#delphine windermere

[reflectedshine]

❝ Our future is not built atop despair and resignations.

Arknights Main Theme Episode 13 -The Whirlpool that is Passion

[vivlily]

"May I draw my sword now?"

The catgirl who is maybe a little less than fine.

alt below

Edit: swapped them since it was fuzzy(?) On mobile

Summon swords is never not cool

[superchat]

[sunder-the-gold]

Ending of a Grand Overture

Reposting my response on my own for the sake of anyone in the tags who wants more people to talk about this event.

Kinda funny but kinda sad but kinda funny that I saw Literally No One talk about the Siege event. -- cerastes

Sad is right, because that shit was depressing. A non-exhaustive list:

Londinium — the city, the infrastructure, the people who maintain both and depend on them to survive — is fucked; even the rich and nobility are Infected and desperately trying to hide it

to the common people, the Sarkaz who were born and raised in Londinium are now indistinguishable from the Sarkaz from Kazdel; they didn't leave with the foreigners as they retreated, but now they're being forced to leave their home anyway

a Columbian who honestly wants to help is annoying in a way that no one can properly explain to him because they don't want to point out that they can't trust his help since the CIA is funding the company he represents, and they don't want to explain all of their familiar Victorian bullshit that is getting in Londinium's way

the dukes are actively hindering the city’s ability to recover, and they keep hanging around specifically to make sure the people don't crown the woman who saved them as king

the people want to reward the woman who saved them by crowning her king and making her a symbol of hope, and they cannot understand why their hero refuses to give them what they want

a common hero of the people is sentenced to death for an impulsive act of ‘stealing’ the crown for the sake of the hope of the people — even when it turns out her death was faked, she's liable to die within a week anyway because her Oripathy is so bad

The Windermere medic that was such a stand-up guy in the main-story has become Infected, and he's addicted to opioids because he passed the real Oripathy suppressants to other people while he kept working too hard

Siege hates her job but she can't leave it; she can steal away a few days to visit the Glasgow Gang gym, but Morgan spells it out in her writing — they can never really have their friend "Vina" back, even if she's only the Speaker instead of the king

The Glasgow Gang has become basically helpless to assist Siege in any capacity now that the war is over, because Indra and Morgan are just a couple of common-born street thugs, and that one younger guy left

Baird is still fucking dead because she tied to help this one terminally ill guy who had lost his mind and shanked her, and she bled out alone without her friends around, and Siege still hasn't really accepted that she's dead, and Morgan is vexed because she's denied the context for the last words Baird wrote before she died

Dadga lost her noble family and formalized the end of the Tower Knights, and Delphine has to leave them to return home, and she might not be able to return like she promises

Allerdale has become Asshole Batman whom Siege must treat as an enemy even though Allerdale is trying to help people, because the most effective way that Allerdale can help people is by employing criminals and ne'erdowells towards productive work like smuggling native-born Londinium Sarkaz out of the city, as well as buying and selling painkillers on the black-market because there's not enough real medicine in the legitimate market and the dukes are blocking legitimate channels

The enemies in the combat stages are mostly just common people struggling to survive; frightened scavengers armed with planks of wood or whatever sword they found laying on the ground, young men who became thieves because too many factories shut down for them to find honest work, old men trying to protect their neighborhoods...

The final boss is a fucking joke and is based entirely on a bullshit "fairy tale" that Siege desperately slapped together to comfort a woman whom thought she was going to die the next morning, but only because Siege didn't tell her that she had already planned a way to smuggle her out of the city

Nazzsalem, the Sarkaz God of War, died off-screen in his own final battle scene; I didn't know that was even possible. We need a new Design of Strife event specifically so we can fight this man as he leads Chapter 11 and Chapter 14 Nachzehrer enemies against us in a massive two-phase battle.

[chryza]

No but I’m so fucked up about Delphine you guys. She’s sooooo sad she is intensely traumatized and grieving and young, oh my god she’s so young she doesn’t fit the uniform her mother prepared for her she shouldn’t be carrying this weight but Arknights has always been in part about the way that the crises of the world affect young people the most.

What strikes me the most though is that she’s settled on solving her guilt for not being able to save her mother by obsessively hunting down the nobles who set them up. It was fundamentally an assassination after all, a decapitating strike against the armies that would rise up against the military commission and their allies. She gives herself no respite and any forgiveness she might have had for herself is turned into another weapon against her enemies. It seems like her primary goal at this point in her personal life is first vengeance and then efficiently removing obstacles, a soldier like her mother taught her to be.

