#and very clearly paying homage

[bookendsguy]

BUT YOUU DONT LOVE ME THATS NEWS TO ME THATS NEWS TOOO MEEE THATS NEWS TO-

[hinamie]

もう一回、もう一回

[sorrelpaws]

lost in the woods or smth but at least they’ve got different outfits!!!

[solvicrafts]

Just saw some people saying that the Loki s2 finale was crap because it wasn't approached with a Christian perspective.

Loki is based off of the Norse deity, you absolute chucklefucks.

[lovereturns]

i'm so tempted to just yell out THE SHOW SUCKS and have the fandom swallow me

[juletheghoul]

greedy

a/n: I cannot be stopped at this point, this man brings out the WHORE in me and I have happily accepted my fate lol. This is un beta-ed, any mistakes are my own. Shout out to @foli-vora for being a constant source of love and support and for contributing so much to this world, thanks my love! 🩷Hopefully you enjoy!

Warnings; 18+ no minors, vague but big-legal age gap, piv sex, dirty talk, Marcus being a total glutton for your greed over him, creampie, heavy possessive feelings from you because lets be REAL, master / slave dynamic (power imbalance), Marcus calls reader Girl, reader calls Marcus Dominus, let me know if I missed any!

Pairing: Marcus Acaciusx F!Reader

word count: 2.4k

reblogs are appreciated

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His house was in order, and that was mostly thanks to you. 

Since your return to Rome, and the villa, he has been busy. Mostly, it’s been a parade of high ranking officials, members of the noble families making their pilgrimage to pay homage to the ‘Saviour of Rome’.

He despised it.

With all of the ferocity within him, he despised it. You could see it in his visage, in the clench in his jaw when they’d come to call. The way the normally confident expression in his eyes, faltered and focused on his sandaled feet. If he hadn’t been the person he was, you might have laughed. But he was, and so you didn’t. 

After a few weeks it inevitably died down, and the whole house seemed to take a deep breath, it wasn’t to last though. Just as the air seems to settle, someone comes calling, someone very important. 

“Lavinia–” She is a true beauty, of high Roman birth and the daughter to one of the most influential men in Rome, just a step below the Emperor himself. “You honour me…” He is at a loss for words as she floats into the halls of his house. His eyes find yours but you don’t need him to say a word, within a moment you’re flitting towards the other attendants, and within the span of a few breaths, his table is laid out with enough food and wine to impress even one as fine as her. 

“I have caught you unawares have I not?” She giggles and the sound is almost calculated to ensnare, the jewels at her throat and dangling from her ears glinting almost as brightly as her eyes “I am glad to see I am not vying with anyone else for your attention, I wanted you all to myself this day.” He leads her to his table, and sends everyone out of the room but you. 

“Yes, well.” He clears his throat, and already you can feel him closing up, hiding behind his mask of courtesy. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

You stand behind his chair at the ready, and watch her cast her spell on him, silently. 

“Does one such as me need a reason to visit with you General Marcus? Surely with your victory you’d have a steady parade of young, quite available women marching through your halls, fighting tooth and nail to catch your eye.” She shook out her long blonde waves, subtly, but not so subtly angling herself in the most flattering way. “You are unmarried and unattached as of yet, all of Rome knows it.” She bites her lip, appealing to him in the way beautiful women always appeal to men and it shocks you to feel the unfamiliar stab of anger in your belly. 

He grunted, noncommittally. 

“I have come to…speak of such things.” She stretched towards him like a cat, picking a grape from the platters on the table, and nibbling at it softly, her lips the colour of ripe pomegranates. “If you would care to hear them, of course.” 

He has no interest in marriage, he cares too much for his time alone, he will tell you to leave–

“I will, of course, listen to whatever you have to say, Lavinia.” If you hadn’t been as experienced with him, you would have gasped. Instead, you stood there, trying with all your might to keep the shock off your face, and the tremble out of your hands. “Wine.” He spoke the word clearly, and it pulled you out of your shocked anger behind him. With a practiced hand, you poured for him, and then moved quickly to pour for her. 

You don’t catch his eye, but you feel it on you, no doubt noting the furrow in your brow,  tracking you, as you make your way back to your place behind him. You let go of a deep, steadying breath and for a moment you could swear on all of the Gods you see him smile over his shoulder. In the blink of an eye, it’s gone. 

“Let us speak of them then.” She claps her hands together happily, “My father would have come to speak to you sooner or later, but I thought it best to test the waters myself, without the scrutiny of his eye.” She leans towards him again, elbows on his table, holding her delicate face in her hands and even you have to admit, it’s masterful. The jewels on her fingers only enhance the hue of her eyes. She takes advantage of the cut of her dress, the calculated pieces of flesh she has on display, and how cunningly she uses them is something to behold. You look down at the simple tunic you wear, the uniform of your station and all at once, you feel beneath her, beneath everyone. 

“And what would your father have to say to me, I believe you are more than capable of making a case for yourself. You strike me as the sort of woman that gets what she wants.” His tone is different, he sounds almost interested and it’s a dagger through your heart. 

Steel yourself, you are nothing but a slave, no matter how many times he buries himself inside you. You are what’s available, until he finds another, equal to him. 

She giggles, tickled, but unsurprised that he seems to be responding to her charms. 

“I do get what I want, in the end.” She smiles, and it is truly lovely, “and what I want is you.” 

“Shall I fetch more wine Dominus?” You step beside him, whispering with a tremble in your voice, hoping, wishing, praying to all of the Gods that he’ll spare you from this torment. 

“No.” A soft word, and your stomach turns. You step back silently. “I am surprised you have come to me, I am sure there are armies of men ready to fight to the death for you, why am I the one you want”

“Oh come now Marcus, you have just led our army in a great victory, the streets cry out your name, the Emperor himself has thanked you for your service, you are the most desired man in all of Rome, you know this.” She brushes his question off, “I can raise you up higher still, to the very halls of the Senate, should you wish it.” 

“The Senate? And what would I do in the Senate? I am no politician, I am quite content where I am.” He smiles for her benefit, and you do your best to remain impartial, and invisible. 

Unfeeling. Unmoving.

“It is an option, should you want it.” She reiterates, “Now, what do you say of this match? What are your thoughts?” She picks more food off the plates, completely confident. 

“I will say this, you honour me greatly,” She smiles, licking at the tips of her delicate fingers, “It is a lot to consider, and I would be grateful if I could have some time to think, send you word of my final decision once I’ve had time to settle back into civilian life.” He bows his head to her and she responds in kind, seemingly pleased with his response. 

She stays longer than the others, and he entertains her to her heart's content, sharing the less violent stories from the war he’d just won and letting her have her fill of his food and hospitality, and you stand behind him. Listening to it all. Until she grows tired and tells him she must depart. 

“I look forward to hearing your answer, don’t make me wait too long.” She smiles, pressing forward and kissing his cheeks boldly. 

“It was lovely to see you, please give your father my greetings. Be safe.” 

You let out a breath you hadn’t realized you were holding, the air in the room felt thin and for a moment, your thoughts clouded your awareness. 

“You are angry.” His voice cuts through your reverie, making you jump where you stand at his table, setting it to rights. 

“Dominus?”

“Speak plainly, girl. You are displeased with Lavinia coming here, offering herself to me.” He stares at you, his eyebrow raised from his place on his favoured chair. 

“I, I have no cause, no reason–” You stumble over your words, wringing your hands to stay obedient.

“Yes you do. She comes into this house, this house that has been your home for a long time, and asks to make it her own. She would be your Domina, and that angers you.” He speaks with a smile in his voice, his eyes shining with the novelty of your misplaced, and maybe grossly inappropriate anger. 

“I, Dominus–your will is my will, whatever you command–” He raises his hand and for a moment you see a flicker of anger. 

“Speak truthfully now, girl. I see the rage on your face. I feel it in your gaze. I will hear the truth, tell me how you feel.” He narrows his eyes for a moment, and you know he wants to hear the truth. 

“I hate it.” You let go of a deep breath, steadying yourself for the wrath of insolence but it never comes, instead, he smiles. 

