#analysis: general.

[viciousgracess]

lyanna and rhaegar are not a love story, they are a cautionary tale. in the same vein, lyanna and robert would have only worked if robert found it in himself to still like lyanna as soon as he's confronted with the entirety of her; not just the pretty face he coveted, but her temper, her stubbornness, her refusal to adhere to traditional gender roles, the very high likelihood that she would not be the subservient wife he was told all his life he would have, the hobbies, interests, proclivities she would not be willing to give up even after she was married to him.

because she dies at age sixteen, we will simply never know if, canonically, they would get there. we can surmise, of course, based on the information we are given.

but truthfully, the greatest love that lyanna ever had, and the only love that matters in her story, is the love her brothers bore her. benjen who kept her secrets, brandon who understood her in ways only he ever could, and ned who gave up his honor to keep his promise to her, who sacrificed so much so she could die a peaceful death.

no other love in lyanna's life is as meaningful or as great as the love she gave and received from her brothers.

[viciousgracess]

anyway, not to be insane about my OC but there is such a strong link between girlhood and monstrosity. the feeling of otherness, of unbelonging, of being set apart and alienated. the feeling of having to repress your impulses for the sake of civility, of keeping your mouth shut and tamping down your own instincts, wants, needs. so much constrains you and you need to stay perfectly still, perfectly content to be constrained, and all the while you are always experiencing these transformations. your body hurts you, the world hurts your body, your body must be hidden from the world, the same world that feels entitled to your body, that feels the need to dictate what you can and can't do with it.

i think the whole point of tiffany as an OC ( and the "monster girl rising" label that i assigned to her ) is that she is, technically, by virtue of what she is, a monster... but she's also still ascending the ladder to the kind of monstrosity that she needs to achieve. she is still constrained by her upbringing, constrained by her environment and its conventions, constrained by her servitude to the syndicate. she is, in most ways that matter, just a girl. she is living in the same world with the same biases and the same machinations tipped against her as you and i.

tiffany isn't meant to be special. in the universe she exists in, there are bigger, better monsters than her. she is good at what she does, yes, of course — she had to be. just like most people in hostile environments develop skillsets, proclivities, coping mechanisms meant to help them navigate those environments, so did tiffany. everything that tiffany is is a reaction, an answer, to the world around her. she is a monster both by nature and by necessity.

now, what kind of monstrosity do i think tiffany needs to achieve? the kind that realizes her girlhood and otherness do not belong in a cage, the kind that recognizes whatever debt she owes the syndicate has already been paid a hundred times over by virtue of everything she's done for them, the kind of monstrosity that sharpens its claws and bares its teeth not at the scared and the helpless, but at other, potentially bigger monsters.

and she's yet to get there. but she will.

[viciousgracess]

drew attends the brooklyn academy of the gifted in NY. it's a specialty school that focuses on students' talents, and drew specializes in performance arts ( dance, music, theater acting. ) after graduating from the academy, she would pursue higher education in NYU, taking up a bachelor of arts in performance studies ( possibly with a minor in dance. )

[viciousgracess]

prior to the end of TLO, drew's just a normal camper and easily overlooked. she's not acting out yet, and i think a lot of people would recognize her in relation to silena, not only because they're sisters but because drew is always following her around. i do think that she's already developed her charmspeaking abilities around this time, which portends her becoming a powerful demigod, but she's yet to harbor the spite that really sharpens this specific ability of hers to the fine, cutting point that we've seen it develop into later in the series.

i also think that, in addition to charmspeak, drew is one of the few children of aphrodite who can shapeshift. this is limited to the boundaries in which the children of aphrodite can use this power ( the wiki says they can only partially change their physical features ) but drew becomes quite good at this and can change her features drastically. this, however, is always a jarring experience for drew, and she doesn't like doing it unless there's a specific reason for it because she's scared she wouldn't be able to revert back to her original features.

in terms of combat though and how helpful drew would be in the battlefield, i do think that her abilities are more in-line with psychic damage. of course, she'd get the same demigod training that all demigods do in terms of endurance / strength / fighting / weapon handling etc., and would also have certain demigod advantages in those areas, but mental manipulation is probably what she excels at so much more.

drew handles an assist role in combat situations unless she has no other option but to lead the charge. neon pink sparks crackle around her when she's using her abilities. she'd usually stun enemies, scramble their minds, make them enter sudden and vivid romantic delusions to distract them, use her charmspeak to get them to follow simple orders ( in large groups. one on one, drew's charmspeaking is lethal enough that she can ask you to follow more complex commands ), taunt enemies to divert their focus, induce migraines, and in worst case scenarios, drive them mad with love and desire. in terms of weapons, drew has a katana made out of steel and tungsten. she named it kirāsuzume, which translates to killer sparrow in japanese.

[viciousgracess]

i'm actually quite sad that abigail never had the "i am a monster" conversation with will. hannibal tells her she's not a monster, she's a victim. will would have told her she became what she had to become to survive, and i think that would have made her feel so much better.

[viciousgracess]

lyanna with her pale gray eyes and dark hair and fair skin could cut the intimidating figure of a snow maiden, only she's actually quite warm, both to the touch and in how she treats the people around her. she's either frowning or glaring or laughing raucously, she's chasing her brother in the snow calling him stupid in that fond way siblings ( but especially older sisters ) tend to do, throwing a half-formed snowball at his head ( so it doesn't hurt ). you see her on her horse and she rides like the wind and then she smiles at you as she passes by, and sometimes because she spends so much time in the kitchen, she smells like baked bread. and when she's spending time in the glass gardens, she smells like roses, and her hair is wild and windswept and the tip of her nose is a bit red, and she asks you how you're doing, tells you she'll see you around before skipping towards the godswood to have a staring contest with the weirwood tree.

[viciousgracess]

ji-ah has inspired a whole urban legend. her story is still told to scare children from staying out too long. in seoul, she is known as the cursed princess of goryeo, and there are artworks, books, movies, comics, webtoons inspired by her. her mythology survived a thousand years, told through word of mouth before it was immortalized in other mediums. it is usually depicted as a horror story, yes, but also as a tragedy: a princess who found love in her general, whose son was killed, whose life was ravaged by senseless violence, who, inconsolable in her grief, rose up from the dead to seek revenge, and then faded into obscurity with her human husband in the mountains of hubaekje, losing the person she loved the most to death who can't touch her, cursed to remember the misfortune of her once-charmed life for all eternity, even as the world forgets.

[viciousgracess]

for purposes of abigail surviving and having a shot at a semi-normal existence, the murder family is canon on this blog. the case against abigail is dismissed due to lack of evidence ( sorry to my man, jack crawford ) and hannibal convinces will to realize his fantasy of a family, with abigail as their daughter.

for obvious reasons, this set-up is very ( and i mean VERY ) dysfunctional. i always got the impression that... well, i think both hannibal and will loved abby in their own way, but for the most part, their taking on the father role came from very selfish motivations. hannibal was recreating the fantasy of bringing back misha with abigail as her stand-in, will was assuaging his guilt for what he did to her father.

and abigail is just trying to survive.

it really is her default setting, growing up the way she did ( with a father who fantasizes about um. killing her ) so it's not that different with will and hannibal, who are both volatile figures of their own. too, there are certain... moral sacrifices that abigail ( and will ) would have had to make to live with hannibal. i imagine that will shields abigail from a lot of it. i also imagine that going off to university would give abigail a reprieve from it ( which is why she does, despite all her anxieties surrounding it, and which is why she extends it by taking up a PhD. )