#(this is so crazy to me... that he would explicitly draw the comparison...)

[mattnben-bennmatt]

Everyone has a Dickie Greenleaf in his life, someone he admires to the point of idolatry.

— Matt Damon, on The Talented Mr. Ripley at Urban Cinephile.

-

Like everybody, I’m lonely to some extent. Like everybody, I live in fear of not being loved and not having love returned. And I think everybody has a Dickie Greenleaf in his life: someone who is extraordinarily charismatic but who can go away.

— Matt Damon, interviewed for The Advocate (January 2000).

-

A 6-foot-3-inch buffed block of granite with a top-heavy build that leaves his arms hanging wide, Mr. Affleck is hardly aloof and anything but dull. Though he seems like the smart-aleck towel-snapper you avoided in gym class, he is, by Mr. Damon's account, ''charismatic, loyal, a fantastic storyteller and a great friend who can laugh even when things go terribly, terribly wrong.'' Mr. Affleck, he says, shares those endearing attributes with Dickie Greenleaf, the doomed playboy in The Talented Mr. Ripley. ''Unlike Dickie, Ben has survived,'' says Mr. Damon, who played that film's murderous Mr. Ripley. ''So far.''

— From Ben Affleck's interview with The New York Times (10 September 2000).

-

See also:

Q: What were the key scenes for you to convey Ripley’s sexuality?

MATT: [T]he scene where Ripley says he’d take a bullet for Dickie [...].

[Later in the interview]

MATT: I guess it’s not enough for me to say that I love Ben so much that I’d take a bullet for him.

[foursaints]

“I don’t care what [Barty] says, Dumbledore’s not stupid”: On Barty as Machiavel

i think we're all forgetting the moment where harry explicitly draws a parallel between barty & remus and i wrote the world’s longest post about it 

under a close reading, moody!barty operates in a manner that is SO distinct from canon!moody, and i think it’s made especially apparent in the way he interacts with students & the virtues he emphasizes in his lessons. even when disguised, barty has a machiavellian tendency that comes through consistently in several different moments. 

i think this quote is a weaker example, but “very tactful” is NOT something that would be used to describe canon!moody under any circumstances. c!moody’s lack of social tact is a known characteristic, and barty uses his tactless reputation to get away with his machinations (see: the dustbin excuse, breaking into snape’s office, even the ferret to an extent).

on the other hand, BARTY is clever and subtle and manipulative, and we see this coming through in how he handles neville. the biggest difference between him and c!moody is the way that barty!moody tends to openly value or praise Cleverness & Craftiness above more moody-ish virtues like bravery, loyalty, or Taking Care of His Students’ Safety… but i think the most interesting part of all this is the way that harry reacts to it.

the hp books notoriously do this clumsy thing where the morality is starkly Black/White (as ursula leguin rightfully criticized). but seemingly arbitrary categories like “gryffindor” or “slytherin” are also conflated with this strict Good/Evil dichotomy. which results in these random-ass traits like “brave 😎🦁” and “cunning 💀🐍” also taking on moral associations within the world of the text (jkr has also done this with physical traits & racial stereotypes, which is vile) 

but an overarching theme in hp is harry grappling with this dumbass in-world black/white morality & unlearning part of it (ex: snape, the epilogue w albus severus about slytherin). but i think it’s sooo interesting that one of the few characters (aside from snape & dumbledore) to demonstrate & valorize a machiavellian tendency AND be admired for it (by harry) is LITERALLY barty jr. 

like! barty’s tact is not a good thing in-canon! he uses his tact to get away with murder & torture & elaborate terrorist plots (he’s part of a group of death eaters described as having "managed to talk their way out of azkaban” p. 527) but i looove that the same trait which allows him to do all sorts of Dastardly Evil is cast as positive and remus-like in this moment. obviously i don’t think jkr was doing of this on purpose, but i love how these little things are unintentionally more compelling than whatever the hell she was trying to do with snape. and it goes deeper!!

this moment is especially telling of barty’s character, to me. subbing out the names, “I don’t care what [Barty] says… Dumbledore’s not stupid” is a CRAZY line. 

it’s lowkey THE barty!moody thesis in comparison to c!moody: nothing we’ve seen from c!moody would even remotely suggest that he’d EVER imply that dumbledore is stupid. (c!moody adopts the “it’s imperative that we blindly trust dd’s mysterious plans” attitude that most of the adults in harry’s life take, that hermione re-emphasizes here). but barty’s attitude is something that harry heavily fucks with in this moment!! 

that’s all i really have to say about The Implications or whatever. but i want to call more attention to moments in canon where barty’s tendencies shine through his disguise because (unlike most marauders characters) his personality is really fleshed-out. especially this aspect of it. my silly 

i. "mind works the right way, granger"

barty speaking about dumbledore like he’s stupid (💀) is enjoyable for several reasons up to & including how big-dicked it is of him, but most importantly i think it’s symptomatic of an overarching theme of his character. in GOF, barty has a tendency to take stock of the people around him, according to what appears to be a really concrete & consistent set of internal values: he values cleverness matched with a certain degree of ruthlessness. 

this bit with hermione is fun. there are about ~6-7 other instances where he praises cleverness, but that’s not really a unique or noteworthy thing to value? but the phrasing in this quote is my favorite. i know that it’s in reference to the skillset required of an auror, but the phrasing of “mind works the right way” can be applied to so much of barty’s character if you reach hard. i love that barty’s language almost casts the mind as something rote & mechanical which can function right or wrong. 

but anyway it only becomes interesting when placed in context of THIS earlier interaction: 

there are endless ways barty could have gone about guiding harry to use his firebolt here, so his specific phrasing holds a lot of weight to me. (keep in mind: he’s prompting harry to feel that he came up with the firebolt/accio idea, but this whole plan was concocted by barty himself much earlier. he’s on the “convince harry to do my broomstick dragon thing” step of his overarching scheme) 

in a sense, by “inspiring” harry to do what HE already independently decided was best, he’s sort of… giving away his own reasoning, a little? the italicized emphasis on enabling oneself to “get what you need” feels… unnecessary, in context? i love that THAT is where emphasis slips into his voice because it betrays his values. 

barty’s Revenge Scheme is insanely fucking convoluted, but at every stage i think that logic is there. in his villain monologue where he rehashes the deranged level of micro-managing he was doing to get harry to resurrect voldemort, at every individual step he was following his own advice. to barty, sometimes murder is just the Simplest Spell to Get What He Needs. 

according his own advice, barty sees the clearest path between two points, and generally has 0 ethical qualms about closing that distance by the Simplest means possible. he later confirms this by describing harry’s morality introducing complications as “contend[ing] with [his] stupidity” (676) 

ii. “good boy,” growled [barty]. “i can make good use of this…”

the scene where barty acquires the marauders map is CRAZYY.. for a moment, barty is so excited & taken aback that we see a few of his genuine reactions. i love that absolutely nothing manages to faze him EXCEPT genuine delighted shock over an interesting new tool he can implement in his schemes. (sidenote: he probably recognized the marauders’ nicknames, which is so funny)

that fact that we have a canonical barty crouch jr “good boy” makes me claw at the walls. anyway. i feel that i don’t need to explain how “i can make good use of this… this might be exactly what i’ve been looking for” supports characterization of barty as a scheming little machiavel because it’s pretty much explicitly stated right there. 

but this quote stands out for his genuine preoccupation with it. from the instant that barty sees the map, his eyes don’t leave it— his eye “whizzed over [it’s] surface” (491), he questions harry about how his name appeared when he searched snape’s office (”’Crouch,’ he said. ‘You’re— you’re sure, Potter?’” (491))— all while harry is sinking into a trick staircase & getting concerned that moody is ignoring him.

“penetrating glare” ← top barty rights! 

the image of him getting new information, questioning harry about it tactfully, and then spending A FULL MINUTE silently integrating it, is one of my favorite instances of him in the book… it’s like you can hear the gears in his head whirring. i like that we can see this type of assessment that he does extends to other people, when he turns it on harry and “size[s] him up”. 

AND ALL OF THIS IS WITHOUT EVEN GETTING INTO WHAT HIS LESSONS WERE LIKE

this post is long enough as it is! but all that’s left to say is that barty will always be at his most interesting when you pay attention to canon… there’s another longpost that could be written about barty!moody’s differences in disposition. the jokes he cracks, his relative lightness, and the sheer number of times he was openly like “FUCK the law i do what i want” (while literally masquerading as a literal wizard cop) are so intriguing. but that’s for another time 

[antlered-vixen]

Okay okay, unless I'm going crazy I cannot for the life of me figure out why the whole "elves love children" thing comes from. Like the hair thing I get, they're attracted to hair iirc (nature of middle earth I think) but the kids thing? Nah, can't figure that out.

Hm. Well. I won't make any general statements like "elves love children" because that's a bit whack. But there's a few interesting things one can point out. For example, that Finwe's core pressure point for wanting to remarry was his right to have more children (more sons, even), and comparing himself to other elven leaders like Ingwe who did. Shows that even in Valinor, without the threat of death over them, heirs were a core desire of elves, at least those in positions of power. Then we see situations like Maedhros looking for Elured and Elurin, and Maglor taking in Elrond and Elros, which suggests that even in the most bloodthirsty, horrific, military contexts, some people who have long crossed the line of brutality and mass murder still draw some kind of line when it comes to children. Also, they were procreating like crazy before and at the beginning of the Great Journey, because Tolkien explicitly specifies the early elves had a very strong reproductive drive, so that the 144 unbgotten could swiftly become an entire species. They had to show self-restrain so they can stop having babies, since it was making the Journey harder. Lastly, we have very, very few examples of elven marriages without children. Elves without children tend to be those without spouse. Tolkien calls the sexually active years of a marriage "the child-making years", because in his Catholic brain the two are one. So it makes it seem like an elf that is partnered almost automatically wants to reproduce. And also, it's an assumption that tends to be made for very long-lived creatures, where children will be rare in comparison to lifespans. You know, scarcity = preciousness. THAT SAID. I am at liberty to question and subvert Tolkien as a writer, and in the latest chapter of Light I do straight up say that most mothers in Valinor seem to be miserable, and that it's hard to make the argument that elven women who are married and become mothers really benefit from that at all. And I also have previously had Maglor challenge the expectation he would want children, and of course I write my Maedhros aroace. I really do very strongly try to interrogate the family and its inescapable nature, and the heteropessimism of how the Eldar choose to structure their societies more broadly. I definitely think there is a line between respecting a lot of the worldbuiling and work that Tolkien has done, and just swallowing up the Catholic family propaganda whole. I absolutely don't think having children has any moral value in either direction (though as a parent I do have very strong feelings about loving one's children right), and I do not want to write my elves as all, intrinsically and communally, having some supposed "love of children" greater than Men or Dwarves, or the average compassionate being that sees something vulnerable and inexperienced and thinks "let's protect this."

[tomwambsmilk]

Re: your post about drawing explicit lines to real life events and people on Succession, it has been driving me crazy, especially everyone saying 4.08 was "just 2016". It was harrowing, yes, but there were elements of past elections mixed together, and the WI thing reminded me of 2000...idk why people want things to be so cut and dry, 1 for 1 comparisons, that would be lazy writing!!!!! Like...appreciate the good writing.

I 100% agree - the 2000 election is one of the ones that's been explicitly referenced by writers and consultants for 4.08, even more so than 2016 or 2020. If I had to separate out what may have influenced what, I'd say the situation around WI and ATN calling early is much more reminiscent of the hanging chad situation in Florida in 2000, where some news outlets wrongly called the election for Al Gore rather than Bush. The aftermath, however, feels much more reminiscent of the civil unrest which followed the 2020 election. But even then, none of it is exactly the same, because the succverse is its own world!! It really truly would be incredibly lazy to just thoughtlessly recreate the 2016/2020 elections but with succession characters and orgs, and Succession has almost always been better than that.

And tbh, ambiguity around news network calls is not exclusive to 2000, and civil unrest is not exclusive to 2020. I see a lot of connection between the temptation to read succ like this, and the tendency people had when Veep was airing to say it "predicted the future". It didn't really. What actually happened is that the writers of Veep had an awareness of the political landscape and history of the US, and the stories which 'came true' were usually based on or extrapolated from things that had already happened. Anyone who was paying attention could have 'predicted' that. (Veep usually exaggerated, because it was a satire, but it was a satire rooted in a lot of truth). But most people's political awareness seems to be limited to the last 10-20 years, and recency bias leads people to fixate on what's happened in the last couple of election cycles; hence the fixation on 4.08 as being representative of 2020.

(I saw one critic call the choice to have Mencken win under dubious circumstances and have democrats protesting a "subversion" of what happened in 2020 - because he's a republican, not a democrat - and it struck me as so incredibly stupid, not least of all because it shows how mired in modern partisan party politics many American viewers are, to such an extent that they aren't able to acknowledge the greater systemic critiques shows like Veep and Succession are trying to make. Political showmanship and the media-politician relationship and electoral fraud and political violence are not things the Republican party invented in 2016. They've been around forever, and while one party may have more of a history of these things than the other, to a certain extent they do transcend party lines.)

In terms of the family dynamics, it's similarly frustrating to see people go Roys = Murdochs, PGN = NYT, Mencken = Trump etc. because as soon as you shoehorn the characters into that framework you lose a lot of critique. Mencken is far more of an ideologue than Trump ever was, because the critique being put forward with Mencken is not about Trump the person (which would be shallow and topical and hopefully outdated relatively soon) but about fascism the ideology. The family dynamics of PGN emulate the family dynamics of the NYT trust in order to critique 'old money' news and how it operates - but operationally, aspects of PGN function more like a major outlet such as MSNBC, which allows the show to also critique the broader left-leaning media landscape. Even looking just at Logan Roy - Jesse has cited as influences not just Rupert Murdoch, but Conrad Black, Tiny Rowland, Lord Rothermere, William Randolph Hearst, Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Sumner Redstone. (In one direct quote from the book It's Not TV: "It's just fun to be completely freed from any sense of responsibility to portray real people realistically.") To read Logan only through the lens of Rupert Murdoch misses a lot of what the show is trying to say about the nature of wealth, particularly extreme wealth, in a capitalist system, and the role that the media plays in that system (and how that role has evolved over time).

And again, it's frustrating because I think it's indicative of this idea that the corruption and exploitation of the media landscape is a modern phenomenon and not something that's been present and developing since its inception, and I also think it's indicative of the belief that this sort of corruption and exploitation only occurs on the political right, when in actual fact it's something that wealthy and powerful people of all (professed) political stripes have engaged in.

[tsutsumi-kaina]

Theory: AFO Gave Tomura Decay (Part 1)

This was initially posted on my main, but I rearranged/rewrote some parts that went off track and decided to repost it to my BNHA blog instead.

I wanted to talk about one of my favorite theories for a bit-- namely, the theory that AFO slipped Tenko “Decay” in an effort to facilitate Tenko’s descent into villainy. It’s a pretty popular theory, and one of the main arguments in favor of it (i.e. manga!Tenko was seen being escorted home by a man with AFO’s build and similarly atrocious fashion sense) has already been discussed to death-- so instead I’ll touch on points that I haven’t seen talked about as frequently, but still seem to hint at some foul play surrounding Tomura’s quirk.  

Warning: This post has spoilers for both the most recent chapters of MHA (up to ch. 316) as well as spoilers for Vigilantes (up to ch. 109).

1. The Itch

Putting this first because it’s often the point I see cited most frequently as evidence of Tenko being born with his quirk, while I personally feel it’s the biggest piece of evidence we have in favor of his quirk not being natural.

imo the idea that Tenko has some sort of autoimmune disorder that activated in response to having a quirk forced on him isn’t actually all that far-fetched-- because AFO himself  invites us to consider the medical implications of quirk transfers when he compares “quirk transplants” to organ transplants (which, by the way, are notorious for being rejected by a recipient even if they are a 100% match. Organ recipients usually have to take Antirejection meds that suppress their immune system for the rest of their lives-- b/c when left unsuppressed, the immune system will view the donor organ as an invading pathogen and will try to crazy murder it. That being said: One of the more benign signs of rejection after a liver or kidney transplantation is pruritis, a.k.a. severe itching).

Basically: Tenko’s body is trying to reject the unsuitable/transplanted quirk-- and it manifests as an allergic reaction which, like most immunity-related illnesses, gets worse when stressed.

Pictured: 50% Panic Attack 50% Shrimp Allergy

Another point in favor of this interpretation is that Decay seems to trigger something eerily similar anaphylaxis when it goes out of control. Tenko is suddenly unable to talk, his itch is the absolute worst that it's ever been, his eyes are visibly bloodshot, and he begins to audibly wheeze-- as if his throat is swelling up. Yes, hyperventilating can be a symptom of a panic attack (and he very much is having a massive panic attack on top of everything else that’s going on in this scene), but having your airways appear to constrict to the point where you are wheezing and can no longer talk is not. Let’s move on!

2. Decay’s first actual manifestation occurs during the --happiest-- moment of Tenko’s life: Right after finding out his grandma, Nana Shimura, was a hero.

This particular sequence always struck me as…. strange, to put it mildly. Like, really strange. It also blatantly contradicts the commonly accepted explanation for Tenko’s “itch.” 

“You have within you an impulse to destroy that even you can’t control. It’s bursting out of you, and the itching is your body letting you know.” - (AFO, chapter 237)

But if this is really the case, why do we see it first activating during what’s likely the happiest moment of Tenko’s life? If Decay is truly fueled by hate/anger and required sufficient hatred to build up before manifesting, then what exactly is fueling it during this scene and why did it activate at this specific moment? So let’s ask ourselves-- who, other than Kotaro, would be pissed off that little Tenko found out about Nana and wants to be just like her?

*jazz hands* This guuuuuy!

Let's assume that AFO was able to watch the Shimura family drama unfold from inside Tenko-- This would explain why decay suddenly activated after Tenko found out about Nana, despite Tenko being completely over the moon at the time.  Which brings us to our next point. 

3. The Unique Property of AFO's Vestiges (plural!)

The fact that Tomura has never seen a vestige is often  brought up as a point against the idea of Decay being someone else’s quirk-- however, we get a fairly probable explanation for why Tomura has never seen Decay’s vestige in the recent chapters of MHA: Vigilantes.

The main antagonist of Vigilantes, Number Six/Rokuro, is in possession of a quirk called “Overclock” that was gifted to him by AFO. Overclock initially belonged to the hero “o’Clock” before AFO stole it, and initially we’re led to believe that Rokuro is able to see o’Clock’s vestige.

