Rom and Ebrietas are gay anime waifus in my version. I mean yeah one is a horrifying yet beautiful monstrosity and the other might have been a human lady at some point, but human ladies sometimes just want all those alien lady tentacles.
Best headcanon. And also has nice symmetry with my Hunter's journey, which involves her gay feelings for the eldrich being that is the Doll and the doll bringing about the Hunter's ascension.
Oh? So you interpreted that as a kind of romantic thing? Huh. Basically the story I ended up filling in with Rom relates to the fact that these things want children but can't have children. Attempts at humans bearing their children have also been questionable. So why not become the kid. Is that not the most romantic thing you could do for your weird alien wife. Hell assuming it works and you get to grow up you'd finally be able to speak with her in a better fashion. There isn't a hint to any of this really but fuck it. All I got is Rom potentially being formerly human, these things want babies, these things are very human and have feelings, and Ebrietas standing over a Rom looking thing in an area called the Altar of Grief.
That's a good interpretation of what's happening. I guess I like the romantic angle bc my Hunter is very much infatuated with the doll and I like the symmetry. You could probably make a better argument for the become the child angle than the romantic partner angle, but i don't think there's much against the romantic angle. But you're making me rethink how the great ones might relate to their human wifey-s edit: wording
It's a really weird way to think of it yes. It only really came to me while writing my self indulgent shipping fics. And then I was like "Honestly that might be an interesting angle to think about these things from". And I mean it's not like Souls theorycrafting isn't mostly based on filling in the blanks and outright madness.
But that's why its so FREAKIN awesome :P I can't talk much for the souls games, as I've only played a bit of demon souls and dark souls 1, but I loooove how my Hunter's story is so different from my friend's Hunter, and they both work. It makes it feel so much more personal, because I know that no one, even if they play through with the same build and same weapons won't have the same story or even characters as I do.
Gwyndolin is my favorite of the Dark Souls cast and he's one of the ones most graced by interesting and variable ideas about him. Almost entirely centered around his gender identity yes but that's kind of fun for me honestly? I view him as someone who is genderqueer, possibly bigendered. A friend of mine who's a transwoman views her as a transwoman. Others view him as a gnc cisman. So on and so forth.
So one of my favorite forms of media analysis is genre analysis and specifically arguing for things to be genres other than what might be most commonly attributed to them. It's a lovely way to look at genre and to look at individual works. So let's do this thing with a thing I have been thinking about for a while. Namely The Chronicles of the Kencyrath by P.C. Hodgel not as high fantasy but as wuxia. For those who aren't aware the Kencyrath books are a series of high fantasy novels centering around a race of dimension hopping people called the Kencyr. The main characters of said books are the three Tyr-ridan, living avatars of the Kencyrath's Three-Faced God. Among the three Jame is the primary protagonist out of them, and the avatar of Regonereth, a sort of Shiva-esque destroyer figure. Jame goes on a series of lovely fantasy adventures. She makes friends with native tribal peoples, goes to military college, joins a thieves' guild and fucks around a giant city, and continues on the path of getting ready to face off against the betrayer of their race Gerridon and their immortal foe Perimal Darkling. Wuxia meanwhile is a genre of fiction from China involving martial arts, chivalry, and sorcery. If you've seen a film like Hero that centers around some sort of sword wielding honorable badass then you've seen a wuxia. The genre predates its existence in film though, coming from earlier popular novel series like the Condor Heroes books. The focus of the wuxia is around the xia, hero, a sort of virtuous outsider highly trained in martial arts. Wuxia is often fantastical and highly political. Now for all that the Kencyrath books are very, very western high fantasy they are also very, very wuxia. Part of that is tone but the bulk of it centers around Jame herself. She offers western readers a sort of neat entry into what wuxia is beyond just cool martial arts by being what is basically the xia equivalent of her own culture. A culture which is more familiar to western readers. So this is already kind of horribly ordered but for the sake of something or other I'll just go through the list of basic traits of the xia and how Jame matches up or fails to match up with them. The first aspect we'll look at is the social status of the xia. The xia often comes from the lower rungs of the Chinese social ladder. They often serve no lord and wield no military might. This is the aspect wherein Jame fails on pretty much every level. Jame not only isn't part of the lower-class she is the heir of the Highlord. Theoretically were her brother to die she would be in charge of leading the entire race. That's not just being part of the aristocracy. That's being in the highest rungs of the