[avilionea]

HELLO! This is an independent & selective multi-muse blog for various characters primarily MYTH  based. Below you’ll find some helpful links that’ll assist you in interacting with this blog. LOW ACTIVITY. Written by Darks, 30+.

RULES - Interest Tracker MUSES TAGS

[avilionea]

got a few more things added to the queue, hoping to add more throughout the week before i turn it back on.

[avilionea]

hoping to be here this weekend. love you all! Mwah!

[avilionea]

HEADCANON: Re; Sophie – on Canon Divergencies.

Shortly after Sophie is born, her mother dies, leaving her father, Mr. Hatter, to raise her alone and manage the family’s hattery. Because Mr. Hatter is trying to manage single parenthood and the business, he has a difficult time keeping on a steady apprentice as duties within the shop also involve helping out with the baby.

He ends up accepting a girl by the name of Fanny to be his apprentice, despite her being much too old and nearly his age. Fanny can’t keep an apprenticeship. She’s tried a variety of professions and either grew bored of them or was fired from the position. Despite this, she still held a very good rapport with two former teachers, a bakery owner, and a witch.

It doesn’t take long for Mr. Hatter to become smitten with her ditzy and simple minded behavior. She is easily won over by Sophie as well as the hats within the shop. He showers her with gifts and eventually the two get married. They have two more daughters, Lettie and Martha. Fanny loves all her children equally.

Because of Fanny’s more extravagant lifestyle and  foolhardy personality, Sophie grows up rather fast, becoming her father’s true apprentice and eventually managing the shop finically as Fanny has rich tastes and her father likes to shower her every whim. By Sophie’s 25th birthday, she’s far surpassed apprenticeship, and her father dies as a sickness passe through her hometown. Fanny inherits the shop and decides its time for her daughters to all have apprenticeships. The problem is that she doesn’t know her daughters very well and simply finds apprenticeships for them based on what she thinks looks the best for them. For Lettie, she finds her an apprenticeship in the bakery (because Lettie would look so lovely in the uniform) and for Martha, she arranges an apprenticeship with a witch : Ms. Fairfax ( her nose is long,  and would be better suited behind books and incantations).

As for Sophie, Fanny decides that she’s best suited to be er apprentice at the hat shop. Sophie can’t see she’s being taken advantage of as being a formal apprentice means that Fanny doesn’t have to pay her—its quite the opposite. Sophie has to pay Fanny. They work out an arrangement in which Sophie continues to manage the shop as well as make the hats within the shop. Fanny continues to spend and live as lavishly as she’s used to. She isn’t malicious in any of these ventures, she’s simply dimwitted.

Sophie settles into her discontent and begins to talk to the hats.   She dreams up great lives for them and is unaware that she’s enchanting them and this is leading to greater success for the shop.  Sophie often goes to visit her sisters on her days off, which leads to her meeting Howl  who saves her from two of the King’s soldiers who pressure her into an uncomfortable situation, as well as the henchmen of the Witch of the Waste. Sophie isn’t aware who either of them are, and is safely deposited to her destination. It’s her sister Lettie who guesses that that was Howl who rescued her, but also argues that he eats women’s hearts and probably orchestrated the whole thing to try and woo her. Sophie finds this hard to believe as she does not think herself beautiful and has this notion further reinforced by Fanny. Lettie is very adamant that that isn’t true and that Sophie is being taken advantage of. Lettie also states that Sophie should go do something nice for herself, as Sophie’s 30th birthday is the next day. Sophie can tell that her sister is also discontent as Lettie talks about how Sophie should abandon the hat shop and seek her fortune.

Sophie promises she’ll be safe on her way home and jokes she makes no promises once there. Upon arriving back to the shop, she finds the door open after closing hours. Thinking someone has robbed the shop she goes to investigating, finding a very tall and beautiful middle-aged woman inspecting the hats she’s made. Sophie explains that the shop is closed (and reasons Fanny forgot to close the shop as instances like this have happened before).

The woman criticizes the hats and Sophie’s appearance. Sophie returns the rudeness and demands the woman leaves.  She reveals herself to be the witch of the waste and curses Sophie before leaving. Sophie can’t talk about her curse at all.  The curse makes Sophie into an old woman and this rightly horrifies her. She hurries off to bed. Upon waking up the next morning, she finds herself still cursed and tells her reflection that this seems a suitable birthday present. She finally feels as pretty as she looks, which is frail and elderly. Because Fanny is not the brightest, Sophie decides she can’t stay at home anymore and uses her sister’s Lettie’s idea of finding her fortune as a good excuse for leaving. She writes a letter that her taking a trip and going on an adventure is a birthday present to herself.

