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starcunning · 5 years

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Three Weeks, She Sleeps

[Gen][Thancred Waters & The Scions of the Seventh Dawn][WOL (X’shasi Kilntreader)][Feo Ul][Angst][I’m sure about the angst this time][A past relationship between Thancred and X’shasi is alluded to but there’s no real shippy content here][Body horror][Assisted suicide mention][Alcoholism mention][FFXIV 5.0][Takes place during the MSQ quest Extinguishing the Last Light][5.9k words]

This story contains ending/MSQ spoilers for FFXIV expansion 5.0, Shadowbringers.

[AO3 mirror]

Light streams in through her window. That feels wrong—as though the sun should have turned its face away from the world. Even if it had, Thancred knows, it would make no difference. Day and night, the light falls through her windows onto the same spreading rectangle upon her floor. Sitting in it brings no warmth and no peace.

He has dragged the chair from her desk into the center of that bright pool anyway, and there he sits in observation. He is not always alone—in fact, he rarely is—but he is almost always there, for reasons he cannot name, and a few that he can.

Thancred has neither the knowledge nor the contacts to try and find a solution. Unlike most of the Circle of Knowing, he has never been adept with magics—and now less than ever. He understands what is happening, but he needs others to explain it. Y’shtola can see, and Urianger can understand; even the twins can feel something. Ryne can act. All Thancred can do is watch and wait.

The other reason he stays is because he owes it to her. Because she has been so much to him—hero and inspiration and friend and even, for a while, lover—and he cannot bring himself to do anything else. He has been too absent for too long.

Her name is X’shasi Kilntreader—Shasi, sometimes, when they are alone. Not now, even when there is no sound in the room but the beating of his heart. It hurts too much to think of her as Shasi, his Shasi, when she lays stiff and unmoving atop her bed.

It hurts worse when she doesn’t.

She seizes. It takes Thancred by surprise—this is not the first time it has happened, but there is no regularity to it. X’shasi convulses atop her bed and her breathing becomes ragged with panting. Something—not blood; it looks more like meol, though Thancred refuses to follow the thread of that thought—leaks from the corner of her lips or sprays from her gasping mouth. He is afraid then that she will hurt herself, until he remembers that she is already in pain and there is little she could do to injure herself worse than she already has. In the aftermath, Thancred turns her onto her side and holds her head gently until he is certain she is breathing; that she has not choked on her own aspirated Light.

Then he calls for Ryne, and whatever else she might have been doing she abandons to come and bind the Light once more. It taxes her, he knows, but there is no one else to ask. There are shadows beginning to form under her eyes; she looks older than a girl her age has any right to.

X’shasi turned thirty, Thancred remembers, some time after he was called to the First. He isn’t sure if she is thirty still. Either way, she is far too young to die. Ryne may be the end to the endless cycle of reincarnation for the Minfilias, but there’s no guarantee she’ll live much longer than her predecessors.

Then again, if he doesn’t call for Ryne, there’s no guarantee that any of them will live for long.

“Thancred?” Ryne says. He hasn’t even heard her come in. He’s taught her that well, or he’s that preoccupied. He looks up from where he sits on the edge of the bed. X’shasi’s pillow rests atop his knee, and her head atop that. He has laid a hand against her neck to measure her pulse with his thumb. He can feel her heartbeat in his hand. It is as close as they have been in five years or more. “It happened again?” she asks. “The last one was only two days ago.” “They’re getting more frequent,” Thancred says. There is no emotion in his voice. It is as blank as X’shasi’s sleeping face, which he now looks upon once more. “Hold her still,” Ryne says. “I’ll get to work.”

Thancred does, shifting his hand from neck to shoulder and anchoring her upon her side. Ryne kneels beside the bed and closes her eyes. She stretches out one hand, feeling at something Thancred can’t even see. She does not look much like Minfilia anymore, except in moments like this when she bows her head and prays. Then it is as though he is still a young man, newly come to Ul’dah, unsure how to care for the girl he orphaned.

He has orphaned this one too, he knows. He stole her from Ran’jit and now has seen the man killed. It is far more direct even than his role in Warburton’s death, and while he does not regret it he thinks he may never see the end of repenting for it. He tries not to let the turmoil show on his face. He has long practice at that.

What Ryne does requires a type of sight he does not possess—or a pair of goggles he left on the Source. As she works he can see the signs, though. X’shasi’s breathing deepens, becomes more even. Her muscles no longer tense with pain. Ryne holds X’shasi’s hand between both of her own a long moment, looking down at the signet ring she wears. Then she withdraws and stands. Thancred carefully rolls X’shasi to her back and adjusts her pillow.

White stains her chin, spatters her clothing. The bedsheets, too, are drenched. He offers Ryne his hand, and leads her out with him into the hallway. A chirurgeon from Spagyrics waits there. “Another incident. She’ll need a change,” he says. “I’ll attend to her,” the chirurgeon says.

Thancred only nods, and shepherds Ryne further down the hall, back to her own apartments. The door is still ajar, speaking to the haste she must have left in, but Ryne balks at the threshold. “She’s getting worse,” Ryne says. “Isn’t she.” Thancred looks down at the girl and longs to lie. Instead he nods once. Ryne lets go of his hand, balling hers into a fist at her side. “I don’t know what more I can do,” she says. Thancred glances back the way they had come, and is surprised to find no one looking on at this outcry. He gently places his hand atop Ryne’s head a moment, and then steps past her and into her apartment. “Come on,” he coaxes. She follows a moment later, shutting the door after herself. Her room is neat, organized; the door to his suite hangs open, revealing that his is a great deal less so, as untidy as his thoughts. “I wish Minfilia were here instead of me,” she says. “Well, I don’t,” Thancred tells her. “She would know what to do! She could save her. She could save everyone, and I … can’t.” “Ryne,” he says, sitting down at the table and indicating to her to sit opposite. “I’m sorry.” Ryne sinks into her seat and just stares at him. “I don’t think Minfilia would know what to do any more than you do,” Thancred says. “I certainly don’t. It’s not fair that you have to deal with this.” “I want to deal with this,” Ryne says. “I want to just fix it! Minfilia could fix it. X’shasi could fix it! I’m not good enough.”

Thancred finds a deeper ache than the one that has pervaded for the last sennight. He welcomes the pain, perverse as he knows the impulse to be, because it is a novelty. Because something is changing, at least. Then he masters it and reaches out to pat Ryne’s arm gently. “You’re doing your best,” he says. “You’re doing more than should ever have been asked of you. I know it’s my fault that you think that’s not good enough.” “Just tell me she’s going to be okay,” Ryne pleads. The lie rises to his lips. He wants to tell it. He wants to believe it. He wants the act of his speaking it to somehow make it the truth. He says, “We’re going to do everything we can to make sure she’s alright.”

Ryne stands, her arm slipping from beneath his hand. He thinks she might storm away, but instead she flings herself at him, burying her face against his chest. Thancred freezes for a moment, and then he wraps an arm around her, stroking her hair with his other hand. “It’s okay if it’s too much,” he says. “You should be able to live a normal life.” “She told me over and over that it was my choice,” Ryne sobs. “But if that’s true then I’m always going to choose to try to help her.” “That’s all anyone can ever ask of you,” Thancred says. “There has to be an answer somewhere. Our friends are going to find it. You have to believe that.” No matter how hard it gets.

– – – – –

Thancred paces his room. It is the same as it was a moon ago, but for the light outside. It contains all the same amusements and distractions as ever, but lacks the things that tempt him most. This is on purpose, of course, and so far has been sufficient. But the Wandering Stairs are never far. Three times already he has put his hand on the doorknob, ready to go out, and thrice he has retreated.

He does not know if he has the strength to resist making a fourth attempt. So he puts himself as far from the door as he can, sitting on the cushioned bench beneath his window. He throws it open and is greeted by harsh light and the smell of stale air. His windowbox plants are a bit rangy-looking—most have dropped their flowers, which wither in the pots below, and some of the leaves have discolored.

Of course. Preoccupied as he’s been with everything else, he’s forgotten—these are varietals from before the Flood, planted with seeds from the Hortorium after night returned to Lakeland. They are as unhappy with the return of the all-enduring light as anyone else.

One by one he drags them in and sets them on his dinner table. It’s not as though he’s been eating at it in any case, but he sits down and resolves to tend to these plants as though he expects to see them bloom again.

He picks the weathered trumpetflowers from the soil of its pot, tossing them into a spare bowl. A few blooms still cling to the shrub, but these are withered and browning, their scent less a delicate perfume and more like fruit gone to rot. He plucks these too, along with the discolored leaves. The shrub looks stunted beneath his hands, its bare branches knobby and pathetic. He rises to find the shears, and in the midst of his pruning he hears the sound of laughter.

“Such care for a poison tree!” “I’m in no mood for pixie pranks, your Majesty,” Thancred says. Feo Ul’s wings tinkle like bells as they flit about his shoulders. “But of course not,” they say. “Your saplings are not the only ones withering under too much Light.” “I am well aware,” Thancred says. He grasps his composure and his tools more tightly, lest the faerie king drive him to drink after all. “Oh, but these are alright,” the king says, settling on the rim of a pot of crocuses. “Growing plants that nourish and plants that poison side-by-side … how reckless! How like a mortal.” It takes a great deal of effort to turn his thoughts from the idea of clipping those gossamer wings in his annoyance. “What do you want, Feo Ul?” “I want nothing,” the pixie says. “I came to give you something! A report from Garlemald. My lady Tataru seemed to think it best trusted to you, if you would care to receive it. Or were you sulking?” “No,” he lies. “Who is it from?” He is quite certain he knows the answer. “Why, the Crown Prince, of course,” Feo Ul replies, aflutter once more. They flit to the next pot and begin to pull sun-scorched leaves from the plant there, tossing them about in a cascade of pink and brown. “Now this one,” Feo Ul says, “is neither food nor poison. Why grow it?” Thancred has no ready answer. After a moment he says, “She gave you back the night. I thought the least I could do was give back its flowers.” “Ah, for love’s sake,” Feo Ul says, “or beauty’s.” “I—” Thancred protests. The faerie king continues undeterred. “You do still have a good heart, then.” Rather than comment on that, Thancred uses his pruning shears to cut the branches he’s severed into mulch. “The report, if you please.”

“The Princeling says that he has arrived in the city and found Asina’s old workshop empty. The First Legion have been recalled in force.” Feo Ul goes on like this with their task as does Thancred with his; when they are done Thancred has a few cups of mulch for the compost heap and a more complete understanding of Garlean troop dispositions than he has in five years. “This report was meant for Tataru?” he asks. “No,” Feo Ul replies. “Not primarily, although I had been instructed to give it to her as well.” “Galvus asked that of you?” Feo Ul shakes their diminutive head. “My sapling bid me do so, but since she was in no position to issue orders as she usually does, I asked Tataru. She suggested I ask you. ‘It’s what X’shasi would want,’ she said.” That takes him by surprise for a moment—and then surprise fades and he admits it only makes sense. X’shasi has been fighting some covert, proxy war in Garlemald for moons—trying to keep the pressure off the Alliance, no doubt—but he hasn’t been part of it. Still, with X’shasi out of the picture, he’s the one most fit for the responsibility, though he’s not at all sure he can hold the leash. “Does Galvus know about her condition?” “I never saw fit to mention it,” Feo Ul says. There is pixie mischief in the king’s tone. “Don’t,” Thancred says, “and won’t he be so surprised when he finds out his instructions came from me.”

Thancred can only hope he’s out of sword-reach when he does. He issues the instructions anyway, his heart leaden, and then he says, “What if she never wakes up?” “Do not say such heartless things,” Feo Ul demands, and the furor of a ruler is not diminished overmuch by the fact that the king stands a fulm high at most. “Is there anything you could do for her?” “No,” the pixie admits. “I could save the world, but not her. We could force the crown upon her and bind her to the castle, as we did the last Titania, or I could turn her into the adorable sapling she has always been. Would you tend her as you do this garden?” Feo Ul wonders. “There is relief there, to care for her until she flowers; to eat of the fruit of her branches; to sleep forever beneath the shade of her boughs.” Of course a faerie would think so. What shocks Thancred is that he thinks so, too. But he can’t afford to—Emet-Selch is not much like Lahabrea, he supposes, but he will not leave that door open just the same. “If she starts to change,” Thancred says, “will you answer my call?” “For my sapling’s sake, I would do all you asked,” Feo Ul says. “Well,” Thancred says, “go to her sleeping prince, then.”

Feo Ul does, and Thancred is left with his garden—stunted and only dubiously saved—and a bowl of things he must now leave to rot.

– – – – –

Y’shtola is not happy to have returned to the Crystarium. Thancred suspects in part that she might not have come in person at all if the master of the Tower were not absent—and while he would never accuse his friend of delighting in the misfortune that surrounds them, he finds he cannot blame her either. After all, she had been right to be suspicious.

“How are things in Slitherbough?” he asks. “Perhaps not so dire as you may expect,” Shtola replies. “The Night’s Blessed have seen the stars, and to lose them has not dashed their hope but steeled their resolve instead. But there were no answers there. Nor in Fanow, where I also chanced to inquire.” “I suppose if it were that easy,” Thancred says, “they would have turned back the Flood long before.” “How are things here?” Shtola asks. “The same,” Thancred says. “So: worse. I’ve had to field a dozen enquiries as to the why of it all, and can come up with no more convincing lie than ‘we don’t know.’” “We are in dire straits if you cannot spin some yarn or another,” Shtola says.

