#aside from obvious vampire powers like super strength and such

[iamyourwayout]

So I finally got my hands on some deleted scenes (courtesy of the Remmick Discord🩷) and we see Bert playing a guitar and singing with Joan right before Remmick comes.

Which means they were singers and musicians already, and the instruments (that I assumed were stolen or something) actually belonged to them.

And it got me wondering about just how far Remmick's influence goes -- I assumed that via the hive-mind, his thralls would just absorb his abilities / talent just like they absorb his memories, but maybe that's not the case?

He does of course dictate what and how they sing, but do these abilities have to be there in the first place?

Later in the dancing circle, everyone knows the moves, but you can see (like with Cornbread for example), that not all of them are experienced dancers like Remmick.

It's just interesting to see that the control is mostly in the mind, and doesn't necessarily affect muscle memory and physicality in general.

[luminisvii]

anyway i’ve been playing three houses on maddening lately because i hate myself, and i also hated looking at tier lists that put some characters who are actually quite bad for high difficulty up top, i made my own tier list of suggested feth characters for if you do a maddening run. this is really just so i can scream about what characters i think are best (spoiler alert: it’s lysithea)

so, here we go, tell’s three houses tier list!

disclaimer: based on personal experience, not all characters have been used on maddening, but i have played the game like... eight times. on my ninth run. so i have some pretty decent data on majority of the characters. 

tier is determined by how easy a character is to use, how much investment they require, and stat growths. crests+relics also influence this, since people who can use relics effectively are better. the game tells me not to judge based on crests, but come on! 

lords are not included, jeritza is also not because he’s CF post skip exclusive, but come on, we all know where he’d place anyway

the real tier list is this: if you’re playing on normal or hard, literally anyone is fine. follow your heart. invest in who you like. on maddening, you unfortunately need to be a little more discerning. and sometimes, you just get rng screwed, even with the best, so rip lmao 

TOP TIER (FOR COOL KIDS ONLY)

-lysithea: the coolest kid, doesn’t need a bed time. obvious bc her spell list and stats and access to relic are great. also look at her. shes bappy. she says so herself in her support with cyril (the only valid cyril support) all jokes aside, she can go down the basic mage line and mow down anyone who comes within her insane range. she also does well as a valkyrie, but with the speed penalty, i don’t recommend her staying in the class for long. just get uncanny blow! then hades will never miss! 

-felix: he may be a shadow the hedgehog motherfucker but he has one important thing that shadow doesnt: crest of fraldarius. i guess shadow has a gun, though. felix is just straightforward gameplay baby. you send him at something and it dies. go crest boy go!

-mercedes: im legally obligated to put mercie in here because of her personal, her crest, and fortify. although restore is also super neat! miss mercie is just plain reliable as a healer. easily goes through the priest line to gremory.

-balthus: extremely helpful early game, doesn’t fall off later either. his personal skill of str/def +6 when below half health means he can either straightforwardly tank or just punch shit so hard it doesn’t have a chance to strike back. also gets a relic, healing focus, and a major crest that allows him to heal, so he’s a one man army. he does one thing really well and that’s use his fists to liquefy his opponents. also gets rally strength if you care about that. my favorite strategy with him is to let the damn poison strike archers knock his health down and then just go to town, combined with vantage for REAL fun. forget war monk, this guy should just go to war master

-sylvain: this little slut will join you if you’ve got boobs so he’s real handy to have around. plus he’s got some great qualities: flexible, strong, free relic, and maybe kinda hot i guess. you could make him a paladin, but you should give him a giant lizard. he can basically become any of the master classes with ease, although i would not recommend putting him into magic classes that much unless you wanna do a wholly mage sylvie build. will still perform just fine as a dark mage even without dedicated magery. but seriously, dragon

-petra: you want crit??? you got crit!!! this little lady can not only crit like hell but also dodge tank really well. i had fun making her a falcoknight once and just watching her line it all up and tear it all down. petra is reliable and stronk and also horrible to fight against so just. recruit her, please

-constance: entirely here because of bolting. for the low price of her reason being A you can nuke enemies from across the map. while you could make her the canon class of dark flier, i for one think the warlock line is better, because that’s four uses of bolting and even more if her crest activates. she also has a similar statline to lysithea and hits like a truck with other spells, and with bolting can supply long range support, so really, what’s not to love? the rest of her spells are good too. i go for gremory over dark flier bc while the mobility is great, x4 bolting is even better. 

