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gallyl · 5 months

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NBC Hannibal: Dogs and Dinners

There is a tv trope "adopt the dog", which helps us like a character and see their good side. Will's character exposition is clear: he saves a dog and cares for a big family of strays. The dogs manifest his good sides, humanity. However, we are also hinted at Will's repressed dark instincts, because domestic dogs are still animals that hunt and kill. They are pack hunters too, and Will's fighting pose in the finale is "on fours", "a wild dog". The domestic and the wild co-exist.

It would be unfair not to demonstrate a humane side of Hannibal during his introduction. We see him working as a psychiatrist. His job almost mirrors Will's job: Will is an empath who analyses psychopaths to put them in jail, and Hannibal is a psychopath who analyses normal people to help them fix their lives. But not all of his patients are actually recovering, and his approach is unorthodox. I don't think his job is a true reflection of his humane side. As in the case with Will, we should look into his house and see the his own character exposition, just as intimate, instinctual and double-sided.

It's his cooking. At first sight it's merely a depiction of his darkness. But if we break down the idea of cooking to the basic instincts (like with Will's dogs), we will feel Hannibal's humanity. For him, cooking is not only eating. It's feeding. And Hannibal likes to feed. Feeding is a paternal instinct, a social, protective behavior. And we have seen many times in the show that Hannibal has paternal instincts, likes socialising and can be protective not only on his behalf. Hannibal uses feeding for manipulation as well, yes, but even in those cases feeding people is his idea of creating connection and affection.

Here are a few examples. After Jack asks Hannibal in the first episode to be gentle with Will, Hannibal, the stag that he is, does the opposite: invades Will's hotel room uninvited and puts him on his antlers with compliments and home-made breakfast that fits Will's simple tastes. When Hannibal tries make Abigail attached to him, he cooks her "breakfast for dinner" and mushroom tea. He makes coffee for Will, when he's in hospital, makes soups to Will, when he's unwell. He likes when someone helps him in the kitchen.

Hannibal doesn't invite people for dinner only when encessary. He does it at every opportinity. He has many "friends" in cultural circles that he loves to entertain. And he feeds them human meat, which is rare and risky to get. There's cynicism in that behaviour but also a need to share and connect at a high cost. Hannibal is generous and hospitable.

Hannibal "likes to eat in a company" and yet it's never simply that. Extended cooking scenes, exquisite dishes and lavish dinners - too lavish even for a small gathering… He’s obsessed with cooking. It's a manifestation of his darkness... and aching humanity. Eating and feeding co-exist.

There may be some evidence to this in canon. In the book/movie “Hannibal rising” (both written/scripted by the original author of "Hannibal") little Lecter starved with Mischa during the war. Mischa was his first beloved human, and he became her parental figure after premature death of their parents. A special emphasis is made in the movie on Hannibal feeding her. His experience of hunger was not only about misery but also love and caring for another person and putting their needs above your own.

Will: Have you ever been a father?

Hannibal: I was to my sister. She was not my child, but she was my charge. She taught me so much about myself. Her name was Mischa.

Before the finale Bedelia says her famous line:

"Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for you and find nourishment at the very sight of you? Yes."

This line is a big box to unpack, but a big idea is that Hannibal is harmless now. He no longer needs to eat Will - or indulge into cannibalism with him - to connect. His love overpowers trauma and killer instincts. In the finale he does exactly what Bedelia predicted: he finds nourishment at the very sight of Will in his house, only sharing wine like in the good old days, and Will feels safe and protected in his presence. And this is a really nice touch to Hannibal's character development.

#hannibal is my favourite cooking show #obsession elevated to art #hannibal lector #nbc hannibal #will graham #hannibal meta #gally meta #hannibal

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cyber-scribe · 2 years

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So I was rewatching the spooky month series when I noticed an interesting pattern: so each episode (except episode 1) has a main monster/antagonist, each one shown on the video thumbnail. I noticed that as the series progresses, the power/super natural nature of each one decreases each episode, but the actual threat and lethality demonstrated by them increases each episode. Let me explain: in episode 2 we get the eyes of the universe, an ancient, mythical, Cthulhu-like entity that can put people in trances, seemingly infinite knowledge including the end of the universe, and, based on its name, is some sort of extra-dimensional creature, however he’s shown to be docile to most and isn’t even an antagonist, just a wacky monster. In episode 3 we get moloch-possessed dexter, a human possessed by a giant demon with the power to grow appendages (or at least horns), levitate, is seemingly impervious to physical trauma, and demons in general are pretty powerful, yet he’s really dumb and ends up snapping the neck of his possessed body just to prove he’s real, defeating him. Episode 4 we get dexter’s ghost possessing the happy fella doll, and while he is a doll that’s easily killed by fire and can be thrown around and restrained easily, he’s also quick, sneaky, impervious to physical trauma, and is treated a bit more as a serious threat, plus he can possess other dolls. Finally we get Bob, aka the devil guy, a mortal human cannibal/serial killer. While yes, this guy can take A LOT of abuse, unlike the previous monsters he’s not impervious to any form of damage, he’s just able to handle a lot of it. Also, unlike the previous antagonists, this guy is the first one to actually kill someone, at least on screen, and is by far the most menacing, threatening, and seriously-treated monster of them all, yet he’s still just a normal human with a magic amulet and a thirst for blood, whereas in episode 2 we essentially had a demigod that lived in a separate dimension yet he was treated as a wacky, harmless monster. See what I mean? I just find this pattern extremely interesting, as it feels like the more grounded we get, the more threatening the villains become, while also showing that power isn’t what makes someone a threat: is there capability to effectively USE that power, something all the other monsters could have learn a thing or two from bob, if, you know, they all were still alive. Again, it’s just a pattern I noticed, and it might not mean anything, but I thought it was interesting so I decided to share it.

#spooky month #pattern #discussion #thoughts

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fatalism-and-villainy · 4 years

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#i have. thoughts about WWX and food - please share!

So I think it’s relevant that all of the most traumatic periods of time in Wei Wuxian’s life involve starvation in some way. There’s living on the streets as a little kid, having survived his parents’ death and not having any caretaker, and having to scavenge for food; there’s spending three months in the Burial Mounds, after what is certainly a very traumatizing medical procedure, getting terrorized by resentful spirits while having to subsist on corpse cannibalism and god knows what else; and then there’s living at the Burial Mounds with the Wens, during which he’s demonstrably in extremely poor mental health, where it’s mentioned that they frequently don’t have enough food, and where the stress of procuring food is a part of daily life.

So I think it’s safe to say that Wei Wuxian associates food with care, with protection, with security. Especially since one of the most prominent caretakers in his life, Jiang Yanli, shows care regularly through food. And there are several occasions where Wei Wuxian asks for help, or rather obscures his need for help, by asking for food. I’m thinking of these two scenes in particular:

The first is for his little mock-whiny “i’m baby!!” ritual. He’s trying to hide that he lost his core and deflect attention from his PTSD and assorted Issues, which he does by joking around and acting childish, and also distilling his distress into something seemingly trivial like not getting his basic needs met. But given the parentified role Jiang Yanli has had in both his and Jiang Cheng’s life, I think there’s a degree to which he doesn’t know how to ask for support from her except by acting like a child.

And then in the second one, on the boat with Lan Wangji and Wen Ning, he’s explicitly remembering the former scene, while hallucinating his sister (with Lan Wangji and Wen Ning looking on in concern). And the way he says “I’m hungry” with that little laugh seems to me like he’s trying to assuage their concern for him, sort of akin to “oh, i’m fine actually, it’s nothing.” But he’s also grieving for Jiang Yanli, and probably the general loss of the familial support system he had with her and Jiang Cheng, and his craving for food is very much tied to his emotional distress in the moment and his loss of that particular kind of care that she provided for him.

So, yeah - basically in his grand tradition of pretending he’s more okay than he is, he sometimes invokes hunger as a more “trivial” concern than his more complex emotional states to explain away his situational distress, but I think hunger is also very much tied into most of his emotional pitfalls, because it’s something he deeply associates with the most significant trauma and mental stress of his life.

#wei wuxian #veliseraptor #my meta #the untamed #cql #untaming #food cw #was planning to make a post about this so thanks for the encouragement!#(only semi-related but jiang cheng saving a bun for him at the wen indoctrination just makes me ;____;)

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littlest-salomon · 2 years

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Just a correction, Sakimori is actually a clan name and most Japanese families, AKA clan, tend to pass down their work through generations and Touji is human who's ancestor from waaaaaaay beyond when the Walls got up, was a normal human who had a pure oni as their spouse. Their oni blood has been watered down by human blood since before The Game, Gates are rare so they couldn't like refresh their oni blood. And Touji himself in his main chapter said that his blood is so watered down that his own children won't have any Oni features and be a pure human, making him the last Sakimori who will have oni blood.

Oh, I can infodump about Toji some more!

The narrative voice said that Toji can't have oni children in the main quest, and the same narrative voice says in Toji's character quest that "Sakimori" isn't a typical bloodline family, but essentially a title for oni and hybrids who follow the same pact to be bound to the land for sustenance and protect both it and its people; the writers wouldn't need to mention that Sakimori can be adopted in the limited time they had unless it was relevant to Toji. It seems the Sakimori occupied a social position similar to, if not the same, as that of the burakumin and their predecessors in the real world--a caste of "untouchable" people who largely shared the same bloody, but necessary careers.

Intermarriage also isn't a one and done thing: the Sakimori are based on tons of oni/human, oni/hybrid, and human/hybrid couples (lovers and otherwise) from over 1,000 years of real Japanese folklore, and in Housamo, Yoritomo definitely would've exiled far more than just one pair, one time. Plus, Toji seems to have some pretty gay oni/human memories in his date quest that couldn't've led to any offspring, so there had to have been at least two such couples in the Sakimori alone.

Toji never refers to the Sakimori who raised him as his parents, and he can remember a time before he knew them--even before his oni side first emerged--which isn't unusual in folklore. His oni subtype seems to be based on very old myths, in which oni were said to be invisible, blood-drinking, undead beings who could fly and transform into anything, but only existed in darkness and, in the Heian period, were said to represent humans' own dark sides: an apt description of Toji's oni as depicted in Halloween Police Corps. Originally ancestor spirits, oni regularly continued to begin life in later myths as "normal" humans, who are later transformed into oni after (or before, if the emotion is strong enough) death if they experience overpowering negative/violent emotions and/or a strong desire to become one; this is why it's so unusual that a small child became an oni.

