Stymphs - Tumblr Posts

Evidence that Rafal could be an Ever: Stymphs only like Evers. In book 1, this claim is presented. The Stymphs cuddled Agatha, and attacked Sophie. Also, the Great Mistake wasn’t a mistake; the Stymph was never confused.

At the same time, the Stymphs are Rafal’s birds. So, he could be the exception, not the rule, because he’s their master. Plus, Rafal has a streak of sadism that feels like it disqualifies him from being an Ever, and I think the twins’ Good-Evil statuses are more nuanced than this, probably. By comparison, Agatha’s just morbid, not sadistic.

The Stymphs' Symbolism and the Storian's Interference

All right, here's our equivalence:

The Stymphs = Fate

Ok, so, with the girls in book one:

Agatha and Sophie are carried off by a Stymph, and they are thrown into their respective schools. No choice. No say in the matter. They've lost their agency, completely.

They are mastered by a Stymph, by fate. Conquered.

Then, the shift happens. They become the masters of their own fate, in riding the Stymph, in steering on top of the Stymph, into the School Master's Tower.

By TLEA, again, their relationship to the Stymphs changes. They're a little beholden to them and fate, in becoming who they are. Fate and the particular Stymph's original actions, its involvement in their kidnapping, I mean, shaped them both, ultimately. The girls are also beholden to the Stymphs for helping them, by not obeying "Rafal" when they help the archer students and Merlin during the second Great War.

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Then, for the prequels:

Who is master of the Stymphs? Rafal, of course.

Yet, Rhian is the "author of own misfortune," or fate.

Rafal is the original master of the Stymphs. In a way, Rafal was destined to become Fate, to become the Balance, had he managed to live long enough to be the One.

Because, he was about to be named the One True School Master, and through the Schools, he would have been master of the Woods' fate, been able to willfully control (or indirectly influence, through the curriculum, the students' educations, and how prepared they would have been, should their fairy tales begin) the fate of all the Woods, all its possible futurities, in theory, to an extent.

But, really, it's the Pen that is Fate, not Rafal himself, when it really comes down to the truth.

However, Rhian disrupted "fate," or the Storian's plans, by being the cause of his brother's death.

And, when he was left with the Stymphs he "inherited," he probably couldn't quite automatically rein them in. I think he had to tame them, or find a literal spell to mollify them with, to get them under his control. Probably symbolically because he was never meant to be Fate or the One in the first place.

And so, of course, Fate's attendants (the Stymphs) wouldn't have followed him willingly, at least, not right away because the ending simply wasn't meant to be, but just so happened to happen nonetheless. (I know the Stymphs' behavior actually must originate from the fact that Stymphs supposedly only like Evers, but I'm looking at this from an angle that's outside of the narrative, and I don't need to rely on the in-universe reasoning at the moment.)

Was there a line after the climax of Fall about this at all? About the Stymphs being disobedient toward Rhian or outright loud and unmanageable, or am I misremembering?

Anyway, Rhian became master of Fate, of the Woods, in becoming the sole School Master. But that only happened when there was no one else left to assume the role. He was the only option, sort of a second-choice. Or, possibly even third, when we consider Pan as the hypothetical third candidate to be the One. Rhian was the default, sadly enough, the lone, surviving one. He wasn't even meant to be School Master, the rightful One, yet he had to be chosen. The Storian was compelled to because there was no one else.

Thus, the "ownership" of the Stymphs and of Fate was transferred over to Rhian.

And remember, once, Rhian was Fate's personal punching bag. He suffered a lot, for his naivete, and from some external causes, like Hook and Vulcan, sort of, even if he was wrongly influenced by the end of it all. And yes, while many events were partly his fault, they also may not have been. The plot could have been the result of very poor happenstance and intersections of the times the brothers lived in, as, we can observe all the turbulence in Rise, during that one particular school year.

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Oh! And I wonder if the Stymphs forevermore missed Rafal, their original master? Did they show any signs of missing him? I'm not sure.

But, I am sure that they knew Rhian replaced Rafal because they can read souls, tell them apart, they way they seemed to instinctually read Agatha's, Sophie's, and Aladdin's souls, to know which Schools they belonged to.

I don't think there's any direct evidence of the Stymphs' mourning though. Did they ever screech, or cry out, as if in pain, like deprived animals? I suppose I could imagine that plausibly happening, with how they were left behind...

The Good, the Evil, and the Volcano

I've been watching Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996), as per a recommendation from @rosellemoon, (Thank you, by the way—I've really been enjoying it!) and had a thought based on the season three finale, "The Good, the Bad, and the Luau."

The premise of the episode was that Sabrina had an evil twin, Katrina, and both twins were put on trial, to determine who was the good one as a matter of life-and-death.

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There were three "trials"/testimonies in the episode, if I recall correctly, and the twins had to bring forth evidence of their goodness.

