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mossflowermouse · 5 years

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Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been reading ‘When Christ and His Saints Slept’ by Sharon Penman, writing my thoughts down as I went. Currently writing a proper review of the book as a whole, but for now I’m posting those original bullet-point reactions. It got kind of long so this is part one of three. I’ve also gone back through and divided things up by chapter, because otherwise it’ll get really confusing.

Below the cut, the civil war begins, everyone is picking sides (but not necessarily staying where they first choose), and I am emotional about the mess this has very quickly become for everyone involved.

Did a bit of reading up on this period – for historical fiction, I like to know more or less what will be covered, especially for Penman books since there's such close attention to detail (also because it can lead to some lovely dramatic irony, knowing how things will play out, and I don’t think of it as spoilers in the same way as other fiction). I’m now aware of the broad strokes – bits of the family tree, the ship sinking, some of the key events during the Anarchy. Also thanks to that one Horrible Histories song, I know Stephen becomes king but Maude is never crowned queen, and her son Henry succeeds Stephen.

I’ve read one other book by this author, ‘The Sunne in Splendour’, but fully expect this to be a completely different experience – I’d spent months studying and reading up on the Wars of the Roses before that, whereas here all the knowledge I have is from like half an hour of Googling, the family tree in the front of the book, things from a few Tumblr posts, and some other faintly-remembered facts about the earliest Plantagenets. I’m really looking forward to it, though, and fully expect to be destroyed with family drama, incredible historical accuracy, and the heartbreak of getting attached to these people while knowing the inevitable conclusion. Here goes.

Chapter I:

Oh no Stephen's got so many relatives on the White Ship

William’s giving me Edmund of Rutland déjà vu – there seems to be a running theme of Penman’s books opening with the death of a 17-year-old noble sibling of one of the main characters.

Oh no I got attached to William

(HOW did I get attached to William, he was alive for like five pages)

Just finished reading the sinking of the White Ship, decided to research it a bit more. I really ought to stop being surprised by how much of the stuff in Penman's novels is real – in this case, Berold as the sole survivor and William's attempt to go back for his sister were the details I'd wondered about. In conclusion: already hooked.

[then I forgot to write anything for a while because the book was too gripping]

Chapter IV:

Ranulf is fairly prominent in these chapters - according to the character list, he seems to be the only notable fictional character. When reading The Sunne in Splendour, I didn't find out Veronique was made up until the author's note at the end, so comparing the experience of reading about those two will be interesting. I like him though.

Note to self: look into William Rufus' death - Stephen and Ranulf's conversation about how Ranulf’s father took the throne has me intrigued.

Chapter V:

First impression of Geoffrey was that he was awful; a hundred pages in and he's done nothing to really change that. Currently resisting the temptation to Google and find out how much longer the characters and I have to deal with him.

I know Maude's not going to get the throne and it's making me sad because of her line about freedom.

And then listing the people she trusts and Stephen's one of them...oh you poor dysfunctional family. And the worst part is, it really doesn't seem like he's going to take the throne for his own gain - he's going to think it's for the best for all of them and he cares about Maude and all their siblings and cousins will have to choose sides :(

And there it is.

Chapters VI and VII:

Stephen: what other choice does Maude have but to accept my kingship? ...well, according to Wikipedia, wage war against you for twenty years, Stephen.

Oh god even Robert's accepted Stephen as king, I was expecting him to side with Maude. He doesn't seem happy with it, though - maybe a change of heart later on?

Ranulf's the only one so far who definitely seems to be on Maude's side.

Okay, yeah, less than half a page later and Robert's already explaining that his loyalty to Stephen is largely a waiting game.

Ranulf's going to get himself killed with his recklessness and open loyalty to Maude isn't he. And I can't even look him up to know for sure and prepare myself because he's fictional. Why.

Oh no and Amabel just mentioned he's seventeen, that's absolutely a death flag as far as Penman characters are concerned (William in this one, Edmund of Rutland and Edouard of Westminster in TSiS come to mind).

Amabel's like "well what does Ranulf have to lose by supporting Maude" and while Robert replies by talking about his betrothal, I'm suddenly very worried that the real answer is "his life"

(Also, I appreciate that much of the book up to this point has been dedicated to the bonds between family members who will soon be on opposite sides of a civil war. This is going to hurt, but I do like being invested in characters.)

Annora :(

Awww, Maude and Ranulf (and poor Ranulf's looking back on his memories of Stephen)

First mention of Eleanor of Aquitaine!

Ugh, Geoffrey.

UGH, GEOFFREY

And first mention of William de Ypres!

Ranulf is still so optimistic and he's going to get his heart broken.

And Ancel says Annora's married. Yup, I suspected she might not be as willing to wait as Ranulf, given the circumstances.

Hmm, Stephen's having difficulty with his court.

Any reference to Robert as 'Gloucester' is making me instinctively like him more after TSiS. (Also, even besides that, the king's relative Gloucester being one of the most powerful nobles is something that keeps cropping up in medieval England. Although Robert's the Earl rather than Duke like later ones)

Chapters VIII and IX:

Robert and Amabel have decided to support Maude! Yes! Now I'm wondering if this will be permanent, though, because there's still 750 pages and like fifteen years of civil war to go. Something other than Geoffrey is going to have to go wrong for Maude for the war to continue that long, because Stephen's really not doing well here.

More traitors in Stephen's court (Miles and Brien) - I wasn't sure at first if it was just unfounded suspicion from Stephen and the other barons, but yeah, it seems they're loyal to Maude.

Matilda's taking a much more active role in the war - first the Dover siege, now the treaty with David of Scotland. I'm enjoying seeing her grow in confidence and discover what she’s able to achieve. Maybe it's not that things will go wrong for Maude, but instead a case of things starting to go right for Stephen and Matilda's side.

Meanwhile, Stephen's being peer pressured into becoming a harsher ruler (well, it's more that several of the nobles are pretty much ruling though him. And the Beaumonts aren't happy about Matilda's influence. Please give me all the court drama, this is good.)

(Also I keep reading Beaumont as Beaufort. The vague similarities between them don’t help. Noble family with even more questionable ambitions than the average noble family and whatnot)

u g h

Poor Henry's having quite the turbulent childhood (though both Maude and Geoffrey love him, so at least there's that. Honestly wasn’t sure what to expect from Geoffrey, relieved he’s apparently a decent father. But considering everything else, the bar really is on the floor here.)

Maude, Robert, Ranulf and Rainald are so good. I've always got a soft spot for siblings who band together in a crisis (and because of TSIS, can't help but draw vague parallels between this lot and the later Plantagenet siblings)

Awww, Uncle Ranulf with Maude's kids

Adeliza's offering to let them land at Arundel Castle - based on what's been said about the situation in England (and Maude's main difficulty being the crossing from Normandy, with nowhere to land safely), this could really be a turning point!

Chapter X:

Just met Adeliza and I like her already.

Robert and Amabel's farewell has me concerned that something's going to happen to one of them

Well that went wrong quickly (they arrived at Arundel Castle a week ago and Stephen's already besieging it)

...wait, how did Stephen find out they're here so quickly? (Possibilities I can think of: Robert was discovered en route to Bristol (please no), there's a spy somewhere in the castle, Adeliza and Stephen had this planned all along (would also be upsetting, I like the glimpse we've had of her friendship with Maude))

Okay, so it's not Adeliza. That's good. I'm worried about Robert though.

"His barons seemed to take turns standing as sentinels between Stephen and his better instincts." This is such a good line and it really sums up my thoughts on Stephen's position right now.

Aw, Stephen's still fond of Maude. I can't decide whether this is more heartwarming or tragic.

“...it was only when he was on his way back to the castle that the significance of the Bishop’s words penetrated. Stephen’s allies made a point of referring to Maude by the title she herself detested: Countess of Anjou. Her own supporters accorded her the rank she much preferred, that of empress. And so, Ranulf finally realized, had the Bishop.” wait what

So does this mean Henry's going to defect or????

I knew he was angry with Stephen about not becoming Archbishop but still. Maybe he's just being petty and this isn't a sign of an actual betrayal.

Robert :)

And Miles and Brien are openly supporting Maude!

...aaand time for war. And there's the chronicle the title's from!

#I'll try to post the next part of this today or early tomorrow #and a proper coherent review eventually #when christ and his saints slept #sharon penman #everyone please read this book it's so good #(it also seems to have got me out of a reading slump)#iz.txt #penmanblogging

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yamayuandadu · 3 years

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Circe by Madeline Miller: a review

As you might have noticed, a few of my most recent posts were more or less a liveblog of Madeline Miller’s novel Circe. However, as they hardly exhausted the subject, a proper review is also in order. You can find it under the “read more” button. All sorts of content warnings apply because this book takes a number of turns one in theory can expect from Greek mythology but which I’d hardly expect to come up in relation to Circe. I should note that this is my first contact with this author’s work. I am not familiar with Miller’s more famous, earlier novel Song of Achilles - I am not much of an Iliad aficionado, truth to be told. I read the poem itself when my literature class required it, but it left no strong impact on me, unlike, say, the Epic of Gilgamesh or, to stay within the theme of Greek mythology, Homeric Hymn to Demeter, works which I read at a similar point in my life on my own accord.