PRETTY GOOD TIER

-ingrid: extremely reliable, only down here instead of in the cool kids category bc her strength kinda sucks. i love ingrid though! she’s got a gambit gimmick and a crest+relic! ingrid with the chalice is super funny and i highly recommend it. i watched her fucking OWN every single siege tome user like that

-ignatz: some will say he sucks. some would argue his utility as a debuffer and rallybot. i will argue this ungodly crit. ignatz is a very luck man, blessed with great opportunities and a base crit value beyond any other. the little man will strike you down in the name of the goddess before you even know what’s going on. with a little help his strength will match the others and if you slap as much crit up on him as possible then it’ll never end. ignatz could be a one man army if he could crit more than one person at once. unfortunately he’s stuck to one divine judgment at a time. you can either use his 55% luck growth and archer level dex to gamble on a high crit rate, or you can stack his personal with another hit +20 to basically never miss anything. if you play deer, this man is a must.

-hilda: the usual, a crest, a relic, good times, a nice personal, but also like. she slaps. in general. pretty sick with an axe but works nicely as almost any physical class (i haven’t tried sword, though) because she naturally goes down the warrior line she can get some real fun times going. or just give her a lizard! women love swarms of lizards. she is a delicate little flower who will end a motherfucker

-ferdinand: fairly reliable as a cavalier class, and comes with some natural dodge tanky capability and access to seteth’s spear of assal and ochain shield which make him restore health like crazy and his personal will stay on. also a counter attack block is nice! he’s got some nice combat arts too. just a pretty straightforward cavalier. good times

-seteth: and while we’re on the crest of cichol, seteth is gonna make sure you never raise a finger against him again. you won’t survive. the only prepromote i use. he has good base stats, good growths, and he just does really well at what he does! he may come in a little late but he’s strong as fuck and is shredded. i tend to favor him over ferdie for the cichol linked items, but also i’m biased towards this anxiety dad, so take that as you will

-marianne: she tends to get left out of the healer talks because like most of the deer, she’s kind of weird. i will make an argument for her. what she lacks in utility she makes up for sheer raw power. while her crest won’t be of much use until very late and even then her sword prowess is not what you should be using her for, her spell list is all high power and she also comes with easy access to silence, which can nicely stall for some time against powerful mage enemies. she also gets a heal to herself if she’s standing next to an animal since all her friends are horses. still kinda slow as most healers are and not as much of a res tank, but a formidable edition nonetheless. blutgang is a good pinch hitter relic as well

-caspar: like most gauntlet users, caspar is good at one thing: punching. he is just really good at it. he’s perfectly geared towards being a war master. and he’ll perform that very well. he gets healing focus as one of his arts, so he can run off on his own if he wants. solidly reliable, will work at just. punching. go short king!

-yuri: the man’s utility is unrivaled. he’d go top tier if it weren’t for the fact that he’s got unreliable strength/magic growths. he could go either way as a physical attacker or a mage, but he naturally fits well in the assassin class along with trickster, and even dancer if you like (i’m trying that and honestly the male dancer animation is so sad. like. why can’t you put as much energy into it as the women.) but this man can go. hes fast. he’ll fuck you up

-hubert: while not as hard hitting as lysithea, the man still fucks things up with dark magic like she does. he lacks her double crests but he makes up for it by still smacking people’s nuts clean off and with the added bonus of range and debuffs dark magic provides. even better, you can make him a dark mage/bishop! however points off because they won’t let me stack fiendish blow. love u vampire man!!! unfortunately locked to CF so rip.

NICE TIER: 

-lorenz: i adore him but hes a little unreliable as things go. in house, hes the better paladin than leonie, and his personal grants him a nice damage bonus with a battalion. lorenz shines as a dark knight the most, he has a heavy hitting spell list and if you really want to, thyrsus is technically his relic even though everyone puts it on lysithea! i really like him and he can perform really well but unfortunately like most of the deer he is Weird and this can put him in strange places with his growths. tis a cruel world, being a lorenz stan!

-dorothea: also suffers from strange statline. for some reason they’re pushing sword with her. honestly, because she’s outperformed by other mages, even on black eagles i tend to put her into dancer and kinda forget about her. she has quite a bit in heavy hitting spells and her personal skill grants a very nice mini heal to people around her, but honestly, i usually favor lysithea over her. she functions best as pure support but can still pull through on the offense. sadly, the competition is really rough.