Her needling should bother him, perhaps. From anyone else, it might. If not that, it might comfort him, but it does not do that either—he is vaguely aware of it, and that is all. No thought follows from the first one, much as he refuses to come to any conclusion about the white blood he has seen stain dark lips all too often.

“Does it hurt, to look on her?” Thancred asks softly. Shtola nods once, but does not turn her face away from the bed. “Like staring into the sun,” she whispers. “And yet I cannot bear the thought of looking away.” She does not finish the thought, and does not need to. Thancred only nods in reply. “I could see her well before I entered the city,” Shtola says. “Like the beacon at Pharos Sirius, or the wellspring of aether beneath Silvertear Lake. I could have guided my amaro by her light from malms away. Something happened yesterday?” “Mm,” Thancred says. “Another seizure. Ryne took care of it.” “The sky …” Shtola takes a moment to gather her thoughts. “The sky is always burning,” she says, “but it was like the backdrafts that tore through the Castrum all those years ago. Around eight bells or so.” “You could see it from there?” Thancred says, and curses. “We are running out of time, then.” “And options,” Shtola says grimly.

They sit there in silence. It should be companionable—they have been friends more than half his life, and for who knows what proportion of hers—but it is merely silence, smothered by the stillness of Light.

“One thought has occurred to me,” Shtola says after a long moment, “though I fear if I should tell it to you now you will try to dissuade me.” “Then why mention it at all?” Thancred wonders, the words bitter on his tongue. “I am not half so fascinated by secrets as our friend Urianger,” she says. “And moreover, it is not exactly a novelty. If I tell you my plan, I expect you to hear all of it.” Thancred sets his teeth a moment. He has an inkling. “Should we ever make it back to the Source, I am going to have words with Master Matoya,” he says. “So, despite my injunction to hear me out, you’ve already drawn your conclusions. G’raha’s theory was sound,” Shtola tells him. “If I draw her into the Lifestream with me, she poses no danger here.” “There are no Elementals or convenient Ascians to save you this time, Shtola!” Thancred snaps. “I do not expect to be saved,” she says. “You can’t honestly expect me to just accept this as the plan.” “Do you have a better one?” Shtola asks.

The silence answers for him.

– – – – –

He returns in the days that follow, knowing that he will continue to do so; tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, until she wakes or until she dies. To the last syllable of recorded time. His shadow when he sits falls ever the same way across the floor. It stops just short of the edge of her bed with its freshly-changed sheets, crisply folded and neatly tucked, stiff as the unmoving thing atop it.

Even as a shade he does not touch her. He is a fool, he knows.

A greater fool than he enters the room, his soft footsteps all but lost in the chiming sound of the chains that dangle from his garb. Urianger Augurelt has always been the smartest man in the Scions, and Louisoix’s most trusted agent, and the most damnable idiot of all of them.

“Good morning,” Urianger says. Thancred’s gaze hardens. He says nothing. If the astrologian notices, he gives no sign. It is only then that Thancred realizes that Urianger is not speaking to him, and has expected no answer. Thancred stands, suddenly restless, and his eyes and Urianger’s meet for a moment. The frisson of anger that passes over him, through him, leaves his jaw tight and brow furrowed. He stalks from the chair to the window and throws it open to the incongruous sound of birdsong in the mountains beyond.

There is a soft scraping sound of metal on stone, and when Thancred looks back, Urianger has dragged the chair from that patch of direct light so that he may sit at X’shasi’s bedside. He takes her inert hand in his, clasping it between his long fingers. The Elezen’s face is a mask of anguish, and for some reason this casual intimacy between them pricks him.

“What news from Il Mheg?” Thancred asks, as though this tableau does not matter to him at all. He turns away again, leaning out the window. X’shasi’s window box is a collection of sun-bleached pots and scorched soil, the flowers that had once decorated it long since withered. “Little to hearten, I fear,” Urianger says. “The pixies spoke only of their own powerlessness in the face of their erstwhile king’s transformation, though the nu mou told somewhat of a different tale.” Thancred reaches out to take up a handful of dirt. It is desiccated and crumbles in his hands, taken by the winds in a trailing plume as he lets it fall. He could replant these flowers, he thinks, but to what end? The person they are meant for will never see them. “What, did they offer to change her into a mushroom?” “No,” Urianger says, “but they spoke of a knight of Voeburt changed to a leafman rather than a sin eater.” “Feo Ul suggested something like that,” Thancred murmurs, casting the last of the dirt back into the pot with a disgusted flick of his hand. He is tilling soil that will bear no harvest. “I’m beginning to think it’s our best option.” Certainly better than losing Y’shtola to her Flow.

“Thou wouldst sacrifice her so readily?” Urianger asks. Thancred can feel his gaze upon his back, the note of surprise in his voice making it tight. “If she does not recover on her own, of which she gives no sign, we will have to start considering the practical options,” Thancred says. He cannot look back at Urianger, so he busies himself with washing his dirty hands and rifling through X’shasi’s pantry. It is all but untouched, most things even unopened, and Thancred begins to suspect that the past few weeks are the most time she has spent here since her arrival. “Shtola has offered up a plan of her own, but I don’t see why it should fall to her to sacrifice herself. The way I see it, it’s either me or you, and of the two of us you’ve a better chance of learning the intricacies of Flow.” “Wherefore comest thou by this conclusion?” Urianger asks. Thancred pauses in straightening the labels of the untouched spices in a rack. “It began with me,” he says. “It should end with me. And you …” He turns back to that hateful tableau.

“This whole situation is your fault,” Thancred says. Urianger says nothing, only purses his lips. “This was your great plan to save the world,” Thancred continues. “This has been your affair for years. You sacrificed Minfilia to this ambition readily enough, and G’raha, and now her. Don’t you think you should bear some portion of the burden yourself, now that your gambits have failed?” Urianger, he of so many words, is silent. He bows his head, looking down upon the hand clasped in his own—the one he won’t let go of. Envy flares in Thancred anew at the sight; it should be him, he thinks. It has not escaped his notice how close the pair have grown in their time on the First. Thick as thieves, which is an irony, as they two are far more virtuous.

Perhaps virtue is the problem.

It is not, he imagines, that they are lovers—and if they were, could he really object, after the things he’s done?—but ever since his calling, Thancred has been estranged from her. Her presence on the First has done less than he hoped to remedy that, and he despairs of ever getting the chance. How can he make amends, after all, with her sleeping form?

With a tree? With nothing at all?

“The pixies had no knowledge to aid me, nor the nu mou, nor the Amaro,” Urianger says. “The wisdom of Voeburt is rotted away, and if the fuath came to know any of it they did not grant it me. Mayhap the answer is within the Tower; ’twas not the Students of Baldesion that would have taught G’raha to make a vessel of the self. Moenbryda’s siphon,” he says, “would be a starting point.” He sighs, turning his face away. “Would that I could change your stars,” Urianger whispers.

“So that’s it,” Thancred says. “You’re going to lock yourself away in the Tower in the hopes there’s an answer in some ancient book, while the rest of us struggle on in the real world. How like you.” “My apologies that my stewardship of the Waking Sands was not exciting enough for thy liking,” Urianger says. “It is perverse that a sage of Sharlayan should so disdain scholarship.” “It’s not scholarship I mind,” Thancred says. “You’re running from your responsibilities to yet another library. You might regret it someday, should you ever come down from your ivory tower.” “Thou knowest little enough about my life, to say naught of my regrets,” Urianger replies. “Moreover, at least I would go in hope that an answer might be found. What occupiest thee, as thou keep thy silent vigil?” “The same question that occupies us all,” Thancred says. “How we’re all going to make it out of this alive.” “Nay,” Urianger says. “Thou hast relinquished that hope, all too willingly, as thou hast abandoned her company.” “I haven’t abandoned anything,” Thancred protests. “I’m here every day to look after her.”

Urianger only looks at him a long while, the scholar’s soft hands locked around X’shasi’s. At length he stands, gently patting her knuckles and laying her arm across her chest as though she merely sleeps. Then he carries the chair back to its place in the light, setting it down with another pointed look, and quits the room.

Thancred sits uneasily in the still-warm chair. His shadow does not reach the bed. It will never touch her.

– – – – –

Four people makes the room crowded, even if one of them is inert. Since she is not awake to eat on her own, Spagyrics has her hooked up to tubes. The sludge they feed her is off-white, and the three living people in the room cannot stand to watch her fed it. The memory is too fresh, and the twins are too young to bear it easily. Instead the three of them sit at the table on the far side of the room, taking a meal of their own—more traditional but no less bland.

Perhaps it is merely that food has lost its savor, but he watches Alisaie push the food around her plate only so long before he turns his attention from that too. He never expected much from them, in truth, though he thinks better than to say so. The twins have done their best; that much is not in dispute. But the Scions had all come from Kholusia, and if there were secrets to be wrenched from the distant islands, they might have managed it before they left. Amh Araeng, too, has given up as much as it’s going to, and the Inn at Journey’s Head employs ever the same tactics.

He looks down at his bowl, at the mess of lentils and cured meats—odds and ends preserved with salt and stretched with easy grains to grow and a handful of herbs. He knows a bit about making food last, but this is far more elegant. It occurs to him there’s something he should know and doesn’t. “What,” Thancred says, “does X’shasi like to eat?” “Hot chocolate,” Alphinaud volunteers. “Haurchefant would—” “Not another word,” Alisaie interrupts. She sets down her fork very deliberately, not looking at Thancred nor her twin brother. Alphinaud smiles, the long-suffering smile of a put-upon sibling. The pair have had their spats in the years since their arrival here, but it has always been playful. Thancred can see that this is not; Alphinaud seems to be meeting his sister’s ardor with his usual good humor. “I suppose that’s not really food.” “We’re not discussing this!” Alisaie’s tone is strident, her delicate hands curled into fists at the edge of the table. “I’m not going to just let you poison her,” she says. When she lifts her gaze to stare Thancred down, her blue eyes are sharp as daggers. Realization catches up with Alphinaud, and he reaches out to set a hand on his sister’s shoulder. “I don’t think anybody really wants to do that,” he says. “Least of all Thancred.” “He’s right about that, at least,” Thancred offers, though his voice betrays him—too subdued, too resigned. So he might as well say the rest. “But I will if I have to.” There’s no sense obfuscating the truth. They are Louisoix’s grandchildren, and have his talent for sniffing out a lie. Besides, they’ve seen and done enough that it’s not a mercy to spare them but a denial of their role in things.

Or perhaps Thancred has never been able to be alone in his grief, and simply wants the excuse to drag everyone else into it.

“Why not kill her weeks ago, then,” Alisaie wonders. “You had plenty of opportunity, with the rest of us chasing our hopes.” Thancred flinches, because he’s asked himself the same question. “I don’t relish the thought,” he said. “But I do have to entertain it.” “You were traveling when it happened,” Alphinaud says, “so you never got to see us have this same conversation about Thancred.” “What,” Alisaie squawks, “because of Lahabrea?” Thancred nods. “There was never a plan to save me. We didn’t know it could be done.” “Well, it could! And we did! And we’re going to save her, too.” Alisaie’s voice grows quieter but more resolute as she speaks. “Right now there’s no hope of that unless she wakes up,” Thancred says. “And even then, we don’t know what to do. Unless you think we should go to the Tempest without her and try to rescue the Exarch?” “That’s exactly what I think we should do,” Alisaie said. “Getting to the bottom of the ocean presents a few logistical problems,” Alphinaud points out. “Like breathing, for one.” “Not a problem for me,” Alisaie says, waving him off. “You can’t just do this alone,” he says. “Then you’d better get started on the logistics, hadn’t you?” Alphinaud balks a moment, glancing from his sister to Thancred and back again, but he seems to read something in the set of his twin’s elfin jaw that tells him the same thing Thancred sees: that Alisaie needs a private word. Although it’s foolish to fear a girl—no, a young woman—half his age, there is a twinge of nervousness in Thancred’s heart just the same. “I’ll see what I can find out,” he says.

The door shuts behind him. Somehow three is easier to bear than four; it is even more welcome than two, despite the forbidding set of her brow. “You were the first to fall, you know,” Alisaie says, rising from her seat. “Doubtless you understood that when you were the first to arrive here.” “Second,” Thancred says. Standing, he continues, “Minfilia was the first.” “Minfilia went of her own accord. Even unto the aetherial sea.” Alisaie stacks her dishes and steps away from the table, crossing to the bedside. “She told me about it,” she says, nodding at Shasi’s sleeping form. The tube by which she was fed ran clear now, water washing away the remnants of her meal and filling her belly. Even an inert body had its needs.

“So I was first. It doesn’t change anything.” “It changed her,” Alisaie said. “She tried her best not to let it show, especially after Y’shtola and Urianger were called—with so few of us left, I think she was concerned about scaring me, but … whenever she could, whenever her duties allowed, she was off searching for an answer. She sent Arya to look for X’rhun and see if he thought this was something like the blood-curse they’d dispelled; she sent Shpoki to Master Matoya and called the Sons of Saint Coinach. She visited the alchemists and the thaumaturges and the conjurers. Everyone she could conceive of that might possibly have an answer, and when we ran out of leads …” Alisaie shook her head. “When there was nothing left to chase, she came back to the Rising Stones—to watch over you all, she said, but she always sat in the same place.” Alisaie turns her face up to regard him. He cannot tell whether she wants to be hard or soft; there is recrimination in the set of her brow but pity in the trembling of her lips. Her eyes are bright with tears. “Next to you.”

