Birds of the Storm, a 37 pages comic available for 4 more days on Shortbox Comic’s Fair!
I really wanted to do a little bit of animation inspired by the story so here you go. Music is a traditionnal farming song from the french Alps! Sung by my best friend @rosalie-stroesser
For if I applied my whole resource to the equipment of a knight as, Heaven knows, many a man has done, and were to tell you how Vulcan, the wise, the famous, the good artificer, set his own hands to the making of Tristan’s sword, jambs, hauberk, and other pieces pertaining to a knight, in superb and masterly fashion; how he drew and cut out the image of him whose courage is boundless – the Boar – on his escutcheon; how he devised his helmet and in token of Love’s torment raised the Fiery Dart upon it; how one by one he fashioned this and that to marvellous perfection and how my lady Cassandra, the wise Trojan woman, had used all her wit and art on arranging Tristan’s clothes and preparing them for him with her best insight (her spirit, as I read, had been endowed by the gods in heaven with supernatural powers): what effect could all this have, other than when, further back, I was equipping Tristan’s company for his investiture! Saving your disagreement, it is my opinion (and I am convinced of it) that if to these two aids – Mettle and Means – you add Discretion and Courtesy, the Four between them will serve as well as any others. Certainly Vulcan and Cassandra never equipped knights more splendidly than they.
Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan, translated by A. T. Hatto
Would you mind if I asked you to confirm some things, since you've read the Mirror Visitor Quartet in its original French? I've been thinking about the 'maternal/paternal God' themes and was wondering if in the original French, The Other is gendered as male, as he is in the English translation? And also, whether on that scene on the wall where Ophelia is talking to Agatha, whether they refer to their mother in the equivalent French term of 'mommy', or is it something else?
Thank you in advance!
The Other IS referred to as male – I think it’s pretty!! Significant! That both the Other and God, as personas/facets of Eulalie, are referred to in the male… There’s something fascinating to me about the way this book is discussing (the failure and absence of) motherhood, though I never quite manage to articulate it… It’s very compelling! I’d love to hear your thoughts on the topic if you have any! But there is something about the repetition of this theme in: Berenilde’s motherhood issues, Roseline who’s infertile, Ophelie who’s also infertile, Eulalie who’s… infertile… The whole state of Anima which is run by the driest mother figures you can imagine, Artemis included…
Paralleled with the characters who seem to be dealing with their own mother issues, from the perspective of children: Thorn, Octavio, Elizabeth, Farouk — and ofc Ophelie herself…
Back to the Other, isn’t it kind of interesting that the one child who manages to escape him is gender-fluid Janus? I wonder if that’s gonna jump out to me in some way when I reread book 4, I can’t wait!
Do not fall into despair. Continue calling your local officials, attending protests, boycotting companies that fund open genocide. Because of this media blackout, we are now Palestine’s voice - please do your best for them.