-ashe: does his job, and does it well. not as heavy of a hitter as some of his fellow archers, but still good nonetheless, and has access to deadeye for extra range (although don’t count on it on maddening). his personal means he can unlock things no matter what class he’s in, so you can focus on others! i personally think that, you guessed it, he should get a giant lizard.

-annette: she does well, sadly outperformed by other house mages. functions as a rallybot and gets crusher if you care about that. i missed crusher completely in my first lions run, whoops, and then in my second one i had constance so uh. sorry, annette! she’s so very sweet, but her spell list has her down here.

-leonie: im hiding before the leonie stans get me. sure, like sylvain, she has his ability and shared flexibility for any class, but unlike sylvain she lacks power, a crest, and a relic. i see people keep arguing that she’s a massive damage dealer, but i honestly never see it. she falls off damage wise really quick, even if she’s got more than enough speed to deal with it. she’s basically just a lamer sylvain or ingrid without the crest abilities that those two have to make them stronger. what? the game keeps TELLING me crest = bad but as far as i can tell, all the best characters have one! on maddening GD, she’ll be good at first, but she’ll drop.

-dedue: i would rank this man higher since i simply adore him but he’s SUPER difficult for me to use. his defense is unrivaled, this man will flinch at nothing, but his speed is almost always shit and he tends to get nuked from orbit by mages. i love him, i really do, but man he can be a lot to manage. he does really well early game but can’t keep up. which is a shame, i really like him :(

-flayn: she has quite a bit of capability with rescue and fortify, and her major crest means her healing is even more potent. however she’s a little slow, extremely fragile, joins low leveled after you’ve already invested in a different healer, and is not very strong. she IS a res tank, though, and learns seal magic, which adds to her res tanking capability. she also synergizes with the caduceus staff, so she can be very self sufficient, and hit from farther away! flayn does very well. the major penalty is a lackluster spell list and significant investment buy in.

-hapi: she’s… weird. i like hapi quite a bit but she’s got it worse than lorenz in terms of stat growth. her personal ability makes her an extreme aggro target for monsters and she can’t even avoid their attacks, and the bonus damage it grants unfortunately isn’t better than fellow DLC mage constance, who hits harder just out of sheer momentum. for having a healing crest, she doesn’t have a particularly interesting white magic line. her dark magic grants her utility similar to hubert, but she’s slower and can’t quite strike like he does. sadly miss hapi has to be down here. id like to put her higher but boy did she struggle

-raphael: well, he’ll do his job. he’s only beat by caspar since caspar has a little bit better tools at his disposal, but they’re basically the same character. raph will do very good at punching the living shit out of things. starts off better than caspar, but unfortunately in my current run i have balthus so raph had to get benched

YOU CAN DO BETTER TIER

-bernadetta: she’ll work alright, but only with lots of attention, and her personal doesn’t seem to make up the difference. for a sniper she seems to have far less hit than her rivals in ashe and ignatz, especially since ignatz makes him more reliable. her crest doesn’t actually grant her much since it has such a low trigger rate and by the time it does work she probably already can double. also she gains no levels between pre and post skip which is hilarious but like. HELLO? ive also been told she has the worst starting stats. personally, i only use her on BE runs. i know she’s a popular character and a lot of people rank her highly for persecution complex and the fact that she learns both encloser and deadeye, but deadeye is unreliable in maddening and she’s a lot of work to keep up with the others.

-cyril: he can become a killer, he honestly does really well, but he starts so far behind you need to invest a significant amount into him. i don’t recall him having a particularly stellar combat art line either, but if you choose to put in all the work of catching the kid up, he will do well. but it’s not worth it most of the time. i use him on church route runs bc it feels right. on other runs, you’ll already have someone who fits his niche--the guy becomes a wyvern rider, and the likes of sylvain can do much better in this line.

-linhardt: kind of a shittier flayn, without fortify or rescue. lackluster spell list for both black and white, and terrible growths. he’ll do fine if you play eagles, but if you’re going to import a healer, mercie or flayn is the better option. 

-anna: oh lord, anna is difficult. her offensive stats are horrendous. flayn hits harder than her. with her unique stat line, inability to get supports, weakness in authority, and all around just odd set up, anna is not a reliable character and you should use yuri instead. they’ve basically got the same crest.

