meanderingstar

[meanderingstar]

i always wish we could have seen jaime and renly interact because their dynamic is so hysterical

jaime: outright says “i rather liked renly”, said it was a pity he died, told a comforting lie to loras to help him in his grief, seems pretty okay about renly being gay

renly: bets against jaime in the tourney of the hand, tells ned stark not to trust any lannisters, makes kingslayer jokes during feasts

[meanderingstar]

“catelyn’s mistreatment of jon is wildly exaggerated within the fandom” and “jon’s childhood trauma is heavily based in catelyn’s resentment towards him” and “catelyn and jon are both victims of a dysfunctional family dynamic” are statements that can all coexist btw

[meanderingstar]

how is it that i've been reading shadowhunters books for over a decade and i only just realized the mortal instruments, as in the the series title, is likely referring to more than just.. the three mortal instruments

[meanderingstar]

so @erch0maii said in a post that i didn’t want to hijack that the reason that both screen adaptations of tmi didn’t feel quite right is because they were these dark gritty adaptations while the books are, at heart, campy and silly and comical. and i was thinking about this and how it relates to the other series in the tsc canon. when i first read tsc i thought that the reason they felt tmi felt different from tid, tda, and tlh is because they were her first books but it really all comes down to the character’s sense of humor and genre awareness. because all the other tsc series (and i’m betting twp too) take themselves so seriously, but timi doesn’t do that. 

with genre awareness, the characters are put in this dark edgy fantasy war series but they act like their in a satire or a comedy. my favorite parts of qoaad were when jace and clary were in these dangerous situations and were acting so nonchalant about it. and it wasn’t even like a fake confidence or something, they genuinely just are Like That. like at the war council they walked in casually with normal clothes and people didn’t even notice them until lily called them out. like, they could have changed, they could have made a big entrance, but no, why bother. and later in brocelind when manuel rips out the tent and they’re playing tic tac toe. they don’t acknowledge him at all, not even to make a joke about him ruining the tents they borrowed. they just sit there playing tic tac toe. and again on the imperishable fields, jace has a knife to manuel’s back and clary is holding the stanchion but emma describes them as walking as if they’re out for a morning stroll.

and like look at the parallels between the series. the tlh crew met one and a half princes of hell and barely made it out with their sanity. the tmi gang has collectively met 3 princes of hell and in literally every situation they’re on the same level. when emma and julian went to thule it was this dark scary traumatizing thing, this actual hell that wasn’t quite hell. and when james, matthew, lucie, and cordelia went to edom it was this terrible experience that both lucie and matthew spent literally dying. but when the tmi gang went to hell, what ever. yeah it was serious and traumatic and scarring but not in the same way. izzy and simon hooked up. clary and jace had sex. and alec made fun of all four of them for it after. jace got caught by a demon and clary scolded him like he left the fridge open. they literally snuck into sebastian’s elite fortress with a plan from simon’s dnd campaign. and diyu?  even when simon was having a mental breakdown he managed to flirt with izzy it took the tlh gang 3 long-ass books to defeat belial and christopher died in the process. the tmi gang beat sammael in a f*cking side book. if you go to the shadowhunter wiki and go to azazel’s history he’s said as being a part of team good. imagine how casual you have to be to get a prince of hell to join ‘team good’

and then there’s the angels. tessa’s contact with ithuriel almost killed her. emma and julian’s whole nephilim thing also almost killed them. and yeah, clary’s first encounter with raziel was very somber and serious. but in cols simon literally blackmailed raziel into giving him a magical sword. and with faerie, every encounter that the tda gang have with faeries or in faerie is this dangerous quest that could get everybody killed. the tmi gang don’t hesitaste to insult the seelie queen to her face

the thing that sets tmi apart from the rest of tsc is the characters’ refusal to take anything, themselves and everyone around them, seriously for very long

[meanderingstar]

the holy trinity

[meanderingstar]

I just wanted to draw them dancing

[meanderingstar]

griff "there's no sweeter joy than escalating with ixion" gareson and delo "habit of defusing conflict" skyfish

[meanderingstar]

I want to shake Annie she’s so caught up in the idea of a system where you can rise from the bottom straight to the top, because that’s what it gave her, that she’s failing to consider just how rare her “miracle” was and that this system still has a horrible bottom. and that the solution is to no longer have it, not to escape it. she doesn’t see it’s keeping those people at the bottom at the bottom and claiming it’s better—and it’s doing that WAY more than it’s saving people like her

[meanderingstar]

i think something important underlying furysong is that things cannot truly be undone. the aurelian cycle is a cycle and there are many cycles contained within it; things repeat. but the reason they're cycles is because things have happened before, not because it is as if they have never happened. in furysong, annie and lee are back to positions of servant and ruler respectively. ixion is successfully undoing many of the reforms by atreus's regime. but annie has known a world where girls can be educated and where she has been firstrider; she is not the same timid girl she was at the beginning of fireborne. just because her position has reverted does not mean she herself can. this is why ixion's restoration cannot work - the people he seeks to subjugate once more are not the same people his family ruled over ten years before.

