#rns asks

[silverskye13]

When you're right, you're right

[silverskye13]

I understand Tanguish now. My partner fights as her career and I just started going to her matches and I'm like here let me help you put your gear on let me bring you your water let me put bandaids on you. I know you are great at what you do but that also gets you hurt so let me do what I can where I can to keep you safe.

That is absolutely amazing! Every fighter needs a Tanguish [and every partner needs someone who will take care of them, and fuss after their well-being a bit, so they take care of themselves.]

Not nearly as fraught as a professional fighter, but my partner does injure himself at work frequently [works with heavy machinery] and my roommate injures herself quite frequently [works with large animals] and the times I want to throttle them for not taking care of themselves and the times I want to do as much as I can to make the healing easier overlap, so vastly.

To love is to care.

[silverskye13]

Ohhh if that line about the coliseum, the word was *temple*, then does that mean EB is also a god? And if so, that makes so much sense. Would it then follow that Evil X is also a god, perhaps the god of Hels even? And thats why hes such a big deal?

Hey! Very good observation!

Yes on both fronts.

EB is the Saint of the Colosseum, with a strong alignment to hospitality. Specifically, I lean towards viking-style hospitality for him. You don't speak too much or too little. You don't brag too much or too little. You do not destroy or fight in your host's hall, nor do you give in to greed or gluttony, and by extension, your host provides for all of your needs. Should a host break hospitality, they invite just vengeance into their household. If a guest breaks hospitality. Well.

Evil X is the Saint of hels, though he tows the line pretty hard between divinity and demon. His affinity is chaos, and he is constantly at the beck and call of his own boredom. I've been trying to reinforce Evil X's godhood in the story through the mentions of his tower, and his influence. He is a force that is constantly in the background hanging over hels, worshipped through fear and reputation. Everyone uses the tower as a landmark for where they are, and everyone is wary of the person who lives inside.

Technically, I guess you could say the First Church is the second largest church in hels -- Evil X's tower is taller.

[silverskye13]

Oh rns Ex how I love your incredibly intentional and faked apathy towards EB "I don't care" he says as he goes on a walk all around Hels with EB and makes a memorial bench specifically designed to make him remember who it was that it was made for but nooooo definitely an unfeeling god uh huh sure thing

Sometimes denial of the obvious is the only thing a person has! That, and the vague instinct of every elder sibling to mess with their younger sibling relentlessly.

[silverskye13]

i was rereading R&S and I happened to notice that you/the narrator tend to refer to Wels without the 'knight' suffix, but you tend to leave it on when narrating Hels - i was wondering if there's any specific reason for that? I've got two guesses: either since Wels IRL actually exists and Hels... doesn't and most people just refer to him as Wels it might seem odd to use his full (user)name, or that it's a message that Wels hasn't really earned the privilege to be called 'knight' due to some of his past actions (though I don't really see that because he's still following his tenets but maybe it's a morals thing [but then that argument could be raised against Hels, so]).

Anyways, i'm very sorry if this bothered you. No disrespect intended

-👾

The reason for that is two-fold!

The first is that Helsknight doesn't consider Welsknight a true knight. He states very early on in he and Tanguish's relationship "Don't call me hels, I got knighted for a reason." This is to set up for the rest of the story that Helsknight wants to be called the way he is specifically because of his knighthood [and implies the reason for why he only ever calls Wels "Wels".] Its less of a "past actions" thing, and has more to do with why Helsknight exists: Wels made HK because he had all these ideas of what a perfect knight could, should, would be, and believed he fell short of them. Helsknight agrees.

The second reason why, in the narrative, Wels is mostly referred to as "Wels" instead of "Welsknight", is because the story is from Tanguish's POV, and his bias on what a knight should be is completely and 100% inspired by what he sees in Helsknight. By his standards, the seemingly irrational bouts of violence and anger coming from Wels are unknightly behavior, he spent several of the first twenty chapters condemning that kind of rage and outburst in Helsknight, after all. Wels isn't acting like a knight, and just like how he only calls HK by "Hels" when he feels that way, he calls Welsknight by "Wels".

