a chapel of ease

it reminds me so much of “i am spartacus”, which is just as often played for comedy in pop culture but in it’s original form, it is deeply sincere and an expression of ultimate solidarity. spartacus, like murzat, was (probably apocryphally irl) the leader of a failed revolt of slaves. the scene that the line comes from was invented for the film, but when the revolt fails, spartacus stands to take the blame for it and every slave still standing that rose with him also claims to be spartacus. they are willing to die in solidarity, they stand united in the quest for freedom against unjust, authoritarian rule. to say it as an idiom in the real world is to shoulder a burden collectively, to share suffering. it is a call to collectivism and a threat of the many against the few.

but what dame seremai’s big moment shows is that the cracks are not between the houses, they are within them. they are all willing to throw the weakest members of their houses under the bus; to use, or abandon, or even kill them as they deem necessary. sure, big style with occtis and gaya and tertia, but yanessa was ready to kill wick and the einfasens are moving to marry ingrid to ethrand even though she absolutely doesn’t want that and they know it will be terrible for her. the house they eliminated was the house that was diminishing in power, yes, but also the house that refused to abandon thjazi fang and that did not force julien into a political marriage. lord einfasen seemed incredibly upset that primus would kill his own son until he learned it was in service of tachonis supremacy.

if a river of blood can become paint and the pariah blades can become ploughshares and the hallowed round can become a theatre, then bolaire can so too be changed. in fact, he already has been, just like when thaisha attempted to reshape the pariah blades and found shadia had already done it unknowingly.

so not only is he a trans man (personal experience here, people infantilise you a lot) but he’s also a gnome and he talks about being picked up and moved around a lot. so even to a dwarf like murray, he’s functionally child-sized. in universe this is racism, so this doesn’t have a 1:1 real world comparison, but it strikes a chord with the infantilisation of disabled people, especially people with visible disabilities who report incidents like having wheel chairs grabbed by strangers.

on top of all that he’s also an adult student. this means a lot of people will infantilise you for not yet having entered “the real world” (conventional work), whether that’s actually true or not. this is especially complicated for murray who has both institutional power over him as bursar but also a duty of care to his general well being. irl, teachers of adults, particularly in universities, are often encouraged institutionally to see their students as children to prevent things like inappropriate teacher/student romantic/sexual relationships. of course that isn’t a flawless system and generates it’s own problems re:infantilisation.

so it’s really important that brennan has demodus stand up for his own agency in conversation with murray, even if he does, at other times, ham up his own persona of jester/clown/silly person. i’d hazard that persona is itself a construction aimed at mitigating whatever anti-gnome (and possibly anti-trans/queer) violence comes his way. yes, he ordinarily chooses to mitigate risks to his safety but if anything that proves that he is Very Aware Of The Risks in a way that murray simply wasn’t giving him credit for.

increasing hostility towards trans men on tumblr

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