“I would hear your reasons.”

“I–I would not have her come here. I would not have her marry you. I have no wish to call her Domina or have her order me away from you. I… I would keep you all to myself,” his smile widens, “Dominus.”

He gestures for you to come closer, and you do, until you stand before him. 

“Would you now?” You stand in the space between his legs, watching the way his eyes dilate to hear you speak of keeping him. 

“Yes Dominus, I would have you all to myself, I would not have her keeping your bed warm.” You seethe at the thought of it, to hear him having her, the way he has you makes your blood boil and he smiles bigger still, his eyes crinkling with the mirth of it. 

“Tell me, my fearsome girl, how greedy you are that you cannot share your Dominus with another.” His hands slide up the backs of your legs, slipping up to cup your backside while your hands land onto his shoulders. 

“I am greedy, I cannot share you Dominus, I will not.” You press yourself closer to him, your fingers threading through his graying curls. “I could not bear to hear you with her.”

“Hmm. You want my cock all for your own, is that it? Only you are fit for the gift of my seed? Tell me.” He pulls your tunic up, and off, stripping you of everything until you stand bare before him. “Only you, and this sweet little cunt, hm? Is that the way of it?” He presses kisses to your belly as he speaks and all at once the anger is gone and replaced with a hunger that only he can satisfy. 

“Yes Dominus, only me-” You pull his face up and claim his mouth, moaning into it at the feeling of his hand cupping your sex. 

“Take it then, girl, take what so clearly belongs to you, what you would keep all to yourself.” 

You waste no time in stripping him bare, relishing to see the way his cock stands at attention for you, and not for the other woman. You ache at the sight of it, the proof of your desire for him dripping onto your thighs in your haste to mount him and when you finally feel him notch his cock at the mouth of your cunt, you practically drop yourself onto it. 

He groans to feel the way you clench around him, the two of you breathing heavily into each other's faces, adjusting to the way his cock seems to kiss your womb. 

“Is this what you wanted, girl?” He bucks up underneath you, and your breasts bounce in his face, mesmerizing him enough to make him do it again. “To claim me like this? Tell me–is this cock yours? Am I yours?” He bounces you again and it’s hard to focus on anything but the fullness of him, the way you feel the pleasure of it lights up every nerve in your body. 

“Yes, yes Dominus, mine–” Your fingers grasp his hair tightly and with every flex of his hips, you roll yours, grinding the pleasure center of your universe against the coarse hairs at the base of his sex. “Your cock is mine, only mine.” he lets out a filthy moan to hear it, and your nipples harden. 

“It is yours, take it, Gods, take it all–” He cannot seem to control himself, quicker and quicker he flexes, until your arousal drenches his lap and the sounds between your legs are wet and obscene. 

“Harder please Dominus, I want it harder–” You hold onto his shoulders, rolling your hips faster and within a moment, he moves forward, placing you on the plush carpet at his feet. Once on the floor, his hips piston and the sounds of your coupling ring out through the room. 

Your orgasm takes you by surprise, your legs seizing up on his hips, and pulling a scream from your throat. He groans, feeling the way you squeeze around him, the force of your climax milking his cock dry. 

“God's girl, you have knocked the wind from me.” He breathes hard in your ear, pressing his lips to your mouth before moving his kisses down your throat, peppering them across your chest. His tongue licks at one nipple, then the other, making you flutter around him. 

A few moments pass, and although you are comforted by his weight, you don’t want to overstep. He forestalls you though. 

“Come girl, I would have this place set to rights, and retire to bed.” He pulls out with a hiss, moving up and away, “I would have you tell me of your anger, in depth, in my chambers.” He holds out his hand to help you up, and you take it with a smile. 

----

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[lackadaisycats]

I tried to answer this succinctly, but it turned into an essay. (Sorry.)

The Princess and the Frog was not accurate, strictly speaking, but dinging it for that would be like criticizing the Lion King for not being a realistic wildlife documentary. Accuracy wasn't really the point. Given the fantastical elements and fictional nations like “Maldonia”, I suppose we're meant to understand this as a bit removed from the real New Orleans. It's more a a jazz-flavored fairy tale than a historical fiction.

But for discussion's sake....

Is it fashion-accurate to its 1926 timeframe? Ehhh, sort of. It pays homage to 20s fashion trends with cloche hats, furs and feathery headpieces, but without fully committing to it. The waistline on almost all of Tiana's clothing is too high for the 20s, and the the shapes of her fancier costumes take a lot of liberties, or deviate wildly from the style of the period.

In the 20s, dresses (including workaday stuff) tended to have a straight up-and-down shape to it - kind of a low-waisted rectangle that de-emphasized curves instead of highlighting them. There are valid reasons to play fast and loose with that, though (something I’m definitely guilty of as well). One of those reasons is communication. 

For instance, speculatively, the filmmakers wrote Tiana as a hard-working waitress and wanted her to look the part, so they made the choice to clothe her in something familiar - that gingham dress of mid-century shape that we broadly associate with diner waitresses. Actual waitress uniforms of the 20s had a fair bit of overlap with maid uniforms at the time too, and I can see why they wouldn't want to risk the confusion. It's more important to communicate clearly with the larger audience than to appease a small faction of fashion nerds who'd notice or care about the precision.

I don't think it's a case of the designers failing to do their research - I'm sure they had piles of references, and maybe even consultants - but they also had to have priorities.

With her hat and coat on, she looks a lot more 1920s-shaped.

Pretty consistently, the indication of the characteristic 1920s drop waist is there, but the approach otherwise ignores the 20s silhouette. The clothes hug the body too much. This may be about appealing to a 2000s audience, visually speaking, but also could be an animation thing. Maybe both. For practical reasons, clothes in 2d animation are usually more a sort of second skin than something that wears or behaves like realistic fabric.

These are not in the 1920s ballpark at all. Tiana's blue gown looks like your basic Disney brand invention. Strapless things would have been extremely unusual and the overall shape is far out of step. Excusable, I guess, because it's a costume in context. Charlotte looks like she’s heading for a mimosa brunch in a modern maxi dress.

Charlotte's princess dress did seem to be calling back to the ultra-wide pannier side hoops of the 18th century - something that made a reappearance for part of the 20s, albeit in much milder form called robe de style. I'm not sure if the filmmakers were alluding to that at all, really, but either way, her dress is hilarious.

They only went about halfway with the cloche hats. The 1920s cloche really encapsulated the cranium, almost entirely covered bobbed hair, and obscured much of the face from certain angles, so it's easy to see why they've been somewhat reined in for the film. Still, it ends up looking more 1930s, where the hats started to recede away from the face, evolving in the direction of the pillbox.

Similarly, Tiana's hair is not very reminiscent of the bobbed, close-to-the-cranium style of the period, but I think that could legitimately be written off as characterization. She's not at all the type of person who'd fuss about going à la mode. Not everyone bobbed and finger-waved their hair.

The clothes Prince Naveen is introduced in are very 1920s collegiate in spirit - the wide-leg oxford bags, the sleeveless pullover sweater, the flat cap, and high, stiff collar. The ukulele and banjolele were pretty trendy instruments at the time too.

Definitely some Josephine Baker vibes here. Also, the look of this whole fantasy sequence was reportedly inspired by the works of Aaron Douglas, a luminary painter of the Harlem Renaissance known for his depictions of the lives of African-Americans. (The mural is in Topeka, Kansas.)

They pretty much nailed the Art Deco. It's gorgeous. Looks somewhat inspired by the interiors of some of the Ralph Walker-designed NYC architecture, plus some French Quarter balcony flair for the final manifestation of Tiana's Place. Her dress here does resemble some gauzy mid-1920s looks, too.

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Culturally speaking...

