JOJO'S REFERENCES IN THE SEED OF THE HANGED

Due to the author's love for anime, progressive rock, Italian food, and fashion, a legion of JoJo's references often crop up in StrixAlluka's Enjoltaireverse. Especially in her epic saga El semen de los ahorcados / The Seed of the Hanged: 

from the characters' poses -- to the psychedelic colours in key scenes (for instance teal, orange, and chartreuse together - a frequent colour scheme!), to Grantaire, Jo-Lee, and Bossuet being modelled physically and personality-wise on Josuke, Koichi, and Okuyasu respectively (and Musichetta on Koichi's girlfriend Yukako, the one with Love Deluxe) -- to "Kono Parnasse da!" and "I, Paragon Enjolras, have a dream" (and the core members of AS-SORTED doing the Torture Dance) to La Squadra Esecuzioni being anti-villains in the UK Starforce Auror gaiden (and in As the Luck Would Have It, the Toll AU).

But what stands out is surely a JJBA referenced combined with a Date Everything reference: already R and friends had unboxed in the Gryffindor commonroom, in an omake, a Rebel-based (Rebel as an object) rubber duck-chicken hybrid, using a wizarding camera (that's the "honorificabilitudinitatibus" omake where the Gryffindors play chubby bunny using such ten-dollar --ten-dollar is an understatement-- words as "antidisestablishmentarianism," "hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian," and the name of a certain railway station on Anglesey in Wales, and a certain hill on the North Island of New Zealand - hilarious! Grantaire wins the competition but knocking on death's door; he almost gets an impromptu tracheotomy because the "whaka" part of the hill's name is pronounced "fucka" and he has a baker's dozen marshmallows in his mouth and throat! The entire gaiden is HILARIOUS!). 

The reference to JJBA is in Éponine's fanfic QUIDDISTAR, a TENNISTAR AU with Courfparnasse (who want to become QuiddiStars in the AU) as her crack OTP, set on a Quidditch training camp (Courf and Parnasse are obviously not amused!). The titles of the fic's acts, or Matches, are Quidditch puns on the Parts of JoJo's, a reference to the seasons of TENNISTAR being puns on those same Parts! In order, the punny titles are: 

Match I: Phantom Quidditch

Match II: Quaffle Tendency

Match III: Quidditch Cup Crusaders

Match IV: Leather is Untearable

Match V: Boccino Aureo / Golden Snitch

Match VI: Stone Bludger

Match VII: Steel Bat Run

Match VIII: ParnasseLion (4 Balls!)

Match IX: The COURFEYLands

:::::::::::::::::::::::

In TENNISTAR, the punny titles are:

• Volley Tendency is a play on Part 2's subtitle, Battle Tendency.
• Grand Slam Crusaders is a play on Part 3's subtitle, Stardust Crusaders.
• Nylon is Unbreakable is a play on Part 4's subtitle, Diamond is Unbreakable.
• Golden Spin / Giro Aureo is a play on Part 5's subtitle, Golden Wind / Vento Aureo.
  • While not a direct reference, a battle technique known as "Spin" features prominently in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, mainly in Part 7: Steel Ball Run.

POTATOES AND MOLOSSUS... I MEAN, MOLE-ASSES...

