#or have them replace them narratively

[mordredpendragon]

obviously i have my biases, but i'm just curious.

a bunch of knights go through grail quest, but what i want to know is your preference for the GRAIL HERO specifically. bonus points if you tell me why!

as a refresher, here's all of the relevant texts they show up in and undergo grail quest

Percival

Peredur (Welsh) Y Seint Greal (Welsh) Perceval + Continuations (French) Parzival (German) Parceval (Norse) Perchevael (Dutch) Prose Perceval (Middle English) Perlesvaus (French) Merlin and the Grail by Robert de Boron (French) Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory (Middle English) The Quest for the Holy Grail (Vulgate) (French) The Quest for The Holy Grail (Post-Vulgate) (French) La Tavola Ritonda (Italian)

Galahad and Bors

Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Malory (Middle English) The Quest for the Holy Grail (Vulgate) (French) The Quest for The Holy Grail (Post-Vulgate) (French) La Tavola Ritonda (Italian)

Gawain

The Crown by Heinrich von dem Türlin (Diu Crône) (German) Perlesvaus (French)

Lancelot and Arthur

Perlesvaus (French)

links are supplied by the Arthurian Preservation Project!

[time-is-restored]

do you guys every think abt death vs immortality as a thoroughline in like. literally all of the mechs albums.

old king cole is explicitly warped by immortality (never to forgive he would eternal live, his hands dyed red by gore - can be read a few ways depending on where u place the emphasis, but at the very least communicates that his wrath is facilitated By his immortality), and the olympians commit attrocities in order to hold onto their wealth and the immortality that it grants them (murdering arachne, yanking heracles' chain the second he tries to go freelance, having a monopoly on the acheron etc). the value they put on immortality and living forever, and the fear they have of ever possibly losing it, has completely warped their morals and priorities.

and while it comes up less in tbi, there's still significant emphasis placed on how odin has been in power for a century (both thor + the narrator bring it up, and there's also an emphasis on how long ago the bifrost project was started, and how 'no one left living' can explain its science). her villain monologue in rangarok iv places the extinction of asgard as an honour - a ruin that no one can possibly rebuild from is called 'apotheosis'. and as she says at the end, the idea that no one can possibly outlive her is a key draw for odin. asgard dies with her.

in hnoc, the only really immortal character is brian (and we only really know that bc of knowledge we get from outside the album), but the axis of life and death as a privilege vs a curse is still very present. 'mordred's gift to Arthur could be love in his own eyes / fating him alone to keep the life to which he clings', not only posits that the gift of survival isn't inherently good + kind (which the audience would immediately recognise as love, not possibly love), but places emphasis on the fact that arthur is now utterly alone. the station's death at the hands of mordred is hardly a happy one ('Its people damned, doomed by a man who's lost all his regrets'), but arthur's fate is arguably worse. severed from the finality and closure of death, what does he become? [insert that one cool theory abt hnoc arthur becoming old king cole here]

it's like. on a meta level, the reason we as fans don't put much emphasis on the depravity + cruelty of the mechs is bc the people portraying the mechs are all charismatic + skilled performers. in live gigs they're all portraying the fun side of their characters - roasting each other, bantering with the audience, making fun of the characters they're singing about, referencing off-screen violence - bc if they portrayed their lore too literally they'd be comitting felonies LMAOOO

but narratively, its like. literally every album is a meditation on the ways that the glorification of immortality can ruin civilisations - can ruin galaxies. whether its rooted in the fear of you specifically dying, or of being outlived, or overpowered or forgotten, or if its done for the sake of someone else's survival... it's all corrosive. if u refuse to accept the indisputable impermanence of life, you lose the ability to value it, and u numb urself to the reality of just how fucked up it is to cut another person's life short for any reason.

like. i do think some of the mechs started as good people, and some of them even might still have ethical standards, but i REALLY cannot stop thinking about how fucking. fascinating it is that this group of immortals who are KNOWN for basically considering nothing but how fun and/or violent any given activity will be, have basically filled their entire discography with songs about how their continued existence is corrosive and brings tragedy + ruin wherever they go.

