wingedbeast (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wingedbeast) wrote2015-08-04 06:39 pm
wingedbeast) wrote2015-08-04 06:39 pm
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Black Hat Brigade: Episode 10
Setting: The Round Table. Camera pans to show various knights, then King Arthur... then Prince Charming.
King Arthur: Thank you all for coming. We all have our own stories and canons and responsibilities within. Yet, we also have this cross-canon alliance of villains, calling itself the Black Hat Brigade.
King Arthur: By my understanding, villains have banded together, before, to change stories in their favor. Prince Charming?
Prince Charming stands: Indeed. Such attempts have occasioned numerous meta-narratives of recent decades.
Prince Charming: Very recently, there was the movie Happily Never After, in which the wicked step-mother changed the way the stories happened so that the villains would have happy endings instead of the heroes.
Prince Charming: Similarly, one episode of Charmed dealt with forces of evil making attempt to change the stories so as to corrupt youth with corrupted ethic.
Prince Charming: Generally, when taken as meta-narrative from within the stories, these are restored after some story. In a sense, we, being the good guys, may be assured of victory... but not without cost.
A commotion sounds outside the door. A guard rushes in.
Guard: Your Majesty, I would not interrupt, I beg your pardon...
King Arthur nods: I'm well aware. Report.
Guard: You will not like this sire.
King Arthur: Simply report, good man. I do not make a practice of punishing people simply for delivering bad news.
Susan: But you could.
Susan stands at the door way.
Guard: It's the-
King Arthur: I see. In future, report quickly.
Susan: Do not blame the poor lad. Narrative convention often demands dramatic entry and will use whoever is available to that end. And, if you're going to go to all the trouble to have a meeting about The Black Hat Brigade, we may as well be represented.
King Arthur: Will there be any other representatives?
Susan: Yes, just as soon as you have your guard here inform the others that Morgana Le Fay, Mordred, and Buford Tannen are your guests.
King Arthur to the guard: Request that they surrender their weapons and swear oath upon their power to not take action against us during this meeting. They will be my guest and under protection and I host under similar protection.
Guard balks...
King Arthur: You have your orders.
The guard leaves.
Enter Morgana Le Fay, Mordred, and Buford Tannen. Each take their seats.
King Arthur: You do not lay mind to ease when you openly associate with the mortal enemies of Camelot.
Lady Morgana smirks.
Susan: Nature of the mission. I deal with the mortal enemies of many a protagonist.
King Arthur: Then, please, tell us about your mission. I've only rumors to go upon and, as Prince Charming is so good to inform us, past meta-narratives.
Susan: To bring complexity to stories and bring justice to those who have been done injustice by their respective canons. In example, Morgana Le Fay and Mordred have been done injustice by the Arthurian Legend, casting them as not but evils.
King Arthur: They are evils. They are the ones who destroy all I've built and, in nigh all but the most child-friendly of iterations, Morgana Le Fay is, arguably, guilty of raping me.
Morgana Le Fay (dismissive): Really?
King Arthur: Quite. You take explicit action to hide your identity, realizing that I would, but that I know, not choose to lay with you. In only recent iteration is it acknowledged that I am the product of similar rape and I will not have either violation swept aside. It would do grave injustice.
Susan: Quite agreed. Morgana is never going to be the, as is so childishly put, "good guy". (uses air-quotes)
Morgana Le Fay: I should say that I am. After all, what is my place, King Arthur, in your Camelot?
King Arthur: Morgana, you must jest. I am been made, in the minds of those who hear and retell the legend, the quintessential Good King. In any iteration that holds to that, I would be the kind one that is not only willing, but longs to give you place within.
Morgana Le Fay: But, what place would that be? In the time that Thomas Malory wrote Le Morte D'Arthur, what place could I have had?
King Arthur: Being my sister, you could not have been a queen, but you could have had high status a baroness or a duchess.
Morgana Le Fay: By that, you mean the wife of a baron or a duke, socially existing within their power.
King Arthur: Then, you could join the clergy as a-
Morgana Le Fay: As a nun, cloistered, not using my own power but, at best, being an adviser and assistant to Merlin. I think not. And, that in addition to the reality that I would have to abandon my identity in order to seek one that is more acceptable to the patriarchal Christianity that identifies your rule as good.
King Arthur: Then, let's look past Thomas Malory. We are an older legend than that, by far-.