Toji's character quest says that humans can turn into oni just by listening to the voices of ghosts and demons, which is the precise inborn psychic power that Toji demonstrates both in that quest and in his first appearance. This does not appear to be true in real Japanese myth, from what I've read; the legitimate options are really dark, though, so I think they decided to find a nicer way to describe whatever happened to him that was so bad that he reacted by transforming into a cannibal demon and then developing a dissociated alter to cope with the trauma. After reconciling with that alter in Halloween Police Corps, Toji apparently now identifies as an oni full-time rather than claiming to be a human with oni blood.

#housamo #housamo lore #if you wanna know more please ask #i've done literal weeks of research and hypothesizing on toji's backstory alone #the game is very subtle when it comes to truly fucked up shit #so a lot of stuff i believe about toji is based on experience and outside reading #like besides what's in this post i'd say if anything was speculation #viewer-discretion #listening to ghosts while alone at night is said to transform children in some other east/southeast asian countries #but only in the 7th month and into hungry ghosts--more like the game's jiangshi #which are all related of course

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scarlettaagni · 3 years

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Bhu’ja-Lulij a.k.a. Bhu’ja-Hulij (Mad Ghost)

Mad Ghost is M’hsi’s great-great-great granduncle and the third disgraced Odd Crest within recent history, as well as the oldest surviving member. He is also the only Odd Crest to be formally declared a Bad Blood, for his crime of partaking in tough meat, the cannibalization of another Yautja. He has since disappeared into the desert for the following 600 years, eluding capture.

Before committing the actions that led to that, he was named Mad Ghost in part of his split-strategies during Hunts- alternating being elusive and silent despite his massive size like a ghost, or charging like a bat out of hell as if gripped by an all-encompassing rage with his trademark axe. Mad Ghost was also named for his habit of sleepwalking and talking, which usually increased in frequency in times of stress. Wandering in the middle of the night muttering ominous nothings, with blank but open eyes and becoming violent when trifled with earned him a name befitting someone who acts like a restless spirit.

Mad Ghost was always eager to go on Hunts and relished in the bloodshed and recovery of trophies. In his free time, he either trained, observed and upkept his trophies, or played music. When he wasn’t slaughtering during a Hunt, he recorded human music he heard (typically church songs and choirs).

He was in his 300s when a Hunt on NV-39W resulted in a cave-in that trapped him in an air pocket with the already deceased body of his Hunt-brother Tieri. Presumed dead, the Hunting party (including a then-young Zazin) returned a few months later to retrieve the expected bodies, instead finding a starving Mad Ghost digging into Tieri’s disembodied leg next to his ravaged corpse. He was accordingly subdued, put under, and given medical attention while transported back to Yautja Prime for his sentence, either death or exile on a hostile planet.

Before a conclusion was reached, Mad Ghost awoke and escaped containment, disappearing into the deserts of Yautja Prime.

Over the following 600 years since his escape, Mad Ghost sought to demonstrate that his crime did not define who he was, never again partaking of tough meat and telling anyone he could have a conversation with that he only did it out of desperation. Believing that he was not the same as other Bad Bloods and to show he belonged back in normal society, Mad Ghost also tracked down and killed other Bad Bloods, especially those whose crimes were not as forgivable as his.

Spending the majority of his time alone in caves or makeshift shelters, he privately grappled with the trauma of the accident, being trapped with the body of a Hunt-brother he could not save, and being forced to eat it until his capture. He will not know rest until he knows if Tieri forgives him or not. Since the incident, Mad Ghost’s sleeptalking subjects have been exclusively about his experiences wasting away next to and eating Tieri’s body.

Enforcers and cocky Hunters had tried their hand at tracking down the legendary Mad Ghost, who typically avoided even being spotted. In the rare cases he was discovered, he easily won the skirmishes and purposefully left his assailants alive, just short on weapons. Careful not to take any weapons that could track him, Mad Ghost was seldom seen, never heard, but a popular urban legend among the clan in his absence.

Mad Ghost’s story was recorded accurately within records of the incident and the memories of those still alive to have witnessed it, but word of mouth has warped the story so heavily as to demonize Mad Ghost as Tieri’s murderer, a willing cannibal, or an unwilling cannibal warped into a beast who hungers for flesh and continues to crave and feast in the desert on stragglers. Even his attempts to garner support by killing Bad Bloods has been spun by mass opinion into him betraying his own kind yet again: first by turning on Yautja society by eating tough meat, and again by killing his fellow Bad Bloods. Some believe he has died given his obscurity, and some even doubt his existence in the first place, considering it a wild story to malign the clan’s resident punching bags, the Odd Crests.

The local plays have rendered Mad Ghost a sort of pierrot/harlequin/trickster stock character, with protagonists being lost in the desert as a fictionalized and flanderized version of Mad Ghost portrayed by an actor appears to lead them astray, terrorize them, or devour a side character. Few plays are actually about him, instead relegating a fictionalized retelling to a side plot, or feature him nearly contextlessly without dedicating a scene to his “backstory”. Even his name itself had been run through the mud, as the Yautja words for mad (angry), l’ulij-bpe, and mad (crazy), h’ulij-bpe, rhyme, resulting in insulting wordplay.

His time spent in the desert, through both sun-bleaching and age, has turned his hair and spines white. Though 900 years old and nearly an Ancient himself, Mad Ghost still clings to his wasted youth and as a result, uses the tar pits in the deserts of Yautja Prime to dye his hair black. His lack of spines and the dye cause him to look as young as he did before the incident. When he is seen with white hair, he is perceived as a spirit or crazed old man, and with black hair, regarded as potentially some kind of eternal supernatural being that Death has abandoned.

Mad Ghost constantly forgets his age and generally acts as he did when he was 300, with a few added behavioral tics such as a tremor, a perpetually unhinged mouth, and a lack of indoor voice. His true age is usually remembered when recalling the past, winning an argument, or making a joke.

After centuries of processing the grief and guilt, Mad Ghost finds himself secure enough to joke about his experiences, insisting he’s finally over it. When asleep, his grief and guilt manifest through his sleepwalking and talking.

When M’hsi returns from her trials, given Mad Ghost’s known slaying of Bad Bloods, sparing the lives of Enforcers, and the ambiguous nature of his original crime, her restoring the Odd Crest honor will revoke his Bad Blood status. Upon her return and recuperation, M’hsi will don her mask, and carrying his previously confiscated axe, find Mad Ghost to tell him the good news. Upon seeing her face and odd crest, he stops reacting with hostility and welcomes his new family with open arms and eagerly fawns over his niece and nephews as they house him. Zazin helps catch him up to speed with modern Yautja society (and providing him with the company of someone actually his age).

Given his streak of victories when barely armed in the desert, he spends his twilight years training M’hsi alongside Vosandi, under Halkrath’s guidance. Depending on how long Mad Ghost lives, he plans on training Lo’bane as well (wishing to wait until Lo’bane is old enough to stand a chance against him).

Mad Ghost’s biggest issue with his newly normal lifestyle is the repetitive debunking of rumors about him and his life. He is especially disgusted with how everyone has memorized his name, yet rarely speak of Tieri, whom he remembers well as a friend and real person (which the public treats him not). Enraged to the point of hilarity at their joint portrayal in the clan’s media, he pens his own account of events titled The Dark Well of Sweet Light in an attempt to set the record straight.

During his time in the well, Mad Ghost did not come close enough to death to meet Cetanu, unlike Halkrath. However, his survival, too, was a result of the whim of Cetanu, who chose to take Tieri’s life and spare the Odd Crest rather than the other way around. Mad Ghost suspects this is so but will not learn the truth and Tieri’s feelings until he himself passes. As he nears the end of his life, like an Ancient, he becomes more in tune with the abstract and spiritual as Zazin is.

#nerd stuff #my art #scarletta doodles #OCs #Mad Ghost #Odd Crests #yautja #predator

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terramythos · 3 years

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TerraMythos' 2020 Reading Challenge - Book 34 of 26

Title: The Harbors of the Sun (2017) (The Books of the Raksura #5)

Author: Martha Wells

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, Epic Fantasy, Adventure, LGBT Protagonist, Female Protagonist (Kind Of), Third-Person

Rating: 9/10

Date Began: 12/11/2020

Date Finished: 12/25/2020

Moon and his friends are reeling from the betrayal of a former ally. With several members of their party kidnapped, and a mysterious weapon stolen by their new enemy, the chase is on. He and the others must infiltrate unknown territory to rescue their missing family and avert a deadly calamity. At the same time, a massive army of Fell are gathering to attack the Reaches. The Raksuran colonies of Indigo Cloud and Opal Night must join forces to defend their home before they are overrun and destroyed.

“But you don’t want to be near Fell,” Moon guessed. Considering what had happened to Shade when they had been captured by the Fell flight northwest of the Reaches, it was only rational.

“No, I don’t.” He looked at Moon hopelessly. “Is that weak?”

Consorts were supposed to be weak and delicate and need everything done for them, but Moon and Shade were different, and nothing was going to change that. And “weak” wasn’t really the right word for what Shade meant. What he was trying to say was harder to express. It was giving into feelings other people thought you were supposed to have about things that shouldn’t have happened to you in the first place, but were not like the actual feelings you did have. There wasn’t a word for that in Raksuran or Altanic or Kedaic or any other language Moon knew. Moon said, “It’s not weak.”

Full review, some spoilers, and content warning(s) under the cut.

Content warnings for the book: Graphic violence and action. Implied past r*pe (it’s the same plot point as previous books). Genocide is a big plot point of this one.

The Harbors of the Sun is the fifth, and presumably final, book in the Raksura series. And boy what a ride it's been. I've enjoyed settling in with a longer fantasy series. While I'm excited to read something new, I'll miss these characters and the captivating world they inhabit. Since this is probably the last installment, I'll look into book-specific details, but also provide some series retrospective commentary. I won't touch on everything, just things that stick out to me.

From what I can tell, The Harbors of the Sun is a little controversial with long time fans. I can see why, and it's the same reason I added "Epic Fantasy" to the tag list. Most of the series has focused on small-scale conflicts centering on the Raksuran characters. There's hints of large-scale stuff in The Siren Depths, but that crisis is averted, so thus not fully realized. However, these last two books contain a much longer storyline, and the stakes in The Harbors of the Sun are potentially catastrophic not just for the Raksura, but thousands if not millions of people. Think The Lord of the Rings trilogy vs The Hobbit in terms of ramp up.

