#madora ref

1. If you’re asking why Madora’s glove goes over her nails and fits, like, seemlessly over them, it’s because her glove starts to fuse with her body. So it starts out as a glove but around her forearm its just like no, this is just her now.

2. Her weird spinal column bit is attached to her actual spine. When her corruption levels get too high, mutates into just fuckin’ extensions of her bones

3. Yes, her coloration + corruption effect are inspired by FSN alters, and in particular a certain someone....... 

1. Always has a flower in her hair. Can be literally any flower. Although If I could draw anything that looks remotely like a flower, I’d probably draw a camellia/gardenia or a lily usually.

2. Lots of hair. soooooooo much hair. pieces usually cut blunt, but at an angle to give a very sharp appearance

3. Focal point eyes. Hair fringe and facial markings accentuate eyes.

ALRIGHT SO. before talking about Madora’s sword we gotta examine the significance of Yatogami because you gotta understand the themes there to understand why Madora’s sword is it’s counterpoint. 

So basically, the tale of the Yato no Kami is as such - There’s this guy named Matachi and he clears a reed plain for the sake of making new rice fields for the people to grow rice on bc you know. Food is a thing people need. So everything is chill, but then!!! Surprise! These things called Yato no Kami show up. Like. Tons of them. And they’re these snake things with horns on their heads. And they’re total assholes, gathering in these new rice fields and keeping people from tending to their crops.

By the way, did I mention it was said that if one looked back at the Yato no Kami while fleeing them, their entire house and kin would be wiped out and they would have no descendants, thus essentially exterminating their family line? Yeah. That’s a thing.

Anyway Matachi was (rightly) pissed about this so he gears up and takes a spear and is generally not even in the vicinity of fucking around and he hunted them down until they retreated into the mountains. Then he took a stick and planted it in a ditch and basically said: “You can have the land above the stick as your own, but the land below it is for the people. I’m gonna become a priest to worship and revere you so like. Please don’t fuck with us anymore.”

SO YEAH. That’s the origin of this fucking sword. We got serpent symbolism and gods being utter fuckwads to humans (and familial extinction hahhahaHAHAHAHAH THANKS IS WAY TO BE SUBTLE)

Yatogami in game is treated as a holy relic wherein a god may or may not actually reside (just like Ryouma’s “Raijin Gatana” (Thunder God Sword) or Takumi’s “Fuujin Kyuu” (Wind God Bow)). Furthermore, it is repeatedly said to be able to save the world or destroy it depending on who were to wield it. However, it chooses it’s user, ultimately.

So to summarize it is:

a sword that ambiguously houses a kami

divine, so probably not man-made

chooses it’s user

tied to serpents

tied to kami that did not do nice things for humans

Keeping all of that in mind, let’s move on to Madora’s sword.

Firstly, it is made from the pieces of Ganglari (if you arent keeping up with the game, something happens that causes Ganglari to break), reforged by Madora herself, using bits of her own old practice sword to make up for pieces that couldn’t be found. The sword is literally made of her own blood, sweat, and tears (sweat because of her training sword going into it, blood because she bleeds on it to form a blood pact with it since it has the tendency to..... act up, and tears because [spoilers]).

MINOR SPOILERS IN THIS PARAGRAPH BUT IM BEING VAGUE. Ganglari is filled with some sort of... dark power that is Not a Fun Time. So basically, for the first few chapters Madora has it, it “acts up” and she controls it through sheer force of will (and blood pact) up until the beginning of Chapter 9, where, in the beginning of the chapter, it sticks itself into the ground again and starts to do the Bad Thing. Marx tries to pull it out to stop it, but he can’t, and Madora, kinda freaking out because she will not have a repeat of last time so she runs up and forces it out sword-in-the-stone style, forcing whatever fuckin demon magic is in there, out. END SPOILERS

It isn’t until she meets the Rainbow Sage tho that he’s able to properly baptize the sword so it becomes a proper holy weapon. I mean, it’s by her own determination that it’s able to be recognized as a sacred weapon, but he’s the one that formally blesses it as such. She then christens it with the name “Jormungandr”

So why Jormungandr?

Firstly, all the Nohr holy weapons have the names of figures from Norse mythology (Siegfried, Brunhilde, even Ganglari/Gangleri).

Secondly - Jormungandr (or the midgard serpent) is one of the major players in Ragnarok aka the End of the Gods, and, in particular, is Thor’s mortal enemy. Now, it being a player in Ragnarok already makes it Yatogami’s anti-thesis as it is a sword to slay the gods. However it has the added bonus of wrecking Thor, god of thunder, too and guess who has the Thunder God Sword. that’s right, get fucking rekt Ryouma.

So, following the historical connotations, we have Yatogami, whose legend stems from a dude who deified the Yato no Kami and revered them in order to protect his people. So we have a kind of “be indebted to the gods for the sake of peace” thing going on, while Jormungandr has a sort of “kill the gods at the cost of no longer having their protection, but being free” (since Thor was the “protector of man” (not exactly it for either of them, by way of legend, but it fits with each twin’s ideology so)

Then of course, since Jormungandr here is a stand-in for basically all of Ragnarok, it also fits because Ragnarok brings about the “perfect darkness”, Ginnungagap, which fits because Anya (aka Nohr) literally translates into “Dark Night”. But, from that perfect darkness comes creation, and thus a new cycle begins, representing how Nohr is not evil even if it is “darkness”.

Also Jormungandr is a serpent that is so large it wraps around the world. there’s not too much to that, but I think it rly represents Madora? Like, she wants to take the entire world under her wings to protect it, but it’s not feasible, and the one person who got the brunt of that (Brutus) was stifled because of it.

SO FROM THAT WE HAVE, FOR JORMUNGANDR:

god-slayer

mad-made sword

overpowered by user;must be worthy by merit/conquest rather than birthright (ahaha see what i did there)

tied to serpents

tied to monster who slayed the gods which sounds like a Bad, but allowed for rebirth/another cycle so

ANYWAY - another reason Jormungandr is a good and the perfect foil to Yatogami is that, together, they cancel each other out. When Madora and Brutus cross swords, not as enemies, but allies, Jormungandr cancels out all that “familial extinction” shit because it’s a god-slayer, but Yatogami in turn “slays” Jormungandr bc u kno. Jormungandr might’ve slayed a god but was in turn slayed itself, and thus prevents the event wherein mankind cannot be protected (THAT WAS PHRASED RLY WEIRDLY BUT I NEED IT LIKE THAT FOR SOMETHING IM GONNA TALK ABOUT ANOTHER DAY). so ye the two cancel each other’s bad shit out.

BUT THEN there’s also the symbolism of two serpents. You know what two serpents entwined is usually attributed to? A caduceus. Symbols of knowledge, healing, life/death, and in mythology, wielded by Isis, Thoth, and Hermes, who all acted as messengers between the divine and humanity (some more than others coughHermescough)