so how self-aware are they? do you think those old morals + ethics still linger in their mind, when they're writing down these tragedies? they willingly self identify as liars + thieves + bastards, etc etc, and they seem to have no trouble identifying the 'bad guys' in the various albums (ie: humanising snow + cinders + rose, but not king cole), but do those concepts actually mean anything emotionally, or even theoretically, for them all beyond their dramatic potential? do they remember their lives before they were mechanised as it actually happened, or do they remember it as lyrics to a song? is it possible to be entirely self aware abt ur own capacity for violence (as jonny in paticular claims to be), if you no longer relate to violence as anything other than a narrative device - a means to an end, whether comedic or dramatic?

[tomurakii]

Look. I am not mad at the Bad Kids specifically for killing the Rat Grinders. Because those are fictional first of all and it's gonna happen. I saw someone say that any one of us would be making the exact same choice, and I agree with that. I do however also think it's dumb to act like the RGs are uniquely evil, when in the same vein I'm pretty sure 90% of people when presented with "come back in service of this god or die permanently with no chance at the afterlife" would be in the same position as the RGs as well.

The things we can blame them for are the things they did BEFORE they were rage starred: literally nothing. They did nothing, to the point where none of the BKs knew they existed. Acting like they deserve to die for the things that came after when they had the influence of a God, a wannabe god, and their trusted teacher/vice principal pushing them to do it IS victim blaming. That is an insane degree of grooming and not one of you would do any better resisting it than they did. They're victims of their circumstances. The BKs actually being in the scene don't really have time for empathy, the audience absolutely does. And it grosses me out to see a bunch of grown adults on tumblr celebrating the gruesome deaths and violent lowkey-misogynistic threats levelled at some of these highschoolers.

It is also just narratively unsatisfying that the anti-pointless violence season about how you have to be mindful and temper your rage with doubt is ending by just Doing Violence Harder, but that is equally a restriction of the medium. It's somewhat missing the themes for the Bad Kids to have been going "wow it's so weird that everyone's so mad at us" all season and be presented with a reason (rage stars/dust) that means they need to employ doubt to work out what parts of their rage are really the fault of the actor, but then completely ignore that part and deliver way worse threats (and actualisations) of murder and desecration than any of the rage-dusted people ever did and without the excuse of Ankarna's influence. It does seem like if this were a premeditated plot rather than improv it should have gone differently.

[pushing500]

Drama in the colony! What in the world could be causing problems for the Jones "twins"?

I'm not sure how Mechi would feel about being called Kwahu's duplicate, but that's beside the point. It looks like there really are consequences for everything that happens on the rim!

Mechi only just met his new "twin", and now we have to choose one to die so one can live?

Haha, sike. Randy can try all he wants, but the joke's on him. We won't be saying goodbye to either of the Jones boys for as long as we can manage. Melissa, the creepjoiner from a while back, will finally get the chance to put her mystical healing powers to good use...

Hopefully, there are no consequences from that. I'm sure there won't be. The void giving us two events with consequences? That would be ridiculous.

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Also, for what it's worth, Mechi and Kwahu aren't sharing a bed. I just forgot to put a bedside table in between while I was drawing. Accidentally made it look like my misanthropic mechanitor was way too comfortable sleeping side-by-side with his equally misanthropic clone lmao.

Aren't Mechi's "cube" sculptures adorable? I feel like a proud parent watching a child make horrendous macaroni and fingerprint art.

[starbuck]

it’s wild to me how obviously mimetic the relationship between these two characters is… like. his desire for revenge, his desire to be loved, AND his desire to sacrifice himself for his friends… ALL MIMICKED!!!!!!!!!!

[wonder-worker]

"The division between the two families [the Woodvilles and the Nevilles] and their allies can be seen in the royal charters that they witnessed. Warwick, Rivers and Archbishop Neville of York, while serving as chancellor and afterwards, were fairly constant witnesses to royal charters and consequently often appeared together. This was not, however, the case for other family members and friends. From 1466 to 1469, if Scales or Woodville associates like Sir John Fogge, John Lord Audley or Humphrey Lord Stafford of Southwick witnessed royal charters, then members of the Neville group, such as John Neville, earl of Northumberland, or John Lord Wenlock would not, and vice versa. Discounting the ubiquitous Warwick, Rivers and Archbishop Neville, of the twenty-four charters issued between February 1466 and June 1469, twelve were witnessed by men associated with the Woodvilles, eight by men associated with the Nevilles and two were witnessed by no member of either group beyond the two earls at their heads and the archbishop; only two charters, both from 1466, featured associates of both families.