 “No, no, NO!”
Maury stood fuming, his hands splayed to the air and covered with thick, black, sticky liquid, while more of the same spread at leisure across the counter and dripped viscously onto the floor.
“That’s a molossus,” I said, getting up to have a better look at the peccadillo.
“I know it’s molasses,” Maury growled. “It’s molasses from a structurally unreliable tetrabrick carton!” He uttered an imprecation that would be indelicate to print here.
I reached over and turned on the kitchen tap, then grabbed a couple of paper towels to help mop up the mess. I was there to eat his food, after all. “No,” I said, “what you said. ‘No, no, no!’ It’s a molossus. A foot of three consecutive stressed, beats.” Like big guard dog, which is what a molossus is actually.
Maury was washing his hands. “Who’s talking about prosody?”
I risked a pun. “Iamb.”
He gave me a persecuted look over the top of his glasses. “Now is not the time for spondee-neity.” Heh heh!  A true wordplay addict can’t resist even when in a sticky situation.
I was stuffing gooey paper towels into his trash can. “What, exactly, are you making, anyway?”
“Shoo-fly pie,” he replied. As if on cue, his oven beeped that it was preheated.
“Another molossus!”
“Yes, made with molasses.”
“Well,” I observed, “in the south, mo’ lasses than lads make it.”
“Yes,” Maury said, tossing the disintegrated tetrabrick in the rubbish, “and no doubt you’ll next make some point about its colour resembling the anuses of moles. Mole-asses, get it?”
“No,” I lied, “I was next going to talk about how those southern girls like to call you ‘honey,’ which, in Latin, is Mel – a nice nickname for a southern belle – which was the root of mellacium, which fed through Portuguese or Spanish melaza to make our molasses.” I leaned against the wall as Maury took another carton of molasses out of his cupboard. Who has multiple molasses in their cupboard? And how many did Maury have? He closed the door before I could see.
“I’ll have to use blackstrap molasses,” he said, and added, apparently forgetting who he was talking to, “so called because when poured it forms a ribbon rather similar to a black leather strap.” As he measured it, he muttered, “I’m heading for more of a black dog here right now.”
“A molossus dog,” I offered. “Massive, like a mastiff. A now-defunct breed of guard dog, but a contributor to some of our bigger modern breeds, from St. Bernard to Rottweiler. A toponym eponym: Molossia is a place in northwestern Greece.”
“Both words sound heavy,” he observed, “but not sticky.” He measured some baking soda into the mixing bowl, which held a mix of molasses, water, and eggs, and it frothed gratifyingly, making a slight sound not unlike the S’s in the words in question. As he mixed in some crumble of  flour, sugar, and butter and poured it all into a pie shell, then topped it with more of the crumble, he mused, “I wonder why a dog. Because it’s big? A big guard dog! Why not a chim-pan-zee? That’s a molossus.”
“Perhaps they simply both come from the same place.” I watched him slide the pie into the oven. “Why name musical modes Lydian, Phrygian, or Dorian?”
“Or fridge-doorian.” Maury fixed his gaze on the fridge door and I got out of the way. He retrieved the mint syrup and ice for his impending julep and took them to the table, whereon rested the bourbon and glasses. “But nobody much uses those modes now, just as nobody much uses the molossus.”
I followed, hot on the trail of my next refreshment. “Gilbert and Sullivan did.” I saw Maury’s back momentarily freeze. He knew a song cue was coming and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He filled his tumbler to the brim as I launched into The Mikado:

“To sit in solemn silence in a dull dark dock,
In a pestilential prison, with a lifelong lock,
Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock,
From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!”

(Other examples of molossi are "big bad wolf," "he died old," and any name of a Tarot court card: Ace of Wands, King of Cups, Queen of Swords, Knight / Page / Prince of Disks. And Edgar Allan Poe's "Ne-ver-more!" As you know, every stanza in The Raven ends with a molossus: "Lost Le-nore," "cham-ber door," "days of yore," "no-thing more..." And, speaking of -ore rhymes, the three summer months in the Revolutionary calendar: Mes-si-dor, Ther-mi-dor (the present month), and Fruc-ti-dor... The catalogue of molossi in the English language is an END-LESS LIST!)
Maury turned, washed down half his glass, and appeared to envision me enduring my execution. He made an unpleasant smile.

THE SEED OF THE HANGED - Cats and Amazon

At several points in El semen de los ahorcados, Grantaire goes on conspiracy theories during his rants (when he's not playing his acoustic guitar on the streets of Hogsmeade). Including the one that cats invented Amazon. One day in fifth form (in Book II) at the Three Broomsticks, he drops his little theory for the first time:

GRANTAIRE: Friends, have you heard of Amazon?