Except, it turns out what he’s seeing isn’t o’Clock’s vestige at all.

What time is it? It’s AFo’Clock!

The above more or less implies that AFO’s vestige is A) Able to masquerade as the “original” vestige of any quirk that he steals (that, or he fuses with their vestige and then overwrites their personality completely with his own) and B) Exists as a pseudo-vestige in pretty much every quirk that he passes down (and there’s evidence of this in the core series, too-- AFO somehow knew of Nagant’s betrayal instantly and immediately activated the bomb quirk he snuck inside her despite his actual body being nowhere near her at the time.  Plus, AFO-Prime heavily implies that he is able to at least sense the actions/thoughts of TomurAFO to a certain degree, even before the prison break occurs). 

In other words, Tomura has never seen a vestige of Decay’s original owner because AFO literally saved over their vestige with his own. 

Additionally: If we're gonna vehemently insist that Decay 100% belongs to Tomura "bc no vestige!" we have to acknowledge that characters like Nagant and Machia never seem to see the original quirk owners in vestige form, either, despite possessing quirks that were gifted by AFO.

At any rate-- We can assume a pseudo AFO vestige present in stolen quirks isn’t nearly as strong as the vestige that’s present within the AFO quirk itself, which is why AFO can’t simply take over anyone that he gifts a quirk to. What the pseudo-vestige seemingly can do, however, is:

Possibly influence emotions/personality like the brain tumor he is (see: his whole monologue about organ transplants being able to influence tastes and personality, which implicitly means quirk transplants can do the same since he is explicitly drawing comparisons between the two)

Possibly force activate their quirks (see: Nagant’s bomb, and likely Tenko’s first incident of decay)

Monitor people from the inside and somehow relay things like their emotional state, situation, and location, back to Prime-AFO. 

Speaking of “monitoring situation/location”...

4. The Key To Heroics (And Villainy, Apparently) Is All About The Timing!

"AFO added you to Find My Friends! Let AFO see your location? :)"

Folks have already talked about how obviously orchestrated this scene is and how it points to AFO having played a part in the Shimura family tragedy, so we'll leave things at that and move on.

Continued in part two (link!)

[felikatze]

Just wanted to say thank you so much for all the brainworms you have been giving me and my friends for the past few hours about Ayin and all the analyses you've been doing about him.

I have been losing my mind in the middle of the night thinking about all the things you've said, turning it over like crazy and trying to compare it with the gameplay I've had of Lobotomy Corporation and Library of Ruina.

Please do more analysis and share more of your ideas! Please? Please, with cherry on top? Please, I beg of you?

Especially if you have in-depth ideas of analyses for the Sephirah and how it relates to both their own characters and Ayin and Angela.

I thank you greatly in advance!

the implication that i've infected an entire friend group with my brainworms is power that will 100% go to my head i feel amazing. what else is analysis posting except trying to inflict people with the same thoughts bouncing around your skull on repeat

i DO have shit on the sephirah but mostly netzach, because i love netzach, and i in fact found my discord ramble about him (and chesed)

i dont have things on how they relate to A and Angela specifically because I mainly kept thinking abt Reverbaration Ensemble parallels... i have so many thoughs abt Netzach and Bremen.

(but if you want me to talk about, say, a specific core supression, or floor realization... i have a lot of thoughts on floor realizations.)

First off I am so sorry that you seem to think I'm smart because that means i have the perfect opportunity to inflict you with this

okay now we can get to the serious stuff

[transcript:

containment breach:

quick ramble abt lor again but i love the ensemble receptions so much. i'm at chesed's rn, and i know he's been chill the entire game, but him just refusing to comment on jae-hoon's tragedy seems, out of context, a dick move, but also is so important for chesed to do? he recognizes that another's suffering is not related to him, that he can't do anything about it, and that this is fine. The closest i'd describe chesed in lobcorp would be "activist burnout." Due to betraying the lab from garion's pressure, chesed was so consumed by guilt, he just blamed himself for everything and became more callous because it's already his fault, right? There's nothing he can do. But in lor, he knows what his responsibilities are, and allows himself joy where he can find it. I love the ensemble receptions bcuz they are just examplary of each patron libriarian's growth and i iqbfjc (sobs)

GOD this sure is a paragraph

also have to salute netzach for carrying his scene all by himself as the musicians of bremen just (animal noises) :pray:

ykno being online i realize that i'm not quiet at all i am a complete and utter chatterbox /end]

[transcript:

containment breach:

thinking abt netzach's scene where he doesn't talk to bremen, because he can't, but recognizes this who has not only lost themself in their own art but also their own suffering

i just i love netzach so much his entire character arc is abt learning to live with depression and learning to want to live again

so he becomes unable to understand, really, why someone would sacrifice themselves for their own art

when he started out just, similar yet different from bremen, completely submerged in his own misery

musicians of bremen reminds me i still have bremen bon bons at home i should eat those. they r tasty /end]

i wanna specifically dig into this scene more because i love that scene, a lot.

Art as we get to know it in the City is irrevocably tied to violence. Puppets are made of human bodies, music is played on bones and sinews. To the artists of the City, to create art is to make someone suffer. Rewatching Netzach's story bits, Roland describes it as doing nothing but seeking stimulation and being provocative.

Furthermore, there is a direct comparison between art and alcohol. To paraphrase more, the Pianist must've been one hell of a stimulant, like getting hit by a strong booze. A performance some are still hungover from.

Netzach's main struggle was addiction because of depression, and his growing appreciation for art is a continuation of that arc. He says himself that art and alcohol are linked.

However, alcohol is a step down from hard drugs. Netzach hasn't quit, but just that step down shows he learned moderation, which makes me very proud of him.

Moderation is what the other.. let's just call them artists, lack. I said in the screencaps above, initially, Netzach was lost in his own suffering, and the musicians of bremen are lost in their art. And if art is seen as equal to suffering, that just means Netzach and Bremen are more similar than expected. (Especially considering what we see of the musicians previously; they’re always trying to chase the same high they experienced listening to the Pianist by any means necessary. The addiction parallels are not suprising.)

I rewatched most of Netzach's lor scenes, and what rlly gets me is that in his first one, he seems almost the exact same as in lobcorp. He doesn't want to work, he got dragged into this against his will, he feels as if his accomplishments are futile.

But! He eventually invites Roland for drinks. He's not drinking to forget alone anymore, he's doing it as social activity. Furthermore, the more time he spends as Patron Librarian of Arts, the more he grows to appreciate art. Art is tied to suffering, still, but it is an expression of suffering. It does not produce any. Or should not, in any case. He sure wishes it wouldn’t.

So we arrive at his Ensemble Reception. This one makes a rather interesting comparison: art as the pursuit of the light. Let me elaborate.

To quote, “Honestly, I wanna tell people to stop doing the kind of art that requires ‘em to immolate themselves and others. Although, on the other hand... I can kinda see where they’re coming from. Art narrows your vision, after all.

You stop caring about the things around you. That’s how most artists seem to act, I think. And so, you indulge in the craft, not realizing that you’re throwing yourself and your surroundings into the fire you started.”

I pose this: Netzach speaks of his experience as Giovanni. Giovanni was a researcher who, when push came to shove, willingly sacrificed himself to advance the project, in hopes of seeing the light, seeing Carmen, again.

Though he dislikes Bremen’s actions, he does not judge them for it, because he recognized that it would be hypocritical. Even so, what shows that he’s grown is that he.. doesn’t want to see people harm themselves anymore. The focus here isn’t if Bremen hurt other people, which they have, but how much of themselves they’ve given up for their performance. He condemns the act, and not the people.

“If I can see that light once more... If I have to muster up the courage to reach it, I’ll gladly do it. It’s easier said than done, though; you need a lot of fearlessness for it.

And I guess you saw the same kind of light I was so desperate to see, yeah? Even if yours was a twisted creature... [...] Though, I don’t think I can tell you off like the others. At least I can see the reason behind it.”

He even explicitly mentions the light. The funny thing is, both Giovanni and Bremen tried to reach the Seed of Light, and Carmen. It’s tragically hilarious that we know Carmen is the voice the Distortions hear.

Hell, the more I think about it, the more you can just compare the Ensemble as a whole to the Outskirts Lab crew, down to Angelica’s puppet body and Carmen’s desecrated corpse.

“And I know pretty well that we have no right to devilishly pick apart each other’s way of art. I’m not very proud of mine, really...”

Netzach just.. gets it. I can’t remember atm, but I don’t think the other Patron Librarians really draw parallels like that. I’m seeing all the parallels now and I can’t unsee them ever. Bro.

His “art,” his way of protecting the light, is still violent. But he sees that perhaps it didn’t have to be, or rather shouldn’t be. I fucking love Netzach so much. His arc just means a lot to me personally, and I’d wager a lot of people who’ve struggled with mental illness would agree.

I’m not gonna get into Netzach’s floor realization here because this post is already long enough, but like, look at the specific flashback of Angela shown in Netzach’s story bits and contrast it to his arc of learning to want to live, and. Yeah.

[sisterspooky1013]

Damsels, Chapter Five: Work That Gameboy

By SisterSpooky1013 / Tagging @today-in-fic

Rated E / Read previous chapters here

Mulder arrives at work early, looking longingly at Scully’s car in the parking lot. Approaching it, he peers in the windows looking for…he isn’t sure what. Her car is, as usual, neat as a pin with no indication of where she went or why.

In his restlessness the night before, he’d thought a lot about why it bothers him so much not to know where she is or what she’s doing. If the roles were reversed, he would expect her to wait it out and trust him to take care of himself, but for some reason he’s struggling to do the same for her. He thought at first that it was her tendency to get hurt or need help, but by comparison he needs her help just as often as she needs his, so that doesn’t track. Then he thought maybe it’s that he doesn’t trust Skinner to do what’s in her best interest, but Skinner has shown a tendency to be protective of Scully on numerous occasions (and in fact Mulder strongly suspects his feelings for her go beyond the bounds of strict professionalism), so that isn’t entirely logical either. Skinner may have left him out to dry with the New Spartans, but he doesn’t believe the man would stoop low enough to treat Scully in the same manner.

In the end, he realized that it’s pretty simple; he’s just crazy about her. His protectiveness doesn’t have anything to do with how capable she is, or the situations other people might put her in, or even situations she might put herself in. He misses her, and cares so much about her that not even knowing where she is feels wrong. It feels like a piece of him is missing, and he’s not allowed to know where it is or when he’ll get it back.

After pretending to work for an hour, he sulks up to Skinner’s office and asks for a few minutes of his time. Skinner is immediately irritated, though Mulder doesn’t realize that it’s in response to him and not a preexisting condition. He stands in front of Skinner’s desk, looming over him.

“What do you want, Agent Mulder?” Skinner grumbles, not looking up from the document he’s reading.

“I’d like to know where Agent Scully is, sir.”

Skinner sighs heavily, dropping his head to his chest.

“Get out of my office, Agent Mulder,” he says in a low, menacing tone.

“Sir, I’m not asking to contact her, I would never compromise her case, I just need to at least know where she is. What if something happens and I need to find her?”

Skinner stands, looking Mulder in the eye with an intensity he’s seen on very few occasions, none of them fond memories. “Agent Mulder, Agent Scully explicitly asked me not to tell you where she is, or what she’s doing. Even if she hadn’t, I STILL would not tell you, however I hope that if you don't respect the direct orders of your superior, you might, at the very least, respect Agent Scully’s wishes. Now get the hell out of my office and do not bring this up again, understood?”

Mulder glances down and notices Scully’s keys on the desk near Skinner’s nameplate, her Apollo 11 keychain easily identifiable. He leans forward, putting his hands on the desktop, one covering the keys.

“Sir, if anything happens to her, I’ll-“

“You’ll what, Agent Mulder?” Skinner challenges him, stuffing his hands in his pockets in a show of bravado.

Mulder straightens, palming the keys as he stands, and leaves without another word.

Scully arrives at the club just before 2 pm, wearing shorts and a tank top as Angel had instructed. After stuffing her purse into a locker, she finds Angel and Tibet on the floor, which has returned to its daylight state of clean and quiet. Queenie restocks the bar while Ben fiddles with the sound system.

Tibet is up on the stage while Angel sits at the tip rail, offering pointers on a new dance Tibet is working out. Scully immediately notices that Tibet’s hair is cropped short and worn in its natural curls, and realizes she’d been wearing a wig the night before.

“So I was thinking that I could either take my top off just before or just after the first chorus, tell me which looks better, okay?” Tibet says to Angel as Scully enters and takes a seat beside her.

“Benny! Hit me with the music!” Tibet shouts, and then repeats her performance twice, revealing her breasts at a different point in the song each time. When she’s finished, she sits down on the edge of the stage in front of them and asks for their thoughts, her breasts still uncovered.

“I think the sooner the better,” Angel says. “They come here to see your body, so show it to em!”

Tibet nods. “What do you think, Desi?” She asks, stretching a smooth brown leg out to her side and leaning into it.

Scully suddenly feels entirely out of her league in terms of providing an opinion. “Uh, well, generally speaking I guess I’d say wait. You want to build some suspense, right? Make them work for it?”

Angel looks at her suspiciously out of the corner of her eye. “You don’t fuck on the first date, do you?” She asks with a haughty grin, and Scully’s eyes go big at the question. “I’m just messing with you, let’s get to your training!”

“Alright,” Tibet begins as though she’s done this dozens of times, tugging the straps of her shirt back over her shoulders. “So, have you ever given a lap dance before?” she asks plainly, and Scully’s cheeks flush.

“Well, kind of I guess. In college, though more as a joke than anything else. I would definitely consider myself a beginner.”

“Got it, got it,” Tibet responds. “Well, for the most part dancing is about creating a sense of intimacy. It’s fake, obviously, but the more your customer feels like you actually care about him, want him to look at you, like that he’s appreciating your body, the better you’ll do. Your stage set is just about showing yourself off and getting them curious about you. The real money comes from lap dances and VIP, and the more you can draw attention with a really great stage set, the more customers will want to spend time with you afterward. Angel is a beast on the pole and she can teach you all those tricks, but I consider myself the lap dance expert around here, so I’m gonna teach you that part.” She smiles and jumps down from the stage, pulling a chair away from one of the tables and gesturing for Scully to sit in it.

“Oh,” Scully says, and sits as instructed.

“Sometimes, when you’re on the floor, customers will flag you down or ask for you, and that’s great. But you also have to approach people, because they’ll be too shy to ask. So you might come up and do this.”

Tibet saunters towards Scully with a secretive smile on her lips, stepping so close that her thighs thread between Scully’s knees. Next she leans down, placing her hands on Scully’s shoulders and bringing her mouth to Scully’s ear.

“Would you like a dance, Baby?” she asks in a syrupy voice, and Scully feels a shiver run down her spine. Tibet backs up. “Okay, now you try.”

“You want ME to do that?” Scully clarifies, and while just asking someone if they want a lap dance should be the easiest hurdle to clear, she’s finding that it’s still an uncomfortably high one.

Angel turns her head toward the bar and calls out, “Queenie! We need some liquid courage over here!”

Queenie walks over with a bottle of tequila and three shot glasses, pouring them wordlessly before returning to her task.

Angel holds her glass up, Tibet and Scully following suit. “To new career paths,” Angel says, and Scully smiles thinly, clinking her glass with theirs and throwing back the shot with a grimace.

Three weeks. She’s been gone three weeks, and not a word from Skinner. No update, no information, though he’s stopped by a couple times and asked, drawing increasing amounts of rage from his boss. He’s finished all the paperwork, re-organized the files, cleaned and rearranged the office (only to immediately change it back) and spent hours upon hours imagining where Scully might be right now.

He kept her keys, just in case, but knows she’d be unhappy with him invading her privacy by snooping around her apartment. That’s why he waits three whole weeks before he finally does it. He has a key to her apartment and could have gone there at any point, but her personal keyring also holds the keys for her gun safe and her mailbox, which may prove helpful. After work on a Thursday, he drives by and lets himself in, the warm vanilla smell of her immediately invading his nostrils as he opens the door. He sighs deeply, pulling her into his lungs; it feels like coming home.

First he waters her plants, which are looking half dead, and makes a mental note to use watering them as the reason he came here if asked. Next he opens her gun safe, and is struck to find her service weapon holstered and tucked neatly inside with the safety on. She doesn’t have her gun? What the hell kind of assignment is this? He brings in her mail, which is no help at all, and leaves it stacked on the counter. Next he lays down on her bed, shoving his face into her pillow and breathing the smell of her shampoo for a few minutes before he has the thought to look for her overnight bag.

Scully has a go bag in the trunk of her car for emergencies, but given the opportunity she’ll use her overnight bag and pack for the weather, situation, etc. Opening her closet, he finds it on the floor near her laundry hamper, empty save for a travel size can of hairspray tucked into a side pocket. In her bathroom, he finds all her toiletries accounted for, including her toothbrush. The more he sees, the more confused he is. Even when he’d spent time undercover with dangerous individuals, he’d been allowed to bring his own toothbrush.

Moving to the hallway, he picks up her landline and dials.

“Dana?” Maggie Scully’s voice answers on the second ring.

“No, sorry, Mrs. Scully, it’s Fox Mulder.”

“I saw Dana’s name on the caller ID, is she with you?” Her voice carries worry.

“No, I’m just here at her apartment watering her plants, sorry to confuse you. Have you been in touch with Dana, Mrs. Scully?”

“No, Fox, I haven’t heard from her in weeks. She told me she had an assignment that would take her away for a while and that she’d be unreachable, but I’m a little concerned that she hasn’t contacted me yet.”

Mulder closes his eyes. “I wish I had anything to share, Mrs. Scully, but I’m in somewhat of the same boat. A.D. Skinner isn’t concerned and it does sound like he’s in touch with her, but I was hoping she might have called you.”

“I’m afraid not,” Maggie replies sadly.

“What did she tell you when she left? Did she share any information at all?” he asks hopefully.

“Um, let me think. She said she was going on an assignment and that she’d be out of touch for a few weeks. And she said she’d bring me some Tastykakes when she comes home,” she adds.

“Tastykakes, what are those?” Mulder asks, his investigative senses tingling.

“They’re a treat we always get when we go to Philadelphia; little packaged snack cakes. The kids always loved them.”

“Are they only available in Philadelphia?” he asks, heart pumping.

“I’m not sure, but that’s where we always get them,” Maggie says hopefully.