There is a terrible symmetry, he realizes. To everything. But he doesn’t know how to say that. All he can say is “Alisaie,” and then she is speaking again. “She has given up so much of herself to the cause—to all of us—to you. If my only hope is at the bottom of the ocean, then I suppose I know now why the kami blessed me all that time ago.” “You really think that you can face down an Ascian alone?” Thancred asks. “I’m a strong swimmer, but I can’t hold my breath nearly that long.” “If I have to do it alone, I will,” Alisaie says. “She did it for me. She deserves more than our resignation to inevitability. Fate turns ever on a capricious spindle, after all.” “It’s the slenderest chance,” Thancred says. “The odds get better with everyone who helps me,” Alisaie replies. “My brother seems happy to be part of it. Would you go with me? Or are you going to stay here and wait for the worst to happen?”

That wasn’t who he was. How could he have forgotten? His life had been a series of impossible odds, and no one ever beat the house at the Platinum Mirage by paying the blinds every round and doing nothing. There was still darkness at the bottom of the sea, if the Ascian had retreated there. They could find it and bring it back—and the Exarch along with it—and if she could not save herself, Thancred would save her or die trying.

It was what she would do. It was what she had done.

It was the least she deserved.

#ff14 #x'shasi #thancred waters #ff14 spoilers #shadowbringers spoilers #5.0 spoilers #original content #starcunning writes #fanservice friday #fan DISSERVICE friday #several of my most treasured thancred headcanons on display #such as:#he's a recovering alcoholic #he likes to garden #he's bisexual #okay he addresses that last thing a lot more directly in 'Water'

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the-blind-assassin-12 · 4 years

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And while I’m on the subject of overdue items...

I failed to scream about this in a more timely fashion, but @something-tofightfor ‘s Mando x Reader series Magnetic is a weekly delight and the last two chapters (4 & 5) were PARTICULARLY spectacular.

If you are a fan of The Mandalorian & his little green son and you haven’t read this story yet, you’re doing yourself a disservice. The Reader character is so well developed and intriguing, Din’s characterization is SPOT ON, and Grogu? GROGU!!! He is the star that he deserves to be and the way that he interacts with Reader and Din (and everyone really) is so well done and is such a fun way to show his personality and his thoughts. Honestly every Friday I just wait patiently for the moment that I can consume the next chapter. Live footage of me reading Magnetic every week:

ANYWAY- go read this.

#fic rec #magnetic #something tofightfor #the mandalorian fic #din djarin x reader #grogu #space dad loves his son #and I do too #and I love this story #so much

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dustedmagazine · 4 years

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Ian Mathers’ 2020: We’re stuck inside our own machines

I’ve had a song I loved in high school and haven’t thought much about since stuck in my head. The song “Apparitions” by the Matthew Good Band is a fine example of the alt rock of the late 90s; if you grew up then but somewhere down in the states (or elsewhere) instead of my southern Ontario you may well have your regional equivalents, and like this one they may not resonate terribly strongly outside of their time and place. It popped back into my head after a long time recently and of course 2020 has changed it a little. A song that as a teen I felt keenly as about loneliness (albeit also about how technology can feed into that) of course now plays on my nerves as another small piece of art about the way that most of us (those scared and/or responsible anyway) have only that relatively narrow, technologically mediated connection to the people we love. All of us, artists and listeners alike, are trying to fit our feelings and art and selves down these little connections, with some success.

On a personal level, 2020 wound up being stressful in ways we couldn’t have predicted even after the pandemic hit. In circumstances that could have seen governments on this continent support those unable to work (and those who shouldn’t have to), support those workers who are truly essential, support workers and renters and even landlords and small businesses, instead we got a near-total abeyance of those governments using the resources we provide them with to save any of us. On a personal level my wife and I were lucky enough to be able to work from home (not that it didn’t come with its own forms of stress, and now that I’m off until January I have several work/stress-related illnesses to recover from) but still saw friends and loved ones lose good, used-to-be-sustainable livings overnight, saw family businesses succumb to a near-total absence of effective government support after months of trying to keep above water, etc.

It is probably no surprise that this is not a situation conducive to listening to music, let alone writing about it; I have deliberately and happily kept busy on behind the scenes stuff at Dusted that I could still manage but looking, at the end of the year, at the amount I managed to actually create is demoralizing if not at all shocking. I’m not sure I think next year will be ‘better’ in many important ways, although at our job there is a growing feeling among coworkers that next year has to have some work/life balance because 2020 was, maybe more than anything else, unsustainable.

That’s not to say I didn’t spend a lot of time and emotion on music this year, and if nothing else constant sleep deprivation, stress, and panic meant I was probably open to being deeply moved by all sorts of art even more than normally (it’s gotten to the point where I can’t even read a sad or moving twitter thread out loud to my wife without getting teary, which is kind of… nice?). Funnily enough the band that did the most to keep me sane didn’t really put out anything in 2020. Personal favorite, Low, instead started, in early April, getting on Instagram with something they called on whim “It’s Friday I’m in Low.” With one brief break they have now done by my count at least 35 shows (catalogued here, by the way), every Friday at about 4 my time.

Admittedly it’s easier for Low to pull this off than some bands, since the 2/3 of the trio that sing are a married couple (they’ve had a couple of socially-distanced backyard shows with bassist Steve Garrington, but he’s mostly been isolating elsewhere). These shows have seen the band’s Alan Sparhawk take a mid-set break to do follow-up phone interviews with the acts featured in the COVID-curtailed touring bands series Vansplainingthat they started on YouTube, or just to give a tour round their vegetable garden and talk tips. It’s seen Alan and Mimi Parker draw on their impressive, 25+ year body of work (averaging 4-5 songs a set, I don’t think they’ve repeated themselves yet) and talk a bit between songs about pandemics, politics, song choices, and whether Alan should grab his bike helmet this time.

They’re not the only musicians out there speaking love and sanity (and playing music) into the strange digital interzone filled with hate and disinformation where we’ve all been forced to gather while locked down, but they were and the most consistent and steady signal being emitted each week. No matter how tired I was from work or what new symptoms I’d developed or what horrific thing I read into the news, even if I had to take an emergency nap while it was actually airing, every Friday the show was there. Once things do return to something more like normal, it’s one of the few things I’ll unambiguously miss about this weird-ass year.

So if that makes an argument for Low as my band of the year (admittedly again… it’s not like Double Negative has aged poorly, either), that does a disservice to those 2020 records I did connect with; even if there are still literally dozens I have to go through, many of which I expect to love, my top picks this year (if as unrankable by me as always) hit me as hard as any top pick in recent years did. So here I present a quick and informal top 5, which the rest of my top 20 following in alphabetical order. Here’s hoping for more time and space in 2021 for music, and even more than that, for more support for those who need it from those who could have been providing it all this time. (The Matthew Good Band, incidentally, always did best with their ballads. “Strange Days” is another I’ve had in my head these days; the image of moving “backwards, into a wall of fire” has stuck with me since the 90s and it’s never felt more grimly appropriate.)

Greet Death — New Hell

New Hell by Greet Death

This one is, in some sense, cheating; it came out November 2019. But that just means it’s the latest winner of my personal Torres Prize for Ian Being Late to the Party (so named because becoming slightly obsessed with Torres’ Sprinter just after I sent in my 2015 list was the first time I noticed that one of my favorite records of each year tends to get picked up by me just after I call it quits on the year, no matter how long I try to wait). This very doom and gloom slowcore/metal/(whatever, just know it’s heavy) trio at first felt very much like my beloved Cloakroom (whose Time Well has also won a Torres Prize) but sure enough nuances revealed themselves. Back in February it felt almost a little too negative, but then the rest of 2020 happened. And the extended burns of “You’re Gonna Hate What You’ve Done” and the title track remain searing.

Holy Fuck — Deleter

youtube

Probably the record I’ve been trying to write about the longest in 2020, and the one I’m most disappointed in myself that I just couldn’t get the requisite paragraphs together. It’s a wonderful effort from the consistently great Toronto resolutely human-created (and —mediated) dance music quartet, one that both feels like a summation of everything they do well, and with the addition of some outside voices (including strong turns from the singers of both Hot Chip and Liars) a step forward at the same time.

Spanish Love Songs — Brave Faces Everyone

Brave Faces Everyone by Spanish Love Songs

As the year got worse, this roar of defiance only got more crucial for me to hear every so often; I was a big enough fan of it, even after writing it up for Dusted, that when they solicited fan footage for a subsequent music video you may just be able to get a glimpse of me in it. (I’m the one in a “No Tories” t-shirt.) My punk rock-loving twin brother was the one who introduced me to Spanish Love Songs and we were supposed to spend an evening in June screaming along to them live in a packed, sweaty room. I need that in my life again.

Julianna Barwick — Healing Is a Miracle

Healing Is A Miracle by Julianna Barwick

It’s a sign of what 2020 has been like here that even just this album title leaves bruises, and while I privately worried Barwick would have a hard time following up 2016’s sublime Will (probably my favorite record that year), it seems that continuing to take whatever downtime she needs to keep focusing and refining her particular muse has once again yielded amazing results. Anyone who thinks they know what a Barwick track sounds like should really check out, say, “Flowers”, but much of this record absolutely sounds like Barwick, just even better than before. She also boasted my wife and I's favorite streaming concert of 2020, an absolutely gorgeous rendition of this album with Mary Lattimore showing up.

Phoebe Bridgers — Punisher

Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers

I joked on Twitter recently that I have far too nice a dad (and far too good a relationship with him) to be as obsessed as I am with Phoebe Bridgers’ “Kyoto”, but here we are. Like most of her generation, Bridgers’ social media presence ranges from shit-posting to inscrutable, but even though things are often just as hard to figure out in her beautiful songs (as they often are in life), there’s an emotional clarity to them that can just grab you deep down. Couple that with seriously impressive songcraft and the progress from her already astounding debut Stranger in the Alps and more than anyone else in 2020 I’m excited to see just where the hell Phoebe Bridgers is going to go, because it feels like she’s talented and hardworking enough to go just about anywhere and drag a lot of our hearts with her.

Other Favorites

Aidan Baker & Gareth Davis — Invisible Cities II

Anastasia Minster — Father

Deftones — Ohms

Hum — Inlet

Kelly Lee Owens — Inner Song

Mesarthim — The Degenerate Era

Perfume Genius — Set My Heart On Fire Immediately

Protomartyr — Ultimate Success Today

Rachel Kiel — Dream Logic

The Ridiculous Trio — The Ridiculous Trio Plays the Stooges

Sam Amidon — Sam Amidon

Shabason, Krgovich & Harris — Philadelphia

Stars Like Fleas — DWARS Session: Live on Radio VPRO

Well Yells — We Mirror the Dead

Yves Tumour — Heaven to a Tortured Mind

Five Reissues/Compilations/etc.

Aix Em Klemm — Aix Em Klemm

Bardo Pond — Adrop/Circuit VIII

Charles Curtis — Performances & Recordings 1998-2018

Coil — Musick to Play in the Dark

Hot Chip — LateNightTales

Ian Mathers

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orchidbreezefc · 4 years

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OKAY COOL I WAS ON THE FENCE ABOUT POSTING MY OWN EXPERIENCES IN THE KFAM DISCORD BECAUSE A POST ABOUT People Being Mean To Sage Specifically SEEMED KIND OF MASTURBATORY OR SELF-PITYING OR WHATEVER BUT IF WE REALLY ARE GOING TO STILL BE OUT HERE PUSHING THE This Server Is A Lovely Familial Community And Dissenters Are The Problem NARRATIVE EVEN NOW? HELL NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT.

obviously this is hard to be objective about. this stuff is a lot less concrete than my first post, a lot more based on vibes i got, which, yknow, is why it’s not in my first post. but if anyone identifies with this, if anyone sees their own experiences in this discord reflected in mine, then it’s going to be worth the worry i’m reading too much into things, or others thinking the same of me. if i can help anyone who felt like THEY were mistreated there and weren’t sure if they were reading too much into things, then. it’s worth it. especially since the M.O. in there was ‘everything’s fine and if not we’re going to MAKE IT FINE by silencing anyone who disagrees’.

a lot of talk has been done about the censorship (word used loosely, first amendment protects from the government not from the mods etc, definitely a specific suppression of dissenting ideas though) the mods have been doing--once more i suggest @kfam-tea for receipts and screenshots. not something i feel great about, but not something i have personal experience with, so i won't speak to it. see also my first post about my interactions with the creators. it touches on the dogpiling, which i'll go into more depth on in this post. you can find it [link: here].

so. the first thing in the official discord that tipped me off about the hivemind samethink phenomenon is that the whole place is distinctly frosty on the subject of samben. that’s a post all its own, one that follows through to numbers on ao3 and whatever, but i’m not here to make a ship manifesto. suffice it to say i got attached to the ship upon listening, inhaled the (suspiciously small) ao3 tag, and was stopped in my tracks at the discord server where any implication of such ship inclinations were met with silence and pointed changes of subject.

distinctly weird. distinctly unusual fandom behavior, that i couldnt even hint around shipping the two men whose incredibly profound relationship is literally the crux of the show, who have exchanged ‘i love you’s, one of whom is confirmed gay--all other romantic entanglements aside, because when have those stopped shippers? that was weird. i realize that's maybe a bit tinfoil hat of me. it could have been the goldfish-bowl big-brother-is-watching vibe from having creators in there, except, as i said, it carries to other sites.

anyway, much more concrete was when i spoke out about my thoughts on ben’s actions in ep68. again, enough there for another post, so tl;dr: he was doing his best, he’s a good guy and a good friend, but his actions DIRECTLY outed sammy to the WHOLE town, without allowing sammy to say the words himself. it was an accident, yes, but it had tangible, harmful consequences, and even accidental harm warrants apology. it should at least be... acknowledged. at some point. by the show OR the fandom. it's a disservice to ben himself to never get the chance to own up to it.