What motivated me to pick up this novel was the slim possibility that for once I’ll see my two favorite Greek gods in fiction, these being Hecate and Helios (in case you’re curious: #3 is Cybele but I suspect that unless some brave soul will attempt to adapt Nonnus’ Dionysiaca, she’ll forever be stuck with no popcultural presence outside Shin Megami Tensei). After all, it seemed reasonable to expect that Circe’s father will be involved considering their relationship, while rarely discussed in classical sources, seems remarkably close. Hesiod’s Catalogue of Women and Apollonius’ Argonautica describe Circe arriving on her island in her father’s solar chariot, while Ptolemy Hephaestion (as quoted by Photius) notes that Helios protected her home during the Gigantomachy. Helios, for all intents and purposes, seems like a decent dad (and, in Medea’s case, grandpa) in the source material even though his most notable children (and granddaughter) are pretty much all cackling sorcerers, not celebrated heroes. How does Miller’s Helios fare, compared to his mythical self? Not great, to put it lightly, as you’ll see later. As for Hecate… she’s not even in the book. Let me preface the core of the review by saying I don’t think reinterpreting myths, changing relations between figures, etc. is necessarily bad - ancient authors did it all the time, and modern adaptations will inevitably do so too, both to maintain internal coherence and perhaps to adjust the stories to a modern audience, much like ancient authors already did. I simply don’t think this book is successful at that. The purpose of the novel is ostensibly to elevate Circe above the status of a one-dimensional minor antagonist - but to accomplish this, the author mostly demonizes her family and a variety of other figures, so the net result is that there are more one dimensional female villains, not less. I expected the opposite, frankly. The initial section of the novel focuses on Circe’s relationship with her family, chiefly with her father. That’s largely uncharted territory in the source material - to my knowledge no ancient author seemed particularly interested in covering this period in her life. Blank pages of this sort are definitely worth filling. To begin with, Helios is characterized as abusive, neglectful and power-hungry. And also, for some reason, as Zeus’ main titan ally in the Titanomachy - a role which Hesiod attributes to Hecate… To be fair I do not think it’s Hesiod who serves as the primary inspiration here, as it’s hard to see any traces of his account - in which Zeus wins in no small part because he promises the lesser titans higher positions that they had under Cronus - in Miller’s version of events. Only Helios and Oceanus keep their share, and are presented as Zeus’ only titan allies (there’s a small plot hole as Selene appears in the novel and evidently still is the moon…) - contrary to just about any portrayal of the conflict, in which many titans actually side with Zeus and his siblings. Also, worth noting that in Hesiod’s version it’s not Oceanus himself who cements the pact with Zeus, it’s his daughter Styx - yes, -that- Styx. Missed opportunity to put more focus on female mythical figures - first of many in this work, despite many reviews praising it as “feminist.” Of course, it’s not all about Helios. We are quickly introduced to a variety of female characters as well (though, as I noted above, none of these traditionally connected to the Titanomachy despite it being a prominent aspect of the book’s background). They are all somewhat repetitive - to the point of being basically interchangeable. Circe’s mother is vain and cruel; so is Scylla. And Pasiphae. There’s no real indication of any hostility between Circe and any of her siblings in classical sources, as far as I am aware, but here it’s a central theme. The subplots pertaining to it bear an uncanny resemblance to these young adult novels in which the heroine, who is Not Like Other Girls, confronts the Chads and Stacies of the world, and I can’t shake off the feelings that it’s exactly what it is, though with superficial mythical flourish on top. I should note that Pasiphae gets a focus arc of sorts - which to my surprise somehow manages to be more sexist than the primary sources. A pretty famous tidbit repeated by many ancient authors is that Pasiphae cursed her husband Minos, regarded as unfaithful, to kill anyone else he’d have sex with with his… well, bodily fluids. Here she does it entirely because she’s a debased sadist and not because unfaithfulness is something one can be justifiably mad about. You’d think it would be easy to put a sympathetic spin on this. But the book manages to top that in the very same chapter - can’t have Pasiphae without the Minotaur (sadly - I think virtually everything else about Pasiphae and Minos is more fun than that myth but alas) so in a brand new twist on this myth we learn that actually the infamous affair wasn’t a curse placed on Pasiphae by Poseidon or Aphrodite because of some transgression committed by Minos. She’s just wretched like that by nature. I’m frankly speechless, especially taking into account the book often goes out of its way to present deities in the worst light possible otherwise, and which as I noted reviews praise for its feminist approach - I’m not exactly sure if treating Pasiphae worse than Greek and Roman authors did counts as that. I should note this is not the only instance of… weirdly enthusiastic references to carnal relations between gods and cattle in this book, as there’s also a weird offhand mention of Helios being the father of his own cows. This, as far as I can tell, is not present in any classical sources and truth to be told I am not a huge fan of this invention. I won’t try to think about the reason behind this addition to maintain my sanity. Pasiphae aside - the author expands on the vague backstory Circe has in classical texts which I’ve mentioned earlier. You’d expect that her island would be a gift from her father - after all many ancient sources state that he provided his children and grandchildren with extravagant gifts. However, since Helios bears little resemblance to his mythical self, Aeaea is instead a place of exile here, since Helios hates Circe and Zeus is afraid of witchcraft and demands such a solution (the same Zeus who, according to Hesiod, holds Hecate in high esteem and who appeared with her on coins reasonably commonly… but hey, licentia poetica, this idea isn’t necessarily bad in itself). Witchcraft is presented as an art exclusive to Helios’ children here - Hecate is nowhere to be found, it’s basically as if her every role in Greek mythology was surgically removed. A bit of a downer, especially since at least one text - I think Ovid’s Metarphoses? - Circe directly invokes Hecate during her confrontation with king Picus (Surprisingly absent here despite being a much more fitting antagonist for Circe than many of the characters presented as her adversaries in this novel…) Of course, we also learn about the origin of Circe’s signature spell according to ancient sources, changing people into animals. It actually takes the novel a longer while to get there, and the invented backstory boils down to Circe getting raped. Despite ancient Greek authors being rather keen on rape as plot device, to my knowledge this was never a part of any myth about Circe. Rather odd decision to put it lightly but I suppose at least there was no cattle involved this time, perhaps two times was enough for the author. Still, I can’t help but feel like much like many other ideas present in this book it seems a bit like the author’s intent is less elevating the Circe above the role of a one note witch antagonist, but rather punishing her for being that. The fact she keeps self loathing about her origin and about not being human doesn’t exactly help to shake off this feeling. This impression that the author isn’t really fond of Circe being a wacky witch only grows stronger when Odysseus enters the scene. There was already a bit of a problem before with Circe’s life revolving around love interests before - somewhat random ones at that (Dedalus during the Pasiphae arc and Hermes on and off - not sure what the inspiration for either of these was) - but it was less noticeable since it was ultimately in the background and the focus was the conflict between Circe and Helios, Pasiphae, etc. In the case of Odysseus it’s much more notable because these subplots cease to appear for a while. As a result of meeting him, Circe decides she wants to experience the joys of motherhood, which long story short eventually leads to the birth of Telegonus, who does exactly what he was famous for. The final arcs have a variety of truly baffling plot twists which didn’t really appeal to me, but which I suppose at least show a degree of creativity - better than just turning Helios’ attitude towards his children upside down for sure. Circe ends up consulting an oc character who I can only describe as “stingray Cthulhu.” His presence doesn’t really add much, and frankly it feels like yet another wasted opportunity to use Hecate, but I digress. Oh, also in another twist Athena is recast as the villain of the Odyssey. Eventually Circe gets to meet Odysseus’ family, for once interacts with another female character on positive terms (with Penelope, to be specific) and… gets together with Telemachus, which to be fair is something present in many ancient works but which feels weird here since there was a pretty long passage about Odysseus describing him as a child to Circe. I think I could live without it. Honestly having her get together with Penelope would feel considerably less weird, but there are no lesbians in the world of this novel. It would appear that the praise for Song of Achilles is connected to the portrayal of gay relationships in it. Can’t say that this applies to Circe - on this front we have an offhand mention of Hyacinth's death. which seems to serve no real purpose other than establishing otherwise irrelevant wind god is evil, and what feels like an advert for Song of Achilles courtesy of Odysseus, which takes less than one page. Eventually Circe opts to become mortal to live with Telemachus and denounces her father and… that’s it. This concludes the story of Circe. I don’t exactly think the original is the deepest or greatest character in classical literature, but I must admit I’d rather read about her wacky witch adventures than about Miller’s Circe. A few small notes I couldn’t fit elsewhere: something very minor that bothered me a lot but that to be honest I don’t think most readers will notice is the extremely chaotic approach to occasional references to the world outside Greece - Sumer is randomly mentioned… chronologically after Babylon and Assyria, and in relation to Persians (or rather - to Perses living among them). At the time we can speak of “Persians” Sumerian was a dead language at best understood by a few literati in the former great cities of Mesopotamia so this is about the same as if a novel about Mesopotamia mentioned Macedonians and then completely randomly Minoans at a chronologically later point. Miller additionally either confused or conflated Perses, son of Perseus, who was viewed positively and associated with Persia (so positively that Xerxes purportedly tried to use it for propaganda purposes!) with Perses the obscure brother of Circe et. al, who is a villain in an equally obscure myth casting Medea as the heroine, in which he rules over “Tauric Chersonese,” the Greek name of a part of Crimea. I am honestly uncertain why was he even there as he amounts to nothing in the book, and there are more prominent minor children of Helios who get no mention (like Aix or Phaeton) so it’s hard to argue it was for the sake of completion. Medea evidently doesn’t triumph over him offscreen which is his sole mythical purpose. Is there something I liked? Well, I’m pretty happy Selene only spoke twice, considering it’s in all due likeness all that spared her from the fate of receiving similarly “amazing” new characterization as her brother. As is, she was… okay. Overall I am definitely not a fan of the book. As for its purported ideological value? It certainly has a female main character. Said character sure does have many experiences which are associated with women. However, I can’t help but think that the novel isn’t exactly feminist - it certainly focuses on Circe, but does it really try to “rehabilitate” her? And is it really “rehabilitation” and feminist reinterpretation when almost every single female character in the book is the same, and arguably depicted with even less compassion than in the source material? It instead felt like the author’s goal is take away any joy and grandeur present in myths, and to deprive Circe of most of what actually makes her Circe. We don’t need to make myths joyless to make them fit for a new era. It’s okay for female characters to be wacky one off villains and there’s no need to punish them for it. A book which celebrates Circe for who she actually is in the Odyssey and in other Greek sources - an unapologetic and honestly pretty funny character - would feel much more feminist to me that a book where she is a wacky witch not because she feels like it but because she got raped, if you ask me.

Circe evidently having the time of her life, by Edmund Dulac (public domain)

#circe #madeline miller #greek mythology #madeline miller circe

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popculturebuffet · 3 years

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Donald Duck by Carl Barks and Don Rosa Review/Analysis: Super Snooper and Super Snooper Strikes Again!

Much like Death, Taxes and Thanos this review was inevitible. It WAS made possible by patreon, and friend of the blog Weirdkev 27, and comissions are open and while my schedule is packed I will always make room for paid work. 5 dollars an issue or episode, 3 for smaller stories like these here.

But even if Kev hadn’t paid me to go ahead and cover these, I would have eventually. As i’ve been candid about in my reviews I love superhero comics, it’s one of my faviorite genres and the possiblities are near endless: from Mutankind choosing to terraform mars to give our solar system a captial and a bunch of lost mutants from a hell dimension a home, to a duck trapped in a world he never made trying to make it as a PI, to two mismatched bestfriends trying to start a buisness together with one from the future and the other the middle of a legacy hero sandwitch. There’s a million stories i’ll never stop being excited to read as they develop and a million more i’ve yet to experince. Just this week I read an old Shang Chi story where he and his buddy Reston have to ride thomas the tank engine through a madmans wonderland then have ot jump off before he takes them off a cliff.

It’s more insane than it sounds and i’ll defenitley be covering all three issues at some point because it’s gloriously and intentionally batshit. Point is I have a deep abiding love of superhero comics.

Not everyone shares that love and it’s understandable why: not everyone likes superheroes, the genre has had some HEAVY periods of decline such as the 90′s or stretches of the 2010′s, characters can have bad runs, and some can go decades without a meaningful appearance or be killed off for shock value. The industry is flawed and i’ts something I have to put up with to get to the creamy middle.

So I do love me a good superhero parody: The Tick and The Venture Bros are the prime examples of this to me,from the former juxtopising grim viglante parody Overkill with his sidekick, a talking boat whose his roomate and room, to the latter breaking down the fight of good vs evil into a beuacratiic system of scheduling deisgned to keep collateral damage down, heroes and villians matched to the proper weight class, and costumed villiany thriving.

So why do I bring all this up: simple, two of the best writers of duck comics both parodied the genre and both HATED it.

But I sympathize with both: Barks was a writer during the Golden Age when this story was published and Silver Age after. He worked on gutbusting comedy stories and painstaking, groundbreaking, fantastical adventures.. that were frequently outsold by Superman who majored in doing impossible shit. And this was before he went off the rails and got a pope hat. And for those of you who haven’t been blessed with this image.. welllll

Your welcome.

Rosa likewise had to put up with his works being ignored but for even MORE aggrivating reasons: Don Rosa’s work mostly came out during the Dark Age of Comics. Aka this kind of nonsense

I mean.. it’s HARD to have your painstaking masterpieces and tributes to your idol be dismissed as “kiddie garbage”.. while some asshole who can’t be bothered to draw well, write a coherent story or do his work half the time to the point that the editor of Valiant comcis DROVE TO HIS HOUSE and stood there while Rob got his work done for a crossover they were doing, gets tons of success, his own company, and is STILL getting work today for some reason. I get why Don Rosa’s bitter. But it’s how he’s expresed it that’s always bothered me.

See i’ve made no secret in the past that Don Rosa’s clear hatred of superheros bothers me. It’s the reason Kev wanted me to review this, and it’s the reason this review was inevitible. I’ve brought it up in my life and times reviews.. and with good reason as he has a bad habit of randomly dunking on superhero comics in his commentary, even when it’s not really related to the chapter itself.

And sometimes.. not so randomly...

You can see the pattern by now: it’s not just that he dose’nt like superhero comics.. it’s that he’s a condescending dick about it: he can’t fathom someone liking a thing he hates.. so he assumes the people who like it are all morons and he’s oh so clever and oh so much better for liking the comics he does and wants everyone to know it. It’s one thing not to like something, diffrent strokes for diffrent folks. I for instance have zero intrest in miraculous ladybug due to using a lot of convestions in stories I cannot stand.. but i’m not going to begrudge someone for liking it. I don’t tell my good friend @jess-the-vampire she’s some stupid plebian for liking it. I just go on with my life and let her enjoy her show because that’s what a reasonable person does. I don’t like being attacked or called stupid.. because i happen to enjoy more than one fucking genre of comic book. And if you thought his thoughts were less smug and more resonable when we got to the notes for this story itself...

Okay so since this is such a monumental tower of bullshit i’m going to need to break it down with some bullet points

1) “Unwanted Superhero Comics”, while it was true they were unwanted post WWII due to shifting demographics, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby DID make comics popular again.. by adding the emotion and character dynamics you yourself pride the duck comics for. Sure there’s some clunky elements like sexisim, communists as a common enemy, and a huge dollop of angst.. but the duck comics also have dated elements like sexisim, child abuse and racist caractures. Saying no one wants something just because you don’t is just a dick move and confrims what i’ve already said.

2) “My comics sell better so they are better”

... but it’s my job to do so anyway so yeah, a comic is not objectively better because it’s a top seller. Your comic reaching top sales if it’s a non-event comic is a point of pride and something to be celebrated, but it does not mean a book is quality, as evidenced by the fact that Civil War II, Tom King’s Batman (At least for a while) and Secret Empire all charted high. A book’s quality is in the writing, not how much it makes, as evidenced by the tons of books that got cacneled real quick but went on to be cult classics or modest sellers that would later be regarded as true greats.

3) “My comics are better nyeh”

This one isn’t wrong if your thinking about say rob liefield stuff or pointless schlock of the time. He’s right there.. but saying superhero comics can’t match Duck Comics, Plot , Humor and Characterizatoin... welllll

So yeah you see why maybe I felt I had to cover these stories: to see what Barks did with teh concept of superhero parody and to see if Rosa could still make a good story despite clearly not being remotely obejctive about it in the slightest.. and given what I got the LAST time I covered a writer who clearly hated superheroes trying to satarize them...

You can see why I might be a mite skeptical he could pull it off. So what did Barks do with it and did Rosa pull it off? well that.. your going to hav eto find out under the cut.

The Super Snooper:

Starting with the master of Ducks, we open with this lovely panel:

“How dare you be literate, go out back and slam your head into a tree like I did till you can’t done think so good”

Just as baffling as his sudden Anti-Literacy Campagin is his reasons for not liking the Super Snooper

First off the “No man could be that strong part” is only because Terry Crews wasn’t born yet.

youtube

He sends the boys off to pick him some medicine for his stomach and the boys naturally.. take the first opportunity to finish the comic because yelling at a children your thing is better never works. If it did I would’ve screamed at my nieces “TEEN TITANS GO SUCKS EGGS WATCH THE ORIGINAL INSTEAD” Still it is Donald so it does track that he’d think yelling would solve all his problems.

The boys revel in Super Snooper and how cool he is before coming across an old messenger whose delivering a package to a place. The boys, being sweethearts, offer to deliver it for him and shockingly for the late 1940′s the old man is reluctant because it’s dangerous. I thought 40′s kids tire swung into barbed wire and road mountain lions while smoking a cigar, this is news to me.

He relents though because his back gets thrown out and the boys take a break before taking it to the cosmic ray testing facility by dropping off their comic.. only to leave the package to go get the medicine.. in teh same house as their registered dumbass uncle who naturally drinks it thinking it’s the medicine and thus gets super powers. Look i’ve heard dumber superhero origins.

Donald finds out about his startling new powers by.. accdiently ripping a lock off the door and throwing it through the floor... and after kicking his door halfway across the yard realizes i’ts not shoddy craftmanship but him having super strength, solidfied when he picks up a steam roller by accident saving a little girl’s nod, a gentle little jab at how heroes always lift up cars and stuff.

