#cursed meta

[aceofwhump]

Hey! You know so much about Cursed, how old would you say all the main characters are? I tried looking but couldn't find anything about it online and there's not much info in the book 👎👎

(this got long. I apologize in advance)

HI! Good question. Yeah ages are tough. They are never really discussed within the show at all except for Merlin who has been alive for like 500 years (book and show have him alive at least at the fall of Rome). Nimue is described as "a young Fey" or "a teenage heroine" in all the show descriptions but that's kinda vague imo. In these cases, when the specific ages are not said and there are no clear indicators of age such as school years I tend to go with the actors age. So, going off the year that the Cursed show came out, they would be:

Squirrel: 13

Nimue: 24

Pym: 26

Morgana: 26

Arthur: 29

Gawain: 31

Lancelot: 34

This is what I use when working on my fic tbh. I'm a lot more comfortable using the actors ages for the characters ages here.

Now there are a few moments in the book that tell us or indicate ages for a few characters.

For Nimue, there is one short line in the book that says:

“But Lenore, surely you can’t suggest . . . I mean, Nimue is too young for such responsibilities.”

“True, at sixteen years she would be young for a Summoner,” Lenore acknowledged, speaking as though not surprised by the turn of events, “but her rapport with the Hidden should outweigh such considerations.

For Gawain we have this to indicate his age:

Nimue glowed inside at the name. She remembered being seven years old, her arms clutched around Gawain’s neck as he carried her on his back through these very same woods. At fourteen, he knew the special gifts of every blossom, leaf, and bark of the Iron Wood, remedies, poisons, which tea-brewed leaves bestowed visions and which captured hearts, which chewed barks induced labor and which bird’s nests predicted the weather.

So we know that Gawain was 14 when she was 7 and if she's 16 in the books then that makes Gawain 23.

We have this quote for Squirrel:

Nimue turned to the Iron Wood and saw ten-year-old Squirrel standing in the monk’s path, bewildered, blood dribbling down his cheek as he dragged a sword behind him.

Arthur is AT LEAST 16 probably a few years older than that. I'd say probably 18:

And by Arthur’s sixteenth year, his father had become a local institution, a knight errant, scribing his adventures to song, settling into the comfortable robes of a storyteller.  And so it was until the day three English knights, not much older than Arthur, rode into the village, seeking only thievery and violence

We’ve got these passages for Merlin’s age:

“Merlin is only the most feared sorcerer of this age. Of any age, for that matter. He’s mentioned in historical records dating back to the fall of Rome. He’s hundreds of years old.”

and

Nimue had a glimmer of hope as she turned to Merlin, curious for his answer. But in that moment, Merlin almost looked his full seven hundred years.

This lovely passage for Iris’ age:

It made Iris smile inside when she learned the Fey Kind had named her the Ghost Child. This meant they feared her, just as they should. At eleven years old, she was already a spirit of death. Some of the older brothers might still laugh when they met her in person. She was only four feet tall.

And then there's this line about Uther:

At only twenty-six years, Uther was a young and insecure monarch and loath to admit error or weakness.

SO! Based on all of this, the book characters ages (that we know) are:

Nimue: 16

Squirrel: 10

Arthur: 16-18

Gawain: 23

Merlin: 700

Iris: 11

Uther: 26

I didn’t find anything to indicate the age of Lancelot  other than knowing he’s been with the Paladins and Carden since he was a young boy. I'd say he's probably the same age as Gawain but I can't be sure. Pym is logically the same age as Nimue seeing as they grew up together and are best friends. Morgana or Morgan le Fey is Arthur’s half sister but they don't say if she's younger, older, or the same age.

And that’s all I got! Hope it helps!

[everlastingdreams]

Another shitpost I made.

I’ll see myself out.

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

I was thinking about Nimue and critiques I’ve seen of her, and that I have as well, most of which revolve around her being seen as suffering a bit from Heroic Strong Female Lead. So, a bit shallow on depth of character, moments that strike one as unrealistic etc. etc. 

Anyway, ran across an older post that discusses the whole thing around female (and minority in general) power fantasies. And there was an addition that I think is super relevant: 

So, there’s this interesting thing where a certain degree of saturation in stories will train the audience to just accept stuff that’d normally strike them as bizarre or unrealistic, and move on without questioning it. It’s sort of like ‘willing suspension of disbelief’, except that phrasing doesn’t really encapsulate it precisely. It’s more like… commonality breeds acceptance.