“Thank you, Mrs. Scully. That’s really helpful. I’ll let you know if I track her down, okay?”

“Thank you, Fox. Take care.”

Setting the phone back on its cradle, he does a little victory dance. It isn’t much, but it’s something. Scully is just a few hours away in the city of brotherly love.

Three weeks. It’s been three weeks of practicing stage sets and lap dances in the afternoon, serving drinks in the evening and well into the middle of the night, and then sleeping until noon. Her arms and legs bear fading bruises from her acclimation to Paul the Pole, the crooks of her elbows and knees sporting slight calluses that help her get a good grip (with an assist from the grip powder Angel has instructed her to use). She’s given Tibet and Angel dozens of lap dances each, the other standing by to coach her on making sure one foot stays on the floor. After three weeks, she found that her barriers were mostly in her head. Once she was able to let go and just move, she’s actually pretty good at it.

That day she arrives in pink cotton shorts and a white tank top, now so used to being scantily clad that it no longer makes her self-conscious, and prepares to do a full dress rehearsal of the routine she worked up with Angel’s help. Queenie and Ricky sit down to observe what is more or less a test of her readiness, and one she intends to pass. Where she would have expected to feel nervous, she’s excited, ever the eager student motivated to impress and exceed expectations. Ben kills the daytime lights to make it look and feel like it would if they were open, and her set begins.

Moving onto the stage, she can barely see her audience with the bright lights trained on her. She quickly gets lost in the movements she rehearsed, feeling graceful as she circles the pole and hitches an arm around it, spinning in a feathery arc. When the point in the dance comes to remove her shirt, she does so as a well practiced step in a strategy, without any feelings of exposure. Soon enough her bra follows suit and she is left with only her tiny pink shorts, nipples hardening as they graze the pole. The undulation of her hips, the pop of her booty out towards the audience, the slip of a hand down the inside of her thigh; they’re each a part of the method. Precisely planned and executed in much the same way as she might dismantle and clean her gun, or prepare a slide for the microscope. It isn’t much different than performing an autopsy, she had reasoned. Except instead of: Y incision, open rib cage, remove organs, examine stomach contents, collect specimens, examine brain, it’s: arch back, grasp breasts, spread legs, thrust pelvis, rub thighs, grind on the pole. She’s always found her strength in taking a clinical, detached approach to difficult tasks, and that turns out to be just as effective on the stage as it is in the lab.

As she finishes, her small audience erupts into applause, standing in ovation as Ben brings the house lights up halfway. Scully smiles shyly, stepping down to join them on the floor as Ricky approaches her and slings an arm around her bare shoulders.

“That was fucking fantastic, Desi. Sexy as fuck. Let me see you do a lap dance now.”

Continue Reading

[sl-walker]

Thoughts on The Unwilling Apprentice

Okay, so the resplendent @xiamei-sami -- bringer of excellent gifs -- brought forth another treasure, which is ostensibly ‘new’ backstory for Maul.  You can find it linked in this post here.  I read it myself a couple weeks ago and have thought about it and, of course, developed opinions about it, but thanks to the whole work thing, haven’t been able to put those down yet.

So, spoilers ahead!  Beware!  If those bug you, anyway.

Okay, so.  There are a few things I liked about it and then some that I was scratching my head about, and then there were some that were just stupid and the author should be ashamed of accepting money for.  But since I’m in a reasonably charitable mood, I’ll start with what I liked.

1.) Maul was not born evil.  And, in fact, was portrayed here as a perfectly darling kid who did chores and liked hanging around in nature like the actual Disney princess he is.  For people who prefer canon over Legends -- though, this story’s relationship with canon is tenuous at best -- it’s nice to have something to point to and go, “Hey, he wasn’t actually inherently evil!”  I mean, Legends proved that with Wrath, but now we have two sources for it.

2.) He was shown as being very much in tune with the Living Force.  Frankly, the reason I liked this was because I wrote that years ago, dude, and I did it better than you lol, but still, it’s nice when something quasi-canonish does the same thing years after you and with less skill. XD  It just is.

Anyway, those were really the only things I actually liked liked.

Now onto the headscratchers:

Where the fuck is canon?  For real.  Suddenly, we have Nightbrothers living with Nightsisters and there’s no mention whatsoever of their marginalization which is ???  It sort of loosely follows Son of Dathomir, in terms of Talzin being Mother of the Year by kicking her son out and ignoring him being abused by other people, because supposedly Sids offered to make her his apprentice and ??? Profit!

Like, I do seriously LOL anytime anyone tries to portray Talzin as some kind of decent person.  I mean, we did watch her feeling Savage up and being complicit in making him murder her other son, and then there’s the fuckery she pulled on Maul, too, and yet somehow there are still people out there who act like she was a great mother.  Boy, have I got a bridge for you!

But anyway.  This had, at its very best, a very fucking cursory relationship to current recognizable canon.  Maul had a brother in this story, but then all those years later just forgot??  What??

So, have that headscratcher.  Now, let’s go into why the author should feel bad about accepting money for this:

1.) The canon thing.  The lack of canon connection.  Completely ignoring that the Nightbrothers are actual canon slaves holy shit.  How do you ignore that?  Like, how do you not acknowledge that??  Even current Disney canon does!  Admittedly, I do believe this story is meant for school kids, but like-- my dude. So was TCW, and they’re the ones who explicitly stated it. There are ways to make this canon without ignoring swathes of it for supposedly school-age readers.

2.) The motivation for Maul ‘going dark’ makes-- exactly no fucking sense.  It’s basically just a literal adoptive-parent abuse story, which is lazy as fuck, btw.  He basically gets beat up a lot.  There is not, as there is in Legends, a very notable and concerted effort to twist his perceptions and manipulate him.  His mom kicks him out (Mother of the Year!), he gets beat up by the adopting family, he learns how to use the Force and fights back.

One of the reasons this annoys me is that it’s lacking all of the clever work Ryder Windham did in Wrath to not only portray Maul as an inherently sweet kid trapped in truly horrific circumstances, but draw an absolutely credible mental roadmap of how you would take that inherently sweet kid and twist him into a Sith assassin.  And in case anyone’s wondering?  Wrath of Darth Maul was meant to be a YA book.

Like, I hate to tell this guy this, but most people who are abused do not, in fact, turn into villains.  Most people also don’t turn into abusers themselves.  So without the manipulation that Ryder depicts, and that Luceno and the others touch on, it just seems kind of like-- he needed an excuse and went with the cheapest, laziest version of Disney he could.

But this brings me to the next point, which is the most egregious point for me:

3.) The author puts the responsibility for Maul being taken and abused by Sidious on Maul himself.

If there was one thing that made Legends absolutely spectacular, re: Maul, it was that never once did Ryder Windham imply, even a little bit, that little Maul had ever asked for or deserved what happened to him at Sid’s hands.  At no point did any of the authors who handled Maul pre-Disney imply that he would choose what was done to him if he’d ever actually been given a choice.  And to me -- and to a lot of other abuse survivors -- this kind of thing is a Big Deal.  It’s a really damned important distinction to make.

But no, in this story, Maul actually chooses to be Sidious’s apprentice.

W. T. F., dude.  What the actual fuck, dude.

I guess I should write this out for anyone who might not know it, but taking a character who in canon was stated to have no choice in it and suddenly giving them responsibility for their own victimization is highly fucked up.

Anyway, that there is some lousy writing.�� Just sayin’.

So, there is my opinion and thoughts.  There are some things I liked, there are some things that were just confusing and then there was shit like the immediate above that means the author should be slapped around a parking lot a few times.  I probably would not kick if people did adopt it as their canon backstory, because it’s still better than the crazy shit people currently assume, like that Maul was somehow born dark.

But please, for the love of god, I am not even kidding about this: If you really want to understand and write a genuinely interesting, nuanced version of Maul, and have a pretty damned cohesive, tragic and psychologically more realistic backstory to build on, stick to his Legends materials.  Those guys who did it first actually did do it best, and this latest offering is very milquetoast by comparison, when it’s not a turd wrapped in paper.

[fourteenacross]

moby-dick thoughts at last

Okay, I’m going to see Moby-Dick one last time tomorrow and I still really want to get my broader thoughts down. I wrote the following as emails to a couple friends who saw it and wanted to chat about it, so I’m just going to put it here for posterity and maybe add more tomorrow night?

I'm still all over the place, though, so I'm going to answer this in no particular order, heh.

First off, some things I love:

Everything about part two is just like candy for me. The audience participation, the anachronistic theme park announcement, the silliness, the way that Choksi pulls out that pointer and keeps collapsing it to make one more comment, then pulls it out again, then collapses it again to make ONE MORE COMMENT. I love the puppets and the puppet show aspect of it. I love how much fun the cast seems to be having! Watching it is fucking delightful, it’s the reason that I’m a member of the ART and the reason I love Malloy’s weirdness and the reason I love weird regional theatre.

The performances are stellar, of course, and there’s a lot of emotion, especially in part four. Starr Busby as Starbuck blows the fucking doors off the place and while I am usually fairly femme4femme, that fucking costume she wears is A LOT for my tiny gay heart to handle, okay? Choksi is brilliant, of course--perfect perfect PERFECT, I cannot imagine a single other person in this role. It’s so weird, I was watching some old Comet clips a couple weeks ago and it’s CRAZY how the beard and the attitude turn him into an entirely different person. (I know, that’s how acting works, but still.) I don’t particularly care about Ahab, but I love basically everyone else? Tashtego and Daggoo’s little asides throughout were particularly good. I loved the use of Dawn Troupe as everyone who’s NOT on the Pequod and her costumes were stellar and that bit where she’s the Rachel in part four is INCREDIBLE. 

The music is also incredible. I’m not like, smart about music, but it manages to keep incorporating like, melodies and refrains again and again to bring the different sections together and it was....good. He musiced good, that Dave Malloy. Good on him.

“The Pacific.” Oh god. That song alone could kill me.

The costumes were great, the set is amazing, and overall it’s just...fun. I had a good time! It’s a 3.5 hour musical and the only parts where I thought, “Oh god, this is long” were a couple of Ahab’s songs. I was never bored! It is a wild, sprawling work, but even though parts of it didn’t work for me, nothing turned me off entirely, which is saying a lot for something that long and intricate.

(Also, to be clear, I haven’t read the book! I saw a few review on the internets where people were like, “If you haven’t read the book, you won’t be able to follow it at all!” which I have to say is untrue. I read a couple of the first chapters in a class in college, fifteen (!!!!!) years ago, but I didn’t so much as wikipedia the thing over the entire course of preparing for this show. I meant to, but I never got around to it. And despite that, I had no problem following it or enjoying it?)

Anyway, onto the criticisms.

So, I agree with a lot of what you said. Some of it is def intentional--I remember either Rachel or Malloy saying in an interview that most adaptations are focused entirely on Ahab, when he largely exists more as sort of this weird, menacing figure who occasionally drops in to be obsessed and then disappears again. But there's def a lot of messiness that I think is the result of trying to do too many things in a very limited amount of time. I would have LOVED to see the seven hour version for comparison's sake. I think the tonal shift is intentional as well, but I don't know that it 100% works for me? Like, I get that Pip's section of the book is fascinating and I get that he wanted to draw the parallels to Pip and the lost boys and Ishmael in part four, but I honestly think a lot of that could stand to be cut. It could be a great stand alone piece, but the things it sets up don't justify the length of it. If they used that time instead to set up some of the despair in part four, I think the tonal shift wouldn't feel so abrupt as well.

The framing device is also a weird choice to me. Like, I love Choksi's performance of it, and I would hate to lose some of those bits, but I feel like, to justify it being in there, you need a follow-up after act four? It would space out three "character" breaks--the prologue, the Fedallah monologue, and then something like an afterword--and do a better job of actually "framing" the show. But also, honestly, I think it would work just as well to take it out all together. It feels like kind of a foreword? And I think that would be better served as like, a note in the program ahead of the bibliography. It's such a fucking weird choice to open out of character and then never really return to that? Like, you can have Ishmael address the audience and break the fourth wall and be anachronistic and not need that weird set up, I promise, Malloy.

(I love reading the bibliographies in playbills at Malloy shows. That has nothing to do with anything, it's just a dumb thing I like, haha)

I would have loved to see some more time devoted to developing Starbuck and developing the relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg, which, again, I feel like there would have been space to do if they got rid of some of the Pip stuff. Especially because Starbuck carries so much of part four, and I would die for Starr Busby and she can definitely shoulder that weight, but the narrative needs to shoulder some of it too. I'm glad that he made Ishmael and Queequeg explicitly a queer couple, but I feel like there's a line between "this is quietly happening in the background and not of importance to the narrative" and "this happened almost entirely off-screen and people who need 'explicit' confirmation of things aren't going to understand it, entirely." I feel like the average cis het folks seeing this show would very easily be like, "Oh, they're slow dancing and holding each other like friends do!!! :)" not out of any malice, but because it wouldn't even occur to them to look at it any other way.

To answer your last question: this is definitely NOT going to broadway any time soon, if at all. It's def still in the development stages and I don't think he has his eye on broadway for it. It's too long and too weird and too much, and I think he knows that. So I feel like it's important to not hold it up to the same metric as the out of town tryouts that the ART normally does? Like, it's not going to compare to Waitress or JLP or even Comet, which had very inventive staging but was a very simple story and fairly well hammered out by the time it was in Cambridge? Which doesn't give it a free pass or anything--it's def still very messy. But I feel like it's mess is different as a piece in development than it would be as an out of town, you know? And I really like that there's a place in regional theatre for weird, messy, experimental things that aren't necessarily aiming for that level of commercial success.

So my tl;dr is that I agree with a lot of your criticisms and think it needs a whole lot of work going forward, but also I kind of loved it for what it was, warts and all, and I'm going back to see it again tomorrow, SO XD

[mattzerella-sticks]

The Bluest Blue (a Dean/Cas hexed!Dean, TLK fic, 3.3k)

(Link to Ao3)

After Michael was defeated, Dean took a temporary hiatus. He wanted to get back in the game, and a case involving a mischief-making witch seemed like the easiest way to dip his toes back into the hunting pool. Unfortunately, he was hit with a spell that'll have him facing something even worse than ancient entities or evil archangels.

His own feelings.

And he has no one to blame but his own body - his own eyes.

           Castiel parked next to Dean’s Baby, turning the car off just as the song on the radio entered its final chorus. Jack crowed from beside him, glaring at the radio. “It was almost over.”

           “That was the third time we’ve heard that song today.”

           “I like it.”

           “It’ll be on again,” Castiel said, exiting the truck, “Come on, Sam and Dean need us.” He didn’t waste any time, striding across the motel parking lot over towards the room Sam texted him. In the frantic phone call, the younger Winchester left that tidbit of information out. Sam was more preoccupied with helping Dean into the car after an unfortunate run-in with a witch.

           They were on a routine hunt; some small town trouble that Dean figured would be a simple job. He convinced everyone it was easy enough that they wouldn’t have to worry. Some slight mischief, where two hunters could step in and sort it out. Ever since they booted Michael from Dean’s head, he was coerced into a temporary retirement until he recovered. The witch-hunt was supposed to prove he could go back into the field on a regular basis. Getting blasted by an unknown spell did not help in any way.

           Castiel rapped on the door, Jack jogging up behind him. By the time he made it there, Sam opened the door. Looking between them, he sighed out a breath of relief. “You made it.”

           “Of course,” he said, stepping past Sam and into the room, “Dean is he -?”

           Dean was upright and moving. When he entered the room, Dean scrambled and ducked his head away from him. Squinting, Castiel trod more cautiously towards his friend. “Dean?”

           “Hey, Cas!” Dean laughed, still not looking at him. Castiel watched him grope the bed he was sitting on for a discarded pair of sunglasses, slipping them on. Once they were settled, he turned over to him. “You, uh – you got here pretty quickly?”

           He shrugged. “You were in trouble.”

           The flush on Dean’s cheeks burned even deeper. Castiel spun towards Sam, who was still behind him watching them curiously. “He seems to be fine?”

           “I mean, the worst of it was the fainting –“

           “I passed out.”

           “Fainting,” Sam stressed, walking over towards the small table by the television set where a few books lay scattered and open. “Honestly, I might have… overreacted when I called you-”

           Dean snorted, leaning back casually on the bed, sunglasses still on. “Nurse Ratchet barely let me do anything when I came to. His worried hen routine had me convinced he wouldn’t even let me go to the bathroom on my own.”

           Sam rolled his eyes. “I wasn’t that bad.”

           “It took almost a half hour of yelling before you’d let me out to the bar!”

           “I was only looking out for you!”

           “You were driving me crazy!” Dean growled, “Besides if you had kept me locked up we might never have discovered what that witch did to me.”

           Castiel, too exasperated to let the brothers carry on arguing, interrupted then. “What did she do?”

           He drew their attention back to him. Where Sam’s fight drained out of him the second he refocused on Castiel, Dean’s tension rose like his taut shoulders and pinched brows.

           “It’s a kind of glamour spell,” Sam explained, bringing the book over to him. “The spells in her books were all pretty basic, I don’t think she knew what she was casting either.”

           Dean grumbled, picking at his cuticles. “Lucky I didn’t end up with a tail or bad gas then…”

           “You still haven’t told me what happened,” Castiel asked him, softly. Dean didn’t respond, too busy with his hands. He tried again, adding, “Does this have anything to do with your sunglasses?”

           Dean cursed, pulling at the skin too hard. He shoved his thumb into his mouth, sucking back the blood.

           While he was distracted, Sam answered for him. “When we went to the bar, everything was fine. But then Dean caught sight of our bartender…” He related the story to him and Jack. About how the first thing their server, a woman named Brandi, remarked on was Dean’s unnatural eye color. “She thought he was wearing contacts,” Sam said, fighting back a smile, “Because no one is supposed to have pink eyes.”

           “Pink?” Castiel repeated, glancing at Dean. His friend didn’t comment, instead making himself to look as small as possible; a hard task to accomplish given his grand stature.

           “Yeah,” Sam carried on, “I dragged him into the bathroom to even make sure – you know, away from all the low lighting and light smoke. His eyes were like Liz Taylor’s –“

           “Liz Taylor had purple eyes,” Dean finally spoke, “If you’re gonna make a comparison at least make it right.”

           “Well, sorry but no actual person ever had pink eyes! Would you have preferred it if I said Barbie?”

           Dean crossed his arms over his chest. “…Still didn’t have pink eyes.”

