#I understand them

[1ncend1ary]

so yeah basically.

[itsybitsybatsyspider]

Redraw of this piece from 6 years ago

[iorekbyrinson]

shc drabbles: asriel belacqua, or, the Double Lion that ISN'T a Double Lion

ok so asriel has literally. haunted me since he got typed as a double lion. and this isn't to say that interpretation isn't correct.

however HOWEVER - do I think that's his sorting? no. I think he's a Lion secondary (that sometimes tries and pulls a Marisa Coulter-esque Snake sec), but his primary? Hufflepuff, baby. this is one of fiction's TRUE evil Badger Lions, and, to be honest, it's not even that hard to see how.

compare and contrast with Erik Lehnsherr, his nearest counterpart. Magneto has a kind of Badger-y shell on his Primary that dovetails with the dehumanizing aspects of his cause, rallies people behind him (it implies a kind of group care without him ever kind of NEEDING the group if that makes sense), and may well be something borrowed from his old mirror Charles Xavier, who Badgers so hard it sometimes hard to see his own Snake-yness. Anyhow, I digress. What I'm saying is - Magneto is the true Double Lion. He has his Cause, and when we see him in First Class, it's a typical low-health revenge fantasy Cause. then Charles intervenes and tries to guide him to a kind of belonging, a reckoning within his sense of unity amongst mutants (and humans, because Charles doesn't discriminate), but once that philosophy goes against Erik's newest Cause (born bloodstained and dripping the SECOND after the coin goes through Shaw's skull), he abandons Charles. and that's Erik's journey throughout these prequel movies especially - he finds a Cause, something disrupts it, he Improvises, then discovers a new one, hidden like an ember deep within. it's all internal and driven and NATURAL AND NORMAL to Erik to do this. he's a Lion.

now take Asriel - Asriel Belacqua, who EVERYONE knows to be a bit of a tight-arse and basically has never related to anyone, ever. his daemon is a snow leopard because the dude basically has the Arctic wastes swirling around inside of him. now that coldness; where is born it from? does it come from a particularly frozen Cause, a sense of isolation on a journey no one understands? when we see Erik on an equivalent journey, he's never ALONE like that - not really. Erik is either brooding or dangerously damaged or ticking over until his Lion comes roaring through. Asriel? even when he's getting what he wants, his glee is - dangerous. he's described as having eyes that glitter with savage amusement or rage. what I'm trying to get it as Asriel has an EXTERNAL primary - and what is his External Primary geared towards? hating humankind.

Now, without getting into the weeds of analysis too much, Asriel is supposed to be a cipher for Satan, the one who wants to destroy Heaven etcetera etcetera. And what we can take from this is Asriel feels fundamentally APART. Excluded. And he HATES it. he hates how the Authority and the Magisterium have curried the world into their little factions of power and belonging, he hates how he perceives himself as the ONLY one to see all this, he hates how Lyra, who is a real Lion primary, can survive on her own rage and power and instead he is burdened by it, because if there was ever someone who didn't have a LIFE outside of his raison d'etre, it's Asriel. It's hard to see, but once you see, you can't unsee it. And boy oh boy, does Asriel dehumanize HARD. He sees it fundamentally in tune to a greater plan (the plan being that he will free the world from oppression, but he shows precious little actual FERVOUR for the people he's supposedly freeing, because as we say, he hates them), and literally anyone who comes in his path he doesn't see as valuable/sees as expendable becomes Not Important. Roger Parslow, the child, who he sacrifices to open the new world. Lyra, time and time again. Even Marisa.

SPEAKING of; Marisa Coulter, Double Snake, is the only one who has ever gotten past all of this destructive Badger armour. Because she's a Loyalist - and Asriel UNDERSTANDS that. His one misstep outside of his mission was in his personal life when he threw caution to the wind to have an affair with Marisa, have their baby, and then grant that baby to Jordan College. Who knows, maybe this was the seed of him starting to dehumanize EVERYONE. But she's the only one he bows to, ever, even slightly. When she's injured in the last book, he lifts her and carries her to his aircraft with a gentleness NO ONE ELSE sees in the books. When she wakes in the other room and despairs of what comes next, whens he asks why he didn't just tell her he was trying in actuality to save Lyra/save the fate of humanity, he says wearily "I lied because I thought you'd believe a lie." At his weakest, at his most vulnerable, he turns to Marisa, because she's the only connection he has left to whatever human being was inside him. And his ending - falling into the abyss with her to save their child? That's the most these toxic, twisted Loyalists could ever give their unparented child. A fitting ending.

@wisteria-lodge I'd love to get your thoughts on this. What say you, Badger Lion, or Double Lion Asriel?

[boykingscourt]

latest from my friend

[ngage2003]

I am literally a feather millipede did you know they form colonies and are social creatures? Did you know they eat meals together?? Did you know that males take care of eggs for weeks and keep them clean of infection? And if a male loses their clutch they will go look for a new one to protect? And even if they have a clutch still they will take in orphaned eggs to protect them? Also they're this gorgeous warm pink or yellows???

[lady-swanbell]

It's not easy for me to say goodbye, especially after so many years - all we've shared, all that we've meant to one another.

[astrid-beck]

Masochist with chronic pain Ashton Greymoore you're everything

[twiggy-ink]

they have that look of understanding/unity of two queer people who are both interested in the same person in their eyes.

[elizabethan-memes]

"We're obsessed with the Tudors" are we though?? Because we sure don't understand them. Are we obsessed with the Tudors or obsessed with our historical Lego figures covered in a patina of mock Tudor?

[mages-ballad]

"emet selch liker to astarion liker pipeline" and what if i said astarions actually most similar to yotsuyu. what then

[ghoulish00]

i need to go missing

[cloudshades]

via shagey_

[platypusisnotonfire]

I’m annoyed by irrational numbers

I know they’re real numbers

They exist

But they are infinite? But not. They are decidedly NOT infinity. But they are….infinitely repeating

It’s like infinity into atoms compared to infinity into the universe but like

They’re also REAL FREAKING NUMBERS that can define finite objects (circles for instance)

I’m not happy about them

[tardis--dreams]

Oh, so it doesn't say "you can analyse from down here"~

[cyrsed]

types of people:

people with the archivist's illness who video tape everything (digital cameras were a boon)

people who fall in love with lighthouses (digital cameras signal the end of an era, automation removing the need for lighthouse keepers)

[raisy-archive]

characters with self destructive tendencies makes brain go brrrr