DIDN’T USE SO NO OPINION TIER: 

-hanneman

-manuela (heard she’s not good anyway)

-alois

-gilbert

-catherine

-shamir

(yes there’s a trend to this which is past FEs have trained me away from using prepromotes!)

and there we go! im still biased towards GD but the characters who do best are the ones who have a clear class line to follow and a statline that matches it. 

[mj-spooks]

Alright, judging by how successful that last Harry Potter experimental question was, Buffy's scooby gang, as a Leverage Crew? Is it too simple to say Buffy as a hitter and Giles as a mastermind?

Which version of the gang are we talking here? Can I go across the whole series? Season 1 only? All Stars? Fuck it I’m cherry picking because THAT’S HOW WE DO.

So, Giles is absolutely on the money. He’s the Mastermind, no doubt. He’s the watcher, he trains the others (mostly Buffy and Faith, but let’s be real, he trains all of them in their own way), he’s the one that works things out, leads research parties, comes up with plans. He’s the Mastermind, at least at first. Like Nate, he graduates out of that position (although I think the others sort of share it after he steps down, rather than one person picking it up).

But Buffy’s not the hitter.

Buffy is the grifter.

Think about it. Pretty, blonde, posterchild for popularity. She’s charismatic. She’s endearing.  You like her. You’d probably do anything she asked you to. She’s an an excellent liar, a brilliant actor. She plays the part. The only reason she doesn’t have Sunnydale wrapped around her fucking finger is because all the bullshit with demons and vampires is Too Obvious for no one to ever notice how weird she is. If they could be even slightly more subtle, or pick slightly more convenient times to get up to their nonsense, no one would ever suspect she was anything but what she looks like.

No, the hitter? That’s Faith. And yes, I’m counting her as a Scooby. My girl got done dirty, alright. Granted, she did some people pretty dirty as well. But she was a teenage girl with a really shitty childhood, and I’m not one to use the shitty childhood as a get out of jail free card (get it), but dude. Dude. Every single thing that could’ve gone wrong for her, did. And every time the team had a chance to prove she could trust them, they fucked it up. Mostly Wesley fucked it up, but let’s not go there. And did I mention she was a teenage girl? Also, it helps that she was only Properly Evil for like, a few months, after which she was in a coma, and was Properly Evil for all of five minutes before deciding “Actually I just wanna be Buffy,” because guess what, she never WANTED to be the bad guy-

I’m getting off topic. The point is. Faith is the brawn, alright? Post-Faith, I guess that position goes to Spike, who let’s face it, is basically Buffy’s backup/guard dog from the moment he realizes he can still kill demons, and especially after his big “Oh shit I love the slayer” realization. For the record, bad decisions being made by an ostensibly helplessly evil soulless monster aside, no one EVER had Buffy’s back like Spike did. Not a single damn person. Fucking fight me. Every. Single. Other. Person. Let her down. Constantly. Or they were never in a positoin to properly have her back in the first place. The one time he really did screw it up, he realized how fucked up he was, and went off and got a fucking soul for her, so basically

Riley, for the record, is not a Hitter and does NOT count as a Scooby, because screw that guy. Also while I’m on the subject, screw Xander, because the episode where Riley leaves and Xander gives Buffy the “you’re the bad guy” speech sits so fucking wrong with me, and Xander goddamn Harris can get fucking bent. I’m still off topic, I know, I know. Sorry, I just. I have VERY STRONG OPINIONS ABOUT BUFFY.

ANYWAY. Willow is the hacker, big fucking shock. She’s... she’s literally a hacker, okay. Even when she stops being all computer-y and starts being all witch-y, her approach to witchcraft is... is to hack it. She hacks magic. Literally. That’s what gets her in so much trouble with it, because she’s too fucking good at cheating the system. It’s how she brought Buffy back. She’s the goddamned Hacker. Age. Of. The. Fucking. Geek. Baby.

Thief............ hmph. I don’t know?!?!?!??!?!?!?!?

See, the thing is, basically all of the properly involved Scoobies had to steal something at one point or another, all with basically the same level of success, so... wait.

Okay. No. The thief is Dawn.