New Orleans is an unusual place. Because some of the colonial Spanish and French laws and conventions that New Orleans evolved under persisted even after its inception into the United States; because it was such a heterogeneous hub of indigenous and immigrant peoples; and because it had a considerable population of free people of color (mostly Creole), it did not function quite like the rest of the South leading up to the Civil War, nor for a while after. Its particular coalescence of cultures made it its own unique sort of culture within the country, within the region, within the state of Louisiana even. By the early 20th century, though, regardless of the not-very-binary nature of New Orleans, Jim Crow laws were enforcing a literal black-and-white distinction, and not an evenhanded one, by far. In that aspect, the city had begun to resemble the rest of the South.

The film nods at the wealth disparity, but goes on to paint a pretty rosy picture of race and class relations at the time. Still it's not unbelievable that some people were exceptions to the rules. You could probably find a few compartments of old New Orleans society that resisted segregation or certain prejudicial norms, preferring to do things their own way. That aside, the film wasn't trying to confront these topics. Not every piece of media should have to. Sometimes breaking away from miserable period piece stereotypes is refreshing. I'm not sure it could have handled that meaningfully given the running time, narrow story focus, and intended audience, anyhow. (But you could perhaps also make a case that family films habitually underestimate younger audiences in this way.)

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Raymond the firefly I guess is the film's Cajun representation. There's not much to say about it, except perhaps to note that Evangeline is a reference to the heroine of a Longfellow poem of the same name. The poem is an epic romance set during the expulsion of the Acadians from the eastern provinces of Canada and the northernmost reaches of the American colonies (now Maine) by the British in the mid-1700s. Many exiled Acadians gradually migrated south to francophone-friendly Louisiana, settling into the prairies and bayous, where 'Acadian' truncated into the pronunciation 'Cajun'. Evangeline - who is only finally reunited with her love when he’s on his deathbed - has become an emblem of the heartbreak, separation and faithful hope of that cultural history, and there are parishes, statues and other landmarks named after the her throughout Louisiana.

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Voodoo does have a very historical presence in New Orleans, having arrived both directly from West Africa and by way of the Haitian diaspora (where it would more properly be called Vodou). While I don't think Disney's treatment of it was especially sensitive or serious, it also wasn't the grotesquely off-base sort of thing that media of the past has been known to do. It was largely whittled down to a magical plot component, but it wasn't so fully repurposed that it didn't resemble Voodoo at all either - and that's mostly owing to the characters, because it does appear the writers pulled from history there.

It’s apparently widely held that Dr. Facilier is a Baron Samedi caricature - and likely that's true, in part - but I have the impression he's also influenced by Doctor John. Not the 20th century funk musician, but the antebellum “Voodoo King” of New Orleans. Doctor John (also called Bayou John, Jean La Ficelle, and other aliases) claimed to be a Senegalese prince. He became well known as a potion man and romance-focused prognosticator to people from all corners of society. Though highly celebrated and financially successful at his peak, he seems ultimately remembered as an exploitative villain.

To my recollection, the film sort of gingerly avoids referring to Facilier as a Voodoo practitioner directly (I think he's more generically called a witch doctor in the script?) but it does seem to imply his 'friends on the other side' are a consortium of loa. It's mostly abbreviated into nebulously evil-seeming special FX, glazing over any specificity or dimensionality, but it does also loop back around as a vehicle of moral justice. Loa are all very individualistic and multi-faceted, but they do have reciprocal rules for asking favors of them.

There's also the benevolent counterpart in Mama Odie's character. Her wearing ritual whites has a definite basis in Voodoo/Vodou practice, and her depiction as a fairy godmother-like figure isn't entirely out of step with how a mambo may have been perceived...in a very general sense. They were/are ceremonial leaders and community bastions who people would seek out for help, advice and spiritual guidance. More than just emanating matronly good vibes, though, some have wielded considerable political and economic power.

(Just my opinions here. I've done a lot of reading on the subject for research but I'm no authority with any special insider understanding of Voodoo, and I really shouldn't be relied upon as an arbiter of who has or hasn't done it justice in fiction.)

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

In summary--

Culturally, I think the film is respectably informed but paints a superficially genteel picture. The set pieces are gorgeous, but the story mostly delivers a sort of veneer of New Orleanishness. And as for fashion, well, it’s the 1920s run through a Disney filter. It’s very pretty, but it’s only as proximally accurate as seemed practical.

I don’t know that any of that really matters so much as whether or not it achieved what it intended, though. As a charming yarn and as a tribute to New Orleans and the Jazz age, I think it’s mostly successful. It’s also really beautifully animated!

[genericpuff]

i find it funny that one of rachel’s drawings of herself in the afterword that just went up is just fully persephone. is that something she does a lot?

Alright so I've been making it a general rule for myself to like, not harp on Rachel in any way outside of LO as much because frankly the horse is dead now and there's not much left to say outside of what can be analyzed in hindsight. I think despite everything I have to say about her and her work, she still deserves to get away from this nonsense and I don't wanna spend eternity hovering over her shoulder.

But the afterword was posted within the LO series and is clearly meant for readers of LO in the functioning of being an afterword so let's just call it fair game LOL

I will say, on the whole, it does feel very honest and sentimental and I can respect Rachel for taking the time to write out and illustrate her afterword in a way that was personal to both her and her fans. I can understand why she went at it from the angle that she did and I'm not gonna fault her for that.

But there's also something that feels deeply... disingenuous about her approach right from the starting gun. I will say, before I continue, that I'm well aware I am biased towards Rachel as a creator, and I fully acknowledge that I could very well be reading too much into things. This is just my opinion, take it with mountains of salt.

I can get looking back on your own childhood, your past self, whatever, and going "see! it all got better!" because sure! For a lot of creators like Rachel, it must be wild to look back on where they came from and there's a lot of sentimentality on expressing that through an afterword like this where she reflects on where she came from. Though she STILL didn't acknowledge her other comics outside of LO, I can understand if she wants to leave those skeletons in the closet.

But I feel like her drawing herself as a child who's being given an Eisner by her adult self and all that just feels like some gross attempt to disarm any criticism of her because "don't make fun of me, I'm just a sad lonely baby girl!"

She's not a child. Child Rachel didn't grossly misappropriate Greek myth into their own self-indulged vanity project. Child Rachel didn't claim herself a folklorist of a culture's works only to bastardize them completely. Child Rachel didn't create a hostile environment within her fanbase by bullying anyone who she perceived as a threat, sneaking into critical spaces to try and cause trouble, and writing her own clapbacks into her comic. Child Rachel didn't claim to be challenging misogyny and purity culture only to reinforce misogyny and purity culture through her own self-insert baby-virgin-gets-rescued-by-rich-tycoon power fantasy that regularly glorified abuse towards women and the lower class.

30-almost-40-year-old Rachel did though.

At best it comes across as really cringe sentimentality from a Greek-weeb (heh, greeboo) and goes to show how much Rachel inserted herself into Greek myth without ever absorbing its messages or cultural contexts, it was all about her and her feelings as a sad New Zealand girl with dyslexia who thought Persephone's story was about another sad girl being rescued from her "horrible childhood".

At worst it's an active attempt to play on people's heartstrings by drawing herself as a child who people will naturally not want to criticize. I don't want to assume she's doing it intentionally, I really don't want to leave her afterword on a bad foot, as I can definitely understand as both a creator and a person who struggled with learning disabilities in their own childhood how and why she wants to pay homage to her past and where she came from... but let's just say, as someone who's also gotten way too "lost in the sauce" concerning personal self-reflective projects, I think there's a lot to say about how this confirms that Rachel made LO entirely for herself, about herself, without any actual intention to respect the original myths, because she never truly separated them from herself when she was a child. And, in my humble opinion as someone who has Been There with the self-insert OC's and self-reflective angsty plotlines, I can fully attest to the fact that that's not fucking healthy. Even with personal projects, you NEED to learn to get your head out of the sauce, you NEED to learn to objectively separate yourself from the narrative so the story doesn't fall apart under your own hubris and ego, you NEED to learn to draw a line if you want to have any sort of identity as a human being outside of what you make for people. And that's with just normal original stories, this was a story based on Greek myth which doesn't belong to her.

