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cno-inbminor · 4 years

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adsentio

a/n: for some reason, i got the idea of prince!akaashi stuck in my head. mildly inspired by the swan princess.

wc: ~2.1k

genre: arranged marriage!au, royalty!au, emerging feelings. fluff mainly? idek, it’s word vomit

royalty!au: adsentio (pt. 1) | bonus letters (pt. 1.5) | the masque (pt. 2)

Prince Akaashi likes to believe he’s a smart cookie, even if he’s only seven. Then again, his parents aren’t exactly the most subtle people on the planet, and he believes it’s quite obvious as to what they’re planning. In fact, not only is he aware, but the whole castle is as well. Hell, even 90% of the citizens in the kingdom are fully aware of what’s to be expected. He strongly dislikes it, and he wishes it didn’t loom over him every summer.

Ever since the summer of the year he turned five, Princess (y/n) of the West Kingdom would show up for two months to make his life miserable. To be fair, it wasn’t exactly your fault, as you were very much forced into this arrangement as he was, but it was easier to blame you. He’d rather just play fight with Bokuto all summer rather than try to include a girl. It’s not because you’re capable of kicking his butt.

That is absolutely not the case here.

His mother, the queen, is scrambling to get all the preparations done in time for (y/n)’s arrival. Akaashi almost rolls his eyes when he spots her rearranging a bouquet of roses in the dining hall. Unfortunately, she spots him from the corner of her eye and beckons him over with a frantic hand. Never one to deny a parent, he quickly jogs over to her.

“Oh darling, would you be a doll and check in on your father? He needs to be dressed properly for the West Kingdom’s arrival. Tell him to wear that cyan blue shirt of his, it’s much more flattering.”

“Do we need to be so overboard like this again? They’ve already been here twice, it’s not like they don’t know us.”

“For reasons you don’t know, they’re extra special to us. Aren’t you excited to see (y/n) again? You two got along so well last summer!”

Akaashi wrinkles his nose in distaste. “It feels like I just saw her yesterday. Bokuto and I just wanna play by ourselves.”

“Nonsense, dear. Now go check on your father, please,” His mother implores before scurrying off to another bouquet of flowers.

It’s so obvious, he thinks to himself as he jogs towards his parents’ chambers. Did they really need this alliance with the West Kingdom? Would they be that much more powerful together? “In due time, you’ll understand,” his parents always said. Akaashi was starting to become tired of hearing those words.

Why is it so hard to just tell him now as to why they want him to marry Princess (y/n)?

“You know why I’m here, right?” (Y/n) asks him one evening. They’re sixteen now – Akaashi counts that this is your twelfth time at the castle. You call the castle your second home, as he once heard you tell your assigned handmaiden, the same lady who attends to you every summer. Somehow, the statement strikes a chord within him – his initial childish annoyance at your presence had long disappeared and been replaced with something akin to defeat. There was very little chance that they could run from this, but in the late nights, Akaashi found himself believing that if there were someone to be betrothed to, (y/n) wasn’t so bad.

“What do you mean?” He replies, slowly turning a page in his book. You both found that one way to quickly pass the time was to raid the royal library. At first, it was custom to read your respective books at opposite ends of the castle. Yet as time passed, you found yourselves meeting closer and closer towards the middle. If desired, the servants could find you two either together in the library, in an empty ballroom by the massive windows, or on the balcony in the summer sun. Most times, Bokuto, Akaashi’s most loyal friend, was with you as well. Reading wasn’t necessarily one of his top hobbies, but he’d rather be with friends than alone wondering around the castle.

This time, the two of you have taken refuge by a fireplace, a terrible thunderstorm casting a chill over the building. Bokuto is conveniently off doing his own thing.

“The reason why I’m here every summer.”

Akaashi casts his best exasperated look towards you, but it goes unnoticed as you refuse to look away from your book. “I’ve known since I was six.”

You sigh and gently shut your novel closed, one finger stuck between the pages to keep your place. With the grace of an angel (Akaashi thinks), you pick yourself up from the lounge chair and drift over to the couch he’s sitting on. Because he’s sitting upright towards the end closest to the fire, there’s more than enough space for you to sit and stretch your legs across the cushions. In fact, you do just that, settling for leaning your back against Akaashi’s strong side profile, his arm supporting most of your weight. Without meaning to, Akaashi finds himself adjusting his sitting position for your comfort. He feels your body tremble slightly and a small wave of concern washes over him.

“Should I ask one of the servants to bring a blanket for you?”

“That won’t be necessary. But thank you for your concern, your highness.”

“You don’t have to address me as so.”

“My apologies, it’s a force of habit.”

“Hmm.”

Akaashi has long given up on reading the words before him. Your question repeats in his head like a broken record.

“Doesn’t it frustrate you?” You whisper, interrupting his thoughts. “Doesn’t it anger you that since my birth, you’ve been forced into a game that you have no choice but to play?”

Akaashi hesitates. This topic has never been broached before, and he’s not sure how to address it.

“I’ll admit it was more frustrating in the beginning. Nobody enjoys being told what to do, especially when you’re little. But I learned to just accept it. In fact, to call it a game would assume that there is a losing side. From what I’ve studied, both of our kingdoms would benefit from this merger. What’s the loss?”

“Our freedom and choice,” you bite out, yet refusing to look at him. You’ve also given up on reading, yet you don’t want to arouse suspicion that this conversation is happening. If a servant were to hear, rumors would fly around the castle like a plague. “I think it’s only human that I want to experience love the way ordinary people do. We don’t even get a say.”

“What about both of our parents? They were arranged yet they love each other.”

“Simple, they got lucky.”

“Then would you rather run away and find another man to fall in love with?”

“More than that, I just want to experience life beyond the castle walls. My position is different from yours.”

“How so?”

You purse your lips, pausing. “Your Highness, what do you think would happen to you if I were to disappear, or god forbid, die?”

Akaashi’s eyes widen in bewilderment. “Why would you ask that?”

“You just need to answer my question.”

“Well,” he ponders. “I…believe I’d be somewhat sad. We would mourn the loss, surely.”

For the first time this summer, he hears a genuine chuckle from you. “I’m honored by your sentiment, your highness. I’m asking more of what you think would politically happen to you.”

Akaashi’s cheeks flush with embarrassment. “I guess…politically I’d be okay. Mother would be devastated, but I guess they’d find me another match. The merger with your kingdom would’ve been our strongest move, but it could still happen since we’re already on such good speaking terms. Supposedly there are other princesses waiting for a chance, and a merger could result from that as well.”

“What a humble braggart you are, your highness,” you tease.

“That’s not what I meant—”

“I know. But in all seriousness,” you switch to a more solemn tone. “The point is, you’d be okay. As you so nicely put it, you have women lining up to be with you.”

“Aren’t men lining up to be with you as well?”

“It’s not the same, Your Highness. As a princess, I’m brought up to constantly prove my worth to others. More importantly, I’m raised to prove my worth as a wife and a queen. We’re left to care for the children we must bear, we must keep our noses a reasonable distance away from kingdom business. If this engagement were to break, many outsiders would automatically assume that I was deemed unworthy of you, that I must’ve wrapped myself in some horrible scandal.”

Akaashi hums and stares into the fire. “I suppose that it’s rather unfortunate. I wish I had realized that sooner.”

“Your self-awareness speaks volumes. I usually wouldn’t admit this to you, but I know you’ll be a great king when it’s your time. Your people already love you, and they will only continue to love you more.”

“That’s very kind of you, Princess.”

“I only speak honestly. There’s no need to sugarcoat my words around you.”

Somehow, Akaashi finds that very comforting. Perhaps as someone in his position, he would consider honesty and wisdom to be valuable. Just because he’s destined to be king someday, doesn’t mean he would always make the right decisions. He would appreciate having you by his side in his decision-making.

“If this happens,” Akaashi finds himself speaking, also not one for beating around the bush. “I can promise now that I’ll try to change that. Even if we end up never loving each other, I’ll do my best to ensure that you never feel confined to such a role. As my w-wife,” he stumbles over the word. “I would want your input. You have a good head on you, and I’m sure you have valuable wisdom that I will need in due time.”

“Somehow, that’s the most romantic thing a man has ever said to me,” you say. He can hear the smile in your voice, his own small one forming on his face. When you move off the couch, his body immediately misses the warmth of your body pressed against his. After you’re done dusting yourself off, you begin to curtsy. He knows that this means you’re retiring for the night, but he’d rather you not leave right now.

“Wait,” he calls out, reaching for the hand not holding your book. You stay silent as Akaashi delicately holds your hand, then breaking out into a slight blush when he lays a soft kiss on the back of your hand, eyes never breaking contact with yours. He’s never been more princely to you than this moment – though his mother had made him do this on every first day you arrive at the castle, it never held so much meaning. This was of his own doing, his own volition, and that spoke volumes to you. He was trying to make this work in his own special way.

You don’t miss the way his thumb ghosts over your knuckles before releasing your hand, although the movement seems hesitant and troubled. “Good night, Princess,” he bids quietly, eyes looking back at the ignored book in his lap. Your heart beats with adrenaline, the chemical fueling you to step closer to him and bend down to place a kiss on his cheek. Akaashi does his best to not look surprised, but he knows that he has failed when he hears the sound of your gentle laugh.

“Good night, Keiji.”

The prince concludes right then and there that he has never heard anything more beautiful.

When you return to your chambers the next night, it’s hard to miss the most beautiful glass vase you’ve seen that’s sitting on your dresser. Inside stands a half-bloomed peony, a flower you recognize from the castle gardens. The petals have a tender shade of a light blush pink – if the flower-arranging lessons taught you anything, they stood for romance, compassion, and bashfulness. A neatly folded cardstock with your name stands demurely by the vase. The handwriting is strikingly familiar, and you can’t help but smile at the words neatly written inside.

To my future queen.

As you bring the flower to your nose and inhale the sweet scent, you begin to think that perhaps, you and Akaashi might just be lucky enough for love.

feel free to send requests for this au!

#haikyu #haikyuu #haikyuu!!#akaashi fluff #akaashi haikyuu #akaashi keiji #haikyu fluff #haikyuu fluff #akaashi imagine #akaashi x reader #akaashi x you #akaashi keiji x reader #akaashi keiji x you #adsentio #akaashi scenarios #keiji #akaashi #got a little..preachy? idk #so sorry!

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keyofjetwolf · 4 years

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@cello-moon submitted:

SO! Submitting as this is long. You certainly don’t need to publish it if you don’t want to!

Tipsy Sumerian/Akkadian Mythology 101 as relevant to Camilla.

Our Relevant Mythological Cast

The Dean - Inanna later known as Ishtar, the Goddess of Love, War, and the Sky

The Death Goddess - Ereshkigal, Queen of Kur, sometimes called Irkalla/Irgal (depending on the translator), the land of the dead

These two are sisters, possibly twins depending on the translation.

(also named dropped are 2 of the 4 members of the Silas Board of Governors - Enki, Patron of Eridu, God of Knowledge, Mischief, and Seawater who is the sentience behind the Library originally and the Owl Lady whom Laf calls as Ukuku, the prophetess of Eridu.)

So mythology backstory as paraphrased from memory (and let me preface this with, scholars argue which of these myths happened first because they both reference the other at some points as if the other one happened first.)

Epic of Gilgamesh - King Gilgamesh (the main character of the Epic) is the 5th King of Uruk - the city Inanna is patron of - and he’s kind-of an arrogant bag of dicks (example: he’s credited with starting the practice of prima nocta). Inanna decides she wants to take Gilgamesh as her lover and consort and refuses to take no for an answer when he turns her down. Specifically, he mentions that she got her husband trapped in the underworld, has generally mistreated many of her previous lovers and he wants no part of her lack of … non-sexual care for her lovers. She goes to some of the higher ranking gods in the Sumerian hierarchy and basically throws a temper tantrum demanding that they hand Gugalanna, the Bull of Heaven, over to her to best Gilgamesh in combat and make him agree to her demands. If they won’t hand Gugalanna over for her to use, she threatens to tear down the gates to the underworld and let loose the dead to devour the living.