Due to the larger scale, this book also embraces a rotating point of view. The original trilogy is entirely from Moon's perspective, and The Edge of Worlds only dips its toes into alternate POVs. The Harbors of the Sun features multiple character groups all doing important things to the story, so there's lots of perspective shifts. While I still consider Moon the main character, he shares the stage with many others.

Personally, I like the scaled up conflict. It seems like a natural progression of the series. While not every point of view wows me, finally seeing some stuff from Jade and Chime's perspective (for example) is really cool. While Moon is an enjoyable protagonist, he often interprets characters and motivations wrong. Getting someone else’s take on a given situation or character is refreshing.

One of my favorite alt-perspectives is Frost. She's a young child and minor character, but serves as the perspective for a tense political discussion between Raksuran queens about impending war with the Fell. This whole section serves to convey important information, but also as great worldbuilding to see how Raksura interact with, indulge, and care for their young. While we have seen adult perspectives such as Moon happily playing with his children, it's interesting to see a child's view of life in the colony. This is emblematic of Wells' approach to the series and her technique when crafting this world. It would be easy to pick a major character like Malachite and tell this section from her perspective, but we would miss many interesting details. Using Frost isn't something I would necessarily consider, and is just a cool writing choice.

By the end, The Harbors of the Sun feels like it's been a long, epic journey-- more so than the shorter adventures of previous books. A LOT of stuff happens in this book, and there's so many different interesting places the characters visit. Even events at the beginning feel distant compared to where everything ends. There is a unique appeal in this kind of story. Maybe it's not for everyone, but I personally like the change of pace and tone, especially as a finale.

For a series retrospective, the Fell are an interesting subject to discuss. I'm impressed with what Wells pulls off with them. One of my criticisms of The Cloud Roads is the Fell aren't especially compelling villains. They're an evil race of shapeshifters, distantly related to Raksura, who infiltrate cities and eat the population. The Fell are parasites-- they have no real culture or ability to survive except through the destruction of others. They’ve recently taken to destroying Raksuran colonies, kidnapping survivors, and forcing them to produce crossbreeds. Obviously, this introduces two narrative problems. One, "evil races" in fantasy are boring and already done ad nauseam. Two, how can one make the Fell interesting when they're literally irredeemable monsters?

The answer, it turns out, is a nature vs nurture debate, and it's mostly approached through the Fell/Raksura crossbreed characters. While these ideas have been explored throughout the series, The Harbors of the Sun brings it full circle. The Cloud Roads' main antagonist is Ranea, a crossbreed queen raised by the Fell. She sees the crossbreeds as a natural way to strengthen the Fell and make them an even deadlier force than they are by default, since Raksura have their own set of powers and traits. She’s soundly defeated, supposedly concluding the subplot. Until, of course, it comes back.

In The Siren Depths, we meet several crossbreed characters who are, for all intents and purposes, Raksura. Malachite rescued them as children and chose to raise them as Raksura of Opal Night. The result is that, while Shade and Lithe are aware of their heritage, they've experienced love and acceptance throughout their lives. Sure, they may have some physical traits and abilities that differ from the others, but often these have practical uses in the story. Their families don’t treat them differently because of this. As characters, they're just as Raksuran as everyone else.

In The Edge of Worlds, we're introduced to another crossbreed queen, a foil to Ranea. While she makes some early mistakes, unlike Ranea she seems capable of reason and compassion. We learn her name and backstory in The Harbors of the Sun. Consolation was born in a Fell flight, but most of her childcare came from her father, a captive Raksuran consort. Hence her name, which is painful with context and distinctly Raksuran. Apparently, the consort's influence didn't just extend to Consolation, but to other outcasts in the flight. After his death, Consolation and her allies slaughtered the leadership and took over the flight, and seek a place to live in peace independent of traditional Fell corruption and influence.

One of the interesting things about this are the kethel and dakti in Consolation's flight. Throughout the series, these two Fell castes are basically treated as cannon fodder. If you need a big intimidating enemy, throw in a kethel. For annoying imp swarms, dakti. The Raksura tend to think of these creatures as intelligent animals, not people. They only talk when a Fell ruler takes over their mind. They're treated badly among the Fell; cannibalized them when food stores get low, thrown into suicidal situations, etc.

In The Harbors of the Sun, the kethel and dakti can speak, much to the surprise of the main cast. Consolation's main advisor is a crossbreed dakti named First. There's also a kethel (presumably pureblooded Fell) that follows and assists Moon and Stone throughout the book and engages them in conversation. They clearly distrust it, but over the course of the story go from calling it "the kethel" to "Kethel", like an actual name. It has ulterior motives-- to convince the Raksura to help Consolation-- but is certainly not "inherently evil", nor just an intelligent animal. This is counter to everything we've been led to believe through the series, and it shocks multiple characters and challenges their way of thinking.

The argument at the end is that the Fell are evil because of a poisonous ideology and the total control of the progenitors (female rulers). Raised with compassion and better treatment, they're very similar to the Raksura. I'm honestly impressed with where the Fell end up vs where they start in The Cloud Roads. I don't know if Wells planned this arc for them from the beginning, but I like the amount of nuance she introduced without it feeling gross or trite. Does it work 100 percent? I'm not sure; I'd have to reread the series in more depth. But based on my current thoughts, it’s a good development; it doesn’t “redeem” or justify the Fell, but demonstrates the ways in which future generations can change and break the cycle. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, and many characters clearly distrust these “new” Fell (understandable considering the sheer trauma most of the cast has), but it’s an interesting take nevertheless.

On another subject, we never really learn what was up with the forerunners! Except they really liked flower motifs, I guess. I kind of like this; there's an impression that the long forgotten civilizations of the past were technologically advanced, but no one knows what happened to them. It's just an enduring mystery of the series. Ultimately it doesn't matter to the characters, and that's fine.

Also, we now have confirmation that The Serpent Sea is basically filler. It felt like a side story when I read it, but part of me hoped it would have some relevance to these last two books. Nope. I’m a little disappointed in this, but it’s not the end of the world, just something to keep in mind when reading the series. I think the book is entertaining on its own merits, but there’s little to connect it to the main story besides the characters.

Overall I recommend these books to people looking for a non-traditional fantasy series. There's no humans or typical Tolkein-esque fantasy races. Instead there are dozens of sapient humanoid species invented whole cloth, with some obvious real world inspirations. The shapeshifting Raksura are lovingly crafted, with lots of interesting detail about their culture, customs, and daily life. I love how they feel like believable people but are distinctly nonhuman. As a setting, The Three Worlds is deadly and fascinating, with lots of interesting places and people. There's always a sense of a big, vibrant world, even when the books choose not to explore it in depth. While The Harbors of the Sun feels like a finale to the current Raksuran story, I wouldn't be surprised if Wells visits this setting in the future.

There are some short story collections in this series which I do plan to read sometime in 2021. However, I'm going to take a break from the Raksura series and dive into something else for now. Thanks for reading!

#2020 reading challenge #taylor reads #9/10

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weaselandfriends · 4 years

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Your works feature a lot of casual references to and appearances of sexual trauma and sexual violence. Characters frequently discuss or threaten it towards young women in a way that makes me think unavoidably of bad shock horror stories or internet edgelords. Your stories demonstrably have a lot of depth and thought behind them, so I was wondering how and why you choose to deploy that kind of (normally very delicately handled) topic when you do?

I think about this question a lot: What divides “dark” from “edgy”?

I love dark stories. There’s some stuff even I consider distasteful, but generally my affinity for dark topics and themes in narrative is higher than the mean. This has the adverse effect of me liking a lot of things that are generally disliked, so I’ve become acutely aware of the need to compromise on the dark themes in the stories I write. Many years ago I was even one of those internet edgelords myself, writing a shock comedy that received harshly negative feedback.

But at the same time, I never want to abandon those dark themes entirely. They’re what I want to write about, and honestly I think stories would grow rather boring if anything potentially brutal or unsavory was tiptoed around or treated with some kind of hover-hand level of respect. My whole writing career has been finding that compromise, that location in the middle where I can communicate and connect with my audience. That’s why I write stories, to connect with people, and I can’t do it if I’m obliterating myself entirely to write what they want and I also can’t do it if I’m in such a different universe that nobody wants to read my story.

A lot of the specifics of how to handle dark material lies in tone. Tone is the most underrated element of storytelling. It’s often forgotten entirely in favor of elements like “plot” and “character,” but I think in many contexts tone is more important. Consider, say, PMMM. Dark show. Young girls get their heads bitten off and several other unsavory things. Why does PMMM get away with this, when other stories would be derided as edgy? Some may point to the redemptive ending as the answer, but I would disagree with that. It’s not like PMMM was some highly-derided show as it was airing until the final episode totally changed everyone’s perception of it. And it’s not like people were hanging on the far more-maligned Magical Girl Site to see if a similar moment of redemption would draw it out of the depths of MAL mid-6 purgatory. The answer is not in the summary content of what happens but in the tone. Urobuchi is a ponderous, psychological writer. He may be known as Gen the Butcher but as constant as his violence is, his endless philosophizing is even more ubiquitous. And while at times he can push the dials too far on either the violence or the philosophizing and leave people displeased with one or another individual work, on the whole this esoteric, thoughtful tone dilutes the brute impact of his grimmer moments and has led to him putting forward several slightly-off-the-mainstream hits.

Or consider Hereditary, a horror film everyone except me likes, and which like PMMM also features the brutal and sudden decapitation of a young girl fairly early in the story. Hereditary is a total tone piece, so much so that if you read a text summary of the story it sounds plaintively absurd. For most of the story jack dick actually happens, it’s people acting disconcertingly offbeat and faintly odd happenings, framed in strange ways with a weird motif of miniatures and dollhouses. It’s slow, it’s ponderous, it’s steeped in speculation about mental illness and family history and so by the time the actual decapitation occurs the audience has already been put at unease, is already anticipating something bad, is in some way psychologically braced for the disaster that is about to occur. (PMMM also does a similar thing in the episodes leading up to Mami’s death; the semantic content of those episodes might be innocuous, but the tone is anything but.)

Then Hereditary becomes about a cult of old white people who want to resurrect Paimon, God of Mischief, and any pretensions to a serious tone are dumped into the ridiculoid bin.

The point I’m getting at here is that a storyteller can either prepare their audience for shock content or assuage the blow via tone. In Modern Cannibals, Mitchum Graves is a walking piece of shock content. He is, in fact, one of the internet edgelords of the original question. My goal was to mentally prepare the audience for Graves via the opening roadtrip scene of the story, where a similar specter of violence and/or sexual assault hangs over the characters in the form of Maximillion, only for this threat to go unrealized as it is eventually revealed that Maximillion is more-or-less harmless. It’s about the same moment that Maximillion ceases being a threat that Graves appears, and while Graves’ overtly unsavory speech and actions are a dramatic step up from what was in the story prior, it’s not a complete turn out of left field. How effective I was at pulling this tone-preparation off, I’ll leave up to you guys; I knew more than a few people who dropped Modern Cannibals shortly after Graves appeared.

