to finish the goddamn story rather than dick around with the dozen or so secondary characters he shoves into every book.  I have heard your excuses “But it’s supposed to be frustrating and boring” “It’s an intermission”  you know what in movies we don’t see the heroes going to the bathroom waiting in line or walking down a hall because it is boring, someone once told me books are real life but without the boring bits. George and Muir created books with all of the boring bits and interesting shit cut out.  Muir created an amazing openly book and a great follow-up but she has zero consistency and an inability to concentrate on the characters themes and storytelling that people to pick her books in the first place.  She wants to write something else, something different? Fine start a new series or write some short stories they can even be in universe but she needs to stop yanking the audience around and actually be consistent for five minutes.  I was promised lesbian duelist and necromancers and I aim to collect.  If she has no intention then announce that she ain’t finishing the series and allow us to write our own fan endings.

Oh for those wondering why I think Muir screwed the fuck up with her saccharine plot it was because in the space of thirty minutes I cam up with a better4 central plot.  Simple give us Harrow and Gideon trading bodies like Camilla and Palamedes and then you can slip Nona-Alecto-Gaia-whatthefuck-whoever in as a mysterious third personality/soul.  Now you have characters we give a fuck about and the new kid that rather than causing the reader to overdose on artificial sweetener is diluted with Gideon’s bravado and Harrows brooding.

[aethersea]

This isn’t going on ao3 until the whole fic is finished, but that’s going to take a thousand years and I’m pleased with this and want to show it to people. So here you all go! A very special first in Duke’s vigilante career <3

Duke is 15 here, Steph is 18, Cass is 19, and Tim is 17.

“DUKE!”

Steph pounded up the grand staircase before her voice had finished echoing through the entrance hall. “Duke!” she bellowed again as she reached the landing and paused, bouncing in place as she waited for her improvised Marco Polo to bear fruit. Bruce’s stupid mansion was too big to go tearing through the whole thing looking for Duke, but she was sorely tempted anyway. This couldn’t wait. It was just too good.

“Duke!” she yelled one more time, just to be sure. A door snapped open in the hall to her left. Steph darted over to the hallway entrance, but it was only Tim. He stuck his head out of a door halfway down the hall, just far enough to give Steph an exasperated glare.

“Where’s Duke?” she demanded before he had time to open his mouth. “Is he with you? Babs said he’d be here. I need to ambush him.”

Tim regarded her with suspicion. “Why?”

“Because!” Steph rocked on the balls of her feet, unable to contain her glee. “We’re doing creative writing in English class. And today we swapped pieces for peer review.”

Tim’s eyes widened. “He got a story?”

“He got a banger. Hall of Fame material.”

Tim lit up in delight. “Cass,” he called into the room, “Duke got his first story!”

“But where is he?” Steph insisted, even as Cass popped out from behind Tim so they stacked like cartoon characters.

“Training with B,” Tim answered, and Steph was gone.

She made it to the bottom of the grand staircase before Cass tackled her. She went down with a shriek, rolled to absorb the impact, and somehow ended up flat on her back with Cass straddling her.

“Thanks for not doing that on the stairs,” Steph wheezed.

Cass frowned at her, a little offended, which meant, Of course I wouldn’t do that on the stairs.

“I appreciate it,” Steph assured her. “I like having unbroken ribs.”

Tim slid down the banister and landed neatly beside them. “No starting without us,” he ordered.

Steph raised her hands in surrender. Cass booped her on the nose and pulled her to her feet.

“So how come you two are up here, anyway?” Steph asked as they set off at a frustratingly sedate pace. She turned to walk backwards in front of them so they’d all fit in the hallway that led to the study. 

Tim shrugged. “Everyone needs Batman Bonding Time when they start out. We don’t want to get in the way.” 

Cass snagged an arm around his waist to pull him close and smacked an aggressively wet kiss on his cheek, which meant, And I needed Timmy Bonding Time!

“Eww! Cass!” Tim shoved her away, but he was laughing, and Cass was smug as she let him go. Steph laughed too as she turned back around to swing into the study and bound over to the grandfather clock. 

Steph didn’t run down the stairs to the Batcave, because those things were a goddamn menace and, as previously mentioned, she liked her bones best when they were intact. But she did jump the last few steps and race to the training mats, yelling, “Duke! Duke! Duke! Duke!” the whole time.

Duke and Bruce were sparring with bo staffs. They’d been at it for a while, judging by the state of their shirts. Duke turned to stare at Steph’s approach in shock, and Bruce reached out to tap him with the staff for his inattention. Duke realized what he was doing and lunged around to block at the last second—sloppy, but effective, and Bruce gave a grudging nod.

Steph grabbed Duke by the shoulders. “Duke. Drop everything. This is a very special occasion.”

Duke started to smile, but he knew her well enough by now that the smile was wary. “What’s up?”

“You’ll see,” she promised, and explained to Bruce, “I had English class today. Creative Writing.”

Bruce looked abruptly pained. “This isn’t going to be like the bubblegum one, is it? Because Duke and I have three more sets to get through just with the staff, and I’m not stopping for that kind of drivel.”

“Absolutely not, this one is quality. And it’s Duke’s first!” She swung around behind Duke and squished her face up next to his. “A boy’s first time is a precious thing, B,” she said piously. “We have to make it good for him.”

Duke’s skin was too dark to show a blush, but Steph could feel his cheek heating next to hers. “Now I know you’re not saying what it sounds like you’re saying,” he said, trying to sound threatening. “So what the hell are you talking about?” This was sufficiently adorable that Steph kissed him on the cheek, which he met with a deeply sardonic look.

“Language,” Bruce said automatically. Steph snorted and stuck her tongue out at him. 

Bruce sighed deeply and looked to the stalactites in supplication, because he was a massive drama queen. By this point Cass and Tim had reached the mats and were watching the proceedings with matching smirks. Bruce shook his head in disgust. “Alright, alright, I know when I’m outnumbered.” He reached for Duke’s bo staff. “This better be good, though. Duke is doing well today, and you shouldn’t interrupt a good sparring session halfway through like this.”

Steph beamed at him. An honest compliment, unprompted, and no one was even bleeding out? He really was growing as a person! She glanced sidelong at Duke and found him trying very hard to look like he was too cool to be pleased at the praise. She giggled and kissed his cheek again.

Bruce shook his head and went to put away the staffs. Steph steered Duke toward the couches Bruce had finally installed down here after she’d mocked him one too many times for his sad man cave with its sad lack of real furniture. They were squashy, ugly things, hideously comfortable, and probably cost ten thousand dollars each. They’d only been bled on a little.

Steph pushed Duke down onto the center of one of the couches. Cass and Tim plopped down on either side of him, Tim with his legs on Duke’s lap, Cass with her head snuggled on his shoulder. Duke, as ever, tolerated this manhandling with equanimity, and only looked a little worried when Tim said solemnly, “We’re holding you down so you can’t escape.” If there were ever a prize for Most Chill Bat, Duke would win it hands down. Steph reflected, not for the first time, that she should really hurry up and start doing annual family award ceremonies. Damian would absolutely hate it. It would be worth it for that alone.

Bruce started to flee toward the stairs, but Steph intercepted him with an, “Absolutely not, Bruce, this is a solemn rite of passage for all Bats—all supers, even. You can’t skip out on this, what kind of a mentor would that make you?”

“One who would like to get some actual work done,” he grumbled, but it was perfunctory and they all knew it. Steph could and would badger him into staying. It was far more efficient to just give in now and save them all the time.

Brue sat on a squashy armchair next to the squashy couch and raised his eyebrows expectantly at Steph. She grinned at him, and turned that grin on the others as well with a theatrical sweep of her arm. “I have gathered you all here today,” she declared, “to celebrate a very special occasion. Now as we all know, there comes a time in every young crime-fighter’s life when they at last get the public recognition they deserve.”

“Whether they like it or not,” Tim muttered. 

“Shut up, you love it. Although,” Steph conceded, “your first was not as cool as mine.”

“Yours was a disgrace,” Tim protested. “I don’t know why you even like it, it was awful.” Cass wrinkled her nose in agreement.

“Mine was a masterpiece and I have it framed, so there.”

“She does,” Tim told Duke. “She won’t let us take it down.”

“In back tunnel,” Cass said, pointing. “Bruce said, too awful to look at daily, can’t have up in the Cave. Steph said, fine, and put in his locker. Compromise: put in Jason’s favorite entrance.”

“I did not agree to this compromise,” Bruce interjected. This was a blatant lie, because if he had such a big problem with it he’d have left the thing up in his locker and suffered in stoic silence. Duke knew it, too, judging by the look he shared with Tim. 

Steph giggled again. “Whatever you say, old man.” She slung her backpack off her shoulder and pulled out a yellow folder. “But today isn’t about you. And so, without further ado, I present to you—” Steph flipped open the folder and pulled out a stack of pages with a great rustling and flapping of paper—“A Guiding Light.”

“This is a long one, huh,” Bruce sighed. 

Tim kicked him in the ankle. “Shut up and cherish your newest kid.”

“I’m not his kid,” Duke said immediately. Steph held out a hand and Duke high-fived her. Bruce made no answer to this, just sat there and looked uncomfortable.

“Alright!” Steph cleared her throat dramatically and struck a pose. “It was not,” she declaimed, “a dark and stormy night.”

“Promising,” Bruce said drily. Tim kicked him in the ankle again.

“It was dark,” Steph continued, gesturing grandly with her free hand, “and storming, but the sun shone on behind the clouds. Not that the boy crouched between the crumbling gargoyles on Stevens Street would have guessed it, if he hadn’t known in his very core that it had not yet crossed the horizon.

“The Signal had never needed fair skies to find the sun.”

“The what?” Duke asked faintly.

Steph cackled, unable to keep a straight face. “You heard me!”

Tim and Cass jostled him, laughing as well. “It’s your first fanfiction!” Tim crowed.

Cass patted him on the head. “Congratulations.”

“Found organically, in the wild,” Tim said. “That’s the rule, actually—you can’t go looking for the stories, they have to just come to you.”

“Well you can,” Steph corrected, “Babs and I do it all the time, it just doesn’t count for the game. And you can’t go looking for someone’s first.”

Cass nodded. “First is special.”

“Huh,” Duke said weakly. The flummoxed shock on his face was morphing quickly into mortification. He eyed Tim’s legs over his lap as if he were seriously considering making a break for it.

“This one is very special,” Steph assured him. “You got a great one for your first, you’ll see.”

“Lucky me.”

Cass giggled and poked Duke in the ribs. Tim ruffled his hair. This had no actual effect, with how short Duke kept his hair, but it’s the thought that counts. Bruce watched them with that soft little smile he got around his kids when he thought no one was looking at him. It was Steph’s favorite thing about Bruce, that little smile, and most of the reason she would trust him with just about anything. But that was a fact that she would take to her grave, because unlike some people she was not an absolute sap.

