#I feel quite endeared to him but I couldn’t write long metas about him

[daenerysstormreborn]

I’ve seen a post recently that dismisses Lyanna’s age as GRRM being bad with picking the ages of women, basically saying nooooo it’s fine she was 15/16 and Rhaegar was in his early 20s it’s just George not thinking it through enough but I really disagree. George wrote “It was her fourteenth nameday” on purpose he knew what he was doing with that I think we are supposed to be critical of Rhaegar and Lyanna. Rhaegar is boring if you’re not critical of him. Most characters are boring if you’re not critical of them. I could theoretically come up with arguments defending many the actions of my favs as perfectly just but that is so boring. Like. Yes the protagonists are Always In The Right don’t you get bored of that? Isn’t that tiring? Isn’t it better to have a protagonist who makes mistakes? Some of you are like “we do acknowledge xyz character’s faults we do!! we only get mad about the unfair criticisms!!” and then I never see any discussion of said faults. I get that people can have a knee jerk reaction because some criticism of certain characters I see IS unfair and sexist so it’s hard not to develop a knee jerk response to it but I prommy it’s more interesting to say “well what if this wasn’t a writing oversight and the character was actually in the wrong?” Because we are all in the wrong sometimes and acting like a character has never done anything wrong makes them unrelatable and boring.

Except for Samwell Tarly I think he actually never did anything wrong.

[amphibious-entity]

TMBS Book 1 Brain Dump

~An Embarrassingly Long Post~

I don’t know why I’m writing this or why I’m so determined to do it. Maybe to finally assume my true form and become a mega dork on main, or maybe just for fun!

This is basically a compilation of all the main points running through my head after reading The Mysterious Benedict Society (2007) for the first time. Rather than posting a ton and spamming the tag, everything’s here in one neat package! (hopefully this gets it all out of my system rip)

Contents:

The Book Itself

The Book Itself, for real this time

The Characters

A Funny Parallel

The S.Q. Section

Lines & Scenes I Liked

Spoilers abound!

The Book Itself

Upon acquiring the first three books (don’t judge me pls), I was surprised at just how long they are. Like, they’re still pretty light being paperbacks and all, but these books are hefty lads.

The first book has this Disney+ Original Series circle thing printed on it, which is kind of unfortunate. Regardless, I love the cover illustration and yellow is actually my favorite color :D It made me weirdly quite happy whenever I saw the book lying around in my room

Also, it’s really cute how there’s a letter from Mr. Benedict at the end! (It only reveals that you can find out his first name if you “know the code”, meaning the bit of Morse printed below the summary on the back.) Shock and horror, though, as I realized I’m starting to recognize some of the letters

The Book Itself, for real this time

It’s wonderful how the tone of the book really shone through to the show adaptation. Something about the deliberateness of the aesthetic, from the set designs to the fashion to scene compositions, that really sells that particular style— like it’s very clear that this story is being told to us, rather than one we’re seeing unfold, if that makes sense.

Where that narration style stood out to me the most was the first chapter. We are told (rather than shown) how Reynie gets himself to the point of the second test, and there’s this whole twisty time maneuver for that whole sequence of events that’s really interesting

A super secret fun fact about me is that I wanted to be a writer when I was younger! So this particular balance of show vs. tell is really neat, since it runs counter to my own tendencies. The sheer amount of commas in every sentence is also kind of comforting, since Ahah, I Do That in those few serious-ish attempts at writing lol

Overall this book’s style reminds me a lot of Roald Dahl’s books, which are very nostalgic for me :D The whole “kids are more competent than adults” angle helps a lot too haha

The Characters

Oh boy here’s where I get a little bit critical! Overall I did really like this book!! it’s just that that expresses itself in all this weird “”analysis”” lol

Reynie - much better in the books than in the show

It’s sort of a lukewarm take but I feel like show!Reynie is kind of boring? He doesn’t have a lot going on flaw-wise, and obviously since he’s the protagonist he can’t have too many weird traits or else the kids watching can’t project themselves onto him as easily

(I call it the difference between an aspirational protagonist and a vessel protagonist. Going off of the Roald Dahl vibes, think Matilda vs Charlie. show!Reynie is more of a Charlie)

Thus when we get to see him really struggle with the Whisperer and doubt himself it gives him a lot more dimension, at least in my opinion

It is a federal crime that the white knight scenes were not adapted into the show

Sticky - my son

I’ve long held to no one besides myself and my long suffering sister that Sticky is The Best Member of the Society

He happened to hit a lot of the Bingo squares of Stuff I Like In Characters: glasses, anxious, nice :), kind of a coward but ultimately is there for his friends, etc

For some reason I don’t talk about him nearly as much as you-know-who, but I love him just as dearly

Kate & Constance - I don’t have much to say

Kate is really interesting in this book! I like how we get to see more of her depths, in particular that one passage about her belief that she is invincible being the only thing that keeps her from falling apart? :c

Also her constant fidgeting is relatable lol

Constance is somehow a lot more tolerable in the book. I think I’m just one of those people with no patience for small children, unfortunately lol

(Some of) The Adults

It’s interesting that they had such an offscreen presence for most of the book. Giving them more time was probably one of the stronger changes of the show

However if that decision was made at the expense of the white knight scenes I think the choice should have been clear

I like the way Rhonda and Number Two are written

Milligan always on sad boy hours 😔✊

The “mill again” passage is touching but kind of messes up the pacing of the getaway, at least for me. Maybe I should read it again to make sure I didn’t miss something

Miss Perumal is much better in the show. We see so little of her in the book she doesn’t function well as an emotional anchor for Reynie, imo

The Institute Gang

Jackson and Jillson serve their purpose well, and Martina was surprising to say the least. I like the direction they took her in the show! I can’t imagine how funny it must have been to watch the tetherball subplot come out of nowhere lolol

These sections were written out of sequence, so random tidbit I couldn’t fit in The S.Q. Section: I like how he stumbles over his words. relatable

Mr. Curtain

While I think I know why they decided to not give Curtain the wheelchair in the show, we were totally robbed of Actor Tony Hale’s performance for the reveal during the final confrontation

Speaking of the wheelchair, it’s such a powerful symbol of his need for control or rather, his fear of losing it

The Contrast between him and Mr. Benedict. This point is expanded on in A Funny Parallel

Mr. Benedict

Oh boy, Mr. Benedict… How do I say this

I find it hard to trust Mr. Benedict, unfortunately

I mean to say, I do in the sense that I know he would never hurt the kids, thanks to knowing that a) this is a children’s book series and b) the meta (tumblr) states that he is really nice and lovable and stuff, but seriously. Why do the kids trust him at first?? I probably missed something somewhere

I like to think I’m an optimistic person, but unfortunately I’m also super paranoid. The premise of “a bunch of vulnerable orphans team up with a strange old man” is just so odd to me I don’t know how to explain it

I don’t know!!! I really want to trust Mr. Benedict

One of the strengths of the show is that we get to see him more often, and thus he gets to acknowledge more often that the plan is weird and that he feels really badly for putting the kids in danger and that he’s trustworthy and genuine

But his lack of presence for most of the book just makes him into something of a specter, invisible and unknowable, speaking only in riddles from across the bay

Which is why the white knight scene is so important!! I loved that scene ;-;

Because here’s an actual emotional connection! We can actually see it happening, rather than only being told that it exists

Reynie asking for advice and receiving encouragement, in words that demonstrate that Mr. Benedict actually cares about him and worries about him and agghh

It is a federal crime that the white knight scenes were not adapted into the show

But overall this whole issue didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the book at all! It’s just ->

A Funny Parallel

Okay, ready for my biggest brain, hottest take ever??

Mr. Benedict and Mr. Curtain…. are… the same

I mean obviously not entirely, given that one is benevolent and kind and the other is… Mr. Curtain

But seriously. Genius old man seeks out children (mainly orphans) to enact a plan. Said children often end up incredibly devoted to his cause and deeply admire him this is a little flimsy

Undoubtedly that’s intentional and is supposed to show the difference between them, like some kind of cautionary tale? “Let yourself be vulnerable and let others help you, lest you turn eeeeviiillll”

I guess that’s where the aforementioned epic contrast comes in. You get Mr. Curtain, strapped into his wheelchair and hiding behind those mirrored sunglasses, terrified (but unwilling to admit it) of ever showing the tiniest hint of vulnerability, vs. Mr. Benedict, who can let himself fall knowing that someone will catch him :’)

Anyhow I have nothing against the parallels, I just think it’s funny

The S.Q. Section

The S.Q. Quarantine Thread so it doesn’t leak out everywhere else <3

I’d like to meet the emo angstlord genius who read this book and decided to make SQ into Dr. Curtain’s son. What in the world

Okay I should probably preface this by saying that I absolutely adore both book!S.Q. and show!SQ with all my heart. Somehow, despite being a completely different character in both mediums, he has managed to be one of the best characters in either and certainly one of my favorites (besides Sticky of course) in the entire franchise, despite the fact that I’ve only read the first book/watched the show so far. I am confident in this statement.

But seriously! How?? Why?? I could probably write a whole other essay about why show!SQ is such an interesting character, and the change works so incredibly well. I’m just. Baffled

Okay, focus. book!S.Q. is such a sweetheart, oh my goodness. Like, 100% one of the most endearing characters in the book. Poor guy. I don’t even know where to start!!

He just seems to be a genuinely good guy at heart, despite being technically one of the bad guys. He’s genuinely happy for Reynie and Sticky when they became Messengers and helped Kate when she “fell” and was concerned about Constance when she looked sick and how he was in that meeting with Mr. Curtain and Martina?!!? aaahhhhghgh ;-; he just wants people to be happy TT-TT

Comparing him against literally every character at the Institute is probably what makes him so endearing tbh. When everyone else is so awful to the kids, it really makes him stand out. Like a cheerful little nightlight in the worst, most humid and rank bathroom you’ve ever been in

It’s kind of pointless to theorize about a book series that’s already concluded (I think?) but. Is the implication of S.Q.’s forgetfulness supposed to be that Mr. Curtain used him in brainsweeping experiments somehow? The timeline probably definitely absolutely doesn’t line up but like. How did he get to being a Messenger being the way he is now, given how cutthroat the process is? And then of course Mr. Curtain keeps him around as an Executive because he’s fun to mess with and presumably his loyalty. I’m very curious as to how their relationship develops in the other books, if at all. Those are probably where the seeds of the “let’s make them family” logic were planted

But wouldn’t it be hilarious if the reason we don’t know what “S.Q.” stands for in the books is that he just. Forgot

Another thing that occurred to me. Given that he and the other Executives were Messengers at some point, what were their worst fears? What is S.Q.’s worst fear?? Inquiring minds need to know

One last horrible little anecdote: I was thinking about book!S.Q. while eating breakfast, as one does, and suddenly it hit me.

I want to believe The Author Trenton Lee Stewart had the name for a character, S.Q. Pedalian, and was like, “Hm! What sort of quirky trait should this young fellow have?” Because, of course, in this style of fiction every character has to have at least one cartoonish or otherwise distinguishing trait to stand out in the minds of children. (For instance, Kate has her bucket, Sticky has his glasses, Constance is angry, and Reynie is Emmett from the Lego Movie)

Anyhow, he looks around the room, searching for inspiration. Suddenly he comes across a jumbo box of plastic wrap. Completely innocuous in design, save for one line of text. 300 SQ FT.

“…large… S.Q. …feet? THAT’S IT!” i’m sorry

Lines & Scenes I Liked

In no particular order!

Sticky quotes Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Evil combination aerobics/square dancing in the gym with the Executives

Everyone being happy at the end :’)

Everyone partying after Sticky reunites with his parents, and later finding Mr. Benedict asleep at his desk from the moment they shook hands :’’)

Literally any scene with Sticky in it

Any time Kate says “you boys” or “gosh”

[“Um, sir?” S.Q. said timidly, raising his hand. “A thought just occurred to me.” / Mr. Curtain raised his eyebrows. “That’s remarkable, S.Q. What is it?”] clown prince of my heart </3

S.Q.’s determined monologue about searching for clues after he bungled up the first time

Literally any scene with S.Q. in it (please refer to The S.Q. Section)

Reynie trying to resist the Whisperer.

[Let us begin. / First let me polish my spectacles, Reynie thought. / Let us begin. / Not without my bucket, Reynie insisted. He heard Mr. Curtain muttering behind him. / Let us begin, let us begin, let us begin. / Rules and schools are tools for fools, Reynie thought.]

NO MORE HURTIN’ WITH CURTAIN

Milligan showing up on the island!!

