#and this is additionally something of a literal ghost story so it's got a double meaning

[essektheylyss]

the only thing I keep notes on when writing is stuff that's already been signaled and needs to come back somehow, and I try to keep those notes as condensed as possible because if they're too lengthy or I have too many items I'll start missing things, but that gets very funny when I jot down something like

[bmblboop]

Is there anything you’re particularly excited for in regards to the vacuo plot?

Okay, so 90% of this is just headcanon/speculation and I'm not gonna throw a tantrum if CRWBY does something completely different. Here goes:

Edit: Oh geez this got long-

Refuge Crisis, because I know that's the reason why you are asking: (Speculation) Vacuo has expanded slightly more into the desert to accommodate the sudden influx of Atlesian people (I will be describing Mantle and Atlas refugees as Atlesians - bite me). They all live in large pueblo-like buildings or makeshift homes and are learning to cooperate with each other, their new environment, and all the other intricacies and chaos of their sudden situation. Robyn and Winter (and Sole-Surviving-Atlas-Councilwoman Camila) speak as representatives of Mantle and Atlas respectively, and have meetings with Vacuo's Council about politics stuff (ie. food, shelter, protection provisions for the refugees that Vacuo is willing to provide). There is some tension here from Vacuo - a kingdom already strapped for resources, feeling unable to provide more than they've already given. Additionally, there is some cultural tension about the Atlesians and Vacuoans, seen in both the political scenes and in the City itself - harkening to the lore we know about their occupation before the Great War, and the state Vacuo was in during the aftermath. These scenes are significant, but mostly serve as the metaphorical (occasionally literal) battleground for the refugees of Atlas and the citizens of Vacuo to overcome their differences, since humanity should stand united by the end of the series.

TLDR: Atlas/Vacuo tensions handled mostly at a distance, with heavy reference to past actions and how we chose to act in the present.

Ren's Story: (Assuming we see a bit of Vacuo before RWBYJ returns) Look. I am a Renora sob and he is the character I think most frequently about, so him and Nora get their own section. Ren is letting Nora figure herself out, but he's also grappling with explicit pining feelings for the first time. Coupled with the grief of losing his *found family all over again, boy is gonna be a mess even with the ability to see and convey his emotions better. I have a soft spot for Qrow and Ren interactions because of the brooding potential (double pun intended), so I'd like to see them interact. (Pure Fanon incoming:) I speculate during Boys Night, we get to see Sun and Ren interact a little bit, including this one angsty headcanon where Ren wonders if Nora ends up someone who wouldn't want to be with him anymore, and Sun says something to the tune of "if you love her, and you want her to be happy, sometimes that means letting her go" - with subtle indications that he's talking about Blake. Him and Emerald make a super kickass anti-Grimm force and stealth/surveilance duo - more on that in Emerald's section, but they are the first two to discover RWBYJ's return. Ren is in such shock that he initially believes they are ghosts or illusions, shaking as he says "People don't come back from the dead!" Jaune steps forward, slowly and carefully, and gives him a hug and Ren just... breaks. He starts crying, out of confusion, out of stress, and out of relief. (End of Pure Fanon rambling.)

TL;DR - No clue what his arc will be because all my angsty headcanons are Renora focused or before RWBYJ+ returns and idk if we will see that.

Nora's Story: (I wanna leave this in CRWBY's hands entirely because I am positive they can write this better than me. 100% speculation inbound!) Nora is helping refugees, helping the Happy Huntresses, helping mitigate and defuse fights, helping wherever she can to feel useful. Emerald manages to pull her away from duties at some point and they have a little Vacuo adventure. To be a super stereotypical "you gotta find yourself" narrative, Emerald takes her shopping, they try on new makeup, they hit up local stores and bars, get into some fights, and who knows? Maybe Nora and Emerald question their sexuality a little after hanging around with such an awesome girl all day. (If CRWBY finds some way to make Pan/Bi Nora canon, I will actually scream.) Anyway, Nora tries new things, learns to love herself more, make a lot of visual changes (or none!), and feels more like herself than ever before.

This plot thread could also happen with Sun's relative from the books who I don't know of, but have heard is super cool and nice and... (might be a Summer Maiden candidate? Just saying Maiden!Nora is a really cool thought and I'd like it a ton if she gets the powers after figuring out who she really is, something to conclude her character growth with a really s i c k power-up)

TLDR; I'm not gonna project my fantasies onto Nora because she is her own person and I want to be surprised by her arc. However, I wouldn't mind seeing a bit of Punk!Nora or Maiden!Nora in this story.

Emerald's Story: She is still getting acquainted with being 'a good guy' now, but is doing her best - helping the Happy Huntresses, defending citizens from Grimm, and generally trying to stick close to Oscar. At some point, she bumps into Tyrian and Mercury (who don't know she's defected from Salem yet because she has no way of contacting her cronies without a Seer Grimm). She tries to stay on Tyrian's good side (knowing he'll gleefully murder her if he learns she's a turncoat), by pretending she's a double-agent and doesn't actually care about all these new friends of hers. Of course, Emerald isn't really a double-agent for Salem, but now she could be a double-agent for our heroes. I have this really cool idea for a fic/fight scene where Em and Ren are caught off guard in the city by an ambush, transitioning into a chase scene and Emerald has to try and not let Ren die while also not giving herself away to Tyrian and Mercury. Anyway -at some point long after that, when Emerald is revealed to be on the side of the heroes, Emerald will plead to Mercury to step out of villainy - to fight against Tyrian with her and find a place where he can really belong. If he rejects or accepts? Who knows-

TL;DR - Give the the Good Guy/Bad Guy self-questioning and Emercury angst! Also Tyrian being a gleefully unhinged chaos demon.

Other assorted things:

Theodore - Idk what to say, just... New Headmaster. He seems cool.

Environmental Degradation - Weird thing to be excited over, but with my background in environmental science, I would like to see them pay a little bit of heed to how Atlas Mining operations decimated the local ecosystem.

New Grimm - Sulphur Fish Fight! I wanna see them in their full epic glory with a metamorphosing Demon-Tower (KH reference) -esque boss fight!

Other CFVY Book Stuff - Crown mention? CFVY in the background? More of Team SSSN as a unit? Some of those kiddos and that first book getting mentioned? If they are mentioned, then please let Ren give them therapy.

Schnee-nanigans - Honestly? If they don't play a huge role, I'll be fine. Whitley is nicer, Willow is more active in her kids lives, and Winter is talking to her family again (admittedly only Weiss so far, but it's still further than she had gone in the past). The glance she shared with her family at the very end of v8 seems to represent that she wants to reconnect with them, amidst all the pain of losing Weiss (and Jacques I guess, but mostly Weiss). I am so incredibly neutral on their future role in the story - I would be fine if they did nothing, and pleasantly surprised if they did plot stuff. I fully expect them to be wrapped up in the Refugee plot as Atlesians we are supposed to be sympathetic towards.

[lov3nerdstuff]

Hi Kay!

I just wanted to take a moment and say how deeply moving (and overall comforting) I find your writing to be! I've gone through almost the entirety of your masterlist twice in the past month alone and have found myself returning more often to the pieces of literature/poems your reference sometimes. (Especially that one poem by Benedict Smith! I've read a few more by him because of you and they're just wonderfully lovely 💛 so I'm eternally thankful to you for including it.)