“Alright.” Duke squared his shoulders, bracing himself. “I’m ready. Hit me, Steph.”

Steph snapped a salute. “You got it, chief.” 

“From the top,” Tim suggested. Cass nodded. 

Steph shot off another salute, struck a dramatic pose, waggled her eyebrows at Duke, and began again.

[gelatomesomeironqrow]

My attempt at a character study on Dream of the Endless.

(Potential spoilers for those currently or planning on reading the comics)

Now, I have not yet read the comics (but after the show. I am definitely reading it now) so this is purely based on what I've seen from the show and from what I've read off of the wiki page. Anyways. I relate so much to Dream. Like ya'll have no idea.

So let's start with the basics. Dream is older than most if not all Gods. He's lived through and seen so much, he's had brief but fleeting relationships knowing that they will one day end. He's a very passionate and devoted lover/partner to the point where he is possessive and reacts extremely poorly to when these relationships he knows are going to end, end.

I'll briefly mention his comic book lovers/wives/partners before I go on to those who made it into the Live Action adaptation.

Killala of the Glow, Nada, Calliope, Titania, Alianora and Thessaly.

Alianora in particular was given one of his jewels and her own section of the Dreaming from my understanding.

From what I've read, way way way in the beginning of time, Dream was apparently more open with his feelings than what we see in the show and comics. But due to his meddling sibling Desire, he shuts down and keeps his feelings to himself. This doesn't stop him from forming strong attachments to people that develop into relationships. Each of them ends poorly. Sometimes because of Dream, sometimes because of Desire or sometimes because of the passing of time.

Anyways, Dream doesn't talk about his past relationships, the two I know about are the show ones and even then, it's probably not everything. So let's talk about Nada and Calliope.

Now I read some stuff about Nada and Dream's past, and all I have to say is that Desire admitting that Nada was a mistake is huge. It shows they feel bad about it. Probably mostly because it's the relationship that really made Dream shut his emotions down (probably why Desire continues to try to "ruin" him. In their own way, they probably just want him to open back up. Maybe.) Anyways, the relationship was not meant to be. Nada was young and fell hard for Dream whereas Dream became possessive. Which is a huge red flag. Them being together caused a higher entity to burn Nada's city to the ground and Nada in her grief blamed herself and their relationship and off'ed herself. Dream tracked his spirit down. Demanded her to become his queen of the Dreaming and when she refused, he threw her in Hell. Dream does eventually launch a rescue mission but still, kind of a harsh punishment and probably the only time I don't like Dream.

Anyways, from what I've read and seen, it does not look like this relationship was a sexual one.

Moving on to the only relationship Dream has had sexual relations to, my personal favorite.

Calliope. The muse. Their relationship is tragic and probably the only one that ended somewhat amicably. From my understanding anyways. They were in love, had a child who died young, and ended their relationship because of their grief. It happens all the time, parents whose child dies before they do, they can't stay together any longer. But yet, Dream still harbors deep attachment to her, even if he denied her request to visit him in the Dreaming. He probably would have said yes had she wanted to see him but he isn't ready to process or accept their child's death even though it had been thousands of years.

Now, why did I delve into his relationships? And why did I say I relate to him so much?

Because I believe him to be Ace or Demisexual. He is somewhere on the spectrum. Like I am. I can see it in his every move and decisions.

Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others, or low or absent interest in or desire for sexual activity. 

He is an anthropomorphic representation of a human. He has appeared as a cat. I don't think him incapable of have sex (clearly since he had a child), I just personally don't think he is interested in sexual relations. He has strong attachments. He can get obsessive and/or possessive. He loves with everything and when it ends he either punishes his lover/partner and/or goes into a depressive state of being.

Sure he's been married. But some asexuals have been in relationships, alot of them successful. Communication is key to any healthy relationship. The point of it is, none of his relationships lasted. Again for various reasons but the general gist is that there was no communication. He expected alot out of his partners and when they failed to meet his expectations he lost interest (never attachment or subsequent feelings related to those attachments) but he was no longer interested in the relationship itself.

As far as I know, he has no other children and hasn't engaged in any other sexual acts.

He finds people intriguing only when they talk about dreams and stories, like when he is on his date with Hob and listens in to Will Shakespeare talk about wanting to inspire people, otherwise he walks around moping all the time. He literally dresses in black at all times and wears eyeliner. Not a representation of Asexual people, just an observation.

Heck, I'm in a relationship with someone and I'm Asexual. (And currently struggling to keep said relationship because I can't bring myself to tell my boyfriend I'm not interested in him like that. But I digress.)

Okay. Moving away from his relationships and sexuality.

He interacts with very few people. He has little to no friends. (I have little to no friends) he probably thinks the few people he is on good terms are exhausting and not worth the time half the time (again. I'm guilty of that). If he isn't an antisocial OCD perfectionist, I don't know what that makes me.

He has a very clear idea of what his job is and performs it well. He gets upset when things don't go his way. He prefers to handle things alone because he's convinced himself no one will help him. He won't ask for help so most of the time no one even knows he needs help.

(The one time he asked for help. Desire literally just sent him his next lover and said good luck, bye.)

He is stubborn and so so so depressed. But despite all of that, he finds something to keep himself going, he draws inspiration from his life and the people who visit his Dreaming at night. It took one visit from his sister to get him to go and see Hob Gadling who he admits is his boyfriend.

Like look at this gif and tell me they aren't flirting.

Anyways. Dream of the Endless is a complicated being that no one may ever truly figure out. He's definitely the embodiment of a wet cat.

I love him. He is doing amazing.

I need a season 2. ASAP.

[algumaideia]

An analysis of Octavian

This post was actually going to be an explanation of why I think Octavian is an antagonist, but not a villain. But it ended up being an analysis of his character. 

SPOILERS

And as always feel free to disagree with me, just be respectful. 

Sorry, because it wasn’t well-written, I’m incapable of writing good texts. 

Backstory

I think it is important to say that since we don’t have any information about his backstory most of the thing said in this part of the review are what I think is his backstory. It is a mix of the facts stated in the books, the way Octavian acts and my interpretations. Besides the things I’ll make clear that were said in the books, the rest is not canon. And you don’t need to agree with me that this was his backstory.

His family is one of the richest of New Rome- In the books he also seems to act without fearing the consequences while taking the privilege/money of his family as garented. Octavian acts like someone that is seeking attention. It is so weird how he just do whatever he wants without fearing consequences when his family is right there in New Rome. For that to happen I think or his family neglects him or they are those kind of people who think the children can do no wrong and are all my baby didn’t do that. But I think that if they were the latter, they would be more present in Octavian’s life, but they are never there. 

He is an augere and feels very proud about it. I don’t think there is too much to add about it besides that I think he likes to be an augere because it makes him important and necessary.

No one likes him and this isn’t something new. In Son of Neptune, Hazel says half of the camp hates Octavian and most of his friends are bought. So, Octavian is a lonely child. And he is aware of this. He is a bad person, people dislike him for a reason. But it seems people have been disliking him for some years and he is a child. According to his wiki he was 10 years old when he came to Camp Jupiter for the first time, and he spent his tweens and teens years in a place where people did not like him. I don’t think this was a good place to grow up.

He is really smart and manipulative. I think that those traits are a little inconsistent. Because in the beginning of the SoN Percy says how Octavian is really good at manipulating people with words, but then in the ending of the book and in MoA everyone is shutting Octavian up. Isn’t he this kind of master of words, how he isn’t answering people back? 

We also know he’s been at camp jupiter for quite sometime. I’ll talk about it in another part of the post.

He is anemic and mentally ill. I’ll talk about those things in the Camp Jupiter, Treatment and Ableism parts. 

Other thing that I would like to say is that this post is not an attempt to ignore the bad things Octavian did and pretend he is not a bad person. It is just me trying to understand his better and show why in my opinion the fandom hasn’t treated him fairly.

Camp Jupiter

Camp Jupiter sucks and it does for a lot of reasons. Some of them being the fact they have a city full of adults and most of them were demigods trained in the camp, which means they have trained adults but instead tweens and teens are the ones who fights. Hazel said that if Percy dishonored the legion they both would be executed. Hazel also says that sometimes people die in the war games. There is also the fact that people are dying all the time in missions/wars. The Camp Jupiter also expects perfect behavior for its demigods, to them all know the rules and to do not commit mistakes and I don’t have adhd but this doesn’t seem to be a good place to people that has the disorder. There is too much preassure to do not do any wrong, apperently no emotional support and the punishments seems to be crazy. It’s not a healthy place to a chldren grow up.

Other point is how they value physical strenght, hand to hand combats and offensive approache more than a lot of things. Frank said how he wasn’t treated well because he was an archer, and this was seem as cowardice. Octavian is anemic, he doesn’t have physical strenght or energy to be able to fight. The only way to be respected in Jupiter's camp is to be a good fighter, and he cannot be that because of his illness. As I said Octavian is someone that is often seeking attention and validation by his peers, and I think that this is why being an augere is something so important to him. He cannot make himself important in the traditional way and by being an augere he is necessary to the camp. People cannot just dismiss him. He buys friends, he manipulates people, he becomes a centurion, he is always dominating the senate. He makes himself impossible to be neglected. 

Yes, Octavian is power-hungry. Yes, he is bad. But a lot of things he did during Heroes of Olympus was just Roman things (he was also mentally ill and his mental health was getting worse in each book). When Hazel says that Octavian will kill Percy if the greeks atack New Rome, but in the next sentence she says that Romans take oaths very seriously. However it is all written like it is Octavian being a horrible person. But it is not. The Romans are very harsh with their punishments, they seem to be violent, physical. When Octavian says the Romans should fight the greeks, he is just acting like a Roman, like someone who was raised in a enviroment that encouraged violence responses.

Treatment

Octavian wasn’t treated nicely by the narrative and other characters. I mean, this guy was the centurion of the first cohort and an augere. But no one seem to respect him. No one enters the legion without him saying yes (I know it is acording to what he sees) but he is treated like he isn’t important. He is the one that is responsable of saying what the gods wants, but no one seems to have problems mocking him. I mean fi he decides to give you a wrong information about what a god want you are dead. 

Hazel said how “obsessed” with the sibylline books Octavian and it was framed as him being irrational and dumb. But in the end he was right, if the legion listened to him Ella would have been save way sooner. But no, it is just Octavian being  “obsessed”.

Percy acts like Octavian doesn’t have any prophecy powers, but he saw the lighting in the Jupiter Temple. Then when Octavian is mad because there are three preators he acts like he is overreacting, and Jason and Reyna do nothing. And this is weird because it was made very clear that rules are very important to Camp Jupiter. 