I’ve rambled for quite a bit, so I hope this at least in part answered your question. I like this topic a lot and could probably ramble on it some more for about fifty more paragraphs, but I really need to rein myself in.

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cyborgrhodey · 5 years

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i am displeased with ffh

spoilers below

[[MORE]]

spoilers commence--

ok. as a rhodey fan who literally wrote a fic about all control of all things iron man immediately passing to rhodey upon tony's death, i am so so so displeased

and i get it. it's a niche desire. nevermind that there is reallt rich comics precedence for rhodey being his legacy character and having to deal with that responsibility. or that even within the mcu itself, it's the logical thing for tony to do--rhodey is his best friend and has been for forever, he's a whole colonel but has demonstrated that he's ready to go against the military if that's what's needed, and he has the same concept of accountability as tony has, as evidenced by the whole accords thing. but whatever. the world just isn't ready for a war machine as iron man legacy movie. fine.

but no, instead they have tony give control of his whole weapons arsenal SOLELY to a 16 year old kid, without any kind of check and balance, as if that's something i should believe tony stark, who has been driven to paranoia by his trauma, is going to do. like, edith didn't even suggest for him to maaaybe run a background check on the guy he's giving this whole system to? sure beck could've played it off as like, oh but that's alternate universe me etc etc, but that would've immediately been a red flag and it would've been pretty simple to demonstrate that there is currently just one beck on earth and the other didn't die. it's idiot plot, which is so insulting because neither tony nor peter is this stupid. yes, even Stressed Out peter. god

speaking of, where the fuck was karen? sure, it's not like karen was jarvis, but why is edith so fucking dumb? even when jarvis and friday had control of all stark weapons like that, they had snark and autonomy in them. and don't you dare tell me that tony didn't have ~time~ to make a new ai, he just pulled friday from storage when jarvis went down. he had more in there. (and as fatalistic as tony is, he'd have Fully Prepared for his death, and that includes a semi-competent ai). and now marvel wants me to believe he just picked his Dumbest least sophisticated one to control all his affairs after his death. yeah, ok. i loved the dynamic between karen and peter too, and she's just gone now for no real reason. ok

they're forcing peter to be tony's legacy character, but peter was never anybody's legacy character. (you know who's a legacy character, and has History grappling with not just great-power-great-responsibility pressure, but also i-need-to-honor-whose-footsteps-i-followed pressure? miles.) that scene with him on the plane fiddling with the suit and happy playing ac/dc (they throw in a 'but look he's different!' moment with the led zepelin quip, as if that's enough. play a different song maybe. it's so stupid since spiderverse used music so effectively in painting character, so much so that they made miles so unique in a movie with 6 spiderpeople, but here the mcu completely fails. ugh)-- that scene was so offensive to me. peter isn't tony. i don't want him to be tony. i don't want him to be miles, either. maybe peter parker is a tired character now, with two other movie franchises, and cartoons and video games and everything, but please. please. he's an iconic character, and yeah he's been around a bajillion years and has been reinvented time and time again and this is just another reinvention, but somehow it feels unsatisfying. not to keep comparing this movie to spiderverse, because that's a real high bar, but that movie reinvented peter parker twice, but they still felt believably like peter parker. this kid--this kid is mostly tony stark mixed in with miles morales. just do miles then.

my big complaint about fury was actually addressed in the post credit. they even lampshaded the absurd fact that this shapeshifter, who was shown to be formidable in his own right in CM, was completely fooled by an illusionist. am i satisfied by this? not entirely, but i'm accepting it. it opens a lot of story potential and i'm excited (secret invasion??? they'll have to be Careful handling that, but it could be fun)

the movie itself, if i had to view it as a standalone movie and forget the whole mcu and general marvel context for it, is pretty fun. the pacing felt weird, with the front part being too rushed, but that was to facilitate the giant ~twist~ about mysterio, so i understand. i also have a soft spot for the peter/mj romance, which is so adorably high school.

except i can't just view it like that. this movie is predicated on me believing that the whole entire marvel cinematic universe lost half their brain cells in the snap and didn't get it back in the blip. it's predicated on me just giving them a pass on cannibalizing peter's, miles', AND tony's characters to spit this out. and i just can't do that.

#marvel wank #somebody shut me up #ffh spoilers #mcu spoilers #this movie actually made me so mad #am i saying that mostly as a rhodey stan? yes #this is long and spoilery so beware

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theseashellscenter · 5 years

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Joel’s Inferno

So I just cooked up this ludicrous Game Theory-tier speculation comparing The Last of Us to Dante’s Inferno and now all I can do spread it around for whoever cares to see. It’s long as fuck so I’ll put it below a cut. I don’t think it actually has any basis in the devs’ intent but it was a fun thought exercise and made more sense the more I wrote. Gets real melodramatic at the end. Waste your time reading it at your own risk.

Playing through the game recently I began to think about how the story is constructed and how a progression of events leads the characters to their eventual conclusion. Essentially, it occurred to me that Joel and Ellie endure a series of increasing hardships which tests and strengthens their relationship before ultimately emerging on the other side together. The thought came to me that this could be compared to a story like Dante's Inferno, where the hero descends into Hell and experiences its worst depths before returning.

Then I started to wonder, could the game's events be directly compared to the nine circles of Hell? For those who don't know, the poem Dante's Inferno depicts Hell as being made up of nine circles, each corresponding to a sin and getting worse (both in terms of the sin and the punishment for the sin) as they go lower. I decided the most fitting way to compare them was for each circle to correspond to people Joel and Ellie meet on their journey.

Keep in mind this is just a thought experiment. As you'll be able to tell from how far many of these had to be stretched to fit, I don't think it was intentional. But I still thought it was an interesting concept.

Limbo: the first circle of Hell, for those who did not sin enough to be damned but also didn't accept God in order to be saved. Among them are unbaptized children, too young to know God but too innocent to go to Hell. This is the prologue of the game, ending with the death of Joel's daughter Sarah, and thus Joel's entry into Hell.

Lust: The early part of the game with Tess. Tess chooses to die out of dedication to the cause of Ellie and her immunity, and Joel initially continues escorting Ellie only in honor of Tess and their partnership together. Notably, one of her last lines is “Look, there's enough here that you have to feel some sort of obligation to me.” What “enough here” exactly means is never made explicit, and they may only have ever been fellow smugglers, but it's clear that at the time when the game begins Tess is the person Joel cares about most. This “obligation” between a man and a woman is the closest the game comes to depicting Lust, and it leads to Tess's death.

Gluttony: Bill's town. Bill is the fattest character in the game (possibly the only person with an out-of-shape build in the entire game, actually), a characteristic which Ellie derisively comments on during their scenes together. Fittingly, this is also where Joel first encounters a bloater, the name of which speaks for itself (and is ironically fought in a high school gym). While obesity may not seem like Bill's most notable flaw, it indirectly symbolizes the isolation and paranoia that defines him, as his reliance on traps to keep others away and do the fighting for him would allow him to avoid exerting himself more than necessary and his careless appearance suggests his disregard for the conventions of outsiders.

Greed: This is Sam. Though not greedy in the traditional sense, Sam shows a form of greed by desiring more than he should in the scene where he attempts to pick up a toy, for which Henry rebukes him with the saying “We only take what we have to.” This greed is a shorthand for the flaws Henry sees in Sam, which Sam is insecure about. These arguments lead Sam to resent his brother and cause him to hide his infection when he is bitten. His final activity before death, counting cans of food while the others are relaxing, demonstrates an opposite form of Greed to that of the toy scene. Sam hordes these items not because he personally desires them but because he thinks his brother will approve, a reversal which is reinforced when he despondently throws away the same toy after Ellie brings it to him.

Wrath: Henry. Henry is characterized largely by his unhappy relationship with his brother, who he views as disobedient and incapable and who he frequently criticizes for his errors. Though this behavior is motivated by love for his brother, whom he wants to keep safe, Sam only sees it as anger. He also first meets Joel and Ellie when he attacks them on sight, and is occasionally aggressive when Joel expresses doubt toward him. His last words are spoken in irrational anger, blaming Joel for the death of his brother before killing himself.

Heresy: Tommy, who Joel goes to in hope that he will bring Ellie to the Fireflies, only to find that Tommy abandoned their cause a long time ago (making him a heretic to their “faith”) and has taken up his own community (whom Joel mockingly refers to as “born again,” a phrase with religious associations). While Marlene can be heard in the opening credits telling people that “When you're lost in the darkness, look for the light,” suggesting the Fireflies as saviors, Tommy has found his own source of light – the electricity produced by the dam his community has restarted. Joel also says his split from Tommy was due to a difference in worldviews (which is reinforced during their argument, where Tommy says they “ain't back in Boston” and that his time surviving with Joel “wasn't worth it”), making him a heretic from Joel's way of life as well.

Joel himself shows a sort of Heresy during this section by attempting to leave Ellie behind, representing a trial of his own “faith” — his love for his daughter. The picture Tommy provides him of his daughter (which he turns down much like he is trying to send away Ellie) is the most obvious suggestion of the connection between the two up to this point. Toward the end of the section with Tommy, Joel at first appears to completely abandon his bond with her by telling her “You're not my daughter, and I sure as hell ain't your dad. And we are going our separate ways.” However, he resolves to stay with her shortly after, claiming that he is afraid of Tommy's wife and encouraging Tommy to stay with her and his community. In a sense, Joel attempts to restore Tommy's faith in his cause in order to escape the difficulties of his own, but he ultimately chooses to be faithful himself and let his brother remain a heretic.

Violence: David. David's section of the game contains four significant instances of violence (which is saying something, for a game as generally violent as this one). First is Joel's impalement, which occurs during Fall but was caused by combat with bandits who David later reveals are part of his group. Second is the revelation that David and his people are cannibals, a form of violence even further than anything seen up to this point, which connects them moreso with the infected than with other humans. Third is Joel's torture and killing of two of David's men, perhaps the first time we truly see extent of the brutality and even cruelty Joel is capable of. Lastly is Ellie's killing of David, an act so violent it isn't shown on screen and the trauma of which seems to finally seal her and Joel's devotion to one another. It also acts as counterpart to Joel's earlier violence, showing the great lengths both will go to when the other is in danger.