I may be wrong in assuming, but I believe you may have studied/are currently studying a degree involving literature. I hope this isn't too foreward of me but I was wandering if you have any other works of literature that you'd recommend? (I'd love to read anything you recommend from poems to plays 💛) I'm slightly embaressed to say but the works I've read are quite limited to a highschool level and since I'm currently studying Pharmacy, there are very few people who can recommend me such moving works. :)

I also feel like I should apologise for writing such a large ask, so please accept this apology as well hehe 💕🥺

Sincerely,

Bek 🌻

Hey there Bek 💚💕✨

First of all... I'm incredibly sorry for how long it took me to reply to this ask, I know you sent it weeks ago and I'm honestly just ashamed of myself for only replying now! I've been taking a bit of a Tumblr break again, or rather a break from literally everything, and I guess not having written anything in a while made me feel guilty whenever I opened Tumblr, so... All I can say for myself really is that I'm sorry you had to wait so long! Again, I never ever ignore anyone, I promise! It just sometimes takes a while for me to reply 😅🙈

Now, I'm so happy to hear that you've been enjoying my writing! 🥺🥰 Hearing that it's comforting and inspiring to you is honestly such a relief and indeed does make me happy more than I can say 💚 It's so cool that you're checking up on all the references I make aaahhh 🥺🥺🥺 I love it 😁 You're always more than welcome, love! I don't think I could stop including references to literature, culture, history and the science around it even if I tried 😅☺️

And yeah, I did study classics and newer literature as a minor for my undergrad degree 😄 But tbh I still work with literally a lot even now (I'm in grad school for media and cultural studies) even though it's technically not something I've been properly taught ☺️ I'm just a nerd who likes to learn on her own, and with media and culture you can pretty much delve into almost anything you want 😂😅🤷🏻‍♀️

Now, it's not forward at all to ask me for literature recommendations! 😁😃 I truly love recommending stuff!!! I have a few up my sleeve, even though you've probably heard of a few already, for obvious reasons: A lot of what I truly enjoyed reading was something Tom Hiddleston has worked on in one way or another! It's truly a magnificent guideline for picking new literature... Just look up the literary origins of his films/shows/plays and you will be in for quality literature most of the time! I don't think I've ever mentioned it on here, but me reading High-Rise (JG Ballard) because I heard Tom would be partaking in the film adaptation was actually what sparked my love and passion for literature!!! Yep, it's that good. Now on to the recommendations though 😁(This... got rather long):

Plays

Anything by Harold Pinter really, but for obvious reasons you'll find a lot of additionally fun stuff for Betrayal, which is lovely and truly funny if you're in on the kind of humour btw

Medea by Euripides (a classic, but I love it nonetheless... You can find translations in almost every language) ((and pls stay away from Seneca's Medea, because ugh... Euripides is far better AND the og story, as much as anyone can say that for Greek mythology)

La Bohème by Puccini (I know, this is technically an opera, but if you read the libretto it's honestly just like a play... And if you're up for it, the og story is in prose and written by Henri Murger... It's better than the opera, but oftentimes more difficult to find) ((this one is hilarious and basically explains an entire cultural subgroup in the 19th century)

Faust by Goethe (many people hate it, but I LOVE this one!!! It's also been translated into any and every language, and it's so interesting philosophically!!! It's also referenced SO freaking often literally everywhere, and the operas and ballets based on it are always my fave) ((there's technically Faust I and Faust II, but you're good to go just reading the first one)

Anything by Shakespeare, obviously... Though I do love me my Hamlet like every other literature enthusiast (Yes, I can do that one famous soliloquy in act 3 scene 1 by heart as well...)

Poetry

Again, anything Shakespeare for the win, but I LOVE the sonnets and keep a copy of them with me most of the time (Yes, I own multiple copies of the sonnets...) ((My faves are 116 and 91, but there's always so much truth to be found in there!!!))

A lot of the stuff William Blake wrote is amazing, though you have to pick carefully with him if certain religious motives aren't your thing... I love The Tyger, which is an individual poem, and the collection of works called Tyger, Tyger which does have many good ones and a few ones that are a little more on the mediocre side

Do not go gentle into that good night by Dylan Thomas (I know this one by heart as well... It's beautiful, and there's a version of Hiddleston reading it on YouTube, which gives you even more goosebumps than the poem does anyway)

Invictus by William Ernest Henley (same for this one, also read by the one and only) ((I love to read this when I'm feeling down or powerless))

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot (This is another wow piece with many quotable lines and truths... I love it a lot and keep coming back to it! It's also a great example of how literary modernism tried to condense the complexity and passing of time and history into a single frame that had to be intrinsically poetical in nature... As in, this poem could've been a short story in any other period, but modernists loved to make everything a poem so here you go)

Der Zauberlehrling by Goethe (This one sucks in all English translations I’ve found, poetically speaking, but in German it’s such a fun piece! If you’ve ever seen the Disney ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ with Mickey Mouse or listened to the orchestral piece by Paul Dukas, then this poem proves very useful in truly understanding either! But again, the English translation should only be taken for informational value... The German one is also worded hilariously)

Prose

Short edited by Alan Ziegler (This is a collection of short prose forms that honestly is a must for me... I love this book to pieces and have had it for years now! It’s an international anthology, so you’ll find more and less famous authors from all around the world represented with short stories, prose poems, short essays and just curious and interesting snippets of writing! I draw a lot of inspiration from this book)

High-Rise by JG Ballard (As mentioned above, I owe this book part of my personality... I don’t think I would be the same person without having read it. It’s not necessarily full of wisdom, but if you’re interested in a different kind of portrayal of the human condition, then this is the read you need to take a look at)

The City of Dreaming Books by Walter Moers (This is another piece that changed my perception of literature, even though this is a more ordinary and ‘fun’-value read... It’s one of my favourite books and it’s endlessly entertaining! So if the classics are a bit heavy for you, this one is perfect for casual readers as well! Its value really does lie more in the realisation of how fun literature can be, and the freedom you have as an author... So really, I could recommend everything by Moers, his style is amazing both in the German original and in the English translation. Yes, I’ve read both.)

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett (This is comedic gold, stylistic gold and generally a bloody perfect book. Also a ‘fun’-value read, but it also does a magnificent job at showing you what you can do with literature, and how well-developed characters are supposed to be written)

The Penguin Book of the Undead (Penguin Classics) edited by Scott G. Bruce (This book is basically an education on fifteen hundred years of supernatural encounters and how culture wrote, used and perceived them. You get introductory texts for different periods and social groups, explaining how and why ghost stories were written and used, followed by passages of the prime source texts (eg. ancient necromancy shown on The Odyssey). Really, this book is just for cultural history nerds)

The Earthquake in Chile by Kleist (This isn’t necessarily one of my faves, but it has helped me understand what studying literature and culture can do for you. In case anyone remembers my insistence in Wicked Game that you gotta know what a pomegranate symbolises... this novella is such an instance where this knowledge would prove useful. Generally, it gives many opportunities to think about privilege and circumstance)

The Symposium by Plato (You’ll probably not want to read the entire collection of speeches tbh... But the concepts introduced mainly here and in some of Plato’s other work are well worth looking into! For example, the ‘double being’ introduces a concept that in modern fiction is called soulmates... Just sayin’)

[nileqt87]

Ramblings about Lucifer referencing Bones, “Close your eyes.” and shows influencing each other

That was never just a Bones reference being made and the season finale admitted it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv_1dJk5yEM

David Boreanaz played the ironically-named Angel on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel: the Series. His character has *so many* parallels with Lucifer (far more than Booth outside of the law enforcement/crime procedural connection).

