#the points they use to defend him are ironically what make him more hateable to me LMAO

[zvezdacito]

This was more in response to the theories that the Dawn Armour is gonna be directly similar/in any way taken from Knight of Dawn's Armour. I know we haven't seen an image of it yet so it's also possible that it will be an original design and just referring to Silver's general connection to dawn

And I know it's impossible for Malleus to be killed-off (permanently) here, he's a mascot character and there's still much left to explore about him. When I say "beat" it also encompasses ideological/moral triumph through battle. It kinda just leaves a bad taste in my mouth for KoD's "peacefulness/misguided virtue" through Silver to be positioned as that over a traumatized Malleus (who is the way he is largely as a consequence of KoD's actions). The Knight of Dawn or anything symbolically affiliated with the Silver Owls don't deserve to be the face of "leading change" here/be seen as the ones "giving grace" in a sense. Or that to have character development Silver has to "accept" them in some way

Explanations of why I rag on him before people respond with the usual excuses and coddling:

Like this is just him when it comes to talking about the horrors of war between faefolk and mankind:

(also kinda annoying how his tone almost paints it as a mutual failure of empathy for both parties when the humans were the aggressors + the fae were the ones disproportionately harmed and displaced. Him lowkey making himself out to be a victim in this is why i think there's a possibility of him being commentary on the line between virtue/sympathy/solidarity and white saviorism)

Well it always was bound to happen but idk if I'm 100% vibing with the idea of Silver "heroically" succeeding against Malleus by donning the image of the colonizer that killed Malleus's mother

^ Though this is only if they completely beat Malleus from this and they completely ignore the irony and colonial subtext of it

I feel like the only appropriate way for this to be brought up in the story is if it's about the horror of history repeating itself, especially through people who love each other, rather than being framed as "Wow Silver is achieving the Knight of Dawn's white saviory wish" (which ends up centering the fae away from the resolution of their own post-war trauma)

Also don't vibe how when talking about the parallels to the past people bothsides the Dawn Knight's and Meleanor's accountability in "inflicting hurt" to each other😭 Even if you bring up Henrik guilt-tripping the Knight it's still a disproportionate and unfair comparison in terms of systemic impact lol

This is my killjoy opinion sorry everyone

[salmagundimagazine]

ON GIRLS, ADDICTION, AND GROWING UP by Catherine Pond

from Salmagundi, Summer 2017 [The TV Issue]

[photo by Annabel Mehran]

   1

It was always winter that year, my first year in Brooklyn. Snow fell on the power-lines.  A grey tree shivered outside my bedroom window. I had many friends but none that I could call.

I wanted to feel connected to the city the way other poets had, like Frank O’Hara in his famous poem “Steps”— “oh god it’s wonderful/ to get out of bed/ and drink too much coffee/ and smoke too many cigarettes/ and love you so much”— but I didn’t smoke, nor did I drink coffee. I barely made it out of bed some mornings. It felt more like I belonged in Muriel Rukeyser’s poem “Empire State Tower”:

The far lands melt to orange and to grey. The city lies, quiet but for a rumor, A single voice. People are guessed. We hazard The world we know is there, below, unseen. And in the street the many beautiful Unstaring walk unwaiting the knives of doom…

   2

It was 2012 and I was 21, living in East Williamsburg in a two-bedroom on Frost Street with my roommate Paul. Paul treated the few women in his life poorly. He despised his girlfriend (uncreative, immature, and blank were some of the adjectives he used) but no matter how many times he dumped her, she’d be back again the next week, sitting on our couch, Paul avoiding eye contact with me. For her birthday, he bought her a $200 steak at Peter Luger’s. “Maybe you actually like her,” I suggested one day, and he shrugged.  

My romantic life was no less antagonistic. I often brought strangers home to have sex with, only to decide halfway through the act that I didn’t want them there, at which point I’d kick them out into the snow at some ungodly hour. Paul witnessed all of this but never brought it up, and I was grateful for that.

