Definitely The Lord of the Rings, which I've reread in full 5 times. The Fellowship to be specific since I abandoned a reread in grad school mid-Two Towers. The Lord of the Rings is definitely my all-time favorite
2. what is the first book you remember reading yourself?
Picture book-wise it was Go Dog Go (though whether I read it or memorized it I do not know). I actually got to read it to my 2.5 year old nephew last time I visited him, which was pretty neat! Chapter book-wise, it was unfortunately Harry Potter. I'm of exactly the right age to have grown up into the Harry Potter craze and I was 7 when I read the first one
There's something very poignant in how Abu is approaching playing Mercy where he's so clearly aware that how he looks makes other people perceive him as a threat and so he is constantly and consciously diminishing his presence to come across less threatening given that Abu is himself a black man. Mercy goes out of their way to be deferential and polite to Bowen, avoids eye contact with Archon Exemplar Petra so as to minimize the amount of perceived threat he poses. His first word he says to her is "mercy". There's this awareness in Mercy and how he's played of how people make snap judgements based on looks and how that can lead to people reacting violently to otherwise neutral acts (Mercy going into a town seeking community and instead finding steels and fists) which speaks to the reality black men live in
So, to stay sane over the break, I've decided to write like twenty-pages worth of different metas glazing the themes of campaign 4. No, I'm not repentant. Welcome to Part 1:
How do you balance your duty to your family versus your duty to the world?
(ft. Hal, Murray, Azune, and NPCS)
Cr4 does a great job showing that while revolution and adventure is heroic and good, it is not always good for the people that you love. We can see this in the pairs of loved ones who are divided between choosing the world over family and vice versa. Ultimatley, though, once you decide the world is more important than your family, your family will inevitably be endangered until they too are forced to choose the world, too.
This domino affect of people choosing World over Family begins, as always, with Thjazi Fang, and his decision to leave Aranessa (Family) for the Falconers' Rebellion (World). This move fundamentally discredits House Royce in the eyes of the Sundered Houses. Further exacerbating the damage is when Thjazi chooses the Cloak (World) over Aranessa again, and accidentally closes the Doors to Fairy. This severely weakens Royce and ultimately leads to rest of the Sundered Houses violently or tacitly destroying Royce. This gravely endangers Aranessa, is puts her on the path of having to choose the World over Family, if only because there is so little Family left.
Before the campaign starts, Thjazi is pretty adamant about keeping the Fangs safe while still choosing the World. He is eventually forced to choose one or the other when he is on the gallows, and he, of course chooses World. He tells Hal a snippet of his plans, and this causes Hal, for the first time, to choose the World over Family.
Hal then enters the impossible game of choosing the World without hurting his family. This breakdowns by the end of the Schemers arc when his theater troupe becomes complicit in lying to the Halovars (I don't think it was an accident it was his literal daughter, Shadia, who put up the banned fairy door), Hero becomes complicit in planning the Spy-Birdwatching-Theatre trifecta and healing Cyd, and Elodie becomes complicit in funding the Magpies. I think Elodie put it best, when she chooses World over Family by giving Hal the money, when she said that there was no place outside of the Sundered Houses' reach; if you are going to fight, there is no place your family can run and be safe. There is no saving the world without risking the innocents you care about.
The reason for this is shown in the Azune and Murray's fight over whether or not Demodus should testify. Azune (world) finally convinces Murray (family) by appealing to her sense of family: if Azune doesn't back up his claims with enough evidence, his life could be in danger. Suddenly, helping family paradoxically means either sacrificing the family who has chosen the world, or putting the whole family in danger. Similarly, for the Seekers, saving Alogar (who has chosen the world) means also choosing the world and fighting with him.
So what's the moral here? Once one person in your family chooses the world, then everyone who loves that person must make a choice. Except it's a false choice. Because choosing World means joining the mission, and choosing Family means protecting that person, which requires joining the mission. The only way to keep the World at bay is to do the Maya Davinos Strategy: divorce Thjazi, marry Otto, let Raimond be un-avenged and dishonored, let Alba die. It means sacrifice everyone to keep the chaos from touching you.