this was an unacceptable take. i tried breaching this topic and making my case twice, and got THOROUGHLY dogpiled both times. a dozen fans crawled out of the woodwork to argue heatedly, sometimes getting quite aggressive, sometimes toeing the line of outright hostility toward me personally. definitely some downright rude messages. not once did anybody speak up to defend my right to put forward my dissenting opinion, let alone SUPPORT my argument, god forbid. ben’s were the actions of a good friend, i was told. outing someone to their whole town without giving them the chance to say it on their own terms didn't qualify as harm at all, i was told, on account of ben's heart being in the right place.

still, the opinions being argued matter less than the attitudes and behaviors. people don't have to agree with me about that ep, i don't care. i do care about being given the right to, as a single person on my own, have space to make an argument without being shouted down by a dozen people. i do care about how it fit into a greater pattern of forbidding any criticism of the show, and ben in particular, who is a good friend and therefore all of his actions are good and harmless, who is our resident heterosexual unassailable paragon of purity. which might explain the samben problem--sammy/ron[/jack] was perfectly fine, even popular, but there was never a whisper of shipping ben with anyone but emily. they're Official. theyre The Perfect Couple. don't you dare challenge that (and for the most part, i didn’t dare. i quickly learned not to).

my [link: previous post] details kyle's response to these fun events, where he specifically went out of the way to follow me being shouted into silence (a result of me being driven to literal tears and shutting down rather than invite more argument) with a warm congratulations to everybody for their conduct in this discussion. because that's the kind of conversation kyle wants to specifically and explicitly praise and encourage, i guess.

anyway. this contributed to the growing sense over my time in the discord that people held a certain distaste for me but didn’t want to say anything direct. instead they talked around me, ignored me, immediately changed the subject from my messages, the whole while bestowing constant glowing compliments on each other and endlessly repeating saccharine sentiments about what a nice family type community they were, how grateful they were for the discord being such a positive space. i suppose that’s an easy impression to get when negativity is ruthlessly suppressed (and apparently outright censored nowadays) and instead of insults or, god forbid, communication with people with whom folks might take issue, they just (more or less) silently stonewall and cold shoulder them.

again, i could be misreading cues, being egocentric or tinfoil hat by reading this pattern into how i in particular was treated. either way, the fact that i was given the fandom friday shout out the week after KFAM live was definitely... strange. fishy, even. i was already mostly out the door at that point, had been for weeks--it was actually in my last few days speaking there period. i felt strangely guilty that they would dedicate a day to me when i didn’t like being there much and hardly spoke any longer. one thing’s for sure: my congratulations were fewer and more impersonal, perfunctory, and/or generic than other fans got (i kept a screenshot). i still have no idea what to make of that one, but there you have it.

p.s.: since vagues are in vogue now apparently, i might as well mention the person who's been accused of being A Problem In The Discord For A While Now, among nastier things, which definitely is not an effort to justify kyle's passive aggressive response to their untagged post which used the phrase 'death of the author', or kyle subsequently crying on twitter about death threats because apparently he couldn't be bothered to google a basic literary analysis term and thought if he was vague enough nobody would look into what was actually said. i guess he was right, if the hundreds of asspats and outcries against The Evils Of Podcast Fan Meanies were any indication.

i digress. i just wanted to testify that the fan in question was one of maybe three or four people on the server who consistently treated me nicely and acted like they liked me. and that another fan who claimed to be uncomfortable around death-of-the-author-person was the person who came the closest to being outright nasty to me when i expressed a critical opinion. make of that what you will i guess!

p.p.s.: if i never say anything more about this whole thing or the creators’ part in it, i do want to say for the record: noah james is fully exempt from all of this and remains absolutely wonderful and a whole treasure. like dont pedestalize male creators and assume them incapable of wrongdoing etc etc but i had an hour long midnight denny’s breakfast sitting across from him and he was nothing short of an angel the whole time. sweetest guy i’ve ever met. he hasn’t breathed a word about any of this drama. he may not even know it’s going on because he’s too busy being the most beautiful and talented man in america or something. i love you noah

#sage speaks #sage original post #kfam #king falls am #kfam drama #kfam critical #kfam negative #kfam hate #long post #kfam tea #ok to reblog

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aseriesofvariousevents · 4 years

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The Legend Series

The Legend Series is yet another series I received for Christmas years ago and never finished. This break, though, I finished it in what quite possibly could be a PR for time it took me to read a series. I started the books on a Friday evening and was done with the series by Sunday afternoon. Marie Lu wrote a riveting saga of strength with characters wholly unafraid to stand for what they believe in.

*SPOILERS*

The first book in the series, Legend, is a strong start, though not perfect. I’ve technically read this book twice before, once as a physical book and the other as an audiobook during a long car ride, so I may be overly critical of my reading this time around, since I don’t typically re-read books, but I found parts of the story to be unnecessary. This may just be coming from my perspective as an “older reader” instead of a young teen, but I found Marie Lu did the characters a disservice by making them 15. The age itself is fine hypothetically, but the emphasis on the romance at times, especially toward the end, felt forced between the two characters and I think, at this point in the series, it would’ve made more sense for them to be just friends. I thought the author wrote June’s loss of innocence surrounding the world she grew up in very well and I truly felt for the girl who had to watch her world crumble around her, bit by bit. I did appreciate the Les Miserables analogy throughout the story, with the June realizing that there may be more to Day than she thought. I also enjoyed Tess’s characters and, briefly, Metias’s, though I found Tess to be a bit one-dimensional at times. Overall, I found the book enjoyable and thought it was a good start to an interesting series.

Favorite Quote: Each day means a new twenty-four hours. Each day means everything's possible again. You live in the moment, you die in the moment, you take it all one day at a time.

I found Prodigy to be an improvement overall from the first book (not that the first book was inherently bad in any way), but I still had some gripes with some of the plots Lu chose to explore. I really enjoyed the politics aspect of this book, with Anden’s utter desperateness to succeed as a ruler and the double crossing of the Patriots by Razor, lying about who is funding this assassination. I had a feeling Razor was not the character he was believed to be for a while, but I never put two and two together that it was the Republic behind the scheme, but when Kaede explained everything, it all made sense, which I found to be a really cool plot point. Once again, the romance in this book frustrated me to no end. The romance between the deceased Metias and Thomas seemed more like a throwaway gay couple than anything of significance, especially since Lu did not explore their relationship as anything other than friendship in the first book, with Thomas even flirting with June (though it was implied that that was all a ruse to keep her safe, but I found that a feeble excuse). It was intended to make us feel worse for Thomas and the “sacrifice” he made for duty, but it instead just made me more sad for Metias. Tess’s sudden love for Day seemed super random as well, especially since they were basically surrogate siblings for each other for years, and, at the end, June’s and Day’s break-up of sorts seemed overly formal for being fifteen-year-olds who had only known each other for a month or so. Prodigy was definitely a page turner, but aspects were still frustrating to get through as a reader.

Favorite Quote: My heart is ripped open, shredded, leaking blood. I can't let him leave like this. We've been through to much to turn into strangers.

Champion was a satisfying conclusion to the series (though I haven’t read Rebel yet, the newest book in the series). Eden’s character was sweet and it was exciting to see him as an actual character for the first time, and not just a sick child that Day constantly thought about. I appreciated that the Tess romance thing got resolved in this book, but Anden’s love of June was creepy to me, considering the age difference, and in the epilogue, I found it weird, but not unexpected, that the two of them dated, though I was glad they broke it off. Day’s illness throughout this story seemed out of place as a plot point for me, especially since it took five years for it to really develop, but I was glad he wasn’t “perfectly cured”, after getting shot. I’m not sure if Lu meant one of those last few chapters as an homage to Les Miserables, but June’s repeated pleads of “let him live” are in the song “Bring Him Home”, which I found to be a nice Easter egg in the story, whether intended or not. June being the cure made sense in a way, but I don’t understand how she got better completely. It’s implied that the colonies gave her some sort of cure and took the virus to spread, but how they got hold of a cure seems fishy to me. In the epilogue, when June sees Metias’s grave and says that they’re finally the same age, I teared up a bit. I can’t imagine having to come to terms with effectively outgrowing someone lost far too young, and I thought the author described her grief really beautifully here.

Favorite Quote: That's why I'm sorry. I'm sorry because you shouldn't have to be everything to me. I had you, but I'd forgotten that I had myself too. It's a new feeling, something I'm getting used to.

Okay, I know this is an unpopular opinion but this was my favorite book in the series. Although I found June and Day more compelling characters than Eden and Day in this book, I thought this story was so much more poignant and had a much more complicated and interesting villain. Ross City was fascinating and the class divide present there held such poignant implications about technology and so much more that I thought it was a much more interesting and complex setting than the original trilogy. Eden and Daniel's (still weird to refer to him by that name) bickering was tiring at times, but their relationship as siblings was really touching and I thought it brought out an interesting perspective of both of the characters. I didn't love Pressa at the beginning, but toward the end, she was such an interesting character and I loved her and Eden's dynamic. The very ending of the book was so so so good and definitely made me tear up a bit. I was wary coming into the book that I would just find it a totally unnecessary addition to the series but I actually really enjoyed it and I thought it added to the overall story (though I did miss June's narrations).

Favorite Quote: There is nothing to figure out, there is no how or why. Sometimes things just happen.

*END OF SPOILERS*

The Legend Series started out as an interesting, updated take on Les Miserables, but quickly evolved into something much more. Though not my favorite series in the whole world, there was never a dull moment and I’m really looking forward to reading some of Lu’s other works, hopefully finding them as immersive as the world of the Republic!

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Books in Series: Legend; Prodigy; Champion; Rebel

Author: Marie Lu

BONUS REVIEWS

Life Before Legend is a duology of two short stories surrounding June and Day prior to the events in the Legend series. I much preferred June’s story to Day’s and found that her story had more heart to me and was more interesting. It was cute, but I found largely unnecessary, but still enjoyable nonetheless. Fun for lovers of the series!

Favorite Quote: Someday, someone out there will see you for the girl you really are. Someday, you’ll find someone who understands you.

Fun to see the epilogue of Champion from Day's perspective. Not a ton of new info but definitely a cute little story that fans of Legend will enjoy.

Favorite Quote: I loved you. I love you still. I want to be with you.

Really short but sweet nonetheless! It's nice to see June and Day together again with his memory mostly intact. Like the other Life After Legend story, didn't offer really any new info but it was exciting to see the duo interact once more, however briefly.

Favorite Quote: Your past is forever part of you, just as it is a part of me. And I loved that person, just as I love you.

Bonus Books: Life Before Legend; Life After Legend; Life After Legend II

#legend #prodigy #champion #marie lu #the legend series #certified nora review #four stars #life before legend #life after legend #life after legend ii #rebel

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smokeybrandreviews · 4 years

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Smokey brand Movie Reviews: Open Wide

A few weeks back, i saw an advertisement for a flick called Run coming to Netflix. I thought it looked interesting but i really paid it no mind because it’s on Hulu. Cats can always watch it whenever s i out it on the back burner. It dropped last Friday, i think. I had planned to check it out in a week or two, but the reviews for this thing started dropping and they were glowing. This was enough to pique my interest. What really caught my attention was the fact that the co-lead, Kiera Allen was announced as Barbara Gordon for that Titans show on HBOMax. Considering both the actress and the character use a wheel chair, that means we're getting a proper Oracle and i cannot be more hype! Admittedly, I've never been a huge fan of Babs as Batgirl, my favorite is definitely Casandra Cain, but Babs a Oracle? That sh*t felt real right! This casting feels right, just from what I've inferred Allen’s performance through those reviews i watched. So, instead of waiting. I've decided to check this thing out now and see for myself if it stands up as one of the best this year.

The Exceptional

Before we get into anything, i just need to commend the adroit direction exhibited by Aneesh Chaganty with this movie. It’s crafted SO goddamn well, for so many reasons. I can gush about this dude’s technique for the entire review but that would be a disservice to literally everything else that makes this experience so brilliant. There is definitely a Hitchcockian edge to Run that Chaganty captures effortlessly, but it’s never an imitation or plagerisim. That sense of unease comes naturally with the story being told and the clarity of Chaganty’s vision for these characters.

As if to drive the point about Chaganty’s ability home, aside from the fact that he’s only twenty-nine and delivering sh*t like this onscreen, dude also has a writing credit on this. He f*cking wrote this movie, too. That level of auteur creativity bodes incredibly well when navigated with aplomb. It;s hard to do for lesser director, Zack Snyder comes to mind, but when it’s executed to it’s full potential, you get brilliance like this.

Off the top, Sarah Paulson is absolutely excellent. She usually is. Paulson is one of those rare talents that uplifts straight up schlock with her raw talent and it’s always a pleasure watching her do it. She did it with the absurd Bird Box. She did it with the over-the-top Ratched. She did it every season she was on AHS. She does it naturally and, when there is actually something to dig into, when the part has some bite, Paulson can work miracles. Her antagonistic turn as Diane Sherman stands next to Kathy Bates and Amy Dunham as one of the most vicious, calculating, and cruel femme fatales to ever be captured in modern cinema.

Kiera Allen is f*cking amazing as our heroine, Chloe Sherman. I literally just gushed about Sarah Paulson but Kiera is JUST as incredible in this movie. She had to be. It’s her movie. Paulson gets top billing, of course, she’s Sarah Paulson, but this movie is not a film without Allen. She is more than capable to match Paulson’s energy, more than capable of elevated this script. You feel her panic and desperation, every second of that struggle. It’s both exhausting and captivating, testament to the raw ability Allen displays. Considering this is just her second credit, i look forward with great anticipation for what comes next in her career.