Remember the white knight hhhhhh

“controle”

A Super Secret Bonus Section

I would be extremely surprised if anyone read through all the way down here lol. Regardless, here’s a little acknowledgements section :D not tagging anyone since I don’t want to bother all of these people

Special shoutout to tumblr blog stonetowns for unknowingly yet singlehandedly demolishing my reluctance to read the books by posting a ton of cute quotes. Thank you for your service o7

Thanks to the two OGs that liked the post I made right before this one, for being my unwitting enablers and for sticking around despite being a) technically an internet stranger (hello!) and b) someone I haven’t spoken to irl in literal years (hey!!)

Last but not least thankz 2 my sister for putting up with me ranting about the book when I first got it and for asking about “CQ” sometimes lol. (i desperately hope you’re not reading this orz)

[elizabethrobertajones]

Hey! Feel free to ignore this long question but it was just something I was thinking about. I’m interacting with this fandom for the first time since about mid season 12-ish, I was an avowed deancas meta reader and I’m trying to catch up on some goings on. Something that’s really been bothering me since it went canon was something I was trying to figure out since I left: what happened during the carver era? Was he setting it up to be canon, because I can’t not see that when I watch s8 and 9, but post-Charlie dying it all seemed so disorganized, and bad. He set it up perfectly then lost the thread totally. Do you have any insight on what happened there? And 2, if I couldn’t stand the first half of season 12 but really liked 15x18, do you think I’d like the rest of the dabb era? How does it compare to peak carver era? Thanks for reading and no pressure! Forgot how much I love this meta stuff and now it’s all I think about again lol

Hi there! 

I think Carver era behind the scenes might end up being something we have to wait for tell-all interviews to understand... At least Dabb was there for all of it so maybe after the show is over, someone might grab him for a sit down to explain some shit and go over the old territory :P I’d guess that Carver was not committed to canon in the same way but he was open to exploring and expanding the relationships and Cas’s character just because he liked Cas and these dynamics, and definitely wasn’t adverse to at least ironically thinking of Dean n Cas in a certain way, hence the “jilted lover” thing. 

I think also there was generally less of a cohesive overall voice to the show from season 8 onwards, which is not a bad thing in that it meant we began to really see each individual writer putting their talents out there (or not-talents) but does mean the interpretation of Dean n Cas or gay subtext in general was an absolute rollercoaster, depending on who was writing, because combining looser control on the creative direction per episode along with a deeper focus on character overall... Bobo could roll right up in season 9 and immediately start serving Destiel but Dabb had been writing since season 4 and it was still season 8 where he first starts flexing any what would become shipper muscles :P 

Considering how Carver era fizzled out and Dabb took over with a stronger sense of what to DO with the dang show and what radical burn-it-all-down steps that involved to take it to a conclusion, including absolutely freewheeling the plot for a little while, throwing spaghetti at the wall and even letting Buckleming serve total curveballs and all, for the sake of really digging into character stuff instead, I do think the change is obvious again. I don’t even know if Dabb took over MEANING to make Destiel canon, but that he was absolutely of the mind that Cas was important and a TFW ending would be necessary. And then once he spent some time on that, the obvious answer that Destiel was integral hit at last through some sort of self-reflection on what the fuck they’d been writing all this time as it came to tying up loose ends. 

Honestly the writers he picked kinda do obviously compliment Destiel but maybe it was even just having so many fresh young voices at the table all at once that LATER shifted the conversation into “why the heck wouldn’t we do this?” after they settled in. 

Anyway, I’m not caught up on the current season, but I would say that Dabb era was as far as I watched, loosely written on the plot front and managing Buckleming nonsense about as deftly as a bunch of excellent writers who are trying to have a consistent vision but need to constantly work around someone lobbing bricks at the story can do. But it got better and better as it went on, because it was focussing more on the emotional stuff and the character dynamics, and taking them all seriously. Season 13 was an important shift in really taking Destiel seriously, and from the sounds of things Dabb was maybe considering Destiel by season 14 and ready to hit the ground running with 15? 

I personally think that Dabb era really started to be very very good as soon as Jack was properly introduced, especially as I spent a whole hiatus dreading him and convinced this was a terrible idea (he’s buckleming spawn, from one of their worst episodes overall behind their true classics like the racist truck) but Dabb wrote the first episode with Jack and it made him instantly endearing, and his whole story was well-handled from then on, making even some of the more garbage characters at least temporarily interesting or at least relevant or to make the scenes they were in easier to endure. 

So I’d say try again and power through until you’ve given Jack the 4 episodes at the beginning of season 13 they use to introduce and explore what he means to the show, and see how you’re feeling about those dynamics and storylines, as they really are where the show goes from then onwards. 

I also have to admit that season 9 is my favourite Carver era season, and overall I don’t like the seasons so much as loving certain episodes, and having a whole lot I don’t like in between. Dabb’s crack team of writers demonstrated what it was like to enjoy every single writer except Buckleming, and have a much more reliable run of episodes in a row consistently so if I was comparing them, especially with hindsight, Carver era is really left in the dust for me. My only regret is that Buckleming never retired early and left the show in the hands of competent adults for a full season.

To really emphasise how much I trust the writers these days, I’m pretty much assuming without watching them that the dozen episodes I haven’t watched will be good and I’ll have a great time watching them, and that Bobo’s last episode will be amazing quite apart from the bizarre mark it left on the historical record. 

[spamzineglasgow]

(REVIEW) All The Poems Contained Within Will Mean Everything To Everyone, by Joe Dunthorne

Is it fiction, is it poetry, is it truth — what are the rules here? Kirsty Dunlop tackles the difficult, yet illustrious art of the poet bio in this review of Joe Dunthorne’s All The Poems Contained Within Will Mean Everything To Everyone (Rough Trade Editions, 2018).

Whenever I read a poetry anthology - I hope I’m not the only one - I go to the bios at the back before I read the poems…it’s also a really strange thing when you publish a poem…you brag about yourself in a text that is supposed to sound distant and academic but is actually you carefully calculating how you’ll present yourself.

> It’s the middle of a night in 2019 and I’m listening to a podcast recording from Rough Trade Editions’ first birthday party at the London Review Bookshop, and this is Dunthorne’s intro to the reading from his pamphlet All The Poems Contained Within Will Mean Everything To Everyone (2018). As I lie there in that strange limbo space of my own insomnia, Dunthorne’s side-note to his work feels comfortingly intimate because it rings so true (the kind of thing you might admit to a friend over a drink after a poetry reading rather than in the performative space of the reading itself). Like Joe, and yes surely many others, I am also fascinated by bios - particularly because I find them so awkward to write/it makes me cringe writing my own/this is definitely the kind of thing you overthink late at night. Bios also function as this alternative narrative on the margins of the central creative work and they do tell a story: take any bio out of context and it can be read as a piece of flash fiction. When we are asked to write bios, there is this unspoken expectation that we follow certain rules in our use of language, tone and content. Side note: how weird would it be if we actually spoke about ourselves in this pompous third person perspective irl?! Bios themselves are limbo spaces (another kind of side note!) where there is much left unsaid and often the unsaid and the little that is said reveals a lot. Of course, some bios are also very, very long. Dunthorne’s pamphlet plays with this limbo space as a site of narrative and poetic potential: prior to All The Poems, I had never read a short story actually written through the framework of a list of poet bios. The result is an incredibly funny, honest and playful piece of meta poetic prose that teases out all the subtle aspects of the poet bio-sphere and ever since that first listen, I can’t stop myself re-reading.

> This work is an exciting example of how formal constraints in writing can actually create an exhilarating sense of narrative liberation. I see this really playful, fluid Oulipo quality to the writing, where the process of using the bio as constraint is what makes the rollercoaster reading experience so satisfying as well as revealing a theatrical stage for language to have its fun, where the reality of our own calculated self performance can be teased out bio by bio. The re-reading opens up a new level of comedy each time often at the level of wordplay. I’ll maybe reveal some more of that in a wee bit.

> It’s a winding road that Dunthorne takes us on in his narrative journey where the micro and the macro continually fall inside each other. So perhaps this review will also be quite winding. Here is another entry into the text: we begin reading about the protagonist Adam Lorral from the opening sentence, who we realise fairly quickly is struggling to put together a ground-breaking landmark poetry anthology. His bio crops up repeatedly in varying forms:

‘Adam Lorral, born 1985 is a playwright, translator and the editor-publisher of this anthology.’

‘Adam Lorral is a playwright, translator and the man who, morning after morning, stood barefoot on his front doorstep […]’

‘Adam Lorral is a playwright, translator and someone for whom the date Monday, October 14th, 2017 has enormous meaning. Firstly Adam’s son started smiling.’

The driving circularity of this repetition pushes the narrative onwards, whilst the language is never bogged down: it hopscotches along and we can’t help but join in the game. Amidst a growing list of other characters/poets- that Adam may or may not include in this collection he seems to be pouring/ draining his energy into, with just a little help from his wife’s family money- tension begins to build.  

> Although Adam is overtly the protagonist in the story, to my mind it is, in fact, Adam’s four-week-old son who is the real heroic figure. Of course this baby doesn’t have a bio of his own but he does continually creep into Adam’s (he’s another side note!). He comes off as the only genuine character: there is no performance, no judgement, he just is. Adam is continually amazed by his son’s mental and physical development which is far more impressive than the growth of this questionable anthology. The baby is this god-like figure, continually present during Adam’s struggles, with the seemingly small moments of its development taking on monumental significance. Adam might try to immerse himself fully in this creative work but the reality of his family surroundings will constantly interrupt. This self-deprecating, reflective tone led me to think about how Dunthorne expansively explores the idea of the contemporary poet and artist identity through metanarrative. In Ben Lerner’s The Hatred of Poetry (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2016), he writes ‘There is embarrassment for the poet – couldn’t you get a real job and put your childish ways behind you?’ In a recent online interview with the poet Will Harris[1], when asked about his own development as a writer, he spoke about how the career trajectory of a poet is a confusing phenomenon and I’ve heard many other poets speak of this too: there are perhaps milestones to pass but they are not rigid or obvious and, of course, they are set apart from the milestones of more ‘adult’, professional pursuits. I think Dunthorne’s short story accurately captures this confusion around artistic, personal and intellectual growth and the navigation of the poetry community, through these minute, telling observations and the rejection of a simplistic narrative linearity. The story doesn’t make any hard or fast judgements: like the character of the baby, the observations just are. Sometimes, it feels like this project could be one of the most important aspects of Adam’s life (it might even make or break it) and we are there with him and at other moments it seems quite irrelevant to the bigger picture, particularly as the bios get more ridiculous. Here, I just have to highlight one of the bios which perfectly evokes this heightened sense of a poet’s importance:

Peter Daniels’ seventh collection The Animatronic Tyrannosaurus of Guadalajara, is forthcoming with Welt Press. He will not let anyone forget that he edited Unpersoned, a prize-winning book of creative transcriptions of immigration interviews obtained by the Freedom of Information Act, even though it was published nearly two decades ago. His poetry has been overlooked for all previous generational anthologies and it is only thanks to the fine-tuned sensibilities of this book’s editor that has he finally become one of the chosen. You would expect him to be grateful.

> Okay…so I said above that there weren’t hard or fast judgements; maybe I should retract that slightly. The text definitely doesn’t feel like a cruel critique of poets generally (its comedy is too clever for that) but, yes, there are a fair few judgements from Adam creeping into those bios. I am so impressed with the way in which Dunthorne is able to expertly navigate Adam’s perspective through all these fragments to create this growing humour, as the character can’t help inserting his own opinions into other poets’ bios. Of course, we are also able to make our own judgements about Adam and his endearing naivety: shout out here to my fave character in the story, Joy Goold (‘exhilaratingly Scottish’) who has submitted the poem, Fake Lake, to the anthology. Hopefully if you’re Scottish, you can appreciate the comedy of this title. Adam Googles her and cannot find any trace of her, which feels perfect…almost too good to be true.

> Dunthorne plays with cliché overtly throughout the text. You could say all the poets in this story are exaggerated clichés but that certainly doesn’t make them boring: it just adds to the knowing intimacy that, yes, feels slightly gossipy (which I can’t help but enjoy). For example, there is the poet who has:

[…] won every major UK poetry prize and long ago dispensed with modesty […] Though he does not need the money he teaches on the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His latest collection is Internal Flight (Faber/FSG). He divides his time between London and New York because they are both lovely.

I am leaving out a fair bit of this bio because I don’t want to take away some of the joy of simply reading this text in its entirety but it is one of many tongue-in-cheek observations that feels very accurate and over-the-top at the same time (I feel like everyone in the poetry community knows this person). It is also even more knowing when you consider that Dunthorne actually has published a collection with Faber, O Positive (2019), a totally immersive read that also doesn’t shy away from poking fun at its speaker throughout. I always like seeing the ideas that repeatedly crop up in a writer’s work and explorations of calculation and cliché are at the forefront of this collection. I keep thinking of this line from the poem ‘Workshop Dream’:

We stepped onto the beach. The water made the sound: cliché, cliché, cliché.