And this goes for a lot of the things she's said and done in the past, so much of her own "sources" even are tethered to things that she read / watched in her childhood and only vaguely remembers, as if she never mentally left her childhood at all, which just... if the point was to highlight her past and the traumas she went through and how they contributed to her present, an Eisner isn't going to validate those experiences. And drawing attention to her past through the lens of her childhood self absolutely 100% does not absolve her of the negative effect her work has had on the modern Greek myth zeitgeist nor the things she's said and done as a 38 year old woman who should absolutely know better.

The community she entered and took from will forever remain changed by her influence and taking, in many ways not for the better. She has the privilege of walking away and never having to think about it again, with all the awards and accolades that were bought for her, the bravado that she built around being a "folklorist" with zero credentials, and the platform she was given over many other creators struggling to even be heard.

That "place" she claims to have now was built entirely on inserting herself into another culture's works and doing nothing but taking, taking, taking, while offering nothing in return but vanity and lip service. That "place" was paid for and brought to you by Webtoons.

[moonlightseve]

At the Barcelona GPF, Yuuri puts his heart and soul into his short program, attempting a quad flip in a way that seems to pay homage to Viktor’s own routines. During his free skate he quite clearly spells out that he wants to live up to Viktor, skating a routine with the same difficulty as he would’ve and managing to break his world record.

It’s clear that the shadow of Viktor Nikiforov, the legend, has fallen over Yuuri once more. This man has been his idol for the majority of his life, always a symbol of his aspirations and his greatest form of inspiration. And as Yuuri takes to the ice, he intends to finally reach these goals of his, putting forward his best possible work in attempts to bring home gold.

He finishes his short program, where he had a gold ring on his finger and the attention of his coach. And he falls to the ice, crumpling as he recalls his attempts at the quad flip — Viktor’s signature move.

He touched down. It had enough rotations, but it was not perfect. Even after all this time he has still failed to do what Viktor is able to do.

The ice he falls to takes on a certain color, reminiscent of Viktor’s Stammi Vicino costume. The very routine that started this all, the one Viktor skated at the GPF a year prior. It’s as if it haunts Yuuri, who had come too far and given too much to fail now.

Viktor, for all he has been humanized and removed from that mental pedestal Yuuri had placed him on long ago, is still a benchmark Yuuri must meet to be satisfied. The ice is tainted by his memories of the skater, his desperation to reach the heights Viktor has and prove himself worthy. When he looks at the rink, he sees the perfection of the Living Legend, the seemingly insurmountable task of raising himself to that level looking back at him.

[sicklyseraphnsuch]

The Duality of Simon (or the Importance of Marcy)

Travel back to the early 2010s, when Adventure Time was still a fairly new thing. The fandom was growing, the theories were flowing. We've had confirmation that Ooo is in fact a post appcalyptic world. And then we get:

Here was living, breathing proof of the intersection between Ooo and our world. Simon Petrikov was a literal connection to the past, and moreover one of the ways Adventure Time really began to develop its inner tragedies.

But honestly, as sad as the Idea of Simon Petrikov was - it remained that he was a relic, an inert tragedy that was a connection to the past, but not necessarily connected to the future.

Enter:

You can mourn the losses of ages past. But it won't necessarily move you to act. Because there's nothing to compel you. You can stand to gain something but it's more important that you don't lose anything by keeping the status quo. In short, there weren't any stakes.

No, not those kind of Stakes... Well... maybe a little

So, bear in mind, Betty won't make her debut until two seasons after "Holly Jolly Secrets". To us, she was a non-entity. Simon's grief over her loss was for the audience, a mostly intellectual exercise. How sad for this poor cursed man to lose the woman he loved - replacing all proper nouns with common nouns because we didn't know Simon either. But his situation is clearly sad, just in a general, unspecific way. Because again, there's nothing at stake here.

Marcy drives thoses stakes up (and into our hearts). Suddenly, Simon becomes Very Very Real because we know Marcy. We've hung out with her for at least five seasons now leading up to the game changing "I Remember You".

By connecting Marcy to this Simon, suddenly we had something to lose - suddenly we already lost something. Marcy gave Simon's curse weight - dimension - texture - rendering it very real instead of a mere intellectual tragedy. Simon matters because he matters to someone here and now, because someone was still crying over him. And we love Marcy. We don't want her to cry.

It was through the Marcy and Simon relationship that we came to learn of and love Simon. Betty came later. Betty came after. We already loved Simon by then so learning of his love story was just building on that love. Naturally, being invested in the Simon and Betty relationship without prior connection to Simon is possible. But the fact that he was already established and endeared to the audience goes a way into investing in the Simon and Betty relationship.

So we get to Fionna and Cake.

We get exactly one scene with the Marcy we know and love. And Simon isn't even in the same room as her.

And the show is fully justified in doing so because Fionna and Cake was a series about Simon and Betty. And Simon and Marcy have little to do with that A story (the love plotline). Even if the B story (the recovery plotline) does pay homage to Simon and Marcy by showing Simon that he does have value, the homage amounts to only a few scenes (maybe cumulatively three minutes of screen time) in the whole series.

However, Simon and Marcy's relationship wasn't just to show that Simon is an integral component to the way Ooo came to be, and his impact on the people he loves. Simon and Marcy's relationship is integral to how we came to love Simon - against all odds and all tenets of common sense, a man that was slowly warped by madness chose to take care of a completely unknown little girl that he found in the wreckage of the world.

The problem here is that Marcy's Simon and Betty's Simon never got to meet in the middle. A lot of this is rooted in the original Adventure Time series where Betty and Marceline never speak more than ten words to each other.

Literally the only time they share the screen (and no I'm not counting Betty bot in Broke his Crown)

Which is BANANAS considering they are literally the two most important people in Simon's life.

And listen, again, by Fionna and Cake, we are invested in Simon and Betty, especially after what she did during the finale. We want to know about them.

And again, the Fionna and Cake series is well and wholly complete without ever having Simon and Marcy talk.

But it leaves a little ache. Because again, the first opportunity to truly love and connect with Simon came through Simon and Marcy. And we never really know how they get on now that they're back together. We seriously have maybe 10 lines of conversation between them since the finale and this includes Obsidian.

Literally, he says hi to Marcy twice and that's it. Very meaningful conversation.

Aaaand there's also the supreme irony where in one relationship, Simon never gets a chance to contribute equally, and in his other relationship, Simon wore himself down to nubs giving all that he had. But this duality within Simon is never really connected. There is a throughline here, his impulse for self sacrifice shares a root for his self centered perspective that blinded him to Betty's self effacing habits.

Now here's the thing, Fionna and Cake also built its conflict around Simon's identity and his self worth, etc. Yet it doesn't really contend with all that Simon has done without Betty, and before Ice King. By centering the narrative on only how he was with Betty (both pre and post Mushroom War), we get very little foundation laid out for what he could do after he says goodbye to her.

And this isn't a mistake because again, the series stands on its own just fine. The story works without it because at least that central relationship of Simon and Betty is fully established. But it does come at the cost of a missed opportunity to fully explore the cause of Simon's myopia, or how living through an apocalypse could reinforce that myopia because Simon keeps romanticizing "when his life was great".

Finally, the other downside is that Fionna and Cake stands on its own, maybe a little too much. It's still based on the characters of Adventure Time, building on the love for the original show. So it would have been a crowd pleaser, shall we say some fan service, to get more of what the original show worked hard to make us love.

[xbuster]

With Ganbare! Nakamura-kun!! getting an anime adaptation announced, I think it’s worth noting how clearly the series’ title was based off Stop!! Hibari-kun!

Like Nakamura-kun uses a similar bubbly font, the くん is stylized similar by being smaller and vertical between the name and the punctuation, and instead of being “Interjection!! Name-kun!” it’s “Interjection! Name-kun!!” with the number of exclamation marks flipped.

It’s just something I never saw anyone mention for some reason, but I thought it was interesting because the manga clearly tries to pay homage to 80’s romcom manga. The rest of the cover itself is very late-70’s early-80’s feeling and almost looks like something you’d see from Urusei Yatsura.