His great passion was television. He liked watching TV with his girlfriend; it was passive, I deduced, and allowed him to ignore her for long stretches of time. I didn’t understand television, and found it distracting and unsatisfying. His favorite show, still in its first season, was Lena Dunham’s cult hit Girls. Paul worked at a law firm and hated women, so this baffled me. When he turned it on, I’d note silently how obnoxious the girls were, then retreat to my bedroom to read Paul Celan.

   3

One night, unable to sleep, I wandered into the living room and watched the entire first season of Girls. Still, I made it a point to actively hate the show. I told everyone I could: “The girls aren’t smart, or driven, and none of them have jobs. I can’t relate.” Occasionally episodes would be filmed on my block, in my coffee shop, in my neighborhood bar. I’d continue my criticism to whomever would listen: “I don’t recognize the world they live in.” Each month a check would arrive from my father to cover my rent. “They’re such spoiled brats,” I lamented to Paul.

   4

Lena Dunham’s lime-green raincoat, dotted with pink flowers, falls open at the crotch. Her teeth are crooked; her lips bright red. It’s February 2017 and she’s posing on the cover of Nylon magazine, happy to capitalize on the character she’s developed: part-child, part-woman, all-provocation.  

Fresh out of college in 2012 and riding the success of her movie Tiny Furniture, Dunham launched the pilot for her show Girls to much fanfare. She snagged the dream network (HBO), the dream co-producer (guru Judd Apatow), and the dream co-writers (Jenni Konner & Lesley Arfin among them).

Girls invited both acclaim and criticism from the get-go.  Deemed “toxic” and “white girl feminism at its worst,” the show, set in contemporary Brooklyn, New York, features four protagonists: Hannah Horvath (Dunham), Jessa Johanson (Jemima Kirke), Shoshanna Shapiro (Zosia Mamet), and Marnie Michaels (Allison Williams).

Dunham is not the first to have the idea to follow four white girls around New York (see: Sex & the City) but she is the first to be held accountable for her show’s lack of diversity.  In The Atlantic in 2013, Judy Berman spared no mercy: “Dunham continues to cast non-white actors only when race defines their character—which is to say, she still doesn’t get it.”

Lena Dunham, sometimes to her own detriment, is not concerned with political correctness (“I haven’t had an abortion but I wish I had,” she said recently in an interview). It is part of what makes the dialogue in her show so accurate and brightly humorous, and it is also part of what might be deemed problematic about her public and professional persona.

Is there an upside? This insistence on accountability has encouraged a long-overdue dialogue about diversity in television. And Dunham herself has learned a little something along the way: “When I wrote the pilot I was 23. Each character was an extension of me,” she told Nylon. “I wouldn’t do another show that starred four white girls,” she added.

   5.

In the first season, Hannah (Dunham) has weird, sloppy sex with the overly aggressive Adam (Adam Driver); Jessa misses her own abortion appointment because she is getting drunk and having sex with a stranger in a bar; Shoshanna sets out to lose her virginity; and Marnie dumps her boyfriend of five years because he’s “too nice.” Later, Hannah takes acid in order to write a more interesting article, and Adam sends Hannah a picture of his dick wrapped in fur, then quickly texts, “That was for someone else.”

Despite this (or because of it) Hannah falls in love with Adam. Adam, for his part, seems drawn to Hannah, but disdains her, presumably because she evokes emotional reactions from him that he’s not fully comfortable feeling. In subsequent seasons, he dates ‘conventionally’ beautiful women, but finds himself defending Hannah, as in a scene where the stunning Shiri Appleby (whom Adam’s character degrades sexually, then dumps) bumps into Hannah and Adam at a coffee shop. Appleby sizes up Hannah’s body and exclaims, with lacerating cruelty, “That’s her?”

Late at night I considered my own body in the mirror. I had a proportional hourglass shape, with big boobs. But my body scared me. I preferred being thin and wearing baggie clothes, and it was my worst nightmare that anyone would learn I had large breasts.

I liked watching Hannah move through the world partially clothed, because I couldn’t, and her obliviousness, while sometimes problematic, seemed in this one sense a blessing.

   6.

As the show progressed, I expected a personality transformation in the characters much like the one I expected in myself: I assumed Hannah would eventually mature, stop loving Adam, publish some writing, make a real career for herself. I thought Jessa would stop doing drugs, get her shit together, that Marnie would become less obnoxiously privileged and white, that Shoshanna would shed her Jewish-American Princess prissiness and learn to take care of herself. I hoped Adam would have a functioning relationship and make peace with his demons.