           “Anyway,” Sam sighed, “We drove back to the witch’s hideout to see if there was anything she left behind. Lucky for us we scared her good, and all the memorabilia she collected was right there like when we left.”

           “Not even all of it was witchy! She had a Willow action figure from Buffy…”

           “We gathered up all the books and brought them back, and then called Rowena –“

           “Rowena, yes,” Castiel said, latching onto that thread. “Did she provide any insight or – or is she coming?”

           “She told us what kind of spell Dean got hit with,” Sam told them, scratching at his neck, “But there was nothing else she could do. Actually, she said that it might help if you showed up.”

           Dean muttered to himself, drawing further inwards.

           Castiel ignored him, instead pondering over Sam’s words. “Me?” he asked, “I’m not… what did she think I could do?”

           Sam shrugged. “She didn’t expand on it, although I’m pretty sure she was laughing.”

           “That does sound like Rowena…” Jack said, nodding.

           “I… I don’t know how I can be of much help,” Castiel admitted, “Was there anything in the books –“

           “Nothing.”

           Castiel turned to Dean, then. As if noticing the angel’s focus, Dean looked up and met his stare. His breath hitched, but he couldn’t tell much else from the sunglasses his friend kept on. “Dean,” Castiel said, voice low, “Why did your eyes turn pink?”

           He remained silent. Dean broke their connection and directed his shielded eyes elsewhere. Luckily Sam, nearby, was more forthcoming with the information.  

           “It was an attraction spell,” Sam said, “So whenever he sees a girl he likes his eyes go all pink. Which, nice to know you’re still crushing on Daphne, Dean.”

           Dean offered a pitiful laugh and a weak ‘shut up’.

           Castiel frowned, unsure as to why Dean would hide his eyes away from him over something like that. His attraction to women was apparent even without the change in color, and while it may have bothered him in the past, Castiel has had time to learn and live with it.

           He knelt down in front of Dean, laying a hand over his knee to grab his attention. Dean stiffened, but did not pull away. “Dean,” Castiel spoke softly, like to an injured fawn, “Dean, I promise I’m not going to laugh… I’m here to help.”

           He shifted, obviously uncomfortable with the idea. “Cas,” he whined, “It’s not – you don’t have to –“

           “Please, Dean,” Castiel urged him, “Don’t you trust me?”

           “Of course,” he told him, without any doubt nor time wasted, “But this is –“

           “This won’t change my opinion of you, Dean, I promise.” Still seeming unsure, Castiel dipped forward. On his toes, he squeezed Dean’s knee tight as if to will every ounce of comfort into his friend’s body. “Please, remove your sunglasses.”

           Dropping his gaze for the briefest of seconds to look between Sam and Jack, Dean returned with a melancholy air about him. As if he were on his way to the guillotine, accepting a horrible fate even though Castiel assured him there was none waiting for him. Steeling himself, Dean slowly pulled the sunglasses off. Then, he blinked his eyes open.

           Castiel dropped backwards, breath stolen from him. He expected rings of pink, but instead was gazing into a glowing pool of bright blue. Dean’s eyes burned brighter the longer they were exposed.

           “Blue?” Sam asked, peering closer. He stepped up behind Castiel and bent down. “What the hell? Why are your eyes blue?” Jack joined them as well, using Castiel’s other side to investigate as well.

           All the sudden attention on Dean made him cherry cheeked. He snarled, forcing them all away as he shoved his sunglasses back on. The light dimmed. “Blue – pink – who the hell cares? Cas can you do your two-fingered grace thing and fix me?”

           “I wasn’t,” Castiel stuttered over himself, “I don’t… I don’t think my grace can fix this.”

           “Then how were you going to help?”

           “I… admit I did not know –“

           “What?”

           “But I thought maybe if I saw for myself what was happening, then the answer would strike me,” Castiel explained, “I did not foresee this happening.”

           “So my eyes are a freakin�� mood ring,” Dean cried, “Great…”

           “Then Dean is upset?” Jack asked, “From what I know about mood rings, blue is the color of sadness.”

           Sam shook his head. “No, Rowena explicitly said it was an attraction spell. I read her the spell verbatim – well, I broke it up so I didn’t accidentally cast it myself…”

           “Attraction…” Jack tapped at his chin, thinking. Snapping his fingers, he drew all the attention to him. “I think I get it!”

           Dean, quickly transitioning from red to white, gaped at him as his freckles stood out against his pale skin. “No, Jack –“

           “If Dean was attracted to a woman, then his eyes turned pink,” Jack explained, “So therefore, when Dean must have seen a man he was attracted to – his eyes would have turned blue!”

           Castiel existed long before the universe was born, and even the silence before the Big Bang did not seem to be this long and uncomfortable. Dean dropped his head into his hands, unable to keep it up. Castiel sat, stunned. He dared not look at his friend, sure that even a glance of Dean would make him spontaneously combust.

           It was Sam who broke the calm that swept over them. At first Castiel couldn’t understand what he was hearing, but as the sound grew in sound and energy, he realized it was laughter.    

           “Oh man,” Sam chuckled, “I thought – I thought it was something more serious. But this explains it! Why you wanted me to call Cas and tell him to turn back even after Rowena – and Rowena! Oh – oh! And how you couldn’t even look me in the eye after I turned on a Dr. Sexy rerun.”

           “I’m glad you find it funny, Sam,” Dean growled, standing up, “So happy I could amuse you. Now if y’all don’t mind, I’m going to go drown myself in the toilet.” He stomped over to the bathroom, slamming it shut behind him.

           Castiel turned to the younger Winchester. “Sam –“

           “Oh, relax,” he said, “He’s not even going near that thing. The day we got here he took one look and has been using the rest room at the McDonald’s two blocks down.”

           That didn’t make Castiel feel any better. He stared at the door, wishing that Dean would come back into the room with them. But that was as unlikely as Castiel moving to join him, his rear glued to the floor.

           Sam kicked him, drawing his attention away from the door. “Well? Aren’t you gonna go to him?”

           “I… I don’t –“

           He rolled his eyes. “Please, I think it was very obvious who made his eyes go blue.” Sam returned to the table, sitting. “So obvious I’m kinda mad I didn’t put the two together. But I was distracted…”

           “Where are you going with this?”

           “Dean finds you attractive… I know you think the same,” Sam listed off. Castiel spluttered, blushing. He waved him off. “Please, after the first few years you can’t write that staring thing you do off as ignorance.”

           “Still,” Castiel muttered, “I doubt Dean wants to see me. He made it very clear with how unwilling he was to show his eyes to me.”

           Sam sighed. “Dean… he was embarrassed. He gets defensive, but he’s still a total pushover. I’m sure he didn’t even lock the door.”

           Castiel looked at the door one final time before making a decision. He tore himself off the ground and carefully marched over to the bathroom door. Hand raised as if to knock, Castiel thought better and reached for the knob instead. Like Sam said, it was unlocked. He chanced a glance backward at Sam and Jack, both shooting him encouraging thumbs up, before entering the bathroom.

           Dean leaned against the sink, watching him in the reflection. The toilet remained shut. Castiel closed the door behind him, taking the space behind Dean nearer the shower.

           His head drooped, and he took a deep breath before addressing Castiel. “There’s nothing I can say that can make this anything but what it is, right?”

           “You can try?” Castiel started, attempting humor, “It might not work, but…”

           “Look, if this is awkward…”

           “It’s not!” he said, loudly, startling them both. “I mean,” he continued, “it’s… it’s not awkward.” Unsure if he wanted to strike at the heart of the issue, Castiel heads down another path first. “I do admit I was surprised… as an angel I never really considered things like gender.”

           Dean scoffed. “You telling me you don’t think of yourself a guy?”

           “I’m an angel… although, if I had to choose, then… yes. I would identify as a man.”

           “Good, because blue eyes are bad enough,” Dean said, looking back up at his reflection. “I don’t wanna know what color they’d shine if you decided to not subscribe to the binary.”

           “You think blue eyes are bad?” Castiel asked, closing the short distance between them, hitting up against Dean’s back. His hand stretched forward, tapping at the mirror where Dean’s eyes were shown. “What’s so wrong with blue eyes?”

           Dean licked his lips, darting his gaze over to Castiel’s face before returning to his own. “They’re – uh… they’re not so bad,” he admitted, “But not on me. I can’t pull them off like, uh… well –“ He nodded to him, unable to tell Castiel what they already knew.

           “Yes,” Castiel agreed, “My vessel is attractive.” He sighed, stepping back, “I understand why your eyes would change color because of my body –“

           “Shit Cas,” Dean cried, throwing a hand over his eyes. Even with the poor coverage, blue light shined between the cracks landing every which way in the room. “You can’t be all self-deprecating and whatnot, do you not know how much more adorable that makes you?”

           Castiel skewed his head to the side. “It does?”

           “Yes, Cas… Christ.” Dean rounded towards him, still covering his eyes. “Yeah, your body is hot. Your body, not a vessel. But… it’s not all that’s making my eyes light up.” He leaned back against the sink, sighing. “Rowena texted me after Sam’s call, filling me in on what she didn’t tell Sam. Warning me that the – the more attractive I found someone the brighter my eyes would glow.”

           “Oh,” Castiel squeaked out, glad that Dean blinded himself so as not to see the fierce blush that dusted around his jaw. “Then, the sunglasses…”

           “Was so I didn’t look like the damned Bat-Signal in our cramped and crummy motel room!” Dean used his other free hand to run through his hair, “Don’t you know what you do to me, Cas?”

           “I… apparently didn’t,” Castiel confessed, “I also didn’t hope that you’d feel the same.”

           Dean’s breath hitches. “The… the same?”

           “Dean,” Castiel said, smiling, “It seems we were both in the dark about our feelings towards each other…” He moved into his space once more. “I felt like the moon, at times, always circling your orbit but never able to touch. The time we spent together without any interruption like a full moon on a clear night. And being driven apart days at a time left me feeling like a sliver barely lighting up the sky.”

           “You… you really mean that, Cas?”

           “I do…” He lifted a hand to touch the one covering Dean’s face, “Come now, Dean. Let me see.”

           “But I… it’s got to be so bright now,” Dean whispered, “I’ll blind you.”

           “The benefits of being an angel,” Castiel smirked, flicking the lights off, “Is that my senses can handle more than any humans could.” With the cover of darkness, Dean allowed Castiel to drag his hand away. Dean’s eyes were the only source of light in the room, the blue shining brighter than even an angel’s grace.

           Castiel was entranced by the rich shades of blue, as if Dean’s attraction was a waterfall cascading over him. There were so many different colors bouncing out from Dean’s eyes, he could barely keep up with them. Instead, he let the warmth of Dean’s affection wash over him as he slowly entwined their fingers together.

           Then, as if pulled in by the tide of Dean’s ocean-like eyes, Castiel drew closer towards him. His lips sought out Dean’s, neither able to look away as their mouths met. It was a brief touch, a slight dusting. Once both stayed put, they pressed their lips together again and kissed fully. Castiel snaked his other hand around Dean’s waist to clutch at his back. Dean threaded both of his hands through Castiel’s hair, tugging at it. The light was cut off as Dean closed his eyes. It was of no matter to Castiel, who shut his own seconds later.

           After a good while, Dean pulled back gasping for breath. They blinked their eyes open, still stuck in the dark. Dean groped around in the darkness, searching for the light switch. Once he turned it on, Castiel smiled.

           Dean’s eyes were green again.

           “What?” he asked, “Is there something on my face?”

           Too joyful to speak, Castiel whirled Dean around to face the mirror again. He then crowded around him once more, encircling his waist with his arms and laying his chin against his shoulder.

           Dean stared at his reflection, fingers hovering below his eyes. “They… they’re back.”

           Castiel smothered a laugh into Dean’s shoulder. “I guess Rowena was right,” he said, “I was the key to fixing all this.”

           “Which means more people knew besides us,” Dean muttered, smiling as wide as Castiel, “We’re a couple of dumbasses aren’t we?”

           “At least we’re a couple,” Castiel told him. “We are a couple, yes?”

           “Buddy, I don’t think anyone else could make my eyes glow like that.”

           Castiel hummed, knocking his head against Dean’s. “I’m glad they stopped. Although I will admit your eyes under this spell were the second most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

           Snorting, Dean craned his neck back so as to look at him directly. “Really?” he asked, “Only the second most beautiful? What could have topped that lightshow?”

           “Your eyes as they are now.” Then, Castiel proceeded to drop two quick kisses onto Dean’s drooping eyelids, delighting in the brilliant shade of pink that crawled across his face. “I must say that I always did prefer green over blue…”

           “…You’re so lucky I’m not spelled anymore Cas,” Dean chuckled, “This close, I’m sure I could have blinded you.”

           Castiel rolled his eyes, pulling away. He reached for Dean’s hand yet again, snaking his fingers over his. “Come, we might as well show the others you’re fixed.”

           Dean put up a faux fight, letting Castiel drag him into the next room. Sam and Jack were waiting, each with knowing smiles on their faces. While he could sense Dean’s discomfort, he stayed by Castiel’s side all through the night. Even through the gauntlet of Sam’s teasing.

           All he needed was to catch sight of Castiel’s blue eyes, and he knew everything was okay.

[melissafoxmedia]

Gender roles, witches, demons and Hereditary. A film essay and review.

An opinionated and biased essay ahead, perfectly imperfect. This writer is aware of said bias's and welcomes your ideas respectuflly. Proceed. 

Halfway through his movie, I turned to my husband and said, “I think we might need therapy when this is all over.” I’d like to start with a caveat that we are a household that loves horror movies. In my opinion, horror is an under-appreciated genre. I'm not talking about franchise horror films, of which we are not a fan, with the exception of Insidious. I'm talking, The Shining, Blair Witch Project, Suspiria, Mommy, Let The Right One In, Babbadook. Classic horror tales and the like. Greek tragedies, even Shakespear. I have a lot to say about this one. So fair warning, this essay is long. 

A QUICK BACKGROUND

I grew up reading Steven King, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelly, Edgar Allen Poe, Anne Rice and Mark Danielewski. I would argue that even my favorite fantasy and science fiction writers like Tolkien and George R.R. Martin borrow from the horror genre. 

What solidified my interest in horror was actually a class in Chinese and Japanese cinema and art history. I enjoyed studying the nuances of the culture through the stories they told. Most of which were ghost stories. Ancestral worship is part of their culture. When visiting someones home, you might find a shrine to their passed loved ones. Ghosts are a normal, everyday part of their spiritual life. So too are their ghost stories. 

This connection to the dead is apparent in many cultures. The Celtic festival of Samhain, The Buddhist Obon, Dia De Los Muertos, Chuseok in Korea and Gai Jatra in Nepal. All have ceremonies and celebrations that honor ancestral spirits. Essentially, the ghosts of your family. I joke that even the Bible is one long ghost story. Full of death, rebirth, angels, demons, spirits, voices and apocalyptic visions. But where eastern religions and ancient cultures differ is around the premise of fear. Specifically spirits.

Take, for instance, the Buddhist Obon and Del Dia De Los Muertos. Celebrations designed to honor the people who came before you. Essentially, one envokes the spirits of your ancestors come back to visit the living. One would light lanterns or lay a path of flowers to guide those spirits back to earth for the celebration. You are literally inviting ghosts to come and have dinner with you. These rituals are not fear based spiritual practices. You will find no children running away in horror from the ghosts of great granddad. They are beautiful rituals full of dancing, prayer, and community.  

I grew up going to Church for a large part of my life, so my religious experiences of adolescence are based on my experiences with the Chrisitan church. Here notes my personal bias. I have no such memories of honoring my ancestors in a such a way from the Church. In fact, anything involving something seance-like would have been viewed as the devil. The dead are mourned in quiet reverence but one must be careful in creating any false idols. The only ghost that is ok to envoke, is the holy ghost. It's still very old testement thinking when it comes to this one. 

I have a vivid memory of sitting on a picnic bench at Jesus camp, 13 years old, sobbing uncontrollably. I just listened to a fiery sermon about hell and I was truly conflicted. I was already "saved," having said the prayer and done the ritual at 8 years old. But my father was not. He was an atheist. I didn't want him to go to hell. I was terrified and felt guilty. My counselor at the time kept pressing me to call him. She wanted me to "get him saved," right now. 

As an adult, I see how flawed that moment was. I did not call my father that night. I couldn't understand how my Christian peers thought less of me for doing so. I thought for sure that God would understand my compassion. My father and I had already discussed his feelings. He always respected my right to choose a religion, and I liked that, so I respected his. But that is not how I was treated by members of the Church. Needless to say, my relationship with the Church ended shortly thereafter and became an agnostic in my adult life. 

I could give many instances of examples of why I feel that Christianity is a fear based religion, but I am not defending that point for this essay. Let's assume that it is. 

I think it's interesting that our writer for Hereditary uses Goetia as it's religious influence. Goetia, an ancient Greek word that literally means sorcerer, get's its roots from the 16th century. Later, during the Renaissance, it became dubbed "black magic." The backdrop for the ending of the film and it's 17th-century Greek influence, we will explore later. But culturally, I think it's worth looking at this film through an American lens, of which, most of the population is Christian, making the comparisons I make relevant. Hereditary is an American film, written by an American writer. So I don't think he is trying to say anything specific about religion, other than to use it as a horror construct. This writer is obviously aware of his audience and is using that within his film. 

We like horror films about evil, possession and ghosts almost as much as we like superhero movies. That classic good versus evil fight. We love it when the lines are drawn in the sand and the tension is clear. We don't get that kind of clarity in life. In fact, life is made up of many unknowns and gray areas. Those two, a cause of our fear and anxiety. 

Hereditary doesn't put this idea front and center. Which is why I love it. The supernatural takes a back seat up until the second act. It dives headfirst into the gray areas to establish our characters and keeps us in the deepend with our worst fears. 

ABOUT HEREDITARY - NON-SPOILER REVIEW

Hereditary is brilliantly written and performed. If I were awarding Oscars, I would give one to the writer and one to the lead actress. The writing and specifically her performance is award worthy. It is visually stunning and draws from some of the best ancient storytelling techniques of the ages. Its greek tragedy influence is what makes the whole story so strong. The best moments are the long takes, the timing of the edit, the absence of music and truly breathless performances. 

