A Favorite Custom By Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1909)

I always told you, your sweet side is your best side. …I guess that’s why you’re the only one who’s ever seen it.

— Kill Bill: Vol. 2

TAMZIN MERCHANT as KATHERINE HOWARD

THE TUDORS (2010)

"Christianity is the only major world religion to have as its central focus the suffering and degradation of its God. The crucifixion is so familiar to us, and so moving, that it is hard to realize how unusual it is as an image of God." Churches sometimes offer Christian education classes under the title "Why Did Jesus Have to Die?" This is not really the right question. A better one is, "Why was Jesus crucified?" The emphasis needs to be, not just on the death, but on the manner of the death. To speak of a crucifixion is to speak of a slave's death. We might think of all the slaves in the American colonies who were killed at the whim of an overseer or owner, not to mention those who died on the infamous Middle Passage across the Atlantic. No one remembers their names or individual histories; their stories were thrown away with their bodies. This was the destiny chosen by the Creator and Lord of the universe: the death of a nobody. Thus the Son of God entered into solidarity with the lowest and least of all his creation, the nameless and forgotten, "the offscouring [dregs] of all things" (1 Cor. 4:13).

—Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (p.75)

I think one of the reasons the trinity works so well is because they all come from three different distinct genres of literature.

The Batman mythos are heavily based in gothic literature and the tropes you find in gothic stories. Everything from the setting to the tone to the types of villains, with large amounts of mad scientists of the victor Frankenstein variety and mysterious serial killers. Even the Jokers clown and carnival imagery fits nicely into themes we see in stories like “the count of amontillado”.

Wonder Woman on the other hand is quite obviously more mythology based. Obviously the Greek gods literally appear in her books, but even Diana’s character and plot lines are reminiscent of Greek hero stories, with heavy ties into themes like hubris and nature. There’s also a lot of tie in’s from mythology around the world, with Roman mythology and African mythology specifically coming to mind.

Superman is obviously a “traditional” superhero, but more directly a lot of his stuff is sci fi in a way the other two are not. There’s the obvious aliens of it all, but also the way metropolis and his human villains are shown. Metropolis tends to be aesthetically futuristic in a way most of the DCU isn’t. And despite Lex Luthor being a “mad scientist,” he’s characterized quite differently then the scientists in Batman stories, with his flaws being less about “madness” (like in gothic stories) and more about control and hatred (which is more reminiscent of what we see in sci fi books).

It just makes sense that the reason these three are so successful is because they all fit into niches with very little overlap. None of their stories have the same tone or aesthetic as the others, which allows for so much variety. It’s actually really impressive.

The Broken Man

“Ser? My lady?” said Podrick. “Is a broken man an outlaw?”

“More or less,” Brienne answered.

Septon Meribald disagreed. “More less than more. There are many sorts of outlaws, just as there are many sorts of birds. A sandpiper and a sea eagle both have wings, but they are not the same. The singers love to sing of good men forced to go outside the law to fight some wicked lord, but most outlaws are more like this ravening Hound than they are the lightning lord. They are evil men, driven by greed, soured by malice, despising the gods and caring only for themselves. Broken men are more deserving of our pity, though they may be just as dangerous. Almost all are common-born, simple folk who had never been more than a mile from the house where they were born until the day some lord came round to take them off to war. Poorly shod and poorly clad, they march away beneath his banners, ofttimes with no better arms than a sickle or a sharpened hoe, or a maul they made themselves by lashing a stone to a stick with strips of hide. Brothers march with brothers, sons with fathers, friends with friends. They’ve heard the songs and stories, so they go off with eager hearts, dreaming of the wonders they will see, of the wealth and glory they will win. War seems a fine adventure, the greatest most of them will ever know.

“Then they get a taste of battle.

“For some, that one taste is enough to break them. Others go on for years, until they lose count of all the battles they have fought in, but even a man who has survived a hundred fights can break in his hundred-and-first. Brothers watch their brothers die, fathers lose their sons, friends see their friends trying to hold their entrails in after they’ve been gutted by an axe.

“They see the lord who led them there cut down, and some other lord shouts that they are his now. They take a wound, and when that’s still half-healed they take another. There is never enough to eat, their shoes fall to pieces from the marching, their clothes are torn and rotting, and half of them are shitting in their breeches from drinking bad water.

“If they want new boots or a warmer cloak or maybe a rusted iron halfhelm, they need to take them from a corpse, and before long they are stealing from the living too, from the smallfolk whose lands they’re fighting in, men very like the men they used to be. They slaughter their sheep and steal their chickens, and from there it’s just a short step to carrying off their daughters too. And one day they look around and realize all their friends and kin are gone, that they are fighting beside strangers beneath a banner that they hardly recognize. They don’t know where they are or how to get back home and the lord they’re fighting for does not know their names, yet here he comes, shouting for them to form up, to make a line with their spears and scythes and sharpened hoes, to stand their ground. And the knights come down on them, faceless men clad all in steel, and the iron thunder of their charge seems to fill the world…

“And the man breaks.

“He turns and runs, or crawls off afterward over the corpses of the slain, or steals away in the black of night, and he finds someplace to hide. All thought of home is gone by then, and kings and lords and gods mean less to him than a haunch of spoiled meat that will let him live another day, or a skin of bad wine that might drown his fear for a few hours. The broken man lives from day to day, from meal to meal, more beast than man. Lady Brienne is not wrong. In times like these, the traveler must beware of broken men, and fear them…but he should pity them as well.”

When Meribald was finished a profound silence fell upon their little band. Brienne could hear the wind rustling through a clump of pussywillows, and farther off the faint cry of a loon. She could hear Dog panting softly as he loped along beside the septon and his donkey, tongue lolling from his mouth. The quiet stretched and stretched, until finally she said, “How old were you when they marched you off to war?”

“Why, no older than your boy,” Meribald replied. “Too young for such, in truth, but my brothers were all going, and I would not be left behind. Willam said I could be his squire, though Will was no knight, only a potboy armed with a kitchen knife he’d stolen from the inn. He died upon the Stepstones, and never struck a blow. It was fever did for him, and for my brother Robin. Owen died from a mace that split his head apart, and his friend Jon Pox was hanged for rape.”

“The War of the Ninepenny Kings?” asked Hyle Hunt.

“So they called it, though I never saw a king, nor earned a penny. It was a war, though. That it was.”

— A Feast for Crows, George R.R. Martin

“Allow yourself to be known, but not comprehended. No one will discern the limits of your talent, and thus no one will be disappointed.”

— Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom

Thinking of Kyle Maclachlan

i watched Kill Bill vol. 1 earlier

LADY SNOWBLOOD (1973) dir. TOSHIYA FUJITA

Lady Vengeance (2005)