One problem here? Gugalanna is Ereshkigal’s husband.

Another problem here? Gilgamesh and Enkidu, his Best Friend/Lover (depending on the interpretation/translation) kill Gugalanna and Enkidu decides to desecrate the body by tearing off the bull’s right thigh and throwing it at Inanna’s head.

Descent of Inanna - there are 2 majorly different version of this poem - the Sumerian one and the Akkadian one.

Sumerian - Inanna decides she’s going to visit her sister, Ereshkigal to attend the funeral rites for her dearly departed brother-in-law, you know, the one Inanna got killed in the Epic of Gilgamesh. This pisses Ereshkigal off so she orders the 7 gates of Kur bared shut and sends her gatekeeper to only allow Inanna through each gate after something is sacrificed/removed. St the first gate, it’s her scepter of power, further gates are jewelry, armor, clothing, ect (all standing for some mastery or strength) and at the last gate she must give up her Divinity to enter Ereshkigal’s throne room - naked and moral. Ereshkigal screams at her, kills her, and chains and mounts her body on a meat hook in her throne room for all the dead to see.

Three days later, Inanna’s handmaiden goes to the other gods of the Sumerian hierarchy asking for help for her mistress. Only Enki agrees to help - sending two divine spirits made from the dirt under his fingernails to help. They retrieve Inanna’s corpse and one gives her their life and the other their divinity to restore Inanna to her original state. Ereshkigal demands a replacement for the no-longer-in-Kur Inanna and, through a series of not relevant to Carmilla events, Inanna’s husband Dumzuid is trapped in Kur forever.

Akkadian - Inanna decides to conquer the underworld for no stated reason other than perhaps shits and giggles and encounters the same 7 gates where she must remove her the same clothing, jewelry, makeup, and divinity. In a rage, when Inanna reaches the throne room, she tackles Ereshkigal and they engage in combat where Inanna loses, is imprisoned in her mortal flesh, and inflicted with 60 diseases. While Inanna is being held in the underworld because she is a goddess of love, no sex can happen on Earth. It takes 3 days for the other gods realize this, come together, and ask Ereshkigal to give Inanna the water of life and restore her to her original state.

Plus, there’s a whole lot of blink (or be unfamiliar with this mythology) and you’ll miss it foreshadowing and namedropping happening even as far back as season 1 indicating that the Sumerian language may be important/relevant, since it just kept popping up in various ways. I’d be happy to point out some of them to you, but I remember from the SU Freezer Friendship Bracelet Shenanigans from ages past that you usually prefer to notice or choose not to notice them yourself.

Hopefully this makes somewhat sense and you can see where the Carmilla authors took inspiration, pulled themes and such, and how it’s similar to what they did in Season 1 with the Sheridan Le Fanu Carmilla novel being a close, but not perfectly accurate record of what happened in the show’s past and what is happening in that season.

(AND HEY! Carmilla doesn’t have to be over unless you want it to! There’s still the movie, if you’re up for it!)

and:

I FORGOT TO INCLUDE THIS PARAGRAPH IN THE SUMERIAN SUMMARY! OH GOSH! THE REASON INANNA'S HUSBAND IS PICKED AS THE ONE TO GET STUCK IN THE UNDERWORLD IS BECAUSE HE WAS THE ONLY ONE NOT WEARING MOURNING CLOTHING/MOURNING FOR INANNA. HE WAS JUST SWANNING AROUND IN HIS DIVINE FINERY WHILE SHE WAS TEMP DEAD. SO REGARDLESS OF IF IT WAS GILGAMESH OR HER HUSBAND WHO WAS MEANT TO BE HER BELOVED RAISED BY THE PORTAL, NEITHER OF THEM WOULD BE HAPPY TO SEE HER. YOU WERE RIGHT ABOUT DUDE LEAVING HER ON READ.

I need you to know how delighted your conclusion made me. MY SHITPOST TIME WAS WELL-SPENT

All of this was super fascinating, thank you for writing it up! I still can’t stop laughing at the particular Venn diagram for all this, it’s amazing and a full 60% of the charm of the whole thing, I love it. If you’re still moved to do so, please feel free to send me the specific bits you mention in S1!

(I’ll contact you privately on the movie!)

#jet wolf watches carmilla #new shirt idea: be gay use sumerian mythological themes #submission #cello moon #long post for ts

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rebelsofshield · 4 years

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Star Wars: Queen’s Peril- Review

EK Johnston follows up her stellar young adult novel, Queen’s Shadow, with a prequel following the early days of Naboo’s most famous monarch. While fans of The Phantom Menace and Amidala will likely be pleased, Queen’s Peril disappoints with awkward structure and lack of focus.

(Review contains minor spoilers)

Padme Amidala has just been elected queen of Naboo. One of the youngest queens in years and the first in a generation to make galactic politics a major platform of her administration, Amidala looks to change Naboo for a more hopeful future. Captain of the Royal Guard Quarsh Panaka finds himself in new territory as he tries his best to shield this willful new queen from harm. Together, the two devise a support group of talented women that will function as both aides and bodyguards. These handmaidens become fast friends and invaluable assets to Padme as she navigates being a young woman and a head of state. However, when invasion makes its way to Naboo, this ragtag team is put to the limits to protect their queen and their planet.

For many, myself included, Queen’s Shadow was the shot in the arm that the character of Padme needed. After being such a standout in The Phantom Menace, Amidala had become mired in a nonstop parade of awkwardly executed romance, damsel in distress plots, and a death scene that has been rightfully criticized over the years for its melodrama and misogyny. E.K. Johnston’s young adult love letter to all things Padme reminded many of just what made this character, and her associates, special. Queen’s Shadow managed to make an emotionally complex and mature character study of Padme’s transition from planetary to galactic government in a way that felt politically prescient without sacrificing the fun and pathos. It transformed the various handmaidens, Sabe in particular, into compelling individuals in their own right. Even Padme’s iconic and intricate outfits were rendered with attention to detail and given their own on page beauty.

Johnston has a palpable affection for Padme and for The Phantom Menace and the decision to tell a prequel to her previous novel seemed like a natural idea for success. Just as the transition from girl queen to adult senator proved dramatically and thematically rich, surely the story of the turbulent start to Padme’s reign would prove just as interesting? I really wish that were the case. There are many things about Queen’s Peril that do work, but the end result proves surprisingly clunky and awkward.

As always, Johnston’s writing is sharpest when centering on the dynamics between the young women at its center. There’s a certain joy in seeing a group of friends form out of professional relationships. Discovering and building the emotional bonds between Padme, Sabe, and the rest is a highlight. While none of the handmaidens prove as dramatically rich as they did in Johnston’s prior novel, there’s a parade of iconic girlhood moments that give Queen’s Peril, at its strongest moments, a coming of age vibe of the best kind. The handmaidens help each other with periods and social awkwardness. Escape from the Naboo castle to dance at a local concert. And get in each other’s way as they test out the waters of early (and refreshingly queer) romance. It’s light and fun and offers a more down to earth and playful side to the Star Wars universe.

Outside of these individual moments of relationship dynamics, much of Queen’s Peril finds itself building towards and dealing with the climactic events of The Phantom Menace. Lore hounds are sure to enjoy the inner workings of the political crisis that lead to the Battle of Naboo, and Johnston gets to play with voice and style as different bit players get brief moments in the sun. The point of view rotates throughout the novel to characters such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jar Jar Binks, Typho, Darth Maul, and most surprisingly Darth Sidious himself. They don’t necessarily provide anything revolutionary in their understandings of the different characters, but there’s a novelty in seeing Johnston adapt her voice so fluidly to each vignette.

However, it’s this preoccupation with The Phantom Menace that ends up being Queen’s Peril’s downfall. For over half of the novel, Johnston spends her time putting the various pieces into place and ratcheting up a feeling of tension and even foreboding. It works as a constant reminder that all the preparation our young queen has gone through is going to be put to the test. However, once The Phantom Menace arrives, the carefully laid pacing deteriorates.

While Johnston makes, the likely correct, assumption that most readers will be familiar with the events of the film, her barebones approach to describing the overlap can’t help but feel rushed and disjointed. Large swaths of the movie are skimmed over or summarized. On one level, it makes sense to tell the story from the perspective of Padme and her handmaidens. They wouldn’t be privy to the inner workings of the Jedi Council or specifics of the larger conflict. However, instead of keeping us anchored in a continuous perspective, Queen’s Peril opts for an approach that skims over story elements that it deems inessential and drops in for moments hidden in the nooks and crannies of George Lucas’s original script. It’s not unlike watching a movie and fast forwarding only to the scenes you want. Even then, the selection of which scenes to skip and which scenes to show is bizarre. Key moments such as Padme’s call for no confidence in Chancellor Valorum or her first meeting with Anakin are more or less relegated to footnotes. It’s understandable that Johnston wouldn’t want to double back over moments that we have already seen, but this approach has the unintended consequence of obscuring what information is important to the reader and ends up severing much of the novel’s building tension. When key parts of character and plot are quite literally off the page, Queen’s Peril transforms from a good, if inessential prequel, to a clunky and awkward collage of deleted scenes.

The end result is something that’s more than a little disappointing. Queen’s Shadow was a mature and lovingly crafted delight that was one of my favorite Star Wars media from last year and arguably one of my favorite young adult novels in the canon. There’s even the potential for a good book in the structure of Queen’s Peril, but its inescapably messy final third clouds over what joys were present. For fansof the character or the early eras of the Prequel Trilogy Queen’s Peril is likely to please in small bursts, but regrettably, most readers can let this one pass.

Score: C+

#Star Wars #review #reviews #Padme Amidala #Star Wars novels #Queen's Peril #Queen's Shadow #EK Johnston

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kannadzukikuroyar · 5 years

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Analysis the relationship of Cassunzel 1

Yeh, it's my second article about Tangled the series, and this time I'm going to explain the relationship between Rapunzel and Cassandra .（somehow about Eugene of course ）

So, the latest episode "Cassandra's revenge " came out, there's something hustling and bustling my mind, about the reaction of Cassandra to the others, especially Rapunzel.

But let's just start with the series beginning （don't worry , it wouldn't go so long）. We could see that, in the whole series, Cassandra really values Rapunzel as a very important person in her life. For the reason why, I believe it's because Rapunzel was the one who "save" her and gave her affirmation. Rapunzel is so special and important for her, when she has been grown up in an environment where people always deny her possibility. In the novel, Rapunzel and the lost lagoon, we could know that Cassandra was afraid of water and Rapunzel was the one who helped her cross the fear and was the first friend of her life. That brings out Rapunzel really means a lot to Cassandra.

Cassandra

We could see that Cass always place herself as a protector of Raps in the series. It's because Cass thinks that's the worth of her life, she wants someone need her. She's trying so hard to establish her own value, her possibility. It shows up Cassandra was the one who has the biggest

Dependence

to Rapunzel instead of Rapunzel has dependence on someone.

Rapunzel is an independent person. Her growth is so obvious. She might need help but not someone to protect her and I am sure that Cassandra also realized that in "Rapunzel and the great tree ". She lost her meaning of her life.

Besides, I think there are more in their relationship, the difference of New Dreams, The Unique Points for each other. In this case, we cannot avoid but to talk about the relationship between Eugene and Rapunzel. Their relationship started with a dramatic haphazard and what they've experienced was special, they ended with an unique story. They Saved each other. They are unique for each other.