Such striking segregation of witnesses suggests that something more than simple convenience or availability was at play. [...] The evidence of these witness lists does show the extent of the split between the two groups from early in Edward's reign and of the need for political society to work with that cleavage in the heart of the Yorkist regime."

— Theron Westervelt, "Royal charter witness lists and the politics of the reign of Edward IV"

*This is specifically applicable for Edward IV's first reign; in contrast, the charters in his second reign displayed a great deal of aristocratic and domestic unity and cohesion.

[lacnunga]

Seems that it's a controversial opinion these days that, if you want your book to be good, there should be a Central Theme and Concept.

[mcybree]

now im nosy, what do you mean by alien clone replacement????

DONT even worry about . dont even worry. dont even

[preciousmetaltimeofnight]

Gonna make a longer post later when I've watched the vod about this. But my initial thoughts on the new egg tasks is that they don't add anything positive to the player experience. Holding the eggs lives hostage to make the players do essentially grinding busy work doesn't add anything.

[fire-on-fuel]

voltron succeeds in being one of the most popular mecha anime where the robots are not interesting and almost completely irrelevant

[cloudbends]

I got so absorbed in the game that I forgot to post about it. oops

[streets-in-paradise]

I just got finish watching the first two episodes of Chucky season three and I keep looking back at the teaser for the next episode and I swear to god if they kill Andy I just might quit the series altogether!

Absolutely, that's the same mindset i'm in.

I said it before, if they brought Andy back only to kill him in a stupid and anti climatic way after that pseudo clousure they gave him at the end of season 2 I would proceed the same way me ( and many others) with the walking dead after the death of Carl.

Abandon the show into irrelevance.

[syncopation53]

Man. isn’t destiny so funny. isn’t it just soooo funny how we had an entire expansion and 16385832848 lore pieces and 400+ seasonal stories about handling grief as immortal beings watching a friend of theirs die and learning to live with that and honoring their memory and not holding grudges and letting go and not being beholden to the past and and and—

[northern-passage]

we go through this every hurricane season but the way people will find any excuse to point the finger at the victims of natural disasters and say cruel shit like "fuck around and find out" like it's not horrifying having to leave behind your home and all your belongings and potentially your pets with the full knowledge that there might not be anything to come back to after... ignoring that there are people that don't have a car or the money to evacuate, ignoring disabled people who have no way to get out, ignoring people that can't find places for their pets to shelter, ignoring people that have medical equipment that can't be moved or replaced, etc... and even if someone stays behind solely because they want to, they still don't deserve to suffer.

as someone who worked extensively in disaster response previously, it is not easy to "just" evacuate, and the relief that comes afterwards is intentionally difficult to obtain. and already the forces that be are trying to spin this narrative that the victims are at fault, to put the blame on them so that if (probably when) people are forced to resort to looting (because the aid never comes) everyone will nod and agree that they're all bad people and deserved it... rather than acknowledging the fact that there was no attempt to make the evacuation accessible and safe for everyone, no guarantee that aid will be waiting for them when they return to a home that has been swept away... no empathy for the fact that these people's entire lives are potentially destroyed with no safety net to catch them.

[arolesbianism]

Brainstorming ideas for some side characters for the toy story and my initial concept for them was to go super stereotypical dnd party but I can already feel myself drifting off that path because I need to do fun stuff with my worldbuilding or I will explode and die

[probablyaseamonster]

Reblogging because I’ve never heard of teshuvah before and I didn’t know it was basically against Rebecca’s religion to depict Steven and the Gems shattering the Diamonds (or at least to frame the idea in a good light), so thank you for the education and the take.

Everytime i think about Steven Universe and the concept of Teshuvah I become something else.