monarchy. Jame also isn't without military might. She's a graduate of the military college of Tentir who holds the rank of Ran and Master Ten. So Jame has a squad of highly trained soldiers under her and some level of influence in the system itself. While she can't just go and say "lol we're gonna blow up Restormir" or something, she's definitely not without military power. Jame has failed her. Utterly. However that is if we simply look at the facts of her titles out of context. Yes, Jame is Ran and Master Ten of House Knorth and also the Lordan but those are just titles. They say very little about how Jame is actually regarded within her society and how Jame is regarded is as an outsider. To be an outsider is one of the other defining traits of the xia. You have the Seven Freaks of Jiagnan from Legend of the Condor Heroes as an example. They're a revered group of martial artists, but they're not really part of the society. Their student Guo Jing, the novel's protagonist, is an outcast whose father was murdered by an invading army, after which he was raised in a Mongol clan. There's also Nameless, the protagonist of the film Hero. Nameless is an orphan forged into a warrior who remains as a sort of hermit and is a would be assassin of the Emperor. None of these characters are really shining examples of the perfect Chinese citizen who is exactly where they should be. Xia are often downright treasonous, and even if they're not they're typically a pain in the side of lords looking for criminals. Jame maintains this essential otherness from her people. Our first real important bit of context is that Jame's father, the former Highlord Ganth, was exiled after he went on a mad killing spree. The first eight or so years of her life were spent entirely away from the bulk of their people and involved being raised by a figure who was commonly reviled, made fun of, or pitied variously. The next ten were spent in the Master's Halls being raised by Gerridon's servants. Gerridon is an intensely and rightly hated figure for the Kencyrath. He resulted in their culture's downfall and the disappearance of one third of the race. He has also sided with their world devouring foe Perimal Darkling. As a result of this and what she learned in the Halls along with her natural magical abilities Jame is said to possess the "Darkling Glamour". At best people are suspicious or intrigued by this. At worst they are downright hateful and fearful of her mere existence. Her sense of social manners is also lacking. While she is very well learned on the Kencyr concept of honor, she is not at all accustomed to how it works in practice on the outset. And even after becoming more acquainted with its reality among the Kencyrath she continues to be a strange sort of outlier and often butts heads with other Kencyr. One of the big reasons for this is that Jame is a woman. Women of her class are supposed to live sequestered away in the Women's Halls. Jame, graduate of Tentir and knower of the Great Dance, is absolutely not adhering to that time honored tradition of violent sexism. She's a horrid outsider, one which might even be considered the low points of Kencyr cultures virtues and customs. Xia aren't just outcasts though. While the xia seemingly defies the expectations and standards of the culture, the xia also exemplifies the values and ideals of that culture. Going through a list of the common traits of the xia code will show that it matches up nine times out of ten with that of Confucian values. The norms of the jianghu, arbiters of the common people who work to solve the disputes of the corrupt courts through xia, match up rather nicely with Confucian values as well. The one real niggling point between Xia Code and Kongjia is the issue of individualism. The xia is a sort of paradoxical being. They are at once everything the culture detests and fears, but also everything the culture admires and aspires to. Jame succeeds in that in spades. Yes, she's a Nemesis who sets things on fire and yes she has no proper courtly manners but what she does have is honor. Honor is everything to the Kencyrath. They are bound by a very strict code of honor laid out by their Three-Faced God. Jame is very schooled in this code, having learned it from one of the most revered martial arts master the Kencyrath have ever had; a figure whom we will be returning to shortly. She isn't just schooled in it though. She keeps to it horrifyingly well. She is honest, she is brave, she is lawful, and she even went to the effort of figuring out whether their God could stand her being a professional thief. While Jame is certainly very odd and has no lack of people who want her head on a spike, Jame has attracted numerous admirers and friends. People who look at her honorable feats and just kind of marvel at them, even as they cringe at the fact that ten houses are now entirely demolished. Hell, even the Dark Judge, essentially the cat Grand Mufti of their people, hasn't been able to pin anything on her. She's a weirdo, but she's an honorable weirdo. And I feel that we as the readers gain that sort of respect for her as well. Perhaps we may not agree with how violent some of her solutions are or perhaps we may. Either way though we look at her with the same sort of approval we give Cú Chulainn, Hercules, or The Man With No Name. They're not nice. They're not part of society proper and can't be. But we love them because they are heroic.