However, for how Cassunzel started with, it's a haphazard too, Cassandra appeared in the time that Rapunzel needed a friend, Cassandra is special for Rapunzel too, but not Unique （as Eugene ）. Cassandra is the first female friend of Rapunzel and with a personality she never meet before, that's why Cass is special to Raps. But it could be anyone, it could be anyone else that appears in the time Rapunzel needed a friend. It could be anyone else to become the first female friend of Rapunzel. And for this, it shows us that the opportunity they met was so fragile.

Other than that, if we take a look in the novel, we could see that Cassandra started contacting with Rapunzel because she afraid to the authority of the princess. It pointed out even Cass and Raps are friends, but deep down, their status are different. We could see that Cassandra didn't really have the authorities of speech as a handmaiden and she knew it. She knew it from the beginning of the series that they are different.

Even Rapunzel needed Cassandra to show her the world at first, Rapunzel is an independent person and can meet new friends very easily, she doesn’t need Cassandra to lead her anymore. She can do it herself. Even if they’ve experienced many special adventures, unlike Eugene, Cassandra is the one being rescued by Rapunzel but she has never been the one who saved Rapunzel. She couldn’t be as Unique as Eugene. She is at best a guest in Rapunzel’s life, not a companion.

And in the episode “Rapunzel and the great tree”, Cassandra realized, Rapunzel doesn’t need her anymore. She grew up in a place where never admit her, that’s why she needs the demanding from Rapunzel. Once she realized that Rapunzel doesn’t need her（protect）anymore. Cassandra’s meaning and her Self-esteem get lost.

As Rapunzel is such a special and important person for Cassandra. Cassandra felt that she was being abandoned and no one in the world would need her anymore. Rapunzel has an obvious growth in the series, but not Cassandra, she still has a strong dependence on Rapunzel, and I am sure that she noticed it.

After her right hand being burned, she wore the armor to cover her, it could also mean that she was tangled with her meaning and future, as she cannot be a soldier（she lost her hand）or the protector of Raps.

Things were going well in the episode “Rapunzel: Day One”, Cassandra seems to let go of her troubles at the end. If there’s not the episode “Rapunzeltopia”.

After Cassandra tried to let go of her thoughts, the Blue Ghost （maybe I should call her Zhan Tiri now）showed Cass her past, abandoned by her mother, Gothel. It steadied the thought of she was abandoned, neglected, not needed. Then, she broke down.

For all the way things go, Cassandra wanted to change. She doesn’t want to be the one who halt, she need to get over the dependence on Rapunzel. She chose the worst way to get over it, Betrayed the most important person of her life, Rapunzel. She cut off everything she used to, friends, family, homeland…Just to become a different person. She did it by her faith.

“And for us if we’re over that’s fine. I’m crossing the line.”

“Despise me, that’s fine."

She is so unwavering about giving up all she had in the past, especially the person means a lot to her, Rapunzel. In the episode "Be very Afraid” Rapunzel sensed the fear of Cassandra and it told us that Cass could also felt Raps’ feelings too. However, it seems there ain’t any indecision to Cassandra’s faith. I am not sure is that only because what the Blue Ghost told her or there are more, but it’s clearly that Cassandra wants to put an end on all of this and do what she chose to do, even it could be extreme. In Nothing left to lose, Cass said,

“ I’m not lost, this fate was mine to choose. So I chose to lose my doubt and lose my chain. Lose each weakness that remains ”

which has strongly alluded for the doubt, chain and weakness of Cassandra is Rapunzel. The episode “Cassandra’s revenge ” shows an intense guidelines ：Cassandra is enemy of Rapunzel, which it’s the strongest episode of the series ever. Cassandra showed a conspicuous hostility to Rapunzel and had several moments to destroy the paint of Rapunzel.

We could see that Cassandra was still hesitated about antagonize with Rapunzel in the episode “ be very afraid ”, it’s such a sudden Cassandra attempted to destroy Rapunzel in “ Cassandra’s revenge ”, it’s weird and bustled my head. Because, even the Blue ghost told Cassandra to do so, the faith of Cassandra is too strong. And that’s why I wonder if it’s because Cass really wants to end the relationship with Rapunzel at the same time.

And when the time she destroyed the paint of Rapunzel, Rapunzel was her safe place, but not anymore.

Hence, the song Nothing left to lose might be a song about Cassandra giving up the past and chose her way of moving forward. （it’s horrible though）

Moreover, Cassandra was compelling Rapunzel to rival her. She’s not going to end this relationship unidirectionally, but bidirectionally. And she succeed. Rapunzel fight her and a smile emerged on her face. I’m not sure what is the this smile means, perhaps it’s a smile of Cassandra felt Rapunzel finally treated her as an enemy. She finally put an end on their relationship.

Cassandra was sad at the last scene of Nothing left to lose, but she wanted this. It’s necessary for the growth of Cassandra and the betraying stuff is inevitable. She has to become a independent person. She has to change the difference of the status between she and Rapunzel. She has to change.

Nothing left to lose （fail）Nothing left to lose （no longer have）

Nothing left to lose is a song Cassandra giving up everything, but it also the sarcasm of Cassandra talking about her, meaningless, worthless. She’s so worthless that nothing left to LOSE（fail/no longer have）If Nothing left to “ lose ” means fail, who is her rival？Rapunzel？I don’t know.

There are also some interesting points that somebody noticed. Cassandra’s skin tone seemed to become pale than before and some people discovered that her skin tone is pale under the sunlight but looks exactly normal in dark places. Some people considered the sunlight might be harmful for Cassandra. That’s a interesting point, as it shows us even Cassandra got the moonstone, she’s still can’t get equality with Rapunzel. It’s like their relationship is Irreversible.

(OK, there are so many thesis I haven’t mentioned yet. But it will be too much for only one article. And sorry for my English. Looking forward to “Race the the Spire” ! To Be Continued…)

PS. (OK, I realized that some Cassunzel shippers might think that I am a New Dreams shipper. I have to say, I'M A CASSUNZEL SHIPPER and enjoyed the relationship between Cass, Raps and Eugene. And I am going to explain the other charms of Cassunzel in the next article. DON'T WORRY. )

#tangled the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure #rta cassandra #rta rapunzel #tts cassandra #tts #tts rapunzel #cassunzel #cassandra #rapunzel #personal opinion #to be continued

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heavenlydragon · 5 years

Text

Part 2: The First Among the Knights

Go to: PART 1 / PART 2 / PART 3 / PART 4

Authors’ Notes: This is an English translation of the first chapter of Vol 4 of the Escaflowne NewType Novels, affectionately called “the Marlene Chapter”. Translation was done by Fayrinferno and scanning/beta reading/editing was done by Pikafwance (Escaflowme). Please note that the chapter will be posted in four parts between Escaflowme and Heavenlydragon. Please enjoy our hard work!

“It’s good to attend these kind of events from time to time,” King Aston’s younger brother, Nueva [1], said as he raised his arm in a gold-embroidered tunic sleeve and gestured to the stadium below. Marlene’s uncle, sitting in the center of the honored guests area, relaxed and dressed in a loose-fitting garb, leaned his well-built body forward. His glossy face shone with entertainment as he watched the knights get out of formation and scatter at the end of the opening ceremony.

“Yes, thank you so much, Lord Nueva,” Marlene nodded and smiled, seeing nothing of the knights from behind Nueva’s large, round back.

The weather was clear again, today.

In truth, Nueva had become worried about Marlene’s withdrawn behavior recently and took it upon himself to take his niece out to the central stadium to see the Great Martial Arts Tournament.

...Not that it improved Marlene’s mood at all. Marlene simply had no interest in martial arts from the start. Rumours of war reached her ears from foreign countries, but her home country had been peaceful for a long time, so she did not feel the necessity of martial arts in her immediate vicinity. The never-ending rivalry between the countries, however, had made it so this so-called Great Tournament never quite became just a formality. Moreover, because bloody scenes were sometimes unavoidable, Marlene usually kept away from these types of events. What reason would she have to come here, if it wasn’t for her kind uncle, and to dispel his worries?

Maybe I should not have come after all…

The colorful garments of the knights coming and going to the field added a gorgeous flare to the gleam of their sword and spear blades. Tension before the battle and strange exaltation filled the air. It was transmitted to the watching people as well, as the audience became more and more excited.

But Marlene watched this, unaffected.

Taking a measured breath, she pointed her indifferent look at nothing in particular. The late-morning sun gave sharp shadows to everything it reached, and the illuminated field stood out as if white.

The packed stadium stirred unanimously, transfixed. Seemingly none wanted to miss any of the starting matches. The knights waited for their names to be called, standing further away from the square drawn in a white line in the centre of the stadium.

“Look, Marlene,” Nueva suddenly turned back to her. “Everyone is in high spirits because they can see this. It may be a great tournament today!”

“It is entertaining, isn’t it?” Marlene said, smiling at her uncle.

Nueva nodded in good spirits, stood up and lifted one hand: “Let us begin! Knights, show the skills worthy of that name, sharpened by regular training, and seize the honor of victory!” After saying this, Nueva motioned towards Marlene. “As a sign of honor, appreciation will be given by the First Princess!” Oh, what a commotion that stirred among the knights and in the audience as well. Although she sighed inwardly, on account of her uncle’s behalf, Marlene gave smiles in all directions. “Hohoho,” laughing in a strong voice and lowering his sizeable body, Nueva gently clapped Marlene’s shoulder. “My Princess, how reliable our people are!”

“Indeed,” Marlene nodded, honestly this time.

The first lesson of a princess was that the country was its people. A monarch must be judged foremost by their prosperity and safety. Whether she liked it or not, Marlene could never forget the lessons she was taught.

At the high-pitched sound of the trumpets, the knights stepped forward. One had a black armor with red tassels, the other wore an emerald-green cloak. His armor was silver. After saluting in their direction, their running attendants provided them long-handled lances. From this point, Marlene lost interest in the scene. “Hohou!” looking at the entertained face of her uncle, Marlene’s mind roamed. The shrill sound of weapons crashing and the commotions of the crowds did not matter to her. This way, time passed without doing anything, without anything happening. She watched mindlessly as the cup of liquid before her threw shadows like stained glass in the sunlight.

I wonder if I will succeed this country…

Even upon hearing the screams of awe, Marlene did not once lift her head.

Who will father choose to rule the country with me? The current king, Aston, only had three daughters, and no male heir. In a rare situation such as this one, the royal consort would be chosen to rule first. Otherwise, if left unwed, Asturia would be left to one of its three princesses.

Whichever the case, it would likely fall onto the shoulders of the eldest daughter, Marlene.

Then, who could father possibly choose?!

Without really looking, her gaze dropped at the field. The two riding knights were clashing their lances. Both of them rough and red-faced strong men, closer to a bear rather than human in appearance.

With a small sigh, Marlene turned her gaze away.

King Aston had probably already made the decision about her husband.

Another country’s royal to strengthen the relations, or possibly a domestic noble or knight?

For me, it’s all the same… Marlene thought disinterestedly, as if this was somebody else’s affair.

It was natural that her father would choose her groom, and besides, she didn’t have any particular preference herself in that regard.

But…

Watching the knights’ dazzling colors, Marlene’s mouth parted slightly.

If love appeared in my life… She knew it only from books and legends, and sometimes from the talk of the handmaidens, but that did not mean she was not interested in it at all.

Love’s beginning was meeting the destined partner...

Love made one weak, crazy, and even miserable...

Love could only be found in a beloved person’s eye, heard only in their voice...

Love made one beautiful, but also foolish...

It was full of such contradiction, but people could not help but lose themselves in its sweetness.

Could there really be such a thing in this world?

Laughing unexpectedly, she shook her head.

It had to be a drop of a rare liquor given to people by the gods on a whim.

Marlene started to even forget such a thing existed. Though even as she made up her mind about it, her uninterested self felt a sense of pity.

Or perhaps it will happen with the person father chooses...

