#thematics

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A white sport coat and a pink carnation I'm all dressed up for the dance A white sport coat and a pink carnation I'm all alone in romance

Once you told me long ago To the prom with me you'd go Now you've changed your mind it seems Someone else will hold my dreams

—A White Sports Coat (and A Pink Carnation)* (1957)

I send you flowers but you don't care You never seem to see me standing there I often wonder what you're thinking of I hope it's me and love love love

—Hello Little Girl (1957)

Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers That grow so incredibly high

—Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds (1967)

Find me in my field of grass Mother Nature's son Swaying daisies, sing a lazy song Beneath the sun

—Mother Nature's Son (1968)

Songs that lingered on my lips excite me now And linger on my mind Leave your flowers at my door I'll leave them for the one who waits behind

—Goodbye (1968)

Some call it magic The search for the grail Love is the answer And you know that for sure Love is a flower You got to let it grow

—Mind Games (1970, 1973)

Sweep through the heather like deer in the glen Carry me back to the days I knew then Nights when we sang like a heavenly choir Of the life and the times of the Mull of Kintyre

—Mull of Kintyre (1977)

All through the summer, I have followed you around Bringing a rose for the winter that's coming Now the snow is on the ground... Love awake to the day When we can make our love awake

—Winter Rose/Love Awake (1978)

You want a love to last forever One that will never fade away I want to help you with your problem Stick around, I say Coming up, coming up, yeah Coming up like a flower Coming up, I say

—Coming Up (1979)

If you'll forgive me my little flower princess Never too late unless you can't forgive

Time is on our side Let's not waste another minute 'Cause I love you my little friend I really love you

Give me just one more chance And I'll show you, take up the dance Where we left off

—Forgive Me (My Little Flower Princess)** (1980)

After hours  Late in the bar  By a darkened corner seat  Faded flowers wait in the jar  Till the evening is complete 

—Take It Away (1981)

She sprinkles flowers in the dirt That's when a thrill becomes a hurt I know I'll never see her face She walks away from my resting place

That day is done, that day is done You know where I've gone I won't be coming back That day is done

Ho'olheyak really is quite the tragic figure once you read her file, isn't she?

For all her being very funny and her inexhaustible Bug Bunny energy, she really has been through so much, forced into a generations-long project that she never asked for, as a mere infant.

Is a small baby she was subjected to some sort of horrible brain surgery that forced the entirety of her species history into her brain and drastically cut down her lifespan, which is implied to be both very traumatic (only a infant could possibly survive it because once a child is old enough to have a sence of "self" it would have been completely obliterated along with their mind) and with incredibly high mortality (As Warfarin puts it: "I don't want to ask her how, many siblings she *had*).

All to force her to continue her family's generations-long project to restore the bloodline powers of the ancient ku'kul'kan.

While she maintains that the brain surgery does not in any force her to do this, she could if she wanted to, drop the entire thing. But I wonder how true that is.

After all, the sunk cost fallacy is real, and once you've already paid with half of your life, what choice is there really but to continue the work? To to otherwise would be to say that the price you paid was not worth it. That the price your mother paid, and her mother before her, going back hundreds if not thousands of years, was not worth it. That the goal they worked towards is not worth trying to achieve. That the sacrifice that was forced upon you has no meaning.

Which child, implanted with scenes of your people's lost grandeur and raised from birth for this single mission, could really say that they are doing it of their own free will? That they had a choice, when they were selected to pay the price for it even before they were born?

One wonders also, how this has created the Ho'olheyak we know. How different would she be if she did not have her people's history rattling around in her brain since before she could talk?

It also explains in a way, her wanting up always work alone. After all, who else could understand the importance of her mission, how everything and everyone can be sacrificed on its altar if need be, than the one who has already paid the highest price for it, and who can literally feel the wingsbeats of ancient ku'kul'kan in her mind? Who else could ever understand.

And that's not getting into her equipment, how each part of the gear she carries is intended to mimic a trait of the mythical Ku'kul'kan, how this burden she carries is literally too heavy to bear without using her arts to lighten it (her exoskeleton alone weighs over 90 kilograms. Without using her arts to lighten it, she would not be able to move). How perhaps the burden of reviving a extinct bloodline would be too much to bear for any human, except perhaps, one created for that express purpose with Arts and brain surgery, to be the perfect, or indeed, the only possible banner-bearer that could endure the weight of generations of sacrifice towards a single cause? Maybe I'm reading up much into it but the parallels are there.

And in the end, soon enough, as her drastically shortened lifespan runs out. She will breed, likely several times to endure she has backup infants (and isn't that a cold-blooded thought? "the first one might not survive, better make more") . And she will subject her infants to the same horribly invasive and lethal brain surgery as was done to her. Until one of them survives. And that one will carry on the project. That one surviving baby will bear the torch. Will burn their life from both ends.

Of her own free will.

You can probably draw a lot of interesting parallels here. Both to the greatness of multi-generational work: "I plant a tree so my grandchildren can sit in the shade", but also to continuing cycles of abuse: "This, was done to me. I will do it to my children in turn. And they to their children. And the one that survived will carry on the torch."

I don't know. I just think she's incredibly fascinating and interesting once you get beyond the first, obvious outer layer of Sexy Fucked Up Evil Snake Woman.

An interesting theme in stories, whether television, movies, comics, books… I’ve noticed that lately that the Villain and Hero get ‘shipped’ more often than not, that they’re “really the same, except one of them is rude about it”, the Villain is believed to be more correct and the Hero is insidious or a coward.

Usually, the story clearly illustrates that the Villain is, at their core, greedy. Different from ambitious, not simply hungry, but greedy. Greedy for power, for prestige, for influence and personal gain over the consequences of stepping on others to get it.

Greed isn’t admirable.

Pulling others up with you, not stepping on people to get where you want to go, striving to simply be better than the current state you find yourself in, seeing to the need for good actions around you… that is admirable.

Greed isn’t cute, it’s not funny, it’s not good. It’s rot. And Villains don’t care about that, or if they realize their problem, they don’t work to fix it. That’s what separates them from the Heroes.

Just something I’ve been ruminating on, and it jumped my brain before I was even properly awake, so I inflict it on the ‘net.