I keep seeing people talking about how Dorcas was killed by Voldemort himself and completely misinterpreting it as “she was so strong and powerful that only he could kill her,” which might’ve been what happened, but I feel like probably wasn’t the case seeing as he’s killed plenty of random people throughout the series and she was only really mentioned that one time.
But there could’ve been some other reason as well, rather than “oh yeah she was just really really powerful.” What if the reason Voldemort targeted Dorcas was because she kept talking to her old friends from Slytherin and making them question their loyalties and whatnot, and had even managed to make a few death eaters drop out of the war? Sure, she was a dangerous enemy to have, but what if another layer of that danger for Voldemort’s side was her way with words?
Imagine Dorcas fighting in the war and seeing her old classmates that she quite literally lived with for seven years fighting against her. Imagine Pandora telling her the reason why she couldn’t bring herself to join the order, despite how much she wanted to help, was because she couldn’t make herself do anything to hurt Evan. Imagine her continuing to fight with all her strength, but then tracking down the death eaters she knew from school just to see if she could talk them out of it.
Evan and Barty stayed, of course. They were loyal to Voldemort till the end but they would always leave her, one of the order’s best duellists, completely unscathed. But others would listen to her, growing more uncertain and starting to hold back more or try to leave the death eaters completely. She was a Slytherin after all. She would’ve had both the ambition and drive to find these death eaters individually, and the cunning in her words to make them question their loyalties.
Maybe Voldemort went after her after Regulus died, because he thought she had something to do with him betraying him, and maybe she actually did. Maybe she had talked to him, even if it was Kreacher that was the turning point, and he had to kill her himself because she could genuinely make them lose the war if she kept doing what she was doing. Maybe the power she had that Voldemort feared so much was the power to turn his own forces on him. The power to destroy his forces without a single weapon or wand.
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i hate it when people call me their friend or think that we’re friends after two seconds; even people that call me “bestie” ironically make me sick. on top of this, when i ask them to stop, everyone thinks i’m the asshole for being uncomfortable
here’s a reminder: friendship is just like any other relationship, and as such requires consent. don’t call strangers “bestie.” don’t call strangers your “friend.” it’s the same as someone you just met calling you their “boy/girlfriend” or “husband/wife.” it makes me feel sick, makes me feel like my consent doesn’t matter (because to you it doesn’t since friendship is the “lesser than” relationship), and i’d very much like you to dismantle your platonormativity and amatonormativity
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pio im sorry but the six balls name joke bothers me. the fact that its that demons are considered to have stupid names if they're lower class or han style names (sha hualing) or titles if they are upper class/ want to appear that way, while being coded as not han chinese feels racist. i just thought you would want to know about this sort of thing.
I can see how you feel that way! It's an understandable thing to be uncomfortable with at first blush. Though honestly I don't really agree-- everyone has stupid names in sv, it's just that six balls is directly translated in English translations while the others remain in pinyin. So you don't immediately clock that shang qinghua's name is a pun that just means Went to Tsinghua University when you say it outloud or that binghe's name is (dropped in an) Icy River or that sha hualing literally translated is just gauze and bells (basically describing her outfit). It's pretty consistent throughout the whole book that every character is named lazily and over literally, less as an indication of their character traits and more as a commentary on how many artists (sqh) tend to suck at naming their OCs imo.
Take the romanized names: Luo Binghe, Shang Qinghua, Sha Hualing, Liu Geqiu
vs some overly literal translated names: dropped in an icy river, went to harvard, ribbons & bells, six balls
The reason why six balls is the only character that gets this treatment is I assume because the singular scene he's in is entirely dependent on the reader understanding what his name means for the joke to work, but pretty much every character could be swapped in to make a fun literal translated name if the situation needed it
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Okay but Tommy drops out of high school — he told his father he was gay and he told him he could either be homeless or go to military school. He goes to military school and joins the army and he likes flying the helicopters because it means he doesn’t have to do any of the killing himself. And he makes some friends.