It actually annoys me that the official English title is “Go for it, Nakamura!” because it completely gets rid of the Hibari-kun format. It’d be like renaming Hibari-kun to “Stop, Hibari!” and if Stop!! Hibari-kun! ever did get translated with its original title, you wouldn’t be able to tell it was Nakamura-kun’s inspiration.

[dualcastimpact]

Just went through the confrontation with Nabriales and Moenbryda's sacrifice (again) and out of all the major deaths that the story keeps coming back to, Moenbryda and Papalymo's feel the least organic, at least in terms of building up that emotional rapport with the Warrior of Light and/or player enough for the Warrior of Light and/or player to be impacted by their passing. Haurchefant interacts prominently with the Warrior of Light and is a reoccurring character all the way from ARR and halfway into Heavensward. We get a whole expansion with Ysayle. We get a whole expansion with Ardbert. Emet-Selch gets TWO expansions, and even Venat and Hythlodaeus get two whole dedicated levels for us to hang out with. You can't argue the same for Moenbryda and Papalymo, who barely interact with the Warrior of Light and in fact never seem to have any significant one-to-one moments with them.

You could argue that Moenbryda's and Papalymo's deaths don't in fact affect the Warrior of Light all too badly like the others' deaths do—and you'd be right! Moenbryda's death is Urianger's grief. Papalymo's death is Lyse's grief. The Warrior of Light doesn't grieve them the way they grieve Haurchefant or Ysayle, or Ardbert, or the Ancients they meet in Elpis, and that's not the issue. The issue is that the game, especially with Moenbryda, tries to make the player feel something for their deaths when they've not allowed the player to engage with the characters enough for us to feel anything for their passing. I'd argue I feel worse about Wilred dying than I did for Moenbryda and Papalymo, and that's because we see so much more of him with the Little Ala Mhigo sequence and his interactions with us while he was in the Crystal Braves; we see him grow as a character, however brief and unrelated to us it was, and we don't get that with Moenbryda and Papalymo.

To make matters worse, Moenbryda's and Papalymo's deaths were driven by their connection to Louisoix: Moenbryda in wishing to understand his motivations for leaving her behind and sacrificing himself for the sake of some no-name place called Eorzea, and Papalymo in wishing to prove himself Louisoix's finest pupil, following his master's footsteps in sacrificing himself to temporarily seal the dread primal Shinryu. Again, that's not the issue—the issue is that ARR only gives us crumbs about Louisoix and the Circle of Knowing, crumbs that are nowhere near enough to make us care about him! Oh, Moenbryda and Papalymo are both paying homage to Louisoix through their sacrifice? Oh well, nothing to do with me! I don't know anything about Louisoix to warrant my caring!

It wouldn't be such an aggravation if the story doesn't insist on making the player care. You have a sequence with Moenbryda's parents comforting Urianger in Endwalker, and there's a sidequest involving Papalymo's father as well—their deaths are not forgotten! They're hearkened back to! They're even included in this image of the fallen made floating in the aetherial sea!

Clearly their sacrifice is considered as major as Minfilia's and Haurchefant's and Ysayle's, which would make sense if the game bothered to put in the effort to make us care about Moenbryda and Papalymo in the first place!

Okay. Rant over. I initially wanted to write about how Raginmar very likely called Kirika to help heal Moenbryda before he went after Nabriales and Minfilia—in-game it makes sense for the Warrior of Light to not be able to call anyone, but by post-ARR Raginmar's adventuring party is pretty established; they're all connected by linkpearls and can contact each other in an emergency, and Moenbryda getting blasted in the stomach by a column of dark aether very much counts as an emergency. There's one issue with that scenario, however:

Papalymo: "She was counting on the theory that a soul's aether burns brightest at the moment of its passing. A scholar until the very end..."

Moenbryda was dying when she gave up her life to temper the aetherial blade. That was the theory she was counting on: that her soul's aether, near its end, would burn brightest at the second of her death and be enough to augment the aetherial blade.

Thancred: "She gave her life to temper the blade of Light? I...I have no words."

If Raginmar was able to get Kirika to come and try to heal Moenbryda, that makes this plot point implausible. She wouldn't have been near death if a healer was at hand. A solution to that problem would be Kirika actually failing to heal Moenbryda and managing to only staunch the wound instead of healing it, but that's additional trauma for Kirika that I have to think about and work on, and I do not have the time for that— oh no— I can feel the brainworms coming—

[inchidentally]

so we all know that Oscar was basically the president of the Lando Norris fanclub back in the day, but my question is, does Lando know? Like I think back to that face mask video when Oscar asked Lando how many sibling's he had and we all suspect that Oscar fully knew the answer. So was he trying to play it cool so Lando didn't catch on that he maybe knew a little too much, or was he trying to play it cool so we the viewers didn't catch on to how much Lando content he has consumed (he has failed, we know Oscar, we know. Especially since he referenced a Quadrant video later in the exact same video).

okay so first we've got to pay homage to the god tier @mecachrome fic Q&A bc it takes every wriggly red-in-the-face possibility of this and wraps an even wrigglier landoscar narrative around it <3

and for my own take on if Lando's twigged about the level of Oscar's fanboying I am so incredibly undecided bc Oscar is so good at putting his defenses way up and passing off a moment like that as just casual...

WAIT WAIIIIIT no okay I'm calling it Oscar knew that Lando had already told the story about being locked out of his house in a video before. I can't remember if it was a stream or a Quadrant video but Lando said he was playing on the sim in their shed and his parents forgot he wasn't in the house and locked up. I'm sorry but Oscar does NOT look like this is the first time he's heard this and even filling in the "and fell through" before Lando says it. CAUGHT.

and let's not forget Lando absolutely knowing Oscar would know the year of his maiden podium in the Splunk video. CAUGHT.

I'm gonna say that Lando knows to a certain degree that Oscar's a fanboy and honestly he's got to just find it funny/cute/endearing imo. Lando's not the type to be mean or an asshole - even when he and Max would sometimes almost have an outright spat on stream Lando would back down first and make a self-deprecating joke. and Max is fully able to stand up to Lando and give as good as he gets! so I can't see Lando ever being anything but amused or fond or both to find out 'kitten pulled from a nap' Oscar has been a fan of his for years.

god this reminded me how unhingedly in sync they were in the Most Likely To video considering they didn't even know how many brothers and sisters they each had yet. it's also unbearable for how much they watch each other and like… one of the best videos for Lando clearly just finding Oscar like, just so cute ??? straight up 'that's my nerdy lil guy' alsfgljasfgljasg and I mean Oscar stares at Lando literally constantly so nothing new there.

also this adorable moment where they're both too stupid to understand the horror movie question but also Lando's little delighted gigglejump when Oscar admits he'd scream and hide his eyes:

more of me just remembering how gd cute this video was

strangely already married teammates moments:

literally the very first question !! they both agreed that Oscar was most likely to sleep in but then Lando had to go and push the issue, resulting in retaliation from Oscar and a you're sleeping on the couch response from Lando. "you just opened a can of worms"

this resulted in a tense stand-off about who takes the longest to get ready which Oscar diplomatically decided was equal between them.

most likely to snore being Lando is hysterical bc they both clearly know that Oscar knows. I love how Oscar drops the issue very wisely and Lando's tone gets VERY clipped at the end. I also feel like this could be a catch-out for Oscar too !! bc Max said on one of his streams about Lando's snoring sounding like Valentino Rossi revving his bike in the next room. so it's highly sus that Oscar said "have you had feedback on that before?" CAUGHT?

"if you dare say me" Lando being absolutely livid that Oscar already knows Lando is most likely to cry during a sad movie. Oscar wisely conceding but his face says otherwise. what has Oscar had to deal with and which movie was it that Oscar had to deal with a sobbing Lando over.