Morgana Le Fay: Yet, one solidified by Le Morte D'Arthur.
King Arthur: Let's look past that to stories written with modern ethic in mind. You could be Merlin's equal or-
Morgana Le Fay: If we step that far afield from the original legends, we might as well be that BBC series, Merlin.
King Arthur: I will thank you not to mention that series in my presence.
Morgana Le Fay: Believe me, I'm not more pleased for it than you. It is not an interpretation of our story, but a different story entirely, using some names and some elements from ours. That Camelot is not this. That King Arthur is not you and that Morgana is not me.
King Arthur: You ask me to tell you about what could have been and tell me that could have been is not acceptable because it is not what was.
Morgana Le Fay: That is my point. Look how far from your legend you must stray, how far from the ethic that bore you you must flee in order to find a place for me that is not so heavily bound.
Morgana Le Fay: Of course I am the hero of this tale. I fight the oppressive force in order to achieve my freedom. That I do not succeed is the stuff of tragedy, not villainy.
King Arthur: I'm afraid, in these days, heroism takes more than simply wanting your own freedom.
Morgana Le Fay: People find the protagonists of Left Behind and Atlas Shrugged heroic.
King Arthur: Not me. Not me at all. A hero must seek for more than one's own desires. That is the core of my story, that I was the King that used might as a tool for right. And, that my greatest failures, the tragedy of my falling and that of Camelot, was in when I failed to live up to that high ideal, by attempting to end the life of you, Mordred.
King Arthur: If anybody could be the unsung protagonist, Mordred, it could be you, but certainly not your mother.
Mordred: I will not see that said of my own mother. Were it not for a monarchical system that would forever deny her equality, she need not have-
King Arthur: Raped me? Perhaps, but rape me she did. And, were it not for that system, she might not have done so in specific desire to create you as useful tool against me. But, create you as useful tool and use you as same, she very well did.
King Arthur: Had I been better, had I not reacted so vilely against you at word of your very existence when you were but an infant, perhaps things could have been better. If your mother had saw fit to love you for more than a tool against me, perhaps things could have been better. Perhaps, had you seen through your upbringing to see that there was another way, maybe.
King Arthur: I can see fit to a story that sees you as blameless victim. (turns to Morgana) But, never you. You are a villain, a "bad guy", the enemy of the good and that is what the tale is, good versus evil, within and without.
Morgana Le Fay: You honestly think that you are good?
King Arthur: Yes, the Quintessential Good King.
Morgana Le Fay: What of the women who do not wish to marry as they are bid? You may not issue such commands, but other landholders will. Such is the way of feudal societies. A good king does not undo an evil system. And, an evil system does not allow me the option to be good and be me.
Susan: Be that as it may, I dare to say that you have just admitted you are not good.
Morgana Le Fay: Who's side are you on?
Susan to Morgana: The side of justice and moral complexity. His point stands, you did use trickery to acquire his seed and did so in order to make a sentient being solely as a means to an end, rather than an end in himself.
Susan to King Arthur: Her point stands that, as good as you may have been in your monarchy, you did little to change the inequities in the system. All you did was be an idealized Christian within your position. As a result, you might have been better than others, you were hardly a hero.
Susan: What the two of you have is not good versus evil, but one power versus another. And, Mordred, like so many others, caught in the middle, with little option but to choose a side and hope his side wins.
King Arthur: Well, that I cannot accept. The heart of this legend is about goodness, the good King that gives people an ideal for which to hope and strive. I will not take that away.
Susan: That ideal is at the expense of personal ambitions, allowing them no other option but to be as you see in your mortal foe.
King Arthur: These are just excuses. Is this your Black Hat Brigade's mission, to take the evil characters and make them beloved. Is that the hope that keeps Mad Dog Tannen at your beck and call?
Buford stands, his hand instinctively going to his empty holster: Nobody calls me "Mad Dog".
King Arthur: Everybody calls you Mad Dog. That is your character. If you think she can make you beloved, you are sorely mistaken.
Buford: Beloved? She'll make me all the more hated! This isn't about me being loved! This is about how I've wronged everybody I've loved!
For a moment, everybody stays silent.
Susan: You don't have to.
Bufford: No. Let me say it. Artie, you're gettin' ticked off so much that you're ready to start an extra-textual war. You're written in a time and with an ethic that thinks war is glorious. Well, I'm set in a time just after the Civil War, the war that started the saying "War is Hell". And, that may be... just may be... the only way I am deserving of compassion.