When he decides to attack Camp Jupiter he is always villified and not seem as a mentally ill boy that has been getting worse doing the Roman thing. 

He is always dismissed, mocked, villified, ignored.

And the fact Luke was treated with sympathy, but Octavian not. Luke, who tried to kill Percy, a childre, a lot of times. Luke, who used Annabeth feelings and emotional attachment to manipulate her. Luke, who was 19-22 years old and groomed Silena, who was 14-18 years old. Luke, who poisoned Talia’s tree. Luke, who had no regards for Grover, the satyr that saved him. Luke was treated with sympathy. But not Octavian. Not the mentally ill child who was losing the touch with reality during the series. Not the guy who was just doing what he was raised to do. 

I mean, I don’t even like Octavian and I cannot stand it.

Gwen

Guys, Octavian did a lot of bad things but killing Gwen wasn’t one of those thing. It is so no sense for a lot of reasons. 

As we talked before he is anemic and he is also smart. This intelligent man, that is full aware of his physical limits, thought it would be a good idea to get in the midle of a chaotic fight? I don’t think so.

Some pages before that Percy hit Octavian and he fell like a straw man (according to the text, the first time I read it I thought he fainted). 

Octavian always makes things because of a purpose, he isn’t just being mean because. He does bad things because his actions will give him something. Killing Gwen wouldn’t help him with anything.

Frank for some reason decided to look to Octavian during that mess and that doesn’t make any sense. He is in the camp for a month at this time the guy should’ve already known that Octavian doesn’t battle, he only commands. He saw Percy fighting for a couple of seconds during the war game and was already able to say how he fought.

Octavian was without his knive, but just minutes before he fainted, he could have lost it when he fell.

Frank said that Octavian seemed interested and not worried. But this is not enough to blame the guy, this is not enough to assume anything execpt that maybe Octavian has low empath. 

Greeks

Octavian was a roman. To the romans the greeks didn’t exist anymore, and they were the enemy. 

So, a random greek shows up, spends some days at the camp, becomes preator, and two of your most important gods appear and give a lot of attention to this greek. This is really suspicious. This greek also says that the romans should work with the greeks so they can defeat Gaea. And why you should trust this dude? He doesn’t show respect for the Roman culture. Then this huge war ship appears and this suspect greek guy says that they all come peace and the romans should not attack. Obviously you don’t believe it, and what happens they attack! As the good roman you are, your answer is to attack the greeks back. 

The romans answers things with violence. This is why Reyna asked if Annabeth was a roman after the judo flip. This is why Hazel said she and Percy would be executed if he did a mistake during his period of probatio. Octavian was being roman. He was trying to protect and revenge his Camp against a long time enemy. 

Not saying everything he did about it was logical, but this is because of his upbringing and his mental health. 

Goals

I think it is really interisting the fact that Octavian main goal was to be a hero, not more powerful. Apollo didin’t say Octavian would become preator, he said Octavian would save New Rome. 

I mean, since Octavian wanted to be preator and then became the pontifex maximum, so the logical think it would be to him wants more power. But no he wants to be a hero. A hero is someone that is respected, admired, liked and even loved. All the thing Octavian isn't. Don't get me wrong, Octavian is a bad person, there is a reason people dislike him. But he is also a lonely child that is hated by most of the camp.

Ableism

Octavian is often described as crazy, mad, insane. In his first appearence Percy said Octavian had madness in the eyes, and this was the way of the narrative warning us he was one of the bad guys. He is obviusly mentally ill, his mental health is obviusly getting worse, but everyone ignores it. Everyone ignores it, execpt when they are describing how insane his laugh is, how crazy he looks, how intense his gaze is. Everyone ignores it, until they need to remind us he is one of the antagonists. 

Ending

The ending was terrible. 

Octavian was obiously having a psychotic break, he was stumbling, laughing “in an insane” way, and he didn’t realize his jewelry was in fire. And then what happens? Michael Kahale, the person he most trusted, his problaby only friends appeared, saw the situation and did nothing.

Octavian didn’t kill himself. He didn’t know his clothes were tied in the onager. It wasn’t a sacrifice. It was an aciddent. 

Nico stopped Will Solace who was trying to warn it because some “deaths are inevitable”. Nico, also a mentally ill character saw Octavian in the vulnerable state he was and did nothing to help him. And when Nico was seeing Octavian lunch himself to the sky he thought that this was a relief. No one was sad, no one thought this was a tragedy, no one cared. Octavian was dead and that was a relief. 

The guy was so desperate to be the hero and no one even cared about his death. It is horrible.

Another sorry for the weird tense of the text.

If you want to read this is my post about Octavian and Azula and how their mental illness were treated differently.

Best regards,

Me. 

Ps. We need to start talking how the way Bryce was written was ableist.

[yourdeepestfathoms]

An Honest Review of Mourning Cloak

this review has spoilers so don’t click Read More if you haven’t watched the episode yet!

Mourning Cloak was a disappointing dumpster fire of an episode that deserves to rot in the deepest, darkest circle of Dante's inferno.

It’s such an insult to Charlie as a character, reducing her to nothing but a puppy-eyed, lovesick, boy crazy little bitch who was willing to leave behind her entire fucking family for the ugliest motherfucker on the planet. Seriously, what’s with this dude’s jaw line?? He looks like he’s made out of melting candle wax for god’s sake.

Ali is a terrible character and every single moment he was on screen, the devil on my shoulder kept hoping for him to just fuck off already.

And then the angel on my right came in and agreed.

The first kiss (more like a make out session) was needlessly long and way too heated, like one of the kissers wasn't a literal seventh grader. I felt uncomfortable watching it. It made my skin crawl, especially considering that Ali was played by a nineteen-year-old and Alexa was only FIFTEEN. That’s not okay!

Like, holy fucking shit AMC, are you that stupid to not realize that you shouldn’t make an underage child kiss an adult?? Everything about that scene is so wrong!

I kept repeatedly pausing the video to close my eyes tight or put my head in my hands every time something romantic happened between Ali and Charlie. I gagged, I snapped, I cringed, I shuddered in disgust. It’s so agonizingly hard to watch because 1) the age gap between the actors and 2) it’s so painfully forced. They barely know each other, probably less than twenty-four hours. I bet Ali doesn’t even know her favorite color, but SURE. They can be together!

Like. I get it. Ali is the first teenager she’s seen since Dakota in a long time. Before that, Charlie has been the ONLY child character to show up consistently, aside from a few very minor ones that are more like toddlers and that band of orphans that disappeared at the end of season five and never showed back up again.

BUT ALSO. Has AMC never interacted with a fucking child before??? Do they think all twelve-year-old girls think about is kissing a boy?????

Her father figure is suffering from memory loss that is most likely caused by dementia, her older sister figure has been missing for MONTHS, the rest of her found family is scattered across the state and she has no way to know if they’re alright, THEY ARE LITERALLY IN NUCLEAR FALLOUT—I do not think a romance with THE ENEMY is going to be her top priority in this situation.

Here’s a better idea that they could have gone with: Ali is like an older brother to Charlie. Charlie wants to indulge in that relationship because she’s a little girl who has lost her real family and desires love and affection. However, she’s hesitant because Ali reminds her of Nick. Nick was also like an older brother to her, and she ended up taking his life. Now she’s afraid that the cycle will repeat.

It has no creepy forced romance AND brings back up Charlie’s very unique trauma that hasn’t been mentioned since SEASON FUCKING FOUR.

Also girly has literally never interacted with a teenage boy IN HER LIFE. You don’t think she’d be the slightest bit wary around one??

Oh, but my mistake, I forgot all girls are innately drawn to tall, handsome boys with messy hair and weapons because we’re all programmed with the sole need to breed with every penis-having individual we even get a whiff of. That’s my bad.

There was also implications of Charlie and Ali running away together, EVEN THOUGH THEY BARELY FUCKING KNEW EACH OTHER.

Additionally, the show attempts to age Charlie up to 13, even though she isn't 13 yet during the episode, she's still 12.

But that doesn't make any sense because she was literally 12 when season 7 began, SO HOW FUCKING LONG HAS IT BEEN SINCE THE BOMBS WENT OFF.

They ALSO altered her age on her wiki page. It now says she was 11 when she first appeared in season 4, even though it said she was 10 for the past 4 years. But here they are, frantically changing her age just so they can justify forcing a little girl into a gross ass romance plot that aids the story in no way.

But speaking of the wiki! Her decisions throughout the episode aren't like her AT ALL. Let’s just go to her overview for reference.

The first sentence reads, “Charlie is a quiet and introverted young orphan, and rarely engages with people who are not close to her.”

So there's one thing the episode gets wrong about her because it's not like Charlie to just fucking start liking some dude right off the bat.

But most importantly, it says this: “She largely depends on her parental figures, to whom she displays extreme loyalty to the point of killing those who would hurt them.”

TO WHOM SHE DISPLAYS EXTREME LOYALTY.

She would never in a million fucking years abandon her family—the people that have been raising her for the past THREE YEARS—for a boy for barely knows. She would NEVER leave behind Alicia of all people. Did AMC just forget that little relationship they had?? I mean, we already didn’t get to see Charlie reunite with June, who is essentially her mom, so what other relationships will they ruin for her?

AND THEN! And then they went and gave her fucking RADIATION POISONING. Where there is an extremely low chance of survival. Even lower with their lack of modern medicine.

But the thing is…they don’t even make it believable. They only symptom she shows are the rashes which appeared alarmingly fast. Like, a quick Google search would have given them a myriad of symptoms that would have been cool to see, including, but not limited to: nausea and vomiting, headache, fever, dizziness and disorientation, weakness and fatigue, hair loss, bloody vomit.

The hair loss and bloody vomit could have been really cool to see. Like, maybe instead of fainting like she did, she could have doubled over and thrown up blood instead.

Mourning Cloak but instead of Charlie and Ali kissing, Charlie projectile vomits blood all over Ali. God, that would have made the episode so much better and more bearable.

But nah, she just got some rashes. It honestly just looks like she rolled around in some poison ivy and everyone is overreacting.

There are very few things this episode did good.

I liked that Charlie finally got her own title card at the beginning. The butterflies were a neat detail and I liked that you could see the bowling alley in the background.

I liked the way Charlie threw the bowling ball the first time. Very much like a kid who never played bowling before.

I liked that June was noticeably upset and tearing up when she said that Charlie was dying. After all, June lost her own daughter to disease (granted, pneumonia is nowhere near as horrible as radiation poisoning) and Charlie has basically become her new child, so I enjoyed that they let her actually react to the upcoming demise of the kid she’s been helping raise for the past few years. It’s the least they could do.

I liked that Ali actually died. I’m sure nobody was upset when that happened.