Next we'll go through the last three things I'll be bothering with, teachers, codes, and martial arts. Let's start with codes though since the last section dealt with how Jame is the pinnacle of Kencyr virtue while also the antithesis to it. How does Jame match up with the eight common aspects of the Xia Code? We have benevolence, justice, individualism, loyalty, courage, truthfulness, disregard for wealth, and desire for glory. These things here? They're what makes a person heroic. Does Jame have the chops to actually be a xia based off the code? Let's look at benevolence first. Jame's a kind person. Which is something of an odd statement when you consider some of the things she has done. She has threatened to skin a man alive and barely stopped herself. She was instrumental in killing a woman by stuffing a large number of bees down her throat. Jame has been at multiple times filled with a nigh all-consuming bloodlust and when she gets angry she gets violently so. That isn't really important though. What's important about kindness and mercy isn't whether you're nice or not. Is it nice when Guanyin shows up on fire and carrying one thousand swords screaming at you to get your shit together? No. It's not. But it's damn sure kind. Jame has helped an old Kendar, the worker and servant class of the Kencyr people, find a home and a lord (or lady really) worth waiting for. She also helped this man come across the remains of his dead sister. She saved a blind cat from being drowned and continues to lovingly adore him even though Jorin is honestly kind of useless. She's gone and had a hard talk with a shitlord of a man to get it across to him just how much of a fuckup he's been and how he needs to get it the fuck together. She regularly befriends and looks after a bunch of odd misfits who are bullied, and often doesn't take shit when these people are being fucked with. And that man she threatened to flay alive I mentioned? She threatened this because said man's inaction lead to the death of one of the girls under her command, and to the danger of several others at the college. A girl that she didn't even like very much. She isn't nice but she is kind. That last detail about Anise, the murdered girl, leads neatly into justice. Jame is all about justice and honor. She occasionally wracks her mind over whether or not she is actually honorable, though I'd say that her track record shows that she is. The unjust thing to do regarding Anise would be to not care or to even blame it on her personally fucking up. It wasn't Anise's fault though. It was the fault of Vant who was in charge and who could have very easily prevented this had he actually taken things seriously and listened. As is he didn't listen and he got someone killed. There's also the case of the evil priest Ishtier. Ishtier was a shithead. He had stolen someone's soul, turning it in a man eating monster that plagued the city of Tai-Tastigon. Jame dealt with his ass and danced the city to safety. Jame also ended up killing a god while in Tai-Tastigon. And instead of just going "oh well I guess that's that" Jame went and did the just thing and helped bring the god back to life and back to his former glory. This sort of behavior from her is common. Justice gets dished out by Jame. It is her thing. She does not let crimes stand unless she absolutely cannot do anything about it. Next up is individualism. Jame might be strict about their honor code and she might be serious about justice and people being treated properly but Jame is a weirdo. She does not stand in line. Even her brother, the Highlord, is regularly sassed and disobeyed by her. Not simply out of spite, though she does do it partly to spite him, but also because Jame has Jame things to do. Jame has her own goals and her own methods and her own standards and she keeps to those. No amount of learning the wonders of how the Kencyr military works or what the Women's Halls are like have crushed her fierce need to simply be Jame. And if her brother who she loves more than anyone in the world can't reign her in I'm not sure how in the hell anything else can. Individualism is great and all but loyalty is also important. Otherwise you're just a selfish asshole that does whatever the fuck you want with no concern for others. Jame is an exceptionally loyal individual. The incident with Anise mentioned earlier I feel should be sign of that. She was both loyal to Anise who died and who was under her, and loyal to the college and her brother by not just murdering Vant even though he honestly really deserved it. And for all her violently tossing things back in her brother's face, she has attempted to not entirely destroy his image or the state of things. She isn't going to bow to Tori's demands, but at the same time she isn't going to toss him to the