An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Relationship: Morina & The Masked Man | Lloyd Bailey
Additional tags: trans lloyd bailey, transfem lloyd bailey, book 4: beyond the kingdoms (the land of stories), queer character, beta read
words: 916 chapters: 1/1
Summary:
"Does this really work?" the Masked Man asked dreamily.
"Of course, they don't call me a beauty witch for nothing," Morina said, wondering why the Masked Man of all people was so intrigued. Perhaps, there was another reason to that mask beyond hiding his identity. "I work to unite women with unfortunate appearances with the beauties they truly are within. I have potions to rejuvenate, revitalize, refresh—even feminize women who are born with typically masculine features."
or; the masked woman takes magic estrogen. hurray!!
Since my last LO/KO comparison post was getting attention, thought I'd make this meme as well. Mors x Korina pulls of the whole "sweet girl x edgy guy" trope way better than Hades x Persephone (long analysis below if you want to read)
I've noticed how these two relationships share a foundation similar tropes, and I wanted to break down why one is a ship I absolutely adore and the other is just "meh" for me. For Morina, I'm mainly going to be focusing on Korina's Origin, mainly because Origins of Olympus gave them less time to develop as a couple properly, plus KO gives us more to work with timeline-wise. For LO Hades x Persephone I'm going to be sticking with S1 and S2 because I haven't seen a lot of S3 for myself (and based on what I've heard, I don't plan to).
Now, I'm not gonna go ahead and say that Morina is the pinnacle of ship writing or whatever, I have some issues with its development and pacing (especially in OoO), plus Mors is unfortunately an asshole no matter what series he's in. But despite its flaws, Morina as a ship feels flawed in a very human sort of way while LO Hades x Persephone feels perfect in the artificial way, if that makes sense?
In LO, the narrative is constantly trying to convince you that Hades x Persephone is the perfect couple and that it's them against the world. It doesn't matter what criticism other characters have of their relationship, because they're all jerks anyway, and any actions taken against them are all thusly justified. Meanwhile, KO acknowledges that while there are external forces preventing them from being together, there are issues that lie within the characters themselves: Mors' anger issues and lack of emotional intelligence, and Korina's insecurities that prevent her from standing up for herself.
Persephone and Korina are both portrayed as kind, altruistic, and naive by the narrative. They show kindness and forgiveness to people who may or may not deserve it, and others may take advantage of this kind nature. Korina takes this in an interesting direction: she is a people pleaser due to her abandonment, and she will constantly sweep things under the rug and play nice even around people who don't deserve it. When she has the choice of announcing her relationship with Mors and invoking the ire of the gods, or playing along with their matchmaking plans for her, she chooses the latter despite it not being what she wants. She is dedicated to maintaining peace and good relationships with everyone, to the point that it ends up putting a strain on her relationship with Mors. She is typically patient and content to go along with what others want of her, and when she does finally snap and lash out at people it's used sparingly, such as when other people reduce her to being nothing more than a servant rather than being a fellow god/demigod. These are character strengths and flaws that go hand in hand with each other, and it builds on the "sweet girl" half of the ship trope in a reasonable way that affects her within the relationship and in other aspects of her life.
And Persephone? Uhhhh... she spends most of her time acting like an excited child (that definitely means she's nice, right???), she showed sympathy for the shades, told off Hades for mutilating a guy and got angry that her nymph friends were killed. Except it wasn't actually her fault that she was righteously angry over the death of her friends, Persephone can't get angry guys, anger is a bad thing and Persephone is good!!!1!1 In all seriousness, Persephone's Act of Wrath was the peak of her character for me. Here I though that we would be seeing her have emotions that humanize her, but nope. I guess the only character traits and emotions she's allowed to have are smol bean uwu, sad from trauma (but only sometimes), and Girlboss™. Still though, do we actually get anything of substance from her personality outside of those traits? Does she have anything about her character that meaningfully builds on the aforementioned “sweet girl” trope? Do we ever truly see her have a moment of agency with a lasting impact? Do we ever see her really struggle with having emotions that she's not fully in control of outside of her Act of Wrath? Is she ever allowed to have feelings that the viewer might disagree with, even if it would make more sense for her character and story? (Honestly these questions apply to Mors as well so I'll just use this as a segue into the next section).