I liked that June got to be a protective mama bear. “You lay one hand on her, I will kill you myself” and “Charlie stays with me, under my care” were both very good lines. Also the way that June went up to Charlie and held her hands out for her when Charlie came out of that one butterfly room crying because Ali died made my heart flutter.

I liked the emotions from Charlie when Ali died. The way she staggers unsteadily out of that butterfly room and trips over her own words is extremely well done, especially with the stammering part. Her flashes of rage when she realized Howard killed Ali and then the sobbing despair were also really good to watch, as well as her eyes-squeezed-shut, teeth-bared expressions. Alexa truly is an amazing actress and I will never stop commending her for her performances as Charlie.

Uhh… I liked the butterflies?? The symbolism behind them is pretty cool and it seems to be fitting enough.

Okay, that’s it. The rest is all garbage. A complete waste of not only my time, bur the actors as well. This episode doesn’t even have any replay ability (at least for me) because more than half of the runtime is spent developing the creepy romance instead of doing soemthing actually useful. Charlie FINALLY got an episode to herself since Ner Tamid and THIS is what they do with it.

I just can’t fathom it. I’ve been giving AMC the benefit of the doubt for a really long time, but I’m at the end of my rope, as I’m sure several other fans are, too. I wouldn’t even be mad if it weren’t for Ali having to be there. If Charlie got radiation poisoning somehow WITHOUT the romance, I would have just been upset because she was dying. Fans shouldn’t be seething with rage as I am now.

I don’t know if Charlie going to die. Honestly, for me, it’s 50/50. But because we don’t really see her anywhere else in the trailers aside from the shots of this episode, I don’t have high hopes. Especially because June said Charlie was to stay with her under her care and then Charlie is just never shown with her???

Still, I’m praying that she doesn’t die yet. She has so much potential with Madison coming back. I want to see her deal with her trauma more. I want to see more of her in general. She’s an incredible character and can be fleshed out so much if the show writers actually gave her a chance.

Overall, Mourning Cloak is a huge disappointment. If I wanted to get super angry and pump my body full of adrenaline fueled by burning hot rage to commit unspeakable acts, I would watch this episode.

Fuck you, AMC. Charlie deserves better.

[commander-coppercogg]

So under a cut because spoilers for the new End of Dragons stuff but the boyfriend and I did some wiki diving last night and found some stuff out:

So I originally thought this was gonna be the commander stand in for Cantha and I even saw some people speculate that this might be Zojja coming back into the story. But turns out this character was discussed during a guild chat episode and already had a wiki page!

I’m so interested to meet her and learn about her and her earrings and her eyes and her design are super super cool and holy shit Gorrick used to work at Thaumanova???? Has this been mentioned before??? Maybe it has something to do with how Blish lost his body???

So I went and read the transcript for the podcast episode (cause listening to podcasts is very difficult for me). The transcript seems to be auto generated so there’s a lot of spelling mistakes but here’s the relevant bit:

Fans of Gorrick are in for a treat!!!! I wonder if she has ties to Inquest at all. Cause the Aetherblades and the Inquest had an alliance in Living World Season 1 right? Maybe we’ll get to find out how and why Gorrick and Lish joined the Inquest cause I’ve always wondered about that. I’m really really hoping for good asura content please anet all of the other races have had their moment in the spot light please.

This gets a bit more personal so uh yeah:

I will say my other immediate gut reaction is “oh god I hope they don’t try and cram a bad romance plot line in there.” Cause like on the one hand I’d love to see an autistic character get an in-depth romance story cause a lot of times autistic people (such as myself) are infantalized to the point where we are denied adult romantic and sexual relationships. But on the other hand I feel like it could really easily fall into some really bad tropes. ESPECIALLY if, god forbid, they try and make it a love triangle with Taimi. I remember Taimi saying something at the end of Icebrood Saga (I don’t have screen caps sorry) that made me go “are…are they trying to…no. No way.” And like nothing came of it so maybe I read it wrong. And Anet has always done an incredible job with Gorrick and his character. And I think that’s the reason I feel immediately so defensive and so nervous. Cause I don’t want it to be bad! I learned I was autistic while playing this game and Gorrick is honestly one of the only autistic character I’ve ever encountered and he really means a lot to me. And I can recognize that a lot of my gut reaction is personal projection and nervousness and I’m still really really excited to meet Ankka and got to Cantha. This turned out a lot more personal and depressing than I meant it to, I just wanted to ramble some feeling out.

[mybg3notebook]

Lore: Details about the “Orb”

Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were written up to the game version v4.1.104.3536 (Early access). As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information. Written in June 2021.

Let's start with the context, because everything related to Gale is packed heavily with Forgotten Realms lore, and since the game is not fully released, whatever extra information that the game could provide to help us understand this is not there yet. Also, it's always important to keep in mind this post about "Context, persuasion, and manipulation" to be sure we are talking in the same terms. 

The lore

I'm going to enumerate some objects or elements related to Forgotten Realms lore that I personally see worth checking out in addition to other “orbs” that I've seen the fandom put attention on. All this information can be expanded using the references and sometimes wiki, even though I personally distrust forgotten realm wiki, unless I can check that info from the original sources.

Shadow Weave

The Shadow Weave is the space between the strands of the Weave. If the Weave is a spider's web, the gaps in between are the Shadow Weave. Shadow Weave reaches everywhere the Weave does, and more. It is not subject to Mystra’s laws or state of well being. If Mystra were to die and the Weave collapses, the Shadow Weave would persist. [Magic of Faerûn 3e. Personal Comment: Yes. It explicitly says in the book that it’s independent of Mystra’s well being. Clearly this has been modified in 4e since the Shadow Weave needs the structure of the Weave to be somehow stable. It collapsed when the Weave did so, so we can see this begins a series of inconsistencies]

Shadow Weave is a dark and distorted copy of the Weave created by Shar, more suited for spells that drag life or confuse the mind (necromancy, control, illusion schools), and gives more difficulty to cast spells that manipulate energy or matter (evocation or transmutation schools). It can't sustain spells that produce light. Both Weave and Shadow Weave are means to use Raw Magic (see at the end of the post). The more familiar a mortal becomes with the secrets of the Shadow Weave, the more detached they become from the Weave. Shadow Weave is NOT a part of Mystra, so Mystra can't block people from accessing magic via Shadow Weave. 

It’s a common mistake to make the analogy that the Shadow Weave is to Shar the same way the Weave is to Mystra. No. Shadow Weave is NOT Shar, while the Weave is Mystra. Shar never developed that level of commitment, making herself one with the Shadow Weave. This is one of the reasons why she could not sustain the Weave during the Spellplague when she tried to corrupt it completely into Shadow Weave. 

All this information belongs to Magic of Faerûn 3e and the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting 3e and novels of 4e. There is nothing about Shadow Weave in 5e. If it weren't for Ed Greenwood's twitter, we should have guessed it disappeared from the lore. So far we know it's slowly recovering in the same way the Weave is. And the Shadow Weave doesn't feed on Weave. For some mysterious reason, fandom started to think so due to BG3.

Death moon orb

This artefact belongs to the 3rd edition, created by a Netheril wizard. From him, it passed to the hands of Szass Tam, who saw it destroyed when the Spellplague corrupted the magic in it. I won't give more details about this object because it looks so unrelated to what Gale has in his chest. Not only is its shape inconsistent with what we see in-game, its powers and properties are unrelated to what is explained in EA. The object is cursed, compelling its owner to cause greater acts of evil; it has a size that changes and looks like a violet-black sphere. In my opinion, the only detail in common with Gale's “orb” is the name "orb". Which is a fallacy, since Gale says explicitly that he uses the word "orb" for the lack of a better one, because clearly what Gale has in his chest is not an orb, but a mass of Black Weave. 

Netherese orbs

These objects are found in Neverwinter MMO in the quest Whisper in Darkness:

The Netherese are foul plague upon this world, corrupting everything they touch. They have cursed the Gray Wolf Tribe, turning them into bloodthirsty monsters. We must find what the Netherese intend to do with their werewolf slaves. The Shadovar Emissaries use the Netherese Orbs powered by Soul Shards to communicate orders from the Prince of Shadow.

This is all the information we have of this object. That's all. It comes from a Neverwinter MMO game which belongs to 4th edition. Once more, the concept that Gale's “orb” is not an orb but a black mass of untamed magic makes me believe that these objects don't apply either. The nature of their magic is compatible though: Netherese orbs are made from shadow magic by Shadovar, descendant of Netheril stuck in the Plane of Shadow (called Shadowfell later on, read more in the post of "The Netherese in 1492DR"). This plane is the source of Shadow Magic, they don't use Raw Magic. Ethel explicitly said in BG3 that Shadow Magic is Netherese Magic, so maybe we can consider this object filled with Netherese magic? In any case, these Netherese orbs are used for communication... which has nothing to do with Gale's “orb”'s properties. There is also no reference of consuming Weave to remain stable.

Devastation orb

The mention of a "devastation orb" happens only in Yartar in Princes of the Apocalypse (related to the god Tharizdun, the mad god): 

In page 5 we have some context: Four elemental cults grow in power in the Sumber Hills, claiming abandoned keeps that connect to an underground fortress once part of an ancient dwarven kingdom. The leaders use elemental magic to create devastation orbs capable of ravaging the countryside. They’ve been testing these magic weapons, bolstering the cults’ ranks, and infiltrating various communities, all directed by visions the prophets receive from the Elder Elemental Eye (Tharizdun). These orbs are plainly described as: essentially bombs of elemental energy to unleash natural disasters.

In page 222 we have a more detailed explanation of what these elements are: 

Devastation Orb: (Wondrous item, very rare) A devastation orb is an elemental bomb that can be created at the site of an elemental node by performing a ritual with an elemental weapon. The type of orb created depends on the node used. For example, an air node creates a devastation orb of air. A devastation orb measures 12 inches in diameter, weighs 10 pounds, and has a solid outer shell. The orb detonates 1d100 hours after its creation, releasing the elemental energy it contains. The orb gives no outward sign of how much time remains before it will detonate. Regardless of the type of orb, its effect is contained within a sphere with a 1 mile radius. The orb is the sphere’s point of origin. The orb is destroyed after one use.

Again, I don't see a real connection with Gale's “orb”. These devastation orbs are not netherese-based, they have elemental energy, and despite the explosion, they don't have any mechanics that resemble the consumption of Weave to remain stable. However, I do find a link between these devastation orbs, their process of construction, and the book that Gale found out. The remotest concept I can scratch here is that, whoever crafted the book with that piece of blackest Weave, could have used the knowledge of the construction of these devastation orbs. Instead of filling them with elemental magic, they filled it with a blackest weave of netherese magic. A procedure that could have been applied to the netherese tadpoles as well.

That's all the information I could gather that remotely is called “orb” or has some vague chance to be that blackest weave.