But I would argue that the best thing about Hereditary is what it doesn’t explicitly say. Like a Greek Tragedy, it’s about the things that take place in-between the lines that make it so terrifying. It’s a spiritual horror film that speaks to our fears of inheriting the tragedies and traits of our ancestors. It’s about secrets between parents and children. Grief and it’s emotional manifestations. How tragedy can transform a person. It’s about the unspeakable terror that leads to more questions than answers. If you are looking for a nice bow-tie ending, you won’t get it. You are more likely to walk away going, “huh?” I loved the ending, but I think it will turn a lot of people off. It’s not what you are used to these days. 

The best thing about the movie, in my opinion, is about women, spirituality, possession, and emotion. Which leads us to the essay below. I won’t be diving into Greek Tragedy or deconstruction of its uses in horror films. That’s for another day. I think it’s been widely documented in reviews thus far. I’d like to take a look at Gender, Christianity, Religion and how this film plays with those larger social constructs. 

GENDER ROLES IN HORROR FILMS 

Gender roles in horror films are one of my favorite things to pick apart culturally. If you want to dive in more, this is an excellent place to start. Women in horror films have a long history of being gas-lighted by the male characters they interact within the plot. They are scorned with male “logic,” that the things they are experiencing aren’t real. Usually, they are tortured, shallow characters that look pretty and scream on cue. Often viewed as “crazy,” and spend most of the plot running from danger. This isn't always the case, there are a few standouts. But for the most part, I think the above is true. Women are either victims or "witches," in the majority of horror films. I also think it's interesting how we treat women who are having spiritual experiences. In our stories, we are uncomfortable with female emotion. Therefore, if someone is having an extremely emotional experience, we are likely to view them as scary.

We are at our roots a Puritan nation. One whose fear of “the devil,” allowed us to pillage “savage Indians,” in the name of that fear. Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries persecuted thousands of witches. Whole villages of Swiss women were wiped out in the hysteria.

In America, we have the Salem witch trials. 

I recently got to visit Salem Massachusetts. I read this fantastic book before I went called, “A Delusion Of Satan, The full story of the Salem witch trials.” Which outlines in more context the conditions and beliefs that lead to the "witch hysteria.” Today, those Puritans have received their Karma. Salem is a joke. It’s become a tourist Halloween town. Complete with haunted houses, tarot readers, and hippie spiritualists. The “devil,” they so fought to destroy has won. I laughed thinking about the righteous judges jumping through time to see children running around in witch costumes pretending to put spells on each other in their beloved village.  

The story of Salem became a cautionary tale of the dangers of religious belief. But the book attempts to take it one step further in outlining the gender roles of women, power dynamics between men and women and femininity, creativity and inspiration. Unlike the modern telling of the story like “The Crucible,” the book deliciously researches connections from historical records. The trials were meticulously documented. Which may be why the story has been passed down to new generations and became taught in schools. But the book makes some connections for me that my 5th-grade classroom reading of The Crucible didn’t. 

Life was hard as a puritan and men made all the rules. Imagination was stifled among children. Art was functional. Creativity was not encouraged, survival was. Sexuality was almost exclusively prohibited as a sin of the flesh with the exception of procreation. Pleasure was not allowed. Expression among women was silenced. These are all feminine values. Women who express extreme emotion are “crazy,” while men who express themselves in extreme ways are “passionate.” Soon “crazy,” became “a witch.” Any outburst of extreme emotion and a woman could be accused of being possessed by the devil. Witch hunting thus became inherently female and while anyone a could be accused of being a witch, most of the persecution was of women. 

As a little girl, I played a lot in an imaginative space. I experimented with all kinds of storytelling and play acting. As a teenager, I was emotional and dramatic. I guarantee if I had been observed by a Puritan priest, they would have convinced the town that I was possessed. I think most artists would have been accused of witchcraft in that era.

These tropes still exist today. We still silence women. We write stories where they are silenced by others. In a large majority of our horror films, women are either the victims or for lack of a better term, "witches." As time moved on, we stopped persecuting witches and started locking women up in asylums for misbehaving.  Thus replacing "witch," with "crazy."

I’m sure at some point, we have all thought our mothers to be “crazy,” through this lens too. Extreme imaginative outbursts or expressions of emotion are squashed in our society. We can barely handle a crying baby on an airplane let alone a woman who cries in public. 

And here marks the line of spoilers people. If you wish to continue, do so at your own risk. I am about to talk about the details of the story. 

GENDER, DEMONS AND WITCHES IN HEREDITARY

 Hereditary begins with our main character, Annie, in the midst of working on her art. She creates model dioramas. It is implied as the story chugs along that these dioramas are her emotional outlet. This is how she processes grief, anger, and fear. The tension between imagination, memory, and reality play nicely here. Why in the world would someone make a miniaturized model of the death of her mother? 

I enjoyed the duality of the models with life. The idea that I could take memories and tragedies out of my head and examine them as real-life objects. To see if I could make sense of them, process them differently. This process apears painstaking in the film. The details are fussed over, out main character possessed with the idea of recreation. A rebirth of her pain. Nicely done. 

Next, we meet Charlie. Charlie is different. She makes you uncomfortable but we trust her slightly more because we assume it’s a mental disorder. The play on gender here is masterfully done. Our young actress is phenomenal but I question the casting choice. We love to put our humanly different in horror films and this borders exploitation for me. It's akin to pointing at her and calling her "freak." I get that we are establishing a long line of mental health issues for our characters, so I'll leave this one be. But do better next time. 

Next, the shocking tragedy that propels our characters into some of the best moments of the film. Personally, I did not see that one coming. The car accident begins our true emotional terror. 

Annie experiences real grief for the first time in the loss of her daughter. She was relieved when her own mother died, having been released from the burden of that relationship only to be thrust forward into the guilt of playing a part in her own daughter's death. Grief is not handled lightly here. Our main character moves through hysteric fits. She retreats. She creates twisted dioramas of the accident. All the while her husband grows more and more suspicious of her behavior. Her husband literally acts as men have throughout history. Questioning the intensity of her emotions and wondering if he should send her away. If we are sticking with our horror metaphors, Annie is possessed by grief. 

My favorite scene to illustrate this concept is at the dinner table. Tensions mount in the household to an emotional breaking point. Our male characters confront our female lead and claim that she isn’t being truthful about her feelings. They invite her to express herself. 

She does. This eruption is the best scene in the film. Rarely do we get to experience female emotional flow on the screen. The sight of a woman in full emotional and visual expression makes our male characters physically retreat from the scene. The very thing they invited her to express is the very thing they can not handle and rather than applaud her completion of this expression, they squash it. The men refuse to join her and instead they persecute her almost as if saying, "burn the witch.’ The refreshing length of the shot and the stellar performance by the actress is noteworthy. They do not shy away from the complexities of extreme emotions. 

I think all of us are afraid that if we let go on some level, what comes forth would be bad. Tapping into our emotional flow is scary. So scary that as a society we can’t handle people doing it in front of us. We tell each other, “don’t cry,” when comforting one another. We tell our men, “crying isn’t manly.” And when we see our lead actress express herself on screen, we too as an audience are scared. We question her sanity, if only for a moment. Can we pause for a moment to admire the cinematography choice here? It's like an 18th century painting. 

I mean, look at that still shot above. Gorgeous terrifying women in full power feeling herself fully. Just hand Tonni Collect the Oscar, please. This scene is fucking amazing. I applauded Annie's capacity to let go and laughed when the men wouldn't join her. Granted, it has taken me a long time to be ok with my own extremities of emotions but now that I am, I was praising this goddess on screen. I honestly can't think of another on screen performance that accomplishes this as well as Hereditary does. 

Emotoins escalate as the film begins introducing the supernatural to the plot. Annie, meets with a new friend in her grief group, this friend conducts a saence to bring back the spirit of her grandchild. It seems to work and despite her reservations, she tries it. This triggers the climax of our film and leads to its ultimate resolution after discovering that her mother had a secret spiritual life. Spirituality “literally," kept in a box and hidden away until the very end of the film. I think spirituality is what our writer wants you to infer as the "hereditary trait." It’s the thing that our lead character doesn’t want to inherit from her mother. Her secret life. Her mental illness. Her spirituality. One might even say, she demonizes her mother. 😉 

 CHARLIE

The gender play with Charlie is also worth noting. At the conclusion of the film, we learn that Charlie is a male demon reincarnated into a female body. His name is Paimon. His rencarnation into Charlie was a mistake, as we learn at the conclusion of the film. The whole film is a plot to correct this mistake. Charlie referenced as she presents more like a tomboy with an androgynous name. While women are often “Witches,” in our scary stories so to men are painted as “Demons.” 

I always wondered why this trope existed in our storytelling. Sometimes I think it's about dominance and submission, Witches serve Demons. Men subservient to women. Demons are usually powerful creatures in our stories. Females are usually the victims of demon possession, either used for literal possession or for impregnation. But it wasn’t always that way. 

In the pre-Christian era, demons were both male and female. Much like the ancient polytheistic religions that had many gods and goddesses, so too was the gender spectrum of demons. It’s Christianity that spun the gender roles and made them sexless. Technically, Christian demons are fallen angels, as referenced in the Bible. They are sexless beings whose purpose is to test human beings on their faith in God and lead them to sin. 

 "For such men are false apostles, deceitful workmen, masquerading as apostles of Christ. 14. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. 15. It is not surprising, then, if his servants masquerade as servants of righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve.” —2 Corinthians 11:13–15

 I always wondered, why then do we paint demons as masculine throughout history? See that winged creature demon up there - - - what sex do you infer when observing it? For context, the above painting is Dante and Virgil in Hell - William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1850. It’s a scene from Dante’s inferno, in which there are several biblical references used to describe the journey into hell. This painting is terrifying in person btw. It’s the size of a billboard and you can see the demons eyes staring at you from all angles. Notice the color palet and the lighting on the main figures in the foregroud. Remind you of any shot from before? 

Back to Hereditary … 

Why does Paimon need a male body? Why is he unhappy in a female body? Paimon is supposed to be a Prince not a Princess. If you don’t know who Paimon is … you aren’t alone. I had to look it up too. He’s one of the kings of hell with Goetic orgins, also referenced in Persian and Iranian stories. The “King," denotes man right? 

Paimon is referenced in a demonology spell book called Lesser Key Of Solomon. Therein lists 72 demons of which, one is Paimon. Each demon has a symbol, which was a clue in the film. Annie wears one around her neck. Guess she should have googled the symbol before wearing it. 

 So essencially our demon "man-king," is pissed because he was born a woman and his followers work to correct the issue. Wow. Talk about some gender issues right? The wiki page for Paimon also gives us a hint at a sequel btw… go read it if you like.

SO have you made it this far? 

If you have, cheers to you. Welcome to my geekery. I spent a lot of money on my education in art history, English and film critique. Literally wrote a paper a day for 4 years. I’m still paying off the bill. Blogs are more refreshing though, I don’t have to worry about being perfect or getting graded. I can just share my passion for picking apart social and cultural references in storytelling. 

That said, if Hereditary made me spawn a long essay like this, imagine what it might do for you. I will warn you, my husband is still having nightmares from the visuals. Which I didn’t even get a chance to geek out about here. That said, I do think that our tales of horror are the most interesting things to look at in society. Our relationship to fear or lack thereof is still taboo. Last year marked the first time a horror film was nominated for an Oscar, and I think to Get Out was nominated more for its cultural relevance and discussion of race in our time. I’d love to see more from this writer. I was seriously impressed. It’s well researched and smart with an excellent understanding of pace and emotional landscapes. 

So just like our movie, here ends my essay. I’m not going to neatly tie this up.

What did you think of the film? 

[kimamanitranslatesnovels]

Fiancée Observation Record c1

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T/N:

So, the title of this WN is a bit ambiguous. It seems to be using ‘Self-Proclaimed Villainess’ as an adjective when normally you would expect it to be a noun in this situation. Personally, because it’s being treated as an adjective even if it’s weird, I am going to interpret it as observing the fiancée in question rather than as the fiancé’s observation record.

I’ll update it if necessary if it’s ever made clear in the story, but I don’t believe it is. 

Chapter 1: Bertia, Age 8

I, Cecil Grau Alfaster, the first and crown prince of the Kingdom of Alfaster, met my fiancée for the first time when I was ten.

Lady Bertia Ibil Noches, a Marquis’ daughter.

She had crimson hair and amber eyes. She was fair-skinned and slightly plump… actually, let me honest here. With notable characteristics like her fluffed-up dress and her snowman-like fat round body, she was a pig – I mean girl – from the prime minister’s house.

She was two years younger than me. After we met each other for the first time with my father, the king, and her father, the prime minister, in attendance, we headed out to the garden. She then immediately said the following.

“Prince Cecil! I am a noble girl villainess! My role, after I start school at Halm Academy, is to break apart your relationship with a heroine you meet, then in the end have my engagement annulled and be put in my place!”

She shoves her finger in my face decisively and glares at me sharply.

Hm. I don’t get it.

Her personal maids that had come along with her are paling… actually, let me amend that. Their expressions are more along the lines of “Oh dear. She did it after all,” like they expected this to happen.

“However, it would injure my pride as a Marquis’ daughter to be in an unsightly state, even if it’s to help you two grow closer! And so, I have decided. I will become a first class flower of evil! And so, your Highness, please become a gentleman so lovely that I won’t mind being put in my place by you!”

What should I do? I honestly don’t understand what she’s saying at all. Could this be because I’m still an immature child?

… Doesn’t seem like it. My attendants’ jaws have dropped open as they blink rapidly, after all.

Ah, but for now…

“Lady Bertia, standing around chatting is rather gauche. Shall we go sit and have tea while we talk?”

I smile sweetly and hold a hand out to her, deciding to invite her to a table where tea has already been prepared for us.

Though I’m still a child, I am someone who will eventually be responsible for an entire kingdom.

Let’s begin by calmly cleaning up this mess.

Father always says that when you’re in trouble, it’s important to take a breath and calm down before dealing with the problem after all.

“… Y- yes, you’re right.”

Lady Bertia, looking rather bewildered at my words judging from her rapid blinking, obediently lets herself be escorted to the tea table. Perhaps she lost steam because of my calm attitude.

“Prince Cecil, aren’t you a little too composed considering your age? Have you perhaps reincarnated?”

After taking a sip from a nice-smelling cup of black tea, Lady Bertia looks at me searchingly. She has a dollop of cream on her cheek from a cake – from a popular bakery – that had been brought out along with the tea.

… Could my fiancée have forgotten that I’m royalty?

It’s not like we’re old friends or anything – I think she’s acting a little too casual.

Well, this is good too since it’s more interesting than her being all weirdly nervous and tensing up.

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘reincarnated’, but if you think that I’m composed for my age, that’s probably because I’m royalty, no? Royalty is taught to conduct themselves like that from a young age. It’s natural,” I respond, my smile not fading.

“Is that so?” she asks back, but she seems to accept my explanation even as she cocks her head to the side.

… Behind me, my naggy personal attendant Zeno is shaking his head. He always says things like “Even putting aside that you’re royalty, your Highness, you look at things too long term,” and “Let’s do some more childlike things!” and “I think childlike cuteness is important as well at your age!”. But I decided to ignore him.

“Alright then, now that we’ve calmed down a little, could you explain the things you were saying earlier in a way I’ll understand? About the phrases like ‘noble girl villainess’, ‘heroine’, ‘annulling the engagement’, and ‘being put in your place’,” I ask, requesting a more detailed explanation the moment she reaches out for a second cake.

… It’s not like I care or anything, but even considering their relationship as master and servant, aren’t her maids being a bit too lenient with her?

In regards to her manners in front of royalty and the amount she’s eating.

“Yes, of course! I need you to become someone worthy of rejecting me after understanding my story fully after all, your Highness!”

Lady Bertia grips her fork tightly and looks at me seriously.

It seems like she hasn’t realized that no matter how serious she looks, she won’t be taken seriously with cream stuck around her mouth.

… It seems like I’ve overestimated my own power up until now.

It’s a bit embarrassing to admit, but I always thought that I was fairly intelligent in comparison to other children my age.

My enrollment to Halm Academy, where many nobles of similar age gather, has already been decided, but that’s mainly to increase my circle of influence and to learn how to interact with others as royalty. I’ve already learned everything there is to learn on an academic level at Halm Academy.

I had really thought that as a ten-year-old who’s already learned up to an eighteen-year-old level that I could say that I was pretty smart.

But, how could this be? I cannot understand what this eight-year-old girl is saying in the slightest.

Even considering that she’s terrible at explanations, I still can’t understand.

“What I’m saying is that your Highness, you’re going to meet this noble lady and be drawn to her innocent nature, eventually falling in love! Seeing your relationship, I become green with envy and start bullying that noble girl. After learning about this, you become furious and annul our engagement. This kicks off a chain of events that ends with the ruin of my family!”

Her passionate words are apparently all about “stuff that will happen in the future”.

And apparently she had her… previous life’s memories?... or something, and in those memories she saw… a novel that appeared with moving pictures?... that talked all about what was going to happen in the future.

Apparently there was also more… nitty gritty details?... or something, but she decided just to tell me the broad strokes today.

To be honest, I can’t imagine that I’d annul an engagement with so many strong political reasons behind it because I went crazy with love or whatever, and at least at the moment, I really can’t imagine the noble girl in front of me becoming green with envy.

There’s so many holes in her story that my head’s in a bit of a jumble.

The time set aside today was just to “see my fiancée face-to-face”, so my tea-time with her is drawing to a close. And anyways, if she gives me any more new information, even I won’t be able to parse through it all.

Ah, but there is one thing I want to double-check.

“Lady Bertia, could I ask just one question?”

“You can ask as many as you want. I’ve been waiting for this day where I tell you everything since my memories returned after all!”

I almost smile wryly at her words, considering that they were said right before we had to part.

To be honest, I don’t care if she’s just a bit delusional or she really has the power to see the future.

All I care about is…

“What kind of person would this ‘first class flower of evil’ you mentioned be?”

… this. This is the most important thing.

From this day on, she has technically become my fiancée.

As she’s become my fiancée, in the future, she will become the Queen.

Ignoring the strange existence of this ‘heroine’, if being this “flower of evil” she mentioned means she isn’t suited towards being a Queen, I’ll need to trai – I mean, lead her onto the correct path early-on. If that seems impossible, I’ll need to consult with Father as soon as possible about breaking things off.

After all, I will be King in the future.

“That’s obvious! She’s strong, dignified, and beautiful! She’s someone who makes her own path in life no matter what anyone says. Even if that path leads to ruin, she walks along it with no hesitation – a flower of evil! I’m going to become someone like that!”

“Strong, dignified, and beautiful… I see.”

Let me apologize.

At that moment, I casually looked down at her stomach.