Donald’s reactoin to getting this power is “i’m going to have fun!”. And this.. is what makes the story so brilliant and an excellent parody: Barks’ Donald is a mirror to ourselves: a guy who tries his hardest.. but sometimes can’t resist goofing off. A guy whose often his own worst enemy simply by getting too cocky or underestimating those around him. A guy who can be a bit harsh with people as we all can be but genuinely loves those he loves, he’s just not perfect, as are none of us.

So while we all would like to THINK we’d become a hero when given superpowers barks shows that many of us.. would just fuck around with the incredible power. And granted since this story ther’es been plenty of deconstructions of this, even as early as Spider-Man having Peter NOT become a hero right away and have to learn a very hard lesson with Uncle Ben’s death to get on the right path.

But despite all the similar stories both serious and not so much since... this still is great simply because it uses Donald’s character. Of COURSE Donald would decide rather than do heroism for the common good, to fuck around with his powers first. That’s who he is. He’s constantly powerless in his life putting up with rich assholes like gladstone and scrooge and an ungreatful and sometimes abusive girlfriend. When given absolute power... why wouldn’t his first instinct be to finally revel at having some power in his life. And how many of us can HONESTLY say we woudln’t do the same? I’d try to do good with it but i’m a moralistic dork whose grown up on superhero comics and even I would probably have some fun first testing it out. As the notes at the back put it Barks best tallent was putting up a mirror to ourselves and giving us the honest truth.. and the honest truth is sometimes, power corrupts.

So the next two pages are just donald having fun with it, doing superman style feats of strength.. but purely for his own enjoyment so he can properly show them off later once he’s used to them, destroying forests, bothering things that fly, jumping to the moon, slapping commets together and my personal faviorite.

Donald’s powers give out though and he takes a swig.. but naturally you can probably guess what’s happened. The kids also point out the obvious flaw in Donald’s philosphy: the kids don’t BLEIVIE the snooper could do what he could, it’s just good fun. While Barks may of disliked superhero comics he got why kids liked them, and simply was having some fun with the conventions and with his own main character.

So the story ends as you’d expect.. with Donald running into a wall, conking out and forgetting his powered stint, and the boys deciding they shoudln’t leave the comics around where the grown ups can get them.

This story.. is great. It’s a short one, but it has a lot of fun spoofing a typical origin story simply by letting donald be donald and the feats of strength type thing common for superman stories before and after this. It’s a genuinely witty bit of parody and still fun despite the gallons of superhero parodies since. It’s simple.. but effective. Now let’s see how Old Man Yells at Superhero Comics does it.

The Super Snooper Strikes Again

As you can probably guess this one’s a sequel to the original, this one published overseas in january 1992 and over here a year later.

Just out of curiosity I did check out what books the big two had out that month just to see the good and bad out there. And honestly... there really wasn’t THAT much notably bad I could gather from what titles I looked at. At most we have Scott Lobdells’ x-men, which is more eh and more notable because the man himself is a sexually harassing douchebag, a lukewarm one month spider-man event and Rob LIefield’s X-Force before he left to make “this book but somehow worse” with Youngblood. Good stuff wise...almost EVERY good comic I can think of that either started it’s run in the 80′s or had it’s run leak into the early part of the 90′s is present and accounted for. I’m not joking nor did I plan this, I genuinely looked up what books both Marvel and Dc had released that month:

Marvel had Bill and Ted’s Excellent Comic Book (Which while not a superhero comic and the kind Rosa would likely enjoy, still deserves mentoning because it’s most triumpahnt and deserves your time post haste) , Mark Gruenwald’s Captain America and Quasar, Peter David’s Incredible Hulk and X-Factor (Which was only on issue 3 of his run no less), Gregory Wright and Dwane McDuffie’s Deathlok, Alan Davis’ Excalibur, and Fabian Niceizas New Warriors.

DC meanwhile had less, especially since Titans Hunt was going on, but still had Justice League International and it’s sister series Justice League Europe, Grant Morrrrisons team and creator definging run on Doom Patrol, specifically the arc about their old enemy Mr. Nobody running for president using a bike that thanks to being ridden while on lsd, makes people high like their on lsd, and the final arc of George Perez’ landmark run on wonder woman. So yeah it wasn’t as bad as it would be soon enough.

I did check a year later just to be fair and Marvel was about the same, all those runs still going and Sensational She Hulk joining them, while DC had admitely gotten worse, with only the addition of Mark Waid’s run on the Flash to comfort it, though given the issue that month happened to be part of the utterly legendary, destined to be covered on this blog story “The Return of Barry Allen” that made me a lifelong flash fan, it’s still one hell of an addition.

SO he did have a little to stand on, but not nearly as much as he thought: one company going to crap is sadly not unusual and Marvel and DC often trade turns and fortunes: sometimes both being good or bad othertimes one being markedly worse. We weren’t in the worst of it just yet is what i’m saying and i’ts clear a lot of this came from his supreroirty complex.

And tha’ts evident in the setup which is almost the same as barks: Donald happens acorss the boys reading super snooper and berates them for it. The diffrence.. is tone and context. Context wise this time Super Snooper has been upgraded for the dark age to destroy whole galaxies and what not, while Donald’s gone from ranting about them being unrelaistic, to mindless with heroes “only solving things with violence”, and wondering why they dont’ read Marvin Monkey instead. As you can tell Rosa’s commentary here is about as subtle as a brick to the head with SUPERHERO COMICS BAD DONALD DUCK GOOD written on it in crayon.

It dosen’t work on a number of levels: the first is Snooper isn’t really ACTING like a 90′s edgelord: while the plotless part is accurate, snooper here throrws galxies around and what not like a silver age superman still. Gritty heroes killed people, brooded a lot, grimaced constantly and used lots of guns that were as big as they were poorly drawn. They were about “doing what real heroes didn’t” and other such edgelord nonsense> There’s a LOT to parody or deconstruct there.... but he just choooses to act like they didn’t really change much when they absolutely had gotten worse after getting better. And you could say “well this is a family work he coudln’t do that”, but A) the boys are just describing it and B),Calvin and Hobbes is also family friendly.. and did tons of damming satire on the dark age of comcis as it was starting, with this strip sticking out most in my mind

This genuinely points out how this stuff was still being marketed to kids despite haivng grown out of it and how mindless it came off. It’s good stuff

This really isn’t.. and more than that it isn’t HELPING HIS CAUSE. Any kid who likes Superhero comics and picked this up because they either ALSO like Donald Duck or they saw him striking a super pose is going to put this down once they realize it’s telling them “oh your comics are bad mine are good I am the ungod”. Kids don’t LIKE being told their taste is bad and will usually reject being told their wrong. Kids who did grow up with terrible comics will have some nostalgia for them but if a comci was bad.. you grow past liking it. I LIKED Avengers: Disassembled when I first read it, and later grew to hate it once I had proper context and grew to care for the characters it treated like garbage. Opinons change, tastes change and people change.

The emotional core of the story.. isn’t bad though. Huey, Dewey or Louie badmouths Donald for being a grown man as a messenger boy which while harsh... isn’t exactly unfair given he was insulting their taste in reading, though he does regret it.

So Donald WANTS to become super himself in order to prove himself to them by becoming a superhero and happens to be delivering the same isotope from last time and thus tries it since that’s how superheroes happen.

The rest of the story from here is honestly pretty repteitive: Donald tries to do a feat, and the boys try to get him to rest because they assume he’s gone crazy from the stress

Just in the barks rosa canon and just off the top of my head you boy shave been back in time, to space multiple times, atlantis, the lost city of el dorado, found a blow gun, fought a vodoo zombie, met ghosts and in the barks story DIRECTLY before the original super snooper saga, found an actual real life unicorn. But the idea of Donald becoming superman no no no that’s too far that’s fiction.

It feels GROSSLY out of character especially since Donald’s the skeptic and the boys, while analytical don’t throw things out right away. And even if they DID think he was cracked.. they’d be LOOKING FOR HIMN. They just sorta sit there while he does stuff and then try to get him to bed. These aren’t passive children, their McDucks god dammit.

But yeah it just.. goes on like this: Donald tries a super feat.. only for rosa to say “Well actually that woudlnt’ work or it’d suck”

First up is super speed which Donald realizes he’d feel all the time running around the world and it isn’t worth it. And this isn’t a bad deconstruction, and even came a year before one of the best uses of this kind of logic.. which came out ironically enough exactly a month before the american release of this story:

This by the way is from X-Factor. Damn fine run and yet AANOTHER comic i’ll no doubt talk about someday.

The rest though is just stuff like “an undersea ilsnad would sink” or “an ocean liner would snap in half” which.. of course they would. it’s just not.. funny or engaging to have donald constantly thought insane for his powers or see donald punished for.. wanting to be loved by his kids, but ti’s not paid for enough pathos either. It’s hard to tell what Rosa’s trying to GO for here. the only really GREAT moment of the comic is when the ocean liner is about to crash into the city and Donald pulls his dwindling power into saving it for the kids sake. It’s truly godo superheroic stuff from a guy who could never stand them. Intresting ain’t it?

So the boys find Donald, he looses hiss memory of the events again and they assume he just jumped off the roof. And again i’ts just not fun to watch someone think someone’s going slowly insane when their TRYING to help them or be incredibly stupid and unecessarily skepteical. I get in real life they’d have reason to be.. but this ISN’T the real world, this world has UNICORNS, SPACE STATIONS BUILT BY SCROOGE FOR MONEY, AND SEA PEOPLE. THIS IS NOT THE REAL WORLD DUCKS OR NO DUCKS.

We end on the boys shilling Donald for being a good caregiver, which is sweet but just feels like more “my shit is better than yours nyeh stuff” It also throws in some casual scrooge cruelty because Rosa has a really BAD habit of not getting that Donald suffering just isn’t funny if he did nothing wrong.

Final Thoughts on Strieks Back: As you can tell I didn’t like this story. Even if you don’t like superhero comics, which again fair play to you.. it’s just repetitive, not very fun and hard to read, watching Donald slowly break down and the boys act like morons. There’s nothing funny or clever and only one really godo scene of note. Rosa WANTED to stick it to superhero comics, but unlike Barks didn’t bother to understand them well enough to do it right.

And it’s not just Rosa’s hatred of superheroes that trips him up here either. He honestly just ISN’T good at ten page comedy stories, and really isn’t good with Donald’s misery, so combinging both and adding in a dollop of hatred to a genre he dosen’t bother to understand, just makes a mess. Rosa just isn’t as happy making shorter stories: It’s while why he wrote a FEW Donald solo stories, almost ALL his work is Scrooge based and all his best stories are likewise. He’s just happier writing bigger stories and going to exotic painstakingly locations than he is with slice of life nonsense> I personally like and can write both, but I get i’ts not for everyone.

He gets comedy, he’s written funny stuff.. but he often forgets Donald suffering on it’s own is just not funny. He’s used it for pathos well.. but here he just can’t strike the ballance between the two and it makes the story nigh unreadable.

And the saddest part is EVEN with all the things Rosa said.. I still went into this hoping it’d be good, hoping he’d pull it out.. and it just isn’t. It’s just a mess and while I haven’t read what many consider to be his worst story, sign of the triple disfink, I have a feeling this one is pretty close. It dosen’t ruin my respect for the man, but it does dent it a bit. It’s not the first time i’ts happened, it’s not the last but it sure does smart every time. Thanks for reading

#donald duck #don rosa #carl barks #the super snooper #super snooper #huey duck #louie duck #dewey duck #superheroes #dc comics #marvel comics #disney #disney comics #duck comics #ducktales #superhero spofos #parody #reviews #analysis

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nordic-language-love · 3 years

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Language Learning Log 2021 Week 49 (06.12 - 12.12)

Read 2x articles

Read 1x chapter of Meg meg meg

2x italki lessons (1h 45m)

Finished writing essay about oil

Wrote 3x journal entries

Studied vocab

Started making various Anki decks

Duolingo

???

Probably did more, but I forgot to keep track.

Applications open for the Bergenstest soon (the 16th!) and with that looming I realised I haven’t been putting in nearly as much effort as I was hoping for. I need to start making time for study if I have a hope of passing, never mind getting C1 in any of the sections!

I reviewed my goals and plans and started putting together a new plan. I think I’ve not been studying vocab as much as I’d like because my current spreadsheet format isn’t very inspiring or interactive. Also, it requires me to sit at my computer, which normally leads to me doing a million other things instead. So, I started creating Anki decks that I can spend a few minutes reviewing while I’m waiting for something to cook, or while I’m waiting for my students at the studio, or when I have spare time between English classes etc. At the moment I do Duo, but that’s reeeeally not gonna get my to Bergenstest level.

I also finished that stupid essay about oil. It was really tough, not so much because I don’t know the specific vocabulary but because I don’t know how to use it properly in a coherent sentence. Maybe I’ll just have to hope I don’t have to write anything about it in the real exam lol.

This week I turn 30 (!!!) so I’m taking a few days off. Hopefully I can use them to create a proper plan for Bergenstest prep! I’ve already made a rough plan, but it needs some polishing.