The Game BG3

In the game, all the info that Gale provides in EA about the “orb” is given before his revelation. The what it is, the how it works and the how it feels. In the revelation scene we only learn the details that are personal and intimate for Gale: the why he ended up with the orb, and potential solutions he can guess so far. To show proofs:

During the meeting:

Tav [Wisdom/tadpole] Try peering into his mind. If he won't open up, you'll sneak in.  [Success] Narrator: For a split second you see a swirl of untamed magic – then his defences drop like a portcullis. 

During the Protocol:

Tav: I simply want to know what it is you're keeping from me Gale: I'm dangerous. Not because I want to be, but because of... an error I made in the past.  [before Gale speaks of his loss] It makes me dangerous – even in death. [after Gale speaks of his loss/tadpole intrusion] I told you how I sought to win the favour of Mystra. I did this by trying to control a form of magic only one wizard ever could. I failed to control it. Instead it infested me. It makes me dangerous... even in death. […] Tav: The darkness inside you, what is it? Gale: It's magic from another time and another place. It is something that is beyond me, yet inside me. That makes me dangerous... even in death. 

During the stew scene or the ask for artefacts in neutral or lower approval

Tav: [Wisdom/tadpole] you sense secrecy and danger. Use your tadpole to probe Gale's thoughts. [Success] Narrator: you become one with Gale's mind and you can feel something sinister oppressing you. It's... inside of you, a mighty darkness radiating from your chest. You could try to push further, but your hold over Gale feels brittle. It won't be easy delving deeper without him noticing. Delve deeper: [Success] Narrator: “ you see through gale's eye, staring down the corridor of a dread memory. A book, bound, then suddenly opened. Inside there are no pages, only a swirling mass of blackest Weave that pounces. It's teeth, it's claws, it's unstoppable as it digs through you and becomes part of you. And gods, is it ever-hungry.

Gale: The only way to “appease” said condition is for me to take powerful magical artefact and absorb the Weave inside. [...]Tav: What happens if you don't consume any artefact? Gale: Catastrophe. [...] Think of it as... tribute. The kind a king might pay to a more powerful neighbour to avoid invasion. As long as I pay there will be peace. But should I ever stop, along comes a war. I can assure the battlefield would extend well beyond the borders of my body alone. [...] I will consume the magic inside. What was a powerful artefact will be rendered no more than a trinket. But it will save my life- even if only temporarily.

Tav: That condition of yours is a very expensive one. Gale: I obtained it in Waterdeep. Nothing there comes cheap.

Artefacts scenes:

Gale: I can feel the storm abating. [...] I will feel it stir again – like a distant thunder sending tremors through the soul. I will need to consume another artefact before the lightning strikes. There's no choice but to find more. [...] It's good to perceive this constant fear repressed into a quiet scare. Let's hope it will last a good long while.

During Revelation scene:

Gale: The gist of it is that he sought to usurp the goddess of magic so that he could become a god himself. He almost managed but not quite, and his entire empire – Netheril – came crashing down around him as he turned to stone. The magic unleashed that day was phenomenal, rolling like the prime chaos that outdates creation. A fragment of it was caught and sealed away in a book. No ordinary book, mind you; a tome of gateways that contained within it a bubble of Astral Plane. It was a fragment of primal Weave locked out of time – locked away from Mystra herself. ‘What if’, the silly wizard thought. ‘What if after all this time, I could return this lost part of herself to the Goddess?”

Narrator: You feel the tadpole quiver as you realise Gale is letting you in. Into the dark. You see through Gale’s eyes, staring down the corridors of a dread memory. A book, bound, then suddenly opened. Inside there are no pages, only a swirling mass of blackest Weave that pounces. It’s teeth, it’s claws, it’s unstoppable as it digs through you and becomes part of you. And gods, is it ever hungry… [...] This Netherese taint.. this orb, for lack of a better word, is balled up inside my chest. And it needs to be fed. As long as it absorbs Weave it remains stable – to an extent. The moment it becomes unstable, however.. [...] It will erupt. I don’t know the exact magnitude of the eruption, but given my studies of Netherese magic, I’d say even a fragment as small as the one I carry…. It’d level a city the size of Waterdeep

Tav : I should godsdamned kill you GALE: Perhaps that is what I deserve, but you deserve no such thing. To kill me is to unleash the orb. 

So far, if we don't use the tadpole, we learn from Gale that he is unwillingly dangerous, there is an ancient magic stuck in his chest—acquired in Waterdeep—that he never could control and it inspires a dreadful state of mind (constant fear). It requires Weave to stay stable, and if it is not fed, a catastrophe will happen that will extend past his body. 

With the Tadpole we learn, in addition, part of the details we can learn during the revelation scene: it's a swirl of untamed/chaotic magic which is an ever-hungry "blackest weave". 

During the Revelation Scene all the information acquired by the tadpole intrusion is given, in addition to describing this mass of magic as an "orb" despite its inaccuracy. We also learn that killing Gale will only unleash the orb instead of putting an end to the problem. 

Gale said everything that is important related to the orb before the party scene, excluding only the personal information since he is a private person. This was exactly the boundary he set when he promised during the stew scene that he was going to explain the what, not the why. With the use of the tadpole we only learn details, simple extra descriptions; all information that Gale will willingly share during the revelation scene anyway.

We can learn a bit more of the “orb”'s function if we explore the goblin party. There, Gale explains part of the mechanism of the “orb” in a "poetic" way, that may or may not be taken exactly as such:

Gale: Two shadows are darkening my soul.The shadow within and the shadow without: you. You led me down this path. [...] I don't know myself anymore. All this... It's not who I am. Around you, I'm not who I want to be. I should leave. 

Tav: [Insight] Stay. We make each other stronger. We make each other survive. /OR/ [Deception] You don't stand a chance alone. You're free to go. I dare you. 

[Success][DC15] Gale: [...]. Few things are more powerful than the will to live. But carnage such as this.... the shadow within is spreading like poison, corrupting kindness and compassion. [...]. Tonight I need to wash my hands of blood and my mind of shattering memories. 

This shows that when playing an Evil Tav who sides with the Goblins, we have an extra description for this “orb”. Again, I ponder every bit of information with its context: Gale is a poet, and he tends to speak with metaphors specially when it comes to emotional painful states of mind or when it comes to the “orb” (which puts him in a very emotional state that even the tadpole doesn't), so these lines can perfectly be understood as a poetic way to describe his deep regret for participating in massacring the Tieflings. However, there is this detail that I can't overlook: the shadow within, understood as the blackest Weave, is spreading across his body, corrupting his good essence. As we saw in the post of "Extensive list of Gale's approvals", compassion and kindness are key elements in Gale's personality. This scene shows a potential that is not explored in EA: the “orb” seems to set a path in which it will corrupt Gale. 

Now this could be considered as a potential beginning of a shift of alignment, but it goes against what Sven said several times in interviews and presentations: he stated that they were not considering to change alignments in the companions (if you can imagine all the extra branches that it opens up, it makes sense not to allow it given the already colossal proportions of the game), so it's hard to suspect how Gale would evolve from here, or if this situation will give him reasons to attempt to kill this Evil Tav eventually (which is my personal guess). Sven suggested many times that companions could potentially kill Tav or other companions during their sleep. We saw this happening in EA with Astarion. Using datamining content, we saw the same with Lae'Zel and Shadowheart. I don't see why not to give in-character reasons to make this mechanism work with Gale as well.

As an extra (datamining) detail, we have Ethel's vicious mockery line emphasising the concept of "the shadow within":

Ethel: I can smell what's under those bandages wizard, you're all rot and ruin.

Putting aside the unnerving detail that Gale's concept art has bandages on one of his hands while the game is oblivious to this, the idea of Gale's “orb” as a source of rot and ruin, in combination with that necrotic aura when he dies, gives us a sure idea that there is a “disease” spreading in Gale's body as a consequence of this blackest weave stuck in his chest.

All the in-game information was presented, so now let's drag conclusions: Comparing all the information extracted from the scenes, we can now consider how much potential has the lore object named before:

Shadow Weave: Could Gale's “orb” be a fragment of Shadow Weave?

Strengths of the argument: Gale's “orb” is described as "blackest weave". It could barely be a hint, even though the Shadow weave has no canon colour nor physical description in the corebooks. So this is a very weak strength.

Weaknesses of the argument: Shadow Weave doesn't feed on Weave (this is a fallacy so far I've checked. It would make no sense to feed on the same object that it needs to exist.) Shadow Weave doesn't explode nor is chaotic. 

Death moon orb:

Strengths: It's called an "orb". And it was made by a netherese arcanist, so it must contain “netherese magic”.

Weaknesses: This object was destroyed during the Spellplague. It's a physical orb which changes size, but it's not an "amorphous mass" of magic. It doesn't consume Weave.

Netherese Orb:

Strengths: It's called an "orb". It's made of shadow magic (which is not netherse magic in corebooks but in game Ethel used both denominations as synonymous). We know Shadovar are masters of Shadow Magic. Read more in the post "The Netherese in 1492DR".

Weaknesses: This object doesn't appear in the corebooks. It's used for communication. It doesn't seem to have any explosive properties nor consumes Weave.

Devastation orb:

Strengths: It's called an "orb". They explode with the intensity to destroy a city. 

Weaknesses: It's made of elemental magic (not netherese magic). It's a solid object, a bomb (not an amorphous mass). It doesn't consume weave.

Personal speculation

I don't think any of these canon objects are or inspired Gale's “orb”. If we take the descriptions in-game as they are, and considering the importance that Karsus and his folly have been given in the whole game (to the point that Larian added ingame books explaining part of it) I support two hypothesis that, by now, they must be obvious for lorists since I want to work with what the game (and datamining) gives me: 

1- The concept that this is a piece of corrupted Weave that Karsus' Avatar allowed to have access to when he disrupted the Weave. Gale calls it “primal weave” as well, which is a concept that doesn't exist so far in the corebooks, and one could relate, very barely, with raw magic. Maybe.

2- Heavy magic (key concept during 2e)

To understand this we need MORE lore (I know, this has no end; this is why I think a lot of misunderstandings with Gale’s character come from the big holes of lore that EA leaves, which is obvious, it's EA) So, allow me to clear out the concepts: 

Karsus' Avatar is the name of the spell that caused Karsus' folly and made him a god for just an ephemeral moment. The notes regarding the spell’s essence were nowhere to be found. It’s believed that Mystra, the reincarnated form of Mystryl, snatched the spell information from the ruins of Karsus’s enclave and sent it “on an eternal journey to the ends of the universe” (who knows what this means). Besides, as if this were not enough precaution, Mystra changed the rules of magic on the material plane making it impossible to cast spells over 10th level. Karsus' Avatar was a 12th level spell.