Interestingly, there is this hypnotising dream-like quality to O Positive - with shape shifting figures, balloonists, owls-in-law – in contrast to the hyper realism I experienced in the Rough Trade pamphlet. However, like All the Poems, in O Positive, we’re always one step inside the writing, one step outside, watching the poem/short story being written. It’s this continual sensation of being very close to failure and embarrassment/cringe. (I can also draw parallels here between Dunthorne’s exploration of this theme and the poet Colin Herd who speaks so brilliantly about the relation between poetry and embarrassment- see our SPAM interview.) Failure is just inevitable in this narrative set up. It makes the turning point of the narrative- when it arrives- all the funnier:

As Adam typed, he hummed the chorus to the Avril Lavigne song–why d’you have to go and make things so complicated?–and smiled to himself because he was keeping things simple. Avril Lavigne. Adam Lorral. Their names were a bit similar. He was looking for a sign and here one was.

> If it isn’t clear already, this is a story that I could continually quote from but to truly appreciate the work, you should read it in its beautiful slim pamphlet format created by Rough Trade Editions. For me, the presentation of this work is as important as the form: this story would have a different effect and tone if it was nestled inside a short story collection. I think a lot of the most exciting creative writing right now is being published by the innovative small indie presses springing up around the UK. Recently I listened to a great podcast by Influx Press, featuring the writer Isabel Waidner: they spoke about both the value of small presses taking risks with writers and the importance of recognising prose as an experimental field, rightly recognising that experimental work often seems to begin with, or be connected to, the poetry community. Waidner’s observation felt like something I had been waiting to hear…and a change that I had noticed in writing being published in the last few years in the UK. I could mention so many examples alongside the work of Rough Trade Books: Waidners’s We are Made of Diamond Stuff (2019), published by Manchester-based Dostoyevsky Wannabe, Eley William’s brilliant Attrib. and Other Stories (Influx Press, 2017), the many exciting hybrid works put out by Prototype Publishing, to name just a few. There is also a growing interest in multimedia work, for example Visual Editions, who publish texts designed to be read on your phone through their series Editions at Play (Joe Dunthorne did a brilliant digital-born collaborative text with Sam Riviere in 2016, The Truth About Cats & Dogs, I would highly recommend!). But this concept of combining the short story with a pamphlet format, created by Rough Trade Books as part of their Rough Trade Editions’ twelve pamphlet series, feels particularly exciting to me and is a reminder of why I love the expansive possibilities of shorter prose pieces. Through its physical format, we are reminded that this is a prose work you can read like a series of poems without losing the narrative tension that is so central to fiction. The expansiveness of the reading possibilities of Dunthorne’s short story also reminds me of Lydia Davis’s short-short stories. Here’s one I love taken from The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis (Penguin Books, 2009):

They take turns using a word they like

“It’s extraordinary,” says one woman. “It is extraordinary,” says the other.

You could read this as a sound bite, an extract from an article, a writing exercise or a short story, the possibilities go on; there is a space created for the reader and consequently it encourages the unravelling of re-reading (which feels like a very poetic mode to me). Like Davis, Dunthorne’s work also highlights how seemingly simple language can be very powerful and take on many subtle faces and tones. I think short forms are so difficult to get right but when you encounter all the elements of language, tone, pacing, style, space, tension brought together effectively (or calculatingly as Dunthorne might say), it can create this immersive, highly intimate back-and-forth play with the reader.

> All The Poems Contained Within Will Mean Everything to Everyone. The title tells us there is a collection of poems here that are hidden: the central work has disappeared leaving behind the shadowy remains of the editor’s frustration and the marginalia of the bios. We feel the presence of the poems despite not actually reading them. The pamphlet’s blurb states that this: ‘is the story of the epiphanies that come with extreme tiredness; that maybe, just maybe the greatest poetry book of all is one that contains no poems.’ The narrative, as well as making fun of itself, also recognises that poetry exists beyond the containment of the poems themselves: it can be found in the readings, the performances, the politics, the drafts, the difficulties, the funding, the collaboration, the collectivity, the bios.

> A friend of mine recently asked me: Where are all the prose parties?…And what might a prose party look like? We were chatting about how a poetry party sounds much cooler (that’s maybe why there’s more of them). I think prose is often aligned with more conventional literary forms, maybe closed off in a way that poetry is seen to be able to liberate, but I think Dunthorne breaks down these preconceptions and binaries around form and modes of reading in All The Poems. I want to be at whatever prose party he’s throwing.

[1] University of Glasgow’s Creative Conversations, Sophie Collins interviewing Will Harris, Monday 4th May 2020 (via Zoom)

~

Text: Kirsty Dunlop Published: 10/7/20

[monkey-network]

Good Stuff's Best of 2019

WARNING: Just wanted to say cheers to you for making it through another year. I send you best wishes for next year to be fruitful. Thank you, take care out there, and enjoy. (Best of 2017) (Best of 2018)

Dedicated to Russi Taylor, John Witherspoon, Rip Torn, Tartar Sauce, Caroll Spinney, Peter Matthews, and the many of KyoAni lost in the arson incident. You all did wonderful; rest in peace.

Welp, I figured the last year of this decade would be the most chaotic one by far, then again everything peak after 2012. As for now, I am counting down the best cartoons/animations/comics I’ve seen and loved this year in no particular order other than #1. Same rules apply: No sneak previews of future projects, no repeats, and this time anything goes.

Runner Ups: Superman Smashes the Klan, Marvel’s Aero, Infinity Train, Enter the Florpus, Amphibia, Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart, Helluva Boss, Meta Runner, Lego Movie 2, Forky Asks a Question

Anyways, Badda boom bang whiz, let’s do this shizz...

10. Super Mario Bros GT

Nostalgia can be quite a mystery, especially one that can come out of nowhere. Super Mario Bros Z kicked so much ass as a kid that now, it still frustrates me to this that it got a cease & desist from Nintendo, even the reboot from the same person couldn’t last long. But the gods have offered a slight miracle in the form of this new spiritual successor that has heart and soul put into every pixelated frame. There is much to celebrate with Youtube animation, where many say it’s dying due to the algorithm and all of the site’s corporate bullshit, but it’s stuff like this which helps me understand why we should celebrate. Against all odds, channels like Smasher Block willfully put their works out their for the people and continues to because on top of getting a little dough, it’s what they want to do.

9. DC SUPER HERO GIRLS (2019)

Awwwwww yeah, this is She-Ra and the Princesses of Power done right. Diverse female squad, each given a quality screen time to truly shine (Beecher especially) on their which makes the episodes where they’re all together feel earned and joyous to watch. Certainly reminds me of Friendship is Magic, which is coincidental since they were created by the same woman. I’d like to think this and MLP G4 were the answers to Faust’s cancelled project Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls where multiple personalities collide to one extraordinary superhero team of girls capable great feats that are lifted from their insecurities or drawbacks. And on top of this being a fun series to kick back to all around, it’s a comforting, somewhat aspiring thought to consider.

8. JOKER

I am somebody that rarely goes to the theaters to watch a film; you have to hook my tight just for me to even think of buying a ticket, no less plan to. But honestly, Joker was worth the hype, the ticket, and the fact that it wasn’t the incel uprising that buttfuck normies tried to make it out as. It’s lower on the list because in thought, there definitely could’ve been some tweaks to the dialogue and a couple scenes that I felt didn’t work in the long run. But really, this movie to me worked because of the escalation that leads to a cathartic climax and ending that left me in actual tears. I don’t give a shit if it “doesn’t fit”, having Frank Sinatra sing the film's credits put me in shambles. Joaquin Phoenix was phenomenal as Arthur, and this movie felt authentic in its many details. This is definitely up there with my favorite comic book films of all time. Good thing, too, Spider-Man was taking up most of that shelf.

7. TUCA & BERTIE

This series being what I can’t help but say is a spin-off to Bojack Horseman, a show I respect, was enough to pull me into watching it. But it being like Bojack where it’s tight-roping between a bouncy comedy and a grounded drama was what kept me around for more. It is a damn shame this was cancelled after one season (while 13 Reasons Why gets FOUR seasons like what the fuck), because while this did feel enough like a complete series, I was certainly interested for more because I really enjoyed it all. I have my issue with a couple choices in the show, but I am sure this series would’ve addressed them later down the line. I can see why some women would find this personally endearing, it felt like the personal stories of actual people, and it deserved better. Either way, I enjoyed this series and I recommend it just as much as Bojack.

6. PRIMAL

Genndy Tartakovsky is that kind of cartoon creator where you feel he’ll go beyond if you give him the right amount of space. He’s not a perfectionist like John “Dirty Diddler” Kricfalusi, but with things like Hotel Transylvania and Samurai Jack, he certainly has proven to have the range in animation where you know how he plays. Primal showcasing his noted skill in dialogue-less storytelling and dynamic action scenes, able to convey everything clear with its ruthless yet careful protagonist and his dinosaur friend, all on top of the most luscious backgrounds. This is a series that definitely feels like Genndy’s taken what he’s used from his previous works and putting it together for a brutal yet passionate look at the prehistoric life. He truly brought us an adult series to enjoy and to look forward to more in the coming year.

5. SPINEL

Bet you didn’t expect a character to be on this list, eh? Spinel is the best thing to come out of Steven Universe in general; makes me wish she was in a better movie. The crew certainly did their darndest to make her not only an enjoyable and connectable character through and through, but a very versatile character that the fandom could take in any which way. Call it corny, but Spinel perfectly represents SU as a whole: a lovable goof that can certainly mean business but deep down is deserved of a hug because of what she’s gone through. Wish she had a more satisfying resolution in her respective debut, but really it’s the balance between those three elements mentioned that makes Spinel almost eternally wonderful.

4. MOB PSYCHO 100 II

As someone that doesn’t like reading, I’m a firm believer that the best animations or visual medias elevate the writing to a memorable degree; the visuals hook to the point where you want to think about what you saw and how it was conveyed. Mob Psycho 100, for two seasons now, does this in spades where Studio Bones throw them bones in animating one of the most dynamic animes of the modern era, providing the writing and characters a proper chance to flex its muscles. The characters are especially what makes this and MP100 as a whole work so well, the story being about a boy learning to be more sociable as well as emotionally stronger all while helping others understand maturity and empathy. For more on this, I recommend Hiding in Public’s video(s) on Mob. But with the animation, Bones was able to provide a sense of impact and immersion to the moments that matter, not making it an overstimulating mess, and putting some respect on ONE’s webcomic art style. 

3. KLAUS

Hands down, this is a great Christmas movie. Take away the animation and you have a charming, wanna say ground and authentic, story about the makings of Santa Claus. With memorable and likable characters, a nice escalation in terms of the plot, and moments that are/can be so satisfying, they can bring you to tears. A couple overdone tropes in the road that doesn’t make this the most perfected story, but those sincerely minor compared to everything else that makes this story the best. Now. Add in the animation, and you have a gold, nay a platinum animated story of the year where the visuals definitely enhance the story to a degree where they’re undoubtedly inseparable. The visuals alone is enough to check this movie out and it’s eye-opening when you learn of how it’s all done. Klaus is a film that did it’s job and then some, and I hope this will be well remembered as a classic holiday film for it deserves that status.

2. BEASTARS

I’ll be fair, I’m mostly referring to the manga and not the anime but since the anime premiered this fall, it counts. Because be it the anime or the series overall, Beastars has such well intricate world building all while offering a little something for everyone (violence, romance, slice of life). The story is well paced and even when we aren’t focusing on the main characters momentarily, Itagaki is surprisingly able to make every supporting/side character we come across memorable in their own way; like I said before, the city is much a character in this story. Oh yeah, and the mangaka is the daughter of Keisuke “Grappler Baki” Itagaki, that in itself is a treasuring bit of trivia for this. Everything about Beastars is enticing and Studio Orange certainly helped in giving this series more of a following.

1. GREEN EGGS & HAM

Well, well, well. Guess Netflix is three for three in terms of bringing its best foot forward among its few steps back each year. The best term to describe this series is surprising. Surprising that this is a Dr. Seuss story that got expanded a 13 episode series, that has fleshed out characters, fun hijinks, an easy story, lovely emotional, more quieter moments... on top of being 2D hand drawn animated. I mean, what else is there to say? Green Eggs and Ham is to Dr. Seuss what Seven was for Final Fantasy, what Friendship is Magic was for MLP, what watermelon was before a nice menthol cigarette. This definitely took the top spot because to me, it was able to bring many good elements from the previous entries and knot it all together into a well kept bow that I never knew I wanted until now. I’m genuinely glad this show got to exist the way it is and I am hoping, praying, that the second season keeps that momentum up.

That leads us to the actual number one which is

1. STEVEN UNIVERSE FUT-

Total Dramarama is now the two time World Heavyweight Champion, babey. Will 2020 give us a quality contender? Will the streak last another year?