Oscar's earlier retaliation comes back to bite him on the ass over most likely to be late !! when he looks at Lando's face he initially concedes. Lando however pushes his luck and Oscar must stand up for himself. the couch is already made up so might as well.

both immediately agreed the answers to:

Lando gets ready quickest

Oscar first into the car

Oscar most likely to get a pet

Lando most likely to embarrass himself in public

Lando most likely to not reply in group chat

neither would survive in the wild (Oscar ribs Lando about being older)

Lando most likely to laugh in a serious moment

both of them agreed to both for:

burnt dinner

cut their own hair

eat their meals quickest (though they agree Lando's chicken burger with sweet potato fries - that Oscar copied - disappears very quickly)

[signalburst]

Shōgun Historical Shallow-Dive: Part 2 - Heir Crash Investigations

What happened to Ochiba no kata and Yaechiyo, the Heir, in history? This was the most requested topic for part two. Get ready for failson psych-outs, drag-king, diss-track action. None of that is a joke.

There is a very simple version of this story, and a very complicated version of this story. I'll try and split the difference, but again, if you're interested, best English-language high level overview of the period that is not horribly out of date.

Again! Not a professional historian, never did my PhD, so my opinion is going to colour this.

The simple version: Ochiba no kata in the Shōgun show is quite a departure from the historical Yodo-dono or Chacha. She did a lot of political manouvreing to try and get her son to regain the pre-eminent position in Japan, but ultimately lost out to Tokugawa's overwhelming political and military strength. Nobody knows if she died or escaped at the end of the siege of Osaka castle in 1615 (15 years after the show), so there are lots of cool folk tales about her.

The more complicated version:

Ochiba is depicted as a sneaky, conniving, scary lady who scratches out fate's eyes. Why? Short version, whilst she was a major magnate and power player during the period of the show and after, she was not a brilliant schemer. She also wasn't crazy malicious - she was trying to keep her son alive. Most of her plans came undone because of incompetence, not being a puppet master who bent men to her will with veiled seduction and threats. That's a later invention. (We'll come back to it at the end).

She was the dictator Koroda's (Oda Nobunaga's) niece, not his daughter. As far as is known, her and Mariko's real life counterpart, Hosokowa Gracia, did not hang out.

The real life Ochiba, Yodo-dono, became a nun after the Taiko (Toyotomi Hideyoshi) died. So... less sultry and cat-like, more pious, still an excellent political operator.

She stayed out of the war between the Regents and Toranaga/Tokugawa, and did send a letter to Toranaga/Tokugawa saying the Heir would remain neutral. This allowed the Eastern forces under Toranaga/Tokugawa to present Ishido/Ishida's mobilisation and war footing as rebellion against the Heir, and the Taiko's wishes.

After Sekigahara, Tokugawa (we're past the book now) claimed that he would be 'as a father' to the Heir - real name, Toyotomi Hideyori. Most of the Heir's former fervent supporters embraced the Tokugawa reign.

He didn't hate the Heir or want to knife him in his sleep. 'It must be emphasised that Ieyasu himself bore Hideyori no personal ill will. Although he had once been enemies with Hideyori's father, Ieyasu was sensible enough to acknowledge Hideyoshi's [the Taiko's] unique genius. He acted kindly towards the late Taiko's child.' (Chaplin, 511).

So how did they end up coming to blows? Ochiba no kata's real-life inspiration, Yodo-dono, was deeply suspicious of Toranaga/Tokugawa. She had her pride - expecting her son to inherit the Realm and all - and she was an excellent political operator in her own right. She wouldn't roll over and let Toranaga/Tokugawa throw all these plans away because of one battle between Regents. She stayed out of it to keep her options open.

Tokugawa was well on his way to implementing his unification of the realm plans, post-Sekigahara. He demanded that she and her son go to Kyoto to show they were good and loyal vassals. Yodo-dono refused on behalf of her, and her son, intuiting (correctly) that the Heir paying homage to Tokugawa would ruin what was left of the family claim. This certainly raised an eyebrow amongst the magnates who'd survived the civil war. To Tokugawa, this woman needed watching, as she was clearly not going to just accept that her son was just another daimyo now.

Once Tokugawa was made Shōgun, he installed one of his lackeys in Osaka castle to keep an eye on Yodo-dono/Ochiba, and the Heir. The lackey reported for a decade that the Heir was essentially 'effeminate' (his words) and a failson.

Tokugawa was fine with this. He was busy building a unified empire. He'd married his granddaughter-in-law to the Heir, and given away most of the Toyotomi (ex-Taiko) lands after the battle to lords that flipped to his side.

As far as Osaka went- Yodo-dono and the Heir - Tokugawa was, characteristically, waiting to see what would happen. He was hoping the whole Toyotomi 'remember how the Heir's dad was Taiko?!' thing would fade with time. Wishful thinking, but maybe the son of his late master would accept the way things were now.

Between 1601-1611, Tokugawa Ieyasu hadn't made up his mind to destroy the Toyotomi. After all, most of his ex-rivals were now scrambling to impress him by contributing the most money to ruinous castle-building programs he ordered, in order to keep them broke and squabbling amongst each other. Maybe Yodo-dono would guide the Heir to do the same?

Ding dong, daddy wants to check on his main political rival's kid! Tokugawa Ieyasu eventually remembered the Heir was still alive, and requested a meeting. Yodo-dono requested three Tokugawa hostages (three of Ieyasu's own sons!) before she'd agree to the meeting. She knew who he was, and she knew now what he was capable of.

Uh oh! In 1611, Tokugawa met the now 18-year-old Heir at a neutral castle and found him strapping, manly, and charismatic. His lackey had been lying to him! It turns out, the lackey keeping watch on Yodo-dono and the Heir had a soft spot for the Taiko, and had been deliberately telling Tokugawa not to worry about his son to try and prevent conflict. But this kid was dangerous. Dangerously awesome. If he impressed Tokugawa, there was a good chance he'd impress other busho and daimyo, drawing them to a faction to oppose the new Tokugawa rule.

Rulers hate him! This little moron used time shut away in a castle to develop into a political threat!

It was at this point Tokugawa made up his mind to destroy Yodo-dono (her son's chief counsellor, and the political force behind a growing anti-Tokugawa movement), as well as the Heir. If you've read any history, a leader cementing power can't let remnants of the old regime hang around to act as a magnet for opposition. Especially if they are impressive and cool - Tokugawa was blown away by the boy's charisma and charm. So Tokugawa needed an excuse to take out the Heir. Any old excuse would do.

The excuse was lame, and arcane. The Heir's dad was famous for a sword hunt. Basically, the Taiko was a peasant who became a general who became a samurai, and wanted to pull the ladder up behind him. No non-samurai would be allowed weapons. No one was allowed class mobility anymore. You were what you were born, suck it, and a big part of that was confiscating weapons to ensure no more uprisings... like the Taiko had been a part of.

But because the Taiko was all about glitz, glamour, and what we'd now call virtue signalling, he was going to melt all of these swords down into a giant Buddha! It was a pious thing, honest! This buddha would be located at a temple called Hoko-ji.

It's 1614, and Yodo-dono has gathered a network of anti-Tokugawa daimyo, busho, and - importantly - samurai. Many samurai had been left masterless (ronin) after Sekigahara. Even those with lords had been transformed overnight from professional warriors to bureaucrats (we'll get to this in a later part). They were restless, out of work, and they flocked to her banner for the chance to get paid for their skills again, and lose the stigma of being masterless. With his ranks swelling, the Heir looked more and more like a viable political contender.

The Toyotomi, under Yodo-dono, with Hideyori as the pretty dashing figurehead, began to throw their weight around. They rebuilt Osaka castle's fortifications, and they forged a bell at Hoko-ji temple funded by the proceeds of Father's Great Sword Hunt. It wasn't any old bell though. It was a diss bell. Read in a certain way, the kanji inscription on the bell could be interpreted as breaking the Tokugawa in two, and 'may the Toyotomi rise... again?'

Tokugawa sent an envoy to Yodo-dono, asking that, given this insult, she and the Heir might consider relocating to another province. Say, a less central, less jewel-in-the-crown-with-an-impregnable-castle province. It'd help make up for the insulting bell, after all. The veiled threat was not very veiled. 'Leave while I give you the chance.'

This drew the battle-lines between those who still held out loyalty to the Taiko's clan (or who just hated the Tokugawa), and the Shōgun's forces. The former flocked to Osaka Castle and dug in.

