#deepwells

[ethotv-archived]

thoughts on gay people

fucking Crazy theyre just out there doing shit. do you see this

[psykulor]

Female Power in “Dobrynya and Marinka”

“The bad wife” and “the wise wife” are two powerful female archetypes that appear in Russian folk tales. “The bad wife” is usually character

Been thinking of the role of witchcraft in contemporary fantasy lately. Female power has been a stand-in for villainy in a lot of witch stories. What's a better way to use the trope?

In our next adventure I'll cast Marinka as the grand dame of a traveling circus, a predatory con artist who uses her magic in ransom schemes as she moves from town to town. Like in the story, she will have the power to make people love her, and to turn them into animals when she is no longer pleased with them. I considered giving her a motivation - she had been manipulated through love in the past, she had been made to feel powerless before - but this veered too close to the stereotype of the bitter, wronged woman as magical villain. It's too easy to cast a feminine villain in this role, as an emotionally driven and reactive person who is lashing out instead of following her own ambition (and masculine villains tend more towards stark ambition than emotional reaction, though it's more of a mixed bag). The folkloric Marinka entranced the purported hero Dobrynya after he killed her dragon boyfriend, which honestly doesn't seem like a disproportionate response to me, but once again boils down to revenge.

So Marinka will be driven by simple greed. Someone whose sole focus is getting and keeping more power, by any means necessary. She'll be proud of her power, too, and want to toy with the adventuring party before luring them to their doom - presenting them with a few challenges based on the abilities of the folkloric Marinka. But this Marinka has the advantage over her literary counterpart of being surrounded by performers and animal handlers - all of them under her spell. It's the beginnings of a cult structure, another domain of villainy reserved for men (with thanks to Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt for their deconstruction of cult-as-masculinity-worship) that will be well-suited to our villain.

[dotmario]

"When the well's dry, we know the worth of the water" -Ben Franklin.

[godsaesthetics]

Classic #throwback church history #deepwells