Stay tuned, and always seek out the Good Stuff.

[sabazio]

I kind of had something planned for this post but it ended up falling through at the last minute.

Regardless! August 3rd marks my 7th anniversary on this account and I’m feeling a bit sentimental. I made this account fresh out of high school on a whim at like 5am after talking to eva-cybele because she had a mitsuru. I was nihilfists back then. Now I’m out of college, technically graduated. It’s honestly wild. Catch me still here after a decade.... (if tungler lasts that long lmao.)

I often ask myself why I’m even still here but despite it all I keep coming back no matter how much time has passed. I’ve tried a few other muses but in the end I keep coming back to him and this dumb as rocks community. I’ve met some of my best friends through here, some of them I still talk to, or have met irl. I’m so grateful. 

I feel like I’ve missed people but so many people have changed urls or moved on I really can’t keep track anymore. Just know, that if we’ve written together, interacted ic or ooc, then: thank you for taking the time. I love you, sincerely.

@dolgelo : This summer I felt like I was finally really able to bond with you---which is something I’ve always wanted to do but was never quite able to for whatever reason. One of my biggest wishes on this blog was to find a mitsuru who was not only passionate about the character and lore, but who loved akimitsu as much as I did. I just wanted someone to have such a pure love for the character, and be on the same level and I finally found her in you. (You’re the asami to my fukki. you’re a sunflower blooooming out of season.) Writing with you is honestly a dream come true. I love reading your thoughts and metas on her, plotting with you, your twitter content, and watching and talking about stage plays and audio dramas. Thank you for sharing so much with me, and for all you do. You’re such a joy clio, don’t let anyone say otherwise. Thank you for spending time with me! Thank you for being my friend!

@crossxskulled / @valorxdrive @jououpansa @zenkofu @rainylotus @qiedaji : I mean, you guys are The Squad. We haven’t felt as close lately, but everyone’s out busy with their lives and that’s okay! I think about you guys every day and I hope you’re doing well. I just can’t tell you how grateful I am that you guys picked me up, of all people, to come hang with you on your silly discord.  I’ve never met a group of people I meshed with so nicely without incident, and our chemistry always felt unmatched. It’s kind of silly, but I’ve always wanted a group chat and like we have, and I found it in you guys. The hours of fun I’ve had with you were some of the happiest times of my life. It’s going to be our one year anniversary very soon, actually! I hope it can continue for more.

@cast-r : It feels strange to be writing this for you because I don’t even know you that well! But you feel like a cryptid in this community, HAHA. When you come around there’s just hushed whispers in my DMs of ‘cast-r’s back!!!’. Your writing is simply some of the best, and I hang on every word. I love your grounded, no-nonsense take on Shinji and I always will. You’ve been with us for so long it just feels wrong when you’re not. I... remember when you were going through grad school. I’m glad you’re like me in that you just can’t stay away, haha. (I look forward to seeing more of your Raidou.)

@miskick : My dear konapop you’re the other I just can’t see this community without. One of the only OCs I’ve ever truly cared about (sorry! lol) I love Karin and our characters have such playful chemistry. Her crush on him is endearing and I’ve always thought it was cute. You just put so much love, care, and effort into everything you do and to see your journey has been so inspiring. Your art especially!! Like?? Everyone go check out her art it’s so incredible! I just adore you kona keep it up!!! I believe in you!!! It’s also crazy that we only live an hour apart now... I hope we can hang out sometime.

@transiens : You’re not even HERE anymore but you’ve been with me since the very beginning--- and yet we’ve never done an actual thread with akihiko and makoto. You’re a friend though that I feel like I’ll always have. I have a lot of interests in common with you and I think that’s what keeps us together. I love talking FF with you, jojo, DMC there’s just so much... I miss your writing. I miss your makoto... and I miss our dantebayos... :(

@gamenu / @gooselullaby : meimei!!! The other forever constant in my life who I couldn’t do without. Akihiko found a little sister in the both of your muses, and they both make him miserable for vastly different reasons LAUGHS. The sheer amount of prompts you’ve sent over on Nanako were so many I’ve hoarded them all in my asks for when I could give them proper replies and never ended up getting around to them. But that kind of generosity thought and care is something I feel like I owe you 10x over. I love writing with Nanako. It’s one of the few threads where I feel Akihiko is truly, truly happy and I enjoy being able to write that side of him with you since none of my threads are ever able to attain that kind of purity. You’re not afraid to write the mundane, or the innocent that people seem to avoid. I just really love writing with you, even though you reply so fast I get whiplash. You’re incredible. Keep writing like the wind!!!

@enshijou  @fukukaichc @adievs : You’re all three honorable mentions because I’ve just gotten the pleasure of meeting you recently (with the exception of fukukaichc) and I might not have anything spectacular to say and no paragraphs to personally sing your praises but know that I’m just so taken with you guys. Your writing is so wonderful. Enshijou I love your Ryoji, I love his charm and sweetness, I love the mystery beneath him. I love your aesthetic and I love the friendliness of the mun. Your threads with Clio are some of my favorites.  Fukukaichc you’re another sweet mun. Writing novellas with our petty, stubborn emperors is honestly so fun. Turning the dash into a mess with not-so-crack is on of my favorite memories. I never thought I’d have so much fun writing with a persona npc. You breathe such life into him. Adievs I hardly know you but you’re a sweetheart and I wish nothing but the best for you. Your sense of humor is so funny, thanks for birthing clownsuru into this world so I can suffer. I hope we can continue our thread sometime because Akihiko interacting with Haru is something I never knew I needed. If Mitsuru is queen, then Haru is a princess.

You’ve been with me for what feels like forever.

@bleachblondbeefcake @maikoyaki @finalhxaven @succubischaos @tacitusauxilium : Exactly what it says on the tin. You guys have been here with me forever and I just wanted to formally thank you for sticking around for so long. I love you! I’m just glad you’e still here. Seeing you reminds me of the good ol days ;___;

I miss you :/

cheerfulfool windsaffinity p-a-p-i-l-i-o-n imperiousqueen crimsonxheadphones textsfromkatsuragi waning-atonement jokyoukou shoscarred ... and to all the junpeis and kens that have come and gone... bls. come back.

[moriartysqueen]

“Are you really a doctor?” - TJLC META / Scene Analysis

Today I would like to discuss a scene from Sherlock season 4 that has really stuck with me, because it seemed so unnatural. I am talking about the scene in Culverton’s “favorite room” before Faith appears.

In TJLC, which by the way got basically completely destroyed by season 4, it was believed that John’s profession as an army-doctor stood in as a metaphor for his bisexuality.

Unfortunately I do not recall who first mentioned/developed this theory, but to quickly summarize:

His profession as a doctor is a metaphor for being attracted to women.

His profession as a soldier/army-man is a metaphor for being attracted to men.

But John is an army-doctor, read attracted to both. And we have seen in many scenes that John is only his most authentic self when he can be an army-doctor, not reduced to just one of the two professions. The most memorable scenes to underline this theory are

1) the scene in The Abominable Bride, after John finds Sherlock in 221b.

“You’re not a soldier, you’re a doctor.” – “NO, I’m an army-doctor.”

 2) when he tries to appeal to Sarah in The Blind Banker, clearly disregarding the side of him that is attracted to men

“Might be a bit mundane for you. Since you are… a soldier.” – “…And a doctor.”

 and finally

3) when Sherlock returns for John in the beginning of A Study in Pink

“You’re a doctor… in fact you are an army-doctor.” – “Yes.”

 Clearly, John is only his truest self when he can embrace every part of who he is, including his bisexuality and often times, the only person her can be this with is Sherlock.

For our analysis today I will be going off of the belief that the entire episode of The Lying Detective is actually just happening in Sherlock’s (drugged) mind palace, which makes a proper reading of this scene a lot easier.

The scene of course starts off with Culverton, John and Sherlock entering the morgue, and then Culverton and John conversing about Culverton’s crimes, which Sherlock just observes.

It is notable that in Sherlock’s mind, John is figuring out everything that is going on without any help, since Sherlock is just standing off on the side waiting for Faith Smith. This supports the reading that Sherlock clearly sees John as a lot smarter than other people.

But let’s get right into the important stuff: Sherlock of course feels like he has disappointed John, since he couldn’t protect Mary like he had promised. Therefore, in Sherlock’s mind, any chance he could have possibly had to be with John seems to have disappeared. This makes what comes next very blatant.

Looking at Sherlock’s effort from The Six Thatchers to reunite with John; it clearly shows that Sherlock was hoping to continue a life with John. Maybe even now, possibly after a mourning period, he could finally be with John in a romantic way.

But since Sherlock had experienced nothing but rejection after Mary’s death, he now believes in his sub-conscience that all hope is gone and John isn’t (and possibly never has been) in love with him.

Because I go off of a reading where everything in The Lying Detective happens in Sherlock’s head, I read Culverton Smith as the embodiment of everything negative and vile in Sherlock’s head.

Culverton is a murderer, and this is how Sherlock sees himself after shooting Charles Augustus Magnussen. Culverton is witty, clever but also very eccentric. Remind you of someone? But also, since Culverton is very frank and sometimes even intrusive, Sherlock pictures him having a conversation with John the way he never could have, confronting him about his sexuality and his feelings.

The conversation goes as follows:

Culverton: “Let me ask you this… are you really a doctor?”

John: “Of course I am.”

John answered without a moment’s hesitation. This symbolizes how sure Sherlock is that John isn’t (and possibly never has been) in love with him. While John is answering, his eyes stay on Culverton; in fact he isn’t looking at Sherlock at all throughout the entire conversation. Which is very telling; Sherlock and his feelings obviously get ignored by John.

Culverton: “No a medical doctor. Not […] media studies or anything…”

John: “I’m a doctor.”

Culverton mentioning “media studies” is a metaphor for the fact that John and Sherlock just present themselves as “straight” for the public eye. So Culverton is basically accusing John of putting on his straight persona just for the media. Read: “He’s just a doctor in media”. In The Reichenbachfall we have the iconic scene of John reading a newspaper, which names him “a confirmed bachelor”, after which he tells Sherlock that they “need to be more careful”, clearly implying that there is something to hide and they need to change their public image.

Being a “medical doctor” of course has a practical/physical connotation to it, which can be interpreted as “are you also physically straight?”. So Culverton is basically asking John whether he is celebrating his heterosexuality physically (sex, kissing,etc.) or if he is just putting on a “theoretical” act for the media.

John just answers with “I’m a doctor”, after which he nervously laughs.

Sherlock obviously knows who John really is; he has always accepted him as his most authentic bisexual self. But he has also seen John try to convince others of his heterosexuality, which of course isn’t entirely true. This is why Sherlock imagines John to nervously chuckle, afraid that someone could catch his lie. Clearly neither John nor Sherlock are convinced of John being just a doctor.

Culverton: “Are you serious? Are you? Are you ACTUALLY serious?”

Whenever I watch this scene, this is where it always seems so over-the-top for me, almost like they are hitting you over the head with it. They WANT us to question John’s sexuality. Culverton questions his sexuality and therefore, Sherlock does.

Why would they put this scene in, with a character repeatedly asking John if he is serious about being straight, if we aren’t meant to doubt John’s sexuality and attractions?

While Culverton is asking this question, John’s expression changes from a confused one to a sad one.

Firstly, John might be confused because he thought he had already “proven” his sexuality (by marrying a woman and having a child) and therefore there shouldn’t be any doubt. But we all know that John isn’t 100% straight, he HIMSELF knows this, so he is worried/sad that someone could find out about that.

Culverton: “I’ve played along with this joke. It’s not funny anymore.”

…meaning that Culverton (Sherlock) is done trying to keep up a fake public persona (=joke). The whole joking in the earlier seasons of “is he your boyfriend?”, “[…] for you and your date.”, “Will you need two bedrooms?”, “live-in p.a.” is not funny anymore. It’s real, it’s happening. John’s and Sherlock’s feelings for each other are not a joke. And they have both played along with it for too long.

Culverton: “Look at [Sherlock]. Go ahead, look at him Doctor Watson.”

Culverton comically emphasizes on the word “doctor”, once again implying that John isn’t just a doctor. But also, Sherlock wants John to look him in the eye and realize it. And eventually decide – is there really nothing he feels for him?

I wanted to stop my analysis right here, because the rest of the scene is still too hard for me to read, I am working on it though.

The last quote I want to leave you with is the following, where Culverton addresses Sherlock directly (after avoiding him for the entire scene so far):

Culverton: “I think you need to tell your faithful little friend how you’re wasting his time because you’re too high to know what’s real anymore.”

There is two ways I’m reading this quote.

The first way: it’s a fourth-wall break. The writers want to endear us, the audience, with “faithful little friend” and tell us that because Sherlock Holmes is on drugs, we should be questioning what is actually true (in this episode/season) and what isn’t. They don’t want us to waste our time by trying to read these scenes literally; we get encouraged to read between the lines.