ENJOLRAS: The rainforest or the warrior women?

GRANTAIRE: Neither. It's a Muggle website and app, on the Internet...

ENJOLRAS: Do you mean on "computters?"

GRANTAIRE: "Computters," as you say, yes indeed, and smart devices. Basically you purchase any object (though most Muggles buy books or gadgets) on the app or on the site, and pay with a credit card...

ENJOLRAS: That little plastic card where Muggles keep their money? Honestly, I wonder how the equivalent of billions of Galleons fit into that li'l thingamabob.

GRANTAIRE: Exactement! You pay with credit card, give Amazon your adress, and days or weeks later, depending on in which country the product was, Amazon sends it to you - obviously not by owl; by plane and by van... what matters is that your product comes in an Amazon box, made of corrugated cardboard and decorated with a smiling mouth...

COURFEYRAC: I have my own phone, though I can't take it to Hogwarts, and I have ordered a few magical girl figurines - Sailor Venus, Angel Daisy, and Cure Lemonade are in my bookshelf. They all came in those smiley boxes you said.

GRANTAIRE: And does your cat scratch the boxes or sleep in them?

COURFEYRAC: Of course! Though I have to throw them in the rubbish when Cleo has torn them to shreds!

GRANTAIRE: Listen carefully, Courf: I think she is mind-controlling you...

COURFEYRAC: Mind-controlling me? Like, is someone casting Imperius on yours truly? Who?

GRANTAIRE: Who else? Your lovely Siamese Cleo, and no, she isn't Imperiusing you but it comes pretty close. Pet cats rescued from the streets have a little parasite called toxoplasmosis, that they can transmit to their humans by scratching them...

COURFEYRAC: A mind-controlling parasite?

COMBEFERRE: Like that mushroom that grows on ants? Or that worm that makes snails' eyes look like candy canes, I mean, caterpillars? But a parasite that controls - like, humans, people? From the inside?

GRANTAIRE: Exactement! Did you know cats actually invented Amazon? It wasn't Jeff Bezos; a global council of domestic felines, armed with the toxoplasma parasite, mind-controlled their humans and created the online platform to ensure a steady supply of premium, reinforced cardboard boxes delivered right to their living rooms.

The plot is genius, really. Cats knew that if they let their humans order random things like phone chargers and shampoo, and magical girl warrior figurines, they would get the ultimate prize—a perfectly sized, dimly lit box to sit in, hide from the world, and ambush their unsuspecting owners. It is a flawless logistics network dedicated entirely to making sure every house cat gets their new cardboard nest and scratching post. You think you're ordering your magical girls online, Courf, but it's actually Cleo who's calling the shot. Are you going home for spring break?

COURFEYRAC: Yes, I'm coming home to our estate for Easter as per Courfeyrac tradition...

GRANTAIRE: You'll have your phone! Any magical girl on your wishlist...?

COURFEYRAC: I think I'm going to order Naoto Shirogane and Rise Kujikawa for a change. They're characters from another anime, a teen detective and a popstar for your information...

GRANTAIRE: Toxoplasmosis is working its magic...

(After Easter, Courf has brought both Rise --in her popstar getup-- and Naoto --in her detective getup-- to his collection on his bookshelf in the Hufflepuff boys' quarters; of course Cleo is nestling in Naoto's box and sharpening her nails on Rise's... Courf can't shake R's theory off his head!)

Updates on AFTER LÜTZEN - Changes to the AU

 You already know from El semen de los ahorcados that Courfeyrac had an ancestor who fought in the Thirty Years' War (and whom he dressed up as for a masquerade -  before the rewrite, in which Courf dresses as Puss in Boots instead). Well, his story is about to be expanded upon, as a StrixAlluka 30YW AU with the Amis as Swedish Army deserters turned guerrilla soldiers of fortune is underway. It will be in Swedish and called "Efter Lützen". Enj is Prussian landed gentry and R a Moor by way of Marseille (Engelhart Schönherr and Razi/René)... most of the cast will remain French though with a few more exceptions (Musichetta, Leslie - Lesgle, Joellll - Jolllly)... Furthermore, Gustavus Adolphus will play the role Napoleon played in canon Les Mis!