There's one guy who's like the squad leader who's a few years old and built like a Greek god and Tommy's young and a little bit in love. And they're friends maybe even family because this whole group of people spend every waking (and sleeping) moment together. And they all talk like a family and they all say they love each other and tease each other and it's nice. And one night it's just the two of them trading a flask of some sort of alcohol that Tommy doesn't know the name of and the man asks Tommy why he joined the army and where he wants to be in five years and Tommy trusts this man. He's half way in love with him so he doesn't even think twice before he tells the story about the time he came out to his family and his father nearly beat him to death before sending him here. And the conversation tapers off after that and he doesn’t register the change in the air but when he wakes up the next morning he’s being dishonourably discharged because he poses “unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability”. He knows what that means.
Tommy joins the fire department because he doesn’t know what else to do. He represses anything regarding his sexuality because he knows now that it’s wrong. He almost feels like he has a family again because his captain seems to like him and some of the guys are cool even if they say things he doesn’t agree with. And then he starts agreeing because maybe they’re right and he’s wrong and he’s just inherently wrong. So he follows their leads and is just straight racist because that’s how he can fit in.
And then a black lesbian woman joins and says she’s a black lesbian woman and Tommy doesn’t understand that either because you can’t be queer you just can’t be because it’s wrong.
But he nearly dies and and an Asian man saves his life and a black lesbian woman comes up with a better idea than any of them had and she tells them she’s no different and she is just as capable. So he improves himself he does and he tries to be better but he still can’t be who he is because the last 2 times he was honest about that he was betrayed.
Tommy leaves the 118 and “don’t ask, don’t tell” is lifted and he meets this guy he likes who likes him back and the 217 don’t seem to have a problem with the gender neutral pronouns and he slowly but surely lets himself open up again and be who he is and when the thing with that guy doesn’t work out because he’s moving to New York and Tommy’s not sure he’s ready to leave, it’s okay because his crew is there and they support him and he can still be himself.
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I saw it in your tag game post that you're also fond of the Apollo-Heracles conflict 👀 for a myth that appears in only a couple of sources, it sure has a lot of presence in the vase paintings (no seriously, everytime I think I've seen the last of it, I find ten more)
SO do you have any favorites among the paintings that represent this story??
OMG OMG THIS ASK IS A GIFT. IT IS A GIFT THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR LETTING ME TALK ABOUT THIS
I also think it's extremely interesting that it's a story so popularly portrayed by vase paintings and in such a variety of ways!! It's certainly one of the stories that gets left out of written compilation of Heracles' legend a bit (which is a shame, I think it's a fantastic story) but Apollo had a very peculiar relationship with Heracles in general that I just kind of find amazing (and very, very funny).
Apollo is not a god with any legitimate grudge against Heracles, but he does argue with the mortal a bit like he argues with his favourite brothers 😂Part of why I love the story of Apollo and Heracles fighting over the tripod so much is that it is such a little brother thing for Heracles to be upset with the proclamation his elder brother has given him and so, he throws a great fit, taking up the chair and declaring that he'll just give himself a better prophecy! And Apollo, instead of being a marginally professional big brother, decides to fight him for it until their father has to break up their cat-fight. Like was that not just the plot of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes? Is this not exactly how Apollo treated Hermes when he was a child and now those two are inseparable? 💀
Because of this, my favourite vase paintings tend to be the ones that highlight the personal squabbling between Apollo and Heracles the most. There are some very elaborate ones that have the full host of them - Athena, Heracles, Apollo, Artemis, usually a dog and a doe, I've even seen a couple that had birds and plants etched on them, but the simplest ones that show Heracles about to bonk Apollo with his club out of frustration or depict Heracles nyooming away from Apollo while Apollo (presumably) yells curses about how he's going to fling Heracles head first into Tartarus for daring to take his things? Yeah, those are the premium big brother/little brother things I'm looking for.
(Photo. Marie-Lan Ngyuen)
(Photo. Museo Claudio Faina)
Also the one in the Theoi.com archives is a real classic - perfect energy.