Angel's spinoff also has noir crime drama aspects mixed with the supernatural starring an immortal protagonist with a dark past and infamously villainous reputation fighting evil as a supernatural private detective in the City of Angels (a city known for its dark underbelly juxtaposed with fame and glamor, broken dreams and chasing eternal youth) and navigating human law (including the LAPD and evil lawyers) while not legally existing.

Angel also fell in love with a blonde human heroine (Buffy Summers) after lifetimes of self-destructive, not-so-heroic behaviors (getting his soul back did *not* make Angel a hero and human Liam was a lecherous drunk with unfulfilled ambitions and father issues) who inspired him to become a better man and make human connections.

AtS made heavy use of sprawling nighttime Downtown L.A. cityscape shots, which Lucifer also shared an abundance of.

During both of their first cases, they failed to save the troubled blonde girl they were trying to help (Tina and Delilah, respectively). They also have a connection inside the LAPD through a blonde cop who also takes their identity secrets pretty badly (Kate Lockley in Angel's case).

Note that Buffy not only screamed (twice, given it repeated during her memory loss in Halloween), but also came after Angel with a crossbow when she thought he'd attacked her mother (it was Darla), so Chloe taking the Devil face reveal (Monster Reveals are iconic old horror imagery) poorly to the point of considering poisoning is par for the course. However, it only took Buffy seven episodes instead of three seasons to get the identity reveal via seeing the horrific second face (arguably also an accident on Angel's part).

They are metaphorically or literally Hell's angels. They also had long stays in Hell or a hell dimension.

Lucifer and Angel are also both Prodigal Sons with long-held grudges against their long-absent fathers (patricide in Liam/Angel(us)'s case) and they're later faced with a situation where they have unexpected, thought-impossible offspring who show up as adults (neither got to raise their miracle child) wanting revenge. Yup, major Connor/Rory parallel there.

Angel is also in a constant struggle with the Powers that Be manipulating his fate and free will (like Lucifer, he's a champion of free will no matter the cost) and making him prophecy's bitch.

Bones famously got jokes about how Booth is Angel getting his Shanshu (made human), since the character is given constant Angel-isms like references to a dark past having killed people (Booth is also named after a historical murderer, in addition to having been a sniper), both being Catholics full of Catholic guilt (note that the Buffyverse is most accurately polytheistic, though Angel does face off against a take on the antichrist--Angel has constant biblical imagery/themes and not just because of vampire iconography), kicking down doors (just not off their entire frames--LOL), turning on a dime and threatening people up against walls, constant wink-wink references to the Buffyverse (familiar casting, references to the Hyperion Hotel, etc...), etc...

The Lucifer finale used the words "Close your eyes." right before Lucifer is sent to Hell. This is literally the BtVS season 2 finale where Buffy kisses Angel and sends him to hell for a century with a stab to the gut (see the season 5 finale, not to mention Lucifer giving up his life for Chloe's à la I Will Remember You).

Note that D.B. Woodside was on BtVS (playing Robin Wood, whose Slayer mother Nikki Wood was killed by Spike). Aimee Garcia was in both episodes of AtS (Birthday--she's older than she looks!) and Bones. See her also playing a cross-wearing religious girl on Supernatural who was slaughtered in a police precinct by Lilith. Kevin Alejandro was also in an episode of Bones.

Tricia Helfer was in an episode of Supernatural playing a ghost who reenacts the night of her death every year. BtVS also had an episode along those lines, but with Buffy and Angelus possessed (not to mention Phantom Dennis!). Lucifer having Dan as a ghost is yet another thing they all have in common (ditto referencing Ghost, Patrick Swayze and/or Unchained Melody--Vincent Schiavelli a.k.a. Ghost's subway ghost was Jenny's uncle Enyos, whom Angelus killed).

Lucifer name-checked Castiel and Supernatural referenced Lucifer using their Lucifer (crime-fighting angel in L.A. made it a double-reference whammy). Supernatural returned the favor again by having Castiel forced to sing in Enochian. Lucifer's reference to his singing voice was already a zing about Misha Collins having to put on that monotone gravel voice and Enochian being far from melodious.

Russell T Davies was quite heavily inspired by the Buffyverse when he revived Doctor Who and spun off Torchwood, so there are absolute tons of Buffy, Angel and Spike respectively in Rose Tyler, the 9th/10th Doctors, Captain Jack Harkness and Captain John Hart (right down to the actor). School Reunion is the episode where the Buffyverse inspiration is most on the nose, complete with Anthony Stewart Head saying "shooty dog thing" in a school setting and a Mayor/Angel-esque speech about the curse of immortality. The Time War gave the Doctor a huge genocide-level guilt complex. Note that the creator of DC comics' version of Lucifer, Neil Gaiman, has also written for Doctor Who and is also the co-creator of Good Omens (the show is brimming with Doctor Who Easter eggs thanks to David Tennant). A barely-recognizable Tom Ellis played Martha Jones' ex-fiancé Tom Milligan during the Year that Never Was, as well.

A lot of shows take inspiration from the Buffyverse and you've probably seen some of them. It isn't just the copycat vampire romance stories either.

Angel's forerunners in turn were a mix of guilt-stricken, rat-eating Louis de Pointe du Lac (his Jekyll/Hyde-esque alter-ego Angelus is closer to the pre-retcon, fully-evil Lestat de Lioncourt, who got woobified into an antihero rocker not unlike Spike--the entire Fanged Four mirror Anne Rice's character lineup), sword-wielding, immortality trope-influencers Connor/Duncan MacLeod of Highlander fighting for the Prize of humanity (akin to Pinocchio becoming a "real boy"--see also Barnabas Collins of Dark Shadows, though he was before vampires became antihero superheroes, not just sympathetic antivillains) and Nick Knight of Forever Knight (vampire detective).

Additionally, Tom Welling was famously the longest-serving Clark Kent of them all (Smallville) on the old WB (there's that DC comics connection, too), so it's not just a Fox shows thing (though Fox, not just Warner Brothers, did indeed own the Buffyverse). One of the least-known things about Clark is that he also has an immortality problem where he wouldn't age parallel to Lois (they wouldn't be able to have kids either) without a workaround. The Kryptonite line directed at Cain/Pierce by Lucifer was quite on the nose! Lucifer and Smallville sort of crossed over even further in Crisis on Infinite Earths, so Tom is canonically the face of both Clark and Cain in parallel universes of the DC multiverse.

Supernatural had quite recently had their own takes on Cain (played by Timothy Omundson, who also played God Johnson) and the Mark of Cain when Lucifer did it. Dan's killer Le Mec was, of course, Rob Benedict, who was God a.k.a. Chuck Shurley, the ultimate villain of Supernatural. Richard Speight, Jr., who was archangel Gabriel/Loki the Trickster, directed a lot of Lucifer's later episodes in addition to being a prolific Supernatural director.