She’s literally a thief! She steals from everybody all the goddamned time! With varying degrees of success, sure. But if she was actually trained at it, she’d be better than all of them. She’s the only Little Sibling out of the bunch (Well, okay, Tara had an older brother, but her homelife was so fucked she has Very Different Younger Sister energy than Dawn). She has a specific talent for it that I bet would serve her well if she was actually trained. I honestly at this point have read so much fanfic that I cannot for the life or me remember if canon!Spike ever helped teach her to knick stuff or if that’s just widely accepted fanon!Spike because people love that dynamic (as they should, it’s great). I’m doing a rewatch but... uh... I kinda stopped partway through S5 because I’m like four episodes away from The Body and gods I just can’t take it. Point being, I dunno if that’s legit or not. BUT. If it were legit, and she was taught how to steal, she’d be great at it.

I guess Spike is kind of also the thief. But he’s also the only one of the scoobies that’s properly been a villain (I’m not counting Faith or Willow’s brief insanity, and Angel isn’t the villain, Angelus is, so...), so naturally he’s got the shady skills. He can kind of grift and mastermind, too, except he’s too impatient for it, which is why he ends up stuck as a hitter most of the time. Everything else is too slow for his ass. See, the entirety of S2.

For fun, under the cut, the remaining scoobies and what position they’re best suited for:

Xander: Hitter??? He’s not got the super strength and he’s kind of played for laughs, but there was that whole bit where he had the tactical training from his brief stint as GI Joe in the Halloween episode. He’s a decent tactician, which is kind of the hitter’s job. I bet that if the wasn’t so busy feeling inferior to Buffy and he actually like. Trained. He could be a decent fighter.

Cordelia: Straight fucking grifter. Which she proves plenty of times on Angel. It’s extra great because she basically IS Sophie, what with the whole “can grift like a boss but put her on stage and she’s terrible” bit. She’s also a decent mastermind, also showcased on Angel. She whips him into shape from day one, and is the only thing that keeps AI running half the time. Also not unlike Sophie. Honestly Cordelia is my favorite character from the OG cast. She deserved better.

Angel: Mastermind. He’s got all of Angelus’ brains, remember, just not necessarily any reason to use them. He’s smart, though, and definitely good at planning. He’s also really into knowing the most and keeping his cards close to his chest. The parallels with Nate are a little strong, honestly, because he also has that whole... guilty conscience spiraling downward holier than thou thing going on. And yes, I do ship him and Cordy, thanks for asking.

Oz: Hacker! Not a lot of people really remember this, since his prominent character traits were “In a band”, “Willow’s boyfriend”, and “werewolf”. Plus there’s the whole flunked-senior-year plot point which I honestly think they did just to keep him around. But the first time Oz actually properly interacted with Willow was because they’d both gotten singled out for their badass computer skills on career day. He’s very nearly as good as her.

Anya: Grifter. I mean, the whole vengeance demon schtick relies on the grift. She’s very good at it. Which, she ought to be, she’s been doing it for over a thousand years. It’s sort of hilarious though because it seems like the second she loses her powers, she also loses her ability to blend in. I think that’s likely because she’s used to short term cons, and running the long con that is being human again is more difficult. Still, this is where she shines.

Riley: He doesn’t count because I kinda hate him. But fine if you wanna go there. Hitter. He doesn’t deserve the title though because Eliot is both brains and brawn and Riley can’t think his way out of a paper sack without someone giving him directions, and even then it’s dicey.

Tara: This one is super hard for me! I can’t see her as any of the actual team positions. I suppose the one skill she displays would be grifting, since she does try to hide her identity as a supposed demon from the others for a while before her birthday comes up. But honestly I see her less as a member of the crew and more as a Maggie. Voice of reason, moral high ground, not putting up with shenanigans if she can help it... yeah. Tara’s the Maggie. Every crew needs one.

[redorblue]

A few reasons why Dory is an unorthodox heroine, too

Nothing re-read related, just a thought I had when I was supposed to be asleep last night. I think we’ve established, and KC says so too, that Cassie is a pretty unorthodox heroine in that she doesn’t start her journey as a professional badass with combat skills and perfect knowledge about her world and this calm, heroic attitude that doesn’t do screaming and crying and getting upset about broken nails because what a mundane thing to do. She sort of gets there and certainly grows with the obstacles she faces, but she’s still not the typical amazon you usually see when female protagonists fight their own battles. Dory on the other hand fits that trope a lot better, but if you leave aside the battle skills, she’s pretty unusual, too.