One important progress thing I wanted to mention was I spent a few minutes talking to my tutor about costumes and wearing wigs, and eventually he was like “do you mean *this word*? Because the one you’re using means floor.” And maybe a year ago I’d have been mortified and felt stupid and not wanted to talk again, but I just laughed and figured at least I won’t forget now. I call that character development ☺️

#progress report #langblr #language blog #learning languages

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soyouareandrewdobson · 4 years

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Alex ze Pirate “Mini Review” 1: About Male Abuse

Alex ze Pirate is in my opinion the WORST “comic” series Dobson has ever written up until this point (date for archives: June 2020). Sure, I agree with people that his “hot take” comics on Star Wars Fans, political issues and virtue signaling for the sake of making brownie points are worse overall cause they are uneducated propaganda that give insight in how much of a loathsome human being driven by spite he genuinely is, but Alex “offends” me as someone who enjoys fiction. It may not be the worst thing ever written, but it just does so many things wrong in terms of storywriting, storytelling, presentation and creating fictional characters, I can’t help but wonder what went wrong that Dobson even remotely thought this thing would be a “successful” comic series to establish him as a creator. Cause I can tell you, having read the likes of Don Rosa’s work on Disney, Hilda, Cleopatra in Space, Spirou, Asterix, One Piece (of which I will talk a lot in my next few posts) and many more, I can confirm by comparison that Dobson’s pirates as a published comic would have only one use on the public shelves: alternative for toilet paper during the COVID-19 epidemic

Believe me, I would love to write an in depth analysis of everything wrong with Alex ze Pirate, from the lazy artwork up to even the publication history of this trainwrack. But doing so would take a lot of time and there is one individual part of this I think deserve at least extra attention. Something that in my opinion embodies quite well a lot of things I consider wrong with this comic. So before I am going over Alex in its entirety (and believe me, the day will come) let me just talk within the next few posts about one certain aspect and story of the comic, that genuinely got me to loath this comic to the core: Sam the Cabin Boy and “his” own individual story Dobson drew in three parts around 2010.

For starters, lets talk who Sam is: Sam is one of the main characters in the comic and actually the first person who joined Alex and Peggy in the initial pages of Legends, the “original” form of Alex ze Pirate.

See, back in 2004, Dobson released Alex ze Pirate in form of a single comic volume called “Legends” which features Alex trying to recruit a crew. The thing is around 78 pages thick and based on what I saw pretty terribly paced. For comparison: When Luffy in One Piece got his crew together, he spend multiple volumes and at least three minor story arcs to get Zoro, Nami, Sanji and Usopp to join him. All while also giving us good insight into the kind of people his new crewmates were (especially Sanji’s and Nami’s backstory got to me), defeating the likes of Buggy and Captain Black, meeting Dracula Mihawk and defeating one of the biggest bastards Eichiro Oda ever created in form of Arlong. What is the story how Sam joins the crew? An orphanage organizes an auction and sells kids off. Which I assume was even illegal in pirate times, so kudos for already showing us how despicable the world of Alex ze Pirate is to begin with and how much it deserves to be nuked in some sort of alien invasion.

Sam also doesn’t really get anything to do when he is introduced, just helping Alex escape on a small boat. Which is weird because he does not know her at all, she is just some stranger who bought him off and has no means to keep him in check, so why even bother following her and not let the mob get rid of Alex?

Anyway, I wish I could tell more about Sam’s involvement in Legends, but I don’t have really more than some scans of it in the beginning and near the end. So I don’t know his involvement in the rest of the volume. I also can’t say how he plays out in volume two, because that does not exist at all. Cause for reasons I will never understand, Dobson just abandoned the idea of telling a “coherent” and ongoing story with Alex ze Pirate and instead went to his colored one page comics/strips with it, turning it into what some people called “Garfield with Pirates” (which I consider a genuine insult towards any newspaper comic out there, even something as Boondocks). And the first thing we see of Sam in “classic” Alex ze Pirate?

The perverted dwarf of the crew showing of his shota underwear so that Alex and Sam stop bickering who is the cutest, leaving him embarrassed and humiliated.

Which kinda sums up his role in the comic to a t. Cause this is what Sam is: He is the buttmonkey of the crew. And honestly, I would not have a total problem with Sam being a buttmonkey, if a) he wasn’t it all the time, b) he would actually do something to deserve any form of humiliation and c) if the other characters in this comic itself would not be some of the biggest assholes I have ever seen, who get away with abusing the poor lad.

See, here is the problem: In a crew featuring a choleric homophobic soulless ginger

A black rat person who wants to fuck the ginger even without her consent

A furry abomination that has the same brain wavelengths as Chris Chan

And a perverted dwarf who tries to impersonate Happosai from Ranma 1/2

Sam is the only decent person in the entire crew. He works hard, he even questions the morality of his friends at times, he is honest, he is not perverted, almost good to the point of childish innocence and he has a very humble “goal” which is he wants to own his own piece of gold. Not even a big pile of treasure, just one single coin would be enough for him.

So he is likeable and relatable. In fact, if anything goes by, he may have been one of the most popular ones in the comic. And yet he is the one who gets constantly abused by “fate” and his friends, because as Dobson would say it, he is supposed to be the buttmonkey. There is just one problem: People do not necessarily like buttmonkeys.

I can primarily speak only for myself here, but I hope what I have to say resonates with others too. See, I get it: A character who is the butt of a joke can be fun. Like Daffy in Duck Amuck. But there is a fine line where a character being humiliated for the sake of a joke is fun (and perhaps even deserved because of his own shortcomings or deeds/actions that make the humiliation sort of kharmic, like lets say Johnny Bravo) and a character being humiliated to the point it feels disproportional, unfunny and mean spirited if not outright sadistic, can be crossed. Take Meg Griffin from Family Guy for example whose only “purpose” for existing within the last 12+ years is to get shat on by her family and the writers. People have no idea for a plot with her, so what do they do? Have her father physically and emotionally abuse her, fart in her face for what is supposed to count as a joke and then add additional insult to it by acknowledging that they are only doing this, because they have no other idea for her and think abuse is fun. Let me just tell you from experience, it is not.

And that is essentially what Sam is: He is the Meg Griffin of Alex ze Pirate, used by his creator as the butt of very unfunny jokes, even if he does not deserve any of the things said or done to him. Want to see some examples?

How about the description Dobson gives Sam within the introduction of one of his volumes, showing how little Dobson as the creator even cares for him.

Why is he called an unworthy “slob” if he is the only one who actually works? Shouldn’t a slob be someone like Dobson, who can’t even take care of himself anymore? Also the confirmation that he was kidnapped at the age of 16. And as we have no clarification how much time passed between Legends Vol. 1 and anything afterwards, that means that in a way Alex is a child abuser.

And now, here some examples by the rest of the cast. Like Uncle Peggy framing him for all sorts of his perverted actions and even trying to kill him for no apparent reason?

Alex trying to kill him with chicken pox…

…Destroying all his worldly posessions which is hilarious because he is a poor orphan…

…Essentially describing him as worthless because he was born with an Y-chromosome…

… doing the kind of thing Dobson claims women would never do to man, using their sex appeal to hurt them…

…forcing him to do some unnecessary and rather petty work for her in a physics defying manner (seriously, the way he holds the axe does not compute with how he swings it. Try it out yourself)

… stealing his food and just being a cruel sadistic cunt to him just because it is fun.

Which is “funny” in so far as that there are a few comics indicating she would jump his dick and ride it like a little pony if she could.

By the way, Talus and Atea are not better. None of them calls Alex out on her bullshit on average, Atea uses Sam to trigger traps in one story arc…

And Talus, the closest to a “friend” he is supposed to have, once for no apparent reason made him dig through his litterbox

And don’t get me even started when the characters decide to gang up on Sam, to the point he gets sexually harassedor is called to be less worth as a human being than the dirt you find in your belly button

Fuck’s sake, even in fanart everyone gangs up on him, even the freaking big bad of the story everyone is supposed to hate or be afraid of

Bottom line, Sam is an abuse victim played for laughs in this comics. And just to clarify, I do not think this was Dobson’s intention. But if the character is undeservingly the butt of jokes for the majority of over 120 strips, it turns nasty. The way Sam is treated, I just find disgusting and indictive of just how unlikable any other character in this comic is to the point I do not want to see this being turned into a proper “franchise”. And I assume others were disgusted by it too, cause Dobson eventually decided to make a story more or less addressing the treatment Sam receives, while also attempting to prove that deep down the assholes with starring roles in this trainwrack care for him. How did this play out? Well, I am going to talk about it, so likely not well. If you want to see the details, grab yourself some popcorn and take a toilet break before we tackle part 2 of this thing.

#andrew dobson #so you are a cartoonist #sjw #comics #comic #webcomic #alex ze pirate #sam the cabin boy #legends #tom preston #disgusting #male abuse #unfunny

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er-neha-gaurav · 3 years

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Survey Logic: How to Be Better at Surveys

Survey Logic are a significant piece of getting the client feedback that is basic to long-haul business achievement — which is the reason such countless organizations send them out. With such countless surveys flooding client inboxes, it’s significant that yours is one individual who needs to round out.

Survey logic makes that conceivable. By making responsive, wise studies, you can guarantee respondents don’t get overpowered or disappointed before they get as far as possible.

How does survey logic work?

Each poll ought to have a coherent succession to it. With online surveys, for instance, you ought to mastermind the structures so an individual’s response to one inquiry advises the inquiry that follows.

“The best studies are basic, brief, and coordinated in an intelligent request,” Sophia Bernazzani at HubSpot composes. “They contain an easy-to-understand equilibrium of short-answer and different decision addresses that get explicit data from the member. Furthermore, most inquiries ought to be discretionary and outlined in a way that keeps away from any predisposition.”

This way of thinking is at the core of Survey logic.

With online structures, you accomplish this through what’s known as survey logic, which can show or shroud structure fields, send messages to specific clients, show diverse thank-you messages, and that’s just the beginning — all dependent on how the client fills in your structure.

Why is survey logic significant?

The short answer is usability; however, numerous organizations belittle exactly how significant convenience is.

As per Sean Si, CEO, and author of SEO Hacker and Qeryz, the absolute most basic reasons individuals don’t finish Surveys are that they’re too hard to even think about replying, the inquiries aren’t pertinent, the format is ugly, and respondents have review weariness.

By making studies more consistent and important, you seize that exhaustion and make the study simpler for individuals to finish.

Nathan Connors, Bang the Table’s head of customer services, accentuates the significance of utilizing survey logic (or “skip logic”) to save a study as short as workable for clients. When follow-up questions are unimportant, individuals don’t need to respond to them. Fewer inquiries mean less exhaustion, and that outcomes in more finished Surveys.

Connors additionally noticed that Surveys should just be the length they should be, and he says you should tell your respondents what amount of time the review should require before they start. This will assist them with dealing with their assumptions.

The most effective method to make better surveys utilizing survey logic

Survey logic focuses on quality over amount. It’s not significant for each client to address each address (amount). It’s just significant for clients to respond to each scrutinize that applies to them (quality).

“You may have many inquiries you might want to pose to your clients, however, the estimation of the Survey must be found in the quality and amount of reactions you get,” Sarah-Nicole LeFlore, client achievement supervisor at CX Index, composes.

With insignificant inquiries off the respondent’s plate, there’s a chance to ask smarter, directed inquiries. These can even be open-finished inquiries that offer respondents space to expound on their responses.

You can likewise utilize Survey logic to require certain inquiries. That way, you guarantee all respondents see the basic inquiries — and you can even front burden the Survey with those inquiries.

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Eventually, survey logic is one apparatus of numerous for making polls more important and simpler to finish. Extra strategies for doing this incorporate

Keeping the Survey’s plan basic and expert

Starting the study with a concise prologue to set assumptions

Using open-finished inquiries to gather unprejudiced reactions

Targeting your surveys to the proper crowds

At the point when you keep studies basic, set respondents’ assumptions decently, and focus on the correct crowd, you can uphold those respondents with an instrument like Fynzo’s survey logic include, which permits you to assemble structures with an assortment of ways, contingent upon how clients answer going before questions.

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Conclusion

This holds individuals back from figuring out unimportant inquiries, and it supports the logic of the Survey. That way each question feels like character development to the inquiry that preceded it.

This is how you seize review exhaustion and urge clients to finish the entire study. Thank you for reading the entire article and please comment below and tell us your thoughts about the topic.

Original Source: https://www.fynzo.com/blog/survey-logic/

#Survey Logic #online survey maker #online survey software #online survey builder #free online survey creator #create a survey #free online survey tool #survey maker #survey software #free survey creator #free online survey maker

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marybeatriceofmodena · 5 years

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TFW when you try to do Anastasia but you also suck at your job: A Master Class by The Rise of Skywalker

Okay. So, I promised you guys a TROS review, and it’s coming, I promise… except I’ll be making two “spin-off posts” about specific issues just in order to clear up some stuff, mainly because in my mind, those issues are important.

First post is going to be, of course, about Rey’s parentage.

So. After TFA, it would have been possible for Rey to have been the kid of “someone”. However, TLJ made it impossible to do so, unless you’d have some serious, bullshit retconning going on – which is exactly what happened.

I know this is a VERY controversial thing to say at this point, but post-TFA, Rey Palpatine “could” have been possible. Okay, maybe not have her be Palpatine’s granddaughter, but more of a descendant of his.

This said, I “tried” making an origin story for Rey Palpatine that “works” for the purposes of this meta, on a hypothetical basis, while making it consistent with canon (something JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio clearly couldn’t be bothered to do, LMAO). I had plotholes no matter what. I do think I could have eventually found something with a little bit of brainstorming, but truth is, IT’S HARD, and a lot of exposition would have been for novels/comics only.

From a thematic perspective, though? It wouldn’t have been a bad idea. For this to work, though, you would have needed to go on full-blown Romeo and Juliet mode with sprinkles of Anastasia, though. I mean, The Lion King 2 did something similar, so why the fuck not. Because, yeah, Ben Solo, the grandson of Darth Vader, son of Han Solo and Leia Organa, the last prince of Alderaan, who falls in love with the last Imperial princess Rey Palpatine while they’re on opposite sides of the war but not the ones you’d think of is the stuff of fairy tales and star-crossed romances, except this one would have a happy ending and brought peace to the galaxy.