Supernatural and Lucifer use the exact same font for their titles (Supernatural Knight).

The X-Files (which Supernatural referenced constantly) and Supernatural also had stories about nephilim (see the apocryphal Book of Enoch). Lucifer ultimately had two nephilim (forbidden interspecies offspring of angels and humans), even if not saying so as a known concept. Connor can also be compared to the vampire equivalent of being something like a dhampir, though he's not quite that (mostly-but-not-quite-human offspring of two vampires instead of a human/vampire hybrid--see Blade for an actual dhampir). Supernatural has also covered the even rarer cambion species (human/demon hybrid).

[g-perla]

The ACOTAR Series is a Romantic/Gothic Horror Stage and Only Nesta Got the Memo

Not even SJM knows what’s going on.

Ok, this is going to seem off the rails but bear with me.

So I'm a big fan of Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (top 5 books and all that jazz) and I was thinking about it because it deals with themes of the Other and the supernatural, Nature as Character, the overlap of the animalistic and human, blurring of established binaries...fun, Romantic shit like that. Interestingly, this overlaps with how SJM illustrates her world and characters a lot of the time, hence why I was considering it while working on my Nesta project. I’ve mentioned before that Nesta really gives me Byronic heroine vibes and that’s a character construct of precisely this literary tradition.

I started thinking about Heathcliff and Cathy and how they're ridiculously extra and just feel the most intense emotions towards each other but also towards literally everything (nothing half-assed ever, this is a Romantic novel after all). I then remembered how so many people ship them, but like in earnest, in a totally aspirational way. It's not a #cursed ship to them at all. It's...romantic to them not Romantic. I even read often that people quote it at their weddings, specifically the infamous "two souls" quote.

Then I had an epiphany. I was like "wait, what if SJM is one of those people?? What if she has the energy of a Cathy/Heathcliff earnest shipper and that's why all her ships are messy??" Because if that is the case, my friends, oh boy oh boy would it explain so much. I will post some sections from Wuthering Heights:

Doesn’t the acotar series seem like a 1/50 dilution of that energy?? And that is barely a taste of all the spiciness this book has to offer. To illustrate further: SJM gave us the F/eysand suicide pact and the near-death battlefield Nessian scene. One is certainly more outlandish than the other, but both are the result of intense emotions. To that Emily Brontë raises the following: Heathcliff asking the sexton to dig up Cathy’s grave to see what’s up because her ghost has been haunting him since he personally dug up her grave 18 years prior and she has been haunting him ever since. He later demands to be buried in the same exact grave when he dies so they can decompose together. They both married other people though which only adds to the mess. (I am not lying to you the Romantic tradition really gave us these gems lmao. As an aside, Mary Shelley was also a writer of the Romantic tradition and she confessed her love to husband Percy Bysshe Shelley on her mother’s grave. Her mother was liberal feminist icon Mary Wollstonecraft by the way which only makes this even more amazing. Additionally, biographers believe that the Shelleys also had sex there. Talk about Romantic 😉.)

Then I had ANOTHER thought! (Dangerous)

If we read the series from the point of view of just another YA high fantasy things might get a bit boring because the world-building is honestly lazy and the magic system is pretty soft, which isn’t a pre-requisite in high fantasy (The Lord of the Rings has a soft magic system) but it's not the norm and it doesn't pay off in this series. Not to mention that the plot is pretty lackluster and derivative. To add to that the romantic and sexual relationships are questionable in their healthiness and consequently are the source of much argument in the fandom. 

But, dear reader, if we think about the ACOTAR series as being a sort of thematic and ideological 21st century YA homage to the Romantic tradition of the 19th century (within which Gothic Horror also lives), things get REALLY, REALLY SPICY.

No longer do we just have a romance fantasy with messy, hyper-emotional, animalistic characters who constantly partake in morally grey situations rife with dubious dynamics. No longer does plot really matter. No longer do we require quasi-scientific descriptions of the world and the magical system. No! All that matters now are the characters and the mood. Now we have potential! Add a lot of Nature ambiance: expanses of dark woods, great mountains, the unknowable and sublime energy of the ocean, a violent rainstorm/hurricane/tsunami, an impending snowstorm whose intensity reflects the growing emotional intensity of the characters as the story goes along (I’m looking at you impending snowstorm in acofas that curiously matches the growing complexity of Nesta’s emotional state). Blur the lines between any imaginable category: life and death, human and animal, known and unknown, Self and Other, beautiful and monstrous, good and evil, masculine and feminine, the list goes on. Most importantly make your readers uncomfortable by frustrating their desires to sort things into easy binary categories and don’t apologise for making them question their assumptions about the world, morality, gender, and any other kind of previously constructed Order. 

Basically write the story with Dionysus-in-a-Greek-tragedy energy and bring to us mere mortals artful Chaos.

Once that is done we can have a literal Romantic/Gothic Horror story.  The Acotar series could have been this unapologetically, with the added element of being told through the eyes of the "Cathy" character instead of through the lens of a third person getting second-hand accounts about what went on. This whole series is honestly enough of a chaotic mess of Byronic-like heroes and heroines and cursed familial relationships that it could have been that. That alone is peak entertainment. The problem, however, and the main reason why I can’t really say that this series truly delivered this wackiness is that SJM committed the act of not fully committing to the bit (very un-Romantic of her, I know). Now, I am not saying that SJM actually intended this. I’m just saying it really could have accidentally been this genius with some tweaks. Unfortunately, she made the crucial mistake of trying to justify too much, trying to make things too neat, too tidy, too sensical (in other words: the reason we really can’t have nice things). 

I could end this here, lamenting the potential of what SJM had set-up for us were it not for one element, one gift:

Nesta 

OHOHOHO DO THINGS GET GOOD HERE SO BUCKLE UP

Most of the characters refuse to fully commit to the bit in their desire to satisfy modern sensibilities, by which I of course mean they want ridiculous things like political power, to conquer lands, to be a Girl Boss, to get married, have kids, celebrate holidays, converse about mundane things, be relatable, etc. You know, pretty pedestrian stuff that only requires a bit of genetic luck, a sprinkle of energy, and the right circumstances within the world of Acotar. I would like to reiterate the beginning of this paragraph: most of the characters. 

Let’s say you’re stubborn and you decide to still read the series through the lens of the Romantic/Gothic tradition, what happens then? 

The most hilarious thing (for the Nesta stans that is. The antis would probably hate this)

Nesta, based on what we know about her through Feyre and the limited amount of other scenes, is the only character who really takes the performance seriously. She's the only one that SJM hasn't managed to confine through justification. Nesta just shows up and simply refuses to make sense (her POWER what a queen 👑). She is endlessly fascinating because she just exists in her world on her terms, established categories be damned, and in this manner she frustrates not only the sensibilities of the characters in the stories but those of the reader as well. This double duty is, I suggest, the result of the other characters not fully inhabiting the nebulous world of Romantic characters and thus being a little too plausible and understandable even if they are not justifiable. 

Ok, you may say, but I relate so much to Nesta. I do understand her. I don’t justify all of her actions, but I understand where she is coming from. (You’re not alone, friend. I like to think these things too. Alas, we are but plebs).