I had been a bit curious about what she thought about her own appearance, but she apparently hadn’t noticed it at all… well, I won’t be too harsh since I don’t intend to explicitly berate her.

I did think that it was bad to look there with this timing considering what we were talking about, so I immediately looked back up at her face and smiled.

But it was too late.

She realized what I had been looking at.

And having realized, her face goes bright red.

“I – it’s not like that! Lady Bertia, Marquis’ daughter, is an underdog-type character so her appearance is kind of questionable.”

“’Underdog’? That seems… like a sad existence. Are you alright with that?”

“N – no I’m not! That’s Bertia’s story – I’m… I’m… I’m not just Lady Bertia! I am myself! I will reach greater heights… I will become a more pure and good flower of evil!”

Is she losing control of herself?

I really feel like a pure and good flower of evil is an oxymoron, but it looks like she hasn’t realized this at all.

Bright red from head to toe, she stands up with a clatter.

“Y – your Highness. I will improve myself before coming again! I will take my leave now! Good day!”

She bows hurriedly and runs out before I could even think about stopping her. Afterwards, following their master’s lead, her maids bow hurriedly and leave as well.

I stared after her blankly until I couldn’t see her anymore.

“… What was with her?” I murmur.

“Your Highness, what will you do?” asks Zeno in response to my murmur.

His question didn’t mention about what I was going to do, but he’s probably talking about my engagement with her.

As royal marriages are usually arranged for political reasons, I won’t be able to do something about it immediately. But if I talk about how she acted today to my father, even if it took time, I would probably be able to bring up the topic of annulment using her “unsuited personality to be a Queen” as the reasoning.

But…

“She’s kind of interesting, isn’t she? And even though she’s of noble birth, she isn’t weirdly warped or twisted. She’s straightforward so she’s probably easy to control… I’ll just observe her, she seems like she’ll be fun for a while.”

Somehow, I’m having fun for the first time in a while.

It’s not like I’ve fallen for her in a romantic sense or anything, but how should I put it… dumb kids are cute? I’ve found a new toy?

… I don’t really get it myself, but I am feeling more excited than I’ve ever felt before.

Generally, I can do anything if I try it once, so the world is rather boring to me.

I’ve almost never felt that feeling of satisfaction on successfully completing something that all the other kids have. My world has always seemed a bit dull and washed out to me.

But after meeting her today, my world has definitely become brighter.

This feeling of not knowing what’s going to happen uplifts my spirits.

“Heh heh…”

Before I realize it, I’m smiling naturally.

This is a very rare occurrence for someone like me who’s used to smiles being something you force onto your face.

“Your Highness, you look like you’re having fun.”

“Yes, I’m thinking that this feeling of uncertainty isn’t bad. It uplifts my spirits.”

“… You’re free to have fun, but couldn’t you have fun in a more childlike way?”

“But I am having some innocent fun, just like a child?”

“… Oh, right. You left behind your childishness in her Majesty the Queen’s womb. I apologize for asking for the impossible.”

“You really always say the rudest things. Well, I don’t mind. I’ll let it go since I’m in a really good mood right now.”

“Thank you very much.”

After glancing at Zeno, who lowers his head with a displeased expression, I turn my gaze back towards the direction she left in.

Just how much fun will she let me have, this girl who’s become my fiancée?

“Don’t let me down, okay?” I say quietly despite no longer being able to even see her.

I turn my head towards the sky and close my eyes.

T/N:

This was someone’s request I took on since this story’s short anyway - only 19 chapters including the extras - and appears to be abandoned. I plan to release a chapter a week from now on every Thursday (not including this week).

edit: Due to requests to start translating the newer chapters but my lack of motivation to start in the middle ^^; I will instead translate 2 - 8 within the next two weeks and post Ch. 9 during the first week of August, at which point I will begin releasing a chapter every week. 

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[thekeyissue]

HoX/PoX: A Narrative Breakdown

                                       ****SPOILERS for House of X/Powers of X below****

The first time I read Joseph Heller’s Catch 22 it punched me in the face. I don’t think I’ve ever met a story so disinterested in maintaining the reader’s understanding of its narrative’s linear order. Sure, there are chapters, but those mean donk-squat and the text bounces you between characters and events that haven’t been described yet while already in the middle of something brand new. Still, even at the end of that first confusing read-through, the book’s themes had cohesively built into something that gutted me.

It takes masterful story-construction and meticulous planning to pull off that style of story-telling (check out this outline Heller made), and Jonathan Hickman is on a very short list of writers I’ve discovered with the skill set to lay the groundwork for a similar effect. Heck, it’s not even that hard to draw some high-level comparisons between House of X/Powers of X and Catch 22 (both have a nonlinear story structure and a climatic reveal at the story’s end that recontextualizes what came before it, but actually occurred early in the plot’s timeline).

The comparisons between HoX/PoX and a novel more or less end there though. What HoX/PoX as a story accomplishes, despite employing two separate but interweaving series, multiple timelines, a large cast, and a nonlinear structure, is actually pretty easy to summarize: it believably gives readers the what and the why of a new status quo. In other words, it’s just the beginning of a story. Well, duh, Marvel said from the start that this was the plan – but when was the last time someone told you just the beginning of a story in a way that was satisfying, complete, and coherent. Like, if I pulled you aside and told you “Once upon a time, Tom went to the grocery store” and took a bow, you’d give me the finger and go find something interesting to do.

You know why 99% of TV show pilots are so bad? Exposition is really, really hard. But exposition is the beginning of a story and necessary, so there’s no way around it. The best story-tellers find ways to minimize the exposition they need, and dramatize the exposition that is absolutely necessary (this is why a lot of action stories start mid-action sequence – it’s an easy dramatic backdrop to explain what’s happening in an exciting way). The HoX/PoX team just pulled off a 12-issue dramatization of exposition that works! They created a mostly unprecedented and believable (by which I mean, character choices/story made sense as a whole) new status quo for mutants in the Marvel comic universe. Pulling that off is crazy-town high-level story-telling! So, how’d they do it?

                                                                     *           *           *

Understanding how HoX/PoX made interesting story-telling out of exposition requires a close look at the series’ overall narratives. Narratives always contain arcs, of which there are many types. A few examples:

Character Arcs: the growth/changes a character makes throughout a story – ex. Johnny grows up and starts taking responsibility for himself

Event Arcs: how a significant event affects those around it – ex. a movie organized around a specific event or movement, like the march from Selma to Montgomery in the “Selma”

Arcs of Understanding: an audience/reader coming to grasp the full truth of a person or situation – ex. a mystery, where our changing understanding of what’s happening drives the story forward

HoX/PoX contains two larger arcs: 

the founding of Krakoa

the reader’s understanding of the radicalization of Xavier.

There are of course many sub-plots that are not explicitly one of the two arcs mentioned above, but these are all in service of one or both of the larger arcs. HoX/PoX having two major arcs makes sense, as it’s technically two different series. If we wanted to generalize, we could call HoX primarily about the founding of Krakoa, and PoX primarily in service of our understanding of Xavier’s radicalization. It’s not a perfect split (I’m looking at you HoX #2), but it can be a helpful delineation.

The founding of Krakoa is an event arc – we get to see how it happens over the course of the series and what that means to different groups of mutants and humans alike. This arc mainly functions to define the new status quo for readers. We see:

the origins of the creation of Krakoa as a space, establishing our new setting.

the call for mutants to join Krakoa/humans to accept Krakoa, the inciting incident to tension/conflict that births the new status quo.

the political maneuvering to have Krakoa be accepted as an independent nation which establishes a new hierarchy of power between mutants and humans.

an introduction to the Orchid group and their attempt to combat the rise of mutants, which defines the current human+machine/mutant conflict within the new status quo.

groups of traditionally ideologically different mutants uniting, empowered, and successfully independent, which is the new status quo.

By the end of HoX we have a solid understanding of Krakoa as a space & nation, mutant’s new place in the world, and the opposition they may face going forward. To understand why this happened requires the larger series’ other arc, the reader’s understanding of the radicalization of Xavier.

Xavier is the key player in HoX/PoX because his traditional ideological position is in such contrast to the decisions we see him making. This is somewhat of a generalization over decades of continuity, but Xavier and the team he founded, the X-Men, traditionally fight for peaceful coexistence & equality between humans and mutants. Suddenly seeing him separate and raise he and his people above humanity seems out of character and requires explanation.

Moira’s story and timelines provide this explanation. Her ultimate truth, fully revealed only in the final issue of the HoX/PoX series, is that across every lifetime she has lived, mutants have always lost to humanity. Leading up to this final reveal, PoX is an exercise in slowly pulling the curtain back on this truth:

X^0 shows Moira meeting Xavier and sharing her experiences/lives with him for the first time (in the series’ current timeline).

X^2 portrays the short-term stakes of the potential future mutants face (bad – they’ve been driven off-Earth and almost extinct).

And X^3 ultimately shows the long-term stakes of mutant’s potential future (very bad – they’re caged up, almost extinct, and with no recollection of freedom).

The revelation of this consistent, demonstrated loss convinces Xavier to shift his ideological stance – although we don’t see his mind changing – which just points to how this series did not have or make the room for character arcs. Xavier’s ideological shift explains the radically different behavior he and the X-men demonstrate, justifying their behavior and the necessity of the new Dawn of X status quo.

While these two large arcs run throughout the HoX/PoX series, they are not shown in linear order. If the plot were ordered from beginning to end, we would never question the characters’ actions and decisions because we’d understand their motivations from issue one – HoX/PoX does the exact opposite: dropping us into the results of motivated characters having already made decisions without our having any context. This maximizes the tension between the old and new status quo and makes sure we’re questioning everything going on. The story doesn’t progress linearly, it progresses by a constantly revealing the context surrounding this shift in status quo.

HoX/PoX creates a huge breadth of potential reveals by containing a large amount of story time (thanks for all those lives you’ve had, Moira!) and by arranging this story time non-linearly. Four different timelines allow for four chances to establish settings/characters, create conflict, and reveal truths – all of which can (and do) inform one another. Juxtaposing the various timelines non-linearly creates double the amount of potential reveals. We get reveals regarding the order in which everything happens, and we get reveals about how what’s happening in one timeline relates to/informs our understanding of other timelines. Creating a structure that provides opportunities for reveal after reveal is what allows HoX/PoX to drive readers excitedly through a full 12-issue series of exposition, which in turn gives the story enough real estate to believably change the status quo so dramatically. Very, very cool.

                                                                    *           *           *

What’s really exciting is that this is just the beginning. Like, we haven’t even gotten into character driven story-telling and people are already HYPE – it should only get better, or, at least, it only has the opportunity to now that the story is ready to move past its introduction.

The creative teams behind the X-Men books have an incredible opportunity to explore the world of mutants in new and exciting ways. Mutants have always been a very vague stand-in/metaphor for oppressed minority groups in the real world. Often these real-world minority groups have various factions organized around competing beliefs regarding methods of empowerment, something somewhat reflected in past mutant vs mutant comic storylines. Because of HoX/PoX, the fictional world of mutants is set up, for the first time (at this scope), to explore the idea of an empowered and fully-united minority group successfully standing up for itself – that’s the kind of thought-provoking setting I applaud mainstream comics embracing, assuming it is done with the thoughtfulness and nuance it deserves.

Consider the film “Do the Right Thing” (and go watch it if you haven’t), which is famous for ending with the following quotes from MLK Jr. and Malcolm X: 

"Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by destroying itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers."--Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I think there are plenty of good people in America, but there are also plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in these positions to block things that you and I need. Because this is the situation, you and I have to preserve the right to do what is necessary to bring an end to that situation, and it doesn't mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time I am not against using violence in self-defense. I don't even call it violence when it's self- defense, I call it intelligence."--Malcolm X

The juxtaposition of these quotes at the film’s end points out how different, even seemingly conflicting ideological standards can exist inside of humans simultaneously, and that holding oppressed groups to a single one of these standards can be an oppression in and of itself. Dawn of X feels like an evolution (lolz) in mutant-related story-telling towards representing this reality – treating mutants as complex beings (who are attempting to unite and rise despite their conflicting beliefs and ideologies) is a step towards realizing the full potential of mutants as metaphor. I am excited to see if and how the Dawn of X series creators will meet this opportunity to tell the epic, fun, meaningful stories the X-Men are known for - and if HoX/PoX is any indication, we are in good hands.

Here’s to Dawn of X, tomorrow and onwards!

[weirdbynorthwest]

Notes on Northern Exposure, S01E02: “Brains, Know-How and Native Intelligence”

We begin the episode with Chris Stevens delivering his first ever “Chris in the Morning” address on the show, in Cicely’s local radio station, KBHR, or “K-Bear”. Why “K-Bear”? Well, firstly, it’s customary for radio stations to be given easily pronounceable names inspired by their initials, for the sake of marketing. But there’s an additional fun fact regarding this particular station’s origins: both KBHR and its nick-name belong to a real-life local radio station in Big Bear City, California. Surrounded by the Alaskan wilderness, Cicely undoubtedly has more than its fair share of bears, so the nickname remains appropriate.

The subject of Chris’s speech, and a significant chunk of the episode, is the 19th century poet Walt Whitman, an American literary giant and one of Chris’s leading artistic inspirations. But not everyone approves of Whitman. Chris recalls being “blindsided by the raging fist of [his] incarcerator,” at the juvenile detention home where he spent his juvenile delinquent days. This stern authority figure told Chris, in no uncertain terms, “that Walt Whitman's homoerotic, unnatural, pornographic sentiments were unacceptable and would not be allowed in an institution dedicated to reforming the ill-formed.” Whitman’s sexuality has been the subject of endless debate, but it’s generally accepted that he was either homo- or bisexual. That Whitman, “that great bear of a man, enjoyed the pleasures of other men came as a great surprise” to Chris, leading him to “reconsider the queers [he] had previously kicked around.” Yes, Chris wasn’t always the open-minded liberal we otherwise see him as. He was, in his youth, capable of homophobic violence. This makes me, a confirmed homosexual (or “homo-romantic grey-sexual,” if we’re being particular), rather sad. It also makes me more inclined to be wary and critical of Chris in this episode.

Chris reads Whitman’s “When Lilacs in the Dooryard Bloom’d” (1865), a poem written following the end of the American Civil War (1861-1865), during a period of national mourning over the then recent assassination of former president Abraham Lincoln. The poem doesn’t explicitly identify Lincoln, but it’s generally thought that that’s who the poem was about. However, the final line of the first stanza – “And thought of him I love” – may have been presented in this scene in order to underline the topic of Whitman’s sexuality. For Whitman’s clearest expression of homosexual love in verse, one should really examine the “Calamus” sequence of poems written in or before 1859, included in the third edition of Leaves of Grass, originally published in 1855. (I nearly read some to an ex-boyfriend on his birthday once. I regret not doing that. But they were aware of the thought, and I got a lot of love for it, so it balanced out.)

We catch a glimpse of Maurice fishing whilst listening to Chris’s show. He clearly isn’t impressed by all this talk of Whitman enjoying “the pleasures of other men.” Maurice was established as being, at the very least, a sexist and racist bigot in the previous episode, so any homophobia on his part wouldn’t come as a surprise. This still doesn’t prepare the viewer for what Maurice will do next.

Meanwhile, in this week’s instalment of “Will They? Won’t They?’ Joel and Maggie are in the Brick, having a go at each other over plumbing. This argument at least feels as if it springs from a natural cause, compared to last week’s glaringly-contrived-in-order-to-establish-the-formula bickering. Joel is talking to Maggie as his landlord, about a faulty toilet. Maggie teases Joel over his lack of self-reliance: why not try fixing it himself, or go out and fertilise the scenery? She winds up calling him a “helplessness junkie”, an odd turn of phrase he’ll spend half the episode grumbling about and later delight in throwing back at her, when she visits him in his surgery over a self-inflicted knee injury.

Joel’s chauvinism is out in full force again, as he offers to treat any puncture wounds Rick may have received from Maggie walking all over him in her heels. Yecch. And then he comes on to her in a way that fictional characters in a “Will They? Won’t They?” comedy set-up routinely get away with, when he says “you’re clearly attracted to me.” Of course, the show will routinely remind us she is. But in real life, if you said something like that to someone, it would be widely and rightly considered inappropriate. Unlike the utterly irredeemable and thoroughly loathsome Ross Geller in Friends (NBC, 1994-2004), Joel is a genuinely likeable character under all the sexist asshattery the writers insist upon having him say. I hope the situation improves, and soon.

Joel remarks that he’s “not the Grizzly Adams type.” This is a reference to John “Grizzly” Adams, a nineteenth-century mountain man who hunted and trained wild animals (including, you guessed it, “grizzly” bears) for use in zoos, menageries and circuses, from New England to California. An outdoorsman and a showman (he partnered up at one point with another American icon, that jack-of-all-trades P.T. Barnum), “Grizzly” Adams became, in the popular cultural consciousness, an iteration of an American frontiersman archetype, akin to Davy Crockett. Joel does not resemble that archetype at all – but Brick proprietor Holling Vincoeur, according to Joel, does. We’ll see how that comparison bears out in the episodes and seasons to come.

Meanwhile, over at K-Bear, the “raging fist” of Maurice Minnifield comes raining down on Chris Stevens like the fist of that faceless authoritarian in Chris’s juvenile detention home. I find the violence Maurice inflicts on Chris in this episode jarring. We later learn from Joel that Maurice threw Chris through a plate-glass window. We see bruises and band-aids on Chris’s face, and his arm in a plaster cast. We learn, towards the end of the episode, that Chris snuck in a decent left-hook – but that still, to my mind, doesn’t make up for what might be one of the single most unpleasant things Maurice has done on the show.

And while we’re on the subject of violence, what about Ed’s response to Joel describing his current spat with Maggie? He asks “Did you hit her?” Where did that come from? A more uncharacteristic thing for Ed to say – even just two episodes into the show – is hard to imagine. Is it meant to suggest that Ed grew up in an environment where domestic violence was the norm? Or that Cicely’s foremost cinephile learnt everything he knows about human interaction from the movies? I don’t know. I just know that it’s a weird, discomfiting line.

Ed introduces the episode’s secondary plot, which is about Ed’s uncle Anku (Frank Sotonoma “Grey Wolf” Salsedo). Ed tells Joel that his uncle is a “witch doctor,” which briefly leads them into a variation on the famous “Who’s on First?” comedy routine.