Truth be told, I still really enjoy fanfics who go for that story and find a way to make it work in canonverse or in AUs – because it’s genuinely fun. But in canon itself, as I point out earlier… it’s not easy.

So, we have Rian Johnson who said he made a list of potential origins for Rey while he was working on TLJ’s script. You bet Rey Palpatine was on that list. However, he came to the conclusion that Rey Nobody was the best way to go, and whatdyaknow, he made the right call.

Why? Rey Nobody requires minimal exposition. Storytelling-wise, you don’t have a lot of brainstorming to do, and it’s easy to have Ben revealing it, and easy to present it as a repressed memory of Rey’s. On a thematic level, that puts Rey on the same level as Jane Eyre or the main character from Rebecca: she’s a nobody from nowhere who is thrown into a family drama, and since she’s the glitch in the matrix, she must stop the story from becoming a tragedy.

See? Simple. You got your easy exposition, you got your thematic coherence, and you got the literary call-backs.

So, JJ and Terrio decided to retcon this shit because, as they said, they thought it was boring. I think Colin Trevorrow probably thought it was boring too, because I have my reasons to think a lot of TROS is from him (but more on that in my main review). But thing is, it’s not it’s “boring”, it’s literally that they didn’t know what the fuck to do with Rey. No, more than that, they don’t understand her, and frankly, they can’t be bothered to do so. She’s an empty vessel they can toy with at their ease, and in the process, turn her in a Mary-Sue. Because yes, TROS!Rey was a Mary-Sue, whereas TFA/TLJ!Rey was not. So, what I say above regarding Rey might be a bomb for some, considering how people are (understandably) defensive when it comes to that statement. I promise I will elaborate more about it in the main review, once again.

So, with the lineage aspect addressed, it’s time to talk about Rey’s parents themselves.

It’s hilarious how HARD JJ and Terrio tried to make Kylo’s explanation work – because as much as they butchered the shit out of him, they said: “Well he’s a bad liar, right? Gotta keep that in mind.”

Although, I don’t think it was a case of them being concerned with Kylo’s characterization – they’re not that graceful. They had to figure out QUICK why the hell Kylo wouldn’t have known Rey was a Palpatine from the get-go, because the Force is a great DNA test and shit, and I guess that’s how Palps located Ben’s Mighty Skywalker Blood™. Except that still doesn’t work because Palps couldn’t even locate his own goddamn granddaughter, but I digress.

Seriously, why would Kylo lie to Rey about her being a nobody instead of her being a Palpatine? It makes no sense, because if you’re going to roll with the theory Kylo just wants UNLIMITED POWAH, the Palpatine princess is not only a great asset (since marrying her legitimizes your claim to the throne in the eyes of the Imperial Remnants, I mean, that’s literally why Henry VII married Elizabeth of York), it’s also the one argument she needs to hear in order to sway her to your side. So I guess JJ and Terrio’s one shared brain cell kinda flicked a bit at that moment.

This said, getting the Palpatine princess on his side is clearly Kylo’s intention in TROS (which, again, makes no sense with what was set up in TLJ but that’s something I’m keeping for another post), except they trip all over themselves by having Kylo say he didn’t lie to Rey in TLJ. Except…

So, what Ben said in TLJ was the following:

Her parents sold her for drinking money.

They’re dead and buried in a pauper’s grave somewhere on Jakku.

Rey is related to no one.

Here’s what Ben reveals to Rey in TROS:

Her parents sold her for her protection.

They died on another planet, while being hunted down by a guy working for Palpatine and instructed to bring Rey back to them.

Rey’s dad is a Palpatine and Rey’s mom is Villanelle (nah, for real: the actress who plays Rey’s mom is Jodie Comer).

So, um, yeah, it’s the EXACT opposite of what Ben said in TLJ. Just say Palps was fucking with Ben’s mind-reading or Rey’s memories instead, JJ. Not that “Oh Ben was telling the truth, but he didn’t have the whole story”, because that’s not it.

For the latter, once again, it would have been feasible: the one thing, for me, that was possible to be added was that Rey had killed her parents accidentally, by having their ship to leave Jakku crash down with the Force: that’s what made her Force powers go dormant for all those years and provoked her trauma. It would also make sense that Ben would willfully not bring that back to her memories, because she’d understandably not be able to cope with the truth, which is often what happens to a lot of trauma victims. THAT was the theory I had pre-TROS, because that’s the only answer I could come up with when it came to JJ saying that there was more to Rey’s past. I guess I expected JJ to be, like, actually able to write, lmao.

I even wonder if that was actually in the cards, considering we see Rey in TROS bringing down a transport that supposedly has Chewie in it… but I guess they deemed that to be “too dark” for their heroine. Except the bullshit that comes instead is actually… much worse.

To make things simple, I’ll just take the above points and develop them.

Rey’s parents sold her for her protection.

Okay, so, Rey’s parents need to hide her to make sure Palps doesn’t get his hands on her. Fair enough. This said, why did it have to be Jakku and not, like, ANYWHERE ELSE? Especially that Palpatine had interest in Jakku at some point and that maybe having Rey anywhere close to that place would not be a good idea?

But let’s play the game and say that Jakku is the only place they can hide her because… I don’t know, it’s hard to find someone there with the Force. Whatever. Even then, why the fuck would they think Unkar Plutt is a proper guardian for a tiny little girl? You know they could have walked a few miles more and found a nice old man who likes the Light Side of the Force and the Jedi and all that shit called Lor San Tekka? Hey, why not even try to find a guy like Luke Skywalker who’s like, a Jedi and shit, and have him take care of their little girl and protect her?

Even then, why the hell doesn’t Rey’s mom stay with her daughter? Her husband is the Palpatine, not her. All Rey’s mom has to do is find a nicer hiding place for her and Rey somewhere on Jakku, like, not Niima Outpost (again, Tuanul is just a few miles away), and just let Dad hide somewhere else. He’s a grownass man, he can take care of himself and he just has to hide on Nar Shaadaa or some shit. Fuck, why don’t all three of them hide on Nar Shaadaa? Or in the Coruscant undercity? ANYWHERE ELSE?

Also, wouldn’t Plutt clearly see two desperate parents as a business opportunity? Like, if you want to do a Les Misérables comparison here, he wouldn’t “buy” Rey from them, he’d try to get money for them à la Thénardier with Fantine. Except Rey’s parents make Fantine look like frigging Einstein because at least she had the excuse of thinking Madame Thénardier would take good care of Cosette since Éponine and Azelma seemed well-cared for.

Again, a creepy-looking alien who exploits the outpost’s inhabitants for portions in exchange for junk, who asks you to pay him to take care of your kid should be a big fucking red flag – unless you want to involve blackmail, but that’s a whole other can of worms.

Seriously, why the hell would Rey’s parents even ACCEPT money that comes from selling their own child? Were they really that desperate? Fuck, even if I had no other way of getting off Jakku, I wouldn’t even THINK of using money that comes from selling my own child. Any parent who’d even CONSIDER doing that is automatically a godawful parent in my book. Shame on you. And shame on JJ for trying to make me buy them as saints, because THEY’RE NOT, JUST BY THAT SINGLE ACTION.

They died on another planet, while being hunted down by a guy working for Palpatine and instructed to bring Rey back to them.

I didn’t notice it until Jenny Nicholson pointed it out in her TROS review, because it SOMEHOW completely escaped my notice, but… Rey’s mom saying Rey is DEFINITELY NOT on Jakku is like the worst fucking lie I’ve ever seen in a film because it’s so hilariously bad. Congratulations, Space Villanelle, may you be forever remembered for this line.

Also, it’s stupid af that Oshi (that’s his name, right? Can’t be bothered to Google it, might just call him Barney the Bounty Hunter from now on) just kills Rey’s parents, because HE’S EVUL MUAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA, because he literally creates a dead end for himself. He still has no fucking clue where Rey is, and he just killed off his only leads. CONGRATULATIONS BARNEY THE BOUNTY HUNTER, YOU SUCK AT YOUR JOB.

Rey’s dad is a Palpatine and Rey’s mom is Villanelle.

So, Rey’s dad looks like he’s in his early thirties at most, right? Maybe a little younger than Luke and Leia, then. So, unless he got frozen in carbonite at some point, that means Palpatine fucked at some point while looking like this:

Anyway, I sure hope Sly Moore was Grandma Palpatine because she’s pretty much the only person who’d be game to smash raisin ass. Which leaves me with extremely disturbing pictures of Palps and Sly having sex, so I’ll spare you the more graphic details of my twisted mind that’s screaming for an end to this misery.

I sure hope having Rey’s mom as Jodie Comer isn’t a clue that we’ll get spin-offs with those two (GOD PLEASE NO), but while I crack jokes about how Rey’s mom is Villanelle and Palpadad kinda looks like Ramsay Bolton… I find it fucking hilarious they dressed Rey’s mom in BLUE. LIKE, SEE? SEE? SHE’S IN BLUE, LIKE THE VIRGIN MARY, BECAUSE REY IS SPACE JESUS!!!! GET IT??? GETIT???? PLEASE TELL ME YA GET IT, OKAY???? *gross sobbing* I knew we should have had Rey born in a manger, that would have made the artistic intentions clear *wipes tear*

All right. There’s a lot more that could be said about Rey’s lineage, but I’m keeping that for my main review because what’s left to say ties up to the bigger picture. What I tried to point out with this preliminary post is that while Rey Palpatine *could* have worked, in different circumstances, it couldn’t have had post-TLJ… and we’re left to see a mutilated horse who was dead on arrival. And that’s tragic.

#star wars #tros spoilers #the rise of skywalker spoilers #rants and reviews #anti tros #rey #reylo #my meta #reylo meta #rey meta