To that I reply; Nesta does things, certainly, and we can spend hours trying to explain through extrapolation, educated guesses, and personal experience why she did those things, but the fact is we really don't know why. We are never explicitly told. Our insight into who she is and her motivations comes predominantly from the understanding of her youngest sister and from our own interpretation of the actions she takes. I must make clear that our own interpretations are rooted in pre-established assumptions about what is sensical and orderly in our own world and in our own lives. We cannot interpret with the tools available to us that which may be, by definition, unfathomable. It is simply paradoxical. Nesta, as we currently know her, is a construct derived from a limited number of scenes and our interpretations and projections of these scenes. Even the scenes where we get third person narration don’t explicitly tell us her motivations and her logic. For all we know there really is no comprehensible reason for her actions and that is endlessly amusing to me in how utterly Romantic it is. Acosf may and likely will change this of course, but as it stands, Nesta is a whole Romantic character. Her divisiveness in fandom and in the narrative could be due in part to her refusal to fit the discrete categories available in her world and ours. 

Isn’t that wonderful?

To illustrate this a bit more I will share some details SJM gives us about her/ elements she sets up that fit in with the characteristics of the Romantic tradition (these are not exhaustive by any means):

The absolute pettiness (and extra-ness) of being so angry at her father’s inaction that she is willing to starve to death to see if he does something.

How in Acowae she is described as shifting between emotions as if she were changing clothes and feeling everything too strongly (probably to the point of destruction)

She is constantly being compared to animals, even when she is still human. Granted, SJM compares everyone to animals, but that strengthens the blurring of lines between usually discrete categories. It is still most powerful when used as a comparison when she is human because it dehumanises Nesta.

Often, SJM describes her characters as forces. Forces of nature, for example. Acofas is full of details like this in relation to Nesta. There is a storm brewing leading up to the solstice party and it is in full swing when she arrives at the townhouse. The language used there suggests that Nesta herself may be the storm (against the onslaught of Nesta). It really adds to the Maleficent energy tbh.

She is often associated with death post her transformation

She is Other even to Others. She was Made like Elain, Feyre, and Amren in a sense, but the process of her specific transformation differentiates her greatly from the others. As it is, she doesn’t fit in anywhere

Her intense attachment to her femininity and its expression are at odds with the ideas and assumptions about the performance of womanhood and a woman’s role in her world and even in ours. She is unapologetically feminine in her physical presentation, but her character, her thoughts, and possibly even desires transgress the unwritten rules of acceptable femininity (unfortunately there still are abject expressions of femininity in our ‘”progressive” mileux

She displays in many of her actions a disrespect towards authority and to the status quo. This is particularly notable when her intensely polarised sense of right and wrong is aggravated.

Her self-destructiveness. This is referred to most strongly in Acofas, but I would say she was remarkably blasé about self-preservation in Acowar as well

She is described as intelligent, cunning, ruthless, attractive, and prone to debilitating extremes of emotionality. All of these are characteristics of Byronic heroes, a subtype of the Romantic hero

Here are a bunch of quotes that touch on many of the elements that I have discussed above:

“I looked at my sister, really looked at her, at this woman who couldn’t stomach the sycophants who now surrounded her, who had never spent a day in the forest but had gone into wolf territory...Who had shrouded the loss of our Mother, then our downfall, because the anger had been a lifeline, the cruelty a release. But she had cared--beneath it she had cared, and perhaps loved more fiercely than I could comprehend, more deeply and loyally.” 

--Acotar, emphasis mine, note the strong emotions. This is a recurring element for Nesta.

“Cassian’s face went almost feral. A wolf who had been circling a doe...Only to find a mountain cat wearing its hide instead.” 

--Acomaf, animal comparison

“Nesta is different from most people,” I explained. “She comes across as rigid and vicious, but I think it’s a wall. A shield--like the ones Rhys has in his mind.” “Against what?” “Feeling. I think Nesta feels everything--sees too much; sees and feels it all. And she burns with it. Keeping that wall up helps from being overwhelmed, from caring too greatly.”

--Acomaf, emphasis mine

“I knew that she was different [...] Nesta was different [...] as if the Cauldron in making her...had been forced to give more than it wanted. As if Nesta had fought after she went under, and had decided that if she was to be dragged into hell, she was taking the Cauldron with her.”

--Acomaf, Nesta had her own plans for the Cauldron what a queen

“Something great and terrible.”

--Acowar, referring to her eyes. Oooh, spooky Nesta 👻

“The day she was changed, she...I felt something different with her [...] like looking at a house cat and suddenly finding a panther standing there instead.”

--Acowar, a two in one here: difference + animal comparison. Boy does SJM really go heavy when establishing Nesta as Other.

“‘Not in flesh, not in the thing that prowls beneath our skin and bones...’ Amren’s remarkable eyes narrowed. ‘But...I see the kernel, girl.’ Amren nodded, more to herself than anyone. ‘You did not fit--the mold that they shoved you into. The path you were born upon and forced to walk. You tried, and yet you did not, could not fit. And then the path changed.’ A little nod. ‘I know--what it is to be that way. I remember it, long ago as it was.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’“

--Acowar, show don’t tell gets thrown out the window here, but it is useful for the present purposes

“What if I tell you that the rock and darkness and sea beyond whispered to me, Lord of Bloodshed? How they shuddered in fear, on that island across the sea. How they trembled when she emerged. She took something--something precious. She ripped it out with her teeth. What did you wake that day in Hybern, Prince of Bastards?

What came out was not what went in [...] How lovely she is, new as a fawn and yet ancient as the sea. How she calls to you. A queen as my sister once was. Terrible and proud; beautiful as a winter’s sunrise.”

--Acowar, who knew rocks, darkness, and the sea were such gossips, but look how many connections to nature! To be compared to the sea, a significant example of the sublime, is peak Romanticism. If any of you have read Moby Dick, think about what the ocean and the white whale might have represented there and how that might relate to Nesta.

“I think the power is death--death made flesh.”

--Acowar, Feyre referring to the possible nature of Nesta’s power. Alluding to her powers possibly being related to death is quite significant because that is something most of us cannot comprehend, nor can most of the characters. For Nesta, a “reborn” but very much living character to have death associated with her is a strong blurring of the lines. The case of her being labelled a witch is similarly significant as it solidifies the elements of the supernatural while simultaneously comparing her to pretty much the only exclusively female-coded monster in western pop culture. I will touch more on this when I do my study of Nesta through the framework of Barbara Creed’s Monstrous Feminine.

“I am not like the others.”

--Acowar, we love a self-aware queen.

“Nesta took in his broken body, the pain in Cassian’s eyes, and angled her head.

The movement was not human.

Not fae.

Purely animal.

Purely predator.”

--Acowar

There are a lot more details and quotes that support this interpretation, but I didn’t write them all down in my archived notes. This post is obscenely long, however, so even though there is more to be said, I’ll leave it for another day. If you made it this far you really are an MVP and probably love Nesta to a concerning degree like me. Please rest your eyes if you’re actually reading this 😂

I’d love to read about any other takes and thoughts that might have come to your minds after reading this monstrosity,

G

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

Back and to the future: childhood trauma and adult guilt

There is a double layer of meaning in the title of the season 15 premiere. One is pretty obvious and I’d call it the meta layer, fitting for the “beginning of the end”, an episode that heavily calls back to the early seasons of the show to introduce the new season. The episode, in fact, textually contains elements from the past of the characters, having the characters face ghosts they dealt with many years ago; actually contains brief flashbacks such as the moments with the woman in white and the iconic closing of the trunk--but also subtextually contains several callbacks to previous seasons, spanning from the visual of the child standing above water, reminiscent of 1x03, to Belphegor’s role paralleling Ruby’s in 3x01, and so on.