And, if sacrifice everyone so that the powers that be will not bother you sounds familiar, it's because that's what Casimir Gavendale did. And look at how well it turned out for him.
I have made and reblogged a number of posts about how Murray's subclass informs and interacts with her character, worldview, and the themes she explores. But rewatching this moment from Occtis's resurrection in episode 4 is prompting me to try to think more about how being a diviner wizard interacts with the larger world of Araman:
Divination and prophecy are generally linked to the idea of fate and a path the world is "supposed" to take. For telling the future to work, there has to be a set future to foretell. (I mean, you can go a full scientific, there is not free will approach, but that's no fun in fantasy.) Augury, the most divination-y of the low-level divination spells is also a cleric spell. There's a reason Brennan calls out specifically that that isn't what's happening here. And so, in a world with no more gods, where the gods represent tyranny and oppression, divination must be explored in other ways. By and large, Murray's magic has been described in terms of math and probability (there was a cool moment in episode 3 where it was described in terms of music, but I don't think that has come back). Which is great! And that's basically what happens during Occtis's resurrection, too. But I love the circular logic introduced in this description: "if you wanted to save the city, this had to happen; you wanted to save the city, so this happened." It pairs in a cool way with the exploration of intention for the ritual at the theater. Divination is about seeing the grid and the way various timelines might unfold, and in a world without gods, that grid isn't about seeing what is "supposed" to happen, but what needs to happen in order to bring an intention into reality
Man, rewatching the Bolaire confession scene and I still can't believe there are people out there (and possibly the campaign itself, yet to be seen) who think I'm supposed to walk out of that scene reading Thjazi being cruel to/using Bolaire as a fundamental character flaw in Thjazi. As opposed to what I actually walk away from that scene thinking, which is that being willing to work with this serial killer instead of stopping him, even if it made him uncomfortable, is the true flaw in Thjazi's moral character (a flaw our protagonists share)
I'm in awe of how well each god's attitude toward Aeor reflects their divine domains.
Emhira, the matron of Ravens, sees no reason not to bring the city down. Death is inevitable. The Raven Queen does not quarrel with resurrection, and she does not quarrel with killing, because all souls come to her, sooner or later - what's a few decades more or less? What's the point of risking herself and the family she's joined, the order she's created, for the sake of postponing death?
Ayden, the Dawnfather, is the god of light and life and growing things. Those druid levels aren't for show; he's the god of agriculture. He looks at Aeor and sees that a harvest may yet come from barren ground. It's not in his nature to tear out roots; it's his nature to help things grow. You can't heal everything. You always have to try.
Silaha, the Arch Heart, looks at Aeor and sees its beauty. It's full of magic. Silaha is not opposed to destroying Aeor, because beauty never lasts: a flower dies, a spell fades, a shining tower falls. But neither is he convinced that Aeor has to die, because beauty is something to be treasured and cherished. Let's relax, let's get a drink, let's think this through. Beauty is wonderful, whether it lasts or not.
Asha, the Wildmother, wants to survive, because that is what wild things do. Predators kill to eat, and prey kills to defend itself. Aeor has backed her into a corner, and her fangs are bared. Nature is death as well as life, nature is brutal, nature endures at all costs. Civilisation no longer speaks to her. She's hungry. She's angry. Her teeth are looking for a throat, ready to tear, ready to protect what is hers.
Trist, the Everlight, hears talk of death and says no. The Everlight, who has let herself fall in love with a mortal and have mortal children, even knowing how much it's all going to hurt. Whose nature is to see the worth in broken things, violent things, irredeemable things. Who looks at the cruelty of Aeor and does not deny it, but will not let anyone forget that everyone here is a person. The bravest of all of them, to look at Aeor and say this, too, is worth saving.
I liked what episode 31 changed about the dynamic between Hal and Bolaire.
