#preaching to the fire

[chungledown-bimothy]

I need to be more careful with just throwing my music on shuffle all willy-nilly in the mornings.

I was NOT prepared for the first thing I heard this morning after my alarm was Jeremy Jordan hitting me with, among other devastatingly horny religious lyrics, "I'm born again a virgin. Love, come ruin me."

It sets a very distinct Tone for the day.

[sparkedblaze]

Idk who does or doesn’t know this

But Jeremy Jordan has a band

Called Age of Madness

And I’m so very NORMAL abt them

[antinouswilder]

saw Jeremy Jordan in concert in London tonight (incredible. don’t know if I’ll ever find the words) and we were encouraged to film this section because his band deserves more attention.

This one’s called Preaching to the Fire: “I always forget how to describe things… it’s about sex.”

[nerdasaurus1200]

This was my mood all day yesterday.

[woahjo]

i think all the time about the line "in what year did fire lord sozin defeat the air nation army" and then aang responding "is this a trick question? the air nomads didn't have a formal army" and the implications of the history that the fire nation had been rewriting for a century. the implication that the air nomads (a peaceful nation) weren't brutally ambushed, but rather that they were ready to fight and may have even been eager to do so. absolving the fire nation of some of the guilt in a total genocide and painting the narrative that the air nomads were ready to defend themselves and/or that the attack on the air nomads was anything but a one sided ambush. i think about it a lot.

[notsogracefullyput]

The 911 show is fun or entertainingly emotional a lot of the time but then I’ll notice an episode is heading in a certain direction and I’m like no please don’t do it don’t do it aaaaand yep there it is *big letters on a Jumbotron* C-C-C-Copaganda *bull horn blaring* brr brr brr brrrrrrr

[successeurdiamant]

So @/Illust_mi (on twitter!) drew my take on F!Diamant... 🥺 She's so pretty

[ro-botany]

The Risen King and his Tactician

In my previous post about Risen King Chrom, I talked largely about who and what he is. What I didn’t touch on was questions of why and how; the reasons for his existence and the means by which he’s controlled. So that’s what I’m tackling today.

Naturally, this means an examination of Grima’s thoughts on the matter. It's not a purely tactical decision on their part.

---

The first reason I could think of for why Grima would make a Risen out of Chrom was that it was an act of tactical cruelty aimed at their enemies. Nothing kills hope and morale in the enemy troops quite like making the shambling corpse of their exalt attack them! But while that’s almost certainly part of the point... It doesn’t explain why RK Chrom’s mind is intact. You can get that effect for a lot cheaper by bringing him back as a garden variety Risen with no sentience to speak of.

After reading the Forging Bonds supports, I initially thought part of the point was to be cruel to Chrom. They’re being sarcastic. They’re taunting him with his dead friends and torturing him by making him slaughter his people. That motivation would explain why he’s still mentally present—if the aim is to torture a foolish idealist son of Naga, it would hardly be satisfying if he weren’t actually there to be tortured.

But I think the main reason I read things that way is due to Heroes’ visual limitation of only having one portrait per character. They can’t adjust a character’s facial expression to better convey tone, which means that wherever tone is ambiguous in the text, the words are coloured by the expression of that one portrait. Since m!Grima’s portrait has that malevolent little smile, we interpret him as sarcastic or taunting and ignore the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the words are genuine.

Read those supports again, and this time ignore the portrait art.

Grima’s phrasing is never blunt. They couch all these hard truths about the situation in these long, indirect statements that soften them. They never bring up a point unless Chrom, in his panic and denial, brings it up first. They even play along with his delirium at first! None of the content of what they’re saying, absolutely none of it, is actually comforting; but the intent to comfort is there in the phrasing. It’s not “Robin is dead”; it’s “Robin is gone, lost, but I am here.” It’s not “Your friends are dead, and now they’re my pawns”; it’s “I know your friends are precious to you; don’t worry, I can bring them back, and you can lead them just like before.”

And they also lie about who killed Chrom. “Who stole your life, you might ask? It was I, with none other than the Fell Dragon Grima, within me.” It’s a bit convoluted, but it sounds like they’re trying to avoid implying it was Robin. But these supports aren’t a timeline where the details of Chrom’s death are unknown; we know he died at the Dragon’s Table fighting Validar, and his very obvious fatal wound is the same spot Robin stabs him at the Dragon’s Table in the premonition from Awakening. The spot that Robin stabs him, under Validar's control. If I were to speculate, I’d say it sounds like Grima is trying to preserve the memory of who Robin was. Spare Chrom the reality that it was his other half that killed him.