The second way, and probably the more likely one, is Sherlock telling himself how much he has wasted their (John & Sherlock) time together. We have seen time and time again how Sherlock tried to cope with/repress his feelings using drugs. If Sherlock would have instead opened up to his “faithful (read: always by his side, believing in Sherlock) little friend” earlier, they could have avoided so many things. They could have avoided John’s heartbreak when Sherlock committed suicide, they could have avoided John’s engagement and marriage to Mary and eventually John’s heartbreak at her loss. If Sherlock wouldn’t have relied on drugs as much as he had, maybe this all would have turned out differently.

But to summarize, John clearly looks miserable in the entire scene. Because both John and Sherlock know that John being a doctor is not his most authentic self. While the part of him that is attracted to women isn’t made up (not “media studies”), it’s not all there is to him. But his attraction to men (soldier) or moreover his attraction to both genders (army-doctor) isn’t mentioned at all in this scene, clearly showing how Sherlock has lost all hope that John could actually still be in love with him after everything that went down.

 Thank you all so much for reading. Season 4 has been tough on all of us but this is my attempt on reading this scene. Also as you probably noticed, I am still quite new at writing meta, so please excuse. 

If you agree, disagree or have anything to add, let me know.

[erotetica]

Anairë/Fingolfin for ship thing

How didthey they meet? In logic college

Whodeveloped romantic feelings first? Anaire’s period of ‘endearedby, but not quite in love with’ lasted longer.

Who istheir biggest “shipper?” earwen and finarfin got rllyinvested in That Guy Anaire’s Seeing, finarfin was similarly engrossed in TheGirl Nolvo’s Dating, it was heckening months before anyone realized they weretalking about the same four people. Findis, lover of screwball comedy, knew andsaid nothing. Anyway after the cards are on the table earwen is the kind ofshipper that writes good meta, lalwen is the kind that makes and posts obscurebut enthusiastic edits, and indis is the one who reblogs the tasteful ones. After~a month of inundation feanor blocks the tag.

Whendid they have their first kiss and under what circumstances? Im inclinedto say something mundane, like walking to somewhere or before parting ways in somehallway of the senate.

Whoconfessed their feelings first? Anaire probably, oncetheyre pretty obviously serious, in a type a ‘right ok we’re doing this then’move. Left to his devices Fingolfin would’ve waffled a little longer, in what might’vebeen a complex rhetorical courtship ritual he embroidered all by himself (it wasn’tit was a self-conscious filibuster).  I answeredthis more as a commitment question WHUPS. Move this down in the questionchronology.

Whatwas their first official date? So like if I wrote thefic it’d be to do with tirion’s marketplaces or the artisans quarter and I Can’tPick. Maybe both. Dinner and a movie except its food truckery and a juried exhibition

How dothey feel about double dates/group dates? Par for the course withsiblings, especially earwen and finarfin.

What dothey do in their down time? Theyre the kind to bringtheir debate club shtick home with them

Whatwas the first meeting of parents as an official couple like? Finweand Indis are aware of and fond of Anaire well before, individually and in thecontext of her dating Fingolfin. Officially I guess they attend a courtfunction as a couple, it goes diplomatically but well. Most of Tirion is awareof Fingolfin individually; Anaire’s parents, Noldorin nobility, are of adifferent political alignment, and the long-standing bit of beef they have w/ Anaireover it extends to him. It’s a weird dinner.

Whatwas their first fight over and how did they get past it? idk what the First One is About Exactly but their fights in general: again, rhetoricians,so they can probably go at something ad infinitum; I think they usually manageto retreat to separate corners before they get too acidic. Their subsequentconflict resolution leaves somethingto be desired.  

Which oneis more easily made jealous? no

What istheir favourite thing to get to eat? ? success??

Who’sthe cuddly one? What their favourite cuddling position? Hv useen

Arethey hand holders? Kakjfks yeAH

Howlong do they wait before sleeping together for the first time? What’s thecircumstances? Im! Saving this one! Bc I want to have a good answer and I don’tyet

Whotops? Fingolfin usually. He has. however. been pegged.

What’sthe worst first they’ve ever gotten into? IS THIS A TYPO OF ‘FIGHT’OR ARE WE TALKING REGRETTABLE BEDROOM DECISIONS. Anyway the insurmountable disagreementis nolexit and….role playing….OH WAIT FUCK there was also nearly a peyote-influencedfoursome w/ olwions.  

Whodoes the shopping and the cooking? The staff. No but uh, Fingolfinprobably can do the aesthetic equivalent of Americana foods. Casseroles. Anairecan reheat them.

Whichone is more organized and prone to tidiness? both of em but Fingolfinhas more of a tendency to Spiral. He kept extensive notes in college and couldn’tfind any of them.

Whoproposes? Fingolfin.

Do theyhave joined Bachelor/Bacheloette parties or separate? Fam i.know jackshit about this custom but am partial to Anaire having a batshit one,and Fingolfin is supposed to have onebut ends up getting royally smashed w/ lalwen in findis’ attic, he is still not-soberwhen getting actually married. so is Anaire but neither of them says a fuckinword.  These things happen immediately beforeweddings right.

Who isthe best man/maid of honour? Any other groomsmen or bridesmaids? FUCKFINE NOW I HAVE TO HAVE THE NOLDORIN WEDDING CUSTOMS RABBIT HOLE. FINE. I HOPEYOURE HAPPY.

BigCeremony or Small? Theyre noldor monarchy it was probably Excessive

Do theyhave a honeymoon? If so, where?  Probably alqualonde/somewherenearby. If not I feel like nessa’s grasslands are as vacation-spotty as valinorgets.

Do theyhave children? How many? *looks into camera like im on the muppet show*

[avani008]

And a final set of DVD Commentaries!

From “Praveśaka”

“It’s the mercury,” he announces as he approaches, taking her hands into his own. “It’s attached to the spokes of the wheel, and as the wheel tilts, the mercury tips over, and its weight propels the wheel forward!”

THIS IS MY FAVORITE CONVERSATION IN THIS FIC, SO WE’RE GOING TO LISTEN TO ALL OF IT (Sorry!)

But it took me so long to figure out Bhaskara’s Wheel was the obvious mechanical puzzle to use here: you are all lucky that we didn’t end up with “Amarendra is mystified by a cotton gin” because there are....not a lot of famous ancient Indian machines whose mechanics are available on the internet.

She laughs. She can’t help it; his exhilaration is infectious. 

Devasena finding Baahu’s engineering dorkiness endearing is probably one of those Avani-fic markers, and I don’t even care.

And, she considers, an advantage not to be missed.

“You said you had seen one in Ujjain,” she murmurs, gaze demurely lowered to their clasped hands.

casually prolonged handholding is one of my favorite shorthands for romance. 

Only a flash of white in the periphery of her vision lets her know her words do not pass unnoticed. “I did,” he says. “A pleasant visit. One of the places I most wished to see.” That’s just as well; Ujjain would be quite a journey to have to make from Kuntala and back.

The subtext of this conversation is not “cool places Baahu has been” or even “where is Baahu from.” As seen by the fact that Devasena’s first thought is to consider what a long journey it would be from Kuntala and back, it’s her trying out the thought of settling down in wherever he’s from. 

“A man who doesn’t have the good sense to jump out of the way of an angry bull he won’t fight off can’t have been around many before.”

I’m fairly certain Amarendra’s never been around any animals that aren’t horses and elephants. Devasena’s the farm girl here. 

He smiles again. His fingers are warm around hers, and as familiar, callouses and all, as her own. “We keep more milk cows in the city. Slower. Sweeter in temper.”

For once, Devasena doesn’t rise to the bait. 

“Kodumanan?” Devasena asks hopefully. They say the iron foundries there craft the best swords to be found in all the world, and she's always wanted to try one herself.

Devasena is every bit a weaponry dork as Amarendra is an engineering dork. I’m a little sad she never gets to make it to Kodumanan in canon.

“Good wine there,” and he chuckles, perhaps at a personal joke, perhaps because he knows exactly why she wants to see Kodumanan without having to be told,

This is super embarrassing, but while writing this fic, I was so in-depth in Devasena’s perspective, I’m still not sure what the heck Amarendra finds so many here. Is it just that Devasena’s like “YAY SWORDS!”? Did Kattappa get horribly drunk at Kodumanan and it was the most hilarious thing Baahu’s ever seen? WHO KNOWS.

 “Not as good as that of Singapuram.”

She pulls away. ”Singapuram?”

Again, the subtext isn’t “how dare you set foot inside Singapuram,” it’s “Are you insane, Singapuram is no place to settle down and raise a family!!!”

“I was only there in search of someone,” he adds hurriedly. “It wasn’t for long.”

By this point in the conversation, Amarendra’s caught on to its half-joking, half-serious nature. But that’s why he definitely wants to make it clear he’s not from there and she certainly won’t be expected to spend say, family vacations out there.

Devasena refuses to be pacified. “I hadn’t heard that Singapuram ever hosted anyone except thieves and murderers.” She considers. “And ladies of low repute.”

“They’re really much friendlier once you get to know them.”

“Especially the ladies of low repute?” she retorts, and he shrugs.

Most of this is just spite at the fact that so many meta jokes/macros have Devasena getting mad over “Manogari” and I....don’t think she’d really care? I honestly think that from her perspective, it’s in the past, and she’d respond to any suggestion that Amarendra would never step out on her with laughter. 

It’s strange; all the romances her ladies-in-waiting so read feature heroines who would descend into incoherent jealousy at such provocation, leaving their unfortunate lovers to trail behind them babbling apologies. 

This is true. Just read any work of Sanskrit poetry/plays. 

Devasena feels no such impulse. It’s enough to know he couldn’t possibly look at any other woman the way he is looking at her now. It’s enough to know no one has looked at her in such a way before. She never wants to look away.

That said, she is a little naive here, a little dreamy, but I’d argue part of the appeal of Amarendra/Devasena is that they make this sort of over-the-top romance work somehow. 

“Devasena,” he says, voice deeper than before, as though she is always Devasena to him and never Crown Princess, before reaching for her hands once more. 

I’m about 50/50 with what he was about to say here. This is clearly a romantically charged moment, and part of me wants to say he’d declare himself; and then, taking into consideration that they’ve just had this intense conversation about where he’s from, he might have been about to admit everything to her early. 

In canon, Amarendra only calls her “Devasena” after his identity’s been revealed, but even otherwise, he seems to save it for more serious occasions, with “yuvarani” in lighter moods. It might be a little off to have him say it early, but I like the contrast here. 

He’s done nothing but clear his throat, apparently wondering where to begin, when she hears footsteps from the stairs to the wall.

and 

He doesn't ask anything. He doesn't ask anything so pointedly that she feels compelled to add: "I refused another proposal of marriage. She disapproved."

This scene exists because otherwise Amarendra’s assumption in canon that “Devasena refused Mother’s proposal because she loves me!” comes off as bizarrely arrogant and entitled, almost. (I mean, maybe she just didn’t like the dude the proposal was for. Maybe she just doesn’t like Mahishmati. Come on, Baahu!)

"Ah."

"Perhaps not as kindly as I could have. But--" she breaks off, frustrated, seeking the right words. "It is impossible for me to marry a man I do not respect, a man who doesn't respect me. Who doesn't want me as his right hand as he will be mine. Who doesn't want me."

Also Amarendra just....randomly having Kattappa ask for Devasena’s marriage, and her only blushing and smiling -- after all the hullabaloo later about a woman’s right to choose, seems....off to me. Unless, like me, you imagine a preceding scene with Devasena literally dropping “MARRY ME YOU FOOL” anvils at poor dumb Amarendra.

Who isn't you, she does not have to add. It is not the most important thing about yesterday's proposal — Queen Mother Sivagami's careless arrogance still stings at her soul — but it is what she most wants him to know. 

I stand by the fact that I don’t think that in canon Devasena’s refusal of the proposal stemmed from any loyalty to “Shivu”--I think she’d still have reacted in exactly the same fashion even had she never met Amarendra. But I did want her to misrepresent it slightly to Amarendra here, so that, as I talk about above, his later reaction to Kattappa’s news makes sense, at least to me.

As I see it, he’s still a little confused here, and then, when Kattappa lets him know that this mystery proposal was (supposedly) for HIM, well, it’s just a sign from the heavens that this was MEANT TO BE.

Mahishmati and its anger is her concern; his should be nothing but answering the challenge she's delivered.

A lot of “Pravesaka” is a back and forth between Amarendra and Devasena, so obviously she does think of this as one last challenge. 

She binds Vasu's leg in silence. When she looks up at last, her stranger's eyes are wide, as though she has offered him a gift greater than any he would have dreamed of.