Normally when there’s a story about a fight between good and evil, with the whole world (in our case, worlds) at stake, the protagonists have something that sets them apart from everyone else, something that makes them the only people capable of turning things around and let the good side win against all odds after all. This key figure-trope, whether the character in question is female or male, represents itself either as the Chosen One by default, with something like a prophecy, a family relation or a superpower distinguishing them from everyone else; or they get into that key position by stumbling into it more or less unintentionally and then get elevated by the people around them. Cassie kinda fits both descriptions a bit: she has the family relation, therefore becomes eligible for the superpower, and things just happen after that (until she starts owning it, of course). And while Dory, through Mircea, has the family connection, too, it doesn’t really get her anywhere, besides not being murdered at a young age. It certainly doesn’t positively set her apart from everyone else and make her eligible for the position of the heroine.

From a purely human perspective, she obviously has some physical advantages like heightened senses and strength, but those only go so far as to level the playing field. They’re certainly nothing special in the supernatural world and don’t get her anywhere all by themselves, they just make sure that she has a fighting chance against other super-natural creatures. Plus she also doesn’t really have any resources from social connections to draw from since she mostly rejects her family and is rejected by everyone else herself. Everything she has, every capability, she’s worked for and earned with years of practice, which in turn makes it attainable for everyone (theoretically, if one has similar physical advantages). There’s no immanent reason for her to be the one who saves the day built into the story. From a narrative perspective, someone like Claire would be a much more obvious choice, with her marrying into the Fae court and being able to transform into a dragon and all that. That makes Dory an unusual hero/heroine just like Cassie, only in different ways.

This is getting longer than I expected, but I wanna elaborate a bit on the hero thing, so be warned that this could get a bit off topic. I’m a university student, and I’m an assistant to a professor who’s working on a project about heroes and the discourses that make them heroes. Of course that’s all very academic and in my opinion (don’t tell him that) only partially applicable to real life (I’m including fiction into that, by the way). But because of my work I’ve picked up a few theoretical aspects of what makes a hero which I think would be nice to test here, so I’m gonna use what is probably a once-in-a-lifetime experience and use what I learned there outside university. But as I’m not in university, I’ll take the liberty to stop gendering the word hero and simply use heroine for both genders, because why not.

So theory says that a heroine’s function is to connect the sacred and the mundane sphere. That sounds pretty abstract, but makes sense when you think about the ancient Greeks. Most heroic figures in Greek mythology are demigods, which makes them the connection between the sacred (the gods) and the mundane (humankind) in corporeal form. So according to theory, in order to be a heroine you need to incorporate both mundane and sacred aspects, not necessarily in your genes but in your skill set, your value system, your charisma, somewhere. And then you need to do something with what you’ve got in order for the sacred inside you to show, which in turn kicks off the discourse that makes sure you’re elevated to a superhuman position, and remembered after you died. This means that the heroine doesn’t need innate heroic features of some sort - she can also develop them on her journey - but she needs them to be noticed by someone and recognized as something special, which makes her more than human and therefore partly sacred. She can then serve as a role model for other people, but for her to be a heroine, she can’t have something that everybody else can achieve, too, with the right motivation and some time, because if her heroic quality was accessible to everyone, it would no longer be part of the sacred sphere. It would be mundane, and kinda boring, and in time this quality and with it the heroine would be forgotten.

See what I’m getting at? If you take this (very simplified and probably partly inaccurate) analysis as a foundation, Cassie is a much more typical heroine than Dory. Cassie has a skill that sets her apart from the vast majority of people in her world, and she’s the only one in her time who can wield her superpower to the extent she can. Yes, there’s the acolytes, but you’re not remembered for being the second best (and therefore not a heroine, because being remembered and recognized as such is a vital part of heroism), and yes, she had to work for it, but she had to hone her skills, not attain them in the first place. Other people who don’t have this sort of skill or parentage don’t even get the chance to try if they’re good at it. Which, coincidentally, are both of divine origin, which would make a researcher on heroism sob with joy because it fits the theory so well. Cassie is both literally and figuratively a link between the sacred and the mundane, and therefore in that respect a classic heroine.