That was enough for Tokugawa, who laid siege to Osaka Castle. Well, he was very old now, so he let his son - the Shōgun whose dad told him what to do - lead the siege. Assaulting the castle was a logistical nightmare, but luckily for Tokugawa and his fledgling Shōgunate, they outsourced much of the work to the lords who had pledged allegiance to the new regime (read: almost all of them). Keeping these lords poor - say, through funding hugely expensive military endeavours - was one of the ways Tokugawa Ieyasu and heirs exerted control. Ieyasu sat on a hill in a comfy tent while others bled gold (and blood) to build the expensive siege works and start the assault.

There were two sieges. One kinda worked, the second wasn't really a siege, but that's what they're called in the sources 🤷

The first siege was very much carrot-and-the-stick. Archers would loose arrows into the castle, with scrolls wrapped around the shafts, requesting the Toyotomi surrender. Politely. Poetically. It didn't work.

Tokugawa Ieyasu (Toranaga) tried bribing famous commanders inside the castle, including famed hunk-hero and coverboy of the Samurai Warriors games, Sanada Yukimura. He told Tokugawa to go fuck himself. Tokugawa tried bribing another general, who considered it, was discovered, and beheaded in Osaka Castle to encourage the others. 🙃

Yodo-dono started dressing up in samurai armor and walking the walls, in full view of the besieging armies. Her son's forces found this 'both unnerving... and condescending.' She was acting like a general, which pissed the generals off. She was also accidentally undermining her now-adult son, and sapping confidence from those who'd pledged to his banner. Read the room, lady. This doesn't seem to be malicious - this was just her first experience actually wielding power in an armed conflict. 'Although she feigned the image of a warlike Virago, she was in fact a cloistered and rather narrow-minded woman who understood little of what went on outside of her castle. As such, Ieyasu knew that she could be manipulated when the time came.'

What's the best way to manipulate someone? Fire cannon at them!

'And now for my most cunning plan. Blowing her up.'

Tokugawa ordered his son to focus cannon fire on the living quarters of Osaka Castle. Yodo-dono's quarters. Twice a day, every day. They were using cannon seized from Portuguese ships, and the gun-crews are likely to have been using training manuals originally drawn up by our old friend, the English pilot. He was off living his best life in Edo at the time. But he trained accurate gunners - one round shot hit Yodo-dono's quarters and nearly killed her. While she and her ladies were having tea. The gall.

This was enough for her. She ordered her son to make terms with the Tokugawa. This wasn't worth dying for.

'Ugh, stop wrecking all my shit you fucking swine. That teapot was from Muji!' - Yodo-dono, 1615

Siege over! Can we be friends? Well, it's hard to go back from that. Tokugawa Ieyasu offered Hideyori/the Heir (well, really, his mom) two options: either Yodo-dono goes to Edo as a hostage to their family's good behaviour, or they agree to fill in the moat of Osaka Castle, making it less a fortress and more of a nice, big, open-plan house.

Option 2 was agreed, and Ieyasu issued a treaty document sealed with his own blood. The very obvious implication - don't fucking break it.

The Heir and Yodo-dono fucking broke it.

Urged on by his mother, Hideyori began to gather ronin (masterless samurai) back to his banner, re-dig the filled in moats, and gathered 120,000 fighting men to Osaka Castle. I forgot to mention how big this siege was, sorry. It was huge. And wouldn't you know it, many of these fighters were būsho, samurai, and ashigaru who were Christian. They saw the way the wind was blowing, and that the Tokugawa were getting wise to Portuguese intentions towards Japan. This might be their last chance (spoiler: it was).

The second siege (called the Summer Siege) began. From the Heir's side, it was much more ambitious than the first. The boy general, son of the Taiko, wanted to seize Kyoto, declare Tokugawa a traitor to the Emperor, and go on the offensive.

Unfortunately, like Sekigahara, many of the forces gathered in Osaka were there to oppose Tokugawa, rather than fight for one unified purpose. The war councils generally ended with disunity, and Yodo-dono kept interfering, which really, really was starting to wear thin with the Heir's vassals and allies. And the Heir himself. Imagine your mom turning up to work every day after you'd got a big promotion (Leader of the Western Armies). Not only that, your mom is literally coming to work in cosplay. The poor kid.

Long story short - Hideyori, the Heir, had no military experience. In a much-mythologised, last-of-its-kind battle between actual samurai - before they hung up their swords and became indentured bureaucrats - the Heir risked it all. His plan to sally forth and fight the armies of the Shōgun failed. They were beaten back by a contingent of 150,000 warriors under the Shōgunate, commanded by Ieyasu's son, Hidetada.

Key commanders were killed during the offensive, the Osaka forces lacked unity and cohesion (Sekigahara called, it wants its overarching lesson back). The Heir retreated back into Osaka Castle, but they didn't have a contingency plan and had few defences and obstacles established. The castle came under massive bombardment and constant infantry assault. The entire castle caught fire.

(Side note: a primary source written by a Dutch trader at the time said that generals loyal to the Heir set the castle on fire themselves, hoping to win favour with the Shōgun. Apparently, Hideyori discovered this and threw them off the ramparts into the flames. We'll probably never know whether that was true, but it's at least plausible.)

The Heir, Toyotomi Hideyori, and his mother, Yodo-dono - niece of Oda Nobunaga, most powerful concubine to the Taiko, most powerful woman in Japan - committed seppuku in the flames.

His body was found. Hers wasn't. You know what happens when this arises in history. There are folk legends that Yodo-dono escaped and lived a happy life in another province, but, hey, we all like a happy ending.

So if the inspiration for Ochiba no kata was a bit of a tone-deaf aristocrat nun who, whilst politically powerful, was not really a sexy, scary woman, how did we end up with Ochiba in the show?

After the Tokugawa defeated the Heir's forces, they had control of everything - eeeverything, including history books, plays, the works. What makes for a better story if you're on the winning side?

A mother was put in a terrible position when her husband, the ruler of the country, died. A group of men promised her husband they would place her son on the throne. One of them lied, stole the throne through force of arms and political savvy, and disinherited the son, despite the mother's best attempts. Her cause failed because she lacked the skills and authority to unify a movement, and her son was an untested youth who, in the end, just didn't have it.

The Heir's mother was an evil, scheming, sexually wanton (!) woman who destabilised the realm and got her son killed. She led them to disaster and without her, Tokugawa Ieyasu and the Heir would have gotten along fine! Her cause failed because she was a malicious harpy.

The Shōgunate chose option 2, and that's mostly the version we get in popular culture. It's hard to undo 260 years worth of character portrayal. Don't get me wrong, she was scheming, she was self-interested, but so was every major player in the period. She used her influence to gather support for her son, tried her best to overcome Toranaga/Tokugawa once she realised what he was, and she failed. To really send the moral message home, the Shōgunate cast her as a wicked woman, making her wickedness the reason she failed, not the complex factors that contributed to the downfall of the Taiko's clan.

So that's the story of Ochiba no kata's real life insiration, and what happened to the Heir - by far the most requested Part 2, and probably a bit depressing for Ochiba fans, unfortunately.

In Part 3, if there's any interest, we could look at the Dictator, the Taiko, and Toranaga and how they unified Japan, or we could look at a really interested question - what the hell happened for the 260 years of Tokugawa rule? How does it live on today (in some pretty dark ways) in the popular imagination? Your call.

[kathanglangit]

The Third Blade: Hinalung - Handheld Speartip

Five days left to go before the launch of the Gubat Banwa Kickstarter campaign! Gubat Banwa is a TTRPG that allows you to play as warrior Kadungganan in the Sword Isles, a fantasy setting as colorful and intricate as the Southeast Asian cultures from which it draws inspiration.

I've been posting the weapons I've been drawing for the game as kind of a countdown, leading up to the launch on October 10. I was planning to do this for Swordtember, but sometimes you gotta shift the goalpost a little bit. 3/7 blades down, behold the HINALUNG

This multi-purpose blade comes in a few different shapes and sizes, but in general they are symmetrical and double-edged. They don't get much longer than one's forearm, and more often than not have handles wrapped in rattan lashings.