I don’t think Amarendra expected her to be so genuinely uncaring of social status to actually agree to marry him. Yes, they talk about earlier, but that could just as easily be a joke. This isn’t. He knows that. 

He swallows, says, "Devasena. If — "

This, unlike the earlier segment, is 100% somewhere where my!Amarendra was definitely going to admit all to her. She’d effectively just proposed, and I don’t think he would have thought it was fair to keep her in the dark at that point. But sadly canon must go on, and so Vasu wakes up, right on schedule. 

Vasu stirs and opens his eyes blearily.

[sulietsexual]

Hey, I love your meta and especially the ones on Angel as I'm huge fan. If you have the time could you write a bit of Angel meta? As long or short as you like, and any topic under that umbrella. :) Thanks! Hope you are well.

Thank you so much, glad you enjoy my meta ramblings! You know, it’sinteresting, through all the Angel meta I’ve been asked to write, no one hasever asked me to write one on Angel himself, so I might take this opportunityto do just that, given how much I love my broody, petty manpire.

If you have only watched BtVS, you wouldn’t think much of Angel’scharacter, as he exists mostly to be Buffy’s love interest, with littledevelopment of his own until Season 3. While Season 2 does expand upon hischaracter a bit with the Angelus storyline and Season 3 starts to lay thefoundation for his subsequent character development with episodes such asAmends and The Prom providing some insight into Angel’s character,it’s not until he moves to his own show that he emerges as the multi-faceted,layered and nuanced character we have all come to love.

The first notable characteristic of Angel’s, which ties very much intohis state of mind and self-flagellating tendencies, is that he is a very isolatedperson. This is partially due to his introverted nature but even more so, itlinks directly to his belief that he doesn’t deserve to walk in the human worldand his day-to-day struggle with Angelus. Once re-ensouled, Angel withdrew fromhumans, from vampires, from demons, from everyone really. He couldn’t walk withhis former allies but being what he was, he didn’t know how to integrate intothe human world, and as we see in the AtS episode Are You Now, Or Have You EverBeen, the few times he has tried, it has failed spectacularly.

This is one of the reasons why Buffy was so pivotal for him, why shewas so important and such a turning point for him as a character and as aperson. Buffy was the first person who brought Angel into the human world and kepthim there. In Buffy, he found another isolated person, someone who, likehim, couldn’t quite fit into either world because she walked the line betweenboth. While Angel has made human connections before, Buffy was the first personto truly ground him in the human world. She gave him light and love and aboveall hope. She made him hate himself less, made him believe that maybe hedid deserve to live among humans, that he did deserve human companionship andlove. Without Buffy, Angel may very well have wallowed in self-pity, guilt andself-loathing for the rest of his days.

Angel’s tendency to wallow in these emotions ties directly to hisself-loathing and his suicidal tendencies, neither of which are often discussedin the fandom, which is interesting because both are big parts of hispersonality. Given the presence of his soul, making him feel two centuriesworth of guilt over what he did as Angelus, it’s unsurprising that Angel has aself-destructive/suicidal streak and over the course of both shows we see himvery willing to end his own life, whether selfishly motivated by guilt (BtVSAmends) or in order to save another person (AtS The Trial). It’s quite sad tothink about and paints Angel in a very tragic light, as an almost Byronic hero.

This is where Angel’s quest for redemption stems from, or rather, hisdesire to do good in the world, his if nothing we do matters, then all thatmatters is what we do mantra. With a soul, Angel cares deeply for humanity,cares for people, for his friends and he genuinely strives to make a differencein the world. Partially spurned on by his guilt, partially motivated by theevil he sees and wishes to eliminate, much of Angel’s journey and arc isconsumed by his fight to make a difference, his desire to improve the world.Because he struggles day-to-day with keeping his evil side in check, he has atendency to become very disappointed and disillusioned with humanity whenconfronted with the evil in the world, when forced to see that humans are, well,human, that they fail and hurt and kill and commit evil. Angel is a verygood person and as such he holds humanity to a very high standard.

On the flip-side, there is also a true darkness to Angel, a sadistic,pragmatic and cruel side which genuinely enjoys inflicting pain, in mentallytorturing people and which can cut him off from his warmer emotions and turn him intoa cold and unfeeling person. This is the side which is let loose andexaggerated when he is Angelus, when he loses the control, empathy and moralitywhich come with a soul. I’ve said this before but Angel isn’t dark because ofAngelus, Angelus is dark because of Angel. The extremity of Angeluscomes about because Angel himself has a real, genuine darkness in him andwithout a soul this darkness goes unchecked, runs amok and brings out a trulyterrifying and evil persona. Part of Angel’s struggle and arc is keeping thisside to him in check, even with a soul, and it only serves to make him moreendearing when we watch him control his darker impulses.

Despite being such an isolated character, Angel is the best version ofhimself when he has people in his life whom he loves and who love him. As seenin Season 2 of AtS, when he loses these people he loses a part of himself andhis darkness becomes more pronounced and harder to keep in check. Beingsomething other than human, he needs people around him to remind him of his humanity,of the person beneath the vampire, the man and not the demon. Buffy was thisfor him initially and on his own show he has Cordy, Wes, Gunn, Fred andespecially Connor to remind him of who he is and who he strives to be.

At the end of the day, Angel is a fantastic character, well-written,beautifully portrayed by David Boreanaz and amazing to watch. I wish more BtVSfans would watch AtS, as they would be able to see the layers, depth andnuances the show gives Angel, turning him from what was initially a somewhattwo-dimensional character who didn’t really exist outside of his relationshipwith Buffy, to a full-developed, fleshed-out character, strong enough to carryhis own show.

[darlingpetao3]

Piece of You, Piece of Me (Harry Wells x Reader)

Rating: T

Summary: After comforting Harry through the stress of trying to regain his captured daughter, your relationship progresses... physically. What will Harry say when he returns from his time on Earth-2 when he sees your very pregnant self?

Harry was hurting.

Sure, he came off as a dick towards the team in the beginning (to be fair, it was mostly towards Cisco), but it was only because his freaking daughter was captured by the crazed psychopath known as Zoom. Anyone with any sense at all could see that. Even beneath all of his prickles.

When you would notice the negative stirrings within Harry start to surface, your heart went out to him, and you started to express your sympathies through small gestures. A hand on his shoulder. Rubbing comforting circles on his back while he tried to pull himself together. It was when you upgraded to doling out hugs that things took a real turn. It could have had to do with the newly heightened feelings of desperation or the unresolved and unspoken sexual tension that had been slowly kindling between you two since first meeting but...

Let's say his fierce and impulsive kisses were far from unwanted.

Throughout the search for Jesse and the constant battling of Central City's new explosion of meta-humans, Harry continued to seek out comfort from you. To keep him from going mad.

And you were more than happy to oblige, anything to help.

From this stemmed a blossoming relationship, one you mutually agreed to keep to yourselves. A sort of secret. Something private and meant for the only two people it concerned.

But on the day you and Caitlin were attempting to stabilize the breach to allow Harry, Barry, and Cisco to return from their Earth-2 mission, was the very same day Harry got his Jesse back. You suddenly worried now that his daughter was safe in his arms, you might never feel those very arms wrapped around you again. For all you knew, you had served your purpose to get him through those tough times. Through the stress, the loneliness, the hopelessness.

Thankfully, this was not the case.

If anything, it kept getting more difficult to hide the displays of affection or the late night rendezvous. This lasted for a good six months until Harry announced to you, to everyone, that he and Jesse would be heading back to Earth-2. After all, he still had a semi-functioning company to deal with back home. It was almost too much for your heart to take. You even contemplated leaving with him, but you knew couldn't abandon your teammates and your city.

The night before Harry and Jesse would return to Earth-2, after the defeat of Zoom, Harry swept you up and this time he took care of you. He caressed your skin with such tenderness, held you close to feel your heart beat in time with his as he paid such gracious attention to your body with his own.

You didn't want him to leave you.

Not after having just found him.

But Harry promised he would come back for you. He didn't know exactly when, but you were to rest assured because Harrison Wells was a man of his word.

It was the hardest thing in the world to see him leave through the breach. Almost as hard as seeing him in so much emotional pain. In the following weeks, the rest of Team Flash was very considerate concerning your loss as you were taking it pretty hard. It even felt like Harry leaving you was making you physically ill!

Wait a second.

A couple of quick pregnancy tests later and the results still weren't enough. So you went to Caitlin at the end of the work day, after the guys were long gone for the night.

“Caitlin, I need your medical expertise.”

Caitlin laughed. “What else is new, (Y/N)?”

“Heheh, yeah, um,” you said. “I think I'm pregnant.”

“What?!”

“Yeah.”

“Does Harry already know?”

“How can you possibly know that?”

“Oh please,” she waved a hand in your direction, “You two together was hardly a secret.” You swallowed a protest as she prepped you for an ultrasound. The waiting was unbearable.

“Well?” you pressed her.

“Well, you're pregnant,” she said with a smile of the sort that seemed to say, I hope this is the news you're looking for because that's the reality of the situation.

“Oh. Wow,” was you could muster in the moment.

Five months have passed and every day you think of Harry and the gift (he currently is unaware of) that he has given you.

An alarm goes off throughout the building, alerting the entirety of Team Flash of a breach opening in the basement of the Labs. Everyone arms themselves, as they prepare for whatever may storm through, but to the room's surprise, it's a familiar face.

That wonderful, wonderful face.

Your Harry.

Your stomach does flips at seeing him again, but you aren't certain whether it's from excitement or from his baby kicking inside you. Team Flash welcomes Harry with knowing slaps on the back and handshakes, which seem to weird him out.

“Good to see you, too, everyone,” Harry says, trying to locate you in the room. “But where's-?” When he finally spots you, his lips turn up with a soft fondness and his eyes twinkle. Just as quickly, his gaze drops to your very noticeably large stomach, and his eyes slowly grow wide with absolute shock. Harry stays like that for a good several seconds, the poor man, and proceeds to verbalize a string of nonsensical sounds while pointing to himself, to your stomach, then back to himself questioningly. You try to reign in the smile attempting to break loose, a cause from his adorable bewilderment, and nod.

“Okay, guys, nothing to see here,” says Cisco, now ushering the rest of the team back upstairs. “Let's leave the procreators to talk about uh... procreating.” Once they've cleared the room, you welcome Harry back with a long overdue embrace.

“Are you okay with this?” you ask. “It was impossible to connect with you on our end and my whole thinking process was that this baby is a piece of you and a piece of me, and how could I not bring something into this world that we made because naturally that combination alone is going to be pretty stellar and-”

“(Y/N),” Harry interrupts your endearing ramble. “While I wasn't expecting this upon my arrival, I don't think I could be any happier than I am right now.” Oh, it's like you can finally breathe again. Harry eliminates any and all worries with a single rousing kiss.

“Do you know-?”

“It's a boy.” Your precious Harry looks like he just got the wind knocked out of him.

“A boy? A son? I'll have a son?”

“You most definitely will.”

“Have you... been thinking of names for him?”

“Here and there. I like the name Jonathan,” you offer. Harry becomes captivated by your baby bump and runs a hand over it.

“Jonathan. I like it, too” he muses. “Little Johnny.”

~

Requested by @bartallenisbae : Hey can you write a Harrison wells(earth 2)x reader about harry and the reader secretly dating for a year or so and the reader ends up pregnant please

A/N: They may not have been secretly dating quite a year, but it was six months. Hope this was still okay! :)

[askmerriauthor]

I remember you railing against BvS pretty hard before. Have you seen Justice League yet?

I actually did get to see it just the other evening, yes.  Movie review and writing talk after the jump, because spoilers.

To its credit, JL is a far better movie than BvS.  That’s a very low bar to set, I admit, but the point stands.  That doesn’t mean it was a good movie though.

When I saw BvS I walked out of the theater thinking “Meh, it was boring but whatever”, only to become more and more angry about it from a writing standpoint as I mulled it over in my head in the following days.  JL garnered the same initial response but - despite my dwelling and pondering and scrutinizing - has not advanced any further than that same “meh”.  It’s a passable movie with plenty of problems (both in production and in performance) at best and just plain ol’ boring at worst.  The most generous I can be with the movie is to say that it had a lot of good ideas with very poor execution.

The basic thrust of the movie is that Batman feels guilty about the shenanigans he was up to in BvS and wants to make good by forming the Justice League to deal with threats now that Supes is dead.  The world has been getting progressively shittier since that event as society falls into a sort of existential dread afterward, contributed wholly to their iconic hero biting it.  Which is somehow what the baddie of the film - a shmoe named Steppenwolf - needs to enact his evil plan of evil bad death doom nasty bad.

Y’know, completely ignoring the fact that Supes was depicted as a severely divisive public figure in BvS that a bulk of the population actively hated, including the US government at large.