Fraud: Marlene and the Fireflies. From Joel's perspective, their choice to kill Ellie is a betrayal. This is fairly clear-cut; while they promise to help humanity, Joel can only see them as trying to destroy what he loves most, making them dishonest in his eyes. Joel also sees Marlene as breaking her promise to Ellie's mother to keep her safe. The Inferno classifies the worst frauds as “Falsifiers, those who attempted to alter things through lies or alchemy, or those who tried to pass off false things as real things.” Joel sees the Fireflies as unworthy heroes for humanity (impostors), trying to convert a girl's life into a cure (alchemy/counterfeiting). Just as these frauds are punished with disease in Hell, Joel massacres the occupants of a hospital, doctors included, takes away the only hope for a cure and condemns humanity to the cordyceps plague.

Treachery: The last circle and the worst sin, Treachery, is embodied by Joel himself. In the final scene he lies to Ellie about what happened with the Fireflies — a lie which Ellie may or may not recognize, but which marks a point from which they can never return, the final stage in their relationship. Before questioning Joel's story and making him swear it is the truth, Ellie tells him about how her friend Riley told her they would die together after being bitten, but as Ellie puts it, she's “Still waiting for [her] turn.” Both Riley and Joel have told her lies, but where the former was an effort to reassure her told out of ignorance of the harsh truth, Joel's was created with full awareness of what really happened and serves his own purposes more than Ellie's.

In trying to protect her from the trials of Hell, Joel's love for Ellie ultimately condemns him to its lowest depths.

Much like in Dante's Inferno, the successive layers of Hell are each reserved for worse sins. Sarah is the most innocent and nonthreatening character in the game; Tess, though capable of violence, is clearly a devoted ally to Joel; Bill is also an ally, but of a more begrudging kind; Sam and Henry are both friendly but unfamiliar, not entirely reliable and eventually self-destructive; Tommy, though by no means hostile, outright refuses to uphold Joel's request at first while Sam and Henry had been eager to cooperate; David pretends to be friendly but turns out to be an unhinged antagonist with some particularly reprehensible traits; the Fireflies are far more sympathetic and civilized but want to kill Ellie immediately, whereas David was obsessed with keeping her alive. Finally, the player realizes that all along they have been controlling the most dangerous character of all — and as our control shifts to Ellie in the last scene, we know he will never let us go so long as he lives, for better or for worse.

#the last of us #tlou #dante's inferno #joel and ellie #neil druckmann

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healingtheblackbody · 3 years

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Moe, The H.o.e.listic Health Coach

Friday, January 29th - 3:00 - 5:00pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAscu-hpjwpG9C7KMNoqxQmHLPAx8ly9Oqi

Join Moe for a workshop on an exploration of magical medicine, self and community healing. A 3 part presentation including a Prayer Energy Medicine Guided Meditation, Ancestral Spiritual Nutrition 101 Intro, and Health & Wellness Q&A.

Moeniesha Richelle is the Hoelistic Health Coach! Serving the community through

Pleasure Based Wellness Coaching for QBIPOC+Allies by -Activating Ancestral Cellular DNA w/Mystical Nourishment, Sexological Shamanism, Creation&Play-

Taja Lindley

Friday, January 29th - 6:00-8:00pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEpf-uorT0sGNJWYUTrs5S2-r8__o58bx87

Join Taja Lindley on an Artist Talk and Film Screening!

Can we grow gardens out of graves? How can we recycle the energy of protest, rage and grief into creating a world where indeed Black Lives Matter? What is the role of memory in our movement building work? And who will be responsible for this labor? These are the questions that haunt the work of visual and performance artist Taja Lindley.

As a memory worker, Lindley explores what has been abandoned, erased, silenced or distorted in our individual and collective consciousness. During her artist talk, she will screen her short film “This Ain’t A Eulogy: A Ritual for Re-Membering” and will discuss her most recent projects: “The Bag Lady Manifesta” and the "Birth Justice Podcast NYC." There will be time for community conversation and Q&A.

Through iterative and interdisciplinary practices, Taja Lindley creates socially engaged artwork that transforms audiences, shifts culture, and moves people to action. Since 2014 she has developed a body of work recycling and repurposing discarded materials. Her 2017 residency at Dixon Place Theater culminated in the world premiere of her one-woman show "The Bag Lady Manifesta" and it has been presented at museums, theaters, and universities nationwide. Her films and installations have been featured at Brooklyn Museum; the Philbrook Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma; the Carver Museum in Austin, Texas; the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, California; and more.

In addition to being an artist, Lindley is actively engaged in social movements as a writer, consultant, and facilitator. For over a decade she has worked with non-profits, research institutes and government on policies and programming that impact women and girls, communities of color, low/no/fixed-income families, queer people, youth, and immigrants. Most recently, she served as a Sexual and Reproductive Justice Consultant at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, co-facilitating a community driven process that created The New York City Standards for Respectful Care at Birth. She is a 2019 NYC Public Artist in Residence and a 2020 A Blade of Grass Fellow. TajaLindley.com

LINDA LA

Friday, January 29th - 8:30 - 9:30pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUuf-6vqjsuG9S7rz4bxjhaggDsCzphuHN3

Get this healing with LINDA LA’s Performance Ritual!

Adjusting My Crown is a meditative, ritual performance born out of recurring themes exploring self worth and self preservation in combat with societal norms. It is an intimate homage to life before the pandemic, set in quarantine, including original movement, music and poetry. This project is intended to re examine the ways we value stillness, solitude and technology. As well as commemorating queer and trans life in spite of the hardships in love and everyday societal rejection.

Linda La is a multidisciplinary artist, teacher, curator, host and organizer from the Boogie Down Bronx, New York. Born out of the Iconic House of LaBeija, her creative work has been articled in both AFROPUNK and The Fader. She has also been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Timeout New York and W Magazine. This past year, she graciously performed under the direction of Bill T. Jones and Lee Mingwei at the MET and performed in the Obie Award winning The Fire this Time Theater Festival. She is currently working on her first studio project set to include original music and poetry. Her work can be found on all music streaming platforms and archived at the Brooklyn Museum in the “Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall” exhibit. Find out more at Lindala.world

Shanel Edwards

Saturday, January 30th - 12:00pm - 1:00pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcvduCrqTIiHtDeOtB01iKGqHQTiizP4vnV

Get this healing with Shanel’s Workshop, How to build a home!

'How to build a home pt. 2' a co-collaborative creative space that asks participants to remember permission, intimacy, safety, play, and connection in our bodies. We are rebuilding a home that remembers our traumas but does not require them, leaving oppressive systems "at the door". We are remembering interconnectedness, remembering care. All black queer and trans folks are welcome to attend, there movement will be involved. Come with a notebook, pen/pencil, any special items to build an altar, and water.

shanel edwards is a Philadelphia rooted, first-generation Jamaican, Black, Queer, Non- binary, artist, and world-builder. They utilize movement, filmmaking, hairstyling, poetry, and photography as channels. Their creations are birthed through their Black queer and trans existence, tenderness, water, intimacy, and collective dreaming. shanel is a 2020 Mural Arts fellow and was a 2019 Artist in Residence with Urban Movement Arts (Philadelphia). They have choreographed for productions at The University of the Arts (2019), and Princeton University (2020). shanel works closely with spirit and their ancestors through herbal knowledge, divination, and channeling through movement to envoke and envision a world where Black trans women are liberated.

Olaiya Olayemi

Saturday, January 30th - 2:00pm - 3:30pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUqfuGppjsoH9FWtBGZQTWe__e07N0k7s_v

throwing the bones and working the roots: a (writing for) performance workshop

this highly anti-disciplinary and experimental workshop/seminar uses writing, image-making, movement, and sound-based exercises to create a brave space where students can excavate and craft their own performative conjurations and divinations; this class explores artmaking as a catalyst for social justice and as a healing modality.

olaiya olayemi is a blk/trans/femme/womxn/anti-disciplinary artist/educator/and organizer who centers womxn of the african diaspora in her performative/literary/cinematic/and sonic works of art that explore love/sex/relationships/family/history/memory and radical joy/pleasure. her work is informed by blk/queer/feminist theories/aesthetics/and politics and african indigenous and diasporic spiritual traditions. she has performed at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, JACK, AAA3A, metaDEN, The Wild Project, The Langston Hughes House, Starr Bar, Mayday Space, and Dixon Place. she holds a bachelor of arts in english/creative writing (with a minor in african/black diaspora studies) from depaul university and a master of fine arts in creative writing from emerson college where she was a recipient of the Dean’s Fellowship. she is a 2019-2020 Performance Fellow in Queer Art’s mentorship program, a Fall 2020 Brooklyn Arts Exchange Space Grantee, a finalist in Fresh Fruit’s Film/Monologue Festival, a 2020-2021 American Woman Fellow in Dramatic Question Theatre’s American Woman Lab, and a participant in Gibney Dance’s Black Diaspora group. her experimental screenplay was recently advanced to second round consideration for the Sundance Screenwriter’s Lab. she currently lives in philadelphia.

Brother(hood) Dance!

January 30th - 5:00pm-6:00pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUocOqvrTMuEtaEM6QX8kLd9ItaiUregeQP

Brother(hood) Dance! will offer a movement experience that engages your full sense of awareness and connectedness to past present and future. We will work through African Diasporic techniques to ground and be rooted.

Brother(hood) Dance! is an interdisciplinary duo that seeks to inform its audiences on the socio-political and environmental injustices from a global perspective, bringing clarity to the same-gender-loving African-American experience in the 21st century. Brother(hood) Dance! was formed in April 2014 as a duo that research, create and perform dances of freedom by Orlando Zane Hunter, Jr. and Ricarrdo Valentine. We have performed our works at FiveMyles, Center for Performance Research, B.A.A.D! (Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance), VCU-The Grace Street Theater, DraftWork at St. Marks Church, JACK, Movement Research at Judson Church, Colby College, Denmark Arts Center and other venues.

As a collective, our work demonstrates how life extends beyond its own subjective limits and often tells a story about the effects of global cultural interaction over the latter half of the twentieth century. It challenges the binaries we continually reconstruct between Self and Other, between our own ‘cannibal’ and ‘civilized’ selves. By rejecting an objective truth and global cultural narratives, we find that movement reveals an inherent awkwardness, a humor that echoes our own vulnerabilities. Brother(hood) Dance! considers movement as a metaphor for the ever-seeking man who experiences a continuous loss. Brother(hood) Dance!'s work urge us to renegotiate performance as being part of a reactive or – at times – autistic medium, commenting on oppressing themes in our contemporary society.