There is a distinct authenticity to Allen’s performance as she, herself, is really wheel chair reliant in life. I commend the production for actually casting a properly disabled actress for the lead in this flick but, more than that, when Chole is struggling with her mobility, that sh*t is true to reality. It’s grueling to see, stressful to witness, and raises the sheer theatricality of this entire ninety minute run time

The tension in this movie is f*cking insane! It starts fast, grabs your throat, and never let’s go. You’re right there with Chloe, every step of the way, being inundated with the quiet viciousness of her mother, the things she’d do to keep her daughter locked away, to feed her delusion, and its f*cking horrifying. There is a deliberate, escalating, pace to the unnerving violence presented on film. It’s rare that a movie can hit me as hard as this one. It’s no Uncut Gems but it’s still one of the stressful times I've ever experienced on film.

Run is f*cking beautiful. The camerawork displayed is exceptional. Every shot with Chloe as she grapples with her plight, feels brutally intimate, almost intrusive in nature. Every close up of Paulson as she spins her wed of deceit feels detached and inhuman. The cinematography is just that powerful. Every pan, fade, transition; All of it is expertly crafted and visually striking. This is one of the best looking movies released so far this year. i kn ow that’s slim pickings but, truly, this flick is a gem for the eye.

The sound design in this thing is an actual character, itself, and deserves a proper mention. All that tension i spoke of earlier? None of that is possible without that inflicting, stressful, score. It compliments the increasing sinister tone to this film perfectly, another feather in the cap of Aneesh Chaganty.

There is a lot, like the most, show-don’t-tell in this thing and i respect the f*ck out of it. The narrative isn’t difficult to flow or anything but it doesn’t hold our hand with a sh*t ton of verbal exposition. It trusts the audience enough to allow them to engage, use their intellect in an effort to tell a far more compelling, far more engaging story. That sh*t is rare, especially in this age of Hollywood Bayhem. It’s incredibly refreshing to see such a well crafted film like this one, especially when you consider how difficult it is to craft such a purely visual experience.

The Ugh

There are some things that happen in service to the plot, some “movie” things that need to occur in order to properly tell the story. They’re aren’t many but everything else about this flick is so tight, so well thought out and put together that, when these things pope up, they are very, VERY, pronounced and, for a split second, kind of pull you out of the experience. I don’t think the majority of the movie going audience would have such an averse reaction to them as i did, most cats don’t pick apart movies like i do, but I'd be lying if i said that stuff didn’t get under my skin a little.

This thing should have been released in theaters, man. Seriously, the way this film is shot, the way the sound design hits, the way it’s lingering shots rest; All of this would have been far more impactful on the big screen with a proper sound system. This is definitely not a knock n the film, itself, this thing is f*cking amazing, it’s just, as i watch this, i can see it impacting as strong as Hereditary, Suspiria, or The VVitch, if it had an opportunity for a proper theatrical run.

This thing is only ninety minutes and it’s a brisk ninety to boot. You’re in it, it’s in you, then it’s over and you’re left wanting so much more. I wanted so much more anyway. That’s testament to the inspired crafting of this movie, man. Again, not a knock, just something that irked me.

The Verdict

Yo, i f*cking loved this movie. It’s one of the best crafted, well written, and tension filled film experiences I've had in years. These characters are that compelling, the direction is that dazzling, and this narrative is that gripping. Run is a pure thriller but it feels like the best Slasher I've seen in decades, minus all of the gore. It’s all atmosphere and inference and i adore every second of it. The strength of this film is easily carried in the shoulders of two performances that, if this were a regular year in film, should definitely be considered for all of the awards. Sarah Paulson is her requite brilliant but newcomer Kiera Allen is just as shiny, just as great, and its her manically desperate energy that carries this bundle of stress across to it’s finish. F*ck, that last scene in the hospital? Are you kidding me?? Run is one of the best films released this year and deserves all of the clout it can get, all of the eyes on it. It’s an exceptionally crafted film with great performances and a level of atmosphere that rivals f*cking Alien. I can’t say it’s my favorite movie of the year, Palm Springs still holds that title, but it only has the slightest of edges over Run. Both are excellent. Both are on Hulu. Go watch them right now.

#Smokey brand Movie Reviews #Run

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kolbisneat · 5 years

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MONTHLY MEDIA: January 2020

Hey here’s how I spent the start of this fine new year!

……….FILM……….

Parasite (2019) I was so focused on the plot that I don’t think I fully appreciated the beauty in this film. Watching this video helped a lot. One thing I admit (light spoilers to follow...skip past if you don’t want anything spoiled) is that I assumed there would be some sort of genre/fantastical element to the whole film. Because I’ve only seen The Host and Snowpiercer (loved both), I think I expected there to be a genre component to the whole thing. When they go down into the basement I really thought it was heading in that direction, and I definitely felt a little let down because of it. BUT after seeing the whole film, I feel like the themes and narrative were stronger because of how real it all felt. (END OF SPOILERS) I think it’s a film I’d like to rewatch to better appreciate the layers, but ho boy is it an emotional gutpunch.

Jojo Rabbit (2019) Just the best. The structure and (some) of the characters felt familiar, but it’s that comfort that makes the changes or introduction of an imaginary Hitler all the more interesting. Beautifully directed and the shifts in tone are so seamless that I really have a hard time pointing out where they happen.

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) A little late to this but it was as good as I’d heard. It had the pacing, spirit, and lightness of late 90s/early 2000 adventure movies and I hope more films like this are getting the go ahead. Now to wait 3 years before seeing the sequel.

Between Two Ferns: The Movie (2019) A fun road trip movie that dips into scathing commentary on hollywood and talk shows? Absolutely. It worked well in building off of the webseries and the bloopers during the end credits really made it for me. Also I should’ve been playing Comedy Bang Bang Bingo while watching the movie. Anyway it does a great job of balancing the mean with genuine character moments and glimpses of sincerity.

……….TELEVISION……….

The Bachelor (Episode 24.01 to 24.03) It started out so promising (with the Hannah Brown return) that I was really primed for a format-shaking season. Nothing can quite live up to that beginning and it’s doing the show a disservice. Maybe if they just focused on nice reasonable dates and women getting along it would feel more substantial than the contrived fighting and lies we’re getting. I still believe that the most engaging season will actually be the one with the least drama. Perhaps I’m in the majority for thinking this.

The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Episode 3.01 to 3.03) Reeeeeeally digging this season. Maybe it’s that there isn’t much relationship drama, or because the relationships play a part in the larger plot (as opposed to Riverdale...but that’s another can of worms). The Cthulhu and carnival stuff are offering a nice mix and we’re really getting lots of monster-of-the-week stuff so far. Hopefully there’s more to come!

Swamp Thing (Episode 1.03 to 1.07) It started out strong and moved at a nice pace, but it lost me. Some episodes had a monster-of-the-week, and those were fun but there was a lot more focus on the locals around the town instead of Swamp Thing. I appreciate a Swamp Thing-centric show would cost a looooooot more, but I also think that’s what most of the fans would want, right? Maybe if it was a 4-ep series it could really go all out and make a splash.

……….READING……….

Dracula vs. Hitler by Patrick Sheane Duncan (Complete) The title and back cover allude to a different, pulpier story, and it takes a while to adjust to the less bombastic narrative. The alternate history you DO get is great, and I think it’s because I didn’t mind a story with a hint of vampire set during the second world war. I’d still love to read a pulpy vamps vs. nazis novel, so if you have one then let me know. This wasn’t perfect, but I enjoyed it.

Head Lopper Volume 3: Head Lopper & the Knights of Venora by Andrew Maclean and Jordie Bellaire (Complete) There’s been a shift and a progression across the first three volumes of Head Lopper. It’s gotten more bold with its storytelling, a little more loose with its artwork (sometimes a hit and miss...I frequently go back because I feel like I’ve missed something in a previous panel) and the sheer scale of the world is expanding so quickly. It’s quickly becoming my favourite modern comic that captures the spirit of what I imagine pulp stories to be. Worth checking out vol. 1 if you haven’t already.

The Magicians: Alice’s Story by Lev Grossman, Lilah Sturges, and Pius Bak (Complete) If you haven’t read any of the Magician’s trilogy by Grossman, this is a great point of entry to see if you’d like the tone, characters, and general premise. If you HAVE read the first novel, this doesn’t branch too far the main narrative. I would’ve liked to spend a little more time with Alice on her own outside of what we see from the novel (and Quentin’s point of view) because what we do get is fantastic. I’m not sure it adds a lot of new elements to the novels but take that for what it is.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - Legendary Edition by Akira Himekawa (Complete) As far as a comic adaptation of a game, it really retains a lot of the core components. There are fun asides and elements get expanded further and it reads really well. Adaptations across media can be tricky but I think this is worth checking out if you liked the game. With that said, there’s a bonus story at the end that is so unrelated to the game and core world that it felt like a miss. It just felt like the author had a completely different story to tell and tried to shoehorn it into this property and it didn’t work. So if you pick it up, know that the best ending is the one you got in the game.

……….AUDIO……….

Yo, Is This Racist (Podcast) I’ve only recently started listening to this, but I really dig the format and the hosts are fun. Part reflection on current events, part interview, part commentary on society...it’s just all very good and funny and also good again.

……….GAMING……….

Baby Is You (Arvi Teikari) Never have I felt more frustrated, rewarded, and impressed by a game. I originally thought it was a sort of “there are endless ways to solve each stage!” game but it turns out the later levels have very specific solutions and that changed my perspective. It’s challenging but fun and uses lots of logic and creative thinking and I just don’t know how to describe how great this game is. Playing it on Switch is nice for the ease of playing a level or two before quitting, but I’m sure it’s fun elsewhere as well.

Neverland: A Role-Playing Game (Andrews McMeel Publishing) So I wrote a setting based on J. M. Barrie’s works and it’s getting published! The weekly group is taking a break from the megadungeon to try this out and it’s been a lot of fun! I will post more in depth recaps of the party’s adventures but so far, they’ve found a small village and nearly died to crocodiles.

A Red & Pleasant Land (Lamentations of the Flame Princess) It’s been aaaaaaaages since this group has had a chance to get together but it’s always so fantastic when we can make it work. The game is really getting to the point where the party has done enough that their actions are having consequences and the group...is adjusting to this. Right now they need to investigate a murder that they themselves are responsible for and I’m VERY keen to see how they approach it.

And that’s it! As always, let me know if you have any recommendations for what to read or watch or hear or play and happy Friday.

#Monthly Media #Rambles #Kolbisneat #Andrew Kolb

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emisonme · 6 years

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Lauren's path..........

I'm not even sure, where to begin. People are banging their heads against the wall, trying to figure out, what the hell is going on, with Lauren and her career.

Again, the first thing you need to understand, is Lauren is still with Syco. If Simco Ltd. owns the copyright to her solo music, she is still under contract with them, period!

It's pretty clear, the initial rumors that Camila and Lauren had solo options in their contracts, were correct. It's also clear, Syco picked up those solo options, as they are the only two still connected to Syco. Syco didn't have solo options on the other girls, but Sony still had control over their recording contracts. After the hiatus, with the exception of Ally, they split the other girls between the Sony Labels.

Camila stayed with Syco/Epic. Lauren is with Syco/Columbia. Normani went to a RCA imprint, with distribution through RCA. Dinah went to LA Reid's new label, that is still connected to Sony. Sony cut Ally loose, and she signed with Atlantic, which is a WMG label.

OK, now, we got the "rumor" that Lauren was signing with Columbia, back in January of last year. A year ago. If they were spreading the "rumor", then the deal was pretty much done. So, she has been a Columbia artist, for at least a year now.

Lauren has said, she didn't start writing her own MUSIC, until the beginning of 2018. It appeared, she was contradicting herself, when she stated she wrote MTT 2/3 years ago, a long ass time ago, and before she started "dating" Ty. I'm going to give her the benefit of the doubt, and say, she wasn't necessarily lying or contradicting herself.

We all know, Lauren has been writing poetry, and song lyrics, for years. Even before X-Factor. But, lyrics are not the only aspect of a song. Those lyrics have to be set to music, to make a song. I can believe her, when she said she didn't start writing or composing music to go with her poetry/lyrics, until last year, because I think that's what she actually meant...If not, it's just another bullshit lie, among many.

Moving on. In June, they had her opening for Halsey's SA tour, where she performed three of her new solo songs, Expectations, Toy, and Inside. The fans started demanding the studio version of Expectation, so in October, we got it, with a video. Columbia never sent it to radio. It was a promotional single.

In November, she performed two new songs, at the MTV vote after party. They were More Than That and Freedom. The fans asked for MTT to be her next single, and a few days ago, that's what they got. The video will be released Friday. Columbia hasn't set a radio impact date, as of yet. Maybe they are waiting to see what the video will do.

I, too, will wait for the video, to do any kind of analysis of MTT. I will say, the production was subpar. Whoever did the sound mixing, done Lauren a definite disservice.

Lauren said, she is still trying to figure out her sound. That translates to, the Label is still trying to figure out how to market her and her music. It is the Labels responsibility to market the artist and promote their music. The label will monitor the internet, and collect the data, to find out what a particular artists demographic is, and they will cater the artist, to that demographic.