Anyway.  There’s a nonsense non-story about Steppenwolf needing to collect the three magical macguffins to destroy the world and the heroes need to join forces to stop him.  Honestly though?  Steppenwolf, as a villain, was utterly pointless.  He had no character, no involvement with the heroes, and spent the bulk of his time on screen only briefly popping in via teleportation and back out again.  He goes through the film collecting the magical macguffins, but for all the difference he makes himself, they could have just spared the character animation budget and made the macguffins naturally gravitate toward one another on their own.

Also - really movie?  Steppenwolf?  Really?  Of all the characters associated with Darkseid, we’re starting with freakin’ STEPPENWOLF?  I admit someone like Granny Goodness would have been a bit much for this movie, but we couldn’t have at least gotten Kalibak?

ANYWAY.  So the Justice League is put together from a ragtag bunch of misfits who overcome staggering odds, learning to be a team in the process.  Superman is brought back from the dead (because of course he is), Steppenwolf is defeated, and everything is hunky dory until the next movie.  Which apparently is going to involve the Legion of Doom rather than Darkseid if the after-credit stinger is to be believed, which just goes to show DC has absolutely not learned their lesson about trying to retroactively introduce characters in a big franchise.

I mean, seriously, who are we going to get in that movie?  Deathstroke apparently.  Solomon Grundy?  Cheetah?  Captain Cold?  Gorilla Grodd?  The general viewing public doesn’t know who the usual array of Legion of Doom’ers are and aren’t going to give one flying flip about seeing them shoe-horned together.  Especially not after the cluster that was Suicide Squad doing the exact same damn thing.

AN-NEE-WAY.  Justice League has a lot of trouble with its pacing and tone, with a clear breaking point happening halfway through the film when Superman is brought back to life.  In reviewing my thoughts on the movie, I keep coming back to that spot being where things really begin to unravel on the whole.  Writing wise, the movie has a hard time keeping itself steady as it constantly waffles between trying to be gritty and dour one moment, then playful and slapstick the next.  Apparently the film was handed over from Zack Snyder to Joss Whedon halfway through production which would certainly explain quite a lot, but doesn’t do much to excuse the final product.

We have a big ensemble cast to work with that the movie makes no effort to endear us to, on top of them being very contrary to previous depictions where the big three are concerned.  Bats, Supes, and Diana don’t act like they did in their previous movies at all.  Bats bounces between being  grim to actually cracking jokes and being the butt of a few himself, Supes spends half his time just sort of being there looking bewildered and the other half being incredibly smarmy, and Diana (along with the Amazons as a whole) had any-and-all character granted by her own movie violently siphoned out of her until she was a bland cardboard cutout.

Given that we just had such a great Wonder Woman standalone movie, this version of Diana really grates on my by comparison.  She’s dull, isn’t proactive, and spends the film needing to be goaded into being a hero by Batman of all people.  Bats is constantly lecturing and advising her on how to be a hero, a leader, how to not lock herself away from the world and others… y’know, stuff that Batman classically has trouble with himself and it REALLY SHOULD BE DIANA TEACHING HIM THAT SHIT SINCE SHE ALREADY DID ALL THAT IN HER OWN DAMN MOVIE AND BEING A RECLUSIVE UNTRUSTWORTHY ASS IS LITERALLY BATMAN’S ENTIRE M.O. IN THIS FRANCHISE.

Flash was fun though.  I enjoyed his presence and jokes, which felt a bit more natural since he is such a young character compared to the rest.  Cyborg was just sort of there as a plot device - dude literally just grows new powers and plucks meta-information out of nowhere whenever the plot needs him to.  Thor - I mean Drax - I mean Aquaman was… well, he was there.  Yep.  He sure did take up screen real estate without actually having any useful contributions to the story, setting, theme, or conflict resolution.

This may just be my own personal sense of humor at play, but there was a gag I really wish they’d gone for with Flash.  After he’s first introduced and the movie is half-assedly explaining his powers, he points out that using his superspeed burns tons of calories, so he’s always famished and is constantly snacking.  “I’m like a blackhole for snacks.  A snack-hole.” he says, while chowing down on an entire pizza himself as he walks.  It’s a fun notion that is never used in the movie beyond that.  At most he says “I’m hungry” about 45 minutes later and is told to go have nosh off-screen, but that’s it.  Since Flash is constantly zipping around from moment to moment, I really wanted to see him always eating whenever he’s not doing something important.  Like, every scene should have him munching on something different.  He’ll be chowing down on this big burrito in the background as the camera slightly pans away to someone talking, and then when it pans back he’s got a tub of Ben & Jerry’s under his arm.  Or in any scene where he has to stand still for more than 10 seconds, each time the camera cuts back to him, there’s increasingly large and varied stacks of discarded food containers scattered around him.

Or, hell, just have him share his snacks with the others.  It would’ve been super cute for him to offer Diana some ice cream and have her be genuinely delighted in return.

Except, y’know, that would require Diana to actually have character in this movie…

The strongest scene in the entire movie to me (and certainly to a bulk of the audience for how vocal a reaction it got in the theater) was right after Supes is resurrected.  He’s all addle-brained and violent because he’s still grave-groggy, so he starts fighting the League members.  As he’s being dogpiled by the rest, Flash kicks into superspeed and starts running around him.  The movie shows the rest of the world freezing in place from Flash’s point of view… until Supes’ eyes start tracking Flash’s movement ever so slowly.  That single point made for a fantastic “OH SHIT” moment that nothing else in the film managed to hit quite as well.  Unfortunate on the whole, but I will give points for that one, if nothing else.

Supes actually tries to fight Flash with both of them going at superspeed, which is a neat bit as well.  It’s clear in watching how they’re moving that Supes is indeed slower, but only just, and it’s more because Flash is so startled that anyone can begin to keep up with him - along with his own inexperience - that Supes takes him out pretty quickly.  The same can’t be said for the big bad of the film.  Steppenwolf is effectively invincible to everything the entire movie, including the heroes.  Attacks literally bounce off him without him even realizing they landed in the first place.  The League members do their best to fight him and will, from time to time, manage to put him through a wall or stagger him before he knocks them through several buildings himself.  But because everyone is pretty much the same level of invulnerable, the fights become pointless because they’re just knocking each other around through papier-mâché set pieces without effect.

But then Supes shows up and instantly trivializes whatever threat Steppenwolf was supposed to have.  It’s played like Awakened Neo verses the Agents in the first Matrix movie, right down to the whole “leaning casually away from a mega-punch” move.  Supes casually walks all over this villain without any effort whatsoever, actually leaves the fight entirely for a few minutes to go save a building full of civilians (by literally picking up the entire apartment complex over his head and flying away with it, because all effort at gritty realism is long gone), and then comes back to derisively snark “Is this guy still bothering you?” at the rest of the group.  And y’know what?  Even with all that, the heroes don’t even kill off the bad guy.  He gets swarmed by his own mindless Parademons for absolutely no good reason, because apparently suddenly a bunch of canon fodder minions that even Batman can take out in a toe-to-toe fight are powerful enough to overwhelm Steppenwolf?

The movie’s writing falls prey to two very common problems the comics suffer from, and it is purely a fault of the writers.  You’ll often hear people say “Superman is a boring character - he’s got unlimited power so he’s impossible to write good stories for”, which is the hallmark of an unimaginative writer.  The other common problem is many writers’ fondness for hoisting Batman up on a pedestal as this amazing genius who can do no wrong.  We get both here.  Batman is the driving force behind everything that happens and all other characters’ motivations, and yet is so vastly outclassed by their power at the same time that the movie struggles to find anything for him to do.  Superman is so beyond powerful that he makes the rest of the movie and its entire cast obsolete - he can do anything in this version through brute force alone, so how is there any danger or conflict?  He literally stops the destruction of the world by using brute strength to pull apart the three macguffins with his bare hands.

So… yeah.  Justice League has a lot of problems if you look at it any harder than just “open eyes, turn off brain, eat popcorn”.  If you can do those steps, it’s a passable bit of brainless fluff and flashy special effects.  And it’s still a superior film to BvS by a vast margin.

[no-zaku-boy]

DA:O Appreciation Week - Day 1

I love this kind of thing but don’t really want to put these questions/prompts on my woefully neglected writing blog, so haaaave some Dragon Age babbling~ (And as a reminder, my inbox is literally always open for DA talk, so feel free to spam me with your meta or tell me about your OCs or anything; I will eat it up.)

Questions of the Day:

How many wardens do you have?  Are they all from different origins, or do you like to do the same origin with different OC’s? I only have two well-developed wardens atm: my canon warden, Lalia Tabris, and my Lyna Mahariel (I’m still debating the name because I really love Lyna but also think I should pick something more original meeeeh, but that’s literally the only thing about her I’m still waffling over). I also have a few from other origins bouncing around in my head, mainly a couple Aeducans and a Cousland. I haven’t done much with them because I’ve been so focused on writing and re-writing my established girls’ campaigns, but I will get to the others eventually.

More under the cut~

Who is your Favorite Squad Member in Origins? Extremely obvious if you take one glance at my little space here on tumblr dot com. I adore every single companion from Origins, they will all always be my favourites, but Zevran has stolen my heart in a way no fictional character has in a long, long time, and there is no sign that I’ll get it back any time soon.

Who is your Favorite NPC in Origins? (ex: Wade, Anora, Bhelen, etc.) Shianni is probably the NPC I spend the most time thinking about, and I truly want her to be happy. Other fave NPCs are Bodahn, Anora, and Wade and Herren. And Isabela, of course~

Prompts of the Day:  

Your Warden and their weapon/weapons of choice.  What sort of strategy do they use in battle?  What are their favorite types of weapons? Lalia is a duel-wielder who goes for nasty little daggers covered in poisons. She fights fast and dirty. She’s not a good tactician to begin with, what with most of her experience being street brawls and alley scuffles, but she has a keen eye on the battlefield, can be where she needs to be at just the right moment, and is rarely taken by surprise, and within a few months, she’s learned enough to craft effective assaults, though she tends to rely on stealth and surprise whenever possible. She benefits from Zevran’s assassin techniques and Isabela’s duelist training but never can quite shake that scrappy, take-whatever-shot-you-can style even with frequent drilling.

Lyna is skilled with a number of weapons. While she opts for the bow when hunting and is a keen shot, in battle she prefers to be right in the mix and takes quickly to greatswords, though she also appreciates a good war axe and can maneuver decently with a shield if necessary. Having grown up with a clan that operated as one be it on the hunt or in defense against attacks, she at first expects everyone in her party to react to one another smoothly and is frustrated by their disparate fighting styles to the point that she enforces group training and finds that she’s a natural leader, if not a particularly clever one. At the end of the day, if she can’t outsmart an enemy (which isn’t uncommon), she can sure as hell chop it to pieces and ensure her companions cooperate with one another while in a fight.

Write about, Draw, or make a tribute to your Favorite Squad Member in Origins. It took me a long time to realize that I liked Zevran not only because he’s right up my alley both romance and general characterization-wise (charming, flirty rogue type with much more to them than you’d guess at first glance? sign me up immediately), but also because I had a lot in common with him emotionally at the time of my first playthrough, and seeing his growth throughout my game helped me in a very personal way. It’s nothing I care to talk about much right now, but in short, there was something very therapeutic in helping a suicidally depressed character come back from such a low place, and that, in part, has endeared him to me in a way I really, really didn’t expect at first. In fact, I thought I’d dislike him after watching his initial scene with Loghain, and I’ve never been happier to be wrong about a first impression. He’s an incredibly well-written character with a lot of depth, and it physically pains me when people write him off as nothing more than a spicy Latin lover trope or, worse, some sort of creep/predatory pervert (people who think this lack a fundamental grasp of his character and should go back, play again, and actually pay attention). It’s an absolute shame that Bioware has more or less shunned one of their very best characters at every turn, and I hold hope in my tiny fangirl heart that we will see best elf boyfriend’s glorious return eventually.

Write about, Draw, or make a tribute to your Favorite NPC in Origins. I wish I were in the mood to actually write a drabble or something for Shianni, but I’m just not, so have more babbling. She’s such a great character, imo. She’s defiant and stands up for herself and others despite being kind of a mess. Even after the horrific events of the city elf origin, she remains outspoken and demands justice, and I’m so grateful to all of the creators in fandom who have explored her story in ways that the game simply couldn’t since she was meant to be a more minor character. I thoroughly reject the epilogue slide that states that she’s murdered, especially when compared to Soris’ possible Bann ending where he pretty much gives up and abandons the Alienage and goes off to live with his new wife. Like, what the actual fuck? Shianni deserves better than that, and I headcanon that despite rubbing a lot of shems the wrong way, she’s an effective leader and comes to have a very good relationship with King Alistair and/or Queen Anora (especially in Lalia’s run since she pretty much ensures before she leaves Denerim that Shianni and Alistair are on good terms and is constantly checking in with Alistair from Vigil’s Keep to make sure the Alienage is being taken care of like he promised) and that while she’s Bann, the Alienage prospers in unprecedented ways.