The idea or bunny came partly from that reference to the musketeer Baron de Courfeyrac in El semen, partly from a mention of Lützen in Les Misérables canon, Colonel Pontmercy having fought in the Napoleonic battle. But I could not shake the idea of the 30YW battle off my head and wondered what if Les Mis had been set in that period and all the Amis sans Marius had been killed in that seventeenth-century war. And of course Colonel Pontmercy would have fought in a Swedish-French alliance and been killed at Lützen...

Engelhart Schönherr and Jules Combeferre + Hercule-Joffrey de Courfeyrac. There you have the rittmeister and his two lieutenants respectively, who keep the ranks they held in the Swedish military. The young Prussian of the landed gentry and his French teacher's son, who has a plan to sort out all flora and fauna a century before Linnaeus, both joined the Swedish military in their late adolescence in order to fight for freedom of worship. The young Gascon baron and lieutenant of musketeers came to the heart of Europe as an envoy to the Swedish camp, representing the Cardinal (Richelieu), with a certain Moor by way of Marseille (R, aka Razi, aka René) for a valet (and cupbearer, and squire...).

Enj is actually a Winged Hussar from Küstrin, on the Prussian-Polish border, yes, and those golden angelic wings are as impressive as they sound; he sells them to Sr. Álvarez/M. Thénardier in exchange for a big hen that turned out to be a meat chicken instead of an egg layer - and then, at the tail end of the war, he makes himself new wings, Icarus style, from all the woodland fowls that he's hunted.

Combeferre studied at Leipzig University, but was expelled for being a freethinker (agnostic) and subsequently press-ganged into Catholic service in a tavern (under the influence) then taken prisoner at Breitenfeld and joined the Swedish ranks.

Courfeyrac is from a Huguenot background and he fled Gascony to escape from an arranged marriage to a girl of his rank whom he didn't know.

All of the characters are sharing the same personality and character arcs as in canon, but adapted to the 30YW setting. Pairings are also the same as in the rest of my AUs (Enjoltaire, Courferre, Éposette, Montponine, Mariusette, Jolesgletta, Valvert, Baholly, etc)

Razi (René), the Moor who never has laid eyes on his parents' birthplace of Castellón, started out with his widowed mother Miriam (Marie) on the docks of Marseille; her husband having been killed in a street fight on those same docks. He became a petty servant in Courfeyrac's entourage, and then the Baron's confidant, thanks to circumstances beyond his control.

R was born on the ship from Valencia to Marseille; when Miriam died and he was orphaned, friends of the family on the docks took up a collection to send him to Paris. He happened to save Cardinal Richelieu's shoes from a muddy puddle by throwing his cloak upon the puddle, and became the Cardinal's personal cupbearer, secretary, and cat-feeder. Before being the personal assistant to Courf, he had those ranks and offices for the late King of Sweden.

The Álvarez (actually Thénardier) family - camp followers, confidence tricksters, and corpse plunderers, whose wagon home can always be found when an engagement has just taken place. Cosette's former guardians, who pretend to be Spanish nobles (according to the Thénardiers themselves, he's from Barcelona ---Fawlty Towers reference!--- and she's from Santiago de Compostela). Éponine alone, their firstborn, is not supporting this elaborate confidence trick; unlike her younger siblings Azelma and Gavroche - although the latter joins Engelhart's company alongside his eldest sister, as per canon

Cosette, Marius, and Valjean "the snowy owl..." Innocent orphan adolescent Fantine was, in this era, ravaged by a thirtyish officer when her home village was raided; she entrusted her daughter to the Thénardiers just like in canon for the same reasons and became a worker in a uniform cloth factory in Wallenstein's province of Friedland, with Valjean for an overseer - his backstory is also just like in canon (older sister and fatherless nephews, bread theft, prisoner camp... lock stock and barrel - only sans kindly bishop and with Wallenstein instead).