It’s clear that they have been very close for years, with Hal’s kids even callung Bolaire “Uncle Bolaire”. This is someone Hal has trusted implicitly. Hal killed a man and put Bolaire onto an enemy to possess them. He has been unsettled – by the revelation of Bolaire’s nature and the enmity between Thjazi and Bolaire – but it didn’t fundamentally change things until now.
And it chamged things because Hal walked in to see Bolaire possessing a friend, an employee, a man for whom Hal was responsible and to whom Hal had offered sanctuary. Hal’s anger and worry in that moment were completely natural, and I think it altered how Hal saw Bolaire.
That doesn’t necessarily reflect well on Hal. Up until now, the people Bolaire was possessing were anonymous or enemies. Now that it’s a friend, the implications of Bolaire casually considering hinself entitled to do this to whomever he likes, whenever he likes hit home. And I think the fact that Bolaire is wearing Misha through the rest of the conversation strongly affects how Hal is responding to him. I think he’s starting to realize why Thjazi regarded Bolaire the way he did.
It’s not that Hal stopped seeing Bolaire as a person. It’s that, for the first time, the person Bolaire was wearing was a person to Hal.
To me as a viewer, it also further highlighted a element that’s already been shown: Bolaire is a sadist. We’ve seen it in how he taunts the people he possesses, and in his focus on spells that distort people’s minds, but in this episode we saw how easy it was for him to make it not unpleasant for his hosts to be worn, which made it stand out all the more that he has been choosing to torture them for no reason other than personal enjoyment. (It’s not yet clear to me whether being worn by Bolaire inherently kills his hosts, or if it’s because of his neglect of the bodies; either is possible.)
I find Bolaire a fascinating character, and “he’s a poor little persecuted woobie whom everyone is mean to” is the single least interesting take on him. (Or on anyone. Nothing turns me off even a character I’m enjoying faster than posts on how everyone else in the party is mean and/or neglectful of poor little them – I’ve seen it for Occtis, Azune, Julien, Wick.) I’m really hoping more of the contradictions in him get dug into in the next arc. Because it’s not fair that he, a sapient being, was created only as a weapon and created in a form that can only exist by possessing people; it’s complicated that revolutionaries seeking freedom used this means of doing so; it’s complex that Thjazi likewise blackmailed and exploited Bolaire. He’s a being who is inherently, and always, both exploiter and exploited, and within the thematic context of the story I think there’s a ton that can be done with that. (And the ideas about ‘ploughshares’ and transformations suggest that it may not be an inalterable condition…)
To indulge in speculation for a moment, I'm so excited for Thimble and Vaelus to be at the same table for many reasons (I've got a post buried somewhere about their narrative similarities, and I know others have dived deeper into that topic). But listening to Brennan talk about the way orcish art and history was repressed under Azgra has suddenly called to mind again Thimble saying to Vaelus "You're an elf. You know our history. Probably better than me," in episode 2. Which may very well just mean "you're 800 and I'm not." But fairies are a group, probably the group actually, that we've seen facing the most current active racialized threat in Araman, as the Creed seeks to villainize them, and a number of fairies have implied they are being actively hunted. And we know that the Shapers jealously controlled magic as a source of power (as the Sundered Houses seem to want to do now, to varying extents). While there are also big question marks on the historical relationship between the Shapers and their primordial spouses. All this to say, it's entirely possible that Thimble means something far more significant when she says elves might know her history better than she does.
Rewatching episode 4, and Shadia talks about it being a hurdle to overcome to make people aware that the Hallowed Round is even in use again. And it did strike me as another layer of healing that's happening with Kother'ai. The reclamation of this space of trauma and the actual magic are obviously the more notable acts of healing happening. But also, abandoned buildings do often feel like wounds in cities (and in smaller communities too, maybe more so). Eventually, nature will fully reclaim them, but in the meantime, they feel like feel like testaments to ways in which a city might be failing to provide homes/gathering places/safety/comfort/spaces for dreams to flourish. And even if none of the magical stuff had happened, there would still have been something beautiful in making this massive amphitheater, sitting abandoned and vandalized at the bottom of the city a place for people to gather and see art together. And I just love how layered the execution of everything to do with The Round and Kother'ai have been
Love Vico's choice to make Caguama an older galapa and a seraph who doesn't know much about their magic and is afraid of it, because they never had anyone to teach them. Because in the Halcyon Domain, of course they wouldn't. Divine magic is extremely rare and very distrusted. Idyl in the previous series had a strong instinctive knowledge of his powers, but he didn't really understand them, so Vico's choice to have their character afraid of what they can do really illuminates another aspect of what it is to wield divine magic in this setting
Azune Nayar is not someone who was failed in his youth by the adults around him.