Marlene pondered the topic while sipping at her drink, occasionally nodding when Nueva made an appreciative sound. Before she knew it, the sun crossed the horizon and shadows covered the white-reflecting field.

The sky remained cloudless as usual. Reflecting the battle of the knights, the excitement of the audience came and went like waves.

Marlene started to contemplate if it wouldn’t have been better to lose herself to the soft cushions and refuse the invitation altogether with some made-up excuse.

And then…

“Oh!” A remarkably huge cheer sounded in unison with Nueva’s raised voice, and Marlene returned to herself.

“Hohho! Hohho!”

From the ruddy profile of her still cheering uncle, Marlene moved her gaze to the field.

Everybody seemed to have held their breath as silence fell on the scene.

Something shone against the sky. In a moment, it became a sword, drawing a large arch before it pierced the ground near the white line.

On the opposite side of the square, another thing shone brightly. Marlene blinked and realized it was long golden hair with widening eyes.

Strands of hair fluttered in the wind as the knight, dressed in a simple blue garb, turned in fluid motion and sheathed his sword. His opponent stood still in shock, holding at his right arm. The referee lifted his arm towards the knight as the cheers burst out across the stadium.

“What exquisite skill,” Nueva’s features relaxed as he clapped his hands.

Who’s that?

“Victory is yours,” Marlene murmured unconsciously. The tall knight crossed the field, walking in Marlene’s direction. His long straight hair shone visibly, the blue coat and crisp white shirt dazzled the eye. Suddenly attacked by a tightly gripping feeling in her chest, Marlene bit her tightly-pressed lips.

The face of the approaching knight became backlit and Marlene had to squint her eyes to make out his features. A slightly slender face with nicely shaped jaw, surprisingly muscled neck, and tightly pulled lips were revealed by the shadows.

By the time the knight’s handsome features were revealed to Marlene’s eyes, he had reached the front on noble guest seats and got down on one knee to receive the knight’s honor.

“Hoho, masterful technique, worthy of the reputation of one of the Asturia’s chivalric order. That certainly pleased my eye. Splendid, Allen Schezar.”

Allen Schezar.

Marlene repeated the name. The stir in her chest was subsiding. “I am deeply honoured by the compliment.” A slightly lowered, but strong and carrying voice reached Marlene’s ears. As he said it, Marlene glimpsed the rising knight’s face and her breath caught.

Clear, incredibly deep blue pierced stubbornly through the fluttering shadow of pale-golden eyelashes. Transfixed, Marlene felt as if the knight's unwavering gaze filled her entire being. From her tightened chest, something swelled up in the back of her throat, making her unconsciously squeeze her hands in front of her breast.

Allen Schezar.

She continued to watch him as she could not tear her eyes away. While Allen’s eyes did not remain on her, a quick glance passed her before dropping back to his feet.

Without noticing anything, Allen bowed again and stood up with a blank look on his face.

The first among Asturia’s knights.

A fitting title for you, Marlene thought as she kept her eyes on the knight. She felt like she had never before seen such personality and nobility in a knight before. The sunlight in the hair of the retreating knight still dazzled the eye.

“Isn’t it truly remarkable for someone so young?” Momentarily lost, Marlene immediately returned to herself and turned back to her uncle. Nueva faced her with a satisfied smile. “Having such a skilled young knight, we may need not worry about the future and peace of our homeland. Promising, truly promising, that one.”

“Yes,” Marlene nodded with a serious face.

“We have many skilled knights in the land, but this one is truly exceptional.”

“Uncle, where does that knight come from?” Marlene asked, trying to sound nonchalant. Nueva nodded with a grin.

“Oh, it’s no wonder that you don’t recognize him. That’s the heir of the Schezar family.” Marlene tilted her neck a bit.

“The Schezar family, isn’t it a prestigious clan that held the position among the Heavenly Knights?”

“That’s true, but…” Nueva paused as stern expression settled on his narrowed eyes, “there was a certain issue with the previous head of the family, the boy’s father.”

Knowing it was probably useless to ask, Marlene waited to see what else her uncle would share.

“In the absence of the knight himself, and in neglect of the duties of a Heavenly Knight, the chivalric order stripped him of the title.” So it seemed that Allen’s father had disappeared. Marlene recalled his cold expression from not too long ago [2].

“But the son, though still very young, returned after a rigorous training somewhere, or so I heard”.

Nueva smiled softly again. “No no, it’s truly a splendid thing, really. Now the Schezar family need not worry anymore. Perhaps the title of Knight of Heaven, should none be against it, will be recognized as an inheritance for this fellow.”

Marlene nodded as her eyes sought out the small retreating figure of Allen. “I look forward to see what work he has yet to show us,” Nueva said, seeing Allen off together with her.

“Indeed,” Marlene said, agreeing from the bottom of her heart. Before disappearing into the darkness of the stadium’s side entrance, there was a quick glimmer of golden hair. For a moment, Marlene felt him clearly watching her. This time, the deep blue eyes caught Marlene’s directly. It may have been less than a second, but it recaptured Marlene completely. From her unblinking sight, the figure in blue and gold disappeared momentarily, leaving her behind.

The sound of the trumpet was shrill. Marlene dazedly looked around, as if in a dream.

The knights had lined up in the white field to participate in another round of the tournament.

The audience rippled like a wave and the vibrant colors of the knights were fading. Marlene slowly turned her head around, taking in a deep breath. The brilliant light was diminishing, giving way to the bottomless dark blue. The passing wind brought the scent of dry grass to Marlene. At the rising awed screams, her gaze returned to the field. The multicolored armor decorations of the knights, the shine of the glistening blades and clouds of dust kicked by the colliding knights... The vibrancy of the scene, not really different from before, finally reached Marlene’s eyes.

Something changed.

Something is different.

She placed both hands on her chest to make sure, clutching, as if not letting it escape. With each and every breath, she was reassured again.

I am alive, Marlene told herself. It was the first time she realized that.

A twinge of pain filled her chest, as if in reply.

Marlene took another deep breath.

The air was cool and dry. It refreshed Marlene's throat and smelt sweetly as it entered her chest.

It was soon after that Allen became a Knight of Heaven.

Knight of Heaven.

That title was given only to the twelve most excellent, most honorable knights of the country. The twelve were each given a powerful guymelef and it was their sworn duty as guardians and honorable warriors to protect the kingdom.

Initially, they used to be picked by the ancient kings themselves, but recently it has become a clan system, so that almost all the positions were filled through inheritance by the major families.

It was also the case of the Schezar family, with the temporary absence caused by the misconduct of the previous generation, before Allen managed to recover the position. Once a prestigious house, the name of the Schezar family was all but ruined, and among the clans who inherited the title of the Heavenly Knight, many were unwilling to accept Allen’s reinstatement.

“Must be jealousy,” Ditoa sighed, tilting her head as Marlene brought up the topic. “After all, becoming a Knight of Heaven, and the honor that comes with it is something extraordinary. Anyone who calls himself a knight would like to hold that title one day. If you acquire the power of one of those twelve guardian melefs, there probably won’t be a strong enough enemy for you anywhere.” Having seen the guymelefs in question, Marlene nodded, understanding Ditoa’s point. “If you thought there was an opportunity for you, and suddenly that became impossible, that can also cause frustration.”

“The clans already holding the title have no reason to say that,” Marlene said, frowning.

“Those who already have something often desire more,” Ditoa shrugged. “Such is the way of life,” she said smiling at Marlene, “But for someone who was raised as a noble like Your Highness, it is hard to understand such lowly way of thinking. Looking at it from your side, it must look shameful.” Ditoa placed the vase full of freshly-cut flowers on the windowsill. “And it’s not like property alone would get you to that position. We should not forget about that.”

“Right?!” Marlene surprised even herself with her excited exclamation and hurried to shut her mouth.

“Ho ho ho, as always, Her Highness is concerned about the peace in our country. It’s alright, all the twelve Knights of Heaven are strong enough after all!” Ditoa nodded approvingly to convince her and put the gardening scissors away in the basket.

Marlene recalled the faces of the men holding that title into mind.

Galleison, Widgate, Narcy…[3]

All holding ministerial positions, all middle-aged or older. All of them skilled, war-weathered veterans. There is no other youth like Allen among them.

Still…

Marlene smiled unconsciously.

The one who fits the title best, is still him…

“Oh? What I said seemed to have eased your mind, Your Highness!”

“Yes, really.” Turning around, Marlene smiled brightly, and Ditoa narrowed her eyes a little. Neither Marlene nor Ditoa herself realized there was a hint of worry in that expression.

Allen Schezar.

Just repeating that name caused a strange inner turmoil in Marlene’s chest. Why was it that each time his name was brought up, a strange pain shot through her heart?

But Marlene did not consider the painful sweetness that came again and again as cruel. Rather, the pain got deeper, and yet, the thought of losing it became almost unbearable. Why was her heart so affected after seeing him only once, and why did he occupy her mind no matter what she did? She could not find the answer.

If we meet again…

What would happen to that pain?

Would it torment her even more, or would it disappear with no meaning?

Whether she did not want to lose it or wanted it to end, both options led her mind astray. Before coming to that decision, Marlene wanted to know more about Allen. Then she may be able to understand this strange sensation.

No.

Marlene stretched her neck to look out of the window. The low afternoon sun painted the sky pale blue, throwing the shadows of a few passing birds on the ground.

What can be seen by just looking at the surface?

She only knew of his family standing, his reputation as an excellent swordsman [4] and the various rumours that Allen, same as Marlene, could not really help. Allen seen through the eyes of someone else bore no meaning to Marlene now. Even if she didn’t hear anything about him at all, she would know. She would recognize a vile person at glance.

Even though it’s been said that looks can be deceiving, the character or true nature still found ways to manifest in the appearance somehow. Especially with an upbringing such as Marlene’s, it had often proved difficult for an adversary to deceive her. Even at a glance, she was confident in her judgement.

She already knew what people were saying.

But there was far more to know.

And she wanted to know.

The more she thought about it, the more the need to know perplexed her.

If I meet him again, I’m sure I’ll understand…

As she thought that, she smiled broadly.

I want to meet him.

As abrupt as it came, her bright expression disappeared from her face again.

But…

Once we meet, this sweet pain may disappear. And she would return to those listless, tiresome days again.

Marlene feared that a little.

If that happened, it would be better to stay like this, even if just for that rush of being alive.

Then, what in the world should I do? Marlene asked herself, a bit frustrated.

This indecisiveness was strange for her. For Marlene, born and raised as the first daughter of a royal family, ambiguity was not an option.

Things were always black or white, and the idea of leaving things undecided (or Jeture forbid, considering something gray) was generally unacceptable. Until now, nothing was indeterminate. As a true princess, she would do anything to get out of such uncertainty as soon as possible and would have made the decision a long time ago.

Instead…

Marlene, for some reason, had a hunch that this situation might go on for a long time. It felt as if she discovered a new self she had not recognized until now. Without her knowing, another Marlene existed, one who was not a princess.

It’s just my personal problem…

It’s nobody else’s concern. Even if I’m confused by this, nobody else need be troubled by this. Even with this reassurance, Marlene already knew things would not stay like this forever.

And the chance to meet again came up unexpectedly early.

Allen eventually came to Palas to serve as the royal palace guard. Needless to say, it was a result of Marlene's clever planning [5]. At his inauguration ceremony, Allen stepped before king Aston, looking far more refined than Marlene had imagined.

“You’re the heir of Schezars.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” kneeling Allen’s head rose at the words. At the sight of the serious, yet faintly flushed expression on Allen’s pale face, the corners of King Aston’s cheeks rose slightly.

“I expect good work from you, worthy of the name of the Knight Caeli.”

“I am prepared to lay down my life in the line of duty,” Allen said, looking straight at Aston. His gaze did not even brush Marlene at the side of the king. Yet Marlene’s chest still throbbed at his mere presence. The feeling for him was so vexing, she wondered if she would be able to stand looking into his eyes face-to-face.