The layer of callbacks to the past of the show is pretty obvious and expected from the last season of the show (and considering Adam’s return and other returns teased by the cast and crew, we haven’t seen it all yet...), but I’d say there is another layer, which is about the past of the characters--childhood.

The “past” elements in the episode weren’t shown at random. @drsilverfish as usual hits the nail on the head in this post about what Constance Welsh and John Wayne Gacy represent in relation to Dean and Sam, but there’s also a few elements that I’d add. (I have also written a post about the significance of the severed heart that @drsilverfish​ mentions in the post).

The woman in white, Constance, committed suicide after killing her children (all by drowning), while the child standing above water and a ghost coming up to grab someone (and drown them) is reminiscent of the child ghost in Dead In The Water. Drowning is a theme in the show that has been emphasized last season in relation past/childhood trauma (x, x) by connecting Dean’s experience with Michael’s possession to drowning, rain/Noah imagery, and the ocean (x, x, also x).

What else have we got? John Wayne Gacy, a clown, Sam’s childhood phobia -- but also a serial killer, Sam’s special interest. (Additionally, the mother and child are a parallel to Dean and Sam as kids - last paragraph here.) The clown ghost, though, is also reminiscent of the rakshasa in 2x02, the “homicidal phantom clown” whose MO was being invited by children in their house and then kill the people in it. (And I think this also - in addition to the meanings pointed out by @drsilverfish​, I mean - explains why the clown was a ghost from a fairly recent episode instead of an “older” one: the clown in 2x02 wasn’t a ghost but a different monster, and 15x01 specifically needed ghosts, but wanted to evoke 2x02 and the specific vibe of a monster connected to children. John Wayne Gacy was also connected to children, in the sense that he abused and killed young boys, but that’s not something the text of the show insists on.)

(I wonder if the lady with the hatchet was supposed to make us think of the Hatchet Man, the character from the horror movies, so tied with past trauma and Dean’s childhood and John, or Sam’s broken hatchet after Jack’s death.)

Then there’s Bloody Mary, who, while not inherently linked to childhood, is summoned by a young girl, and then kills the girl’s older sister’s friend, who accidentally killed a young boy. The point of her story, though, is guilt, which is also the theme of 1x01 and 1x03: the woman in white couldn’t “go home” because of the guilt of killing her children, and the victims of the child in 1x03 carried the guilt of causing the child’s death as kids.

In fact, I think the “water ghost” became Bloody Mary partly to avoid the implication that the drowned kid from 1x03 would have gone to hell, but of course she fits well into the theme, and there’s always a layer carried by her sharing a name with Mary Winchester, which possibly originated as a coincidence since Bloody Mary is an actual legend the show drew inspiration from for their episode, but at this point using a character called Mary is hardly done accidentally. 15x01 basically has a mother who drowned her children and herself - in fact the first ever Mary mirror since it was literally the pilot -, and another woman called Mary who tries to pull a mother and a child into a basin of water... again, parenthood, childhood, drowning, trauma, guilt, we have it all.

So: childhood (especially dead children) and guilt. Obviously, the most prominent dead child in the episode is Jack, whose “ghost” literally walks around with them and torments them; but also Dean and Sam, whose childhood is evoked at the end of the episode, the children whose childhood was murdered together with Mary. Which leads to the other elements of the episode -- mothers. Constance, the first mother we meet in the show after Mary; the mother with her child that Sam and Cas save; and the mother who is never mentioned but whose ghosts hangs on Dean and Cas’ relationship since they realized that Jack had killed her.

Back and to the future, the title of the episode tells us. We need to “return” to the childhood, to the past, to the trauma whose ghost is haunting us, in order to go forward. The episode subtextually laid the cards on the table, the rest of the season will play them...

[fuck-customers]

This is going to be a bit lengthy, and even though it was a small purchase and only a few bucks, I caught a scammer and im proud of myself. Plus the whole thing was insanely extra and annoying so I’m just gonna share it with you.

So onto the story…

Last night I was working a closing shift. Around 8 (2 hours before closing), a woman and her son come up to my register to check out. At this point there are no other customers. She has 12 red mangoes, and that’s all.

I go to ring them up but halfway through me typing the produce code for them, she asks, “these are the ones that are $3 for $1, right?” So I pause mid-code type, change it to a price inquiry, type it in, and inform her, “errr, no, they'e 88 cents a piece.”

Sooo… here’s where it gets good. We’ll refer to my coworker in produce by the name “Richard”. It is extremely important to note that Richard always wears a black company hat while on the clock. Next to no one else does this.

She tells me, “well Richard over there in produce said they were 3 for $1.”

Okay… at the time I wasn’t really thinking about it, but looking back I think my subconsious kicked in and smelled something fishy. Here in good old Colorado, and at my store, mangoes are never 3 for $1 unless we’re having one of our special 3 day sales… in the summer. They haven’t been that cheap in I don’t know how long, and my 2 year anniversary is in February, so I’ve been there long enough to know about that. Additionally, There’s been no other customers coming up with complaints about the price, which if it’s wrong, mangoes are popular, so I would have heard about it by now. And it was the last day of our weekly ad cycle so, what even?

So as a recap - at this point, I have a woman and her son at my register, claiming the mangoes are 3 for $1, and she’s specifically using an employee’s name to convince me she’s right, but I am doubtful. Already the beginning of a good scam story, right?

Well, here’s where it gets even better. Let me tell you how our conversation went.

Her: Richard in produce said I could have them for 3 for 1.

Me: err, okay well let me call and see.

Richard (over the phone): hello?

Me: hey, man, so what’s going on with the mangoes? Like, What price are they back there?

Richard: um… 88 cents. Wait… let me double check and look at organics too hold on.

Me: okay. *puts down phone and turns to woman* well, he’s saying they’re 88 cents a piece as well but he’s double checking.

Her: well I just talked to Richard back there a minute ago! Richard told me that I could have them 3 for $1. He was wearing a hat! Richard told me that was the price!

Richard (calling me back on the phone): yeah the regular ones are 88 cents. Organic 98.

Me: and there’s no sign anywhere that says 3 for 1? I have a woman up here saying that you said she could have them at 3 for a dollar. 

Richard: ..no? They'e 88 cents.

Her: Richard back in produce told me!

Me, knowing I was speaking to Richard but asks anyway: right uh.. is this Richard?

Richard: yeah..?

Me: well there’s a woman up here claiming that YOU told her that the mangoes were 3 for a dollar.

Richard, annoyed: is it (brief description of woman at my register)?

Me: yes.

Richard: I saw her in my department but she didn’t speak to me. I haven’t talked to anyone. I’ve been on lunch for the last half hour.

Me: okay, thank you. *sets phone back down, turns, faces woman, and looks her right in her eyes*

So I just got off of the phone with Richard, and he says that he didn’t tell you that, and that he’s been on lunch for the last half hour.