Sophie decides that she’ll venture to the city across the border as it is full of witches and wizards, being a hot bed for apprentices. Someone there must know how to break her curse. Unfortunately, Sophie cannot take the ferry and river passage to the city due to ongoing blockades secondary to an ongoing war between neighboring countries. Because of this, Sophie elects to go on foot and cross the mountain passage and through the wastes as she figures the witch won’t hurt her anymore than she already has. She hitch hikes and walks, eventually coming across a scarecrow with a turnip for a head that she had mistaken for a walking stick. Feeling pity for its toppled state, Sophie talked to the scarecrow, named him Turnip Head, and found that the scarecrow itself was magic. Sophie surmised he too must be under a curse. Turnip Head proceeded to follow Sophie and at her request, found a place for her to stay: Howl’s Castle

[mayregina]

when merlin encourages arthur to take a wife, the young king immediately suggests guinevere as 'THE MOST VALIANT AND FAIREST LADY THAT I KNOW LIVING OR YET THAT EVER I COULD FIND.'

.... AND IT WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER, merlin always said, HAD SHE BEEN DROWNED AT BIRTH.

#MAYREGINA. PRIVATE INDEPENDENT INTERPRETATION OF QUEEN GUINEVERE.

[avilionea]

v excited about these headcanons for Lancelot and Arthur on Chivalry, Courtly Love, and Arthur's enlightened England.

Would 10/10 recommend reading Andreas Capellanus' The Art of Courtly Love because it put both Arthur and Lancelot into perspective for me, especially given how they view the world, why the affair happens, and how women were treated, both as prizes and as property given the divide between peasantry and nobility.

[arturiusrex]

" it is not for me to judge what is or is not heresy," arthur replies, the coin between his fingers stalling. he would not consider this discussion -- for discussion is all it is -- heresy, when its purpose is to gain understanding; true heresy, he thinks, is action, not thought. " and my life has been dominated and preoccupied by fathers, brothers, and knights, so my knowledge of women's position is limited. " when he was a stupid boy in caer goch, he used to dream of a mother, of some sisters, with no knowing his real mother, his true sisters, still existed beyond caer goch's forest. not waiting for him, as he always dreamed, but thinking him dead. all that, however, is too complex, too intimate, to reveal to guinevere just yet, so he leaves the thought inward. " but i disagree in this: thinking is not a sin."

the coin proceeds in its rotation among his knuckles. " my own prophet" -- a starburst of grief; it is difficult to speak of merlin, his vanishment still fresh and frustrating in its mystery -- "taught me to think for myself; to reason and understand. God does not want to make slaves of us; true subservience to another's will, obedience, love, comes from understanding, which comes from thought, all which is our own free will. when adam and eve were cast from the garden due to eve's curiosity, they were not cast into hell, but into a life more similar to our present earth, God believing them now capable of managing themselves. it was a punishment, but no damnation.

" true, yes, in confession we will often confess our baser thoughts, but that is more for guidance than genuine absolution. sin is thought made manifest, not thought alone. so, even with my confessed ignorance, i think God would want women to think; it's the only way for someone to truly discover and follow God's wisdom and love. "

[avilionea]

"Are you not divinely chosen by God to rule?" the question was genuine, he head canted slightly as she asked it, "If God seated you, then I should think you an accurate judge."

"I have heard of your reformations, Sire. Your lack of how to handle a woman shines through." The words are softer, not intended to cause offence, and pitched perfectly as Guinevere would have said them ( though her coyness would have shown through on her face. She would have more words to woo him with than to leave it as Guinevak had).

"Then why do you think God forbid them from the tree? why exile them without solid explanation? Why cast suffering onto them? Did Eve know before the apple that she was capable of progeny? She was placed there to cure Adam's loneliness. What if she hadn't made him happy? " She thought a moment before adding, "Even our dear pope supports laws that claim a child is property of the husband after they have been ensouled. If thinking is not a sin, then is it so far fetched for a woman to worry over that which she formed?"

She could hear the shift in his voice, the subtle drop in his intonation, the decrease in his cadence-- this was a path to tread carefully on. "He must have been very blessed a person. " she said as if to offer condolences, "They were cast into the world- a world where given free thought, their son murdered his brother. Eve's curiosity is the Original Sin, is it not? The prophets that came through the remainder of that elder testament did not preach of paradise-- heaven was not a conception until Christ. Mankind breathed and then died with the expectation that nothingness came after-- all because of the Original Sin."