I was pissed when this didn’t happen. I was angry when Hannah went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and then left because she couldn’t live anywhere but New York City, and didn’t understand how to take constructive criticism. Her writing was self-referential and sometimes straight-up bad. When I first watched Jessa attend AA meetings, I thought it was silly. Jessa’s stint in rehab seemed futile, and she picked up drinking soon after.

When, on my 23rd birthday, I broke down in front of my brother and admitted I needed help with my alcoholism, I didn’t make the correlation to Jessa’s character. I was proud and vocal when I stuck with AA for one month, and then two.  And I was mortified and quiet when I stopped going and picked up drinking again, more heavily this time.

   7

Around the time the fourth season came out, I fell in love with an artist named Charlie, who had dated a friend of mine years earlier. This friend was particularly possessive of him.

I made lists of all the reasons why my attraction to Charlie was bullshit, why it wouldn’t work, why I should avoid him.  I assumed the attraction was based on some subconscious yearning, the fucked up parts of me attempting a ruinous self-sabotage. In a fury with myself, I used the money from a poetry prize to buy a ticket to France for a week. I decided in that time I would get over my bizarre crush and move on with my life.    

I fell in love anyway. I lost my friend. And eight months later, I lost Charlie too.

   8

In the fifth season of Girls, something surprising happens. Adam begins pursuing Jessa. As Hannah’s best friend, Jessa is furious to find herself falling for Adam as well. They date. Hannah finds out; Jessa begins to resent Adam.

“Y’know, people hate me,” Jessa confides to Adam. “I’m a hateable kind of person. I don’t know why, I can’t help it, maybe it’s because I have a big ass and good hair but I know, I know that I have principles and one thing I don’t do is steal people’s boyfriends. But you ruin that. Don’t you see that? We could die in the same bed and I will never forgive you.”

Adam, livid, replies: “Hannah is a lazy, entitled, manipulative, myopic narcissist who knows a lot less than she thinks she does. Why do you think I fucking hated you for so long? Because Hannah fucking hates you.”

Jessa whips her long blonde hair. “Welcome to having a friend,” she digs coolly, and Adam smashes a lamp against a wall.  

   9

As the other characters slide into caricature in the late seasons of the show, Adam seems actually to begin to mature, even playing guardian to his nephew after his unstable sister (the brilliant Gaby Hoffman) disappears. In this way he serves as Hannah’s foil, and his maturity highlights the ways in which Hannah fails to grow up with the world around her. Ironic that the character with the most interesting arc on Girls is a man.  

   10

I consoled myself a lot in my graduate school years by comparing myself to those I deemed less intelligent. I was convinced I could’ve written Girls, but better, and I protected myself this way, moving through the world with the conviction of my own gifts, and no awareness of the deep uncertainty I harbored inside. In the poems I wrote, I was at the mercy of everyone in the world who didn’t love me back.  

Girls, for all its flaws, anticipated and mirrored my own life in ways I did not want to acknowledge.  As I grew older and more forgiving of myself, I found myself more forgiving of the characters on the show, and their myriad missteps. Annoying, immature, adolescent—sure. But Lena Dunham had something I wanted: agency.  

It’s this that I think we all work towards as we get older.  Agency in our relationships, in our writing, in our careers, and in ourselves. I still want to be, as Hannah Horvath puts it in the pilot episode, “the voice of my generation. Or, you know, a generation.”    

   11

I haven’t spoken to Paul in years, but I think of him each time I watch Girls. How badly we behaved back then. How scared we were of being hurt.

I think of telling him how he saved my life with his dumb shows and giant flat-screen TV. How safe I felt, hearing him have hate-sex with his girlfriend through the wall. How I loved him, though I never said it. How I knew him by heart.    

When I walked past the other day, Frost Street was quiet. Three trees struggled under ice.

I live on South 3rd now, a street with small fenced-in yards, and a happily neutral name.