Delphine is a soldier , for as much as Amphelise might have wanted her to be happy or not to grow up with the strain. She was an intelligence operator for years and a soldier when it was needed and she is frankly ruthless. The epitome of what every Victorian scion should be. And she cast aside the politics of becoming the Duke of Windermere in favor of two things: the belief that true progress lay with Rhodes Island and not politicking, and a vendetta. Maybe her mother would be disappointed with her for that, but it seems more likely she never wanted Delphine to become the Duke of Windermere in the first place.

[kara-knuckles]

As much as I liked the Darknights bits in Episode 13, on the whole I found it pretty frustrating, because it kinda devalued every storyline from Episode 12.

Amiya once again gets an arc about generational Sarkaz bullshit. The Revenant is barely mentioned, despite being a really damn big deal.

What about the Dukes? Last chapter has shown that they are willing to become more involved in the conflict, and now that their forces barely avoided getting hit by The Shard, surely we will get more from them? Nah, the Duke of Windermere probably holds the record for the shortest amount of time it took an established character to die, the biggest impact her forces did was GTFO-ing for the sake of Siege's arc, and the most the other Dukes managed was finally lifting their asses and telling us to tune again in half a year for Episode 14, where they maybe will do something. Maybe. Probably.

Speaking of Siege, remember all the introspection she did in 12? Morgan's realization that they aren't some heroes of legend? Who cares! Let's go full superhero comic, complete with hyper aggressive fighting, deep wound in a polluted area with no consequences, being given a convenient banner to rally people around, and even returning a fallen friend we knew for a week and mourned deeply!

…Baird who? Her buddy Delphine doesn't even get a line connecting her to Glasgow, let alone actually include her with the group in the archives. Nice CG with the real heroes, though!

Last time we saw Paprika she was with Manfred, one of our main antagonists. Will we learn more about him? Will it have some kind of effect on her? LOL. LMAO, even.

Remember all the soul searching Damazti did? How the climax of the chapter was their death? Forget it, we got not one, but two of them, complete with reset personalities!

Obviously, this means we don't get more insight from them about Golding, and Heidi is long forgotten by the narrative, but look! Lettou's arc is hitting rock bottom, perhaps he can spare some thoughts for his old friend he drove to suicide? Maybe even do some elegy about how it ties into Gaul's fate? Nope! His catalyst is actually some rando with a dementia (which I loved on a thematic level, but, you know *gestures at the list*).

Even Ines, who frankly barely did anything in 12, got her injured state completely ignored in favour of telling us Hoederer got a haircut, so that she could do some acrobatics atop a flying skeleton a few days later. But hey! They actually acknowledged her big moment of jumping from the airship, now that's a progress!

[sunder-the-gold]

Sad is right, because that shit was depressing. A non-exhaustive list:

Londinium — the city, the infrastructure, the people who maintain both and depend on them to survive — is fucked; even the rich and nobility are Infected and desperately trying to hide it

to the common people, the Sarkaz who were born and raised in Londinium are now indistinguishable from the Sarkaz from Kazdel; they didn't leave with the foreigners as they retreated, but now they're being forced to leave their home anyway

a Columbian who honestly wants to help is annoying in a way that no one can properly explain to him because they don't want to point out that they can't trust his help since the CIA is funding the company he represents, and they don't want to explain all of their familiar Victorian bullshit that is getting in Londinium's way

the dukes are actively hindering the city’s ability to recover, and they keep hanging around specifically to make sure the people don't crown the woman who saved them as king

the people want to reward the woman who saved them by crowning her king and making her a symbol of hope, and they cannot understand why their hero refuses to give them what they want

a common hero of the people is sentenced to death for an impulsive act of ‘stealing’ the crown for the sake of the hope of the people — even when it turns out her death was faked, she's liable to die within a week anyway because her Oripathy is so bad

The Windermere medic that was such a stand-up guy in the main-story has become Infected, and he's addicted to opioids because he passed the real Oripathy suppressants to other people while he kept working too hard

Siege hates her job but she can't leave it; she can steal away a few days to visit the Glasgow Gang gym, but Morgan spells it out in her writing — they can never really have their friend "Vina" back, even if she's only the Speaker instead of the king

The Glasgow Gang has become basically helpless to assist Siege in any capacity now that the war is over, because Indra and Morgan are just a couple of common-born street thugs, and that one younger guy left

Baird is still fucking dead because she tied to help this one terminally ill guy who had lost his mind and shanked her, and she bled out alone without her friends around, and Siege still hasn't really accepted that she's dead, and Morgan is vexed because she's denied the context for the last words Baird wrote before she died

Dadga lost her noble family and formalized the end of the Tower Knights, and Delphine has to leave them to return home, and she might not be able to return like she promises

Allerdale has become Asshole Batman whom Siege must treat as an enemy even though Allerdale is trying to help people, because the most effective way that Allerdale can help people is by employing criminals and ne'erdowells towards productive work like smuggling native-born Londinium Sarkaz out of the city, as well as buying and selling painkillers on the black-market because there's not enough real medicine in the legitimate market and the dukes are blocking legitimate channels

The enemies in the combat stages are mostly just common people struggling to survive; frightened scavengers armed with planks of wood or whatever sword they found laying on the ground, young men who became thieves because too many factories shut down for them to find honest work, old men trying to protect their neighborhoods...