Ed’s uncle is seriously unwell – as in, there’s blood in his urine. And blood in your urine is nothing to be sniffed at. 11 years ago I had a urinary tract infection thanks to the onset of type-one diabetes. The pain was unreal. Imagine passing red hot needles instead of water. TMI? Ah, DMY. My point is, it’s not something you can comfortably ignore. And as a doctor, Joel knows it’s not something you can afford to ignore. And so, at Ed’s behest, Joel spends a significant chunk of the episode befriending Anku and trying his best to persuade him to seek medical attention. But, unbeknownst to Anku’s family, Anku has already sought medical attention and learnt that he has prostate cancer. He just needs Joel to pressure him into swallowing his pride as a medicine man before seeking further treatment.

Joel will, in dealing with Anku, realise in an on-screen “eureka!” of an epiphany that pride is the theme binding all the episode’s narrative threads together. Anku’s pride, his own pride, Maggie’s pride, Maurice’s pride, are all wrapped up in a neat little package. Is it too neat, too tidy? Maybe, but I like it. It’s a reassuring sign that Joel’s character won’t remain static, that he’ll gain new insight into the town and its characters, learn new things and continue to develop over the course of the series.

“Keeping it in the family”: Mrs. Anku is played by Armenia Miles, the mother of Elaine Miles, who plays Joel’s secretary, Marilyn Whirlwind. In future episodes, she’ll play Marilyn’s mother.

Anku asks Joel if he’s ever seen the film Little Big Man (dir. Arthur Penn, 1970), in which Dustin Hoffman plays a man who, as a white child, was rescued and raised by a Cheyenne tribe. Is Anku drawing a connection between the Jewish actor and Jewish doctor, to whom he imparts some of his own “native intelligence”?

Joel, after explaining that he can’t keep chasing after Anku, pleads with Ed not to “do this northern brooding thing, I can’t stand Bergman films.” Is Joel intentionally using sophisticated cinema references he knows Ed will get? Because if so, that’s kinda cute. Couple that with Ed watching Joel as he sleeps, and I wonder if anyone, anywhere, at any time, has thought to ship these two characters?

As Maurice takes full control of radio K-Bear we learn he’s a huge fan of musical theatre, something that’s often been depicted as a stereotypical trait of gay men (less so these days, but very much so in the nineties). Is the episode replaying the old, unhelpful cliché that “all homophobes are repressed homosexuals”? I don’t think so. It certainly doesn’t underline or lean into that idea. As much as Maurice’s showtunes are driving the residents of Cicely crazy, he’s never mocked for the fact that he enjoys showtunes.

At a town meeting, angry Cicelians call for the reinstatement of Chris Stevens as radio presenter. Maurice isn’t having it. “One of our own, Chris Stevens, made a mistake,” he “did a bad thing” and “he had to pay for it.” What was that mistake? We get an answer, of sorts, when Maurice returns to the airwaves the next day and attempts to explain his recent behaviour. It’s a speech that causes the entire town to stop in its tracks, suggesting we should stop in our tracks too and take what Maurice is saying seriously.

Maurice recalls his devastation upon discovering, as a child, that his hero John Wayne didn’t do his own stunts. The gist of it is, Maurice doesn’t want his heroes to be humanized, to have their weaknesses exposed. “Sure, we’re all human,” but do we have to be reminded that our heroes are human too? Maurice is an advocate of the “Great Man” theory of history, the idea that the greatest achievements in human history were brought about by great men (and with his ego, he no doubt fancies himself one). Maurice wants his heroes to remain on their marble pedestals as untainted paragons of manly virtue. “We need our heroes. We need men we can look up to. Believe in. Men who walk tall.” Of course it doesn’t occur to Maurice, just as it doesn’t occur to most advocates of the “Great Man” conception of history, that those heroes could include women or minorities.

Maurice considers Walt Whitman a hero. Though “Walt Whitman was a pervert,” in Maurice’s bigoted view, “he was the best poet that America ever produced.” Maurice concedes that Whitman was, most likely, a homosexual. He’d just rather not know or be reminded of that. Because Maurice is a homophobic bigot who believes that homosexuality is a weakness, a character flaw that should be hidden from view, never to be acknowledged. But just because Maurice believes that “there are damn few of us who deserve to be called heroes” and that, despite his own bigotry, Whitman deserves the title of hero, doesn’t make Maurice less wrong or less of a bigot.

And yet, as the speech prompts Chris to go and apologise to Maurice, the episode seems to come down firmly on Maurice’s side of the argument. Not that there’s actually been an argument. No one in town has attempted to argue the opposite of Maurice’s position – that a knowledge of Whitman’s probable homosexuality does nothing to diminish him or his work. The implicit and unfortunate assumption in this episode is that it does diminish Whitman. That’s why we have Chris apologising to Maurice, saying that he also doesn’t want people reading Walt Whitman for “the wrong reasons.” What reasons are those, Chris? The only reason suggested in the episode comes from Ruth-Anne, when she tells Joel that all the Whitman has been taken out of the library as there’s “nothing like an interesting sex-life to get people reading.”

So, is Chris suggesting that he doesn’t want people reading Whitman because of his sexuality? Why not? Whitman’s “Calamus” poems meant a lot to me when I was younger, and I would never have discovered them had I not heard about Whitman’s sexuality and the poems’ reputation. I see in them a beautiful expression of the romantic feelings I then had for my ex-boyfriend, and I can’t read them now without getting misty-eyed. Like a lot of great poetry, the poems powerfully describe feelings of romantic/erotic longing, the distinction being that they clearly describe feelings of romantic/erotic longing between men. It isn’t “subtext.” You don’t have to “read between the lines.” It’s there, in the words on the page. Whitman’s sexuality informs his writing, even if his writing isn’t explicitly sexual.

Unfortunately, in the nineties there persisted this idea that homosexuality was something to be guarded against, lest it corrupt our children or our own imaginations when engaged in the intellectual enjoyment of nineteenth-century verse. Depending on where you are in the world, it’s an attitude that still persists or even prevails. And this episode of Northern Exposure appears to embody it.

For me, Whitman’s “Calamus” poems are a powerful reminder of a time in my life when I was young and happy and in love. But Chris appears to be suggesting that I’m reading Whitman wrong. Well… Fuck you Chris. There’s nothing wrong with highlighting the fact that Walt Whitman was likely gay or bi, or that a significant number of his poems appear to have been informed by his own homoerotic desire. It can do a lot of people – gay or bisexual people, for example – a lot of good to know that people who felt the way they do existed in the 19th century, and that they wrote beautiful verse you could share with a loved one.

It should be clear by now that, unlike Maurice, I don’t believe it’s a mistake to humanize our heroes. Knowing Mark Twain loves cats humanizes him. In no way does it diminish my love of Mark Twain (but then I’m a cat person, so I’m biased). Other than the very worst literary critics, who really wants to see the likes of Twain and Whitman reduced to cold, lifeless marble statues in the Pantheon of the American Literary Canon? It does us no harm, either, to learn the personal and political beliefs of our heroes, especially if we don’t want people thinking we share certain of those beliefs. Hero worship is problematic in general, but it’s impossible for us not to admire people, to have our own personal heroes. But as we grow and change over the course of our lives, we shouldn’t be afraid to update that list.

In the course of its run, Northern Exposure introduced a gay male couple; confirmed that its founders, Cicely and Roslyn, were a lesbian couple; and was the second US TV show to feature a gay wedding (the first being Roc [Fox, 1994-1994]). Northern Exposure was not only on the right side of history, it was consistently ahead of its time. If I’ve been especially hard on this episode, it’s because I know how far it falls short of the show’s future accomplishments.

[plotmaster]

Aria: Stammi Vicino, Non Te Ne Andare (5/9)

An update has happened!

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

Questa storia che senso non ha / This story that makes no sense 

The strains of a violin fill the air of the mansion.

Yuuri sits in rapt attention as Victor’s fingers, splayed on the bow, draw back and forth in measured strokes on the instrument, while a humming melody from his mouth at the same time. It’s short — only just over a minute long, but the song itself is...

Wistful. Yuuri’s heart aches as he watches Victor’s body mirror the draw of his bow, the calculated press of strings, cutting a lonesome figure in the Lavender Room. The sun pours in behind him, casting him in a deep silhouette of a violinist in the middle of his performance, the music resonating so deeply that Yuuri feels like it is a song that he has heard for the past six hundred years.

It’s only just a little over a minute long in this incomplete state that Victor has insisted on showing Yuuri. Victor mouths words as he plays the violin tucked under his chin, his eyes lost in refining the timing of his bow. Yuuri can’t make out the lyrics, but Victor’s expression is so vulnerable that he almost doesn’t want to know.

Between the creaks of wood in Victor’s fingers and his expression and the melody winding through the room, Yuuri feels strangely pleased, but also somewhat discomfited. The song is for him, composed about him. It’s beautiful and original and unique - yet the way Victor plays it is like he’s putting his whole being on display for Yuuri to see, explicitly for Yuuri to hear. It’s the equivalent of Victor baring his heart to Yuuri without a second thought, without Yuuri’s prompting, and that sort of closeness makes something in Yuuri’s own heart twist.

“So what do you think?” Victor asks, pausing his playing. He rests his violin on the table, puts his bow next to it, rubbing his knuckles. Part of Yuuri wants to reach out to him and ask him if he can help soothe the ache, but he grabs the thought and tamps it down behind a benign smile.

“I thought it was beautiful,” Yuuri says.

“It’s not complete, unfortunately, but perhaps over the duration of my stay I will be able to finish it.” Victor’s angle is obvious, his eyes pleading.

Yuuri hums in mock contemplation, though he’d already decided last night what his response to any gift Victor could offer would be. The song is beautiful, and Yuuri wants to hear it in full completion someday. “I don’t know...”

“Not even after what happened last night?” Victor smiles, mouth heart-shaped and eyes closed.

Unbidden, a blush rises on Yuuri’s cheeks. He averts his eyes. “I would have said yes to anything you had offered me,” he deflects. “And not because of what happened last night. I find your company...” he closed his eyes, searching for the right word, “I enjoy your company. I wish for you to stay until you wish to leave.”  

Victor taps his finger to his lips, a gesture that Yuuri knew as one of deep thought. “What if I never wish to leave?” he asks, cocking his hip.

At those words, any pleasant mood that Yuuri has because of the music (because of Victor ) twists into a thin knife and lodges itself right under his heart. He smiles a practiced smile, and turns away, gripping the arms of his chair slightly. “We’ll see about that,” Yuuri says. He stands up. “Thank you Victor, for the song. It is lovely, but it’s high time that I call Yurochka for a late lunch.”

He stalks out of the room with his muscles tight, mind still reeling at Victor’s careless words. Never want to leave? He scoffs to himself. Impossible.

Everyone leaves.

An immortal and a man who wants to stay with him forever? That kind of story makes no sense.

 “That could have gone better,” Victor says to Makkachin. He glances at the door that Yuuri had left through, remembering how quickly the man had shut down. He crouches down to tug Makkachin closer; the poodle whines and licks his nose. “I didn’t think he would react like that .”

Especially after last night; Victor remembers the softness of Yuuri’s lips under his own, the way his eyes had looked, darkened with pleasure, his voice gasping Victor’s name without any composure. They hadn’t done anything other than kiss and grind against each other. Yuuri had been the one to stop first, pressing feather-light kisses on Victor’s shoulder and soothing him with his voice until their arousals had calmed. “No more.” Yuuri’s whisper still haunts Victor’s mind. “This is wonderful, but please — no more.”

That had been that.

Victor gives Makkachin several more indulgent scratches before putting his violin away. Outside the sun shines, but snow falls gently, winter having finally arrived to the region with all her being.

He looks out the window. From here, he can see a fair portion of the estate, including the copse of graves and a frozen-over pond. He squints at the figure there, the bright yellow hair tipping him off that Yuuri’s son is the one out there, skating on the ice in idle circles, cutting patterns into the pond. Victor remembers the acid green of the youth’s eyes yesterday, Yuuri’s sudden reticence after allowing him to stay and makes a decision.

He rummages through his luggage for his own pair of skates, and heads out.

 “May I join you?” a voice breaks Yuri from his reverie, and he instinctively scowls at the person at the edge of the pond.

“We don’t have extra skates,” Yuri snaps, ignoring the silver-haired man and focusing on the ice.

“I have my own.”

“Hah?” Yuri looks up and can’t help but be surprised as the man steps onto the ice, skating shoes laced up. He’s balanced and moves with an assured grace. “What kind of traveler carries skating shoes around?” Yuri asks doubtfully.

The man does a complicated-looking turn. “The kind that’s been around everywhere!” he says. “They’re dreadfully useful for travelling around the North, you know?”

“You skate to places?” Yuri can’t believe his ears.

He shrugs. “Safer and faster than walking across frozen bodies of water. I really don’t see why not to.”

“You-” Yuri bites his tongue to silence himself, and skates to the other end of the pond. You’re crazy, he wants to say, but at the same time he doesn’t want to interact with the stranger at all. He’d woken up to violin music, and he knows that Papa would have accepted that as a gift — even though its intangible, worthless. What good is music that only exists in memories?

Even if the stranger is staying, that doesn’t mean Yuri has to like him. He carefully doesn’t look in that direction, focusing on the feeling of the ice under his blades, the singing of metal and frozen water. He’ll ignore the guest until he leaves if he has to.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like the odd man himself has gotten the memo that Yuri wants absolutely nothing to do with him. "Is there anything I can do for you?" he asks, skating near Yuri.

"You can go away," Yuri snaps, unable to hold his tongue out of vitriol. To his credit, the guy doesn't balk.

"Is there anything I can do that would endear myself to you, Yuri?" he clarifies. "I'm definitely not leaving."

"Ha?" A spray of ice goes through the air as Yuri scrapes his blades and skids to a stop. "What are you talking about, weirdo?"

There's no change in expression. "I'm going to be staying here," he says, "I'd like to get along with you, Yuri."

Yuri can't help his sneer. "What's it to you?" he demands. "Just ignore me, and I'll ignore you, and we can go on with no problem, got that? No need to worry about endearing yourself to me or any of that shit." He makes to skate away, but-

"I want to get along with you," Victor says quietly, his eyes serious. "If at least because I am to be staying here a while, and this is your home."

"You only care about Papa," Yuri spits. "Don't worry, I don't want you to care about me."

Victor frowns. Yuri can't tell why. "True, I'm here because of your father, but he cares about you very much. I... I have strong feelings for him, but they pale in comparison to what he has for you, so I want to get along with you. Besides, I've done nothing wrong. Why do you hate me so much?"

Yuri bristles immediately. "Nothing wrong?" he snarls, digging his toe pick into the ice, "You being here is wrong."

"Why?" Vi- the weirdo is still calm. Then, an annoying smile crawls over his face. “Oh, are you scared that I’m stealing Yuuri away from you, Yuri?” There’s barely a pause before he continues, “Yuri, Yuuri, your names sound too similar. Should I call you something different? Yura? Yuriy? Oh, what about Yurio-”

Yuri lunges, for him, hands going for the throat - “ Shut up!”

— But Victor dodges, laughing merrily. “That’s not a happy face!”

“What is wrong with you?!” Yuri screeches, fury unbridled now, chasing the man around the pond, his blades shrieking with his anger. “Do you not know when to shut up, old man? I hate people like you!” He manages to snag Victor’s jacket and yank. The smack of Victor’s back against the ice is deeply satisfying.

Victor’s laugh falls off his face, and that is satisfying as well. “People like me, Yura?” he asks, “What do people like me do?”

Yuri senses the tension shift to something he can’t put his finger on. But Victor’s face is serious, strangely so, and if Yuri was in leopard form right now he’d have his hackles raised. Something about Victor feels wrong, all his instincts scream it. “People like you waltz in and make merry with Papa, but then you leave and Papa gets sad every time and I’m the one that sees it! He doesn’t tell me but I see it!” he crouches down to jab a finger in the weirdo’s face. “All of you are pieces of shit- don’t deserve to stay.”

He gets up and heads for the edge of the pond, intent on going back indoors now that he’s made his damn point. “I’m not like them,” the weirdo calls.

“Bullshit!” Yuri shoots back.

There’s a hand on his shoulder, and he smacks it away, but weirdo isn’t offended. “Is there any way I can prove it?” weirdo says, and there’s... something earnest in his voice.

Yuri would love to chase him away from the house, make him regret ever starting Papa on the road to sadness again, but... weirdo is to first in a long time to approach him like this. Ever. Most guests don’t know how to interact with Yuri, avoid him or just see him as an extension of Papa, and that’s always chafed down any respect he has for those that visit. But here wei- Victor is, asking for his opinion. “No,” Yuri answers with finality. He turns to look at Victor. “Nothing you can do to prove it. Only time will tell.”

Victor remains serious. “Nothing at all?”

Yuri... hesitates, looks at his home where Papa is waiting for him. Them? “You can answer some questions,” Yuri decides to say. He glances at Victor. “I don’t trust you to not break Papa’s heart. But if you want me to tolerate you, answer me.” He narrows his eyes, cat-slit thin, “I’ll know if you lie or not.”

Unlike many before him, Victor doesn’t laugh. “Instincts from shifting with a leopardskin so long, right?” his head is tilted slightly to the side. “Okay. Ask away, Yura!”

Yuri bristles at the nickname, but doesn’t let it stall him. “How did you hear about Papa in the first place?”

“Metzrin town.” Victor smiles wryly, “They kept telling me not to come here, and I’ve always been terrible at following orders.”

Yuri scoffs. “They’re all fools,” he mutters, “So, why do you care so much?”

Victor blinks. “What?”

“You heard me,” Yuri snaps, regaining his vitriol. “I’ve seen how you are with Papa. You want to get close to him — you asked to see his inner library. You read his journals. No one reads Papa’s journals.”

“How did you know that?”

“Papa told me that you were in the inner library, and I checked for myself later. Journals weren’t dusty anymore.”

A pause. “I think Yuuri and I are quite alike,” Victor says. “I just want to get to know him better. Is that such a crime?”

There was something off about that line. “You’re hiding something,” Yuri growls, and his hand twitches to grab Victor’s collar to interrogate him. “I don’t like that.”

Victor shrugs. “Let me keep my secrets.” His voice is curt.

Yuri can’t help the way his mouth twists into a snarl, a growl coming out from deep in his chest. “You said ask away, don’t take your words back now!”

“Fine. You can have one more question,” Victor bites out the words, tight-lipped.

“How old are you, and where are you from?” Yuri had of heard neither from Papa. “Papa says you’ve traveled all around the continent, but you’re way too young for that.”