Raw Magic is “the stuff of creation, the mute and mindless will of existence, permeating every bit of matter and present in every manifestation of energy throughout the multiverse. Mortals can't directly shape this raw magic. Instead, they make use of a fabric of magic, a kind of interface between the will of a spellcaster and the stuff of raw magic. The spellcasters of the Forgotten Realms call it the Weave and recognize its essence as the goddess Mystra.” [Player's Handbook 5e]

The creation of the Weave allowed all mortals to have access to magic through study. The Weave works like a barrier and an interpreter to use the real source of magic: Raw Magic. For more information on this, check the wiki (otherwise each of these posts will be mini books of lore). Few mortals can tap magic from the raw magic. Spells like silver fire are part of the raw magic. Some wild mages can tap into it as well, but at the cost of making their spells very random. Only Weave-disruptive events can allow an uncontrolled influx of raw magic into the world (which can be considered what happened during Karsus' folly)

Mythalars are immense artefacts that work like intermediates of the Raw Magic. They don't use the Weave, they have direct access to Raw Magic and were used to power up magical artefacts around them (thanks to these objects the Netheril cities floated in the air). Touching a mythalar causes instant death since Raw magic is harmful for most mortals.

So the first hypothesis (corrupted Weave) means that when Karsus cast this spell and became the Weave itself for a brief moment, he may have access to Raw magic directly. His spell Karsus' avatar started using common Weave, but in the second he connected deeply with the Weave and with Mystryl's powers, he had access to Raw magic as a god. His spell may have changed the source of its power from the Weave to Raw Magic, adding the latter's randomness and chaos to the spell itself and therefore, corrupting the Weave. The transition, so violent like the whole event, may have corrupted part of the Weave that was being used while casting the spell. According to Gale's description, the “orb” stuck in his chest is a piece of Weave with the active effect of Karsus' Avatar (the spell), but the Narrator gives us the extra information that it's corrupted. Apparently Gale never realised this object was corrupted, or may have known it and he tried to cleanse it so he could return it to Mystra. Either way, the source of the corruption may have been the sudden transition to Raw Magic during the casting. My main problem with this hypothesis is how a spell can be stuck in a piece of Weave, since Gale's “orb” maintains Karsus's avatar's effect. 

On one hand, Karsus' Avatar main effect is “to absorb god-like powers”. In that moment of history, this spell was aimed at Mystryl, and therefore to the Weave. The disruption of the event “stuck” the effect of “absorbing weave” in a piece of Weave, while the chaotic nature of this “orb” could be attributed to the direct presence of Raw Magic, also stuck in it. Now, another weakness of this hypothesis is that nothing of this causes a "corruption disease" as Gale implies it (we only know that the failure of the spell turned Karsus into stone). So we don't have a good argument for this effect beyond the one “I believe that since the moment was disruptive, it must have corrupted something, and that corruption is quite unhealthy in a mortal body”. Which it's not of my liking, but this is what we get up to this point in EA.

The second hypothesis I talked about is another lore concept intimately related to Karsus in 2e: Heavy Magic (which I personally prefer over the first hypothesis). 

Heavy magic is physical, tangible magic, usually presented as a viscous mass of chaotic nature. It can crawl, entering into cracks of a wall or a body, for example. Karsus created a distilled version of this magic called super heavy magic, and experimented with people. The subject eating a bit of this magic will have heavy magic spread on all the inner walls of their body and will kill them (it's not a disease, but it spreads inside and kills). The usual effect of the stable super heavy magic was to magnify the powers of a spell or enchantment (it allowed spells to be stuck in it), however it could be used for everything. 

Karsus used this element to enhance enchantments on walls, for example projecting illusions endlessly. This means that this product has the ability of keeping a spell functioning in it (as we see that this black weave keeps the function of the Karsus' avatar). [Dangerous Games, 2e]

Naturally, heavy magic absorbs life energies (maybe another characteristic fitting the concept of disease and necrotic effects). There is an event (2e) related to this aspect in which the renegade arcanist Wulgreth became a lich after heavy magic overflew him [Power and Pantheons, 2e]

As it is easy to see, this concept shares a lot of similarities with the object stuck in Gale's chest. But there is still more:

In the novel Dangerous Games (2e), strongly focused on how Karsus experimented with Heavy Magic, it is explicitly said that Karsus infused himself with super heavy magic before casting Karsus' avatar (probably to magnify the spell power but we also know that heavy magic can get spells stuck in it). He grew taller, and glowed in a white-silver radiance. Babbling arcane chants, the super heavy magic raged within him until he came into a state of being between a man and deity. Then it followed his folly. Karsus “died”, turning his body into red-hued stone, bound in eternal torment to relieve repeatedly the moment he became aware of his folly. 

So there exists a chance that a pieces of super heavy magic (in which Karsus was infused when all this happened) may have kept Karsus' Avatar effect stuck in them. One of these pieces could have been recovered later around the red stone where Karsus is now. This could potentially be the object or, at least, in what it had inspired Gale's “orb”. It's also worth noticing that one of the main characters in this novel Dangerous Games was looking for ways to safely contain heavy magic and avoid its damaging effect, so there is extra lore information about vessels that could justify the sealed book that Gale found in Waterdeep. 

As an extra detail on this matter, we know that the runes of teleportation may have been made with heavy magic: "Gale: See that rune? Netherese, I think. Weave's so thick on it, it's almost viscous." 

Since Gale is calling "Weave" to the element attached to the teleport runes, it makes me wonder if this was a slight variation that Larian made of the canon concept of Heavy Magic to not add new concepts to the already complex world of Forgotten Realms. Maybe, in the end, both hypotheses are the same: the second one is strictly more canon-related than the first one, which is more or less the same but simplified in terms and concepts. 

As a last conclusion from my personal point of view, I see no much sense in calling this thing “orb”. In game it's clearly described as an amorphous black mass, not an orb. And it made me remember Gale's original description, when the EA was not released yet: it's the only way where I can see its nonsensical origin, which was done in a completely different context. 

Gale has one ambition: to become the greatest wizard Faerûn has ever known. Yet his thirst for magic led to disaster. A Netherese Destruction Orb beats in his chest, counting down to an explosion that can level a city. Gale is confident he'll overcome it, but time is not on his side.

After the game was released in EA, Gale's description changed radically, and therefore his current description has a different approach entirely, removing the concept of "orb" for what we know in the game: “ancient chaotic magic”. 

Wizard prodigy: Gale is a wizard prodigy whose love for a goddess made him attempt a dread feat no mortal should. Blighted by the forbidden magic of ancient Netheril, Gale strives to undo the corruption that is overtaking him and win back his goddess’ favour before he becomes a destroyer of worlds.

This is one of the many details that make me believe that Gale's original concept/character was changed significantly before the EA release. But this is a mere personal speculation. For more details on netherese magic, read the post of "The Netherese in 1492DR".

Source: 

2nd edition: Powers and Pantheons, Netheril: Empire of Magic, Dangerous Games by Emery Clayton. 3rd Edition: Faith and Pantheon, Magic of Faerûn 4th edition Player's Handbook 5th edition: Player's Handbook, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide

This post was written in May 2021. → For more Gale: Analysis Series Index

[luwupercal]

had a 4am craving last night for silent king lore so i popped open his wiki page. and now i have some thoughts and stuff id like to share

first of all. i like that hes kind of supposed to sit there and juat nod at his fellow triarchs. like imagine having 3 kings and the top king is so badass he doesnt even talk to you his two dudes have to do it for him

there’s also this bit from the necrontyr getting into communication with the ctan for the first time that fucks massively

It was during the reign of Szarekh that the godlike energy beings known as the C'tan first blighted the Necrontyr. It is impossible to say for certain how the Necrontyr first came to encounter the C'tan, though many misleading, contradictory and one-sided accounts of these events exist.

The dusty archives of Solemnace claim it was but an accident, a chance discovery made by a stellar probe during the investigation of a dying star. The Book of Mournful Night, held under close guard in the Black Library's innermost sanctum, tells rather that the raw hatred that the Necrontyr held for the Old Ones sang out across space, acting as a beacon the C'tan could not ignore.

which is neat

also, the deceiver told szarekh something p interesting

The Deceiver spoke of a war, fought long before the birth of the Necrontyr, between the C'tan and the Old Ones. It was a war, he said, that the C'tan had lost. In the aftermath, and fearing the vengeance of the Old Ones, he and his brothers had hidden themselves away, hoping one day to find allies with whom they could finally bring the Old Ones to account. In return for aid, the Deceiver assured, he and his brothers would deliver everything that the Necrontyr craved.

Unity could be theirs once again, and the immortality that they had sought for so long would finally be within their grasp. No price would there be for these great gifts, the Deceiver insisted, for they were but boons to be bestowed upon valued allies. Thus did the Deceiver speak, and who can say how much of his tale was truth? It is doubtful whether even the Deceiver knew, for trickery had become so much a part of his existence that even he could no longer divine its root.

so either the old ones have even more war crimes on their record or szarekh literally fell for a nigerian prince scam LMFAO

also orikan the diviner deserves more hype for being szarekhs courts token transhet and predicting that the ctan would fuck them over

another thought is that i’d really love to see the exact moment when szarekh realized he fucked up? like

With the pact between Necrontyr and C'tan sealed, the Star Gods revealed the form that immortality would take, and the great biotransference began. Colossal bio-furnaces roared day and night, consuming weak-bodied flesh and replacing it with enduring forms of living metal. As the cyclopean machines clamoured, the C'tan swarmed about the biotransference sites, drinking in the torrent of cast-off life energy and growing ever stronger.

As Szarekh watched the C'tan feast on the life essence of his people, he realised the terrible depth of his mistake. In many ways, he felt better than he had in solar decades, the countless aches and uncertainties of organic life now behind him. His new machine body was far mightier than the frail form he had tolerated for so long, and his thoughts were swifter and clearer than they had ever been. Yet there was an emptiness gnawing at his mind, an inexpressible hollowness of spirit that defied rational explanation.

In that moment, he knew with cold certainty that the price of physical immortality had been the loss of his soul. With great sorrow the Silent King beheld the fate he had brought upon his people: the Necrontyr were now but a memory, and the soulless Necrons reborn in their place.

this is what the wiki says, but i’d love to read specifics about this

also another interesting thing is that it says this

Likewise, the Necrons enjoyed a unity that the Necrontyr had never known, though it was achieved through tyranny rather than consent. The biotransference process had embedded command protocols in every Necron mind, granting Szarekh the unswerving loyalty of his subjects. At first, the Silent King embraced this unanimity, for it was a welcome reprieve from the chaos of recent years. However, as time wore on he grew weary of his burden but dared not sever the command protocols, lest his subjects turn on him in vengeance for the terrible curse he had visited upon them.

and then it says this

This was the Silent King's last order, and as the last Tomb World sealed its vaults, he destroyed the command protocols by which he had controlled his people, for he had failed them utterly. Without a backward glance, Szarekh, last of the Silent Kings, took ship into the blackness of intergalactic space, there to find whatever measure of solace or penance he could.

which is inch resting. i do like that at least he feels GUILTY lol

one last thing: 

what the actual fuck are the ctans

seriously

The Book of Mournful Night, held under close guard in the Black Library's innermost sanctum, tells rather that the raw hatred that the Necrontyr held for the Old Ones sang out across space, acting as a beacon the C'tan could not ignore.

like the tyranids were theorized to at some point??