To loosely interpret what happened: whomever was found to be the evil one was to be sent away, a fairly benign punishment. Yet, it actually turned out that the evil twin would be pitched into an active volcano as a human sacrifice, to cleanse the pair of its shadow. (Hold that thought for a bit. I will circle back to it later!)

Ok, now to transpose this into the Endless Woods:

Unbeknownst to the brothers, the stakes of the trial are much higher than they first believe, worse than they were initially led to perceive by the impartial Gnomeland judge who lied to them, so as to preserve the integrity of the examination.

One fateful day, Rhian and Rafal are brought to trial, to determine the true content of their souls and thus, their fates, accordingly, probably in a version of the Endless Woods that wants to purge itself of all Evil, being more dystopian than it already is.

In the episode, Katrina passes one of the tests with flying colors, and things originally look bleak for Sabrina. As far as Rhian and Rafal go, the plot could look like this:

Rhian is performatively Good, and he's far better at looking Good on paper than Rafal is, for all intents and purposes. Yet, the question is: how much of his Goodness is sincere? Appearances can be deceiving and not everything is as it seems. Just, keep those classic adages in mind.

And, even if Rafal is renowned for his Evil all throughout the Woods, he tries his hardest to win the trials, and so too does Rhian.

They have ample reason to try after all—neither of them wants to be cast out of the Woods, consigned to a magicless existence. And, more importantly, neither of them wants to be the loser on principle, because that would mark them as the inferior twin for the rest of their days.

Anyway, by contrast, Rafal's reputation does not serve him well, and whenever he does Good, it's for selfish reasons. His motives are often more visibly selfish than Rhian’s reasons. Albeit, Rhian's reasons for doing Good are also just as self-serving, just more subtle; they revolve around vanity more than Rafal's power-hungry drive for tangible gains does, at the very least.

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Thus, during the first of the trials, Rhian had a lifetime of clearly Good Deeds to show for himself, and Rafal had... nothing. And, Rhian exhibited compassion during a spontaneous act of kindness.

During the second trial, Rafal won by acting quickly under a high-pressure situation, leaving Rhian as the loser.

Now, during the third trial, Rafal had a better answer than Rhian's in response to the prompting from the judge: to recall something Good they did for another during the last 24 hours. (Luckily for Rafal, hours ago, he had done something that qualified indirectly as a Good Deed: he had been thinking over a riddle the Kingdom Council had given him to solve, and the Stymph screeches outside had finally gotten to him. He decided to confront the birds, and Humburg, who looked to be the source of their agitation from Rafal's view, as Rafal didn't have all the information available. The Stymphs had been starving, made irritable by their prolonged suffering, and Humburg was suffering from back pain, groaning on the ground, being pecked. So, Rafal cast a spell to silence the Stymphs, providing them with food, but he only did it to "mute" them, in a sense, in order to shut them up, so he could properly concentrate, and get back to his riddle promptly. He also decided to "help" Humburg by petrifying him temporarily, but even if that was a crude, scornful "solution," it did technically alleviate Humburg's back pain!)

Later, however, it turned out that when Rafal's answer about the aforementioned Good Deed was reviewed in more depth, it was found to have been driven by impure intentions, disqualifying Rafal's evidence, meaning Rhian, was, by default, the victor of the third trial, and had won 2/3 of them, fair and square.

So, it came to be that the moment of the sacrifice had arrived.

Both twins were told the truth of the matter, that the actual punishment for being Evil was to be thrown into deathly, red-hot lava. And, it was the Good twin's noble duty to bid his Evil twin farewell and perform the send-off.

The judge commanded Rhian to push Rafal into the volcano, and he does! Miraculously, without question, Rhian obeyed the authority at hand.

Rhian said, "Okie dokie!" with unusual cheer, and shoved Rafal over the edge to his demise, secretly relieved that he had the chance to continue living. (Rhian was willing to sacrifice his brother because he's cowardly and didn't want to die himself.)

Rafal and the Ever witnesses present stared in slack-jawed, wide-eyed horror at how Rhian had publicly exposed his sudden, seemingly newfound capacity for Evil.

Then, Rafal toppled, almost plunging straight into the hot, molten lava below, but he managed to latch onto the cliffside by Rhian's feet, and when he regained his bearings, whilst still dangling precariously over the fuming, burning crater, he vengefully seized Rhian's ankle and pulled. And, he didn't pull himself up. Instead, he intended to drag Rhian down, shouting that he would take Rhian down with him, even if it was the last thing he did!

The judge observed these ongoings, and heaved both twins back over the edge, back onto solid ground, saving them. He then announced that no Good twin has ever had the heart to do away with his Evil twin, in the history of all other twin trials preceding this... exceptional outcome, but while this would, under ordinary circumstances, mean that he should pronounce the victim the Good twin and the one who followed through with his unethical order as Evil, this time, it was... rather hard to tell them apart, especially when accounting for Rafal's outburst, his equally murderous reaction toward Rhian's act, being petty retaliation and all.