[meanderingstar]

it’s so meta to name the series about annie and lee on their aurelians the aurelian cycle when it’s about their own founding story for callipolis and then the in-text aurelian cycle is a founding story for callipolis. i think this is genuinely one of my favorite things.

annie and lee are the only central characters who ride aurelians, too - griff, cor, power, and rock ride stormscourges and delo, duck, crissa, and lotus ride skyfish. so when it is called the aurelian cycle, what it really means is annie and lee. it really drives home that this is their founding myth and that they are the ones who have this power - they have the capability to make this change, and their callipolis can be something new because it reflects an instance when callipolis was made new before.

and then, taking a step back even from that, it's another example of a cycle. this series is all about cycles - another incredibly apt reason for it to be called the aurelian cycle - and the series title itself aligning with the in-text traditional epic poem indicates that annie and lee are repeating it. what we are reading is another aurelian cycle.

[meanderingstar]

today thinking about how all three titles of the aurelian cycle (fireborne, flamefall, furysong), as well as the series name itself, are taken from in-world poetry.

the focus of the plot is, ostensibly, the political regimes and wars and revolutions and aftermath. atrocities are committed regularly and no choice anyone is given or makes is better than ‘not as bad as the other option’. but the importance of poetry is pervasive. it makes connections across across country and class and culture, has recognizable emotional and situational resonances to the present day, influences decisions and understanding, creates sympathy. its censorship always leads, if indirectly, to terrible events happening, even if that connection isn’t explicitly noted in-text.

and all of the works the series' titles are taken from are censored in some way by the government. the aurelian cycle, an ancient epic foundational to one of the books' cultures, is restricted and then entirely banned for 'promoting values contrary to the national interest' and engendering sympathy for the enemy. flamefall at aureos, a classical tragedy, is literally rewritten, poorly and unsubtly, to have a happy ending for propaganda. the first exodus, about a woman who rode a dragon and pursued vengeance, is vox draconis but was not included in the the aurelian cycle like the other poems thus attributed; and then in the version that becomes the skysung queen folktale, the woman is benevolent, and she does not even ride a dragon until freyda adopts the moniker.

language itself is important in the series: which languages you speak or (are forced to) learn, when and why you speak or learn each language, the way language (and literacy) is used as a tool of oppression, formal and informal address. the significance of poetry and its censorship is an extension of that. who has access, and why is that access kept away from others? poetry and words can be just as dangerous as a dragon.

[meanderingstar]

fireborne is such a beautiful book... "if it is our fate to die then by my own hand let me earn it" and "your choices are your own. my conscience is not your keeper. bring what fury you have and i will answer it with ours" and "it becomes a struggle to peel the layers back, to probe for weakness, to expose a mistake. a performance of something intimate. these are the things I alone can find in her, and she alone can find in me" and "the boy who mattered to me only because in a world where we had no one, he was kind" and "i know annie too well not to recognize the sound of her anger" and "as though he's holding me together so that i can fall apart" and "dance with me? / you don't like dancing / i'd like dancing with you" and "this has been a dream in the fabric of my longing for as long as I can remember. less a desire than a need. i've lost everything else from the old life, but this i can keep. this i’m still allowed to want" and "our fathers may be dead, but their blood runs in our veins. we were born to this" and "this is the refrain she must play for herself, on bad days and after nightmares; this is her refrain, and like mine, it is never enough" and "an old desire wells up within me, its pain so familiar, it returns like exhaustion. i would give anything to ease the hurt on this girl’s face" and "i look down at this boy, vulnerable, at my mercy, and think, to the ends of the earth i will protect you" and and and. there is so much.

[meanderingstar]

i love you cycles i love you horrified to repeat history i love you justification for old crimes done again i love you never escaping what your father has done i love you disillusionment with what you have clung to to free yourself from your past i love you no good decisions

[meanderingstar]

the mortal instruments was a wild ass series. gay wizards. cunty vampires. angels nailed to basement floors. the heroine's father claims her boyfriend is his long lost son for like two or three books. werewolves run a chinese restaurant.

[meanderingstar]

THE MORTAL INSTRUMENTS (2007 — 2014 )

[meanderingstar]

... actually nvm, I'm gonna keep using this blog

[meanderingstar]

golden age of narnia outfit designs based on medieval fashion. dont ask why theres two of them.