Sasha Schaafe

January 30th - 7:00pm-8:30pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZIvd-qsrDsqHtzkR93WGC3sl2wurizVcTsJ

Whip your herbs out of the kitchen for this magical herbalism workshop!

Spiritual Healing & Protection with Herbs : Thyme & Bay

With respect to necessary uprisings in honor of black lives, while in the space of a global pandemic, it’s absolutely vital to our whole wellness that we practice spiritual hygiene & empower our spiritual bodies with clarity & protection. In this workshop we will focus on two methods & one medicinal preparation, with the support of our plant allies/“plantcestors,” that powerfully heal, cleanse & protect us during these difficult times.

Spiritual baths & headwashes are healing & maintenance methods that have been employed in indigenous practices throughout Afro-diasporic traditions, with special attention to the “head.” We will bring focus to two easily accessible herbs that provide clearing & protective support in efforts of providing our aura & spirit with clarity, removing energy that isn’t our own. We ask that you enter this space as your full & authentic selves, so that we may co-create & infuse our healing experience with powerful, loving intention.

Workshop Materials:

FOR SPIRITUAL BATH/HEADWASH :

- Bay Leaf (Mediterranean- Laurus nobilis OR West Indian- Pimenta racemoca)

- Thyme (Thymus vulgaris)

- Rosemary (Salvia rosmarinus)

- Tulsi/Holy Basil (Ocimum tenuiflorum)

- Freshly boiled water

- *OPTIONAL: Citrus peels (lemon & orange)

- *OPTIONAL: Florida Water or Kananga Water

FOR MEDICINAL PREPARATION:

- Bay Leaf

- Ginger

- White Rum (40% ABV / 80 proof or Wray & Nephew- 100 proof)

- *OPTIONAL: Allspice/Cinnamon/Nutmeg

- *OPTIONAL: Orange Peel

Sasha Schaafe is a spiritual herbalist apprenticing within the Sacred Vibes Apothecary community, under the tutelage of Karen Rose. Her background experience with “food as medicine” is informed by her family’s Jamaican/Chinese roots & upbringing. Her spirituality largely stands on the strength of ancestral connection & veneration. Operating through love & intuition, Sasha commits to being of service to community with a village-mind — honoring her purpose & the purpose of all those who are a part, as we all have a role to play. She concerns herself with being in right relationship with the land & energies within & around nature. She trusts that our planet heals itself & most effectively heals us when we nurture & nourish ourselves with respect to our relationships with nature & spirit.

Kiyan Williams

Sunday, January 31st - 2:00pm-3:00pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEpde-srT0qE9McUbutgFApjaqUmAWvHZ25

Tune into this Artist Talk by the phenomenal Kiyan Williams!

This Bridge Between Starshine and Clay: An Artist Talk With Kiyan Williams

Artist Kiyan Williams will share the development of their art practice, which draws on and is inspired by traditions of Black feminist, queer, and trans creative practice as rituals of self-determination.

Kiyan Williams is a visual artists from Newark, NJ who works fluidly across performance, sculpture, and video. They often work with soil and debris as material and metaphor to unearth Black queer subjectivity.

Ọmọlólù / Ma’at Works Dance Collective / Ricky

Sunday, January 31st, 5:00pm - 6:30pm

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEqf--vrzwqEtxieIjv_kakBkwjK8c9YoYP

Join the finale of our opening weekend with these three powerhouse healing artists!

Ọmọlólù

Believing in the depth of healing that resounds in blx sonic force ọmọlólù will give a sonic offering. Using harmonized loops and mantras ọmọlólù hopes to welcome folx who bare witness into a state of ease, reflection and blx ecstatix bliss.

ọmọlólù refilwe bàbàtùndé is an educator, african surrealist documentarian, digital griot and blx ecstatix performance artist. A diasporic daughter of blx Southern migration she is in constant practice, reverence and searching for blx sounds in all it’s haptic, visual, sonic, strategic, mobile, logical mutations. Using image, video, prose and sound she attempts to stun whiteness and create a divine glimmer of blx relief, a brief moment of sanctuary for folx to come home into. She is co-founder of rogueTHEIF, an upcycle denim brand/performative gesture which strives to poke holes in capitalist modes of exchange while also being a platform to celebrate ancestors whose memory challenges us to fight for more liberating realities for ourselves and those coming after. She has performed at the New Museum, Northstar Durham, and many intentional DIY spaces. She released her first EP “laiii 222 rest ooo : blx ancestral sonix salves” on Don Giovanni Records in October 2020.

Ma’at Works Dance Collective

This offering is a meditation in nature, a practice of process, tenderness and stillness. A conversation with the tree branches, the stream, the birds and the sky. I'm interested in what helps to heal black bodies and I think mending our relationship with the woods is a great place to begin.

Ama Ma'at Gora is a Philly based dance artist, educator and choreographer. She received her BA from Georgian Court University and her dance MFA from Temple University. She was given opportunities to work with choreographers such as, Kariamu Welsh, Lela Aisha Jones, Earl Moseley, Sidra Bell, Gregory King and more. She now serves as Community Based Learning Director at Drexel University; overseeing artistic civic engagement. She established Ma'at Works Dance Collective, as a way to hold space for controversial dialogue. Her work centers identity, historic trauma and restoration. Thus she intends on crafting spaces which reflect, healing. As co-founder of The Juba House, she’s been able to serve local artists.

ricky

for those in between: a meditation on black mania, magic, and multidimensional living

ricky is an artist, musician, performer, writer, and diviner. last year they released WAHALA, their second solo album as YATTA . the release was accompanied by a theatrical production called An Episode: Ricky’s Room, commissioned by The Shed. this year, they dropped ‘Dial Up’, a collaboratively dreamt up album with philly musician and poet, Moor Mother. ricky has shared a stage with musicians like The Sun Ra Arkestra and Cardi B, creating multimedia performances that tour astrally, nationally, and globally.

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kingdomshiftersministries · 7 years

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Strategies For Leaders & Parents In Bringing Healing to Preacher Kids, Church Kids & Families! * Explore with God what ways you have sacrificed your marriage, family, and children through the fire. Repent to God for what he reveals to you. * Break the strongholds of cannibalism off you, your children and family line. Break generational curses of witchcraft and idolatry and break the powers of religions and tradition off your family line. * Take your time with God and journal as he reveals every way that you and your family engaged in these idolatrous acts. Be specific of what they are. Denounce them and break every webbing they have around you and your family. Be open to revisiting this with God multiple times until you have a clear unraveling of the religious system of cannibalism and its snaring. * If you are married, talk to your mate first regarding this revelation and what God shared with you. You all can do the first three steps together, and even spend time repenting to one another and to God for wounds within your marriage. If they are not willing you do them. God will honor your willingness to accept truth and your pursuit for you and your family to be transformed. * Cleanse all shame, guilt, condemnation, confusion, shock and trauma you maybe experiencing from receiving this revelation and examining yourself before God. Cleanse all bitterness, anger, resentment, rebellion, etc., you have concerning yourself, your spouse, children, saints, the ministry, and God. * Cleanse unforgiveness you have concerning yourself, your spouse, children, saints, the ministry, and God. * Ask God to reveal to you when it is time to have a sit down with your children. Make sure you have dealt with your own hurts and feelings and even forgiven them for rebelling against the system of your home and church. Make sure you are certain you are ready. Your children may have pent up rage, pain, trauma, and hate that you are not cognizant of. If you are not ready to allow them to express themselves and to HEAR THEIR TRUTH where you will not be trying to put the rod to them, THEN WAIT until you have had ample time to really accept the fullness of all that has occurred with you and your family and you are ready deal with it in a humble - resolution focused - manner. Remember you are not the pastor, minister or the religious parent in this moment. You are a person trying to reconcile with another person that is your child. * If you have more than one child, have a sit down with each of them and then after you have reconciled bring them together so they can reconcile with one another and see that you have reconciled with their siblings. Then set some goals to work on restoring the relationships personally and as a family. * Sit down with your children no matter how old they are and apologize to them for the things God revealed to you that hurt them and hurt the family. Be specific and allow them to share their heart concerning what you shared. * Allow your children to share freely and present an open environment where you desire and welcome truth. Let them know you are not their to be a parent in the since of chastisement but this is a meeting focused on reconciliation and restoration and their truth is necessary for that to occur. Encourage them to share anything that you may have overlooked that hurt them. Do not be quick to interject or correct them. Hear what they are saying through their eyes and the compassion of God. Remember even their false perceptions have become a part of their identity so do not negate these thoughts and feelings and cast them off as untrue. * Repent to them for things that they may reveal that you were not aware you did or aware happened to them. Share with them ways you should have been their for them. Do not make flighty promises in this moment. Just listen, repent, acknowledge what you could or should have done and love on them. * Let them know that they can come to you as they remember things and need to talk, so you can repent, love on them and heal. * If they do not apologize in this moment, let it go. In time they will. They need to see that your changes are genuine. This is not about them admitting their rebellion as you probably have already corrected that plenty of times. * Do not criticize any ungodly lifestyle your child is currently in. Allow the healing process to take its course and trust God to work with them. You work on engaging them from a healthy place and demonstrating balance and wellness in God and allow them to be drawn to you regarding the revelations and insights they need regarding being restored unto God. * End the meeting by setting two goals you all promise to work on to restore the relationship. Revisit these goals in a month, add more goals and you are consistent with the previous ones and until your relationship is restored. Keep open communication so you can revisit challenges that may arise in your present interactions. Sometimes old wounds resurface with children so be mindful of this and seek God on how to bring complete healing if they seemed to be unable to let go and move forward. * In your private time, pray for your children and further break the webbing of rebellion, trauma and cannibalism that is causing them to engage in the generational cycle of cannibalism by sacrificing themselves to the world or things that are not in alignment with their destiny. * Ask God to show you who your children are and journal God's destiny plan for their giftings, mantles, lives, and for the inheritance they are to have through the ministry you have or what you have imparted into the kingdom. From time to time declare out that plan on their behalf and as hey begin to demonstrate that they are being restored to God, share it with them and ask them to take it before the Lord in prayer so he can speak to them for themselves. * Ask God your role in your child's plan and fulfill whatever she shares. Be conscious of what is God and anything you may try to implement out of guilt and shame of past actions. Implementing things through guilt and shame will cause contention as you will be trying to make the child be something God has not said, which opens the door to cannibalism. Allow God to guide you and trust full restoration as he heals and renews the destiny plan of your children, family, and lineage. * This strategy may take some time to reap restoration and fruit and your child may even get worse before he folds and return to the Lord. The prodigal son lost all he had before he returned to his father. Study that parable in Luke 15:11-32. * Depending on how long the cannibalism may have occurred, it may take some time to revive and restore trust, redevelop and cultivate relationship where healing can be seen in your interactions towards one another. Be patient as and allow you family to work the healing process with God. By: Taquetta Baker Healing Of Church Hurt Movement Series Kingdomshifters.com Join My "Healing From Church Hurt" Page On Facebook

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drjacquescoulardeau · 7 years

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NATALIE DIAZ – WHEN MY BROTHER WAS AN AZTEC – 2012

This is an important collection of poems from an Indian woman. Important because it is poetry. Important because the poet is a woman. Important because the poetess is Indian. But we do have to get into it a lot deeper.