The artist will compile a big song library, for each album. Usually for the first solo album, they will have around 30/40 songs in the can, ready to choose from. The artist and their manager, will work with the label A&R, to choose the best songs for the album, based on the data collected. Columbia had multiple chances to collect that data. BTM, AN, Strangers, IYP, Expectations, Toy, Inside, MTT, and Freedom. They were all used for data mining. The Label A&R will use that data, to guide the artist in the direction to best connect to the public in her demographic.

Once they figure out Lauren's marketing strategy, it is up to the label to promote the music, to the GP. Thy choose the official singles. They choose when and if a single gets sent to radio. If it doesn't get sent to radio, it gets labeled a promo single, and it's up to the artist and their fans, to push it.

Radio looks to Shazam, and the amount of streams a promo single gets, to decide if they want to dedicate air time to it, or not. The more Shazam streams, the better chance it gets ait time. That's why people are always reminding the fans to stream on Shazam, as well as Spotify, YouTube, and other streaming sites.

It's also, usually, up to the label, to get a single put on popular playlists, and which, if any, television appearances for the single.

It's up to the artists management, to promote the artist. They do this, in conjunction with the label. It is the managements job, to create and control the artists/brands public image. They manage how the public sees the artist, when the public sees the artist, and where the public sees the artist.

The PR Teams and Talent Agents, work in conjunction with the management, to get the artist out there, to get attention from the media and therefore, the public.

It is the artist themselves, that has the most important role in their own career. The Label can market the artist, the management can get them attention, but it is completely up to the artist, to make a connection to fans and potential fans. If an artist isn't making a connection to the public, then the rest of it doesn't even matter.

Lauren is more than capable of making that connection. The problem is, her image is turning people off, and I'm not just talking about fans, but also potential endorsements. Her public image, right now, is not a good one, and she knows it. Unfortunately, her damn managers would rather promote Ty and a dog, more than Lauren.

Don't get me wrong, Gracie is cute and Lauren's interaction with her, is adorable. I know they made sure she, and her dog, got nominated for one of the most ridiculous awards ever, but I'd much rather Lauren be promoted and recognized for her talent, than her cute little pet.

Columbia needs to get her a presenter spot at the Grammy's, so she can walk the carpet, and be seen on prime time television. They need to get her a performance spot on the iHeart music awards. Those air on March 19. Hopefully Columbia is ready to release an official single, and she can perform it there, like Camila did.

Honestly, her next single needs to be about something personal. Something inspirational. It doesn't have to be a slow ass ballad, but it needs to be about something that makes folks want to get to know Lauren. Expectations would have been a good choice...IF they hadn't turned everyone off to it, by saying she wrote the damn thing about Ty not being there to cuddle when she wanted him to. (that was literally one of the dumbest explanations for a song, I had ever heard)

I really don't think MTT is that song, either. The subject matter has turned even her own fans off. (I have my own theory about the song, but I'm waiting for the video to see if I'm even close to right) The problem with MTT, is the subject matter automatically takes people's minds to her "cheating" with Ty. Even though she has said, she wrote it before she even started "dating" him. The lyrics just took people there, and that was a turn off, for many. Her next single needs to be something that represents her. Not her fucking "boyfriend", not her fucking dog, but her.

She has plenty of music ready to go, so they really need to get her out there, performing at some of these Festivals. They may not all know who she is at those things, but that's the point, to get her out there, seen and heard.

She really needs to do some of the more popular radio shows, like Zane Lowe. She did good on Zack Sang, but Zane is a pretty good interviewer. He doesn't throw softball questions, so she needs to be ready, and willing to answer all the tough questions.

She hasn't been to Europe or Great Britain since what, 2016. She needs to get over there and show her face. Do some interviews, especially BBC Radio, or whatever it's called. Really, she needs to be doing a lot more than walking around propping Ty's ass up, and packing around her pooch.

Maverick needs to do their damn job, and take her for a sit down with the Spotify and YouTube folks, and make a deal with them, herself. Her Label isn't doing much, but she can talk to them and get them to sponsor her and promote her, for exclusive content. That will get her on all the popular playlists, and billboards. She doesn't need to rely on Columbia to do all this shit for her. She can help herself out, as well.

They need to scrub her SM, especially her Instagram, of anything that might be deemed problematic. The big Brands will not even consider her, for Celebrity Endorsements, if all they see is her partying it up, smoking dope all the damn time.

Lauren is a solo artist, now. She is no longer handcuffed, by a group image, or the set plan for that group. As a solo artist, she does have more say in her career, but she isn't as free as she is letting on. She has more freedom, than she had as a member of 5H, though.

Lauren needs to take some of that new found freedom, sit her management team down, tell them what she wants and expects for her career. If Maverick isn't willing to manage her career, the way she expects them to, then she needs to fire their ass, and find a manager who will.

Yes, she can fire them. As a solo artist, she pays them 15% of her earnings. If they aren't earning that 15%, she can hire someone who will. Camila did. Normani did. She can, too.

They need to put an end to all these stupid narratives. They need to.....You know what, I could sit here all day, and say what I think they all should do, but I'm not Lauren, her manager, or her Label. Maybe they have it all figured out, and are just slow walking her, I don't know. But, I do know, what they have chosen to do thus far, isn't really working, and it's really pissing me off.

Lauren has the talent to succeed in this damn business. She has the intelligence to succeed in this damn business. I just hope she has the will to succeed in this damn business. It's not really going to get any easier, at least not for a while....I really hope she achieves that dream she had when she was younger. I hope she finds that solo success, she always knew she was capable of. I know I'm rooting for her.

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kuriquinn · 4 years

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Hi Kuri! I hope you’re well. I wanted to ask if you will ever get back to Gal Friday as I thoroughly enjoyed that :)

I’m well, thanks! Keeping busy between school assignments and writing projects. Hope you’re holding up too!

The thing about Gal Friday is I really lost my interest in it a few years ago because it got a lot of hate because I implied Sasuke (and Sakura) had had previous relationships before they met. I’m pretty sure that came from the immature fans and purity culture crowd, but it was enough to really sour the story for me, and whenever I open up to start writing it again I can’t quite get back into the headspace I was when I started.

That said, I have indicated before, I may continue it as an original story that I put on Patreon. I kind of want to explore a BDSM angle, but in an actual healthy manner and not the creepy and fucked up 50 Shades version (creepy for both the horrible writing and word choice as much as the clear abusive relationship). And in this instance, Sakura would be dominant in the relationship, since I feel like it evens out the balance of power a bit.

But I really have to be in the right mood to write that, and it involves a lot of research and talking to actual practitioners of BDSM so I don’t accidentally offend someone or misrepresent the community in some way. So it will be a while. Also, I’m currently in a more fantasy/sci-fi headspace, so office romance stories are on the backburner.

Sorry if that’s not the answer you wanted. I’m aware Gal Friday is a fan favorite, but forcing myself to write it would be doing you guys a disservice.

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starcunning · 5 years

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Injurious

And the other thing that’s been cooking since last November (it was revised after more recent events). Sometimes you have to break a bone so it will heal correctly.

This story contains MSQ/ending spoilers for FFXIV patch 4.56, “Requiem for Heroes.”

Odette

At eleven bells I take up my cane and go for a walk with Grandpere. It is much too late for a morning promenade, but the intention is not to see and be seen; in my current state I do not much desire to be looked upon in any case. Much of the bruising has faded, but bandages betray the mending of more serious wounds. The one in my side pains me, but the chirurgeons have instructed me to walk as much as I am able.

It is spring; soon it will be Hatching-tide, but snow still dusts the roof of the Athenaeum, visible across the thoroughfare. We take the steps slowly; I have learned to place the cane down first and lean into it, compressing my favored side a little. It hurts each time I do it, but better that than a torn stitch. Again. How embarrassing for a lady who favors white to find herself blotted unexpectedly with crimson. Such a thing had not happened to me in nigh-on fifteen summers, when I was just in the earliest blooms of womanhood. Am I to be helpless as a child for the fullness of my convalescence? I am thirty-seven winters old—or thirty-two; there is some debate on the matter owing to the five years I cannot count after Carteneau.

There is no moon falling upon us now, and yet I still feel some great doom hanging overhead. Certainly there is someone trying to impress that knowledge upon me, and he—whoever he is—is responsible for my injured state. It is half a miracle I did not die; though Aymeric is too circumspect to say so, my sister does not share his compunctions.

Whatever calamity it is we are meant to forestall, there is no evidence of it along the Arc of the Venerable. Its august houses rest safe among the Pillars, dusted by snow. Eventually we come to a grander set of steps; the houses that rise to either side of the thoroughfare are slightly dingy—soot-dusted.

“Where are we going?” I ask, because I count dozens of stairs. “I’m reporting to the construction site,” Grandpere says. “I thought you might like to come, considering it’s your money.” I smile wanly, though it becomes more a grimace as I totter down the stairs. Before we’re halfway down, I am leaning on Grandpere’s arm. The stone is heat-cracked and crumbling despite the ever-present fog; old scaffolds are laid in broken heaps along the sides of the street. Children pick through the leavings of rotting wood, trying to find scraps small enough to carry away for the fire.

In the distance I can hear the steady pace of hammering, the rasp of saws, the back and forth call of workers. We pass terraces of row houses, and I peer down the streets, trying to make them familiar to me. There is one I should know; one I should be able to pick out from the rubble, but fire and desolation—and new construction—have made these facades unfamiliar to me. The impulse to stand before it is perverse anyway, and I smother it the way every breath seems to smother me, fog in my lungs. I can feel the damp on my cheeks; my makeup threatens to run.

Still, it isn’t all bad. I can see smoke rising from chimneys and the children do play, chasing each other round and round the middenheaps, laughing. Mother calls me a populist, and blames this on the education she was forced to give me—and my sister. While supplemented by private tutelage in the afternoons, most of what Colette and I learned was at the hands of beleaguered schoolmarms who—while well-accustomed to teaching the sons and daughters of merchants—were unprepared for the sudden influx of noble children. Grandpere—who even Mother would not dare accuse of the same heresies she pins on me, despite his stances being far more overt—tells me it was some manner of compromise; a gesture meant to show that the High Houses were not so far out of touch—or reach—from the common man.

I will never have children, but I suspect that my peers who are of an age with me will be faced with a similar edict.

I am less sure if the children we pass have been taught their letters. I wonder if Aymeric will raise the matter in the House. Perhaps that is putting the cart before the chocobo, if they are scavenging rotten wood to keep warm. Ishgard’s troubles are many; she still bears the scars of her thousand-year war, and it is difficult to know in what order to do things.

Perhaps then it is foolishness for me to rebuild the homes the so-called True Brothers set ablaze, but that is what I have the resources to do—I collect an allowance from my family and a stipend from the Temple Knights, to say nothing of the honoraria my sister and I are accustomed to collecting. There are those who claim we should work for free, but my belief is that no man should work for free, lest his employer compel others to match him. Instead, having no need of the money I collect, it is purposed toward other causes. And the House artisans are glad of steady work and steady wages. Grandpere collects a sum as foreman of the project; I suspect he, too, reinvests it in the project. His retirement as Count has left him with free time enough to pursue this endeavor, and I am glad of his expertise.

His office is small; I suspect that before he took possession of it the Forgotten Knight used it for storage. The windows are small and the scent of barley clings to the place. He does not linger overlong there; his desk is perfectly neat and his blotter has no waiting messages, so we wander through the work site. It is slow going; the stones are uneven and I must move carefully, unsure of my cane in such conditions. The masons wear the silver-and-red livery of our house, but there are other tradesmen who bear no such allegiance. They wear wool caps against the chill of this fog-cloaked bank, and I try to imagine Mother knitting beside the fire.

Fond as she is of the activity, I have not known her to do such a thing as this. She seems to prefer blankets and booties, to be given as gifts to the children of other ladies, since Colette and I insist upon disappointing her hopes.

Though the sun is nearing its apex, it has yet to burn the fog off this place. Despite that, morale seems high here. It is not impossible, I consider, that some of the men have roots here. After all, Rempart was of this place, once, before he came to our service. Even if not, they seem glad to have meaningful work—or perhaps it is simply that the prospect of it being undone by dragons in short order has greatly diminished. I am proud for a moment of what I have done, and allow myself to survey my work with a faint smile.

Then I spy a head of blonde hair and the bottom drops out of my world.

Rielle

The bucket is heavy and I know my arms will ache tomorrow, but I don’t complain. That’s a small price to pay for the work, and I’ve done harder things. I’m stronger than I know—Fray says so sometimes, but I’m not really sure I believe him. I know exactly how strong I am; I’m just not sure that’s all me.

I’ve been at this for moons, and my regular visitation allows me to watch the houses climbing back up out of the rubble. Home’s a funny word; I lived here a while, and somewhere else for the first few years of my life, but the place I’ve done most of my growing up is one I never want to go back to. This summer will be my fourteenth; I’m eager for it because it officially tips the scales and I’ll have spent more time out than in. Soon the oubliette will be a diminishing fraction of my life, though who knows what will grow to fill that space.

I hear a woman’s yelp and look down at my bucket of water and I want to help. I know a little conjury; Fray taught me some and I get books sent from Gridania. I used to have a—not a tutor, exactly, but someone used to teach me the arts of the astrologian, but that hasn’t happened for a while now. She disappeared along with her sister a few years ago. After the argument.

Anyway, rather than stand there frozen, I set my pail aside and hustle over. Master Tarresson is kneeling, leaning over someone I can’t see around a corner. He looks exasperated but amused; it’s a look I’ve seen Sid wear a thousand times. “What are you doing?” he asks, chuckling fondly. The unseen woman only hushes him in response, though perhaps it’s simply a hiss of pain. “She’ll hear you,” she says, and though her voice is raw there’s something familiar about it. “Who?” Master Tarresson asks, seeming amused. He outstretches an arm. “The girl? What have you to fear from a girl of fourteen summers?” Fourteen! I stand a little straighter, trying to look taller, older, as though this will make me fourteen summers in truth. I can feel myself smiling, my cheeks warm despite the cold. “That’s,” she says, gritting her teeth. I see her hand close around his forearm and hear another cry of pain escape through gritted teeth. “That’s Rielle de Caulignont.”