Neither had passed the Volcano Test, a harrowing final test in disguise, which had devolved to become more hazardous than it was originally designed to be.

So, the judge concluded that both twins were Evil.

Consequently, he issued a court order for them to be closely monitored for signs of "reformation" as they returned to their daily lives, once again, having outlived a pretty surreal experience for the ages. In fact, in hindsight, the case was interpreted by a law clerk to mean that, incidentally, they had proven themselves more a danger to each other than a threat to the Woods at large.

The END.

I love these concepts! They're all very plausible. Though the Woods seem more forgiving than Gavaldon is, in regards to magic/sorcery, even if it were dark magic, so I wonder why their parents could've been murdered. Did you have a reason in mind?

And, actually, I have a WIP that's slightly similar although Rafal isn't a child (since it's set during canon instead), nor does he "vent" aloud.

what if rafal talked to birds when he was a child

Actually, I can see this and I had a headcanon/AU about it once, where that's how he connected with the stymphs.

Draft Excerpt from a Potential WIP Fic

This is set in Stymph Forest, during Rise. It isn't a TOTSMOV41 excerpt.

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He tossed his blackened handkerchief into the glade from atop his high perch.

It landed in the circle of Stymphs, the birds arranged much like a fairy ring of living corpses.

His birds stared back up at him. One cocked its head.

Rafal smirked back.

Here he was, airing out dirty laundry. Literally if not figuratively.

Bah! That was Good’s job. Exposing villains. And whatever went on amongst his graduates.

Lately, the lot of them had been disappointments. But really, all that was the decline of the youth. Couldn’t be his teaching methods. His methods had never failed him before.

A few decades ago, villainy was worthwhile. Not now.

Ought he to change?

No. The problem lay with the students themselves. Children were becoming stupider with every passing generation.

Probable that the tales were making their parents soft. Less bloodshed these days. Fewer blood oaths than ever, even if his from a century ago hadn’t been the last. Far from it.

Yet, allowing the stupid duffers to live and procreate had been a mistake on the Pen’s part. They were the culprits, from a few generations back. The tales ought to have not been so merciful, sparing them!

A few too many dimwitted Evers and even the slower Nevers he’d not seen before in his time hadn’t just managed to stall their deaths with the comforts of advancing technology and so-called conveniences. They’d seemingly thrived.

And restaurants! In the densest parts of the Woods, no less. And spellcasts. And squirrely nuts of all things! Even the vermin had longer memories than his students did, if they could recite letters with that much precision.

It was more than he could say about his latest class. Besides the rampant insubordination and how they’d just barely passed their last impromptu examination.

They’d had it too soft for too long. Those conveniences wouldn’t be so convenient when they were stranded alone in the Woods. When they had nothing but birds and cloaks for company. Not even birds in their cases, he reasoned. His Stymphs served him and him alone.

No wonder those parents’ offspring couldn’t keep up with his curriculum. They’d all gone to rot—brains leaking through their ears, moth-eaten attention-spans. Worse every generation, it was.

It was all ludicrous, this, this accursed modernity. Look what it’d bought them: a marked lack of survival skills.

And the result of that deficit was premature deaths when the cushioning ceased to exist, when all the fail-safes excess inter-kingdom tourism had engineered fell to ruins like all enterprises did in time, like the hotels and spas some of his brother’s vapid colleagues couldn’t even begin to live without did. And they called themselves “professionals.”

He tossed his head back, tilting his chin skywards. Nothing endured forever. Not even the stars.

Forever was only as long as you could prolong it to be, through sheer force of will, and that was assuming you were shrewd enough to see forthcoming disaster on the horizon.

And if the tales didn’t result in death, then they ended with the living afflicted by grave stupidity. Which was worse. Incurably worse than ridding the Woods of the problem at all.

Yet, Good’s mortality rates these days were at an all-time low.

He couldn’t ease up. Not now. When he’d return, he’d require better performance from them all—if only so they could crane their necks to live up to great heights and exceed his expectations as Nevers. Prove they were deserving of his attention.

His eyes lit up as he grinned to himself.

And, if they couldn’t, well, there was always the chopping block. Or the pruning shears for Mogrifs.

He couldn’t let old standards decline. Not even while he was gone.

If he could scout out someone exemplary, to replace the rancid, rotted-through students with, those limp-spined lost causes, maybe they’d rally together and make something of themselves. Live to see another day in their future tales, if they garnered the Pen’s attention at all.

It was the best he could do.

That said, he should probably keep up with the tales while he was away, once they were released into the Woods, via printed copies, if not the Pen’s first editions.

There’d be a delay in acquiring storybooks, but what could go wrong in his absence? The manor was secure, even if his brother wasn’t fortress material.