(Blades by Tatang HImanggo and one of his students- a certain Arnold; As shared by Biboy's Sharp Edges) If I'm not mistaken, the term "hinalung" is Ifugao- referring to a certain group of indigenous peoples in the Philippine Cordilleras- though the usage of the blade itself was widespread across the mountains of north Luzon. Nowadays, it isn't just Ifugao smiths making them, and a number of contemporary smiths from across the region seem to lay claim to the blade. In any case, the blade is of the Cordilleras, unconquered by Spain.

(Blades by Ifugao Traditional Blades) One more thing of note is the open scabbard, which seems to be common among blades in that region- not just the hinalung. Some of them boast enough space for more than one blade to be sheathed, and are often sold as novelties. The first example below has a large hinalung in the middle, joined by a pair of pinahig. It can very quickly get out of hand. These X-in-1 sets are usually sold as novelties.

(Blades by Orinn Mongalini/Panday Anitu Mumbaki)

(Photo from Orinn Mongalini)

(Photo from Ifugao Artistic Blade)

Now for the fun part! You may be wondering why the handle is shaped the way it is, with that triangular opening near the base of the blade? Or perhaps you read the title of this post and you already know where this is going?

They double as spearheads! The handle itself is steel folded in to create a hollow socket, allowing the hinalung to be mounted on a wooden shaft, turning it into a spear. Supposedly, this spear-form was used for hunting. You can see the hollow socket more clearly here:

(Blade by HanYan Blades)

(Screencap from a video by AJ Blade Reviews testing the blade as a spear; Blade by Lakay Paul Dulnuan Sr.) As mentioned previously, the Philippine Cordilleras were never conquered by Spain, and as such were able to carry their traditions with a little more ease into the present day. It is very much apparent in the blade culture. Present-day smiths in the Cordilleras still forge hinalung, some of them stating they do it in the traditional way, others admitting to hewing to more modern methods.

(Antique from the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology)

(Modern build by Lakay Pabian, photo by Ramon Bathan) Like I said before: Blade culture is alive and still developing. One of the Five Major Mahamandalas of Gubat Banwa pays homage to and gleans inspiration from living cultures like those I mentioned here. If you want to know what the first half of that sentence means, check out the game and its Kickstarter!

The Gubat Banwa Kickstarter launches in 5 days! Check it out here:

I've watched this game be started, written, and developed by like- one guy, who just managed to drum up enough interest and meet enough people willing to help shape the dream, and make it what it is today. It could not have gotten this far without all of them. Still, it remains a very small team of creators from the global south, with very limited resources. We would dearly appreciate any and all help in getting the word out about the game!

[murfpersonalblog]

IWTV S2 Ep1 Musings - Cezare Romulo: History through Visual Context in Ploiești, Romania (Pt2)

I am on the hunt for any and all information on AMC's OCs, The Vampire Daciana, and the Vampire Cezare Romulo.

In Part 1, I pointed out that Daciana was likely AMC's nod paying homage to the Dacians (aka Geto-Dacians or Daci, as the Greco-Romans knew them), the ancient Romanians of c. 10th century BC - 7th century AD, in the Transylvanian/Wallachian regions of the Carpathian Mountains.

In AR's TVC, vampires tend to reflect the era they lived/died in, preferring to wear their traditional clothes & surround themselves with antiques from their time period--like grave goods for the dead. However, from what I've found, there was nothing about Daciana's clothes/home indicating that she was an ancient Dacian (X).

(Granted, if she IS that old, then that definitely increases her odds of being an "Old God" that got caught in the Great Burning.... 👀)

Regardless, I wanna turn my attention to Cezare Romulo, cuz while I'm tentatively ruling out Daciana as being Dacian, I haven't dug into The Vampire Cezare yet. So here goes nothing!

Nomenclature

First thing that stood out to me is his name. Cezare's obvs Caesar, but I wonder if that's his name, or his title (like how the Latin caesar became kaiser in German & tsar in Russian).

In Oltenia (Wallachia) there are archaeological remains of a Roman-Dacian fort called Romula, dated to the 2nd century AD. I couldn't find much about it, so we'll just put a pin in that. Something way cooler is that according to Google Translate, Romulo means Romulus, in both Romanian & Italian. That's hella interesting, cuz Romulus was the founder of Rome (8th century BC), twin brother of Remus, whom he killed Cain vs Abel style to be the ruler. In some versions, Romulus "died" under VERY mysterious circumstances:

So for AMC's OC vampire to be named after two Romans (Caesar & Romulus) who were both incredibly violent & bloodthirsty rulers says a lot. Especially considering with how Daciana described him:

The Castle: Bears & Wolves (Totems & Crests)

Cezare killed a whole circus troupe traveling through Transylvania (Sibiu), and only spared their bear. I wondered why this was so noteworthy--vampires will kill anyone for food (or sport), esp. if they don't follow the creed about only killing Evil Doers (as Cezare obvs. didn't--unless he knew something about that troupe we don't...! 👀 Clowns ARE evil, after all 💀). Vamps don't tend to kill animals, unless they need to defend themselves--but aren't circus bears kept in cages or something? So why would it matter?

So I reckon that Daciana's point was actually that Cezare LIKED the bear, and probably KEPT it, as his pet.

Cuz look at his castle: the joint's filled with taxidermy.

I think some of these animals are bears and/or wolves (Romulus & Remus were raised by wolves in the woods....). And that tracks with what is known about the main Dacian animal, the wolf (or "Draco"/dragon), (X X X).

Sava, Cipriana. "Cultural heritage tourism--Dacian fortresses in the Orăştie area, Romania." MEFkon 2020 INNOVATION AS AN INITIATOR OF THE DEVELOPMENT. (2020): 290-311.

Strechie, Mădălina. "The Dacians, the Wolf Warriors." In International Conference Knowledge-Based Organization, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 367-373. 2017.

(ISTG when is AMC bringing AR's Wolf Gift books into the Immortals Universe--I need my werewolves already, gosh darnit!)

Cezare clearly felt a strong affinity for animals, especially bears.

Which isn't surprising, considering the life-death-rebirth symbolism of the bear in Romanian traditions like the Ursului (bear dances).

Trandafoiu, Ruxandra. "A Tale of Two (or# EverMore) Festivals: Electronic Music in a Transylvanian Town." Eastern European Popular Music in a Transnational Context: Beyond the Borders (2019): 213-237.

The Castle: Architecture

As for Cezare's castle ruins, I have no idea what's going on.

The most interesting thing was Cezare's final resting place in this catacomb-like structure, lying in a stone sarcophagus.

Like, there are Roman-era burials found across Romania, but Cezare having a STONE sarcophagus is interesting, cuz apparently Transylvania's Daco-Roman inhumations are more often brick:

As stone sarcophagi only became more popular around the 3rd-4th century AD

Cocis, Horatiu. "Some remarks on the Roman necropolises of Potaissa." Journal of Ancient History and Archaeology 2, no. 2 (2015).

Before largely falling out of favor/use by the 5th-6th century AD, except for clergy & royalty:

Maggio, Ariane. "Burial Practices in Europe." Encyclopedia of Global Archaeology (2018): 1-6.

So, does this possibly give us a date for him, approx 2nd-6th century AD? But how long was it until he died? (HOW did he even die?)

What about the rest of his castle? Like, the place is an utter ruin, and there's barely anything left of that dark AF exterior that I can use.

Is this a studio set, or was it filmed on location somewhere? IDFK. There's hundreds of Romanian archaeological sites--let alone Daco-Roman ones--it kinda reminds me of davas (fortresses/strongholds), (X X), if not for the masonry being different.

So yeah, I have no frikkin clue, y'all; this is all I've got, LOL. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Results? Inconclusive! Again! 😂😭

I don't know if AMC was deliberately implying that Cezare Romulo (or Daciana) had anything to do with the ancient Daco-Romans...but it's interesting to think about!