Some Necrontyr actively sought the C'tan's favour and oversaw the forging of living metal bodies to contain the Star Gods' nebulous essence. Thus clad, the C'tan took the shapes of the Necrontyr's half-forgotten gods, hiding their own desires beneath cloaks of obsequious subservience.

so they had living metal technology before the ctan

The Deceiver spoke of a war, fought long before the birth of the Necrontyr, between the C'tan and the Old Ones. It was a war, he said, that the C'tan had lost. In the aftermath, and fearing the vengeance of the Old Ones, he and his brothers had hidden themselves away, hoping one day to find allies with whom they could finally bring the Old Ones to account.

...and who can say how much of his tale was truth? It is doubtful whether even the Deceiver knew, for trickery had become so much a part of his existence that even he could no longer divine its root.

so they MAYBE fought the old ones?? and the deceiver has no option but to trick???

With the pact between Necrontyr and C'tan sealed, the Star Gods revealed the form that immortality would take, and the great biotransference began. Colossal bio-furnaces roared day and night, consuming weak-bodied flesh and replacing it with enduring forms of living metal.

which like this just makes me think they had the biotransference technology all along, but the c’tan added some sort of element? or promised to add, and didn’t? could they not transfer their souls?

Alas, the C'tan were immortal star-spawn, part of the fundamental fabric of reality and therefore nigh impossible to destroy.

and this is like the most baffling bit -- are the c’tan some form of warp entity??

anyway what the fuck

[thevindicativevordan]

On Supergirl

Figured I should put up my thoughts about Kara in the wake of her first film appearance being announced, and the final season of her TV show fast approaching. Short version is: Kara is very cool and DC needs to stop messing with her. 

My Introduction to Kara

I was introduced to Kara the way most millennials/Gen Zers were I imagine, via the Loeb Superman/Batman arc which brought the traditional Kara Zor-El Supergirl take into Post-Crisis continuity, after years of DC attempting to have a “Supergirl” without violating the editorial mandate that Kal needed to be the literal “Last Son of Krypton” (an example of one of the dumb ways DC fucked Kara over). Story goes that one day Dan Didio was in line at the Superman ride at Six Flags (I love that ride even though it’s stolen my glasses every time I’ve ridden it, even when I left them in a locker!). The ride had signs that talked about various Superman characters. Didio was reading the entry for Supergirl where it talked about her not being Clark’s cousin but instead some weird merge of alien shapeshifter, angel, and human girl, and he realized how fucking stupid that was, and he went back to the office and told Loeb to bring Kara back. 

Years later I would also be standing in line at the Six Flags Superman ride (probably at a different park location but who knows?) as a youngster and would read the new Supergirl sign that trumpeted that Superman had a cousin who shared all his powers, an update reflecting the new Loeb origin. I thought she sounded pretty cool, made a note to see if my library had any Supergirl stories next time I visited, then got on the Superman ride and promptly lost my glasses like an idiot because I wanted to take them off while I was riding and pretend I was changing from my “disguise” into Superman mid flight. My dad grounded me for this afterwards, but it gave me a funny story to tell at family get togethers and isn’t that what Six Flags is all about?

A month later (and with spiffy new glasses), my mom dropped me off at a new library next to where she worked, and they had one of the best Superman collections I’ve ever seen to this day. I was in heaven and while reading every Superman book I could find (I couldn’t check them out because I didn’t have a card, my mom’s card didn’t cover the area the library was in, and my mom wouldn’t have checked them out anyway since comics were “too violent”), I found the trade collecting Kara’s new origin. I read it and I thought both she and Superman were really cool, and Batman was a  punk who had to beat Darkseid by cheating, the loser. Turner’s art to my young eyes was the best I had ever seen, and the panels got engraved into my brain. 

I still get downright nostalgic whenever I see Turner Superman or Supergirl stuff. I also got my parents to rent the animated movie adaption of the Superman/Batman arc from Blockbuster (remember those?), and that sealed the deal. Seeing Kara hold her own against Darkseid convinced me she was as cool as her cousin. Next time my mom dropped me off at the library next to her workplace, I went looking for Supergirl stuff to read. I found the first volume of her new volume by Joe Kelly taking place after the Loeb arc and dove in.

It was... weird. 5 years later I might have enjoyed it but at the time I was majorly put off. Kara took a secret identity for a day and then ditched it because it was “stupid” and the kids bullied her. She was always getting into fights with Kal, and there was this weird plot that I couldn’t follow about how her dad had sent her to kill Kal, maybe or maybe not? Also she could grow crystals which I thought was dumb, and said she was stronger than her cousin which I couldn’t buy for a second given he looked like he was carved out of marble, and she looked like she relied on sunlight instead of food. I put the volume back on the shelf and kinda gave up on reading the character after that for a while. 

I followed her via the DC wiki updates just like I did Superman, and everything I read seemed dumb and convoluted. She was split in two, moped around a lot, made out with an alternate version of her cousin, and basically just flopped about the same way the rest of the Superfamily did during the 00s. Nothing made me think I had made a mistake dropping Kara until I read the latest update to her wiki page.

I was super into what I was reading about the Busiek/Johns era of Superman online. Lex was back and making a big revenge scheme that involved all the other Rogues! Old Superman Rogues were getting revamped and made cool again! Johns reintroduced Brainiac and made him a big threat, with Kal and Kara teaming up to fight him! Busiek was revamping Prankster and telling big ambitious Superman stories! For the first time in a long while, the consensus on the Internet was that Superman was good again. My “home” library had zero Marvel books and no Superman or Batman books, all their DC stuff was Flash or Green Lantern, mainly written by Johns. Insane to think back on now. My hopes that because Johns was involved with Superman, Superman books would show up at my library were fulfilled. They started bringing in Busiek and Johns collections, and someone there also ordered Sterling Gates’ first volume of Supergirl, and I checked everything out since I was old enough to have my own library card, and my parents were worried more about the violent video games I was playing rather than comics.

I read everything and loved it. I also really liked Gates’ take on Kara. She was still an imperfect teenager but she wasn’t insufferably angsty or constantly fighting with Kal. She was going to give the secret identity another try and Lana had “adopted” her. It’s funny remembering how I enjoyed all that given my current thoughts on how Kara should work, but it was great at the time. I liked Gates introducing new foes for Kara, some classic Superman Rogues adapted for her like Bizzarogirl, others crafted specifically for her like Reactron. Gates’ basically rekindled my enjoyment of Kara the same way Busiek & Johns rekindled my enjoyment of Superman.

Of course it ended terribly like everything Superman-related seems to.

I’ve got a whole post I want to do about New Krypton and what came after. In short that is the most blatant example of “hitting the reset button” that I’ve ever seen. All the potential got wasted, and afterwards everything except Lex’s Action Comics stuff just didn’t appeal to me. Gates got booted off Kara for Nick Spencer who ended up leaving himself later, a promising Teen Titans line-up with Kara on it didn’t happen, and the last proper Pre-Flashpoint Superfamily story was a crappy team-up with Doomsday against Bigger Doomsday (thank God for Cornell’s final Luthor/Superman confrontation at least). When news of the reboot arrived, I was honestly happy. The Superline needed an enema.

Controversial opinion time: I liked New 52 Supergirl. It’s weird because a lot of the stuff I hated about Kelly’s run was here, and a lot of the stuff I loved about the Gates’ run was not. This was angry, moody, emotional Kara again, fighting with Kal and not fond of Earth. But I was in my teens at this point, and I didn’t want happy go-lucky Superman or Supergirl. I wanted my heroes angry, scared of the future, ready to go out there and smash some cars. Morrison’s Action Comics was 100% my jam (still is once I really understood the deeper meaning beneath the work) and this Kara felt like a natural fit for this universe. Plus we got Asrar on art and that guy made it damn pretty to look at, lots of cool science fiction stuff going on, even with the dumb H’el storyline.

I loved all the new Rogues Kara got. I loved her new Fortress under the ocean. I loved how traumatized she was by the loss of Krypton, that she wanted more than anything to go home, that her cousin was like a stranger to her since they had been apart for so long. I found all of that incredibly relatable. A lot of the New 52 Supergirl stories might have been schlock but it was my type of schlock damnit, and I enjoyed it!

I kept with her New 52 series all the way through the Red Daughter Saga (which I loved). As someone who grew up on Johns GL (since that was the only comics my home library had), seeing a Supercharacter join a Lantern Corp was the hypest thing ever. I loved the finale about Kara finally letting go of her anger and losing the ring while smashing her foe into the sun, it was incredibly cathartic for me as an angry teen myself. I finally stopped following her series sometime after since I was no longer enjoying the Superline or really DC as a whole. It wasn’t until I heard that New 52 Superman died and the “old” Superman was back, that I checked back into DC.

DC Rebirth & How I Think Kara Should Work

I did not enjoy Supergirl Rebirth, and I think I’ll talk about my problems with it alongside how I think Kara as a character should work since the two are related. A pet peeve of mine that has formed over the years is this: I don’t like it when Superfamily members get turned into Clark clones. Kon wearing glasses and going to Smallville High. Kara going to high school and being involved in journalism. Jon more or less being written as a copy of his dad personality-wise. I hate that kind of stuff because it’s boring. What’s the point of a Superfamily if everyone is just copying Clark? It also doesn’t fit the characters especially in Kara’s case. Why the hell does she want to be a journalist? Were there journalists on Krypton? I don’t remember ever seeing one! Shouldn’t she want to be, I dunno, a scientist? That seems to have been the El family tradition, wouldn’t she have been groomed for that?

This one-off by Shea is honestly the only acceptable outcome for Kara going into journalism for me. She realizes she’s just copying her cousin and switches to something she wants to do. So Orlando copying the show, which already basically turned Kara into an expy of her cousin, just did not appeal to me at all. What had worked for me under Gates way back when was not clicking for me this time. I wanted to see Kara embody the principles of the S-shield in a different way than her cousin did. So I really enjoyed when Rebirth ended and we moved into the Bendis era with Andrekyo relaunching the title as Kara in space.