King Arthur: Thank you all for coming. We all have our own stories and canons and responsibilities within. Yet, we also have this cross-canon alliance of villains, calling itself the Black Hat Brigade.
King Arthur: By my understanding, villains have banded together, before, to change stories in their favor. Prince Charming?
Prince Charming stands: Indeed. Such attempts have occasioned numerous meta-narratives of recent decades.
Prince Charming: Very recently, there was the movie Happily Never After, in which the wicked step-mother changed the way the stories happened so that the villains would have happy endings instead of the heroes.
Prince Charming: Similarly, one episode of Charmed dealt with forces of evil making attempt to change the stories so as to corrupt youth with corrupted ethic.
Prince Charming: Generally, when taken as meta-narrative from within the stories, these are restored after some story. In a sense, we, being the good guys, may be assured of victory... but not without cost.
A commotion sounds outside the door. A guard rushes in.
Guard: Your Majesty, I would not interrupt, I beg your pardon...
King Arthur nods: I'm well aware. Report.
Guard: You will not like this sire.
King Arthur: Simply report, good man. I do not make a practice of punishing people simply for delivering bad news.
Susan: But you could.
Susan stands at the door way.
Guard: It's the-
King Arthur: I see. In future, report quickly.
Susan: Do not blame the poor lad. Narrative convention often demands dramatic entry and will use whoever is available to that end. And, if you're going to go to all the trouble to have a meeting about The Black Hat Brigade, we may as well be represented.
King Arthur: Will there be any other representatives?
Susan: Yes, just as soon as you have your guard here inform the others that Morgana Le Fay, Mordred, and Buford Tannen are your guests.
King Arthur to the guard: Request that they surrender their weapons and swear oath upon their power to not take action against us during this meeting. They will be my guest and under protection and I host under similar protection.
Guard balks...
King Arthur: You have your orders.
The guard leaves.
Enter Morgana Le Fay, Mordred, and Buford Tannen. Each take their seats.
King Arthur: You do not lay mind to ease when you openly associate with the mortal enemies of Camelot.
Lady Morgana smirks.
Susan: Nature of the mission. I deal with the mortal enemies of many a protagonist.
King Arthur: Then, please, tell us about your mission. I've only rumors to go upon and, as Prince Charming is so good to inform us, past meta-narratives.
Susan: To bring complexity to stories and bring justice to those who have been done injustice by their respective canons. In example, Morgana Le Fay and Mordred have been done injustice by the Arthurian Legend, casting them as not but evils.
King Arthur: They are evils. They are the ones who destroy all I've built and, in nigh all but the most child-friendly of iterations, Morgana Le Fay is, arguably, guilty of raping me.
Morgana Le Fay (dismissive): Really?
King Arthur: Quite. You take explicit action to hide your identity, realizing that I would, but that I know, not choose to lay with you. In only recent iteration is it acknowledged that I am the product of similar rape and I will not have either violation swept aside. It would do grave injustice.
Susan: Quite agreed. Morgana is never going to be the, as is so childishly put, "good guy". (uses air-quotes)
Morgana Le Fay: I should say that I am. After all, what is my place, King Arthur, in your Camelot?
King Arthur: Morgana, you must jest. I am been made, in the minds of those who hear and retell the legend, the quintessential Good King. In any iteration that holds to that, I would be the kind one that is not only willing, but longs to give you place within.
Morgana Le Fay: But, what place would that be? In the time that Thomas Malory wrote Le Morte D'Arthur, what place could I have had?
King Arthur: Being my sister, you could not have been a queen, but you could have had high status a baroness or a duchess.
Morgana Le Fay: By that, you mean the wife of a baron or a duke, socially existing within their power.
King Arthur: Then, you could join the clergy as a-
Morgana Le Fay: As a nun, cloistered, not using my own power but, at best, being an adviser and assistant to Merlin. I think not. And, that in addition to the reality that I would have to abandon my identity in order to seek one that is more acceptable to the patriarchal Christianity that identifies your rule as good.
King Arthur: Then, let's look past Thomas Malory. We are an older legend than that, by far-.
Morgana Le Fay: Yet, one solidified by Le Morte D'Arthur.