Musichetta - here she is a North Italian (Ferrarese) opera singer who was soubrette until a while ago to fairytale collector and primadonna her southern friend Adriana Basile (who compiled the Pentamerone alongside her brother Giambattista!). Not long ago, they parted ways when she decided to move up north into the war torn heart of Europe with the half of the company that preferred opera buffa to opera seria - in order to bring smiles to the regions with commedia-dell'arte style plots and gags.

The ending is just like in canon, and framed like the stories Marius tells his daughter with Cosette, Catherine Pontmercy.

Feuilly is now Romany and nonbinary; Jehanne Prouvaire is trans and descendant of Cathars (she hears angelic voices like Jehanne of Arc). Bahorel is still  the thug-faced farm boy with the heart of a plushie.

Leslie (Lesgle)/Bossuet is a half-Scottish, half Mali mulatto ex-chamber Moor (Moor as in dark-skinned person, not as in Muslim) from a ducal court. And Joly went from being a Sephardic Jew called Joel... to being Jo-Lee "Jo-lee-lee-lee" from Joseon, who found himself in Europe due to mysterious circumstances (due to the historical webtoons I now read, Joseon is now my latest special interest!)

And Montparnasse is still the same old sociopath, a former street rat and self-made officer with a killer instinct...

The group name is now Freiheitskinder (instead of Friends of the ABC) and they at first live nomadically in the woods, then take an abandoned estate mansion, which they call the Engelsnest, as their headquarters

A NEW CHAPTER IN THE BARATHEON SAGA

This is the end of the Baratheon Saga. I envisioned it at first in third person like the rest of the Saga but this afternoon I had an epiphany that it should be told in first person by a very important character:

Dearest reader, I am typing these words from my office in Zürich. I feel that it is my duty to tell you the end of the Baratheon story, and how it all comes back to the same source.

I am ambiguously grateful to my Uncle Peter and Aunt Lizzie for allowing me to resume my University education here in Switzerland, thanks to them I have become a Primary schoolteacher in history and the proud enlightener of class after class of starry-eyed children. Oh, if they only knew the real stories about her real life that Fräulein Stark has experienced!

What caused my move to Zürich was quite unexpected... after Aunt Lizzie fell off the ledge in our châlet, her widowed husband began making moves on yours truly, saying how much I look like my mother, Kate Stark née Tully, who was his childhood sweetheart. Putting his hands underneath my skirt (I retaliated by wearing trousers for the first time in forever) and worse. So I packed my savings and came to Zürich on my own, with a little black case, and I have to commute Monday through Friday to the little school in the valley where I give my history lessons.

I have discovered that my family is doing somewhat well, somewhat not so well. My Papa, Ned Stark, was captured by the Nazis for trying to save their victims and executed by firing squad. My mother and oldest brother Roy are doing very fine in Värmland - Roy is volunteering in the war in Finland and getting married to one Jane Westerling, a volunteer nurse.

My younger sister Anna, that royal pest, has been employed by the KGB in Leningrad as a secret agent, with Varish, the Comrade of Sturmende, himself as her mentor. Nothing else is known about them, and I am pretty curious about their circumstances.

Stanislaus Baratheon and his wife Elise saw their daughter Irene being taken from them by the Nazis, and they blamed Aleksandra, the Lady in Red who said she would cure Irene of her autism. As a result, the Lady in Red burned down the parish of Sturmende with the two remaining Baratheons inside.

As for the two "Baratheon" children who are actually von Lännister, Elsa and Telramund, they still live in Valencia at one-gender boarding schools. Count Jakob von Lännister volunteered for the Republican side (something unheard of!) in the Civil War and was killed at the Ebro, while his ladylove Brünnhilde von Tarth moved to Valencia and is now working as a secretary for a local bureaucrat.