I know her then, as surely as she knows me, and I approach them closer still, looking upon them. Though it’s twisted with pain, I know that face. “Odette,” I say. She only lets out another wail, letting go of Master Tarresson’s arm and trying to press herself back against the stone wall, as though she might melt into it. “Are you alright?” I ask. “I think,” she says, panting, “I sprained my ankle.”

Trying to hide from me. I don’t understand, but I don’t ask, only kneel down next to her. She shrinks from my touch and I try to smile. “I want to help,” I say. “I’ve been studying …” Her face is pale, her lilac eyes fixed upon the sky, though I glance up and see nothing but fog. “Rielle,” she says, and something softens, though I can still see the tightness of pain in her brow. That’s still the same, then; Fray shows his in his shoulders and Sid in his jaw, and I’ve gotten so used to seeing it. She stretches her leg out, gritting her teeth. The ankle is swollen, bruises begun to flood beneath her pale skin like a spreading stain.

There are no Elementals here like the ones they write of in the Black Shroud. Nature seems remote to this place; there is the snow and the distant mountains, but Ishgard has stood for a dozen centuries, defiant and apart. Still, there is power in dragon’s blood, which has anointed every stone in this city, and which runs in my veins, and I call on that power, feeling it rise and awaken within me.

I haven’t just been studying; I’ve been practicing too. Ishgard is different now, but change doesn’t come all at once—it begins in one place and spreads unevenly, like a mottled bruise. My magic is the same; I can direct the streams of aether and speed the natural healing of the body, but changing the currents is harder. I let it pool in her leg, mending the tears in the ligaments. It wants to flow elsewhere, too; there are deep valleys of pain in her that threaten to empty me out, great spirit and all, but I stop before the torrent of aether can begin.

“You’re hurt,” I say, and for the first time I notice the cane that Master Tarresson holds. I’ve never known him to walk with one, and the head of it is fashioned after a swan preparing to take flight, so it must be hers. “’Tis nothing for you to worry on,” she insists. “I have a chirurgeon to tend me. But … thank you.” “So,” Master Tarresson says. “You’re that Rielle.” I feel the tips of my ears grow hot. “I didn’t realize I was so famous,” I say. “My granddaughter spoke of you all the time,” he says. “They both did.” I don’t know what to say to that for a long moment.

Into the pause he simply says “Up you go,” and takes Odette beneath her arms, pulling her with him as he rises to his feet, as though she were a child who had fallen playing in the courtyard. She takes her cane from him. “Is Miss Colette here, too?” I ask, pushing myself to my feet and dusting off my knees. The two of them exchange a look. “No,” Odette says after a moment. “She visits home occasionally, but we still have a job to do, and since I can’t …” “Oh,” I say. “I see.” “I’ll tell her how well you’re coming along,” Master Tarresson says, and I lift my shoulders, embarrassed. The bells of the city resound over the stone—twelve chimes, bright and clear like skies ought to be. “It’s quitting time for you, young miss,” Master Tarresson says. And lunch for the rest of them, I know; I can hear the hammering stop and the particular groaning of wood as the workers begin to climb down the scaffolds.

I look at Odette, who is looking back at me with a curious expression on her face. “Do you want to walk me home?” I say. Maybe she can stay for lunch. Maybe Fray can help her. He’s not a very experienced conjurer, but he still knows more than me. I know he was angry with her, but that was a long time ago, and she’s hurt. Maybe … She closes her eyes, and then she nods. “Alright,” she says, and offers me her hand.

It seems a childish gesture. I am almost thirteen summers old, and easily mistaken for older, but I have missed her, so I take it. Her hand is soft—she holds her sword in the same hand that now grasps her cane, leaving this one gentle.

Climbing the stairs is a very slow process, and I can tell how much it hurts her, though she never makes a sound.

“How did you get hurt?” I ask. “Saving the world,” she says, through gritted teeth. “As usual.” “Oh,” I say. Then, “Is that why you left?” “Yes,” she hisses. The wood groans too, but soon we are at the landing and can walk out into Saint Valeroyant’s Forum. The shattered statue of that saint still overlooks the plaza, and far overhead the dragonkillers still bristle, but they are unmanned. “How long are you home for?” I wonder. “Until I’m needed elsewhere. Until I get better.” She produces a lace-edged handkerchief from her sleeve and dabs at her brow, but the mask of pain has not quite left her. “So you have to go away again,” I say. She doesn’t take my hand again, just leans on her cane and starts off. “Eventually.” “Well, as long as you’re in the city, maybe we can see each other,” I say, smiling at the thought. “What were you doing in the Brume anyway?” She turns her head to look at me. “It’s my worksite,” she says, as though it should be perfectly obvious. “What?” “I’m paying for it, so I thought I would go see how it’s coming along. Moreover, the chirurgeons suggested it was good for me to get out of the house a bit.” “Oh,” I say. I hadn’t realized—the Dzemael livery was obvious enough, but I had assumed they were merely contracted for the work by the state. “Why?” Her gaze goes distant, her knuckles on the cane growing white. “I guess the house I bought you isn’t good enough for Fray,” she says. “What?” I’m bewildered. It’s a nice house, and I’m happy there, and that, at least, seems to make Fray and Sid happy. “I’m rebuilding the old one,” Odette says. “And the rest of them. Maybe then he’ll be satisfied.”

That doesn’t seem right. And she doesn’t sound happy when she talks about Fray. I want to ask her, but that seems too obvious, so I say something else instead.

“Did you miss me?” I ask, and the words come out quieter than I meant them to. No one would mistake me for a young lady of fourteen summers hearing that; more likely they would assume I was eight, and I hate it. She looks at me a long moment before she answers. “Of course I did, Rielle,” she says.

When we come to the house, Fray is standing outside, his arms folded across his chest. He doesn’t look happy either, and I wonder if I’ve made a mistake, but these two loved each other once, and I don’t understand why that should have stopped. His eyes are like a wolf’s eyes.

“Rielle,” he says. “I found Odette at the worksite,” I say quickly. “I thought we could have lunch, and—” “Go inside,” Fray tells me in a tone that brooks no disagreement.

Fray

I cannot believe she’s here. That she would dare to come here. I haven’t seen her in two years, but Halone help me, I could have gone for twenty more without having to see her face. She’s never completely absent my life, of course—that’s just how it is, given who she is, but she doesn’t come down here, and she shouldn’t, and she has.

I hear the door close behind me, and glance back to see the curtains twitch, so I jerk my head to the side and make my voice as calm as I can. “Let’s take a walk.” She doesn’t say anything, but she follows me. She’s leaning on a cane—for what? Sympathy? I wonder why she needs it and then remember she’s always had her crutches, and am angry all over again because I used to be one. At the end of the street there’s a little garden, a communal patch of green that overlooks the plaza below, though the fog rolling over the lower reaches of the city obscures much. I was born down there. I belong down there.

Instead I’m up here, with her, and she’s looking at me, brow furrowed like she can’t figure me out. “What in the hells do you think you’re doing?” I ask, my voice low and soft. We are well out of earshot of the house but somehow I still think we’ll be overheard. “Rielle asked me to walk her home!” Odette protests. There’s something almost whining in her tone. “And you said yes,” I point out to her. “Rielle is a child. You’re an adult. You’re supposed to be the responsible one. Or did it not occur to you that you wouldn’t be welcome?” “I didn’t know you were going to be home!” I shake my head. “Whether I was here to see it or not, you shouldn’t have come. I don’t even know why you’d want to.” “I didn’t want to disappoint her,” Odette says. There’s something about her voice when we argue; she gets shrill and girlish. Right now it annoys me, because there’s no point in granting her my sympathy. “Didn’t want to disappoint her,” I repeat, the words blustering out of me, scornful. “You disappeared! For two years!” “You don’t even want me here, so I don’t exactly see what the problem is,” Odette says. Her hand tightens on the cane.

“We’re not talking about me right now,” I say, setting my teeth. “We’re talking about Rielle, and how you never said goodbye to her or wrote to her while you were gone. You don’t think that’s disappointing?” “Would you have even let me write to her?” she asks. Her lips are set into a firm line. The fog is dewy on her brow. “I sure as hells won’t now,” I say. “She needs stability, and she has it now, no thanks to you.” She huffs out a sigh. “You have no idea the pressures I’m under,” she says.

It’s true; I don’t. I know she’s a Warrior of Light—along with her twin. Sometimes they count her manservant and companion, a fellow bastard of the Brume she probably thinks of as a charity case, but Rempart is much less famous than the twins, and I suspect that’s not entirely an accident. I can only guess at the circumstances they and their companions find themselves in.

“If you’re going to start telling me about that now, it’s far too late,” I tell her. There was a time where that was all I wanted, but for all the times she talked about herself, Odette never spoke much about those things in particular. “Why don’t you go tell the Lord Commander?” I sneer. She averts her gaze, her brow furrowing. “Perhaps I have,” she replies, tone bitter.

I grind my teeth. It’s a surprise only insofar as I assumed she had discarded him too, but that admission is a confession that she chose him over me, and she turns her head to look at me. There’s something like pain in her expression for a moment before it transmutes to anger. Disgust. “Oh, don’t look like that,” she says. “You still have Sidurgu, don’t you?” “I never endeavored to keep Sid a secret,” I snipe back. “I believe, in fact, you had firsthand knowledge of that relationship.” “So what?” she replies. “In the end you’d choose him over me anyway. Just like you’re going to blame this on me even though Rielle was part of it too.” “Rielle and I are going to have a discussion,” I say, “and I will make it clear to her that I don’t want you to come here and I don’t think that you’re going to be a positive influence in her life, and if she does it again, yes, there will be consequences. It’s my fault for assuming she knew better.” She looks at me, bewildered, as though the concept of boundaries is completely foreign to her. Maybe it is, reflecting on our time together. “But I didn’t do anything,” she says. “You abandoned her,” I snarl, no longer able to keep the anger from my voice. “You don’t think she’s had enough of that after her mother?” “What do you know about mothers!” Odette shouts back. “That’s exactly why I should talk to her!” “Your mother is still alive, last I checked. I don’t think it would pass unnoticed, exactly.” She has no answer for that, so she only huffs, tapping her cane against the stone to give vent to whatever roils inside her.

“You can’t be that mad at me if you still live in my house,” she says. “It’s not your house,” I point out. “You made that very clear when I asked you to move into it!” “If you hate me so much I don’t know why you’d stay there,” she says. “Because Rielle needs a stable environment,” I say, frustration radiating down my spine. “So you’re not going to move back into Ser Ompagne’s house once it’s rebuilt?” “Once you finish paying for the reconstruction, you mean,” I say. I can’t stop myself from rolling my eyes. “Why do you even care so much?” “Because!” she shouts back. “You were right! I can’t buy everyone a house that lost theirs, there just aren’t enough of them, and it seemed like this is what you wanted! To just—just go back to the life you had before you met me! Like I didn’t even matter, but if I could do that, then …” She turns away, blinking. “Oh, save your crocodile tears,” I spit. “What do you want me to do, fall at your feet in worship? You made it pretty clear when you left how you felt about us. Like it wasn’t already obvious.” She hunches her shoulders but doesn’t turn back, mumbling something I can’t quite hear. “Why did you even buy us this house in the first place, Odette?” I ask, stalking up to her shoulder so I can look at her face while she doesn’t answer me.

But she does, to my great surprise. “I wanted to do something important. I thought you’d be grateful.” “What,” I say, “grateful enough to forgive you for stringing me along? For fucking around behind my back?” “You knew who I was,” she says, her tone a lot less fragile than it was a moment before. “What I was like. Did you just assume I’d change for you?” “I don’t understand you at all,” I admit. “I thought you bought the house because you wanted me to forgive you for those sins you hadn’t confessed to yet. But you don’t care about that at all, do you?” “I didn’t,” she says. “They’re two separate things,” I say. “Thank you, I guess, for saving my life and making sure my family didn’t become homeless. Is that what you wanted to hear?” “Yes,” she replies, but it’s robotic, like she’s somewhere far away from here. “But you hurt me, Odette. Did you think you didn’t?” “No,” she says, just as flat. “No, I knew.” “I don’t have to forgive you for that,” I say.

She blinks again, turning her face away from me, and some smothered part of me that cared for her once—that loved her, even—cries out that perhaps her tears are real, and wants me to do something about them. But that isn’t my problem anymore. It can’t be. She made that clear, and anyway she has the Lord Commander to salve whatever wounds she’s nursing.

“Is there anything else you want to say to me?” she asks. “Before we say goodbye for good and you just go back to your life like—” “Like you don’t matter,” I finish for her. “Do you think I’m obligated to let you matter now?” I ask, and she’s still, silent, the breath rattling in her lungs. “I can’t say I’m happy to see you in pain, Odette, but if you want to talk about people mattering, when did we ever matter to you? When did I ever matter to you?” I ask. “I let myself believe that you were committed, because I admired your convictions in other things, but you were never anything less than halfway out the door all the time. I just didn’t let myself see it because you were a fucking hero—you saved my life and then Rielle’s, of course I felt something for you, but you were never going to let yourself be part of this. Not really. And when I did notice, you didn’t seem to care that I had. So who doesn’t matter, Odette?” “I never meant to hurt you,” she says, but her voice is weak. “Bullshit,” I say. “You did too. That was your way out.” “Maybe,” she says.