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feuilly-cakes · 4 years

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Breaking Dawn - 3* review

Oh boy was this a long one. Okay, I really don't know how to feel about this book, because on one hand I had lots of fun revisiting my old favourite and picking it apart but on the other hand I had a very big issue with a major part of the plot. If I were rating based on each book within this book, I would give book one 4*and book two and three 3*. It starts out strong, then gets progressively harder to keep track of, but then maybe my short attention span is the problem here. I learned many interesting facts and character traits in this book, and I also figured out something important to do with imprinting that's been vaguely introduced in the previous book but is explored in-depth here. Stick around if you want to see what that discovery is. As usual, I'll be putting interesting and relevant facts and things I found particularly offensive under sub-headings, but I'll be saying a lot about each book as if it's separate before then, because Breaking Dawn as a whole is too long to talk about with any coherency. So without further ado: There are only spoilers ahead. Book 1: Bella First let me just say that these books have such amazing prologues/prefaces that immediately grab your attention. If you didn't know she was going to get pregnant, it would probably seem like she's talking about Edward being the one killing her. Anyway, this book was shorter than I expected, but far more enjoyable. This one seems to be more family oriented in the language used than previous in the series; while before any of the Cullens would be described as 'Edward's adopted -' , in this they are simply his mother, his brothers, his sisters. Even Jasper, who always seemed to me to be the outsider of the bunch, uses the term "We Cullens" and it just feels more like a family than a vampire coven pretending to be a family. This is helped along by Bella suddenly knowing so much more about the history of the Cullens and their extended family the Denalis. She's ready to fit right on in there. This book deals with the wedding and the honeymoon. Bella reflects on how she told her parents, freaks out about getting married, has her wedding, abruptly changes her stance on said wedding, then they shoot off to the honeymoon and things occur. Basically, she gets pregnant. It's a huge commotion. Backtracking, both Charlie and Renee were weirdly supportive about the engagement and handled it super well, with Renee and Bella having such a lovely conversation I nearly teared up. She's a great mother even when she's not physically there for Bella. Bella, on the other hand, is doing that thing again where she's selfish and a bit mean without realising she's being that way. Poor Edward is stressed to his eyeballs about the honeymoon and the very real possibility of hurting and even killing Bella, and she just brushes him right off. More on that later, but that's not the responsible way to do things, Bella. Fast forward to the honeymoon, and Edward is now the one being dramatic, refusing to sleep with her again because he bruised her and not listening to her when she says she's perfectly fine. The way it happens is very funny. Then we get to see random things happening that oh so subtly turn out to be pregnancy symptoms, like strange dreams about vampire babies who look human, oversleeping, mood swings, strange eating habits, and last but not least, morning sickness. It wasn't subtle. When they figure it out Edward loses it and says he's going to arrange for her to have an abortion. Bella asks Rosalie for help, and screen fades to black. The big theme here is that Bella changes her mind. She doesn't want to be married until she suddenly does at her wedding, she doesn't want to stay human until she decides she can afford a few extra years, and she doesn't want kids until she's already pregnant. Even with Rosalie, their slowly evolving relationship wasn't going to be proper friendship until Bella asks her for help. She's changing so quickly it's like getting whiplash, but it's not unrealistic. That's how I make most of my big decisions too, like it simmers away unnoticed until it's ready to be addressed. Relatable, really. Book 2: Jacob Book 2 takes us through Bella's pregnancy from Jacob's perspective, as he goes from planning to kill the Cullens to becoming their biggest protector and an Alpha of his own pack. As much as I love multiple POVs in books this is one I couldn't get behind, and here's why. One of the main themes in this book is imprinting. I don't like it. While I adore soulmates as a concept, and even more so platonic soulmates, it's made clear that this isn't what that is, and it's icky. We get 4 pages of Quil interacting with his imprint Claire, who is 3. The whole time Jacob has a running commentary on how Quil is more devoted than a parent would ever be, how he wants to make her so very happy, how it's so very different from that of a parent, and how Quil has to wait like a "monk" for "a good fourteen years" until Claire was his age. This was never platonic, it was a waiting game. It's also grooming. This was also around the time it became apparent just why Quil imprinted on Claire in the first place: it was all a set up for Jacob's eventual imprint. It had to be a part of the story before it happened so people wouldn't question it, and for the most part it worked. Both Quil's story and Jacob's interactions with a pregnant Bella prove this: "the hold she had on me only got harder to break. Almost like it was related to her expanding belly" and "It feels... complete when you're here, Jacob. Like all my family is together." I hated reading that. He should've imprinted on that nice girl Lizzie, from the park. Surely Stephenie Meyer could've come up with something else to keep Nessie alive? Onto similarly disturbing things but less revolting in the long run, Bella's story here seems to be an attempt at pro-life propaganda that backfired. The reason? Bella makes a choice about her body, and though most of them don't like it, they don't force her to do otherwise. People seem to forget that being pro-choice also means the choice to stay pregnant even when it's best not to. Bella makes that decision and she's absolutely sure of it, at the expense of her life and health, but it's hers to make. She is pitted against Edward, who would absolutely force her to have an abortion if he had backup, and who is also losing his damn mind. He insists to Jacob that Carlisle would help him if not for Esme, and that Rosalie doesn't care about Bella's life, only the baby's. Carlisle himself tells Jacob he would never take the choice away from Bella, and context shows that Rosalie is protecting Bella's choices and bodily autonomy, and carrying out her last wishes to ensure the baby is brought into the world healthy. Remember that Rosalie had all her choices taken from her, and all she wanted for Bella was for her to make the right ones. Edward doesn't change his stance until he discovers the baby has thoughts that can be read, and loves Bella. Once again, this seems to have been an attempt at showing that babies have thoughts and feelings in the womb, but it does almost the opposite as Bella is a day away from full term and not once has anything been picked up by either him or Jasper before that point. It's safe to assume there was nothing to pick up on. The pregnancy ends with a truly horrifying birth scene that made my hands go numb and my ears ring from the violence of it all. Bella dies, Jacob imprints on a minutes-old baby and begins his journey as a child groomer, and then Bella comes back and begins her transformation. Book 3: Bella. Or as I like to call it: It all goes downhill from here. Bella has the most unrealistic yet brutal experience ever, and is now a super sexy, super perfect, super powerful, super smart vampire. She has a perfect baby, perfect control of her bloodlust, and somehow the perfect life. But oh no! The Volturi are threatening that peace! Who could have predicted that the last remaining villains would appear in the last book? Now Bella and the rest of the Cullens have to find their friends to stop the Volturi in their track, but peacefully of course, because they are the good guys really! Just a misunderstanding! I'm so glad that was addressed in story, because I would not have been able to deal with a pro-police/pro-dictator story in this political climate. The most unrealistic part of this is when the Volturi don't simply assert their vampire dominance over them by killing them all without taking their own witnesses. I didn't like how Bella suddenly became perfect and good at everything in this book. It's so unrealistic. Less than a month to become the strongest shield ever and be able to scare the ancient Volturi? Perfect control on her first hunt? I think not thank you. There was also a missed opportunity to have Bella be a psychic of some kind since she dreamt of the future accurately many times. Renesmee was very sweet though, and that's all I'll say on that. Now onto my lists! Differences between book and film This was mostly pretty accurate in terms of plot. - Edward's backstory that we see pre-wedding isn't a thing in the book. It actually isn't a thing in any of the main books, but I can't speak for the others. - Bella knows about the immortal children before the book even starts, and she's the one to realise that Irina thought Renesmee was one herself. - The wedding is inside. The film had it outside I'm pretty sure. - The whole part where Jacob freaks out and borrows a very fancy sports car to go and try to find his imprint was never in the films, and I think that's a tragedy. Vampires - The appearance of the nicknames Em and Jazz for Emmett and Jasper. It's not at all important I just thought it was cute. - Half vampire babies use their teeth to escape the womb. Also, Renesmee was trying to be careful to not hurt Bella while she was still inside her. She started reading when she was under 3 months. If I saw a baby read aloud in full sentences I'd never sleep again. - Edward called Jacob "Jake" in book 3. It's weird how their relationship changes throughout the book. - Poor Renesmee knows it's because of her that the Volturi are coming, and says "This is my fault." She's just a few months old at this point, and she's already going through a whole lot. - The volturi look like someone threw baby powder on them because they sat still for so long they started "petrifying". - There are 32 Volturi members, considering they took the whole coven with them to Forks. - Fun Bella fact: she was going to let Charlie assume what was up with her because she thinks he will never decide on vampire. Red Flags Most of these have been discussed in depth so I'll just mention them briefly. - Edward, pre wedding, is described as having a "panic attack" by Bella at the thought of hurting her, and instead of reassuring him she brushes him off and thinks "He wasn't getting out of this deal. Not after insisting I marry him first." This is beyond selfish and even cruel, because he has a point and genuine concerns that should have been discussed properly. - "We're going to get that thing out before it can hurt any part of you." Edward has decided this for himself, without Bella's input. - Jacob contemplates suicide over the thought of having to see Leah. This is absolutely not something that should be talked about like it's nothing. - The imprinting of Quil and Claire. - Every bit of foreshadowing about Jacob imprinting on Renesmee, and the act itself. - Rosalie calls the place in South America where the half vampire myths originated "a disease-infested swamp with a medicine man smearing sloth spit across your face" in relation to giving birth there, and it's more than a little racist. How would she even know what it's like? - "the Egyptians all looked so alike, with their midnight hair and olive-toned pallor, that they could have easily passed for a biological family" The white, blonde Denali sisters were never ever described this way, so why are the non-white people described as such? - Bella had "never met any vampires less civilized" than the Amazons. They have long black braids, so we can assume they aren't white. Why are only the non-white vampires being described these ways? - Bella describes the rough area where she met 1 person, who was working for J Jenks and happened to be Black, but was well dressed in rich clothes, as the "ghetto address". Upon googling, I learnt that this refers to low income areas of a city that are occupied by minorities. She met one person. How could she possibly know if it was the "ghetto"? It was described as the "downtown office" by Max, the man in question, so why wouldn't she just use that term? - Jacob gives Renesmee the Quileute equivalent of a promise ring. I want to throw up, because we all know what a promise ring symbolises. - Lastly but certainly not leastly, when learning Renesmee will be full grown at age 7, Bella feels a "shudder" from Jacob. I hate it, it's gross, it needs to burn. Disgusting. And that's that, sorry it's so long, I had a lot to say. If you have any opinions on this review, feel free to discuss with me!

#twilight #twilight renaissance #breaking dawn #book review #book blogger #Books and Literature #next up is Midnight Sun!!

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smokeybrandreviews · 4 years

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Smokey brand Movie Reviews: Blyat

ne of the films i was looking forward to, like, years ago was The New Mutants. If you follow this blog, then you know I'm a massive fan of Magik, the teleporting mutant sister of Colossus and Hell-Lord of Limbo. In come canon, including the main 616 Marvel universe, Illyana Rasputin is even in line to be Sorcerer Supreme. The second Fox announced there would be a New Mutants flick, i knew my darling Darkchylde had to make an appearance and, much to my joy, she would, portrayed by Anya Taylor-Joy. Perfect f*cking casting, man. And then the film was relegated to oblivion for years. Whispers of a movie that should never be screened abounded and i was loosing hope it would ever be released. I lost interest after a while but, after he Disney merger, it got a release date! And then the Wuha happened. Eventually it was dumped into theater with absolutely no fanfare. Recently, there have been digital releases and the hard copy blu rays are coming out in a few days so i bit the bullet and decided to finally check it out.

The Great

Look, i told you before, the only reason i wanted to see this movie was because of Illyana and the fact they cast Anya Taylor-Joy was straight up perfect. This sh*t is tantamount to RDJ as Iron Man or Jackman as Logan. It was just that perfect. And, like those other actors i just mentioned, she embodies Magik as a character, even if her accent is a little iffy. Magik is easily the best thing about this film and, overall quality be damned, Anya’s portrayal is worth the price of admission.

The Good

The concept of a capeflick meets horror film was a stroke of genius to me. I thought, similarly to a Doctor Strange flick, that melding of genre could be incredibly interesting. There’s a lot of potential that can be tapped there. The fact that they opted to adapt the Demon Bear arc of the New Mutants story line lent itself to a horror narrative perfectly. I was glad this was the narrative they chose to bring to the big screen first.

The visual prowess of this film is unassailable. This thing looks much more expensive than the budget they were given. Magik’s soul armor, the ethereal visage of the Demon Bear, that hellish flair of Limbo, and even the Smiley Men are all rendered with aplomb. I really enjoyed the look of this film.

The escalation of Dani’s powers was portrayed pretty earnestly. The fact that Dani Moonstar can manifest the nightmares of those around her so, having that as an anchor to this films conflict was a stroke of genius. You can get some pretty incredible visuals when the narrative revolves around the nightmares of traumatized teenagers.

There is some solid direction in this thing. You can tell that there was a story to be told and

The representation in this cast, and the cast as a whole, is amazing. I absolutely adore it. Dani is native American and they cast Blu Hunt in the role, an actual Lakota. That was dope. Dani is also, canonically, lesbian. They didn’t even shy away from this, writing a relationship with the Scottish mutant, Wolfsbane, portrayed by Maisie Williams. I was actually really surprised they would even present that aspect of the character, which frustrates me even more that this thing didn’t get the necessary attention it should have. That level of representation continues with Henry Zaga as Sunspot, both of whom are Brazilian. Even Dr. Reyes is represented by a woman of color in Alice Braga. That sh*t is dope as f*ck. I also need to mention Charlie Heaton’s Cannonball. That southern accent was hilarious. Plus, as kind of a bonus, f*cking Marilyn Manson voices the Smiley Men. What??

I just really want to emphasize how much i adored the relationship between Dani and Rahne. That sh*t was f*cking beautiful!

That f*cking Demon Bear, tho!!

LOCKHEED!!!

The Bad

The pacing in this flick is borderline schizophrenic. You never feel like you have enough time with these characters or their development but, simultaneously, we spend way too long getting to the next scene. It’s weird to see in a proper, big budget, flick tied to a blockbuster franchise like the X-Men.

This film was edited by someone with tourettes. It feels like there is a whole ass second movie that can be constructed by what’s missing from this one. It’s coherent enough but there is definitely a cut of this film that has more exposition and far more fleshed out characters

The climax, while riveting and everything i wanted to see in a New Mutants film, seems rushed. This thing should have been a whole ass spectacle but they didn’t have the budget for it, which sucks, because this thing could have been one of the best X-Films if the studio actually believed in the damn thing.

The writing in this thing is pedestrian at best. People don’t talk like this, let alone teenagers. It’s weird hearing certain things come out of these character’s mouths, like it’s forced or rushed. I think the script could have used at least one ore rewrite to really focus these characters and make them feel like proper people and not just tropes in a movie.

The Verdict

This movie feels small, almost Shyamalan-esque, but with none of the genius and all of the limitations. Watching this makes me fell all of the disappointment i felt at the end of Glass. Just like the bookend to the Unbreakable trilogy, The New Mutants has lofty ideal and well of potential but it never reaches any of that. I mean, the premise is genius, the framing mechanism is brilliant and the cast is perfect. None of it comes together in a coherent package, though. It feels all over the place, like there is no direction or focus. I can see the forest through the trees but i don’t think anyone in charge of this production could see anything other than dollar signs and it really shows. New Mutants isn’t as bad as Dark Phoenix but i can tell that this version is a completely different movie than what was originally presented and i think that film might have be absolutely terrible. New Mutants feels like a first attempt, like a Phase One MCU film. It’s not Thor, for sure, but it ain’t Iron Man ether. It;s literally about as good as Incredible Hulk. Yeah, that’s a good comparison. They’re both entertaining movies with great ideas, solid cast, and decent performances but it’s nowhere near as good as the rest of the better films in their retrospective franchises. The New Mutants is worth a watch if you’re a fan of the X-Frachise but, if you wanted to pass on it, you wouldn’t be missing much.

#Smokey brand Movie Reviews #The New Mutants

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irarelypostanything · 4 years

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Parasite - “Quick” Analysis

One of my favorite English professors once said that you should read reviews of a book before writing your own--not doing so is kind of like arriving late to a party and not bothering to ask anyone what they’ve talked about. It’s actually controversial advice, but I agree with it; that’s why I read and watched a few reviews of this movie before responding to it in my own way.

I’m a little late to the party, anyway.

*Spoilers*

...And you would not believe how much people have to say about this movie. I wonder if the director, who is already famous with American and Korean audiences alike, could have predicted its success? The Wisecrack team theorizes that it’s successful for political reasons: It’s a coherent, well-written movie about class struggle in a time in which there’s a huge left/right divide in the United States, in Europe, and in Asia. It’s also entertaining, the set design is meticulous, and the pacing does a good job at holding suspense.

Koreans write in the comments about how the Park mother (I’m going to refer to all characters like that. Park mother, Park father, Park son, Park daughter...each has a Kim counterpart, so it’s easy) changes dialect when talking to her husband and when talking to “the help.” Americans write in the comments that it’s ironic the Park mother was so captivated by the Illinois University, which isn’t actually very prestigious. Wisecrack, for its part, details every little bit about the set design and provide some much-needed context about the cultural history. There are sub-basements in Korean cities originally built during the Cold War that were banned for their horrific living conditions, but then the population boomed and the government went back on it. Because of an economic downturn in the 90s, many middle-class Koreans took advantage of low interest rates to turn to jobs running their own restaurants...and many of them failed horribly. It’s quite possible, possibly implied, that the Kim family was actually comfortably middle-class before the downturn.

