So much of Garak as a person starts to make sense once you know his childhood was a fucking gothic novel. His main playground was a graveyard and he'd play pretend by perfoming improv eulogies to an imagined audience. For a long time his main touchstone for most important figures from recent history is 'oh yeah I know about that guy my dad buried him. great flower arrangements for that one'. He finds out later his 'parents' are actually a brother and sister who had to get married to avoid the utter shame and social devastation of having a child born out of wedlock, and they live in the basement of his biological father's house. (the madwoman in the attic vs. the tiny elim in the basement.) His biological father calls himself his uncle and locks him in a closet whenever he fails to live up to his insane and unpredictable expectations and everyone just has to act like that's normal and expected, and his will hangs over everything at all times, unseen but always felt keener than anything else. The father who actually raised him grows the world's most beautiful (and as it turns out, most poisonous) orchids and keeps the mask of a god hidden in a box in his work shed. Everyone in the house is choking down secrets like it's the only air they know how to breathe anymore.
What I'm saying is that right from the get-go this guy never had the faintest shot at turning out normal, so I'm glad that by middle age he's found a way to get a bit silly with it as he continues to be deeply deeply not normal about anything ever <3
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PERCEVAL THE UNHAPPY, THE MISERABLE, THE UNFORTUNATE, THE FISHER KING!
Perceval, de Troyes (trans. Burton Raffel)
ALRIGHT alright. so previously I did an illustration that explained the premise of all this, that it's inspired by the narrative choices that Bresson made in his film Lancelot du Lac etc
to dive in more into it (because this is something like derivative fiction. I'm putting concepts into a blender and seeing what comes out of it): the setting is haunted by the previously existing narratives that started cannibalizing each other until it regurgitates itself into the more well known narrative beats, and something else about the invasive rot of christianity and empire mythmaking into settings. it's an intertextual haunting, if you will! and this scene takes place during the grail quest narrative, but the temptation of Perceval plays out differently.
in both Chretien (and Wolfram's) Perceval narratives, what 'wakes' Perceval up (in more ways than one. desire and self actualization in one go!) is seeing knights, something his mother tried hard to keep him from. so instead of the temptation of lust & etc in the Morte narrative taking the form of a lady, it takes the form of a knight. the temptation to renounce one's faith to serve something else remains.
so Perceval still stabs himself, but instead of continuing on the grail quest in the shadow of Galahad, he becomes the narrative's Fisher King because his earlier state of being as a the grail quest hero is creeping back into his marrow. it was waiting for an opening, and stabbing yourself in the thigh is one hell of a parallel!!!
that wound isn't going to heal buddy, and the state of the setting will now be reflected on your body. sure hope that Arthur hasn't like. corrupted the justice of the land or anything. that sure would suck for your overall health.
all the red in this sequence is because in de Troyes' Perceval, Perceval takes the armor of the Red Knight and becomes known as the Knight in Red.
and now for the citations, which I will try to order in a way that makes sense!
Seeing Knights For The First Time
Perceval, de Troyes (trans. Burton Raffel)
The Temptation of Perceval
Le Morte Darthur, Mallory (modernized by Baines)
The Fisher King, and Perceval The Unfortunate
Perceval, de Troyes (trans. Burton Raffel)
On Perceval and Gender, etc.
Clothes Make The Man: Parzival Dressed and Undressed, Michael D. Amey
On Wounds
Wounded Masculinity: Injury and Gender in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur, Kenneth Hodges
The Red Knight
Perceval, de Troyes (trans. Burton Raffel)
On Arthur and the Corruption of Justice
The Failure of Justice, the Failure of Arthur, L.K. Bedwell
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Me, at the start of the video, scanning the timeline to see what the sections are about: Oh hey, there's a lot of James Somerton in the second half. I can see a bunch of shots in the preview window of him casually speaking into a mic so they're probably talking over a video call. It's cool that these two video essay creators I watch are collabing like this. Bit odd that James doesn't seem to appear in the first half though.
Me, having now finished the video: I am going to kill James Somerton with my bare hands.
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okay okay, pardonne moi, I am currently rewatching umbara for fic writing purposes and I have a lot of other things to say but the first thing is highly inappropriate and only funny if you have mental health issues BUT YOU KNOW WHAT WE WERE ROBBED OF???
When the clones first turn on Krell and he jumps out the tower? The clones down there attack him, but Rex and some others are still in the tower. THAT ELEVATOR RIDE??? I WANNA FUCKING SEE THAT ELEVATOR RIDE DOWN. GIVE ME HARDCORE ACTION INTERRUPTED BY *robotic voice* “you are on the top floor” “you have selected bottom floor” *generic elevator music that lasts way to fucking long* “you are at the bottom flo—“ and then it cuts off because Fives shot the sound system
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