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Juuni Taisen 8 | Netjuu no Susume 7 | Mahoutsukai no Yome 7 | Houseki no Kuni 7 | Girls’ Last Tour 7

Juuni Taisen 8

I’m fresh off the Hozuki no Reitetsu season 1 boat and ready to rock! Let’s go.

Atari? Isn’t that some game company???

I can kinda feel Nisio Isin’s motivation waning, like Dragon and Snake don’t really matter. Dragon and Snake really don’t matter, considering they’ll die later anyways.

Well, at least Graphinica makes nice ice effects. They must be pretty coo-what, you want me to stop with the puns? I didn’t even finish that one.

I wonder if Ufotable hires Graphinica for 3D effects? Those fire effects look familiar.

Ooh…the Dragon brings the court to its knees. The more I watch, the more I’m convinced these Tatsumi twins are the Beppus. (I think I’ve said that for previous episodes, though.)

Hmm. I don’t appreciate the fact I just sat through two episodes’ worth of monologues, but hopefully we can actually get something good out of this. Like a battle.

Can Duodecuple please do something more useful in this show? As much as I like to hear Hiroki Yasumoto speak English, Duodecuple’s a lousy “god” to the zodiac and a horrible narrator, since the monologues do everything for him. Even Navi does better than this in the manga…

Netjuu no Susume 7

Sakurai has a pink keyboard. That suits his name (sakura = cherry blossom).

Interesting to note they don’t use the kanji for “I” (watashi) or “you” (kimi). There are two different yous and two different Is used to imply different genders.

Hayashi has signs saying moratta (received) which CR translates as “gift”. Hmm…there seems to be a disconnect between those two words.

Frigglin’ heck. It’s like these guys knew I was reading Haruhi Suzumiya light novels not too long ago!

Asymmetry short, ponytail long, mannish (?) short and ribbon hair (long). That’s what those hairstyles are.

As I pointed out once, this is from a web manga. Meta joke!

Netjuu no Susume eyecatches make good wallpapers once aga-what? Who’s this with the strange bow in their hair?

Giant burger plush. I want.

Koiwai uses Windows, LOL. (Vista, I think?)

The subbers spelt “server” wrong. It’s weird, because they spelt “sever” instead…

Moll-Oh. Morii. I get it now.

Koiwai has a sister? (based on switched genders)

Koiwai is gonna fricking pull these lovebirds together, isn’t he? He already did it in real life, so it’s not like he couldn’t here, that noob.

The butterfly effect in the background, haha. Harumi’s AFK, people. Respect the AFK people.

Oh…dear. They put Mamiko Noto on double cast duty, which makes sense, but they put Tomoaki Maeno as Harumi, which…uh, suits that muscular woman. Yuki though…they cast Yuki with someone else. I think, from the credit list, the brown character who’s paired off with Yuki is called “Hearth”.

Mahoutsukai no Yome 7

There are some interesting parallels between Alice/Renfred and Chise/Elias…

That mandrake is so rattled…I like it. It’s cute.

Serously, what do you call the sheep-thing?

When you get the chance to, pause and read the note. It’s not proper English, but that is some fancy handwriting…

Holy No Face, Batman! It’s a spirit that looks like the internet group Anonymous!

Is the church grim a fairy?

Chise is such an otome game heroine. I’d pay good money for an otome game with her as the protag.

Houseki no Kuni 7

Snow is a symbol of sadness…

Cinnabar doesn’t have blobs of mercury around themselves in the OP. Interesting.

Hibernation in Japanese is literally “sleeping [for] winter”. The language really can be simple sometimes.

They made these pretty dresses, all for sleeping huh? That Kongo must like being surrounded by gems then…haha.

I know gems don’t have any genders, but I like Antarcticite already. His extremely bishie look makes him a contender for my heart. I heard through the grapevine Antarcticite was a fan favourite too, so that’s…unfortunate. (Although En’s quite the fan favourite in Boueibu, so what gives?)

Antarcticite reminds me of Rod from Cinderella Phenomenon. I’ve been working on that otome game as of late, so of course I’d make the connection.

Let’s be real: does anyone find Phos endearing?

I think I saw an image of this on Yoichi Nishikawa’s Twitter. Dangit, Antarcticite spoilers.

Uh…question? Is this work shoujo or josei or what? I get shoujo vibes from it because it’s all long leggy stuff like CLAMP. Update: It’s seinen! Shocking, isn’t it?

Phos and her bowl, it almost makes Phos look drunk, haha.

“I do the things I can as best I can.” – Nice quote…uh, Antarcticite? Or Phos?

Is Phos gonna fall i-spoke too soon. Completely anticipated this show’s direction right there.

Why does a sheet work on Kongo too? Humour? It definitely worked on me, if that was the case.

Antarc is such a daddy’s bo-I mean, gem.

Whoa! That was freaky! Did they just imply-oh sorry. It’s a hard topic to speak about on the internet.

I wonder, could I write…actually no. I think I’ve done that already. (I was thinking of doing an article about how replacing oneself over and over with different parts could easily make you a different person, but I’ve done that kind of discussion already in Next to Me.)

Girls’ Last Tour 7

Those pipes are CGI. My CGI sense is tingling about it.

This show is a Problem when on Normal Mode. (What I mean by Normal Mode was that it was easier to see when they were in the temple a few episodes back – that’s the single exception.)

Yuu: a worse photobomber than Yumoto…

I’d like to make a joke about how the arrow points left and they just said “right”, but I’d need a visual cue, dangit. Too lazy for visual cues right now…

I thought Chi would be really grumpy as she slid down the chute/pipe/whatever, but she’s having fun too.

The button colours are around the wrong way. What the heck happened to make them like that???

Potato powder? Y’mean, potato starch???

This kneading montage is quite obviously looped.

Oh great. We got Shokugeki no Souma in Girls’ Last Tour, for some reason…

[sulietsexual]

If it's okay, could you write a meta on harry potter? Not the series but the character. And maybe discuss some of his dynamics with others if it's not too much?

Harry issuch an under-appreciated character, which is somewhat ridiculous given thatnot only is he the protagonist but he’s a well-written and multi-faceted character,with a lot of nuances, a compelling backstory and great dynamics with many ofthe main characters. Yet parts of the HP fandom will literally hate on him foranything; today I ran across a post which blasted a twelve-year-old Harry fornot financially supporting the Weasley, ignoring the fact that, you know, he’s twelve and the fact that theWeasleys would in no way ever accept Harry’s money.

Harryovercomes a lot throughout his life, and this is even before the whole ChosenOne crap was placed on his very young shoulders. For the first eleven years ofhis life, Harry literally never experienced love, support, affection or evenproper care. He was often neglected, at times outright abused by the Dursleys,and I think these years and these circumstances shaped Harry more than thefandom tends to recognise. A lot of his stubbornness and refusal to seek helpfrom adults would have stemmed from this, as he spent eleven years believingthat adults couldn’t or wouldn’t help him. His generosity and caring naturealso probably stems from this, having experienced neither in early years of hislife, he has a desire to share both.

Harryalso has a deep aversion to fighting and negativity, and unlike Ron andHermione, he derives no pleasure from arguing or fighting. He gets genuinelyupset whenever Ron and Hermione take their verbal sparring too far, oftensnapping at them and telling them to let it go. Harry spent so many years in avolatile environment, so many years where a single wrong word or look couldproduce an explosion, that his natural instinct is to avoid conflict andarguments, which is somewhat ironic given the argumentative natures of both ofhis best friends.

Harry isa character who doesn’t change much over the series. This isn’t to say that hedoesn’t grow or evolve as acharacter. He definitely undertakes his own journey, and goes from an isolatedand insecure young boy into a strong and heroic young adult. But who he is athis core never really changes. He holds onto his goodness, his self-righteousnessand his “saving people” attitude until the very end. If you look at hischaracterisation in the first novel compared to his characterisation in thelast novel, it is remarkably similar. He is still a person who will walk intocertain death to save others, still a person who believes in bravery and doingthe right thing, and even if his faith in those around him has been tested andstretched – and in some cases broken – his general belief in the good in theworld prevails.

Harry is such a genuinely good person, like,there are few characters out there who contain as much goodness and forgivenessas Harry does. He is always genuinely outraged and upset at what he perceivesto be wrongdoings, such as Snape’s unfairness and favouritism or Umbridge’s reignof terror. He also refuses to kowtow to authority if he believes they are inthe wrong, such as when both Fudge and Scrimgeour try to sway him to theirsides. Harry’s genuine goodness and belief in what is right, in what is fair is one of his defining charactertraits, and it amazes me that a lot of the fandom does not seem to see or acknowledgethis side of him.

I havealways found Harry to be quite an isolated character, and I believe that thistoo stems from his upbringing and his life with the Dursleys. Growing up in anenvironment where he received no support, where he had no friends and no familymembers who paid attention to him turned Harry into a very self-sufficient andsolitary person, and if you look closely at his inter-personal relationships, itbecomes apparent that all of his close relationships are with people who arealso isolated and/or lonely in their own way.

Ron andHarry bond almost instantly when the two meet on the Hogwarts Express, bothdelighted to make one another’s acquaintance. Despite his large family, Ron isalso a solitary person, not being particularly close to any of his siblings andoften feeling fierce competition with them. Harry not having had a singlefriend before in his life is keen to make one, but even at this young age candistinguish between a genuine offer of friendship (Ron) and a friendship whichmay come with strings attached or an inequality within the dynamic (Malfoy).

DespiteRon’s occasional jealousy (which is nowhere near as fierce or as prevalent asparts of the fandom would have you believe) Ron and Harry’s friendship is anequal partnership, mirroring that of James and Sirius. Both Ron and Harryhave a penchant for trouble making, and Ron does occasionally come across assomewhat callous and cruel, but both have a deep desire to do good and believein bravery and heroics, all of which bonds them and cements their friendship. Ithink they recognise the loneliness and desire for close bonds in one another,and both give and take over the course of the friendship, providing one of thestrongest friendships on the written page.

Harry’sfriendship with Hermione is somewhat different. While again, he has bonded withsomeone who is quite an isolated character and he is close to Hermione andobviously cares for her deeply, his dynamic with her is neither as free or as easy as his dynamic with Ron. He and Hermione are close to one another, butthey are both closer to and connect better with Ron than they do with eachother, and this is evident whenever the two spend long periods of time togetherwithout Ron’s presence, such as when Harry and Ron have their falling outduring GoF or when Ron leaves them during Deathly Hallows. When Harry is withRon one-on-one it is still easy and fun, but when it is just him and Hermione,things are different, and it really does show how integral Ron is to the Trio,and how his presence balances the dynamic within the group.

Harry’srelationships with people outside of the main Trio also reflect this tendencyto bond with isolated and/or lonely characters, as evidenced by his closefriendship with Luna and even his romantic relationship with Ginny. Bothgirls are initially presented as isolated characters who gain friends over thecourse of the books. Luna in particular is a very lonely soul, and I thinkHarry’s fondness for her stems from him relating to this loneliness.

EvenHarry’s relationships with the adults in his life follow the same pattern, asthe four closest adult friendships he has – Sirius, Lupin, Hagrid andDumbledore – are all with figures who are quite isolated. Sirius, of course,being incarcerated for much of his life and having lost all his friends hasbecome an isolated figure, and his relationship with Harry seems to combinethat of cool uncle and nephew with the dynamic of best friends. As much asSirius does genuinely love and care for Harry, there is a part of him that does see Harry as a James substitute,but the same can be said for the way in which Harry views Sirius, as asurrogate parental figure, as well as someone who can provide a link to hisparents.

Lupin andHagrid both also provide this link in their own ways, Lupin more so thanHagrid, having been a Marauder and someone who was close to both James andSirius. Harry’s relationship with Lupin feels somewhat like a mentorship which gradually moves into genuine friendship. His relationship with Hagrid, ofcourse, is just beautiful from the start and develops into one of the deepestand most heartfelt relationship of Harry’s. Hagrid, too, is another somewhatisolated soul, spurned for his freakish size and odd attachment to dangerouscreatures.

Harry’s relationship with Dumbledore really deserves its’ own meta, I feel like entirevolumes could be written about the nuances, intricacies and levels of thatrelationship, but once more, it shows Harry bonding with someone who has hadtheir fair share of isolation and loneliness, and who can identify with thepain and struggle Harry faces over the course of the series.

All up,Harry is just a wonderful character, rich, multi-faceted and very endearing. Ihave always loved Harry for his big heart, his desire to do what’s right, his stubbornnessand the determination he applies to every task he undertakes. He really is awoefully under-appreciated character and I often feel that the fandom ignoreshim and overlooks how amazing he actually is, and that is a real pity, becausethey’re missing out on a great character by doing so.