The final boss is a fucking joke and is based entirely on a bullshit "fairy tale" that Siege desperately slapped together to comfort a woman whom thought she was going to die the next morning, but only because Siege didn't tell her that she had already planned a way to smuggle her out of the city

Nazzsalem, the Sarkaz God of War, died off-screen in his own final battle scene; I didn't know that was even possible. We need a new Design of Strife event specifically so we can fight this man as he leads Chapter 11 and Chapter 14 Nachzehrer enemies against us in a massive two-phase battle.

Kinda funny but kinda sad but kinda funny that I saw Literally No One talk about the Siege event.

[bluhburr]

Ulrike Ottinger’s Third Eye

Ulrike Ottinger sees things the way nobody else does, and that isn’t even her greatest gift. Her greatest gift is her ability to make the spectator see what she sees. It’s not like like you, as a viewer, are seeing something you’ve never seen before, but rather that for the first time you’re really paying attention, considering it in a way that you had never previously considered it. I remember watching Ottinger’s Aller Jamais Retour for the first time about thirty-five years ago in a symposium on avant-garde feminist film. I can still hear Tabea Blumenschein’s red heels clicking across the floor of the airport terminal, see her walking away from the camera instead of toward it, stopping to buy a one-way ticket to Berlin for a booze-fueled blitzkrieg through the city with the likes of Nina Hagen and a homeless woman she picks up along the way. 

Still one of the greatest films, feminist or otherwise, that I have ever seen.  

This is why I was so thrilled when I stumbled across a streamable version of Johanna d’Arc of Mongolia yesterday on Youtube. Ottinger’s work is almost impossible to view and her DVDs equally impossible to find for purchase, so I was really looking forward to this film. 

It didn’t disappoint.    

The story begins among a group of cosmopolitan Europeans on a trip along the Trans-Siberian Railway. The ensemble includes a couple of Russian military officers, female ethnologist Lady Windermere, played by Delphine Seyrig (in what turned out to be her final film role), an uptight German school teacher (Irm Hermann), a young female backpacker, and a Broadway musical star who calls herself Fanny Ziegfeld. There’s also a rich young Jewish bon-vivant and Yiddish theater star who gets up to sing “Toot, Toot, Tootsie!” with a trio of female Russian chanteuses, the Kalinka Sisters. The whole thing evokes films like Sternberg’s Shanghai Express, which is clearly its intention, but all of the characters, especially the women, are much more than a compendium of stereotypical clichés from movie history. Ottinger caresses these stereotypes, deconstructs them, and in doing so she reveals the complex human beings that reside beneath them.    

The western narrative is hijacked – in every sense of the term – when a Mongolian bandit princess and her tribe stop the train and steal away with the female passengers for an extended trip into the exotic landscape of untamed Mongolia. Any notion of a traditional western storytelling is halted as we get lost in this new world, where dialogue gives way to the power of the image. Lady Windermere, both polymath and polyglot who is fluent in Mongolian, convinces the ladies to surrender to the beauty of this singular experience. Essentially, the Mongolians want nothing more than to share their culture with these fellow women, and this is where the full scope of Ottinger’s genius is on display. What ensues is a sort of postmodern/feminist take on Montesquieu’s Persian Letters in which the women come to realize that to understand themselves, they must understand the other. This is a world where money has no value other than decorative, where broken down motorcycles are pulled through the Taiga by camels, where shamans replace intellectuals and scholars, and where life is every bit as meaningful and rich as it is in the modern and technological world of late-stage capitalism. 

It’s impossible not to notice how different a story can be when told by female filmmaker intent on not simply repeating the narrative tropes of her male counterparts. The women taken off the train never feel as if they have been “abducted.” They do not try to conquer the Mongolian tribe nor do they attempt to escape, which I am sure would be the trajectory of most films centered around a group of captive males. The women see this as an opportunity for growth, for adventure, for compassion and understanding. 

The film’s ending achieves a sort of beautiful and cosmic equilibrium when another train is stopped by the Mongolian bandits so that the European women can return to their lives in the West. Only this time, there’s a new passenger. When I watch the bandit princess, now decked out in haute couture on board the Trans-Siberian, seated in an elegant compartment next to Delphine Seyrig, I can’t help but think of Lawrence of Arabia turned inside-out. 

In any case, see it before it disappears, because it is a masterwork.