That’s about as much closure as I can expect to get, so I turn to go and leave her there. “Tell Rielle I said goodbye,” she says, her voice reedy and choked. I don’t dare turn back to look at her, because there’s nothing I want to see back there. “Fine,” I say. “But I’m not doing it for you.”

#ff14 #fanservice friday #FAN DISSERVICE FRIDAY #odette #fray myste #rielle de caulignont #ff14 spoilers #stormblood spoilers #patch 4.56 spoilers #original content #starcunning writes

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morgansdeb · 5 years

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13 reasons why and Jess for that ask thingy?

Thank you!

13 Reasons Why

Favorite character: I always go back and forth between Hannah and Jessica.

Least Favorite character: Br*ce and M*nty, for obvious reasons.

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): Clay/Hannah, Hannah/Jessica, Jessica/Chloe, Zach/Alex, and Clay/Sheri.

Character I find most attractive: Everyone on this cast in beautiful af, so I can’t really choose.

Character I would marry: No one, they’re all in high school. But I’d marry Dylan Minnette if I could lmao

Character I would be best friends with: TONY!!

a random thought: Season 4 better end up with everyone happy and not in jail, or else…

An unpopular opinion: idk what’s unpopular anymore when it comes to this show. But listen, I get that it’s a damn mess and I dislike a lot of stuff about it, but people making 40-minute rants on YouTube and recycling the same tweets every year to complain about it make me laugh… just watch another show and move on with your life.

My Canon OTP: Clay/Hannah

My Non-canon OTP: Zach/Alex

Most Badass Character: JESSICA!!

Most Epic Villain: All the villains of this show are disgusting people, so no one.

Pairing I am not a fan of: Anything involving Br*ce and M*nty because r*pists shouldn’t be shipped with anybody (looking at you, M*nty/W*nston shippers). Clay/Ani because do they seriously expect me to believe that Clay has absolutely no problem with dating someone who had sex with Hannah and Jessica’s r*pist? Jesus. Also, Alex/Jessica because Jessica doesn’t love him that way, and it’s not healthy for Alex to keep chasing after someone who doesn’t return his feelings. Let the kid move on.

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Listen, I don’t mind that Alex killed Br*ce because the POS deserved it, but I don’t want Alex to end up in jail. That’s not a good ending for a character who survived a suicide attempt. Also, Ani. There are a million interesting ways her character could have been written, but the writers chose to make her a nosy r*pe apologist who was shoved into everyone’s narrative and used as a prop to humanize Br*ce. That’s disgusting, and Grace Saif deserved better than that.

Favourite Friendship: Clay/any of his friends, tbh. Also, Alex/Jessica/Hannah because FML forever.

Character I most identify with: I relate a lot to both Hannah and Jessica. I always see some bits of myself in Clay and Alex.

Character I wish I could be: No one.

Jessica Davis

How I feel about this character: Beautiful, smart, caring, and has a huge heart. A truly amazing character that I love.

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: Hannah, Chloe, lowkey Justin.

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: Alex, Tyler, Clay, Greg, Olivia.

My unpopular opinion about this character: idk if this is unpopular, but she’s one of the best characters on this show, has every single right to be upset, and Alisha Boe is one of the strongest actors.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I wish she had gotten to punch Br*ce in the face. I wish she could have gotten the chance to call out Ani for having a friendship/sexual relationship with her r*pist, because I feel like it was a disservice to her character not to give her a chance to say anything… the whole season was about Jessica getting her voice back, after all. Also, I wish we could have seen some more Jess/Hannah flashbacks in season 2. Jessica still cared about Hannah and I feel like some people forget that. I wish she had been the one to be there for Chloe. I liked the Chloe/Zach stuff, but both Jessica and Chloe have a lot in common, and they gave them 0 scenes in season 3… shame on the writers. I wish she had found out that Nina stole the polaroids. I know Samantha Logan was probably busy filming All American to be on the show, but that storyline shouldn’t have been dropped. We better get some more scenes with Jessica and her parents next season. Oh, and I really hope she doesn’t get in any trouble, because she used part of Br*ce’s tape during her speech :/

Favorite friendship for this character: Alex, but also Tyler. The Jess/Tyler stuff this season was amazing.

My crossover ship: Jessica/Tyra Collette from Friday Night Lights. idk why, it just occurred to me, lol.

#calmshadowcat #replies

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postguiltypleasures · 5 years

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JANE THE VIRGIN Finale Articles Links Round Up

Jane the Virgin, a show I never missed and affected my emotions on surprising ways wrapped up last week. It did well by plots that I feel like I’ve only ever seen done badly. The finale was pretty perfect in that it highlight what was special about the show and giving us the viewers a loving goodbye. I don’t know where the show will ultimately fit in with the direction in which television is moving, it kind of feels like an end of something and the beginning of something. Going through these fair wells might be a first step.

I’m actually starting with a couple of articles that really weren’t about the show’s finale. The first is technically a review of Emily Nussbaum’s I Like to Watch, as she has been a great champion of the show, as well as generally insisting that the what is considered “serious” vs “frivolous” be reconsidered. This response to Nussbaum’s book starts in particular about her essay “Jane the Virgin isn’t a Guilty Pleasure”. Nussbaum’s essay does a great job at praising what the show does well as connecting it to earlier television shows. (Interestingly she doesn’t associate Jane with camp the way she did with Ugly Betty, nor does she list that as one of Jane’s predecessors despite the fact that both are US primetime networks adapting Latin American telenovelas. I’ll get more into why I think that is interesting and probably for the best later.) The article about her book does more to talk about how it’s been frequently overlooked for shows that seem created for men. In a lot of her book tour Nussbaum has spoken about how the way Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Sopranos were discussed around the time that they debuted drove her into tv criticism. If I were to pick something to be The Sopranos to Jane’s Buffy I’d probably go with Breaking Bad, as it had a notoriously difficult time getting its fans to care about/not hate Walt’s home life. Walt’s home life was about the slow consequences of his drug dealing and gangster activity. There was always a fair amount of gangster activity on Jane, but from watching Breaking Bad could leave you with the impression that there’s no way to make caring for an infant as exciting as the chaos of organized crime. Jane proved that isn’t true.

Also before the finale, The Ringer published this article that is sort of half praise/ half interview with the creator. It gets into the ways it played with the crime drama story types but never really treated it like that’s what it was about. It also gets into the writer’s room, and I was happy to learn that some people there have worked on telenovela’s in the past. It also has some quote’s from Jaime Camil who plays Jane’s father Rogelio de la Vega, which I thought were an interesting contrast to an interview he gave earlier in the show’s run. The Ringer article misleadingly identifies Camil as having starred in the “Spanish language version of Ugly Betty.” There were three Spanish language versions of Ugly Betty, or rather there were three Spanish language versions of the Colombian telenovela Yo Soy Betty La Fea which was the source material for Ugly Betty. Camil starred it the Mexican one, La Fea Más Bella, which debuted around the same time as Ugly Betty. (Fun fact, between LFMB and the later Por Ella Soy Eva, Camil has twice starred in Mexican remakes of Colombian telenovela’s in roles originated by Jorge Enrique Abello) I was at one point obsessed with the whole constant remaking of YSBLF phenomena and Ugly Betty in particular. It was taking on one of the most popular IPs of all time and had to do it in a very different format than the original. (Producing one episode a week for an indefinite number of years is very different than five episodes a week for approximately a year. For starters, there’s going to be a much smaller ensemble.) I never watched the original Venezuelan telenovela Juana la Virgen. It wasn’t remade internationally with anything like the regularity as Betty, and ultimately that may have been in the American show’s favor. Part of me wants to say that Jane learned from some things Betty tried but didn’t necessarily execute so well. And another part of me thinks that not having the burden of massive international popularity allowed them to jettison some of the things that made it a harder to adapt for a different audience. In the original YSBLF, Betty’s family life and work life have this great tension where some of her more questionable decisions (specifically, choosing to help her boss commit fraud to the board of the company) are partially based in some disillusioning parts of her home life (namely, her father loosing his job due to the boss selling the company and never paying out his pension). Ugly Betty never played those two aspects of Betty’s life against her like that. In some ways it was much better to the character. (American Betty had professional ambition in a way that the original didn’t.) But in this not knowing how to connect her family and professional lives, it often felt like it was struggling to make the family life stories matter. Jane the Virgin never had this problem. Partially because it was much more interested in emotional reactions than plot twists, but also, because it didn’t need to follow an original’s example of making the work place drama the engine of the show. Between the different relationships they had with their source materials and how they mined the work/life balances of their character’s they were different shows, from different times. Too much comparison is just counterproductive.

Kathryn VanArendonk wrote beautifully about how the fantastical elements of the story made the more mundane plots like finding a good school for Mateo, and balancing child care and a burgeoning writing career, really work. VanArendonk doesn’t focus on how badly many other shows do on making the housekeeping side of life interesting. The fact that as a tv watcher you’ve been through so many examples of shows that feel like the drag or are just aimless when it comes to the personal life side of the work life divide does contribute towards the sort of miraculous feeling Jane sometimes created, but it’s probably for the best not to focus on the negative examples.

I also want to highlight this great personal essay about how the show dealt with both being an adult and having anxiety around sex, mostly because of cultural baggage. The show didn’t so much reject the things that we associate with the baggage (ie no one abandoned the Church. (Also not discussed was the fact that all three of the Villanueva women had anxiety about sex at some point in their stories, but as Xiomara’s was more about the aftermath of cancer and chemotherapy than culture created anxiety, so it doesn’t fit with Mariya Karimjee’s larger theme. Just bringing it up to say, I liked how Xiomara’s post-cancer story worked out.)

A final one from Vulture about the reveal that the narrator is the adult version of Jane’s son Mateo. I’m highlighting it because the Mateo has ADHD plot was one of the most moving stories the show did during the final season. ADHD is so misunderstood and there were so many ways that this could have gotten a too pat, wrong message of an ending. I’m glad voice over actor Anthony Mendez talks about how even as an adult it’s something with which he struggles.

I cheered for Petra for most of the series. However, due to things in my real life, I currently have a pretty low tolerance for stories about bad bosses. Petra’s worst quality was she was a terrible boss, mercurial and abusive. Inkoo Kang’s tribute to the character is good, and gets at why I’ve been interested in her, and her relationship with Jane, for so long. Despite finding Petra less likable in the final seasons than in earlier ones when she was more villainous, one of my favorite moments of hers did come this season. At one point she says that her “worst nightmare” is turning into her mother. It could have been just a throwaway one, but then the narrator tells us it’s true and shows us what it looks like, and it manages to be hilarious, heartbreaking a you get why this would be Petra’s worst nightmare.

(The Toast once dedicated a “Femslash Friday” to the Jane and Petra dynamic. Here’s the link if interested.)

After the finale aired Slate also published an article about how the Michael is not dead plot didn’t work and was a disservice to the way love works. I mostly agree. I never really cared with whom Jane ended up. The show was always more about figuring out haw to build and maintain relationships than proving who was more right for each other. And I did kind of like the “each in their own time” resolution to the love triangle. (I felt similarly to the one in Lost Girl.) I get why the show did it. I do agree it was why the final season dragged in some parts. I do think Michael coming back from the dead reinvigorated the Sin Rostro story just in time to climax on the penultimate episode. Whether or not that was worth it is up to you.

I do want to take this moment to point out that while watching Jane walk down the aisle in the final episode, I realized that there never really wasn’t a moment in the entire where I felt doubt that Jane was loved, or felt unlovable. The closest it ever got to that’s in its depictions of how growing up without a father affected her. But, as connecting with her biological father Rogelio and developing a very deep bond was such an important part of the show, that anxiety was never really felt for Jane. (Petra, on the other hand…) This makes her kind of an outlier of most of the series I watch, whether the was the point of the series (You’re the Worst, Crazy Ex Girlfriend) or kind of a side affect of the surreal and chaotic universe in which it’s set (Broad City, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt). I’m not sure what to make of this. Is it part of why it would be more likely to be misidentified as a guilty pleasure? Is it a sign about changes in what makes a heroine “relatable”?

I’ve repeatedly said here that I’m thinking about tapering the amount of tv I watch until it’s none. In Margaret Lyons’s review, she talks about how Jane was in some ways the show that replaced Mad Men in her heart, which reminded me that when Jane started I wasn’t sure I wanted to start any new tv shows. Also both show’s care about episode structure in a way that feels undervalued these days. I do kind of have to agree with Lyons that some of the final season felt like treading water. (Something that seemed to affect the more character than plot driven shows I’ve watched that have ended this year. This runs counter to most of my theory of what’s going on with tv these days.)

“Have you ever loved something so deeply it was almost impossible to talk about?” Jade Budowski wrote over at The Decider. And yes, for a while now, the things I like the most are the things I have the hardest time trying o talk about. It’s satisfying enough that you kind of want to just point and say “go, experience it for yourself.” Even though that runs the risk of letting it be taken as froth.

Over at Vox, Constance Grady wrote about how the finale worked, despite the fact that most of the conflict was resolved on the previous episode. It’s a loving tribute to how the show knew how to work and give us the happiest of endings without being too saccharine.

Finally, I want to day thanks for making Jane and Rafael’s wedding song Ximena Sariñana’s “Todo En Mi Vida”. Sure, I’ve been following Sariñana since her debut, Mediocre, so this is likely to appeal to me personally, but it’s also a beautiful song about learning to love the unexpected and build a new life around it.

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