King Arthur: Let's look past that to stories written with modern ethic in mind. You could be Merlin's equal or-
Morgana Le Fay: If we step that far afield from the original legends, we might as well be that BBC series, Merlin.
King Arthur: I will thank you not to mention that series in my presence.
Morgana Le Fay: Believe me, I'm not more pleased for it than you. It is not an interpretation of our story, but a different story entirely, using some names and some elements from ours. That Camelot is not this. That King Arthur is not you and that Morgana is not me.
King Arthur: You ask me to tell you about what could have been and tell me that could have been is not acceptable because it is not what was.
Morgana Le Fay: That is my point. Look how far from your legend you must stray, how far from the ethic that bore you you must flee in order to find a place for me that is not so heavily bound.
Morgana Le Fay: Of course I am the hero of this tale. I fight the oppressive force in order to achieve my freedom. That I do not succeed is the stuff of tragedy, not villainy.
King Arthur: I'm afraid, in these days, heroism takes more than simply wanting your own freedom.
Morgana Le Fay: People find the protagonists of Left Behind and Atlas Shrugged heroic.
King Arthur: Not me. Not me at all. A hero must seek for more than one's own desires. That is the core of my story, that I was the King that used might as a tool for right. And, that my greatest failures, the tragedy of my falling and that of Camelot, was in when I failed to live up to that high ideal, by attempting to end the life of you, Mordred.
King Arthur: If anybody could be the unsung protagonist, Mordred, it could be you, but certainly not your mother.
Mordred: I will not see that said of my own mother. Were it not for a monarchical system that would forever deny her equality, she need not have-
King Arthur: Raped me? Perhaps, but rape me she did. And, were it not for that system, she might not have done so in specific desire to create you as useful tool against me. But, create you as useful tool and use you as same, she very well did.
King Arthur: Had I been better, had I not reacted so vilely against you at word of your very existence when you were but an infant, perhaps things could have been better. If your mother had saw fit to love you for more than a tool against me, perhaps things could have been better. Perhaps, had you seen through your upbringing to see that there was another way, maybe.
King Arthur: I can see fit to a story that sees you as blameless victim. (turns to Morgana) But, never you. You are a villain, a "bad guy", the enemy of the good and that is what the tale is, good versus evil, within and without.
Morgana Le Fay: You honestly think that you are good?
King Arthur: Yes, the Quintessential Good King.
Morgana Le Fay: What of the women who do not wish to marry as they are bid? You may not issue such commands, but other landholders will. Such is the way of feudal societies. A good king does not undo an evil system. And, an evil system does not allow me the option to be good and be me.
Susan: Be that as it may, I dare to say that you have just admitted you are not good.
Morgana Le Fay: Who's side are you on?
Susan to Morgana: The side of justice and moral complexity. His point stands, you did use trickery to acquire his seed and did so in order to make a sentient being solely as a means to an end, rather than an end in himself.
Susan to King Arthur: Her point stands that, as good as you may have been in your monarchy, you did little to change the inequities in the system. All you did was be an idealized Christian within your position. As a result, you might have been better than others, you were hardly a hero.
Susan: What the two of you have is not good versus evil, but one power versus another. And, Mordred, like so many others, caught in the middle, with little option but to choose a side and hope his side wins.
King Arthur: Well, that I cannot accept. The heart of this legend is about goodness, the good King that gives people an ideal for which to hope and strive. I will not take that away.
Susan: That ideal is at the expense of personal ambitions, allowing them no other option but to be as you see in your mortal foe.
King Arthur: These are just excuses. Is this your Black Hat Brigade's mission, to take the evil characters and make them beloved. Is that the hope that keeps Mad Dog Tannen at your beck and call?
Buford stands, his hand instinctively going to his empty holster: Nobody calls me "Mad Dog".
King Arthur: Everybody calls you Mad Dog. That is your character. If you think she can make you beloved, you are sorely mistaken.
Buford: Beloved? She'll make me all the more hated! This isn't about me being loved! This is about how I've wronged everybody I've loved!
For a moment, everybody stays silent.
Susan: You don't have to.
Bufford: No. Let me say it. Artie, you're gettin' ticked off so much that you're ready to start an extra-textual war. You're written in a time and with an ethic that thinks war is glorious. Well, I'm set in a time just after the Civil War, the war that started the saying "War is Hell". And, that may be... just may be... the only way I am deserving of compassion.