As he looked down at Allen, a shade of pity crossed Aston’s eyes. “The prosperity of your house also depends on your earnest service. Work hard and valiantly.”

“I will.” Marlene did not miss the bitter look that passed Allen’s face during Aston’s speech.

There was no need to say that, Marlene thought, sad at the thorns in her father’s words.

As if he had heard her thoughts, Allen’s eyes met Marlene’s for a fleeting moment.

“Very well, off to your duty now.”

“I’ll take my leave then.”

Before she could open her mouth, Allen turned around like wind, his cloak floating behind him.

“Hm, surely, that is one smart youth,” King Aston said stroking his chin as he watched Allen’s back. “If he does not make a mistake, he may very well rise high.”

“Father?” Aston’s features relaxed as he looked back at Marlene. “I called him because you wanted, but it seems he is indeed a good man to be stationed nearby.”

“I hear he is a very skilled knight,” Marlene said, smiling. “I heard some horrible stories of nighttime robberies recently, and felt nervous and unsafe. That is why I asked to strengthen the guard.”

“Hohohoo, really?” Aston tapped her shoulder lightly. “Is this enough relief for you then? Anyway, I would not have anyone so much as lay a finger upon you three.”

“I know your heart, Father,” Marlene said, but half of her own heart was already elsewhere.

Because just a while ago, their eyes met.

It wasn’t a dream.

Even if she smiled bitterly, deep down, she was a bit relieved.

With her thoughts of him becoming so inflated, her belief that such a person even existed in this world started to waver.

Even though it was surely impossible...

Once more, Marlene trusted her own judgement of people.

Looks like I was not wrong.

Marlene thought a bit proudly.

Allen’s nobility, deep prudence and youthful innocence she glimpsed were all appealing to her eye. She could not say what Allen’s own feelings towards Marlene were, but at least, there was no hatred or disgust in his eyes.

Marlene left the hall, with a small tinge of anxiety and the sweet pain still grasping her heart.

——————

[1] ヌエバ

[2] This may not necessarily mean that Leon held the title of Knight Caeli for some time while he was younger. Later, Marlene says that the order consists of middle-aged or older men, which is why it could be that Leon’s predecessor held the title until old age and Leon left his family at about the same time as he was supposed to accept the title and responsibilities.

[3] ガレイソン、ウィダゲート、ナルシ

[4] The text just mentions Allen’s reputation. But at this point, it does not have anything to do with his ladykiller image or other things he became known for later.

[5] It is not exactly clear in what way Marlene schemed to meet with Allen again. Based on what is said later in the chapter, she probably referred him to King Aston, who later picked him for the Palace Guard or just requested more guards for the castle and Allen was chosen. The decision to accept him into the order seemed to be a different matter, this was rather the question of his first posting as a Knight Caeli.

#escaflowne #vision of escaflowne #tenkuu no escaflowne #translation #escaflowne newtype novels #marlene aston #allen schezar #asturia #excited to bring you some new canon material after years!

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shastlelow · 5 years

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Darth Vader (2020) #2

HELLO! YEEAAAHHHHH!

Welcome back to This Week in Comics – Star Wars Style! The second installment this week.

With the three releases this week, I will end up doing three posts. I had thought about waiting, but after reading all three, I’m more excited than I thought I would be about Bounty Hunters #1, a new ongoing series telling stories of a band of bounty hunters in the time between Empire and Jedi. I will review that one on Friday or over the weekend. One of the primary characters I know of from the 2015-2019 run of Star Wars Comics, but I bounced around those titles, so need to do a little more digging on him after reading the issue last night.

Also, if you haven’t already, check you my summary/review of the limited series The Rise of Kylo Ren, which I posted Wednesday night. Great conclusion to a good limited series.

This post, however, will focus on Darth Vader (2020) #2 by Greg Pak, illustrated by Raffaele Ienco.

SPOILER WARNING: This review/summary may contain spoilers for this issue, as well as any previously released Star Wars media (Films, TV Shows, Novels, Comics, Video Games) released to date, including #NotCanon. Also, this post may CONTAIN ADULT CONTENT!

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….

Dark Heart of the Sith – Part II

Darth Vader revealed the truth: He is Luke Skywalker’s father. But Luke refused to join him and escaped.

Enraged, Vader has taken a squad of death troopers and the Imperial forensics droid, ZED-6-7, on a quest of revenge against everyone who hid Luke from him. Vader’s bloody journey led him from Tatooine to Padmé Amidala’s abandoned apartment on Coruscant.

And now he stands face to face with a ghost from his past. Does Padmé somehow live?

We start the issue in the great red POV aspect. Slight tangent here, and minor spoiler for the novel Thrawn: Alliances. I listened to that book, I didn’t read it. In that book, when Anakin would be using the Force in a fight, we’d get “double vision” and descriptions of what was about to happen. Something about it bugged me every time. I think it was the vocal direction. I wasn’t a fan. I get why it was needed, but it bugged me throughout the novel. Talking to others, mostly readers of the book, they didn’t have the same issue. Yet something here that is very much in the same spirit, I love. Guess it’s the difference between a visual medium and an audio one. (bleh, just thought of John Lithgow as Roger Ailes in Bombshell (a movie I enjoyed, actually). Bleh).

Back to the summary. We start in the red POV. It is the final act of Attack of the Clones. Padmé and Anakin about to be take out to the arena on Geonosis for execution. Padmé speaking, Vader responding. It seems our Dark Lord is still haunted by that kiss she never should have given him.

Vendaxa. Padmé asks, “What did you call me?” Zed scans and her and is amazed at the similarities. When she asks who he is, Zed responds, “Why, this is Darth Vader, the Emperor’s—” BLASTER FIRE!

Vader stops the bolt. He questions who she is. She says “Padmé Amidala, you said it yourself”

She continues on a four-panel page – all in red POV.

“…Queen…” – Padmé at the end of The Phantom Menace during the celebration, with R2, little Jedi Ani, Obi-wan and a handmaiden (Sabé) behind her.

“…Senator…” – Padmé in her apartment on Coruscant with Anakin and Obi-wan behind her.

“…daughter of Naboo…” – Padmé on the terrace by the lake.

“…back from the dead to haunt you to your grave.” – Padmé on Mustafar.

Back and forth over the next few panels of Anakin Force choking Padmé and Vader doing the same to “Padmé.”

They are then attacked by Vendaxan land squid and “Padmé” appears to escape.

Vader follows her. “Who are you? Tell me. Don’t be afraid.” Another parallel scene from the tunnel on Geonosis – “I’m not afraid.”

“Padmé” continues. “I’m angry”

Vader puts down his saber. “I see it now. Padmé is dead. But you wear her face. Speak with her voice. You’re the queen’s shadow. A handmaiden from Naboo.”

Zed kicks into gear, begins to point out the differences only a droid looking would notice.

It is revealed to be Sabé. She and Vader go back and forth over the events since Padmé’s death. They come to an agreement to make those that hid her pay.

Suddenly, they are surrounded by more creatures. Sabé admits that they opened the gate to let them in when she wanted Vader and Zed dead. “But now, maybe we’ve all got a reason to go on” and the fight off the brood together.

We get more red vision of events from Attack of the Clones side by side with the current events.

“You…fought well. Now come, we leave at once.”

Zed notices Sabé lingering. “When Lord Vader says we leave, we…”

“Droid, help me bury them” Zed protest, but Vader makes it clear he is to help.

When they are done, she comments that they were good soldiers who walked with her at Padmé’s funeral. “and they will be mourned. Not like you, Lord Vader. And not like me. No come, so you can serve your Emperor and I can have my vengeance.”

She informs them that after the funeral, they knew they didn’t have the whole story, so the went to Coruscant, and broke into Padmé’s quarters, and stole the security recordings. They were never able to decrypt them, so they hid them….

…on Naboo.

To Be Continued.

Master Shast LeLow’s Thoughts

Just want to state the obvious one last time. In my review of Issue #1, I said, “That final page, though! Obviously, this will turn out to be Sabé.” Not going to get too big of a head here, it was the only logical conclusion. But it feels good to be right.

This series is my early favorite of the three mail titles launched so far. I love the “behind the mask” feel of it. Zed is an all-star caliber droid. Seeing Padmé/Sabé team up with Vader was great, too. Just like old times, so to speak.

With that, it’s time the deactivate the lightsaber and clip it to my belt.

Remember, the Force will be with you, Always.

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gold-from-straw · 6 years

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Reassembled - final chapter!

I’ve never had a story take THIS LONG to finish before omg! (well, apart from all those half-finished first drafts of novels I’ve got in my drawer... shhh!) I think this is finally done, though I’m not ruling out some future fluffy slice of life scenes, similar to the ones I started with! If you’d like to read from the beginning, here it is, but otherwise, here’s a chapter of Frigga being the true BAMF that she is ^_^

Frigga felt the adrenaline rise in her blood as she followed her husband into the mortal’s conference room. With a tiny nod to her, Agent Coulson placed the slim tablet on the table and retreated, closing the door behind her, the Allfather, and their guards.

“Frigga,” he said, his voice as steel-lined as it always was in his dealings with diplomats and his second son. “I demand to know the meaning of this behaviour.”

“If you will not listen to reason, husband…”

“Listening to reason is one thing entirely, and you know you have my ear at any other time. But to present a disunited front to a clan of simple-minded mortals? This is unlike you. You have always been a consummate diplomat.”

Frigga snorted and dropped her facade of patience. “Do not treat me as some vassal or disappointing apprentice. You know very well what has driven me to these ends.”

“Loki,” he growled.

“Indeed, Loki. Your son. Or, as you have made clear, my son alone.”

“He has never been your son. He is but a political prisoner who has been treated extraordinarily well, and has repaid such treatment with dishonour and treachery!”

Frigga did not allow the pain in her heart to show on her face. How had she let things get so far? “He is not a tool, Odin, but a young man, a prince, of whom you should be proud. He has forsaken his birthright—“

“His birthright was to die as a child, abandoned on a rock!” Odin roared. “It was I who saved him from such a fate, who brought him to not only safety but a life of opulence. But of course, I should have known better than to expect loyalty from a Frost Giant.”

Frigga gritted her teeth. “Loyalty is earned by more than a single act carried out in secret.”

“Indeed, but it is usually expected of a son towards his father!”

Odin’s hypocrisy had long driven Frigga to circular arguments, and with an effort, she suppressed the expression of surprise that she longed to make, that suddenly Odin called Loki ‘son’ once more. “That sort of blind loyalty is what leads misguided young men to attack another realm, having learned to demand absolute obedience from their subject at their father’s knee. You cannot have it both ways, Odin!”

“And now you would have that attack go unpunished?” he demanded, as if seeing a weakness at which to strike. “You dare to speak for the Jotun, say that the attacker of their world should be allowed to frolic in freedom with his new pets rather than serve time for his attempted destruction of their entire realm?”

“I had been referencing Thor’s invasion, but now that you mention it…” Frigga worked quickly, not sure when she would get a better opening. With a gesture, one of her handmaidens brought forth the prepared anchor for the communication portal, and Frigga opened it with a burst of magic. “Helblindi, can you hear me?”

The Jotun king appeared in the portal, only his chest and head in view, and behind him, an entire court, arms clasped in respect and apprehension. “I see you, Queen Frigga. Well met.”

“Well met, indeed.” She stepped back so Odin was in view, and saw him straighten and apply his regal mask, face impassive. “I received your communique and was delighted to hear of the return of your people’s fortune.”

Helblindi bowed his head, as they had rehearsed. “Indeed, your majesty. It is my deep pleasure to report that the replacement Casket is working better than any of us could ever have expected.”