wolves because she felt like it one day. Then there's her mindbound servant. He's an odd person and the bond was made out of necessity. She's honestly not entirely fond of him and does go through a period where she basically ignores him. She comes to realize how exceptionally shit this is and while she's still not entirely sure what to do about the situation she has been making efforts to fix it. Not because she likes Grey, necessarily. But because god dammit there is a bond there and we have to be loyal to it. Courage is our fifth virtue. I think this can be summed up with saying that Jame is almost dangerously addicted to courageous acts. Jame is the sort of person who will rush into a burning building without a second thought to save an old woman. In the books we have seen her run after a bunch of falling logs to save a tribe from dying, sneak into the most highly guarded home of the richest man in a city to steal his most prized possession, call upon and stand up to the judgment of the furry Grand Mufti, lead an assault on the fort of a far more powerful lord who hates her to save Grey, and more. Jame is brave. She is stupidly brave. It is something of a wonder she isn't dead yet, honestly. Or at least seriously maimed. Now on to truthfulness. Jame doesn't lie. She just. Doesn't really. She's incredibly blunt and to the point, actually. We could say she is truthful to the point where it is actively upsetting at times. She doesn't do it to be mean, but more because that is just the right thing to do and honestly what else would she do? If one could accuse her of not being truthful in any fashion it would be with the information Jame does not divulge. Which is to say quite a bit, especially where her brother is concerned. Tori is not aware of most of her shenanigans, however, given that Tori has not asked and they have never really been in a position where her telling him things would be direly important I feel she dodges the lying by omission bullet. If Tori really wants to know then Tori can damn well ask himself and she'll answer him honestly and concisely. Next up comes the disregard for wealth. Jame doesn't care about this shit. There are many in the books who do. Jame is not among them. We've seen her fawn over a pretty glove but generally Jame's rather down to earth with her wants. She's bemused by the wealth and splendor of her dead uncle, and only used his things at the college out of necessity. She's wanted nicer boots and gloves, but that's more a practicality thing. Her want for a home has never been in the fashion of "I want the coolest keep ever so I can be super awesome and rich and show off to people" but more that Jame honestly just really wants a nice stable place to call home. Where she won't be forced to run away or be chased off. She's not the most covetous woman and when provided with a bunch of funds by her brother, she spent the bulk of it on the servant she wronged and her fellows in her Ten Squad as opposed to on herself. And lastly we have the desire for glory. Jame is not Cú Chulainn levels of glory hog. She is not out to gain it at any cost. She does seem to have some sort of desire for it though. Or at the least she has liked when her acts have been highly praised. She takes a sort of pride in the braids she earned for slaying people while protecting the Merikit. She's gone and done stupid things like steal someone's underwear from the roof dwelling Cloudies to make good on a dare. While she isn't trying to die early specifically to gain glory she does seem more than fine with doing things to get it at times. Virtue wise she matches up pretty neatly with the common facets of Xia Code. And this leaves us with martial arts and masters. The xia is amazingly skilled in martial arts. Like. Frighteningly so. They often know sacred and secret techniques of devastating power and cost. They're capable of surmounting odds that no normal man could with their bare fists. The xia also has a teacher that they learned this from. There's a sort of very reverential and intimate relationship with this teacher as well. You do not just run off and learn from another teacher unless your teacher knows about this and okays it. Lineage is important. This is actually the aspect of Jame's character that originally got me thinking about this. Because Jame is a master of a martial art called Senethar. The Senethar is a dance like martial art with a series of standard forms, called kantirs, that fall into four rough categories based upon the elements. There are names to the various moves. She's very fond of one called the Fire-Leaping Kick and we've also seen mention of the Salmon-Leap, and of several Earth Flowing moves. Overall the way the martial art is described it sounds very, very much like Hodgel has watched a lot of Asian action