— so at this point she seems to understand that her scam isn’t working, but refuses to back down. At this point in getting a line but I’m INVESTED in this at this point, and there’s nothing I can really do at this point anyways because she won’t back down, so i am stuck there while she changes her scam from “Richard in produce told me” to now we are at -

Her: *turning towards the store and looking around* well it must have been somebody else then!! Who was it? I know he had a hat…

Me: …right well, Richard is our produce manager, sooooo….

She begins scanning the store for employees to pin this on, but hilariously, since she picked 8pm on a Tuesday night, the store is practically a ghost town void of both customers AND employees. Literally the only other employee that she can see besides me and Richard is a guy working in the meat department back room behind a glass wall.

Now, the thing is, is that the meat guys basically never leave their area, and they don’t rove the floor either as right next to the meat counter there are double doors leading to the back room. While they do face produce, they’re not exactly close to it. They have a coffin case in between them, and the doors for the back room that produce uses are literally on the opposite side of the store that meat counter is.

To her credit, I think the woman knew that trying to pin it on the meat guy, Who actually conveniently was wearing the same color and type of hat as Richard was, was ridiculous and wouldn’t have made any sense because she didn’t try to blame him for this. So not as stupid as you’d think, but still pretty questionable.

Anyways, I feel like at this point ive done all I can do, and she STILL won’t leave or accept me all but calling her a liar (all over wanting to pay $4 for almost $11 worth of mangoes, like really lady if you'e gonna pull a scam do it for something that’s WORTH IT), so i call the manager on duty.

However, I was trying to get to the MOD before this woman did, because in MY EXPERIENCE scammers and liars will absolutely talk and walk all over you as soon as a manager shows up and lie to their face - and unfortunately managers always believe the lies and get away with it. I knew if I was able to explain the situation first, it would be different - given that my current manager WILL bend rules, but is also known to stick up for us cashiers.

Luckily, I spot her pushing a cart down an action alley towards us, so I book it over and explain everything as fast as I can. At the end i say, “but you know, She’s…” my manager tries to finish, “She’s being rude?” But I reply, “She’s lying is what she’s doing. She’s lying.” And my manager says “oh, okay. Call (supervisor) up here to deal with the lines.” So I do, as at this point we had accumulated a long one.

So she walks up and asks this woman what’s going on, and in the SNOTTIEST, RUDEST tone she says, “Who are you?” It kind of surprised me because at this point while the scammer was being mind numbingly annoying, she had been reasonably polite, so for her to get so hostile over a manager kind of surprised me, but at this point, thank god, said manager was in charge and dealing with it now.

I took care of a few other customers while they were talking, and as soon as my line was done i excused myself and hung out by my supervisors register, which happened to be close enough to listen but far away enough to not be involved.

And I can hear what they'e saying - my manager having been informed of the scam, is holding firm on the 88 cent price, and the woman, for some unfathomable reason, is still insistent on the price. I think at this point she knew she was caught and was trying to leave gracefully by making it seem like a mistake, but it was really annoying.

Her: it must have been in the online ad.. unless the online ad is wrong.

Manager: they haven’t been that price for a while, MAYBE it was like that 2 weeks ago… (so not in any recent ad she might have “gotten confused” about.)

Even better was that… now, I didn’t find this out until afterwards as my supervisor started to ask me what was going on and since I was explaing it I didn’t hear this part of the drama… but my manager came up to me afterwards after she was done talking to the woman, that apparently the woman switched tactic again, never mentioned Richard, and instead said that she had called the store and asked about the price and whoever was on the phone, was now the magical entity that told her the mythical price of 3 for $1

Absolutely fucking hilariously, said manager said that she had gotten a call like that, answered it herself, and knew for a fact that she did not tell this woman they were 3 for a dollar.

Fucking OH MY GOD WOMAN, you got caught! It’s been obvious for the past 10 minutes that you'e not fleecing any of us! You can save yourself the most dignity by just… FUCKING OFF!

The whole thing was super obnoxious, but handle-able and im proud of myself for sticking to my guns and glad that my manager backed me up and stood firm, as orginally, before i said that the woman was lying, she started telling me to just give them to her for that price. So it was nice that she took me seriously and stood her (our) ground.

The only frustrating thing is that since I have borderline personality disorder… I’m not afraid of confrontation by any means (obviously) but sometimes my body overreacts to my emotion as well. So while I was keeping a cool and level head on the outside (believe it or not) my body was giving me away… my face was flushing, my voice was uneven, my body became stiff and weird and gangly, on top of shaking… too much adrenaline. But other than that I’m happy on how it worked out. Luckily I think my supervisor saw I was a bit jittery and sent me on my break to cool off.

And may I also say, that there’s few other customers that I hate as much as ones who name drop when the person they’re naming didn’t do what they claim they did. Richard seemed mad but cool and collected.. I know if someone did that to me like she did to him I would be stomping over and being like “she said WHAT now? No I did NOT!!!!!!” Back tf up. But that’s just another reason I don’t wear my name tag… can’t use my name if it’s not broadcasted!

But anyways kids, just keep in mind that name dropping is actually a really common way of scamming, it gives the illusion that they really did talk to someone when they didn’t. So it never hurts to double check with that person.

[addcrazy-blog]

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500 Miles within the 2017 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 Convertible and Coupe

ONCORD, North Carolina – Contrived? Maybe only a little. However, Chevrolet’s idea to offer us a 2017 Camaro ZL1 to force to Daytona Seashore, Florida, made sense once the organization brought up the numbers: 650 for 500 to the 500.

As in 650 horsepower from the supercharged LT4 6.2-liter V-8. As in 500 miles from Concord, that is just north of Charlotte, to Daytona Seashore. And 500 once more, as within the Daytona 500, where Chevrolets would start at the front row, each from Hendrick Motorsports – more approximately that during a second – which might follow the Camaro ZL1 tempo car to the green flag, driven through the semi-retired Jeff Gordon, who gained 4 NASCAR championships for Hendrick and Chevrolet. Tidy!

It might be great for Chevrolet if we ought to document the logo received the Daytona 500, However of the route it didn’t. Polesitter Chase Elliott ran out of gasoline, allowing Stewart-Haas driver Kurt Busch to get the past for his first win in the first race after the four-vehicle Stewart-Haas team switched from Chevrolet to Ford.

Regrettably for Ford, although, as high-quality as the 526-horsepower 2017 Mustang Shelby GT350 is, Chevrolet’s ZL1 has the clean, modern gain inside the 50-yr Pony vehicle wars. Yes, Stay clear of has the pleasant 707-horsepower Challenger Hellcat, however, the chassis and aerodynamics are a few years behind the most up to date Camaro and Mustang.

The primary enchantment of this ride – apart from the plain using-a-hotrod-to-a-NASCAR-race – was to peer how properly the ZL1 dealt with a 500-mile drive in a day. Which brings us back to the first forestall closing Wednesday night time: Hendrick Motorsports, home of contemporary NASCAR drivers Dale Earnhardt Jr., Kasey Kahne, Elliott, and 7-time NASCAR Monster Power Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson.