Victor stares at him, blue eyes as companionable as sharp icicles in freezing winter. He smiles. It’s not a kind smile. “That’s two questions.”

Yuri’s ears prick at footsteps approaching. Judging from Victor’s face though, he hasn’t noticed. “Two basic questions. Is there a reason why you can’t say?”

“I’m from...” Victor falls silent for a moment. “... Arus.”

“Yurochka? Victor?” a voice interrupts. Yuri doesn’t bother turning around. “What’s going on?”

“Yuuri!” Victor cries, seriousness turning to excitement in an instant and throws himself at Papa. Yuri draws back to watch, trying to keep the ball of resentment in his chest from lashing out. They land in the snow with an whumpf, Victor laughing and Papa’s expression of stunned shock turning into laughter as well.

“What on earth was that for?” Papa laughs as Victor gets up and pulls him to his feet.

Victor just grins, brushing snow off of himself. “I was just happy to see you!”

Something rises up in the back of Yuri’s mind, watching them like this. Victor is... lively around Papa. Inordinately joyous. And Papa... reciprocates the joy, and touches, in kind. It’s bizarre, unlike any other guest — for Papa to become this open with someone would take at least three months. “Papa, is it lunchtime?” Yuri cuts in on their laughter, snagging his father’s sleeve and looking up beseechingly.

“It is.” Papa’s laughter fades. “I... is everything alright, though?” he looks between him and Victor nervously, and Yuri lets his wariness abate further.

“Everything’s fine,” he says before Victor can say anything. “Let’s go in.”

Papa smiles at him. “I’m glad to hear that, Yurochka,” and his voice is so painfully happy that Yuri for a second, regrets attacking Victor the night before. Papa starts walking back first, saying something about how hopefully the food wouldn’t be cold yet, but Yuri lingers to walk in line with Victor.

“... When you make Papa sad, I’ll make you regret it,” Yuri says, not looking at the man.

“Shouldn’t that be an ‘if’, not a when?”

“Don’t give yourself too much credit.”

In the many years that he’s lived with Papa, Yuri knows that no one stays forever. Leaving is an inevitability, even for himself. Yuri will leave Papa through death, though. Everyone else may walk away, from Yuuri Katsuki, but Yuri will never.

So for now, he’ll let Victor into their home. “You make Papa laugh,” Yuri mutters. “So I guess you’re not too bad.”

“Did you say something?”

“Nothing.”

(That lunch is the first meal that all three of them eat together. Somehow, it’s not as awkward as most first meals go, so Yuri counts it as a win.)

 The dynamic amongst the three of them is one that is hard to stabilize. But it does stabilize, over time.

Yuuri and Yuri are father and son. For several years, Yuuri has raised Yuri, watched him sprout through puberty, taken care of him when ill, fed and clothed and done all the things he remembers his own mother doing for himself over six hundred years ago. Usually, they are easy around each other; interactions laced with eight years of familiarity.

However, the occurrence of Victor’s presence throws them off, because now they must calculate for a third presence during the day. But Victor is gracious, doesn’t try to carve himself a space between them. He fits himself next to Yuuri instead, because Yuri would sooner scratch Victor’s eyes out than sit next to him on the couch. And that’s okay, because —

Yuri and Victor are... friends is too amicable of a word for them. But Victor is kind to Yuri, doesn’t brush him off whenever Yuri tells him that he’s a disaster in the kitchen, or that he reeks and needs to take a bath; “-it’s a miracle that Papa can stand your smell.” Smiles indulgently at Yuri’s hisses and spitfire tongue, jabs back at him in kind — never backs down from a verbal spar, and acquiesces that Yuri knows more about Yuuri than Victor does.

Victor knows that Yuri distrusts him, and doesn’t try to annoyingly ingratiate himself to Yuri. He’s straightforward through his secrets. In turn, Yuri keeps his hostility away; he watches, still, but he will let Victor have his secrets. His instincts tell him that Victor is strange, still, but as long as those secrets don’t harm Papa, then they can stay secret.

Victor and Yuuri are guest and host.

Guest and host, Yuuri tells himself, even when Victor is a comfortable weight on his side, Yuuri’s head in the crook of Victor’s neck, listening to Victor’s smooth voice detailing his time in the Nocturne Treesea while Yuri plays with cats as a leopard.

Guest and host, Yuuri insists in his mind every morning when Victor greets him with a welcoming hug. Victor’s hugs are lovely, the breadth of his shoulders wide enough that all of his hugs make Yuuri feel like he fits in his arms. They’re warm and freely given and Yuuri’s immortal heart beats just the slightest bit faster; Yuuri’s arms snake around Victor’s waist in kind. Letting go makes a part of Yuuri’s heart ache for some strange reason.

(He doesn’t think too much about it.) (He tries to, anyway.)

Guest and host. Yuuri hangs onto the words like a lifeline as Yurochka yells in response to one of Victor’s jabs, all of them eating dinner. Victor’s clothes are casual and uncoordinated unlike the first days of his stay, while Yuri isn’t caring that Victor is laughing at him or the mashed potatoes on his mouth. (Victor passes a napkin to Yurochka the same time Yuuri does, and when they look at each other oh, Yuuri’s heart stutters.)

Few guests care about Yurochka like that; they dismiss him because of his harsh voice and his coarse reception, or they attempt to coddle him. But Victor treats him like the young man he is growing into, follows Yuuri’s cues, and sometimes, it feels like they’re a family. Yuuri and Yuri together alone have been family, but the addition of Victor makes it feel... a little more whole.

A little less lonely.

 A month into Victor’s stay, Yuuko comes by with Axel, Lutz, and Loop while her husband stays back to take care of the inn. “Yuuri!” she greets him with a hug on the front steps of the estate, her daughters swarming Yuri with hugs as well. Victor watches curiously from the doorway.

“Hello, Yuuko,” Yuuri returns the greeting, and the hug, and his eyes are unmistakably fond. “How are you doing?”

“Oh, same as usual, you know.” She breaks away from the hug upon glimpsing Victor. “Is that your new guest?”

“Oh, yes!” He ushers everyone inside, as the evening air is bitingly chill. “This is Victor.”

Victor bows, “It’s-”

He’s on the ground in seconds, cheek smarting from Yuuko’s blow. “We know each other,” Yuuko says frostily over Yuuri’s shock. “I told you about Yuuri, but not so that you could come and pester him, traveller!”

“I suppose I had that coming,” Victor says, clutching his face. “It’s nice to see you again, Mrs. Nishigori.”

“Why’d you punch him?” Yuri, Axel, Lutz, and Loop ask, voices chiming together.

Yuuri kneels down to help him. “Yuuko, please don’t assault Victor. What did he do?”

Yuuko crosses her arms and looks at Victor. Even though she is shorter, her irritation makes it feel like she’s looking down at him rather than up. “... You better not have been making any trouble for Yuuri,” she says finally. She marches towards the kitchen. “So, what will we have for dinner?”

Dinner is... a variety of dishes, cooked by Yuuko and Yuuri. Victor listens most of the time, to Yuuko updating Yuuri on life in Metzrin and the triplets regaling Yuri with funny things they’ve seen. “He’s like really fat, Yura!” Loop cries, spreading her arms out. “Really fat! He’s got a bunch of people with him too, a proper entourage.”

“What’s nobility like that doing all the way in Metzrin?” Yuri wonders. They have no clue.

Yuuko and her children leave later in the night, when the stars are already up, astride four of Yuuri’s horses and two dogs accompanying them for safety, so they can return faster.

“What is Yuuko to you?” Victor asks, later. They’re cleaning up the aftermath of the dinner, and he had insisted on helping.

(Yuri quietly appreciates that Victor lifts his weight, unlike many other guests.)

Yuuri hums a little. “... A niece?” he says the word, but it doesn’t sound quite right, so he frowns. “She’s like family, but not very close.”

“Not a friend?”

He laughs. “She’s too young for that, Victor. I’ve known her since she was a child.”

It’s a strange thought, that Yuuri views Yuuko and Yuri almost equally in terms of their age compared to his, and him knowing them for so long. “Are the triplets grandchildren, then?” Victor asks.

“Sounds about right.”

They work in silence, and have shifted to the kitchen to wash dishes by the time Victor opens his mouth again. “What do you want me to be you, Yuuri?” His sleeves are rolled up and he’s elbow-deep in soapsuds, but that’s not enough to stop him from asking it.

Yuuri stares at him like he’s spoken some foreign tongue. “What do you mean?”

“A father figure? A brother?”

He laughs a little at both. “You’re much too young to be either, even if your hair is grey.”

Victor takes a moment to pretend to be offended, putting a wet hand to his chest. “It’s silver, Yuuri!” Yuuri just giggles, and Victor can’t help but smile at the sound. “A friend? Or do you just want me to be your guest?”

Yuuri’s laughter tapers off, and he makes a discontented sound. “I...”

“A lover?” Victor keeps his voice even, suggests it as if he were offering a cup of tea. Yuuri pauses. “I’ll try my best then.”

“What? No!” Yuuri exclaims, and a flower of some kind of hope wilts in Victor’s chest. Water splashes a little as Yuuri jerks around to look at him. “You... you don’t have to be anything like that to me, Victor,” he cries. “Just... be yourself.”

“Be myself?” Victor echoes.

Yuuri nods furiously. (And oh, the flower of hope blooms again because there is no noble composure here, no Immortal Lord Yuuri Katsuki. It’s just Yuuri.) “I... if you were any of the other things, I-” his voice breaks off a little, and his face softens, voice quietens, “I just want you as you are. As long as you’ll stay here.”

“... I can do that,” Victor murmurs.

On a whim, he leans forward to brush his lips against Yuuri’s forehead. Yuuri stills, staring at him wide-eyed, but says nothing.

When they part that night, it is with another forehead-kiss, and Yuuri’s very faint, “Good night, Victor.”

 read the rest on ao3 (some error occurred and I couldn’t add the second half to this post, sorry)

[eleutheriana-archive]

listen. i need you to talk about why she goes so hard with her wardrobe. she doesn't need to drag the whole galaxy every time she gets dressed so ! why does she do it ! explain !

LOOK AT HER ! SHE’S FLAWLESS ! I DIE ! 

but alright, you asked for it, and i’m here to provide. 

now, we all make a lot of jokes about how padmé is continually being extra af in her wardrobe and frankly, she is, but also there’s a lot of logic and reasoning behind this. so let’s start with our introduction to padmé –––– or, in this case, queen amidala. 

her red dress as amidala is pretty fucking iconic at this point so i’m not going to waste a lot of time talking about it, but what i want to do with this is bring up all of her clothing as amidala vs her clothing as padmé in tpm. so let’s go through these, starting with queen amidala’s wardrobe:

queen amidala’s wardrobe, here shown only on padmé rather than on her and sabé both, is SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED to do a number of things. they INCREASE HER STATURE. everything she wears includes some sort of elaborate headdress and/or voluminous robes/skirts. they make her bigger. they make her taller. they make her larger. she takes up more space, she is easier to spot, and she is impossible to ignore, especially when she wears red, which is a traditional color of naboo royalty, and something amidala wears a lot of. she’s only five feet and three inches in bare feet, which makes her very small, especially in comparison to most of the men on her guard detail, or that she interacts with as queen. she has to look larger, and more imposing, to be taken seriously. and because most of what she wears covers her hair or twists her hair into elaborate headdresses, and she wears the traditional face paint of her station, it makes it significantly easier for sabé to slip into her role without anyone else catching on. ( side note, it’s almost impossible to see in these caps even though i switched icon styles for this meta to show off some more of her clothing, but any time padmé is in her queen regalia and acting as the part of amidala, you can almost always see sabé in the frame or in the room, listening in on everything so that she’s able to seamlessly transition into her role as decoy when she takes over for the queen. ) now, let’s look at padmé:

there is NOTHING INDIVIDUAL ABOUT HER OUTFITS AS A HANDMAIDEN. this is incredibly important, as it allows her to blend seamlessly in on tattooine, and with the other handmaidens. even in the last cap, where she’s giving orders to the captain of her guard and eirtaé, one of her handmaidens, she blends in. she’s wearing the same thing that every handmaiden wears so that her position remains in the shadows, and it keeps her hidden, even when sabé turns to get confirmation from her before making a decision; it just looks like she’s confirming loyalty from a handmaiden, not getting permission from her queen. 

this, more than anything, is where padmé’s wardrobe and her inability to dress in anything remotely simple comes from. she knows when to blend in, and she’ll do it ( though let’s be real, the refugee gown is literally modeled after a russian princess’s ballgown like babe please you’re not fooling anyone ) , but she also knows when and how to use her wardrobe to her advantage. dressing the right way can get you noticed, or it can hide you. it can make people take you seriously, or view you as an object ––– which isn’t always a bad thing, if it’s going to help you accomplish something in the long run. so now let’s take a look at senator amidala’s clothing: 

now, i’m not really including any of her ‘senatorial clothing’ mainly because we’re all really familiar with it and because it would just be me repeating myself re: making her appear larger and more formidable and forcing people to look at her and take her seriously, so i want to, instead, talk about the other functions of her wardrobe. 

the packing dress, the slate blue and black dress she wears after the second assassination attempt is thwarted and she’s being sent back to naboo with anakin, is something she wears for only a few minutes on screen, but it’s a very important dress for padmé’s character and a clear indicator of her mindset during the assassination attempts on her. we see her here, outwardly irritated that she’s being sent away from coruscant when she’s in the middle of important work. she doesn’t think she needs a bodyguard, she just wants to know who’s trying to kill her and why, and while she’s glad to be getting some time to spend at home, she doesn’t like that she’s being forced into it, and doesn’t like that it’s coming at the expense of her work, or her personal safety. she acts like this is a minor inconvenience, simply a blip on her radar, and that she’s frustrated and irritated by it all. 

but she’s wearing a dress containing armored panels in her own home.

the metal panel down the front of her dress, the thick and structured bodice, the metal plating on her sleeves, even the headdress that contains metal along her forehead, this is all very cleverly disguised armor that betrays the fact that, irritated through she might be on the outside, padmé is scared, but she’s not going to vocalize it and run the risk of losing her credibility. so she does what she knows how to do best –––– she dresses for the occasion. if someone is going to come after her, she’s going to wear armor, and she’s never going to let anyone else know. 

then we look at the refugee/senatorial dress. again, she’s wearing a headdress that protects her head, should someone try and take a shot at her. she’s wearing a dress that is unassuming, but still professional enough to be worn during an audience with a queen. she’s also wearing neutral colors ––– nothing that draws the eye. she’s being careful. she’s flying under the radar. i also want to take this moment to point out how her outfit plays off of queen jamillia’s; where the queen is wearing black and white, padmé is wearing brown and gold, and their headdresses are very similar. it doesn’t serve much of a purpose, but i just think it’s an interesting visual callback and reminder that padmé used to sit in the chair that jamillia is now occupying. it’s also a good time to point out –––– we never see padmé wearing red during her time as a senator, which i think is just so interesting ? there’s probably another meta in there somewhere because red is explicitly shown, time and again, to be an official color of naboo, and specifically, the color of royalty. padmé wears the naboo official insignia on almost everything she owns, and it’s incredibly present in her personal space in her apartment, but she doesn’t wear red. personally, if you ask me, i wholeheartedly believe she doesn’t wear red because she feels it’s disrespectful to the current queen of naboo, especially when you remember that her people tried to amend the constitution to get her to remain in office for longer. ( another interesting side note ––– padmé sticks to cool tones, for the most part, in her wardrobe as senator, and her official residence is also done in cool water tones. palpatine’s, on the other hand, who is also from naboo but who never served in office as king, is done almost entirely in reds. )

getting back on topic, next we have the genosis battle outfit, which, fun fact, the first time i watched this movie i was pretty young, and i knew immediately that something was up and going to happen because i was like nah man padmé’s wearing pants, she didn’t even wear pants when her planet was under attack and she was shooting the crap out of droids, something’s up, something’s about to go down. and, lo and behold, shit did in fact go down. but i digress –––– this outfit is important because it contains a metric fuckton of pockets and pouches and holds all kinds of shit in it, most notably, a lockpick. padmé is fucking crazy prepared for any situation, something her time as queen taught her, and it is very evident in her outfits. i’d be willing to bet any and all of her clothing as senator contains the same little kit of stuff that the genosis outfit contains, just better disguised. she’s only twenty four years old. she’s been senator for three years. she was queen for eight. she’s had more attempts on her life than any twenty four year old has a right to have had, and she’s now come to accept that this is her normal. therefore, she’s ready for it at any given moment, and she looks damn good doing it. 

now, onto the clothing that we’re all here for, aka the beautiful shit she wears on naboo while consistently insisting that she doesn’t return anakin’s affection. a lot of people have talked about padmé using clothing as seduction in this instance ( think: the black dress she wears at dinner with anakin because honestly she did not have to go that hard ) , but i don’t necessarily see it that way ? legends canon tells us that padmé’s paternal grandmother, winama naberrie, was a seamstress, one of the best weavers in theed, and that she is where padmé got her love of fashion from. i don’t see padmé wearing these beautiful gowns, both simple and complex, as a way of seducing anakin while verbally telling him she’s not interested. 

she wears them because she’s starting to feel safe again. 

think about it: we watch her go from armor plated dresses to, suddenly, an entirely backless dress when she arrives at varykino from theed. why ? if someone’s trying to have her killed to the point where she has to retreat to a property her parents own in the countryside of her home planet, if she’s been so concerned and afraid for her own life that she was disguising herself on routine flights to coruscant and wearing armored dresses in her own home, why does she suddenly shift to a silk and slinky dress that doesn’t even have a back ?

because she feels safe. 

she does this because she feels safe at home. she feels safe with anakin next to her. she knows that if something or someone comes after her, he’s going to stop it, and that the chances of something coming for her this far out in the lake country are slim to none. she feels safe. she feels at home. she’s reverting back to the padmé that existed in the ten years between tpm and aotc, the padmé we never got to see. the padmé that has a mother and a father and a sister and two nieces she dotes on. the padmé who was close to her grandmother and learned how to sew and mend clothing from her. the padmé who is a queen and a senator but is also a person behind both of these faces. 

padmé repeatedly uses her clothing as a lot of things, most notably a line of defense, a way of distraction, and even a weapon, if you look at them abstractly. she also uses her outfits as a way of expressing herself. they all have a functional and narrative purpose, no matter how unassuming the garment itself may seem.