Frigga noticed the sudden tension almost radiating from Odin in sharp spikes, and offered up a desperate prayer to the Norns, but Helblindi was as talented a wordsmith and showman as his brother. He stepped aside to show the green-blue artefact glowing at the centre of the great temple, surrounded by a people who looked, already, so much healthier than they had done the last many centuries. “When we received word that the Casket of Ancient Winters had been lost, we were in despair. And then, to hear that you, Odin Allfather, were sending your own two sons to bring succour to our people and to repair the damage they had wrought! It was a balm to freeze many a heart molten in grief. This replacement has already done so much for our world, and will surely stand as a symbol of peace between our two great realms for millennia to come. I look forward to resuming diplomatic exchanges and trade in the next few months ahead.”

Frigga did not allow her smile to change in quality in any way, even though she wanted to bark an hysterical laugh at the Jotun king’s audacity, sneaking in that last statement that they had not discussed. She felt pride glow in her heart. This Helblindi may be young, but he would be no toadying fool, and he would grasp everything he could for the good of his people.

If Odin did not call their bluff, and declare outright war for their deception.

When Odin smiled through gritted teeth and inclined his head graciously, Frigga nearly wept in relief. “I am glad to see our reparations have been well received. Let us walk together towards a more peaceful relationship between our two great lands as once we did, and put the foolishness of the war behind us where it belongs.”

At his words, the Jotun court raised their hands and ululated in joy. Helblindi’s face split into a genuine smile that made Frigga’s heart ache. He looked so much like her Loki in one of his rare unguarded moments.

As the final platitudes were exchanged, and the portal closed, Frigga took a moment to savour the tentative victory before turning to face Odin again. He looked at her, expression blank, and she felt the anxiety of a young bride still battling an arrangement. She straightened her back, and smiled instead of cringing. She would win this time. “It appears there is no crime to punish.”

He stood in silence for a moment. “Leave us,” he said softly to the Einherjar and her maidens both. The women looked, with no uncertainty, towards her before they made any move to obey. Frigga saw his temper rise and told herself she was not afraid, simply excited at having won another point. She held his gaze and said aloud, “will you give my husband and I our privacy, handmaidens?”

The women bowed as one. Their long, elegant skirts would never shift to show the extent of their freedom, the number of weapons they concealed. The loose bodices appeared to conceal plump chests and bellies, but instead guarded lightweight dwarven armour and powerful muscle. Frigga had trained each and every one of her maidens, and they knew well that she could protect herself without them, too. They turned and walked demurely to the door, curtsying daintily to the Einherjar who held it open for them.

Odin waited until the sound of footsteps had faded to stillness, the loyal servants just outside at wait in the corridor. At last he spoke, his voice as expressionless as his face. “You dare defy me like this?”

“I dare much more in the name of my children,” she said, and unlike him, allowed her voice to fill with just a hint of the depths to which she would go. To which she should have gone many years before.

“You seem to think you are indispensable to me.”

She shook her head, and her blood thundered in her ears. “Indeed, I know otherwise, husband. I know there are none you would not forsake in your pursuit of power.”

“Of power?” he demanded. “Have I not been a faithful guardian of all nine realms for millennia? Have I not cared for your realm, and all others, keeping them safe from the marauders of the rest of the galaxy? How deep does this betrayal go, Frigga?”

The hint of hurt in his voice almost caught her, but she shook her head, as a cue to herself as much as him. “Do you know, Odin, that the humans have words for such as you? Narcissist. Abuser.”

“Abuse!” He scoffed. “You know not the meaning of the word! I have never treated you or our children with any cruelty, and only brought punishment for crimes that deserved it! As with any of my subjects, had their behaviour been above reproach, there would have been no reproach. All punishment was brought to them by their own hand.”

“There is a word they have for such insidiousness too,” she continued, almost conversationally. “They call it gaslighting. When a person in power manipulates another to believe that they are misremembering events, or feeling emotions incorrectly, or thinking incorrectly. As a woman who has long been lauded for her intelligence, I am ashamed that I have allowed it to continue so long, but I have been assured that there is no shame to be placed at the victim’s door. And yes, I am not ashamed to count myself a victim either. What I am ashamed about is that I have allowed you to victimise our sons, particularly Loki, for so many centuries in this way. Indeed, I have added to his suffering, telling him you have a reason for all you do, when even I could not see it. That ends today, Odin. You have stricken Loki from your bloodline, but I have taken him into mine. He is my son, and I shall allow no-one to threaten him, or his brother.”

“And so, because Frigga wills it, he is now free to commit his crimes across the galaxy?” Odin scoffed.

Frigga did not allow him to continue. She had come to the end of her patience, and it was time to bring this conversation to a close. “I know about Hela.”

Odin’s voice, his very breathing, seemed to come to an abrupt end. He stared at her, and Frigga wondered if the faintest hint of fear had crept into his visage. “Hela.”

“Indeed,” she said. “Your firstborn child. She who fought to please you in every way, and when she became too much of a threat - too much like you - she was locked away. I imagine she would be interested to receive another visit from her stepmother.”

“You would not—“

“I would,” she said, and could not hold back the viciousness. “I have failed my children, I have held back while I watched you build them up only to tear them down, time and time again. Make unreasonable demands, and then punish them for failing and for succeeding in meeting your expectations. You have wanted puppets, and will never see the worth in any of your children as they are, as I have wished for so long. It is over, Odin Allfather. Should you ever make a threat on either myself or my children, I shall not hesitate to ally myself with Hela.”

Odin was on her in an instant, his hands at her throat. “I should kill you where you stand!”

She smiled, calmed her heart. “And do you think I have not prepared for such an eventuality? You may never have admitted it aloud, but you know in your heart it is true - I have always been more skilled at magic than you, and have always been able to find a hole in your workings.”

Odin’s face paled. He stepped back and she stood upright once more, not allowing herself to touch her throat, to breathe any differently. It was no empty threat. Should she die, Hela’s prison would become her throne, all of Frigga’s power flooding her veins. She would prefer a longer term approach, one which would temper the poor girl’s broken fury, and she had… plans to that effect. But if safety was denied her and her sons, she would settle for revenge.

Without a word, Odin swept from the room. Frigga waited until he had marched down the corridor before slumping slightly, taking a deep breath.

She walked over to Agent Coulson’s tablet and lifted it from the desk, turning it so that the screen faced upwards. “Agent Fury, it is good to see you once more.”

“The honour is all mine, your Majesty,” said the image of Fury on the screen. He sat behind a great wooden desk, hands clasped in front of him. “I’m glad to see you remain unharmed. I must admit to being concerned there once or twice.”

She smiled and was glad the man had only been able to hear, not see, else the assassins she was sure he had secreted around the room would have surely come to her rescue, as unnecessary as it was. “Your support and hospitality has been invaluable, Agent,” she said instead. “I believe we have been successful in our endeavour.”

He nodded once. “It sounds that way, for now. And you’re sure Odin will not decide to attack at a later date?”

She shook her head. “He may have done so had he been able to reach Midgard earlier. But with the destruction of the Bifrost, he has been forced to only observe your world, and see the full power of your heroes. Not only yours, but those in Japan, Wakanda, England, and many others. Beyond that, the simple force of numbers of you humans has been enough to give him pause. Even so, as we discussed, my handmaidens will each be dispatched to provide the gifts you requested.”

“A pleasure doing business with you, your Majesty. With the apples distributed carefully we may have some chance of protecting our world in the long run… the very long run.”

“It will almost certainly be the last time we can provide such a payment for your assistance. I hope you have taken that into consideration?”

“Princess Shuri of Wakanda has several contingency plans already in place,” he said. “And I imagine Stark and Banner will be able to take similar steps.”

Frigga allowed a full grin to split her face. “In that case, I shall leave you to your logistics,” she said. “Well met, Agent Fury.”

“God speed,” he said wryly, and the screen went blank.

She left it on the table, then stepped out into the corridor. Her handmaidens arranged themselves at her back as she walked out into the common room to see her sons, her beloved sons, in a tight embrace, Loki sobbing in his brother’s arms as Thor comforted him. For a moment she wasn’t sure she would be able to speak around the lump in her throat. When she did it was a croak. “My sons.”

#FrostIron #my writing #bamf frigga #narcissism #gaslighting #Reassembled

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lexpistachio · 7 years

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Hi lex, i had a question. Are there lgbtq books/comics that you enjoyed that you think are more representative and are narratively better than cp? If you do i would love to check more out and get a feel for the differences.

Not gonna lie, I’ve been hemming and hawing about how to answer this ask haha. But thank you for your q!!!

Yes, there are a lot of lgbt books/comics that I have enjoyed better than CP and that I think are narratively better and which treatment of LGBT issues I did find more satisfying.

But I’ve also read (and critiqued) CP by itself, like how I read any other works, and try to come up with things that are objectively enjoyable about it and things I don’t like about it in a vacuum. I wanted to shy away from making any comparisons, lest it be incongruous or void. I didn’t want to be unfair in comparing it to a work of a different medium or genre, or make hierarchies on works that tackle LGBT issues based on their treatment of it. And anyway, I feel like the brunt of my criticisms about CP has something to do with its abandonment of some of its storylines and its uncompelling character arcs and story. That is to say, I think… maybe any other well-structured, well-written story will do?

For instance, I just recently finished Andre Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name, and it’s a coming-of-age love story between two guys with a sizeable age difference, and further, it’s a story where there are no extrinsic deterrents to their relationship and what drives the story are just their feelings, how they act on it and don’t act on it, and y’all it doesn’t even tackle coming out, or homophobia; in those aspects, you can compare it to CP, and it just does a better job of addressing the issue of age difference or in general, just expressing the nature of desire and physicality and confusion that comes with First Love. The younger guy’s insecurity, while it was assuaged, never really went away, but at least it was addressed. Are the two works really comparable? No. But did I enjoy it better? Absolutely. And it’s the same for like, I guess 90% of LGBT works I’ve read vis a vis CP.

And I have read a lot of stuff. In the interest of full disclosure, I did grow up reading shonen-ai and yaoi?? If you know what those are, you won’t be surprised at how fluffy comics with “queer” characters has existed long before CP (or, while at it, how reminiscent zim*its is of a traditional yaoi pairing with the Hunky Seme and blushing virginal Uke; might be also why i hate the pairing for how i’ve seen that dynamics a million times before). Though I make no value judgments about yaoi, I guess what I’m trying to say is that there are a LOT of romance (and even scifi and fantasy) LGBT works that don’t focus on queer issues, and they aren’t less enjoyable for that fact. The key is deciding early on if queer issues such as homophobia is something to be dealt with in the comic’s universe, and not flip flop midway and ending lacklustre and lacking like how CP did it. I guess I wanted to address the point that our criticisms of its lack of discussion about stuff is waived because CP is “supposed to be fluffy”; I maintain that it’s worthy of criticism because it wasn’t consistent on its discussion. Shhh this stays as a secret lol but one of the earliest yaoi novel I remember reading was this pulp trashy novel Only The Ring Finger Knows and it’s about two guys falling for each other and navigating their relationship and living together and they don’t really face scrutiny for being gay. But all their insecurities and all the misunderstandings were addressed properly, and it’s not Man Booker material but I remember feeling satisfied.

In addition, I do believe that the Coming Out story where the protagonist comes out stronger™ for it is as cliche as they come.

One of the most nonchalant mention of sexuality that I can remember is from one of my favorite webcomics ever– The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal--when TJ gets asked if he’s gay and he replies, “I ping all I am ninja.” But it’s also a story about a POC who’s gay and trapped in an arranged marriage, but it doesn’t dwell on that and the story keeps moving. At the heart of that comic is just two guys finding themselves and falling in love while on a roadtrip. That’s as tropey as you get, and yet the character development is to die for.

There’s a lot of LGBT stories where the queerness aren’t used solely as a device to drive a larger story. There is A LOT.