Hades and Mors are both the edgy antisocial guys who have been shunned for one reason or another. They put up a tough front and lash out at the world, but drop the mask around those they care about (though if anything threatens their lover, they go straight back to being the dominating machismo guy). Hades' beef with other characters tends to mostly be framed as petty drama, but do any of them actually dislike Hades for the legitimately bad things he does? Because he’s invaded Persephone’s privacy without her knowledge, neglected his adopted son, put his partner in a financially abusive situation, allows the shades to live miserable afterlives despite being their king, took out a tabloid reporter’s eye for doing his job, and that’s only what I can name off the top of my head. Does Hades have any actual motivation for the way he treats others aside from pettiness and simping over Persephone? Is any of what he does truly framed as bad by the narrative? Why, then, are we supposed to believe that he’s a misunderstood edgy bad boy if the narrative barely even acknowledges how and why he has this reputation in the first place?
Mors, on the other hand, is shunned by many because he is the descendant of the personification of violent death, and thus has an aggressive personality and the capability for mass destruction. Thing is, he spends most of his life not knowing that, so to him people are just weird about him for no reason (other than Korina, who also doesn't know until later). Whether or not the treatment of Mors is truly justified in the viewers’ eyes, I’m sure many can agree that it is still a reasonable motivation to lash out. And let’s take a look at the bad things he has done to compare to Hades, shall we? Killing in self-defense (or Korina’s defense), verbally and physically lashing out at his father for not telling him about his mother, using violence/threats to solve problems that range from "this person is kind of annoying" to "this person is a threat", verbally berating people who get on his bad side (which sometimes does include Korina). Some of these are understandable in context, some aren't, but the point is that the narrative and the characters acknowledge that these actions are bad. Sometimes he even (gasp) faces consequences for his actions! And on top of that, he struggles with his morality and whether he can truly become a better person because of his nature. (Plus he gets bonus points for being a low-empathy person who a) is still capable of showing strong emotions b) is not completely demonized for something out of his control.) Again, Mors' story and character builds on the "edgy guy" trope in an understandable way that makes him feel human rather than trying to make him into a misunderstood paragon like Hades.
(Also, to me Mors is coded as being neurodivergent and/or having a personality disorder, but I feel like that's straying too far into headcanon territory. I know that it doesn't excuse Mors' behavior, all I'm saying is that as an nd person myself, I can at least get why he does what he does even if I don't agree with it. I have no such understanding with Hades and Persephone's actions. For them, the viewers are expected to just roll with everything they do and not question it.)
And now that we've fully established the characters, what about their dynamics and interactions? Hades saw Persephone and immediately began lusting after her, to which she seems mostly oblivious early on. He also goes behind her back to find out more about her, such as the thing with the memory tapes and Hecate's letter. But it's fine, because any breaking of boundaries is made up for when Hades love bombs her with gifts. And even though he's only known her for a few days/weeks within S1, he chooses to trauma dump to her rather than his therapist that only comes up like once. In fact, the two of them become each other's entire world within this short time frame. Any friendships or familial relationships they have (Hecate, Eros, Artemis, Hermes, Thanatos, Demeter, etc.) seem to be thrown to the wayside in favor of the main couple. Ironically enough, I feel like I would like Hades and Persephone's relationship more if they had more going on outside of it (and if they didn't have the age gap but that's a whole different thing). It felt like they were written specifically to fit that trope and everything else about their characters, like Hades’ fear of becoming like Kronos and Persephone’s act of wrath, were added as afterthoughts. As a result, rather than feeling like characters that were shaped and developed by their experiences, we have overblown caricatures based on their ship tropes.