films. There's another aspect to this though and that's special moves and that is where the Senetha comes into play. Senetha is related to Senethar but they are not the same thing. Senetha is simply a ritual dance, with no combat applications. Usually anyway. Senetha is also magical and linked to something called The Great Dance in particular. What exactly The Great Dance can do hasn't been entirely laid out. We have however seen that it is capable of mind controlling people, stealing souls, stopping a city from falling apart, and crossing The Border. It is some very serious shit, and the Dark Judge is waiting to catch her on misusing this. Next to no one knows how to perform The Great Dance. The only other people who knew it are now both dead. Jame remains with her weird magical, secret doom dancing. Away from the Senetha and Senethar Jame has been schooled in a little practiced martial art called Arrin-thar. Arrin-thar is a fighting style based around using clawed gauntlets. Jame has natural ivory claws though, so she doesn't need the gauntlets. She just needs her own natural hands. Beyond Jame there's only one other person who knows Arrin-thar terribly well that I'm aware of and that one other is her teacher in it, a man named Bear who suffered severe brain damage years ago in an accident. Which leads us at last to Tirandys who was mentioned forever ago. Tirandys is Jame's first Senethari, her teacher. The Senethari seems to have a kind of reverence attached to him similar to that of the Sifu in Chinese martial arts. You seem to take on very, very few Senetharis and Jame's opinions of her Senetharis have always been rather high. Indeed her interactions with them are among the key times we see Jame taking on a submissive role in some capacity. Her relationship with the one, Tirandys, seemed to have bordered on a sort of father-daughter sort of thing. At the very least his death is one of the only times she has ever cried. She's also deadly protective of them, even if one of them has definitely tried to grievously harm her on at least one occasion. Both of her teachers are also highly exceptional in their fields, as teachers of xia often are. Tirandys is a legend to the point where even though he hasn't been seen in millennia people know what his style looks like. It is to the extent that when people at Tentir saw Jame's Senethar they remarked on how like Tirandys' classical Senethar it looked. That is how iconic he is to the practice. Bear meanwhile is one of the only people who knows the Arrin-thar left. He is definitely the only person capable of teaching it at the college. An accident has damaged his brain quite a bit. As a result of an enraged attack on his part after the accident, Bear's brother was forced to either keep him locked up in the college or to kill him. He picked the former choice. Despite the damage done Bear is still a bright man and he's still very, very talented in his art and more than capable of teaching it. Or more than capable of teaching it to Jame at least. This whole bit being here to stress that Jame isn't just highly talent. She comes from two very distinct and highly respected lineages where her arts are concerned, and that she treats those teachers with a great deal of respect. Conclusions are fucking stupid bullshit and also it is two in the morning. So we will settle with an awkward transition because fuck it. Kencyrath is definitely high fantasy of the western variety. That's not at all up for debate. We got magical ass swords and fancy king types and evil monsters and what the fuck else. But Kencyrath can also be argued as being wuxia because Jame herself is basically a western xia. And I continue to have "Have you ever read The Legend of the Condor Heroes or other wuxia novels? Or watched wuxia films or tv serials?" as questions to ask Hodgell. I am tired.
(BTW, if anyone wants to know how I'd script-doctor the scene in the tl;dr if I could, that rant is significantly shorter but also available.)
SO DRESDEN FILES spoilers abound, everyone. be warned. Spoiler: cold case spoilers THE FUCKING WINTER LADY MANTLE BULLSHIT WHAT THE FUCK why can the winter lady suddenly not have sex it was definitely implied that not only was maeve implied to be having a heckton of sex (because she was a Sexy Villain, which is a whoooole nother rant), but the summer lady (lily, not aurora) is also implied to be having a sexual relationship (with fix. this IS debatable, because if there's a couple in the dresden files that i could see as celibate it's them. OH YEAH THE TREATMENT OF SEX IS ANOTHER RANT UPCOMING) so, why, all of a sudden, is it suddenly a thing that getting jiggy will cause the winter lady to fucking beat you to death it feels like a stupid plot twist that makes it IMPOSSIBLE for molly to ever get over her crush on