The opening poem that gives the title of the collection is describing this brother as a pure Aztec god, Huitzilopochtli, performing Aztec human sacrifice, morning after morning, on his own parents, ripping their hearts out of their chests over and over again. The poem also introduces another theme at the end:

“My parents gathered

what he left of their bodies, trying to stand without legs,

trying to defend his blows with missing arms, searching for their fingers

to pray, to climb out of whatever dark belly my brother, the Aztec,

their son, had fed them to.”

This sacrificial dismembering will come later with another meaning than this Aztec ritualistic perspective. And it is this crossing of an old heritage and a more recent curse that is essential in this poetry.

The first part is centered on the author’s vision. Her menstrual periods are seen as a metaphor of alienation as a woman, as an Indian and as a human being. This alienation of the Indian human being is then evoked as a legless man in a wheelchair. It is clear that this leglessness is the result of the colonial genocide of John Wayne’s movies. And yet the survivor, “the Injun That Could” survive in fact as a “Guy No-Horse” after the passage of the cavalry and you cannot be surprised by the fact the cavalry is running in his veins, in his blood, in Indian blood shed to the ground by cut up bodies trampled by the horses of General Custer and consorts, many consorts. Rivers of blood.

A legless woman can then intervene and this leglessness is the result of having committed the sin of accepting to be deculturated in order to be acculturated into the white skin of a soulless Indian. The worst crime is then not to kill millions of Indians, but to force the survivors out of their culture (no dancing, no drums, no music) into the white culture (short hair, proper clothing, brush your teeth, use the toilets, speak English, think normal, that is to say submissive and humbly crawling on the moral floor of the White God’s religion and principles). Be poor and rejoice in the great salvation God will provide you with after your death, of hunger if necessary.

The present curse is phenomenal. Grandmothers have danced the legs of the people off. Indians live in permanent dimness. Indian history is nothing but a collection of debris collected in some museums for the entertainment of white people. Indians went through a genocide that is unrecognized and unrepaired. Indians have to stop talking, meaning their languages, because “language is a cemetery.” The only hope of Indians is in tribal dentists who will restore the teeth of Indians and then teach them to bite back and bite first. Don’t expect anything but devouring biting molasses on the white side. Bite first and you may have some future. This collection can be summarized in these four words: BITE BACK! BITE FIRST!

So imagine Mojave Barbie meeting with white Ken and she “peek[ed] at Ken’s hard body and naked Mojave Barbie gripping his pistol, both mid-yenni and dripping wet.” A famous Yenni has become more than infamous on January 17, 2017: “The FBI has been looking into allegations that Jefferson Parish President Mike Yenni sent sexually explicit texts to a 17-year-old he first noticed at a high school function last year, in the middle of Yenni’s successful 2015 campaign for one of the region’s most powerful political offices.” The poem becomes then very explicit about how Mojave Barbie was abused and guess who is expelled? Or are we speaking of mids, mid-grade marijuana?

The life on the reservation is then described, touch after touch, to reach the blackmailing of white entrepreneurs towards Indian starving workers to start shoveling on an infrastructural project across a field that reveals itself to be a cemetery of Indian babies and infants. The Indians then refuse to work anymore and they are rejected morally as lazy, and Indians are rejected as barbaric since they bury children, infants and babies in baskets. Then the only thing left for Indians are prayers understood as being oubliettes, deep chasms in which Indians can starve to death and be completely forgotten. These oubliettes will come back twice more.

The second part concerns the ordeal of the author’s brother, the Aztec of the title. His drama is that he got addicted to methamphetamine. She attempts to penetrate his psychology and she describes the supportive love he can enjoy till his death. She captures the hallucinating fake vision he experiences, the fact that life is for him some kind of disguise of human beasts that are just some Halloween parade. This brother reenacts the Indian alienation by embodying, impersonating Judas, the traitor, and his thirty silver pieces, and he becomes the Judas of the Indian people in the very Christian reference the disguise carries.

Twenty years ago the brother was a normal teenager. But Indian alienation came bringing the brother’s addiction that brings the Indian dedication to death that leads the brother to destroying all sources of light (lamps, bulbs and others) and the parents out of love and support accept to turn their home into the funeral pyre of their own son in order not to embarrass him, though he is destroying the family temple, the only thing that should be sacred to him. That naturally leads to the evocation of Thais: “Thaïs was a famous Greek hetaera [a type of prostitute in ancient Greece] who lived during the time of Alexander the Great and accompanied him on his [colonizing] campaigns. She is most famous for instigating the burning of Persepolis. At the time, Thaïs was the lover of Ptolemy I Soter, one of Alexander's generals. It has been suggested that she may also have been Alexander's lover, on the basis of Athenaeus's statement that Alexander liked to "keep Thais with him", but this may simply mean he enjoyed her company. She is said to have been very witty and entertaining. Athenaeus also says that after Alexander's death Ptolemy married Thaïs, who bore him three children.”

And the contact between the brother and this Thais, or rather the fire she represents since she is “an ember” that makes the brother “hard” and tonight he is going to “love [whatever he may think of] into blaze” and into “ash.” In the morning the “fields too will go to smoke.” And the brother like some “lamp-lit moths” will die but “gleaming with sex.”

This meth-addicted brother splits his own father into two different fathers, “one who weeps” and “the other who drags his feet down the hall.” And “the audience” can only dream the “doves [her] brother made disappear” may come back “like angels” to take her brother to the other side of this life, as psychopomps they are. But for the time being the brother is coring “not just an apple but the entire orchard, the family, even the dog.” This apple metaphor is going to come back with another meaning.

The author calls then Antigone to her help, “the daughter/sister of Oedipus and his mother, Jocasta,” and this Antigone “is the subject of a story in which she attempts to secure a respectable burial for her brother Polynices, who by decree of the uncle Creon is not to be buried or even mourned, on pain of death by stoning.” And this ancient metaphor is crossed with Jesus after his resurrection and the holes he has in his palms. The stigma in the right hand is a chasm in which the brother drops a knife and a candelabra, whereas he licks the stigma in the left hand and finds it “tastes like love.” Explicit though morbid metaphor. Then Antigone does not bury her brother but the horses the white European settlers and their cavalry have brought to America, thus symbolically getting rid of the whites. But that is another oubliette for Indians:

“We aren’t here to eat, we are being eaten.

Come, pretty girl. Let us devour our lives.”

The ultimate curse of Indians devouring themselves by accepting to be buried in the Christian oubliette of Jesus’ stigmata.

Then the brother can finally be buried, and yet he comes back as a revenant, a ghost, a haunting presence the author will never be able to get rid of.

“My brother finally showed up asking why

he hadn’t been invited and who baked the cake.

He told me I shouldn’t smile, that this whole party was shit

because I’d imagined it. The worst part he said was

he was still alive. The worst part he said was

he wasn’t even dead. I think he is right, but maybe

the worst part is that I’m still imagining the party, maybe

the worst part is that I can still taste the cake.”

Speaking of Post Traumatic Genocide Stress Syndrome, this is a fabulous demonstration of how the damage of a genocidal trauma is inerasable in the mind of a victim, not to mention a collective victim.

The third part is the author after her brother’s death. She explores her lesbian orientation and brings all types of metaphors together.

Love is like eating an apple and she wants to be that apple in order to be devoured by the woman she loves. To be cored out of love, because of love, submissive to this voracious love.

Love is war and the scene ends with her mouth on her lover’s thigh ready to bite and devour the person she loves. Loves is some cannibalistic war. If I accept what some psychiatrists say about drug-addicts, that they are cannibals to the people who try to help them, she has transferred the main characteristic of her meth-addicted brother onto herself in her lesbian love orientation.

No surprise that love is like an oubliette in which you get lost. And this oubliette is of course also a symbol of Indian alienation through genocide and colonization, Christianism and drug addiction. Can love regenerate this alienation?

Love is fire in the middle of the night and this love is reduced to ash at sunrise in the morning like so many lamp-lit moths.

Love then leads nowhere. The tongue with which she loves, with which she speaks is heretic in all the hateful rejection it contains, rejection of the dominant faith and rejection by the dominant faith. And her heart is like a red dress, the red dress of desire and prostitution. Love cannot be permanent and can only be some kind of episodic adventure.

Love is her Indian alienation and she loves in direct descent from her great grandmother who got her legs amputated, who, as we have seen, danced herself legless, who got amputated when the white victors imposed a total ban on dancing and drum playing. Then the tongue was the heretic of this rule because Indians could still sing.

Love is a mouth, which is a cathedral, with a vaulted ceiling, and its maxilla and mandible are the flying buttress of this cathedral. And this mouth of love is embodied in a zoo lion who out of boredom devoured a member of the audience who woke him up. Love is taming the devouring other into a cage but if you wake it up you will be devoured because love is a mouth against a thigh, ready to bite, and the lover has learned how to bite back and to bite first. And this mouth, this devouring love is also the fate of Indians in the hands of the cavalry and at the same time the future of Indians in their own hands when they have finally learned how to bite back and bite first.

A beautiful poetry of liberation for Indians who can only get out of the PTGenocideSS if they find the tribal doctors who will teach them to bite back and bite first. This call for liberation and historical healing can only come from a woman because Indian women have lived two traumas, first to be reduced to inferior women among Indians though historically they were equal in their tribes, and then to be reduced to surviving slaves in the post-colonial American society that is still entirely living on this colonial – and slavery – heritage.

It will take many people, voices, heretic tongues and tribal doctors to finally push aside this heritage of slavery and genocide in the psyche of whites, blacks and Indians equally, because they all share the traumas, as victims or as victimizers, and of course as descendants of victims and victimizers.

Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU

#Poetry #American Indian #Indian genocide #PTSS

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terramythos · 4 years

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TerraMythos' 2020 Reading Challenge - Book 32 of 26

Title: The Siren Depths (2012) (The Books of the Raksura #3)

Author: Martha Wells

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, Adventure, LGBT Protagonist, Third-Person

Rating: 8/10

Date Began: 11/09/2020

Date Finished: 11/21/2020

Moon's past has always been obscure. A winged shapeshifter, he has spent most of his life as a solitary wanderer. He has few memories of his childhood, and only recently found others of his kind-- the Raksura. Now Moon has found a home as first consort to the queen Jade in the Raksuran court of Indigo Cloud.

However, when a neighboring queen recognizes his bloodline, Moon's new life is upended as he's forced to return to a family he doesn't even remember. Seemingly abandoned by Jade and overcome with doubt, Moon has to navigate the complex politics and grave secrets in the court of Opal Night alone. But an old enemy is about to return, threatening every Raksuran court in the Reaches.

The one thing he hadn’t expected to do was miss Indigo Cloud so much. He had been leaving people all his life, to the point where all the turns seemed like an uninterrupted progression of departures, and there had been people he had missed terribly. But this was a never-ending ache in his chest... You’ll get over it, he told himself. You always get over it.

But somehow, this time was different.

Some major spoilers and content warning(s) under the cut.

Content warnings for the book: As always, graphic violence and action. There is a disturbing scene that's... kind of forced cannibalism I guess (I'm not sure how else to describe it). Some sexual content is implied but not graphic. The r*pe plot point from The Cloud Roads is relevant, but is not depicted or described in detail. A romantic relationship with a significant age gap is briefly mentioned (both are consenting adults but it may make some readers uncomfortable).

For the most part, I enjoyed The Siren Depths more than the previous entries. I connected much more strongly to the central conflict, and was pleased to see some deeper character development than in the last two books. This entry also introduces fascinating new settings and characters while exploring some genuinely interesting ideas. It serves as a good parallel to The Cloud Roads, with similar plot beats explored in different ways. I did have one big problem which I will detail further in the review, but let's talk about the good parts first. Moon's conflict in this story, like the rest of the series, has to do with belonging. But The Siren Depths has the advantage of two books of development. From what we know of Moon's past, he sees any home as temporary, and when he's suddenly forced to leave Indigo Cloud (presumably for good), his new attachments and way of life come into question. To some degree, Moon sees this as an inevitable part of his life. Sooner or later, something out of his control will happen and he'll be abandoned. What I found relatable is there's several times Moon knows he is being irrational but still can't stop the negative downward spiral. Like... jeez, just call me out specifically next time! While a depressed protagonist can be a drag to read, I think it really works here because we've grown attached to Moon and know how far he's come. And sure enough, he does get his ass in gear when he realizes this ISN'T like before, and lots of people do care about him. The found vs biological family conflict is interesting as well. I think The Siren Depths does great here because you can see both points of view. Moon always assumed his biological family died, and they assumed the same thing about him. This should be a happy homecoming, but under the circumstances simply isn't. Moon resents being torn from Indigo Cloud because a group of people he barely remembers have a legal claim on him. Opal Night seems strangely hostile until you learn more about its politics and secrets. Even though they're early antagonists, they're not really villains; just a traumatized group of people who see Moon as a missing link from their past. When he's not what the others are expecting, obvious issues ensue, but Moon finds he does care about some of these people, even if it's not really his home. Outside of Moon, several other characters have arcs in this book. While the previous books feature a likeable enough cast, the characters are mostly one dimensional. Not so here; we explore the insecurities and struggles of some of the supporting cast. Jade isn't nearly as self-confident as she appears to be, and grapples with this throughout the book-- for example, wanting to prove to Moon that she is willing to do whatever it takes to get him back. Similarly, Chime's struggle with his involuntary transformation comes to a head here as his strange new powers become relevant again. We see just how bitter he is that he's cut off from his old magical gifts and still holds out hope that they'll return. We even get some indication that while this HAS happened before in Raksuran history, it's incredibly rare. There’s also an interesting hint on what the powers really are, which has some pretty big implications. This is potentially a future plot point, so I’m hoping it gets explored. (Also, I was totally right about Moon/Chime, do I get a prize?)

There are several new characters I found really interesting, namely Malachite and Shade. Malachite (spoiler: Moon's biological mother) is initially presented as the antagonist, and her behavior seems inscrutable. She's a powerful queen who commands respect, yet seems unpredictable and standoffish. All of this starts to make sense as one learns more about her. Turns out unbelievable, extended trauma really fucks with a person. The Fell destroyed her colony, killed her consort and most of her children, and she spent almost a year in full guerilla warfare against them. Yet she adopted the Fell/Raksura crossbreeds and raised them as her own children, demonstrating nothing but indulgent love and kindness towards them. I'm not sure I would be able to do that in her place. In general she's just a huge badass; totally decked out in scars and the first to leap into battle. At least we know where Moon gets it from. Did I say Fell/Raksura crossbreeds? Yup, that plot point is back. Only, it's explored in a different way here. The crossbreeds in The Cloud Roads are terrifying weapons deployed by the Fell. The ones in The Siren Depths, raised in a loving home, are just kind of weirdly pale Raksura. I liked Shade in particular, who we learn is Moon's half brother and serves as an interesting foil. Moon would probably be much more like Shade if the Fell attack on Opal Night never happened. Shade is an earnest and kind (if naïve) man and behaves like none of the Fell we’ve met in the series. I hope we see more of him (and Lithe, the other crossbreed) in future volumes, because I think they're an interesting take on nature vs nurture with the "inherently" evil Fell. Speaking of the Fell, while they themselves haven't changed much, I thought they were more effective villains than in The Cloud Roads. We see their manipulations and twisted views of the world in much more detail. There's a long sequence where much of the main cast is captured by The Fell, and their struggle to survive and potentially escape is harrowing. I also like that Moon isn't their main focus this time, which adds some nuance and perspective to their behavior. They’re also just... creepy as shit. While I do have some issues with the ending of the book, I think the Fell are handled pretty well beforehand.

I'd be remiss to ignore the always excellent worldbuilding in this series. Like in The Serpent Sea, we get to see more Raksuran courts, all of which feel distinct. It’s cool and impressive for a singular fantasy race to have multiple believable factions and societies. The settings in this book are also creative, including a giant half-dead mountain tree, a city carved into a giant statue, and what I can only describe as "Rapture, but make it a solarpunk prison". Wells goes into vivid, loving detail when it comes to the world. That being said, I would like to see more of the sea/sky realms, since this series has largely focused on the earth. The Three Worlds is kind of a misnomer if two of them don't really show up much. Oh well, maybe in future books/stories.

My main complaint, and what drags down the rating, is the ending. It's... underwhelming, confusing, and seems pretty rushed. I'll go into more detail below. *major spoilers for the ending* So... one of the big plot points in both The Cloud Roads and The Siren Depths is that the Fell are crossbreeding with captured Raksura. In The Cloud Roads, this is explained as a ploy to strengthen the Fell with some unique Raksuran abilities; queens can prevent others from shifting, mentors can scry future events, and so on. In The Siren Depths, however, we learn it's not that simple. There's some third party manipulating the Fell and encouraging their actions. The goal is to produce a crossbreed that physically resembles the (unnamed) Fell/Raksura common ancestor for... reasons. We are led to believe the being orchestrating this is in fact an ancient ancestor, though its motives are unknown.

While this feels like a retcon, the discrepancy is acknowledged in the story, and it is explained that the Fell in The Cloud Roads were either lying or those specific ones decided to pursue their own agenda. Which... fine, makes sense based on what we know about them. I'll let it slide. Perhaps it was hinted at earlier and I just don’t remember.

So Moon and the others follow the Fell to the mysterious source, a vast and abandoned underwater city. Soon they find the creature that's been imprisoned there. Turns out it's not the Fell/Raksura ancestor, but something different. I can only describe it as sort of eldritchy, with a vaguely creepy physical form, and the abilities to speak through dead/dying Fell and to create disturbingly realistic illusions. The Fell/Raksuran ancestors trapped it there eons ago, and the only way to free it is the physical presence of a member of the ancestor species (for some reason). Which explains why it has been encouraging the crossbreeding, since their common ancestor is presumably extinct. It's freed from its prison since Shade fits the "ancestor" criteria based on his physical appearance. Then, in the span of literally one chapter, it attacks everyone, chases the characters through the underwater city, gets hit by some water, then promptly melts like the Wicked Witch of the West and dies.

I had a couple problems with this ending. First, the whole Fell crossbreeding conflict with the Raksura is a huge generational trauma thing. Moon has his own horrible experience with them, of course, but it's also a big issue with both Indigo Cloud and Opal Night. Hell, it's the whole reason Moon was separated from his family and lived thirty-some years in exile without knowing what he was. The series literally wouldn't have happened without this conflict. To have everything explained away by "an eldritch wizard did it" is very anticlimactic. I vastly prefer the original explanation.

Second, we know basically nothing about this creature. How was it able to communicate with the Fell (and Chime)? Why was it imprisoned other than being super evil and stuff? Who knows. And yeah, it's possible this will be expanded on later. Except I'm pretty sure that when this book came out, it was the last one planned for the series. The next two books follow a different storyline and came out four years later. So this was probably the only explanation we were ever going to get.

I'm not totally against the concept, but it needed more time and a more interesting/memorable villain for it to work. Introducing all of this in the second to last chapter of (presumably) not only the book but the series, then defeating it with little effort, feels unsatisfying. Hell, there’s more time dedicated to discovering and exploring its prison than anything involving the creature itself! As it stands, the Fell were much creepier and more memorable bad guys in this book, yet narratively serve as bit players in the end. It just feels off.

Also, a nitpick, but the title of the book is weird. The Siren Depths is obviously referring to this imprisoned being. It's trapped underwater and is calling the Fell to it. But it's never referred to as a siren; I'm not sure that word is used at all in the book. It just seems like an odd choice of title that doesn't really fit the vernacular of the world. Siren has some very specific meanings/connotations in our world that don't translate to The Three Worlds. Not a huge deal, just something I noticed.

*ending spoilers end here*

Despite my issues with the ending, I really enjoyed everything else about the book. It does everything the other books do well while featuring serious improvements. I've heard mixed things about the next two books but plan to go in with an open mind.

#8/10 #taylor reads #2020 reading challenge #BONUS ROUND #*casually posts this a week late*

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