"If God wants anyone to think, if he is omnipotent and omnipresent, if he loves what we have become, i should think he would intervene in our sorrow. I think Abel would have lived a long life. What woman has come crying as a prophet? Surely there are saints that have become such because they used free thought. Saint Brigid, perhaps, but the bishops still argue that her miracle was a sin against God himself, that she destroyed property and should be stricken. Ironic, i should think, since she is patron saint of learning. Though I have been told Saint Winifred is what women should be. Should we all be virgin martyrs to be loved by God? Is she so ideal because she is without her head? And what of the man who took it? There are no records of divine justice for his murder of her."

"But she thought. She acted. And she died."

[avilionea]

anyone know anybody who does cheap commissions that could help me out? I'm trying to recreate a very specific wallpaper that is in my father in law's house for my husband' to upload into spoon flower. I have photos of the wall paper, i just need them touched up so I can make a recurring pattern to upload them.

[avilionea]

I'm still working on drafts and the inbox, thank you all for your patience and sticking with me T^T. Also still working on Christine's hc and rough outline of CDs as well as a few edits for Lancelot and Vasilisa. v excited~

[avilionea]

the more i think about it, the more i ship Guinevak and Kay. something something having and understanding of your sibling no one else does and only being able to watch as greatness both subsumes them and eventually destroys them.

In other thoughts--the trouble with a lot of female characters in arthurian lore is that they are either evil because they are autonomous or evil because they lack their autonomy. We hate them because they are women. We hate them because they are objects. Pity is also acceptable. It isn't any kind of irony that the only woman to truly survive into modern times with any level of respect is Guinevere. You really think the victorian arthurian revival period ( largely an English movement) is going to belittle its queen? While it serves largely as a bridge between legends and modernism with only a few authros really surviving into modern times (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, William Morris, and Sir Walter Scott to name a few) what remains is not necessarily the stories themselves but more so the morals of that era. it does not surprise me that what else is consistently taken forward is the misogyny that has morphed with these stories.

I love the problematic women in the lore. I know I'll die alone on this hill, but if it means i can make a few dead men roll in their graves then I consider it a good day.

[avilionea]

Notifications are being weird, i've gotten the ding but see nothing new. Please retag me or shoot me an IM if you have something for me so I don't miss it!!

also I purged all my books and redid my bookshelves. I may post a picture of my upstairs bookshelf ( almost all my research, arthurian, manga, and children's pretty picture books got moved downstairs) because I am damn proud of myself for getting it under control and getting rid of books i no longer read. it means room for new books!

[avilionea]

[avilionea]

Energy has been varying because iykyk so I was not here to write this weekend like I wanted. But I def have thoughts on Vasilisa, Christine, and may write some things up about Lancelot. Fingers crossed for me folks.

[daenerys-stormborn]

— HAMNET (2025) directed by Chloé Zhao

[masqve]

𝐌𝐀𝐒𝐐𝐕𝐄 ... the opera ghost really existed . he was not , as was long believed , a creature of the imagination of artists , the superstition of the managers , or a product of the absurd and impressionable brains of the young ladies of the ballet , their mothers , the box - keepers , the cloak - room attendants or the concierge . yes , he existed in flesh and blood . ©

[teethburied]

The Age of Innocence (1993) dir. Martin Scorsese

[avilionea]

You KNOW that your Mark has become the definitive Mark for me, the Mark by which I judge all other iterations of King Mark even (especially) formally published ones, ajakaka. BUT I WANNA TAKE A MOMENT FOR ONE OF YOUR NEWER MUSES and lavish Guinevak. You managed to create something original out of her, and carve out a fascinating, gritty, historical narrative for her that's so much fun to explore. I always love reading your stuff, so pls keep posting 💕

BEEP BEEP! HOW'S MY PORTRAYAL?

OOC; i actually really needed to hear this today. Thank you. I haven't been writing anything for my three newest Arthurian muses ( or in Lancelot's case, posting privately) because I just got really insecure about them lately, especially since they are all characters that mainly affect more popular muses stories and therefore have been very prominent in other peoples headcanons on the dash.

Its hard to feel confident in your own interpretation when it goes against what is the popular perception among you peers. So i really appreciate this. It really boosted my mood and confidence. <3