[There's a little more nuance to it than that as well. Tanguish flips a lot on whether he says "Wels" or "Welsknight" depending on if he thinks it will be insulting. He spends a lot of time trying to manipulate people so they won't hurt him or find him threatening. Tango calls him "Wels" because they're friends, and would call him that on Hermitcraft as opposed to formally full-name-dropping him. Etc.]

[silverskye13]

I am aware that I could be completely wrong, but I also know how much authors like hearing theories, so. Does a helsmet becoming a saint have something to do with reconciling with their hermit? Or saving them in some way, like how Tanguish does for Tango? Or even the other way around, the hermit doing it? Maybe they have to have someone devoted to them too. Or maybe even the devoted person is the actual trigger! I got to thinking about how it could even be triggered, now that we know there are at least three running around hels. Might be off the mark, but your worldbuilding gives my brain so much to chew on and I love trying to find the connections and the threads.

Very very good thoughts!

The way I've been trying to write it, is that a helsmet has to come to turns with [and subvert] their nature, or the reason they were made. This gets more difficult the closer they get to going back to the Universe -- they slide easier into whatever bad habit that made them.

It will get addressed in a little more depth, but just as an example, EB was the helsmet for Xisuma's pride. He was a very prideful Champion -- it was why he built his persona around being the Colosseum's Darling. He had to get over that pride to become a Saint.

Tanguish was Tango's codependency. There is a specific moment in RnS where he breaks his tie with Tango by leaning away from that codependency.

But! Those are my thoughts. It hasn't ever been directly stated in the fic -- mostly because no helsmet really knows what causes the break. If they did, hels wouldn't be nearly so harrowing a place to be.

[silverskye13]

SILVER

(Please) GIVE US MORE HELSKNIGHT AND TANGUISH KISSES,

AND MY LIFE

IS YOURS

I'm sure this is referring to written scenes in the fic, but I won't get the chance to do that for awhile so! Have some of my collected doodles instead!

[silverskye13]

you don't need to answer if this if you don't want to, especially because I know religion and related issues can be Very Personally Complex. But I wanted to let you know that I really, really, REALLY loved the recent chapters of R&S where Tanguish interacts with the knight of Memory and the knight insists on giving Tanguish the diamonds. They say “If you still don’t think you deserve this gift, take it in remembrance of me.”

I grew up in the church and yeah HELLO that line hit with familiarity, but also... I think you may have provoked an epiphany. I'm reevaluating the whole way I interpret the eucharist because of this line and it's something truly beautiful.

I don't know if that was an intentional point you were making, or if you were simply borrowing the language as a reference, but either way: that scene is going to stick with me for a long time and I just wanted to say I appreciate it.

...and that I love the whole dang fic and I look forward to every chapter. :D

I think probably the more interesting things to come out of this fic are the number of practicing religious / previous religious folks who had sent me asks along the vein, saying RnS has them thinking deeply about their religion. Even if me and God aren't exactly on speaking terms ourselves, I am! Very honored to know I've influenced your beliefs in a positive way. I used to study the Bible pretty [heh] religiously. I loved reading interpretations, comparing translations, and digging into the original Hebrew. When I first found out the book of Revelation was probably metaphoric apocrypha instead of literal text, I was overjoyed rereading it to try and find meaning. There is something very powerful and human about the divine. We search for meaning and we find it, or it finds us.

Anyway, all that to say, yes that was intentional word choice! Both because of the reference to divinity that's an easy hallmark for people to pick up, if you've partaken in Eucharist or Communion, but also because of the aspect of religion/divinity that I used to enjoy most -- that it is giving a gift, and taking a gift into yourself. RnS has a lot of philosophy about taking up space, the art of figuring out where you belong in relation to self and other people, and the holy is just as much a part of that. Take this and remember me. Remember how I was, how I met you, and how you changed. Take sustenance from this, use it to build yourself into something you can live with. Use it to build yourself into something I can beside, within, amongst. Take this and remember I thought you were worth the sacrifice. Keep taking up space. If I did not love you already, as you are, I wouldn't have given it.