No longer noticeably, Hendrick Motorsports was a ghost city, with a maximum of the important thing gamers in Daytona. A handful of employees in the shop that homes the automobiles for Johnson and Earnhardt banged on bodies and measured shells with templates, probable operating on vehicles for soon-to-come races in Atlanta and Las Vegas.

But that didn’t rely upon, as we came to see the large Hendrick Historical past Center, which isn’t always open to the public, no pics allowed – although if you buy a vehicle from the Historical past Middle, you get an excursion. Automobiles available for buy range from a 1990 Chevrolet Suburban ($39,990) to Gordon’s 2006 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, a 4-time Martinsville NASCAR winner, for $four hundred,000.

The Heritage Middle – and this isn’t always to be harassed with Hendrick’s 15,000-square-foot museum, which is open to the general public–is surely packed with an eclectic series of stuff that both has a private that means to Rick Hendrick, or that he simply likes. There’s a 1977 Pontiac Trans Am “Smokey and the Bandit” automobile that Mrs. Hendrick offered for Rick, which has just double-digit miles, and there’s a beautiful 1961 Corvette, Hendrick’s first of a multitude of Corvettes. Of simply greater than 200 Vehicles right here, half are Corvettes. And the most amazing part of the Background Center collection is the wide variety of particular Corvettes which might be Hendrick’s favorite: 1967, 427-powered Stingrays. Thirty-seven of them. And each automobile in the collection is ready to run on the turn of a key. If you have ever driven a Corvette powered by using a 427-cubic-inch engine – and we’re speaking any 427, Now not just the holy-grail LS7, 435-horsepower Tri-Power model – the car become a rocket at the dual carriageway But ponderous round metropolis, threatening to overheat or foul a plug or par-boil its two occupants in warm climate. It shook, it rattled, it roared, and it frequently took little extra than a Sunday force to reason the Corvette-loving husband to change in his massive-block prize on some thing more docile, or face divorce. Apologies if this sounds sexist, However men who anticipated a hundred-pound spouse to embrace a 4-velocity, 427 Corvette as her every day motive force better have married Shirley Muldowney.

Which brings us to the 650-horsepower Camaro ZL1: It’s a automobile that, When you have very quick friends which could match on the package deal shelf that passes for a rear seat, is genuinely delighted to carpool around Manhattan. In particular with the brand new 10-speed automatic transmission, which, we’ll cross beforehand and tell you currently, is the unmarried most mind-blowing characteristic of the 2017 ZL1. It replaces the 8-velocity automated we had within the 640-horsepower Cadillac CTS-V some weeks ago, the most effective characteristic we got here returned complaining about after a 700-mile weekend in the Caddy. It tended to shudder slightly because it hit eighth gear, and the engine dropped returned to four cylinders to save fuel. No such trouble inside the ZL1, However Not lots within the manner of gas savings, either: Our mileage ran quite near the bleak EPA ratings of 12 mpg town, 20 toll road for the automatic, and 14 metropolis and 20 toll road for the six-speed manual.

buy the automatic, and you’ll pay $1,595 extra than the manual, and $2,100 within the federal “gas guzzler” tax ($1, three hundred for the six-pace). This brought the sticker of our loaded ZL1 convertible with the automatic to $72,325. The six-speed coupe we drove, which had a base rate of $sixty two,135, turned into about $five,000 greater than that out the door.

And talking of out the door, we had been Thursday morning, after a briefing on the auto. Car magazine has already given you the details in multiple stories; this time our task become to inform you the way it all worked on an actual journey.

the primary half of the 500 miles, we spent inside the aforementioned six-pace coupe, which turned into optioned heavily, which includes the $495 MyLink audio machine with navigation, and an eight-inch touchscreen. It’s exceptional to look the expenses of nav structures dropping in view of the truth that all of us have smartphones, or lacking that, a wonderfully first-class $89 TomTom from Walmart.

The six-speed guide is nicely-matched to the engine’s prodigious Electricity. The shifter itself is stiff, however the car was logo-new, and after a few thousand miles it’ll be great. Seize action is firm However doesn’t require a lot of stress, even though take-up is a touch abrupt.

Specially, as I learned, if you don’t know the way to power a guide, as my car-mate did No longer, or at the least hadn’t driven one in years. Clutch take-up is definitely abrupt then, until you get the grasp of modulation. Or don’t. both way, we made it to the checkpoint unscathed, in which we swapped the coupe for a convertible, additionally grey, because the Ferrari pink and yellow models have a tendency to be dual carriageway Patrol magnets.

The convertible pinnacle drops and increases fast, and works at hurries up to 30 mph. Wind buffeting is present However tolerable even at 80 mph and beyond. Inside, the Recaro seats, standard, are great – thin and light as you would expect in a performance automobile “looking after” its weight (4,148 pounds with the automated in convertible shape, 2 hundred kilos lighter than its predecessor), However secure and supportive even after an extended day inside the cockpit. Gadgets and controls are reasonably intuitive, But having just pop out of a 2017 Lexus GS F, they regarded greater complicated than vital.

Coupe or convertible, outward visibility remains an problem with the Camaro, though admittedly lowering the pinnacle provides for your sightline. the new Camaro is better-looking than the previous model, Mainly the extensive-bodied model used here to squeeze the large, very capable Goodyear F1 Supercar tires below their respective fenders, But it’s nonetheless pretty excessive-waisted. Even at a top of six toes, resting my arm in the open window is much less relaxed than I want it was, because given the ZL1’s exhaust note, I’d force it with home windows down plenty.

2017 Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 rear three area 02

As referred to, as we cruised down Interstate 95 beyond the Florida nation line closer to Daytona Seashore, that 10-velocity automated, which we feared might be annoyingly busy, was something But. It is a transparent transmission, seemingly inside the right equipment regardless of the circumstance. It’s a winner.

And so is the magnetic-ride suspension, which continues to prove its really worth in most every software: stiff whilst you need it to be, and pretty compliant while you don’t, it’s a actually all-reason system that, matched to the large Brembo brakes, works equally nicely on the track and on the street. Even inside the stiffest putting, the journey became tolerable at the Interstate. Properly done.

So we made it to Daytona Beach within the Camaro ZL1, if Not pretty to Daytona Global Speedway, wherein – since the Daytona 500 is a restrictor-plate race – we would have arrived with greater horsepower than any automobile NASCAR had on the track this weekend, and for that remember, at least as an awful lot horsepower as any entry inside the Rolex 24 at Daytona sports activities-vehicle staying power race some weeks ago. It’s a right of passage for any high-horse street automobile to power thru the lengthy flip-one tunnel beneath the music and, um, display what the car feels like below heavy acceleration. Didn’t get that hazard. Maybe next time.

And talking of subsequent time: Saturday afternoon, Chevrolet amazed all and sundry at the experience while it unveiled the 2018 Camaro ZL1 with the 1LE package. In brief, in case you just ordered a 2017 ZL1, you’ve got already been trumped.

The 1LE is avenue-legal, with aircon and all that, However it’s an clearly committed song rat with a suspension advanced by means of Multimatic (the organisation that builds the brand new Ford GT), and among the mounting factors at the ZL1 which are cushioned with the aid of a nice rubber bushing are honestly metal-to-metallic on the ZL1 1LE. This means superb stiffness at the tune (desirable!) and ideal stiffness for your day by day power (Perhaps Now not so top! See connection with 427 Corvette above).

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