[zvezdacito]

Since we're only one day away from Diasomnia Part 13, I'm gonna re-articulate my story concerns with the new Silver card so my point is more clear:

I don't really think the imagery of the Knight of Dawn/Silver Owls is something that can be reclaimed/redeemed. Not even if it's to save Malleus, rather than kill him like Meleanor. The implications of morally saving him from himself through that image is a whole other can of worms (AKA the white savior vibes). And that's lowkey what I originally meant anyway by "heroically beat". Saving him from his OB is still beating him in the narrative...

I'm hoping that its either:

just named that due to Silver's dawn motifs in general and not because he'll actually have to wear something Silver Owls related😔 Original armour design would be cool

OR if he gets put in the armour because it represents the non-diasomnia characters' (and even audience) expectations of him as the good (Silver Owl motifs* popularly recognized as that due to the historical revisionism) defeating what is unquestionably evil in their eyes (Malleus and lowkey the Briar Valley). Only for him to subvert it by denouncing the role, maybe wrecking the armour after wearing it a bit, then stopping Malleus without it. Because he wants them to know that both he and Malleus as persons will be more than the boxes of good human vs evil dragon

Also I think when they make Silver denounce it because he wants them to be seen as more than the past, they have to be careful to not make it come off as "yeah the fae should just never acknowledge the long term con consequences on their land/lives because it's all in the past". Because that wouldn't be why Silver want himself and Malleus to be more than that. It's more to be more than stereotypes and prevent future conflict (he in the human side also has to make effort to compromise their comfort not just the colonized fae)

* Since in real life norms, knightly motifs are associated with good while dragons/darkness are associated with evil, subverting which side uses which in a colonization storyline (then having the colonized dragon motif people be seen as the evil ones due to propaganda) can be metacommentary on how the idea of Good vs Evil in fairytales and popular imagination is dependent on the Status Quo. With even the fandom perceiving the knightly motifs as savior in the narrative despite them being symbols of colonization in-universe due to their established association with heroism IRL

TWST is about how there's more to the stories of fairytale-like characters than binary Good and Evil, so I think Silver only having the card for fanservice but actually denouncing the armour in the story itself makes the most sense to TWST's themes.... IDK what level of faith I should have in the writers, but they are potentially cooking if they commit to this

Also I know people people are gonna bring up how this is about Silver forgiving his birth parents because he realizes they did love him and just tried to do what's best for him. I do think it makes sense for him to have a better opinion of them as individuals, but once again I don't think the place for that should be in the final battle against the face of the people they genocided💀 That still boils down to redeeming and reclaiming the Dawn Knight's role as the "hero" with moral high ground over the dragon. I don't think it's the Dawn Knight's place to have his vision succeed here. As I said it was a long time coming because it's the most obvious way to parallel to original Sleeping Beauty, but doesn't mean I won't side-eye a certain handling of it because they chose to contextualize the twst version with a colonization storyline of all things

And do NOT reply with explanations like "Oh but the Dawn Knight was getting manipulated yadda yadda💔" because ironically every point used to defend him are the exact reasons I think he's hateable /lh

I think he's a more interesting character when seen as intentional depiction individuals on an oppressing/priveleged class being sympathetic, but not being willing to do enough against their own benefits in the system/challenge the system as a whole, thinking isolated acts of charity are enough to offset the extent of the violence they participate in. And even that sympathy can feel patronizing to the colonized's capacity to progress without their involvement/centers the feelings of the colonizer side.

Dawn Knight being good-intentioned as a parent and him being irredeemable and spineless as a colonizer are not mutually exclusive. It would be interesting to have Silver try to reconcile that without the story suddenly making him think the former point compensates for the latter (that wouldn't really be his place either)

Also tbh I think people overestimate Henrik's manipulation. Like yeah he was saying "ur not good for anything than fighting/you owe us" but it was only harsh words rather than actual blackmail yet the Dawn Knight kinda just folded instantly so that's on him😭 And again this doesn't really change how he distastefully makes so much of the horrors of war about himself and his own feelings. All his sad monologue scenes have the same vibe as US veterans making their massacres about just wanting to pay for bills or how it gave them PTSD lmao💀

That's all... we will find out tomorrow... if they are cooking gourmet or poison