Off the top of my head, Sarah Waters has historical novels like Fingersmith and Tipping the Velvet that are more plot-driven, doesn’t deal with the queer issues, but have women falling in love and being happy together. Fingersmith is also where the movie The Handmaiden is based from, which if you haven’t watched, should. Some of David Levithan’s stories deal with homophobia, but most are just guys falling in love and being happy and cute. Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life–a read I don’t recommend to anyone dear to me– has its protagonist fall in love with his Hollywood celebrity best friend (though I think the takeaway from this novel is that love doesn’t cure trauma, though people suffering from it can be happy) and there is no fuss about their queerness at all, and the book is actually nominated for a Man Booker.

There are also works like Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (POC, LGBT), or Perry Moore’s Hero, or Tillie Walden’s autobiographical graphic novel Spinning (LGBT, sports) that are about coming-of-age and aren’t afraid to tackle the warping effect of homophobia, the feelings of shame and fear that comes with being queer in a realistic world, and yet did not demure to end on a hopeful note.

I know the webcomic Tripping Over You is but a fluffy slice-of-life that’s just two guys who are in a relationship, talking it out and that’s it?? And it’s satisfying, and I can’t help but highlight how the coming out story of one of its characters, Liam, to his father was nothing but his decision to make, despite all the hiding he did was affecting his relationship with his partner as well. That coming out arc was a blip in the larger story arcs that are… their relationship and about being adults.

And I mean you even have fanfics that include that feature its characters coming out, and I have read a disturbing amount of fics you guys, even hockey rpf featuring different pairings, that discuss the issues that CP seemed to present (but didn’t follow through on) in a better way. I remember this lowkey one about a beat reporter starting a relationship with a professional hockey player, and the difference in their status is addressed, financially and in other terms, and that both of them are fully cognizant about these things as they proceed with the relationship. And the hopeful coming out scenario is a product of playing out the consequences of it and the alternative. I also remember this moment in that fic where the main POV character deals with a panic attack with his partner present, and it’s so much powerful to me than anything CP has shown about mental health.

In terms of mental health, I remember reading Tobias and Guy which is as light and fluffy as you get when a guy (literally named Guy) falls in love with a demon guy, and has this arc when Guy dealt with depression while in that relationship, and it was short and succinct but dared one of its characters to at least ask “but his family are loving and are supportive of him. how can he think like that?” for the sake of expounding the topic. I think it’s an okay portrayal of how partners in a relationship might deal in a situation where on suffers from mental health illness. I feel like the show You’re The Worst has also been exemplary in that regard. SKAM’s season 3 deals with internal homophobia and mental health illness while in a relationship and coming out (with none of the backlash of homophobia like CP) but doesn’t deal with cliches, and remains as a compelling and moving story.

In terms of insight into sports, a notable read for me is Nina Revoyr’s The Necessary Hunger (LGBT, POC, Sports), as it treated the sport the characters are in as integral part of who they are, which, I think is an effective use of the sports as a genre. As a manga-reader though, I’ve been spoiled by sports manga which are the best! sports! comics! (Slam Dunk! Hajime no Ippo! Hikaru no Go!) because they deal with their respective sport with so much insight, aplomb and passion, viewed in the eyes of the hero who’s in a journey to triumph. In manga, even baking bread can be a sport haha. To be honest these sports comics don’t need to have an athlete’s insider info on the world it’s set in. They just have to be believable. CP, I think, lacks both believability and insight, and more importantly, a deep tangible way the sports affects its protagonist. I find that so unsatisfying. I’m looking forward to how well C.S. Pacat’s Fence does.

My favorite college slice-of-life comic isn’t LGBT however, but it’s about a group of occasionally-starved college students in an art school. I read/saw the anime when I was in high school and has since stuck with me. I was equally invested in each of the characters’ storylines, not much like how I lost interest in CP after Rans and Holster and Shitty and Lardo were relegated to the fawning supportive straight friends stereotypes. The main romance doesn’t detract from the characters having their own stories and careers they want to fulfill. Even the POV character, who wasn’t my fave, had an endearing and compelling story.

As a bottomline: I don’t think there is a holy grail of lgbt works insomuch as they subjectively appeals to us. These are just some works that stand out to my memory and there are various takeaways from each for our purpose of comparison, but there are tons of material out there, LGBT and otherwise. SERIOUSLY. And I think there’s nothing wrong with trying it out one work at a time, see if it pings you. Trust your judgment friend!

#this answer is A MESS i'm sorry #omgcheckplease #omgcp #omgcp_critical #lukestarrunner

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weekendwarriorblog · 5 years

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The Weekend Warrior February 28, 2020 – THE INVISIBLE MAN, GREED

Welcome to Leap Weekend (if there is such a thing) as we get that one extra day of February for the first time in four years before we leap (get it?) headlong into March’s proverbial lion on Sunday.

This past weekend, 20th Century’s Call of the Wild did far better than anyone had projected as it benefited greatly from being one of the most Disney-friendly movies produced by the former Fox-house, as well as the solid reviews. Even though I probably had one of the highest projections for the weekend at $17 million, it ended up blowing that away with $25 million, coming out just below Sonic the Hedgehog. This coming weekend it might surpass it. Brahms II fell short of my already-low prediction. (Also, Impractical Jokers: The Movie ended up making $2.6 million in 357 theaters last weekend, just missing the top 10. Makes me curious how many more theaters it will expand into this weekend... but we’ll get back to that in a bit.)

Thankfully, this weekend we only get one new wide release, and it’s a good one, as Saw and Insidious co-creator Leigh Whannell takes on HG Wells’ THE INVISIBLE MAN (Universal) with Elisabeth Moss playing the unseen killer’s primary victim, one who believes her toxic and abusive ex Adrian Griffin (Oliver Jackson-Cohen from “The Haunting of Hill House”) is dead, but in fact, he’s just invisible! I know, it sounds cornier than it actually is. By the time you read this, I’ll have probably already written my full review so you already know that I kind of dug what Whannell did here.

This will be an interesting test to see if Moss can bring her popularity from shows like “The Handmaiden’s Tale” and “Mad Men” to the big screen since she really hasn’t been the lead in many big studio releases. Obviously, she had a fairly big role in Jordan Peele’s Uslast year, which was also produced by Jason Blum for Universal, and that did decently by opening with $71 million. (That movie got a huge boost by being Peele’s follow-up to the Oscar-winning Get Out with the amazing Lupita Nyong’o.) A few months later, Moss’ co-starring role in the WB graphic novel-based crime thriller The Kitchen tanked even with support from bigger stars like Melissa McCarthy and Tiffany Haddish. The Invisible Man will be a good test to see if Moss can carry a major wide release, already having a strong fanbase, especially among critics thanks to last year’s indie Her Smell.

There’s a pretty long history of Universal’s Classic Monsters being brought back to the screen with Dracula and Frankenstein getting the most iterations -- some more successful than others. Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 movie Bram Stoker’s Dracula was one of the bigger hits for the time, grossing $82 million after a $30 million opening, and this was 1992 money, mind you.

Just ten years ago, Universal’s The Wolf Man opened with $31.5 million over the Presidents Day weekend and ended up grossing $61.9 million, the name value of its title character helping quite a bit but only for that opening weekend. Even though it was universally (ha ha) panned, Tom Cruise’s The Mummy reboot also opened with $31.7 million (in the summer) although it failed to kick-start Universal’s planned “Dark Universe” shared universe of films. The lack of quality for those projects may hurt The Invisible Man with moviegoers who have felt like they’ve been burned too many times before, but we’ll have to see how the critics feel about it. (Reviews so far are mostly positive, at the time of this writing.)

Going back further, the Paul Verhoeven thriller Hollow Man, starring Kevin Bacon, opened with $26.4 million on its way to $73.2 million, so I can’t see any reason why 20 years later, The Invisible Man can’t find similar success.

Sure, there’s been a serious downturn on horror over the past two months with so many pretty mediocre horror movies getting released, few of them doing well. The name brand of The Invisible Man and the Blumhouse branding (not to mention Universal’s marketing, which has done a decent job with the trailers and commercials) should allow it to make $26 to 30 million (maybe more?) – it won’t have a problem being the #1 movie at the box office this weekend regardless.

My Review of The Invisible Man

My Interview with Leigh Whannell over at VitalThrills.com

The Invisible Man shouldn’t have a hard time taking #1 whether it ends up on the low point of projections or breaks out with something closer to $30 million or more. Even more interesting to watch is the bottom of the top 10 and whether last week’s Emma or Impractical Jokers: the Movie might break into the top 10 depending on their respective expansions. The latter might have a slight advantage since it might be targeting 700 to 800 theaters or more while Emma is only expanding into about 100 theaters before its nationwide release next week.

Also, apparently the popular manga series “My Hero Academia” is coming to the big screen starting tonight with the nationwide release of My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising, but since I know almost nothing about the series or how many theaters it might open in, there’s not much more I can add. Maybe it’ll do well enough to break into the top 10, but who really knows? The previous movie grossed $5.5 million domestically with an August ‘18 opening, and presumably, its sequel can do even better with the series being even more popular. I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt that it could end up with $3 million over the weekend if it opens in 500 or more theaters, but it’s really a stab in the dark here.

1. The Invisible Man (Universal) - $30.6 million N/A (up $2 million)*

2. Call of the Wild (20th Century) - $15.4 million -38%

3. Sonic the Hedgehog (Paramount) - $14 million -47%

4. Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey (Warner Bros) - $3.5 million -48%

5. Bad Boys for Life (Sony) - $3.5 million -40%

6. My Hero Academia: Heroes Rising (FUNimation) - $3.1 million N/A* (based on 550 theaters - note that this opens Weds i.e. today)

7. 1917 (Universal) - $2.6 million -38%

8. Brahms: The Boy II (STXfilms) - $2.5 million -57%

9. The Impractical Jokers Movie (TruTV) - $2.2 million -15%* (based on 750 theaters)

10. Jumanji: The Next Level (Sony) - $2.1 million -35%

11. Emma. (Focus Features) or Parasite (NEON) - $1.7 million (down .3 million)

*UPDATE: Giving Invisible Man a little boost since it’s opening in about 600 more theaters than my earlier projection plus the reviews have mostly been positive which will definitely help. Still no actual theater counts for My Hero Academia and The Impractical Jokers movie, so I guess we’ll have to see when numbers come in Saturday where they end up.

LIMITED RELEASES

This week’s FEATURED MOVIE is GREED (Sony Pictures Classics), the new collaboration between Michael Winterbottom and Steve Coogan, whose earlier films, 24 Hour Party People and “The Trip” movies (a fourth one coming out this summer!) are some of my favorite British comedies. In this one, Coogan plays Sir Richard McCreadie, the “King of High Street,” who has earned a reputation for his billion-dollar fashion store empire by negotiating wholesalers’ prices down, even when it means the already poorly-paid workers overseas are deprived further of anything close to a fair wage.

The film is told through a pseudo-doc format as McGreadie’s family and staff are preparing for his lavish 60th birthday soirée in Greece, complete with a facsimile version of Rome’s Colosseum so that “Greedy” McCreadie can fulfill his fantasies of being Russell Crowe in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator. What could possibly go wrong? The story is told through McGreadie’s biographer Nick (the amazing David Mitchell from Peep Show in a rare movie role!) who is going around the world talking to those who know McGreadie to get interviews for a video profile to be shown for the event.

Greed takes on a fairly standard mockumentary format with Winterbottom (who also cowrote this screenplay himself, another rarity for the filmmaker) putting together an impressive cast that includes Isla Fisher as McGreadie’s wife Samantha and Shirley Henderson as his mother (despite her being the same age as Coogan). Much of the humor comes from the comedy-of-errors surrounding this celebration with one thing going wrong after another but things getting progressively worse whenever McGreadie steps in to try to fix things.