You’ll notice that I’m not basing this on fighting skills but solely on extraordinary powers because they’re basically accessible to everybody. Pritkin for example can’t be considered a hero because he’s good at various combat techniques, but rather because of his extraordinary talent for magic, and maybe also because he tried on numerous occasions to sacrifice himself for Cassie, and one time succeeded, which is important. I’m saying maybe because an act of martyrdom as a qualification for heroism is controversial among researchers. Some say it requires extraordinary strength to do it and therefore partly sacralizes the heroine, while others contend that everybody can die, and depending on your mindset and circumstances it might not even be a hard decision to make, which makes it purely mundane and the martyr therefore not a heroine. My personal, unqualified opinion is that while it certainly requires admirable strength, especially in times of war dying for another person or being prepared to do so is not uncommon enough to qualify as heroic in the sense of sacred, so I’ll exclude acts of martyrdom as a qualification for being a typical heroine.

What’s left for Dory, then? She had her moment of attempted martyrdom, but it happens quite a lot in these books - we’d have to count in Cassie, Pritkin, Mircea, Marco, Rafe, Agnes and several guards, both vampires and mages, just to name a few, and one basic rule about heroism is that not everyone can be a heroine. Heroines must be rare for them to be extraordinary and part of the sacred world. Don’t get me wrong, I love Dory, but according to this theory she’s not a heroine because the only thing special about her are her combat skills, and those are not special enough to be considered heroic/of sacred origin. On top of this, she doesn’t even have the narrative pointing a sign at her that reads heroine, as I discussed way, way above. We’ll see how things evolve in the next Dory book when/if she learns how to integrate her two personas and use Dorina’s (much more extraordinary and therefore heroic) mental powers. But until then, if you look at our lead ladies from this perspective, Dory is at least as unorthodox a heroine as Cassie.

[jeneelestrange]

So that Mummy Remake....

While I’m happy to see a female monster, there’s something that’s sticking in my craw about this whole thing. Firstly, the fact that Dracula got a sympathetic first person, and we just get a female monster who suddenly appears because “female ambition.” (yes, I know they’re going to pretend the Drac movie didn’t happen, but let’s be real, I’ll bet my left foot one of the male monsters gets a somewhat sympathetic treatment at some point).

But, like....LISTEN to the backstory they gave Ahmunet.  It sounds like Hatshepsut’s reign as described by sexist douchebags. I would normally try for better sources than Wiki, but I do not have the strength to dig up scores of sources to go over her life and the relevant points for a tumblr post so here we fucking go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatshepsut http://www.biography.com/people/hatshepsut-9331094 So Thutmose II is a minor son of the pharoah, and to secure him more being likely to be named pharoah, he marries his sister Hatshepsut(it’s gross, but this is why that Egyptian royal incest shit happened--like European royal cousin-marrying multiplied by 1000). By all accounts, he doesn’t do much as pharoah, and even the accomplishments he does have are theorized to have been influenced by his wife Hatshepsut because they have her later hallmarks all over them.

Thutmose II dies. While Egypt is MUCH less sexist than the rest of the ancient world, when it comes to their kingship, they are as sexist as errrrrybody else. Women cannot be the official ruler outright. Thutmose only has his daughter Neferure, and a baby boy born to a concubine. So baby boy is officially co-regent of Egypt, but since he’s....a baby, it makes sense to make Hatshepsut the other co-regent until he’s old enough. This is what basically happens with ALL the Egyptian female pharoahs--they’re waiting it out until the official male heir can rule.

And Hatshepsut is not slinking back and letting a literal baby take credit for the actual governing good she does. She focused on re-opening trade routes that had been compromised since the Hyksos invasion, instead of conquering like many of her predecessors were obsessed with doing. So Egypt gets RICH, and she builds A BUNCH OF SHIT. She’s one of the most prolific builders of the pharaohs. So her face is memorialized on a bunch of shit, all with her wearing the usual pharaoh beard, etc. It’s just like when women were trying to enter the corporate world in the 80′s and all started wearing business suits with giant ass shoulder pads. When your role is precarious in a profession often associated with males, play up your masculine attributes to assert your authority.