harry, because let's be real he's the winter knight and well, harry dresden and therefore probably the only dude who could avoid nearly dying. unless she slept with someone literally immortal. it doesn't make sense, and it seems cheap and retcon-y. it feels like something that should have been established WAY before now. Spoiler: sexy villain rant so, basically every female villain is Sexy. so sexy. they will sexually harrass whatever character is fighting them. now, I love me a good sexy villain, but this is a bit ridiculous. I'm PRETTY certain at this point that Jim Butcher has kinks he keeps accidentally putting in his writing, because the femdom and noncon levels are KIND OF RIDICULOUS. the only female villains i can think of that aren't constantly sexually intimidating are Mab (who is DESCRIBED as sexy, but she doesn't really use it as a weapon) and Corpsetaker (who doesn't have a physical body and we don't learn she's a girl until ghost story), and Marva (who's a fucking corpse.) every other one, from major ones like Lara Raith to minor ones like that fucking tiny Red Court vampire, uh, Esmeralda, is high key sexual. The White Court are succubi, so that makes sense. With the fae, if it was JUST Maeve, or JUST Jenny Greenteeth, or JUST Lea (kind of), it wouldn't be weird. Again, with the Red Court, if it were JUST one or two, it would be LESS WEIRD. but it is every one of them. Bianca ran a FUCKING BROTHEL FOR CRYING OUT LOUD BUTCHER YOU ONLY NEED ONE SEXUAL VAMPIRE COURT. PLS CHILL. denarians? tessa propositions harry, deidre is fucking her dad, rosana is The Seductress that's like her whole gig, and I'm p sure they are the ONLY girls we see other than Hannah Ascher who, OH WAIT, also tries to seduce harry. lash and lasciel are kind of outliers in that while they are romantically (in a creepy way, in lasciel's case) into harry (maybe??? i ship it. fuck the fallen angel, you know you want to) they aren't really sexual. ooh! kumori wasn't sexualized, but she wasn't really a villain villain, and also was wearing a cloak the whole damn time. basically, almost every female villain is sexualized in a very male gaze-y, ooh she's scary but hot, she'll kill you but it'll be sexy killing way. and like, it feels very idfic and therefore i am disappointed in the lack of this intergrated into dresden files fanfic. next time! treatment of sex! why bisexuality is SUPER AWKWARD in the series! why murphy/dresden as a ship should just be given up on at this point! JUSTINE DESERVES MORE: the rant!
Spoiler: A response to the Dresden Files commentary ... Wait, why is Jenny Greenteeth a sexy villain? I mean, I can kind of get the rational with her luring children into murky water to die, but a lot of those legends have her as a horse. Or not even turned into a person, just a rotting corpse-looking fairy who peeks out of dingy water and yanks you down like a goddamn champ. I would expect her last to be a sexy villain, and am actually kind of annoyed she is. Unless there's a tone similar to Adventure Time's Garbage Witch, where she's still a rotting possibly horse zombie who's also sultry and very "you want some of these gams, Harry???" to a confused and squicked out Dresden.
Spoiler: response less attractive more sexualized in her murder attacks? can't remember her exact descriptions, but maeve suggested harry sleep with her and she tried to drown someone in a punch bowl while grinding on them it was awkward
Spoiler Nope, Jenny Greenteeth is a sexy lady who walks out of a pond naked and gets sexily dressed by pixies or something in some kind of weird power-play thing Maeve cooked up? ALSO I AM FOREVER AND ALWAYS BITTER ABOUT HANNAH ASCHER AND LASCIEL'S WAR FORM. LIKE. EVERY OTHER DENARIAN HAS SOME KIND OF MONSTERY ALTERNATE MODE. EVERY ONE OF THEM. BUT LASCIEL JUST GETS SEXY SMOKE THAT DOESN'T EVEN ATTEMPT TO BE THREATENING? YOU COULD'VE DONE ANYTHING. SHE'S ALREADY GOT A SPIDER MOTIF GOING ON. OR YOU COULD'VE MADE HER A SHOUTOUT TO THE VORD MONSTERS IN CODEX ALERA. A N Y T H I N G.
Spoiler: response YEP NOW I REMEMBER JESUS CHRIST holy shit hannah ascher and lasciel were the most disappointing damn thing SO MUCH COULD HAVE BEEN DONE WHY WASNT IT
Re: Dresden Files: I like to blame some of the "EVERY LADY IN THE TEXT IS SUPER HAWT" on Harry being extremely lonely and having lower standards than he thinks he does, but that doesn't solve the problems of their narrative roles. Spoiler And so very agreed on Lasciel in Skin Game. Everything about that was such a letdown. Including the giant plot hole of 1) why does she know about what happened with Lash and 2) if she knew, why isn't she acting appropriately confused/surprised/whatever about the fact that a puny mortal not only managed to reject her, but straight-up suborned her imprint? That's kind of a huge deal.