Azune Nayar is someone whose childhood and youth were marked by adults who, faced with bad choices, made the less-worse one because they cared about him.
His parents starved themselves to give him and his sister the chance of being recruited as child soldiers by a mercenary group, because that was the only way to protect him from starvation.
Thjazi Fang saw a child abandoned by the roadside, desperately, determinedly, and implausibly claiming he could fight. Thazi Fang was in the middle of waging a rebellion against the powers of Araman. That rebellion wasn’t the best place for a child of twelve. But it was a better place than abandoned by the roadside or picked up by another mercenary group, and Thjazi cared, so Thjazi took him in and assigned him to noncombat work away from the front lines.
By 15 Azune was fighting on the front lines. (In an earlier war, the same was true of Thazi at that age.)
Thjazi’s rebellion failed. He asked his brother Hal to look out for the teenage Azune. Hal did so, treating Azune as part of his family. Hal did the same for other people who needed it. Being like family wasn’t the same as being Hal’s kid.
The tragedy of Azune isn’t that he was failed or abandoned or uncared for or used. The tragedy of Azune is that the best that people who cared about him could give him still wasn’t the same as what he needed, because being an adult doesn’t make you all-powerful. Azune’s problems weren’t created by those who loved him. They were created by the world he lives in.
Azune lived his adult life for the Torn Banner because it was the life he knew; or out of loyalty; or because they were the ones trying to change that world into something different.
He offers understanding and empathy to enemies (Julien) and strangers (Vaelus). He learned that somewhere.
He will self-immolate for a cause. He likely learned that from his parents, who did it for him, and from Thjazi, who did it for the same cause.
this might not be to everyone’s taste but my favorite thing about campaign four is how on its surface it is very much operating on traditional fantasy “good vs evil” levels.
the whole thing feels extremely storybookesque but it’s the characters who inhabit the world that add nuance and dimension.
aramán, to me, really does feel like an adult fairy tale. not because of any sex or violence or swearing, but in the way it takes familiar, almost one note, tropes and makes them feel dirty and live in.
As always, I'm so here for Aabria and her attention to the world, both the small details and the larger implications, how grounded her character is in its histories and realities, using that character knowledge to put things together and move things forward so swiftly elegantly, cutting through confusion and argument.
"Wasn't Thjazi called Shadow?"
Tossing the Iron nail to Julien.
Quickly cutting through all the noise to reveal the truth.
While playing Thaisha, Aabria is so conscious of the world and Thaisha's worldview. As a woman whose religious culture has been persecuted nearly to extinction. As a person from a race that every other race of Aramán was happy to leave in subjugation; the suffering of the Runjani was a fair price for their comfort.
You can viscerally feel this in her gentle but clear acknowledgement of Bolaire, her tone when she asked him why he was so angry.
"What exactly do you find to be foolishness, Bolaire?"
The calm, despite the fact that, when it comes down to it, he is angry that the actions Thjazi set in motion blew up his comfortable life. The same actions that liberated the Runjani afterlife. He doesn't think "a couple hundred" Runjani souls are worth it.
"So you're not angry, you're afraid."
It reminded me of when Aranessa was breaking down and overwhelmed because her life was blown up and she has to make hard decisions to move forward. Thaisha used the same gentle, but firm tone then.
"You always had to make a choice and the world was always chaos. It's just touching you now."