She’s one of the most successful pharoahs. But then she died. Everything goes normally until formerly-baby boy Thutmose III takes power, grows old, and his own son starts to become co-regent with him. Listen to this shit:  “Toward the end of the reign of Thutmose III and into the reign of his son, an attempt was made to remove Hatshepsut from certain historical and pharaonic records. This elimination was carried out in the most literal way possible. Her cartouches and images were chiselled off some stone walls, leaving very obvious Hatshepsut-shaped gaps in the artwork.At the Deir el-Bahari temple, Hatshepsut's numerous statues were torn down and in many cases, smashed or disfigured before being buried in a pit. At Karnak, there even was an attempt to wall up her obelisks. While it is clear that much of this rewriting of Hatshepsut's history occurred only during the close of Thutmose III's reign, it is not clear why it happened, other than the typical pattern of self-promotion that existed among the pharaohs and their administrators, or perhaps saving money by not building new monuments for the burial of Thutmose III and instead, using the grand structures built by Hatshepsut. Amenhotep II, the son of Thutmose III, who became a co-regent toward the end of his father's reign, is suspected by some as being the defacer during the end of the reign of a very old pharaoh. He would have had a motive because his position in the royal lineage was not so strong as to assure his elevation to pharaoh. He is documented, further, as having usurped many of Hatshepsut's accomplishments during his own reign. His reign is marked with attempts to break the royal lineage as well, not recording the names of his queens and eliminating the powerful titles and official roles of royal women, such as God's Wife of Amun.[45]

Look just how fucking hard the archaeological community tries to be like “but it wasn’t sexism you guys!!!!!! sometimes later pharaohs just try to systematically erase your memory from all of history!!!!!!!” Which, to my knowledge, has NEVER happened with the exception of Akhenaten and his family--which is understandable because Akh basically declared the native Egyptian religion heresy, made his own brand of monotheism, and forced everyone to worship it and took funding away from existing temples.  Also remember that the Egyptians believed that one of the five parts of a person’s soul was their NAME--and that this part of their soul would live as long as the name was spoke. This was exactly why cartouches WERE A THING, and grandson DESTROYED THEM. So they’re basically saying its totes normal for the most successful female pharoah--and one of the most successful pharaohs period--to be systematically erased from the archaeological record along with every other important woman of the court, because it once happened to the most hated pharaoh in Egyptian history. OR, Occam’s razor you guys, maybe Hatshepsut’s pseudo-grandson was a sexist dick! SO. Let’s review what The Mummy’s trailer said about Ahmunet. 1.) She was the next in line for the throne(LOL EGYPT WAS NOT THAT WOKE BUT OKAY, THEY WERE SUPER PROGRESSIVE OH SO CONVENIENTLY). 2.) But that wasn’t ENOUGH power for her, and she did messed-up shit to get MORE, like she’s the child of Hilary Clinton and a vampire(which, as an addendum, can I say how common it is while looking for links to find articles saying HEY, Hatshepsut did NOT usurp power, she was doing exactly what was expected of her only??? A fucking lot, and can I say how common when I do research into other female rulers, take a guess, it’s a fuckton).

3.) They try to stop her by putting her tomb in some unknown location that is unlikely to be found--not the Valley of the Kings or anything. Would be shocked if they didn’t destroy any mention of her or where her tomb is, because after all, this is a horror movie and this is some “ancient evil.”

Honestly, I don’t think Universal did any connections to Hatshepsut intentionally--this looks like your typical mindless explosion-fest and I extremely doubt they’d have the insight to do such a thing.

I’m just aggravated that this movie accidentally sounds like the reign of Hatshepsut as described by douchebags. That it’s a bit of a wasted opportunity. And that--as little as the writing made sense in Dracula Untold--we got them trying to do a sensitive portrayal of the weight of rule and responsibility to protect his people....and a ruling female mummy just gets that she is MAD WITH POWER!!!! (Also, WHAT  THE FUCK could she possibly want with Tom Cruise’s character, oh wait, it’s because he’s white man protagonist, nvm) Like, seriously, I would give both of my ovaries to see a movie where the mummy of Hatshepsut has risen and boy is she FILLED WITH RIGHTEOUS WRATH. Maybe I have to pray that this reaches Jordan Peele, idk, that’s the only way a movie that actually fucking says anything gets made in Hollywood

Also, as an aside on even MORE missed opportunities from this, HOW FUCKING COOL would a black Invisible Man movie be, one that references the original Wells work and the book about race with the same name by Ralph Ellison???? But NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, that would be actually fucking interesting and we can’t have that, so let’s cast Johnny Depp for the same ol’ shit. For fuck’s sake