Anyway, here’s my take in a nutshell: I felt more for the Parks than I did for the Kims, and I think this was intentional.

If you’re an average audience member somewhere in the world, watching Parasite at a theater or Amazon video, you’re probably middle class. There’s a big gap within the middle class. Maybe you’re wealthy middle, and even though you have a comfortable salary and are looking to buy a house (or two), you’re still nowhere near as rich as the Parks. Or maybe you’re on the other side of the spectrum, and have student loans, or credit card debt, or both, but you’re still not clearing the sewage out of your home. So you probably want to get rich, or at least fantasize about it. Most people do.

I think one of the big messages of the movie is that wealth, and the supposed culture behind the wealthy, is an illusion. The Park mother fails to recognize that the Kim daughter’s understanding of art and psychology are completely fabricated, and she mistakes the Kim brother’s extreme confidence for intelligence and depth. The Park daughter is so desperate for love that she immediately kisses someone who says she’s pretty; the Park son is emotionally scarred by a man his whole family doesn’t even know resides there, a man who frantically attempts to reach out to him in a language that he, and apparently no one else in his family, understands. Only the Park father, oblivious and controlling, really earns the audience’s scorn. He starts it by complaining about the smell of “people who rides subways,” which his wife internalizes, but the damning moment is when he asks the Kim father to drive him as the Kim daughter bleeds out.

Yes, there’s a lot more to this movie than that. Class structure as represented by literal house floors. A metaphorical rock. A soundtrack that intentionally plays “classy music” to drown out the violence, and working class characters who are so cutthroat that, instead of helping each other up, they literally push each other down flights of stairs and kill each other for the chance to rise up. I just find it a bit odd that critics don’t focus a little more on the Parks, whom the Kims each respectively try to become.

It’s...a little weird for me to think about. While each Park character remains mostly unknown, each member of the Kim family acts like a loyal piece in the unit. They never really stray. The Kim daughter has the idea to bring food to their captives, an act of kindness, and as if to punish her for even considering this small act of kindness, she dies while her brother (the one who tries to outright kill them) lives.

We all want to be rich...probably. It’s ingrained in everything. A car, a watch, some import wine or just a single night to splurge on food and have a kind waiter convince you that you’re wealthy...wealth and the culture around it is this tantalizing, attractive something. But Parasite depicts the wealthy, in its image, as clueless at best and malevolent at worst. They just don’t get it. They care for their families, they try to do right by them, they “love” in their own way, they try to stay educated and proper and safe...

...and, again, they just don’t get it. Those they perceive as beneath them are in the shadows, idolizing or despising them, failing to communicate or hiding their children, wanting to live, wanting to inhabit their space, wanting to love them or kill them and...

It’s just a trap. They have no power of their own. They can’t cook, they can’t clean, they can’t even help each other when they need it the most. They’re trapped in their own homes and eventually have to flee from them.

#parasite #30-minute freewrite

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incarnateirony · 4 years

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I'm curious, do you think that theory that Lucifer is Jottun makes sense? To me it feels weird, but this is your lane and you have way more knowledge about this.

Okay so first of all, wtf tumblr why is your cut INSIDE THE ASK and fucking up my post

Moving on:

I... is this like, a show theory that someone came up with? Or are you talking like, in general mythology?

(Edit: I realized I postured this from the angle of assuming we’re talking about the widely received idea of Lucifer in modern culture; if I was wrong about that, lemme know -- I do drift into the NONCHRISTIAN Greek Lucifer as well, which you’ve seen me talk about with Phanes before on this blog)

I’ve never heard a serious statement (or at least one that held up if gently poked) about this as much as a general correlation (IE, Promethean deities if you will, which would correspond Lucifer to Loki, though I highly disagree with that assessment for other reasons as well) -- or various theory parallels where the Jotun are parallel to everything from Titans to Nephilim.

Generally the Luciferian/Satanic iconization of Loki came from later transcriptions of eddas by Christian monks. Then again, the idea of Satan himself came from the jews taking on Zoroastrian beliefs after captivity so fuck all flips table

The last thing I’ve seen that tried to draw any kind of correlation about it had some nonsense trying to equate Azazel to Hermes too and a whole other mess of madness.

Without tracking the anthropology and etymology of a situation though, you end up with a mess, and there’s a lot of those out there. If you google long and hard enough, Lucifer is everyone. He’s Cronus, he’s Hyperion, he’s Prometheus, he’s Loki, he’s like half the native american spirits, he’s also somehow half the angels and demons in the bible and apocryphal scripture, depending on how far down a rabbit hole someone wants to go, he’s Santa or a tempting sandwich on tuesdays.

This got long so I’m putting it behind a cut -- it seems to drift but to truly answer this ask, or more answer why I don’t even have a direct statement to answer it, required some -- explanation and history

Helel is a stronger thing to lean into for example. The anthropology tracks, the mythos tracks, etc. Hell, look up Jewish beliefs on fallen angels, satan, lucifer or whatever and realize Christianity has really taken judaism for a joyride while gluing shit over their homework. Hell like, check out the history of jewish captivity under Nebuchadnezzar II and how Zoroastrianism influenced judaism/the very belief of satan/eventual conflation with Lucifer -- there’s debate on whether the Morning Star, mentioned as the King of Babylon, who made them work and toil, was Nebuchadnezzar himself. Which would make, Lucifer, um. Some king dude that died 2600 years ago, give or take.

I am-- very slow to draw angelic associations. That’s not to say they don’t happen. You can, say, track the fall of the grigori and follow their mentioned path to egypt where they "became kings”, and follow which ones disseminated into which cultures how by comparing their attributes, sure. But with something like, say, Lucifer, which is a mythological clusterfuck to itself, considering everything in the public mind about Lucifer modernly is an amalgam of everything from multiple names in the same sacred text to adaptations from influencing religions/weird reads on the transcriptions from people that didn’t know their history/etc, I’m not gonna be like LUCIFER IS JOTUN any more than LUCIFER IS A TITAN or LUCIFER IS A NEPHILIM.

Could there be a correlation for that? Sure I guess. But of the many things I have studied or dealt with, I’ve seen some shit. I’ve seen some SHIT. And never once have I encountered a Lucifer that was legit, if you believe in spoopy shit. Various shit loves using the name as a quick cred card but that’s the equivalent of a nigerian prince facebook scam that’s totes in the US Army Doug David Donnie Darko Davis, very believable. But you know what? I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s Lucifer these days. Whoever was identified as it originally 1. probably put on magical witness protection and changed names by now 2. has been utterly lost by time and has been replaced more with a /concept/ than a /being/. But the modern concepts are so vague it’s like hiding a blue chip in a pool, have fun finding it, and I’ve definitely never been compelled to do so.

I’m sure racially speaking one could say “angels might be aesir” “demons might be jotun” and draw a reasonable argument about it with enough effort, but that’d be more like... systemic translation of thousands-years-old stories traveled over the lands, at which point the question is less “Is Lucifer Jotun?” and more “What would the Aesir and Jotun be in abrahamic text equivalency?”

Curiously I’ve never seen anybody go bananas over this shit to find correlations for anything ~other~ than Christian-outward -- Christian texts always want to make their people everybody else’s people, but nobody is fighting to be referenced by christianity and even less are trying to compare say, Zoroastrianism or Islam or anything else to what gods THEY might be -- even though Zoroastrianism is literally where half this stuff came from, where ideas of archangelic-like creatures and archdemons came from, where the afterlife, where it all came from. So I struggle, deeply, to associate Lucifer with anything specific for a long, long list of reasons but find this a particularly weird thing. Like when’s the last time you heard a muslim or taoist or any other major world religion right now go out and be like “YOU KNOW WHO I THINK (ENTITY) IS, I BET ITS THIS GREEK/NORSE DUDE RIGHT HERE”-- it’s just a Christian culture thing?? IDK???

And again sometimes it’s even /valid/ but I just-- Lucifer is such a Topic(TM) to me. Because to me, he’s a concept, an idea, an archetype, but if there ever was an individual Lucifer that dude got himself a face transplant and fucked off a long time ago IMO so good luck

cuz like

Interpretations of a similar term in the Hebrew Bible, translated in the King James Version as "Lucifer" as a proper name, led to a Christian tradition of applying the name Lucifer, and its associated stories of a fall from heaven, to Satan, but modern scholarship generally translates the term in the relevant Bible passage, (Isaiah 14:12), as "morning star" or "shining one" rather than as a proper name, "Lucifer".

As a name for the Devil, the more common meaning in English, "Lucifer" is the rendering of the Hebrew word הֵילֵל‎ (transliteration: hêylêl; pronunciation: hay-lale) in Isaiah (Isaiah 14:12) given in the King James Version of the Bible. The translators of this version took the word from the Latin Vulgate, which translated הֵילֵל by the Latin word lucifer (uncapitalized) meaning "the morning star, the planet Venus", or, as an adjective, "light-bringing".

As a name for the planet in its morning aspect, "Lucifer" (Light-Bringer) is a proper name and is capitalized in English. In Greco-Roman civilization, it was often personified and considered a god and in some versions considered a son of Aurora (the Dawn). A similar name used by the Roman poet Catullus for the planet in its evening aspect is "Noctifer" (Night-Bringer).

You’d probably have a better chance of coherently inferring that Lucifer is actually Inanna or Ishtar the goddess, as Venus, or that Lucifer is Aphrodite. ORIGINALLY IT WAS FUCKING HELEL.

A suggested methodology on this: Never ever ever start from Christian texts. Like ever. Much less without at least a single Daf Yomi run to actually understand the jewish texts before it got super renovated and had white-out slapped all over it. Christianity generally perished anything after it, or at best attached like a symbiote until the host entity or belief was gone. Hell, sometimes the greecoroman Lucifer is the son of Eoster. Sound familiar? Hot take: Lucifer is Easter confirmed Easter is Satan worship.

See how that can be kinda... faulty? If you want to understand it though-- figure out where the same concept went? GO BACKWARDS. Never go FORWARDS. Pick up those christian and jewish texts and go. BACKWARDS. Akkadian. Babylonian. Because once you realize what was clipped out of other faiths, you can go back to that core deity and start figuring out where it branched off in other directions than eventually being kidnapped into the messianic cult bag. THEN go forward in time and realize that christianity is just an itty bitty teeny tiny branch of our history, it just swamped us over time via extermination. So you can find Lucifer as just about anyone, because respectively, ask a room full of rabbis and pastors to write down every time Lucifer is mentioned by name in original text form in the bible before translation and rendition. The rabbis are gonna giggle and the pastors are gonna be deadass wrong, sorry.

You wanna play a game? “Is Asmodeus Aesir?”

folds arms I’ma let you sit here scratching your heads about that for a while.

Because it’s gonna take going backwards. Who was the babylonian form of Asmodeus? When did the name ASMODEUS happen? What name did it have even in jewish texts? Or which branch of names? What did that deity evolve into in less calvinistic or messianic circles? Yes, you can track this. Yes, you CAN find how it translated into greece far and away from abrahamic or calvinistic influence, or to the vikings, or anyone else if you chase the crumbs enough, but again, there’s-- entire things to review about systemic beliefs and translations/hot takes. Same shit, different label in most places, sure, but-- eh.

Ranting a bit at this point but if anyone takes anything out of this:

Pinpoint when/where/why names originated

Go backwards first, not forward

Find the anchor belief/origin/story

Find where it branched

respect the branches and deviations as unique renditions within cultures while equally respecting the fact that there’s some truth in all beliefs and we’re all trying to describe the same shit. So could Lucifer be Jotun, I guess. But we’d have to hold nuanced discussion about the journey of the narrative from A to B and how the Aesir and Jotun correspond at large.

Anthropology and etymology are key. Where did people travel, how did they write, what did it mean. Don’t look only for very specific affiliations.

Hell let me take a quote from-- a place.

Here is how a pantheon actually comes together.

First deity: “Shit. My people were conquered and my religion just blowed up. I’m out of a job”

Second deity: “Me too.”

Third deity: “Hey, you look like that Lightning God the mortals in that place over there are telling stories about.”

Two deities at the same time: “We’re lightning gods too, though!”

Third deity: “Well, shit. You, on the left, you’re better looking. Best you be in charge.”

First deity: “Screw you! I’m bigger than all of you!”

Second deity: “Whatever. You’re a thug. Go rule the sea.”

First deity: “What? I’m a god of paternity!”

Second deity: “Paternity’s moist. That’s very similar.”

Meanwhile, you guys on Earth are all like, “Oh, Hermes is younger than Apollon.” Like its a fact. Like I wasn’t some Proto-Indo-Eurpean god of Penises and Serpents and outcroppings of stone long before anyone was ever speaking Greek.

And while we’re at the bastardized rerolling of mythologies, most heavily performed by christianity, I point you to that last line, regarding Baal Peor, and raise you:

youtube

If people noticed that video was sassier than normal, there’s a reason.

Let’s say you had a super interesting life and people kept telling your story, but over time, as it spread around the world, the telephone game got warped into several very different things. In some you’re even the villain, in some you have a giant dick, and in others you saved the world. All of these were somehow inspired by you and your story, but none of the people at the end of the story are necessarily ~you~. But someone has to figure out where the story started to find who ~you~ are, even if there’s tales of things you did, or supposedly did, all over the place. And sometimes people also take any word that sounds like your name and make it you. So if your name was Ted, you’d also end up with all kinds of shit like Bed Dead Fed Head Jed Lead Ned Red Wed and Zed when they come up suddenly all get replaced by the word/name Ted and that’s it, that’s your mythology.