Mors and Korina start out as childhood friends and develop their relationship over many years. As they grow up they start drifting apart due to their different roles (Mors being the heir of death and Korina being a household servant) but Korina offers a non-judgmental outlet for Mors' anger issues, and Mors still consistently treats her as a peer despite their differences in status. When they finally do get together, Mors, in spite of how hypersexual he typically is, actually respects her boundaries for both sexual and non-sexual things. While it's all sunshine and rainbows for a while, Mors takes a jab at Korina’s past trauma during an argument, and she actually (rightfully) calls for the two of them to take a break in their relationship over it. However they still remain friends and support each other in their own separate endeavors. Korina chooses to stick with Mors even after learning of his violent nature, Mors supports Korina's search for her mother and proves time and time again that he would go through hell and back to protect her. The two of them love each other and still do, but the story makes it clear that love on its own is not enough, and that’s okay. Korina herself acknowledges that the two of them need to work on themselves before they can try again. Their argument and breakup wasn't the end of the world, it was the catalyst for them to realize that they needed to do better, and that is why I'm able to feel for them and root for them despite all of their issues.
Plus Mors and Korina at least have the excuse of being an inexperienced 20 something year olds. Hades has had thousands of years to get his act together. Oh, I forgot to mention. Despite crushing on each other since their younger years, Morina only officially got together when Mors was 25 and Korina was 23, which means that it avoids the dubious morality of a 19 year old getting with a 3000+ year old.
In conclusion: Although Mors x Korina by no means a perfect rendition of the "sweet girl x edgy guy" ship, the narrative at least doesn't try to present it that way and gives us a much more nuanced view on their relationship compares with Hades and Persephone. While it wants us to root for Korina and Mors to get back together eventually, it also tells us to our faces that the two of them need to work out their own issues first. Lore Olympus, on the other hand, wants us to look at Hades and Persephone and immediately see them as perfect people in a perfect relationship that the world wrongfully wants to tear apart, despite the obvious problems in their characters and relationship.
Apologies for how long and disjointed this is! I'm literally typing the first thoughts that pop into my head and I have too many thoughts about this lol
I'm so glad to come back with a new post and a new wip! On Halloween I posted pics of my newest costume from #TLOS6 by Chris Colfer, Morina!
Since I work hard on my costumes, I really wanted to post some pics of the making of, so here we are!
I forgot to take pics while cutting and sewing the lilac and violet skirts, but that's just very basic.
It's been the belt and horns that took most of the time to be made, so this wip is basically. about those 😁
I first made the belt out of paper to find the right proportions, and I cut the horn's patterns as well. The horns are then made with 5mm foam.
I then glued the horns together and used some gesso to smooth the edges, then I put some Flexipaint primer and then painted them.
The horns are then fixed to the wig with bobby pins, but I'm going to fix them on a headband to make them stay more firmly and prevent them from slipping.
The belt is again made with foam, primed with flexipaint (it's the best primer to keep the paint from cracking if it gets bended) and then colored with acrylic spray paint. I then painted the small lines by hand.
The squid on the central part of the belt and the stones along the belt are made by hand with a mouldable polyester thermoplastic which acts like clay when warm, then becomes strong plastic when it cools.
I glued everything together, then sewed by hand the black lace.
The black frame around the aqua gem is made with black pearls glued on a foam layer.
To make the skulls stay in good position on the skirt and not just hanging down, I interlaced the chains with wire. I then sewed the chains to the lace.
I sewed the bustier, made the collar putting a stiff lining inside to make it stand, then sewed it to the bustier. I then added, sewing by hand, the feathers.
This heap down here are the 2 skirts and the black pettycoat I put under them to make the skirt look wider.
I painted my skin with lilac Kryolan aquacolor, the color looked already great, I just added some darker shades to make the cheeks more hollow and the facial expression more dramatic. It took A LOT of time to make the color smooth.
That's all! Next post will be some pics of me as Morina, hopefully I'm making a proper photoset soon - those were taken in our garage by my husband, and I terrified some kids which were doing trick or treat in our apartments block 😂😂😂
