Yamara wrote:Dave wrote:Brandi apparently feels that she is such a superb manipulative "chessmaster" that she could deliberately manipulate a person into a situation where that person would voluntarily do great harm to him/herself.
I don't think we've ever actually seen Brandi do that... but we don't know if she has actually done anything like it in the past. She may be speculating, or giving a warning based on cold hard knowledge and memory.
Bathorys Daughter wrote:As to selecting Lily and Suzi, I wonder if Brandi set things in motion that created them in the first place so she could use them later? Heck, she could have manipulated things such that they were born (correct genetic mix?) and their eventual transformation.
As to the skinning comment. She either likes to rattle people with talk like that (it's not the first time she said something like that after all) or, as has been suggested, is recalling a past incident. It may be not all her plans went quite right and someone paid a high price for her failure. Worse still, it did go right! Yuck! Interesting, perhaps even titillating, but yuck!
Paul has never stated this directly, to my knowledge, but insofar as they have weaknesses susceptible to demonic elements, Bud and Brandi's Chimeric aspects seem to favor surrendering to, respectively, Rage and Despair. Bud has a lot of stubborn common sense from her core personality to handle her explosive Ragey side, but by Brandi's own admission, Despair is a much deadlier burden. It's the imagining of everything that could wrong
and giving into it.
Brandi's leonine aspect is the very image of Despair. And in Spenser's
Faerie Queene, the personification of Despair nearly makes short work of the heroes, by nearly convincing them to kill themselves:
XXXIX
Who travels by the wearie wandring way,
To come unto his wished home in haste,
And meetes a flood, that doth his passage stay,
Is not great grace to helpe him over past,
Or free his feet that in the myre sticke fast?
Most envious man, that grieves at neighbours good,
And fond, that joyest in the woe thou hast,
Why wilt not let him passe, that long hath stood
Upon the banke, yet wilt thy selfe not passe the flood?
XL
He there does now enjoy eternall rest
And happy ease, which thou dost want and crave,
And further from it daily wanderest:
What if some little paine the passage have,
That makes fraile flesh to feare the bitter wave?
Is not short paine well borne, that brings long ease,
And layes the soule to sleepe in quiet grave?
Sleepe after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Ease after warre, death after life does greatly please.
To be able to come
back from being an infamous manipulator, though?
That's the work of a few lifetimes. Brandi can't even suggest buying an ice cream
without rousing suspicions.
See? Now you're wondering what's in that latte popsicle...
But Pratt needs to see things in another way entirely. If Brandi wanted Despair to sweep the world, it would be child's play for her.
She wants to oppose that force: and inspire Confidence. In the Calendar ritual,
she was sounding like a clueless hippie talking about it. But in fact it is one of the most difficult and vital things in the universe to attain.