And the thing is, Grima has no reason to attempt to speak kindly to Chrom or to absolve Robin of blame... unless Grima remembers enough about being Robin to still care about Chrom. Regardless of how you interpret the nature of the connection between Robin and Grima, it’s not unreasonable to assume that Robin’s memories and emotions are part of Grima in some way, and influence their actions.

Why does Grima bring Chrom back from the dead? Because Grima never chose to kill the man they loved, and now that they’re a god again, they have the power to undo it.

But! We know that Grima is capable of true resurrection. They bring Validar completely back to life in the main timeline, living body and intact soul, when they aren’t even at full power. So if Grima cares that much, why not bring Chrom back as a living person?

The answer to that one is simple: because there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that Chrom would ever willingly participate in their apocalypse. What good would it do to bring him back only to have to kill him again? The fact that they don’t want to bear him being gone is what has them raising him in the first damned place. Grima needs him to be on their side... So they force him to be. They remake him as a Risen; a being bound to as dark a role as they are, and by definition, something they can control.

And here’s where we get to that how question. While Risen are naturally controllable through dark magic, there’s never been a Risen with a will before, and certainly not one with the blood of a different divine dragon. And given Validar’s actions, Grima is acutely aware of the fact that holy blood creates the possibility of control by another. Which means Naga might try something. They needed to counter that possibility.

Look at Risen King Chrom again and count the holy brands. It’s not just Naga’s anymore; he bears the brand of the defile too. At first I thought it might be attached to his sword, but I enlisted the help of a much healthier Chrom to check, and...

...no, the brand is absolutely attached to RK Chrom’s hand.

Grima covered all their bases. They minimized any chance that Chrom’s willpower or Naga’s meddling could interfere by making a blood pact with him as a second means of control.

Channelled dear old dad a little with that one.

---

So why does Risen King Chrom exist? Because Grima still loves Chrom. Or to be more precise... he exists because Grima loves what Chrom represents.

He’s the idea of companionship. A symbol of the brief moment that Grima was Robin, and was happy. And they love that idea so dearly that they can’t let it die. They bring Chrom back—but they don’t bring him back as he was, they remove his ability to choose and then force him into something that has the shape of their former relationship and none of the heart of it. Grima is still the tactician, and Chrom is still the exalt, and they’re marching to war with the Shepherds like they always do. They’re together like they always were. Right? Grima is acting out a hollow facsimile of a different life, and Chrom is trapped in a nightmare he can’t escape from.

What’s worse is I think Grima knows it’s cruel to keep him around like this. But they’re too rigid in their own beliefs to stop what they’re doing, and too selfish and lonely to let him go. And I think some part of them takes comfort in the fact that they’ve broken Chrom of his ability to hope, too. If even he can’t keep fighting the tide of fate, there really was nothing they could do to avoid this. (Nevermind the fact that they rigged the game so he couldn’t fight even if he wanted to.)

[euniveve]

Yall its like the writing gods has bestowed their light upon me mark my words imma COMEBACK THIS YEAR GET READY BECAUSE THE AVOCATE AND RUIYING IS COMING IN HOT

[ladychlo]

x

[zemfruit]

I should learn to draw tentacles and mechs

[rockabell-chime]

i went down to a route and was immediately accosted by some... palkia preachers? very intensely weird! they were just as surprised to see me as i saw them

[officialyourdailyinspiration]

"What is preaching? Logic on fire! Preaching is theology coming through a man who is on fire. A true understanding and experience of the Truth must lead to this. I say again that a man who can speak about these things dispassionately has no right whatsoever to be in a pulpit; and should never be allowed to enter one." Martyn Lloyd-Jones

[nerdasaurus1200]

Great, now I'm picturing Varian actually singing Preaching to the Fire and I'm laughing

[konakoro]

Also before the Seattle concert, there was a megaphone preacher heckling everyone in line, and when he mentioned something about the concert being evil, a portion of the crowd cheered

[kraviolis]

im glad belos got what he deserved and is actually fully gone for good and wont ever hurt anyone ever again, but its also really funny and fascinating to think about shoving luz and ghost-belos into a locked room together where neither of them can physically harm each other and just force them to have an actual honest conversation for once