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PLEASE infodump to me, how do we know for a fact the skiddo in the trailers and concert is the prince? I am starved for Alef lore
💫 HAYYY~~~~ 💫
I will GLADLY info dump about my favorite sky kids!!
SPOILER WARNING FOR ANYONE WHO HASNT COMPLETED AURORA!
Obligatory nothing is absolutely confirmed in sky unless stated by creators since there's no dialogue. So lots of stuff is always up to interpretation.
Howeverrrr the likelihood of Alef being the sky kid we see is essentially 99.9%!!
So here we go!!!
First thing to note is that the spirit from isle and the concert is totally the same Sky Kid. And we can tell thanks to MAMA Spirit! Or well- the adoptive mama spirit! More specifically... the adoptive mama spirit who unfortunately dies :(
One of the FIRST spirits in the game is a feminine looking ancestor with a relatively high pony tail, who discovers a fallen sky child (likely to be Alef)! This occurs in the Isle of Dawn!
Then, in the concert, we get a similar looking spirit ( high ponytail ) who ALSO took in a sky child-- who dies tragically :( leaving the sky child orphaned and alone.
Granted it is a different body type!!! But considering the amount of retcons and redesigns of areas / updates to the game around this time I'll look past it for now. But regardless, ponytail stays the same.
And of course lastly is our mama from the trailers with our Dawn Ember :(
Who is also wearing a bag on her shoulders like the aurora spirit (you can see the rope strap!)- and who also tragically loses her life as confirmed by TGC during the anniversary livestream. This can be found when they state it's the tale of two ORPHANS... implying our Dawn Ember does not have a guardian. Or at least not anymore. (Which also implies our Dusk Ember/The Stewards parents who gave him the butterfly pendant ALSO die, but that's for another time)
Something to note is that Sky Kids and ancestors are NOT the same race. They are completely different. Ancestors do have children!! But Sky Kids are a separate thing.
And they're rare.
Very rare.
So rare in fact that it's heavily believed by the fandom that Alef/Resh was the FIRST sky kid.
So the likelihood of two different pony tailed ancestors (who live in the Isle of Dawn AND who die tragically) adopting a sky kid is SUPER UNLIKELY!
So that's how we vaguely know it's the SAME Sky kid. BUT!! Most importantly, we know the Sky Kid is Alef forrrrr kinda shallow reasons, but they hold water!!! So it counts!!!
Which is basically to sayyyy... Dawn Ember is wearing a baby version of King Resh's mask.
So like- not the most GROUND BREAKING lore reveal. But---
Like-
Yeah,
That's our favorite star prince right there!
Also the implication that he got the extra four points AFTER prophecy, explains why as a kid he only has the main 4 points at the top and sides. Plus he already has suspiciously placed "cracks" in his mask where the 4 other points will come out of. That's our baby boy for sure!!!
Obviously, this isn't concrete proof of tgc just going HEY that's Alef!
However, for a game with zero dialogue and the most complex game of charades ever, this is basically as good as it's gonna get when it comes to tying everything together!
Also his name is Dawn.
Dawn Ember. For isle of Dawn. Which took me until 5 minutes ago to realize.
Which explains a lot, because we've all been kinda side eyeing the names like why tf did they name Hopeful Steward the Dusk Ember. But, if they're naming them off of AREAS and not literally the day/night motif that makes sense. Especially since a ton of Dusk Embers trailer scenes seem to take place in Wasteland, which the devs call the Dusk area. Despite him probably being from prairie or aviary village.
So badabing badaboom that's our baby boy right there!!! 3 different ways. 3 different flavors!!! All for the sake of mama spirit dying. Tragic. But that's our boy alrighttttt yayyy!!!!!!!!
Watch me be totally 100% wrong and all the fanart make zero sense a couple months from now. BUT IM DYING ON THIS HILL (for now!)
🎉🎉 That's our Prince right there!! 🎉🎉
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