Laurent Tyrell and his lover Wenzel von Lännister, and the merry widow Margot Tyrell, moved not long ago from Paris to Zürich due to the Nazi occupation, and they work still as bohemian artists. In fact, the young trio now live in a block of flats next to mine! I was elated to finally speak to Margot and to Laurent and to tell them that I murdered Gottfried Baratheon... but it shall be our secret, shan't it?

Last of all, I want to talk about Elisabeth von Lännister. She paid the price for her many sexual dalliances and for her alcoholism by being taken prisoner in the Soviet occupation of Sturmende and losing her hair, her shame, her decorum, and her sanity in the process. She was found dead in the water tank in the Gulag where she was kept.

I myself have resolved not to get married, but to keep my friends close and acknowledge the peace in this country and the fact that I live swaddled in a cocoon of neutrality while the war rages at the door. I get rather well paid as a teacher, I adore my student children's curious questions, and it has been a pleasure to reconnect with the Tyrells (and to know Wenzel von Lännister). This chronicle that started with the Barathéons' leaving France during the Revolution has finally reached the present day, and I hope that you have taken some lessons out of it.

Zürich, November 1949

Sandra Stark.

PS. The other scenes I haven't written, like the deaths of Robert and Rainer, I will write them. This is the end of the plot, but not the end of my writing the Baratheon Saga.

ESTAR O NO ESTAR... el monólogo de Hamlet

 Desde hace cuatro siglos que traducimos "to be or not to be" como "ser o no ser", hasta el punto de que esa traducción está canonizada en los anales del cánon español. Pero al hacerlo se pierde el sentido de que Hamlet está teniendo PENSAMIENTOS SUICIDAS y dudando entre la vida y la muerte. Por eso yo lo traduzco ahora como "estar o no estar": ¿estar en este mundo o no? ¿Estar vivo o muerto? Tengo el orgullo de presentar mi propia traducción al respecto

ESTAR O NO ESTAR... El monólogo de Hamlet

Traducción de Sandra Dermark

*************

Estar o no estar:

¡he aquí el dilema!

¿Qué es más noble:

sufrir los golpes de un destino atroz

o enfrentarse a una marea de dudas

y, enfrentándose, acabar con ella?

Morir, fenecer, tal vez dormir...

Y, con un sueño, acabar con

los mil corazones rotos, los mil contratiempos

que la carne hereda.

Es algo que hay que heredar con ansia,

bueno, desearlo.

¡Aquí está el quid de la cuestión!

Pues, en el sueño eterno,

¿qué sueños podríamos tener

cuando hayamos pasado a mejor vida?

He aquí el respeto

que hace de una larga vida un infortunio.

¿Quién aguantaría el flagelo del tiempo,

las injurias de la opresión,

las de la soberbia,

el desengaño amoroso,

la demora de la ley,

la insolencia del rango

y el despecho que sufren

la paciencia y el mérito

cuando podrías acabar con todo,

sólo de una puñalada?

Pero el miedo a ALGO después de la muerte,

a ese país desconocido

que nadie ha cartografiado,

perpleja al albedrío...

¿Quién cargaría con sus cruces,

con su sangre, sudor y hastío,

ya que este enigma nos hace

mejor sufrir las penas que tenemos

que volar hacia las que no conocemos?

Y así, el color nativo de la decisión

palidece con la frialdad del pensamiento

y las grandes y planeadas empresas

con esto pierden la corriente,

se descarrilan y son privadas

del nombre de "acción".

UNDER THE MIDDAY MOONSHINE

 UNDER THE MIDDAY MOONSHINE

An Othello AU with a (nearly) all-female, all-queer, multicultural cast IN ANTARCTICA

LeShawna Jardinier (Othello)

Marie-Grâce Jardinier (Desdemona)

Cassiopée Véga Delacroix (Cassio)

Iara Ondina Luísa de Souza (Iago)

Emi Mizuno (Emilia)

René François de Satigny (Roderigo)