For example, a humble young boy who rises to prominence and becomes a hero is such a standard piece of storytelling, that virtually no one ever sits down to watch a movie and actually goes ‘well, but, this is just a young farm lad - surely he can’t do a single thing to help stop the Forces of Evil!’ People in the movie might do that. But unless the audience is very, very young, or has somehow managed to avoid most books, movies, songs, comics, television shows, and oral traditions for the whole of their life, they’re going to sit down and think ‘ah yes, here’s our guy’.

Even though, in real life, it actually IS still pretty far-fetched for Ye Humble Village Lad to turn out to be the only thing standing between mankind and destruction.

The interesting thing, though, is that if you change enough elements of what is so common as to be thoughtlessly accepted, the image you present will no longer resemble the familiar narrative. Even if, below the surface, the other components are exactly the same.

This, along with the above-mentioned misogyny, is another contributing factor to the Mary Sue thing.

Because there are fewer female heroes who are just unabashed power fantasies, embodying unlikely rises to success or mastery of untold skills, if you take a very typical story that stars a dude and swap him out for a lady, the elements once rendered invisible by familiarity, are now noticeable again. The audience is jolted out of complacency, and begins to think more critically about what they’re being asked to believe. (You can accomplish the same thing with other demographics, too, i.e. putting characters of colour in roles typically given to white actors, or having LGBT+ characters with the same abundance as straight ones, and so on and so forth.)

So even people who like to think of themselves as totally fair and unprejudiced can end up enforcing double-standards in entertainment. Because if you don’t catch yourself, you will not even realize that you managed to sit through three Iron Man movies without ever questioning the premise of Tony Stark’s genius, but somehow Shuri in Black Panther just struck you as ‘unrealistic’.

[Full Post for reference] 

Because this is focused on Nimue, and not Arthur (or another knight of the round table, as we are generally used to seeing), those tropes around “strong leader finds magical item that secures their already clear right to leadership” and “humble to hero” are glaringly obvious. Had it been a show about Arthur, I’m not sure we’d have as much discussion around it. 

It’s something I also see in comparison to Weeping Monk | Lancelot who has considerably less character development than Nimue. All of his basically comes in 2/3 scenes in the ninth episode and 2/3 scenes in the finale. Compared to Nimue who we have gotten to know over the course of all 10 episodes. But I know I’ve raised his lack of depth as something that makes it hard for me to find him interesting and people have rebutted with “well no, i think he’s got plenty of depth/has got some characterization happening” etc. and that’s not supported really, by the show. 

The text, if we want to call the show that, demonstrates the opposite. This isn’t to say you can’t like or enjoy the Weeping Monk, it’s just to say there’s a reason his glaring lack of depth is brushed over while people spend time analyzing Nimue’s. And it’s because we’re used to seeing the Strong Silent Mysterious Male trope. In terms of villains with depth, Iris and Carden have more going on. But the Weeping Monk fits, in one degree, a power fantasy we’re used to seeing. 

In addition, compared to Nimue, Weeping monk is more of a blank slate which makes him easier to project onto. Which is half the point of how these unrealistic power fantasies work. Nimue allows that to a certain degree, she’s bland enough I think a lot of people could read themselves onto her. But she’s got just enough characterization, just enough back story, where she’s not a tabula rasa. 

Anyway, this show is really rife with moments where, as fans, we can catch ourselves doing that double standard of “why do we accept X for one character but not the same for another”. Obviously, with this show, in addition to gender there’s also race to consider. 

Just some thoughts. I’m not going anywhere in particular with them. 

[adaav]

I just remembered the meta "Dean is so short because he gave all his food to Sam 😔"

[melody-chii]

this is a bit cursed but since i’m p sure anakin falls forwards onto the lava when obi-wan relieves him of his remaining limbs, does that mean his dick melted off? idk if that’s worse or better than maul.

obi-wan,,,,,, okay maybe you should feel a bit bad. anakin is rly dumb and he did kill basically everyone you knew and loved but that’s a bit mean.