Kara in space has always felt like a good fit for me. Unlike Kal I’ve come to believe that Kara really shouldn’t be all that fond of Earth. For him it’s home, but for her it’s just where she ended up after her real home got destroyed. I think Kara works well as a sort of nomad, occasionally making stops back home to Earth to check on her cousin, but otherwise? She’s more comfortable out in space than she could ever be on Earth. Out in space she can be Kryptonian (which is what she should think of herself as in contrast to Clark being torn between his Kryptonian biology and human upbringing, and Jon/Kon identifying as human), be her true self, not have to pretend to be human to fit in. Kara founding a moon refuge was one of the best ideas for her that I’ve seen, I would love if DC made her Future State refugee center on the moon canon. I’m excited for more Kara adventures in space with the upcoming Tom King story.

Also love that her and Krypto are getting tied together, if they don’t want to use Krypto in Superman’s stuff, let her have him! Bring on cosmic adventurer Supergirl!

Personality & Other Traits

Kara to me should be more hot-tempered than her cousin. All the Superfamily members should have a temper in my opinion, I see that as the “Deadly Sin” of Superman and his family. But while Kal is like a simmering pot that will explode if it’s left cooking for too long, Kara is like dynamite. Light her fuse at your own peril because she will go off on you.

I also like the idea of Kara being rash. Kal’s got a maturity that came from over a decade of having to live with Lex Luthor constantly getting away with all his evil schemes. He’s patient because he’s been forced to be. Kara? If you ask for her help she’ll give it, but beware because she doesn’t really care about the long term impacts of her decisions. She’s an invulnerable teenager after all.

Really liked that Venditti Annual where Kara got tutored in history by a reincarnation of Hawkman. Kara having a passion for history is a neat trait, would be nice to see her teach Kal or Jon some Kryptonian lore, or have her lead a Kryptonian holiday celebration for the Superfamily because she’s the only one who remembers how to do it. 

Sexuality wise I know a lot of people ship Kara and Lena on account of the chemistry between the two in the show. I haven’t watched the show myself but I’m fine with making Kara bisexual, the Superfamily could use some LGBT+ rep, and Lena hasn’t done anything of worth as a villain, so undo that and throw the two together. If we’re letting Harley and Ivy get away with murder I think we can let Lena off the hook too, undo the Ultrawoman weirdness and put the two together. Could be fun seeing the two building that moon refuge together.

All in all I think Kara is a great character who is a stronger embodiment of the immigrant experience than even her cousin in some ways. I hope King does a good job with her, she’s treated better than her cousin on the film side, and that overall the 20s are a better decade for Supergirl than the 10s were.

[leighlim]

I'm hoping that this instalment has James passing the mantel to Nomi.

Adam Liaw favours Timothee Chalamet over Idris Elba. I would be going with Lashana Lynch over both...as she already has experience being in the Bond universe as an agent with 00 status. I know it's just a clip...but...from that...her performance was solid.

PS: I'm actually looking forward to a Phoebe Waller-Bridge screenplay with also a production credit for the next one.

(I was actually surprised that Phoebe hasn't attempted directing yet.)

PPS: If you can't wait to find out Nomi's 00 designation...the Wiki page of the film has something. Of course...it's not confirmed until we see it with our own eyes (or read the captions)...

...but from the clip...Nomi mentions that she's had the number for two years. I finally got my answer about permanence of 00 designations.

(Gosh...after reading that section of the wiki page...I'm quite excited now...I wonder if a version of the screenplay with surface within the next few weeks?)

------------------

Highlights:

Graham: Over the films, what's the worst injury you've had?

Daniel: Probably my knee, which was on 'Spectre'...That was Dave Bautista. God bless him.

[An image from Spectre with Bond going hand to hand with Hinx. Their size difference apparent.]

Daniel: Who is a professional wrestler.

[Laughter from the audience]

Daniel: We were doing this scene. The fight sequence on, um, a train in 'Spectre'. And we've learned this for weeks and weeks and weeks. And...you basically spend a week shooting it...And Dave was basically being really great with me. And he's a big, big guy. I forget how big he is. And he was sort of throwing me against the wall and being gentle. So he should. It's pretend.

[The audience laughs along with Graham]

Daniel: And....and....I sort of said: 'Dave, Dave, mate, come on. It's alright. Come on, you can chuck me a bit. Don't worry about it. It's fine. I'm fine. Grrrrr. '

[Graham is grinning, hanging on to Daniel's every word.]

Daniel: So he did.

[Graham lets our a hearty laugh.]

Daniel: I ended up on the wall but my knee is sort of here somewhere.

[Daniel points to a weird angle and we could only imagine how much he screamed when it happened.]

Graham: Oooh.

Daniel: I sort of went: 'Oh God!!'...And I knew. So if anyone's had that kind of injury, you know in your head that something's really wrong...Like I was out and we had to re-film it. I had a brace on and it was a struggle to do it. But I broke his nose.

['Ohhhs' from the audience as well as Rami]

Graham: Don't mess with the Craig.

Daniel: Well, I didn't do it deliberately. And clearly it was a mistake. I mean...like I said, he's a big guy. He's a professional wrestler. You wouldn't really mess with him. And I threw this punch, hit him on the nose. I heard his crack and went: 'Oh, God! No!'. And ran away.

------------------

Ed: Do you have the finished product? Because I lacquered it.

Graham: All right, Ed. all right.

[Graham switches to a photo of the finished cot. It's outside under the sun, Ed leaning against it. Smiling widely. Behind him, a perfectly manicured lawn.]

Graham: There we go. It's beautiful.

Ed: Look how happy I am.

[Applause from the audience.]

Daniel: Look at the lawn!

Graham: No, that's exactly...

[Graham gestures to Daniel excitedly.]

Graham: Oh, we are so middle-aged...

[Daniel leans forward laughing.]

Graham: ...we are so middle aged. We looked past you.

Graham and Daniel: Look at that lawn!

------------------

Episode Rating: 6/10

[americangodstalk]

Just an update

So after a long period of silence here is a due update to the situation, for anyone that is interested.

Despite all my hopes and efforts, I can’t work on the American Gods Wiki, unfortunately. As I mentionned previously, to maintain a Wiki active you need :

1) to be a team and unfortunately I am a lonely soul (a lot of you showed support when I made the post, mostly thanks to Neil Gaiman reblogging it, but no one actually came to the Wiki or did anything with it, so while I am glad you all sent me promises and such, without action behind it just can’t work out - it is not a blame, just a statement). 

2) to have enough time and energy to give for something that won’t give you much in return. Nowadays my life is busy, incredibly busy. I have studies. I have family troubles. There are monetary problems. I have a long list of books to read that are waiting for years. I need to prepare myself a stable job or source of income, and I need to build my life a bit better in front of the hardships. Anyway all to say - currently I cannot dedicate myself to maintain a website that won’t give me back any money or any real human contact. It is just not a good use of my time, or rather not a healthy and sustainable one.

Again, it doesn’t mean I have given up on the Wiki. Not at all. I still have a duty as the only remaining staff member. And I have worked a lot on several aspects of it. So I keep checking the Wiki, watching over it like a guardian bird. But I can’t find enough time/energy/will to read again and again the book to hunt down every little detail to make the articles more accurate ; nor to play with the codes and formating of the pages to make readable articles with well-positionned images. Hell I didn’t even knew how to do that at first, I learned everything on the spot and made several mistakes along the way.

Originally, my intention was to improve the Wiki in order to help inform people online. That was my true and original goal - I noticed so much people spreading misinformation on Reddit and Youtube comment sections and the like about American Gods, I understood that the very summary and lacking aspect of the Wiki had a part to play in it. The Wiki covers barely half of the novel, if not a third, and doesn’t even speak of the additional works such as Monarch of the Glen, or Anansi Boys. Just for example, Whiskey Jack’s page was just a few descriptions and sentences before I worked a bit on it - it did not reflect at all how important and powerful he is in the novel, it didn’t even mention how he moved his house around, how his relationship with Harry Bluejay was quite complicated, how he [SPOILERS BEGIN] pulled out Shadow of the nothingness [SPOILERS END]. 

It is this kind of misinformation I wanted to help correct by improving the Wiki. Some people only knew of the television series and looking at the Wiki got a wrong idea of the book. Some people read merely half or a part of the book and used the Wiki to help them catch up to a read they thought they’ll never do. And even more people just did not read the novel and used the Wiki as prime source. I wanted to correct that. 

[I also admit that a secondary desire of mine was to spread the awareness of all the deleted scenes, deleted characters and deleted material of both the book and the television series - I have an obsession with what could have been, what almost was, what will never be, and there was so much people ignored or did not talk about because it was not shared widely or looked for.]

But ultimately, I realize all of this isn’t worth me wasting all my effort only to have for sole visitors on the Wiki people who are asking why aren’t the gods in the book like their Marvel counterparts (because they somehow think it is a Marvel comic book?) or starting religious debates as to why Jesus should be the more powerful god/absorb all the gods/kill all the other gods. You know the kind of people that clearly did not get what the book was about or inscribed itself in, or that mash-up the television series and the novel which have two universes that work in very different functions (and I am still baffled by some people that come in the Wiki not having read the book or watched the show and that still wants to explain to me why the worldbuilding or the relationships don’t work). 

While American Gods is a fun story to study, it is a fun story to study while sharing with other fans and friends. It is funny to discover things people will debate upon, it is funny to remind ourselves of things we missed or forgot, it is funny to see people’s reactions and theories to deleted scenes. But to analyze every word of a chapter, to try to put words on every feeling you have while reading, to rewatch episodes scene by scene - just for the sake of writing a comprehensive, detailled, fully-informed article that people won’t use as an help to understand and explore AG but simply to pretend they know the story when they haven’t watched or read it beforehand... No, that’s a bummer and a burn-out for me. 

So... I still enjoy the novel. I still enjoy the first season of the television series, and parts of season two (not season three though). I still enjoy parts of the American Gods graphic novel adaptation (especially the Coming to America segments in it, they are gorgeous). But I just won’t work on the Wiki anymore until a very, very long time - or until a team reforms itself on it. 

An ultimate reminder: the Wiki was not made as a way to know everything without reading or watching American Gods. It was made originally to help people understand some mysteries, spot details they missed, explain mythological references, to act as a companion, not a replacement. So I leave you with those parting words:

READ THE GODDAMN BOOK. WATCH THE GODDAMN SHOW. AND THEN YOU CAN SPEAK ABOUT IT. 

And please remember that it is not a religious manifesto or a political statement (the novel at least - I am speaking of the novel) but simply a “urban fantasy” novel set in the late 1990s/early 2000s, a grim, oniric, supernatural road trip ; an exploration of a world of old gods and modern religions in the United-States ; and kind of a trippy and mysterious coming-of-age story (so to speak).