There's such weight and truth behind the way Aabria carries Thaisha. I look forward to her Soldier table, but I feel for what the rest of the tables will be losing without her presence.
The private meeting between Yanessa and Primus was such a great guide into their characters and ideologies. Really, the crux of it for me was Yanessa asking: "Do you discount the utility of commoners, Primus?"
I think Yanessa understands better than any of the other Sundered Houses that the greatest threat to their rule comes from ordinary people because, in the end, they depend on those people. She was old enough to remember the Shapers, the gods, and saw their demise. "I suppose to the Shapers, we were all commoners," she added in a pointed comment to Primus.
One he doesn't even pick up on. He scoffs ordinary people as "dretch" and is trying to build a world in which he will never have to concern himself with them. Regardless of what the Tachonis' ultimate design is, it's the classic project of an oligarch drunk on his own power: just create a world in which you never have to interact or even worry about the poors ever again. He's Bezos on his island fortress, he's Elon trying to get to Mars. It's stupid, short-sighted, and relies on the brute force of his magic to plug all the holes in his leaky submersible of a plan.
Yanessa, meanwhile, took the lessons of the Shaper's fall and created the Candescent Creed, a new faith, to fill the religious void left by the toppling of the gods. It's quite clever really, because it's a system of control that uses the illusion of consent for people to happily embrace the rule of a new god.
Through the Creed, House Halovar is able to expand its wealth and influence further than any other Sundered House. Through the Luxes, they're even able to create an entirely new pool of spellcasters to bolster their power that don't need to have been born to a sorcerous bloodline. No other House can boast that except perhaps House Cormoray and its taking over the education of wizards through the Penteveral. Which is only one institution in one city.
Wizards are still rare, but Luxes seem to be everywhere.
Primus is twisted, dangerous, and as arrogant as he is powerful, but I don't really think he'll end up being the Final Boss of this Campaign. Yanessa Halovar, the Photarch, the "resurrected" theocrat dissolving entire governments to the applause of new converts feels like a much, much bigger threat to our party of freedom fighters. Because unlike Primus, she's so very good at convincing commoners that obedience to her bright and shiny lie is freedom.
This is almost definitely me putting way too much thought into a moment that Brennan just did in passing, but it's one that is important TO ME, which is the little moment between Hero and Thaisha in the Archanade during convergence. The one where Hero tells Thaisha about un-petrifying Cyd and says "I've done something Shadia hasn't"
It just speaks so much to the love and support and closeness of the Lloy-Fang-D'vyen family. "I've done something Shadia hasn't" is like, very classic and normal and lowkey sibling rivalry. And she has 0 qualms expressing this to Shadia's mom! She has no fear of being shut down or shamed, she doesn't spare any worry that Thaisha might be cold to her in response.
And we see that trust immediately born out in the fact that Thaisha laughs and even says she likes this energy! There's no weirdness, it's just warmth.
Hero says it's good to see her. Thaisha congratulates her on being at the Penteveral. This is a family and they are so, so fond of each other.
There is something to be said about the orcish lens of CR4 and allegory vs metaphor. I have been trying and failing to say it for the last half hour. What I will say is this:
This is a story being told predominantly by white artists but has been framed in such a way that the lens through which we view the story is highly racialized. (We focus on the legacy of an orcish freedom fighter, in an orcish city, culminating the first chapter with a play about orcish history, liberating previously enslaved orcs from an unjust after life.) This is, in my opinion, a value neutral thing to be happening. But I do think it demands an audience that engages with that reality. And thinks about, not just the value of the lens, but also the potential disconnect between the lens and the creators. Ultimately, CR4 isn't just going to say something about race, it's going to say something about how left-leaning, white Americans, in collaboration with people of color, certainly, but definitely dominating the space, think about race.
This is not me saying "be on the lookout for mistakes to get mad about." What I am saying is that there is a rich vein for analysis here, that looks not just at what the story is saying and how, but also where the story's ideology and execution might be in conflict. Also, for all his proclamations of allegory, Brennan is almost certainly looking for the grace of metaphor
