Everyone deserves a "good hair day!" This was mine... #selfcare #lefrenchtwisthairsalon #laceyrocks https://www.instagram.com/p/Cd3Z0DAl8yJ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
Lets talk about the characters. Lets talk about Lacey. Lacey Ruth Bolton, daughter of Charlotte Delia Bolton and Henry Lucius Bolton. I think she has a brother as well but he is likely the sane one.
Lace, as she is known to her brief friends, is an ascendant. That means she has the attention and special favor of a greater power. You might call them gods but part of the gist of this whole shebang is that commoners – that's you and me pleb – are still effectively cave dwellers making up stories about things we just don't understand.
Part of the narrative is spent explaining the factual underpinning that gives rise to silly notions such as Gods and so forth. Although for the idea of gods, the caveman version is pretty good. Those in the know call them the Pillars. Think Pillars of heaven or what have you, just see these beings as very powerful and incomplete structures looking to get their act together.
Some time back, if time is a thought that applies here, the pillars were shattered and their pieces came to rest at certain places and times, nexuses that turn out to be people like you and me. And these people have the chance to capitalize on this spark of greatness that has alighted in their existence.
Most never do. In fact most never even guess that they have a direct line to the greater world. But occasionally there are visionaries, guides, or just blind luck that leads those with the connection to the font of their ultimate power.
But they don't just get a free ride to the astral realms. Nope. They have to be worthy. Very worthy. Did I mention that these Pillars are all in competition with each other? Major power struggle. So whomsoever gets their act together first gets to thumb everyone else in their deistic eyes. But you need the strongest elements, the most powerful shards. Anything less and your just wasting your time, fluid as that may be.
So ascendants lead a hard life. Theirs is an existence fraught with labors and tests. They have to fight for every scrap of respect, every gift f power and acknowledgment from their patron Pillar. Most die bloody and the idea that one ascendant can get power by offing another ascendant is in no way discouraged. Life as an ascendant on the trail to their ultimate form is somewhere between a double speed mosh pit and a half speed meat grinder.
They can't have anything nice and everything they touch breaks: phones, cars, hearts, etc... But then nothing really matters except the prize, and getting there ain't no team sport... sport.
With that in mind, lets return to Lace. She is an ascendant brought into the plot by Aaron Zed, we will talk about that headcase a little later. But know that she is a wildfire in chainsaw form ready to go and raring to make the kind of name for herself that will make even the Pillars take a step back.
She is unstoppable and driven by an internal furnace of iron will and feral grinning, fists up, ready to rumble certainty. She is “get godhood or die trying” in a canvas jacket, bloody knuckles out.
I want to see her as African-American, dark skinned, not pretty. I want her to, with her very existence, be taking on the notion of pretty and beauty. I might reference Azelia Banks or Danai Gurira. But of course they are both quite pretty. I want Lace to wear her looks like her battered army jacket and duct taped jump boots
“I'm ready. I am so ready. I'm ready to burn it all down up in here. You let me get a hand on something, some hard target, some big name. None of them have been safe since I put one foot in front of the other. You think I’m kidding? You wait and see. Im'a make it if I have to rip it out of daddy hummingbird himself. See if I don't!”
The flavor of Lace's power is going to be very Aztec. Theirs is a pretty bloody tale, brutal and vicious with heads rolling and hearts offered up or consumed. That's is the kind of savagery I want swimming right under the surface of Lacey's life.
She is part of a society of women put together years before she was even born. Does it have a name? I'm not sure yet. But they all have Aztec tattoos covering a significant part of their bodies. Lacey has once covering her right shoulder, arm and part of her chest and back.
The ladies get these to see if they are the one. The pain of the tattoo and the blood that is spilled in its application start the ritual, an initiation of blood. But it never truly took until Lacey, she was the one. Now all the women in the society are hers and support her in her quest to the top. But then we talked about how this is a one woman show so Lace doesn't really get them involved unless she just needs something they can readily provide. Its not like she has a street gang at her beck and call. Heck, some of these ladies have kids now that they know they wont be an ascended.
Lacey has a long strip of jaguar fur that she wears around her chest. I am not sure I want to broach the shores of chest binding but I have this visual of her whipping off her jacket and then her shirt, sweeping her arm outside it like a Kurosawa samurai and putting the fear of a few gods into some unfortunate who didn't know his shirt was red.
The strip itself is ribbon from a cloak touched by the Pillar who chose Lace. I am thinking Huitzilopochtli or some version of that.
Still unclear about just how on-the-nose I want to get with this. But its a sacred item and she wears it always and reveals it when its time to get serious. I am thinking that if you have her convinced that you are a worthy opponent, its time to show the hem of god and get to the business of climbing that ladder.
I kind of love Lace because she is so vital. She is just a juggernaut of can't-stop-me-now.
What is she doing with the other unlucky ladies and gents in this story? More about that next time.