#pagan life

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the-quiet-winds · 5 years

Text

Between Angels and Demons (part one)

[The newest AU by me and @ichlugebulletsandcornnuts. TW for mentions of abuse for the most part (if more warnings are needed, please tell)]

[Part 1: Queen of Nothing at All]

Jane Seymour had taught Advanced Year Twelve English for long enough to recognize how the year will play out on the first day of school.

Because of this, she bites back a sigh at the uninterested, bored, wish-it-was-still-break faces staring back at her.

There is, however, one exception. seated in the middle of the second row was a tall, slim girl with dark hair with pink ends, looking at her with a quiet excitement.

"Good morning, class, I'm Miss Seymour, and welcome to advanced english. I'll start by taking roll."

She calls out the names on her list, hearing monotone 'here's and lazy flicks of hands.

"Katherine Howard?"

"Here."

The girl from the second row gives a shy smile as she makes eye contact with Jane, who holds it for an extra second and sends a small smile of her own before moving on with roll.

Jane begins the lesson in the usual way; going through the admin on what they’d be studying over the course, the set texts that they needed to read, and the upcoming assessments they needed to prepare for. She’d printed all the information on a sheet of paper that she passed around to everybody too, knowing that the kids tended to let their minds wander off during this part, but she was pleased to note a couple of students taking notes on what she was saying. Listening most attentively was the same girl in the second row, Katherine, her pen flying across the paper in front of her.

"If anyone has any questions," she says after finishing her explanation, "now is a good time to ask them."

There’s not much of a response, but Katherine's hand shakily raises from the second row.

"Yes, Miss..." she pretends to check her roster, as if 'Katherine Howard' hadn't already ingrained itself in her mind. "Howard?"

"The books...will they be provided?"

"For the most part, no. It’s expected that students provide their own reading materials." Jane can't help but notice the red tint appearing in Katherine's cheeks, as well as the assorted snickering from around the room. "But if it's a financial issue, you can speak to me after class, Miss Howard."

"No," Katherine protests, although Jane thinks that wasn't the end. "I was just wondering."

Jane notices Katherine shrink back in her seat slightly and stare down at her notebook as Jane fields a couple more questions. She doesn’t even look up when Jane announces the next exercise; a simple book review of any book the students had read over the summer. Jane liked to start with that, as it gave the chance to see the level the students were working at in their writing, and the book they wrote about tended to tell her something about the child.

Jane begins to slowly wander the room as they start their writing, and she keeps a soft eye on Katherine. It takes the girl an extra minute or two to begin writing, but soon Jane can see how fast she works.

She gives a curious glance at the title of the book, and something resonates in her.

Katherine was writing about ‘The Glass Castle’, a memoir Jane herself had read recently. It wove a tale of girl with an alcoholic and deranged father and a fairly absent mother. It was a fantastic read, in Jane’s opinion, and it intrigued her that Katherine had also read it.

Soon, the end of the class arrives and Jane asks the students to hand in their papers as they leave.

Most of the students rush out, eager to chat with their friends, but Katherine lingers to the back slightly. When she hands in her paper Jane gives her a smile, and Katherine returns it with a nervous one of her own. Jane turns back to her desk to organise the papers, and after a few moments she realises that Katherine is still standing by the doorway.

“Is there something you wanted to talk to me about?” Jane asks kindly.

Katherine looks incredibly embarrassed, nearly fearful of speaking to Jane.

“I just...I-“ she tries, but no coherent thoughts appear in her head. she berates herself for being so useless, as always. “No,” she finally says in a small voice. “Nothing, Miss.”

“Are you sure, Katherine?” Jane makes her voice as soft as possible. She’d only known the girl for an hour, but she seemed the skittish, run-if-someone-raised-their-voice type.

“I-I'm sure,” Katherine stutters. “I should get going to my next class. Um, thank you for the lesson.” With that slightly bizarre statement, Katherine disappears out of the door and Jane turns back to the papers on her desk.

If there was something wrong, she hopes that Katherine will soon be brave enough to ask whatever is on her mind. If it’s about the books then Jane would soon find out; they would be starting work on their first book project next week.

The rest of the day is an odd sort of blur to Jane. she begins to sort names and faces in her remaining classes, but none stick as clearly in her mind as tall, pink-haired Katherine Howard.

She sees another Catherine when she arrives home that night - her roommate, practically her sister, Catherine Parr, editor and novelist.

“Hey Parr,” she says as she lets herself in that night.

“Jane! how was the first day?” Parr asks, interested although she doesn’t look up.

Jane shrugs. “The usual. No one wanted to be there. But there was this one girl...” she trails off as Katherine Howard pops into her mind again.

Parr knows that look and she raises an eyebrow. “Did she stand out in a good or bad way?”

“She just seems very nervous,” Jane sighs. “She wants to do well, but I think there’s something else going on.”

There’s a few moments of silence as Jane wonders about the girl, before Parr speaks again.

“I'm sure if anyone can help her in class, it’s you.”

“I hope so, Parr,” Jane muses. “I hope so.”

Jane settles onto the couch and starts to read over the short answers most of the kids provided. Some wrote about novels, others about biographies, and even some about religious texts. Most answers were somewhat bland and uninspired, while a few stood out for their originality and prose.

Then Jane reaches Katherine Howard’s essay. Katherine has written far more than other students, taking up a full front page and half of the back, and Jane was startled at the girl’s writing voice. When she speaks about the author, the story’s protagonist, she is blown away at the layers Katherine is able to perceive and dissect.

It just leaves her with more questions, though, about Katherine’s story, and she can’t shake it from her head.

Jane writes her usual feedback comment at the bottom of the essay, praising Katherine’s writing ability and offering her agreement with some of Katherine’s opinions. Underneath, she puts a small ‘well done’ sticker; it was something she liked to do for students who did especially well, despite how juvenile it might seem to give the students stickers.

She continues marking the essays until she realizes that it’s about time for her to start making dinner.

She grades the remaining essays after dinner, but the one about ‘The Glass Castle’ doesn’t leave her head.

The next morning, her class begins to trickle in around ten minutes before the bell.

Katherine Howard scurries in merely seconds before it rings, ungracefully dropping into her seat, looking winded from running.

Jane pretends not to notice and begins class by handing out the essays. She also pretends not to notice that, as Jane drops hers on her desk, the deep red that flushes her face at the praise on the back.

“Now I think we should do a ‘get to know you’ game,” Jane says, leaning on her desk once all the essays had been distributed. “This class will be a lot of teamwork after all. When it’s your turn, stand and share somethings about yourself. who would like to go first?”

The entire class stare at their desks, not wanting to volunteer. Katherine is among them, although she dares to flit her gaze up for just the briefest of moments. When she makes eye contact she looks down straight away and Jane glances around the classroom.

“No volunteers?”

There’s silence again, and Jane sighs. She hates having to pick on students to get them to answer, but she always has to near the beginning of the year.

“Katherine Howard, would you like to start?”

Katherine feels every eye in the room fall on her, and her hand rises to nervously scratch at the back of her neck.

“No thank you,” she says quietly, slipping further into her seat.”

Jane doesn’t want to push her, but feels a gentle nudge could help. “The first person to go doesn’t have to try to impress anyone,” she says wisely. Katherine looks up, and their eyes catch for a half-second.

Katherine swallows hard, but stands up. “Well, I'm Katherine Howard,” she says in a shaky voice. “I like to read and write, I used to do music,” that word catches awkwardly in her throat, and Jane notices. “but now I mostly just focus on school.”

“Thank you, Katherine,” Jane smiles encouragingly. “And thank you for going first. Who would like to go next? You’re all going to have to go eventually, so you might as well get it over with.” She accompanies these words with a small laugh and to her relief, another student volunteers.

Jane listens to every student, but she can’t help but notice the way Katherine takes subtle yet deep calming breaths, closing her eyes momentarily in a way that seems practiced, as if she’d done it many times before.

Once all the students have gone, Jane has enough time to start the first lesson.

“This class,” she explains, handing out worksheets, “will be more than just essays and books. You will also explore poetry and creative writing. but before we get into that, understanding proper grammar and phrasing is key.”

She gives them till the end of the period to work on the handout, focused on punctuation, capitalization, and sentence structure. Only a handful finish before the bell, the rest having to finish it for homework.

Katherine Howard, of course, turns hers in.

“Miss Howard,” Jane says as the girl stands to leave. “a word, please.”

The girl pales dramatically, but shuffles obediently towards Jane’s desk. “Yes, Miss Seymour?” She asks timidly, head down, as if feeling she was about to be reprimanded.

Jane gives a half-frown and pulls a jar out of the bottom drawer of her desk. “Would you like a sweet, Miss Howard?”

Katherine looks taken aback, unsure of what to say.

“Um,” is all she manages, and Jane places the jar on her desk.

“Help yourself if you’d like one,” she says encouragingly, although without any pressure behind her voice. Katherine slowly reaches over and takes a small wrapped sweet from the jar, before bringing her hands to clasp together in front of her, not unwrapping the sweet.

“Thank you,” she says quietly.

“Of course,” Jane says, then lowers her voice. “You deserve it after that wonderful analysis of ‘The Glass Castle.’” she hesitates for a moment before speaking again. “Say, Katherine, where do you usually have your lunch?”

“The cafeteria,” Katherine says quietly, fiddling with her sleeves.

“Well, if you’d like,” Jane says, voice gentle and smooth as she can make it, “you’re welcome to come here during lunch and we can discuss the book further if you’d like. It’s up to you.”

Katherine looks slightly uncomfortable and she shuffles backwards the tiniest bit. She opens her mouth as if to answer, but then closes it again. Jane takes the opportunity to add a caveat to her statement to hopefully make Katherine less worried.

“Of course, if you’d rather spend that time with your friends then that’s perfectly fine. It’s your choice.”

Katherine nods once, rocking ever so slightly on her heels.

Jane cocks her head slightly, giving the girl a kind look. “I did thoroughly enjoy your essay,” she says. There has to be something to bring Katherine out of what Jane is suspecting to be a perfectly crafted façade.

But praise isn’t it.

“Thank you,” Katherine says politely, looking slightly downward.

A flicker of a frown passes over Jane’s lips. “You’d better run along, don’t want to be late.”

Katherine nods, then grabs her bag and books it out the door.

Jane sighs and gets ready for her next classes.

The pass in a breeze, and suddenly the lunch bell is ringing.

Her room falls silent for several minutes, Jane settling into her chair with a book and her lunch.

Suddenly, quiet footsteps grab her attention.

Katherine Howard is standing in her classroom door, holding her book and an apple, giving Jane a slightly hopeful look.

“Katherine,” Jane smiles. “Come in, take a seat”

Katherine hurries forwards and sits down in the chair opposite the desk. She places the book on the table and shifts, adjusting her legs until she was sitting cross-legged on the chair. Jane stifles a gentle laugh at the unconventional sitting position and glances down at the book.

it appears to be a library copy, well-thumbed and slightly battered, with a scrap of paper sticking out acting as a bookmark.

Katherine takes a nervous bite of the apple in her hand and starts to flick to where the bookmark is, several chapters in.

“Did you have something in particular you wanted to discuss?” Jane asks carefully, gauging the girl’s reaction.

“There was one part,” Katherine says, still hunting for the elusive page, her voice sounding much more thoughtful and freer than this morning. “This.” she passes the book to Jane without hesitation, and Jane fights to keep neutral at the preferred paragraph.

It describes, in a rather artistic telling, the first time the narrator was ever abused by her father, drunk and storming.

“What about this part, Katherine?”

“I wanted to...” Katherine shifts slightly, thumb absently tracing over the words, “um, talk about the language the author uses to describe what happened.”

“And what do you think about it?” Jane asks encouragingly, trying to coax more words out of the girl.

“I think it’s really effective,” Katherine says, very quietly. “Using such lovely words to describe something so horrible. The contrast works really well.”

Jane nods in agreement. “What in particular?”

Katherine teases one of the pages, as if she were able to turn the page to flee this conversation. “When she discusses him coming in, comparing it to a tiny storm on the empty sea...” She swallows hard, and Jane’s eye follow her hand as it returns to the back of her neck, like it had in class. “But by the end, it’s a hurricane and she’s a tiny desolate town.”

“You’re right, Katherine, it’s a wonderfully written section,” Jane says gently, and Katherine visibly relaxes at Jane’s approval. Katherine takes another bite of her apple, a bigger one this time, and Jane takes the opportunity to make a start on her own lunch. She asks Katherine a few more questions about the book, slowly coaxing linger and longer sentences out of her.

By the end of the lunch period, the conversations are less coaxing, more actual, fluid conversation.

The bell rings, and Jane could swear she sees a flicker of disappointment cross Katherine’s face.

“You’re welcome to come in after your last class, if you’d like,” Jane offers.

Katherine pales dramatically, visible even under the harsh fluorescents.

“If you’d rather not, then I'll see you tomorrow morning in class. It’s really up to you, love.” The term of endearment slips out without Jane thinking about it, but it’s one she usually reserves for her ‘favorite’ students (although she’d deny the claims) much later in the year, but Katherine had already arrived there now, on the second day.

“I'm busy after school,” Katherine says in a rush, followed by a hasty, “sorry, Miss Seymour,” When she worries she seemed rude in her response. Jane gives a gentle nod, trying to seem as calm as possible so not to startle the girl any more.

“That’s absolutely fine, Katherine, don’t worry.”

“I should go,” Katherine says, picking up her book and the discarded apple core from the desk. “Thank you, Miss Seymour.”

With that, she disappears around the door, leaving Jane alone.

Jane leans back in her chair to contemplate the enigmatic girl, and barely recognizes her next class trickling in until the bell rings, and she gets to her feet and continues her day.

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