The funny thing about watching Greed is that I spent most of the movie convinced it was a biopic about a real person ala 24 Hour Party People, vaguely remembering certain events as something I remember hearing about. Thanks to my old Beat editor Hannah Lodge for pointing out that the movie was in fact loosely based on the true story of billionaire Sir Philip Ross Green, someone I wasn’t even remotely familiar with but clearly was enough in the public consciousness to make me realize this film was loosely based on fact. (I’m sure that many will touch on the toxic masculinity clearly displayed by McGreadie which lines up with accusations about Green, who has repeatedly had his knighthood in danger of being repealed for his behavior and actions.)

I found Greed to be very funny but with a clear and poignant message about what the likes of “Greedy” are regularly getting away with at the expense of beleaguered workers in poverty-stricken countries. In that sense, it doesn’t hit the viewer too hard over the head with its message but still gets it across as well as any actual doc might. There’s also a great Knives Out style turn that will appeal to those who have gotten tired of the wealthy doing whatever they want and getting away with it.

There are other movies I’ll probably be watching this week and a few others that I won’t have a chance to watch.

Andrew Heckler’s BURDEN (101 Studios) premiered over two years ago at the Sundance Film Festival, but it’s finally being revived and released. It involves a Ku Klux Klan museum opening in a small racially-diverse town in South Carolina in 1996 and how it affects the people of the town. The story mainly revolves around Garrett Hedlund’s Mike Burden, a top soldier for the local KKK head Tom Griffin, played by Tom Wilkinson, who is odds with the local preacher, Reverend David Kennedy (played by Forrest Whitaker) about that museum. When Mike falls for a single mother (Andrea Riseborough), he has to start deciding whether he can leave the KKK despite his inbred hatred for blacks, including Kennedy, who helps him when Griffin turns the town against Mike. This is a decent drama that I wanted to like more because it deals with a really important message about allowing love to overcome hatred. It’s a strong story (based on true events) that features some amazing performances, but particularly from Riseborough (once again virtually unrecognizable!), but also Hedlund and Whitaker, both playing very difficult roles. I guess the problem is that Mike’s inevitable road to redemption is so bumpy with so many ups and downs, you love him, you hate him, he’s good, he’s bad… it really created quite an erratic tone whereas a tighter script could have made this a movie as good or better than Spike Lee’s BlackKklansman. It’s a shame, but I still it’s worth watching since it does deal with issues like racism and hatred that seem to constantly raise their ugly head even when we think there’s hope for a better world. It’ll open in select cities this Friday.s

Speaking of Sundance, Benh Zeitilin’s Beasts of the Southern Wild was all the rage at the festival all the way back in 2012, eventually getting four Oscar nominations, and he finally releases his follow-up WENDY (Fox Searchlight), a re-envisioning of the classic Peter Pan mythos. It once again features a group of no-name non-actors with Devin France in the title role and Yashua Mack playing Peter Pan.

Albert Shin’s moody thriller DISAPPEARANCE AT CLIFTON HILL (IFC Midnight) stars Tuppence Middleton (“Sense 8”) as Abby, a young woman who witnessed a kidnapping at Niagara Falls when she was a girl, who decides to return to home there to see if she can figure out who was responsible.

Apparently, John Turturro’s THE JESUS ROLLS, in which he reprises his bowling character from the Coens’ The Big Lebowski,is opening in select theaters this weekend. Turturro directed the movie that co-stars Bobby Cannavale, Audrey Tautou, Susan Sarandon and Sonia Braga, and for some reason, I thought it was opening on March 20 but apparently, it will be at the IFC Center starting this weekend!

Matthew Pope’s feature debut, the thriller Blood on her Name (Vertical), stars Bethany Ann Lind (from “Ozark”) as Leigh Tiller, a woman who discovers a body of a dead man with his blood draining out onto the floor, and she decides to cover it up while also feeling like she needs to return the body to the man’s family. It will get a special screening at the Nitehawk in Wiliamsburg on Thursday night with Pope, Lind and co-writer Don Thompson doing a QnA, and then will be On Demand (and other select cities) on Friday.

Next up is The Whistlers (Magnolia), the new film from Romanian filmmaker Cornelio Porumboiu (12:08 East of Bucharest, Police Adjective), and it’s a rare Romanian film that’s less than two hours long! It’s a policeman trying to free a crooked businessman from a Romanian prison, first travelling to Gomera, one of the Canary Islands, where he has to learn the local dialect that includes hissing and spissing. Bummed I missed this one. It will open at the Film Forum downtown and Film at Lincoln Center uptown, plus other cities.

Alex Thompson’s Saint Frances (Oscilloscope) is written by and stars Kelly O’Sullivan from “Sirens” as 34-year-old Bridge, who finally catches a break and gets a much-needed job taking care of a six-year-old (Ramona Edith-Williams) and also meets a nice guy but when she gets pregnant, it avoids to unexpected complications with her young liege.

Opening Thursday night at the IFC Center is James Sweeney’s rom-com Straight Up (Strand), starring Sweeney as Todd, an obsessive compulsive gay twenty-something who suddenly gets the existential feeling that maybe he isn’t gay after all. Meeting Karen Finlay’s Rory, a struggling actress, the two form a bond around their conversations. Sweeney and some of his cast will be doing QnAs at the IFC Center on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.

Lastly, D.W. Young’s doc The Booksellers (Greenwich) looks behind the scenes at the world of rare books with appearances by Parker Posey, Fran Lebowitz and Gay Talese. It opens at the Quad in New York and other cities.

Also screening at the IFC Center Weds night is Stuart Sweezey’s excellent music doc Desolation Center, which looks at the efforts by an L.A. concert promoter to hold indie rock/punk shows in the Sahara Desert in the early ‘80s featuring the likes of Sonic Youth, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Red Kross, Swans, Einstürzende Neubauten and more! The special screening will include a QnA with Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley, and having seen it at Rooftop Films last summer, I highly recommend it to fans of any of those bands.

LOCAL FESTIVALS

The big regional film for the New York area, and it’s one that I have yet to be able to attend, mainly since it takes place so far uptown, is the 10thannual Athena Film Festival, which is quite an amazing achievement for my friend Melissa Silverstein and her Women and Hollywood for putting this on for ten years.

This year’s fest runs from February 27 (this Thursday) through March 1 (Sunday), kicking off with Unjoo Moon’s I Am Woman, a biopic about Helen Reddy, who famously wrote that song in the ‘70s. It closes on the 1stwith Suffragette director Sarah Gavron’s Rocks, starring newcomer Bukky Bakray as a teen girl trying to take care of her younger brother and herself. The centerpiece films are Liz Garbus’ Lost Girls, starring Amy Ryan; Haiffa Al-Monsour’s The Perfect Candidate and the Oscar-nominated documentary For Sama. The festival includes a mix of new and already-released films including Harriet, Toni Morrison: the Pieces I Am and lots more. Click on the link above for the full schedule and program of films.

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

Metrograph wraps up its month-long “To Hong Kong with Love” this weekend with the fictional anthology Ten Years (2015), James Leong’s 2018 film Umbrella Diaries: The First Umbrella (chronicling the recent revolution in Hong Kong) as well as a work in progress screening of Leong’s If We Burn. “Climate Crisis Parables” continues with Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011) shown again, as well as Bong Joon Ho’s Snowpiercer from 2013, Antonioni’s cRed Desert (1964) and Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979). Also this weekend, Welcome To Metrograph: Redux will screen the ‘80s classic Beverly Hills Cop (1984), starring Eddie Murphy, as well as Abel Ferrara’s equally classic Bad Lieutenant (1992), starring Harvey Keitel. Also screening Saturday evening is Jeff Kanew’s Black Rodeo (1972) as well as Vincent Gallo’s Buffalo ’88 (1998) and then Claude Chabrol’s 1960 film Les Bonnes Femmes on Monday night. This weekend’s Late Nites at Metrograph is Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966) while Playtime: Family Matinees is David Lynch’s The Straight Story (1999) a good introduction of Lynch for the kiddies?

ALAMO DRAFTHOUSE BROOKLYN (NYC)

Tonight’s “Weird Wednesday” is 1985’s softcore gladiator film The Perils of Gwendolyn (hosted by my pal, the wonderful Heather Buckley!). Showing earlier this evening (but sadly sold out) is the Tom Cruise/Brad Pitt classic Interview with the Vampire (1994). Thursday begins the Alamo’s “VHStival” with a screening of the 1987 flick Video Violence, and then next Monday’s “VHS Vortex” movie is Evil Spawn, also from 1987. Next Tuesday’s “Terror Tuesday” is the 2005 movie House of Wax and then next week’s “Weird Wednesday” is the classic Robocop 2 (1990) plus there’ll be a screening of William Friedkin’s Sorcerer from 1977 earlier next Weds, which more than likely will also sell out.

Over on the West Coast, the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema Downtown Los Angeles (which would earn you 4,256 points in Scrabble if you could even fit it on the board) is playing Voyage of the Rock Aliens (1984) as its “Weird Wednesday” tonight (it’s sold out) and then Thursday night is the J-Horror Bloodbath double feature of Demon Within and Biotherapy that New York got earlier in the month. (Also, sold out! Sorry!) Also on Saturday, the appropriate Amy Addams comedy Leap Year will screen in the afternoon. Sunday is a double feature of Destin Daniel Cretton’s movie Short Term 12, starring Brie Larson, is paired with Brett Haley’s new film All the Bright Places with Haley and writer Liz Hannah on hand to answer questions. You can either choose between that or Pawel Pawlikowski’s 2005 film Summer of Love, starring a very young Emily Blunt. Monday’s already sold-out “Out of Tune” hosted by my buddy Jeremy Wein (who keeps forgetting to tell me about these before they sell out!) is the Electric Light Orchestra and Olivia Newton-John collaboration Xanadu from 1980. Next week’s “Terror Tuesday” is Brian Yuzna’s Society from 1989 with the director in attendance.

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

Wednesday’s Afternoon Classic is Vincente Minelli’s An American in Paris (1951), starring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron, while the Weds/Thursday double features are Freebie and the Bean and Busting, both from 1974. 1992’s Candyman will screen as this week’s “Freaky Friday” and then Friday’s midnight movie is True Romance (again) and the Saturday midnight movie is Arthur Hiller’s The Hospital (1971) starring George C. Scott. This weekend’s Kiddee Matinee is Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix from 2004 and the Monday’s matinee is Wesley Snipes in Passenger 57 (1992).

EGYPTIAN THEATRE (LA):

Friday is the rescheduled Retroformat 2020 screening of 1913’s Traffic in Souls while Saturday begins a series of “Weinmar Variations” (free with RSVP!), German films made between 1919 and 1933 with musical accompaniment. Pandora’s Box from 1929 will screen on Saturday night and then Sunday’s “Sunday Print Edition” is Vincent Minelli’s The Clock (1945). Lav Daz will appear in person on Sundayfor a screening of a restoration of his 2001 film Batang West Side with a series on the Philipino filmmaker shared with Aero.

AERO (LA):

Thursday’s “Antiwar Cinema” matinee is The Mouse That Roared (1959), starring Peter Sellers and then Thursday night is a double feature “Salute to Kelly Reichardt” with Old Joy and River of Grass with Reichardt in person. Saturday is a series called “The End of History: The Cinema of Lav Diaz,” screening 2013’s Norte: the End of History with Diaz in person. Sunday evening’s double feature continues the Kelly Reichardt series with two of her picks: 1953’s Ugetsuand 1970’s Little by Little.

MOMA (NYC):

Modern Matinees: Jack Lemmonwraps up this week with 1954’s It Should Happen to You on Weds, Blake Edwards’ 1962 Days of Wine and Roses on Thursday and 1968’s The Odd Couple on Friday. (The next series will focus on the great Cicely Tyson!) The “Theater of Operations” film series also continues with Werner Herzog’s Lessons of Darkness (1992) on Sunday. The “It’s All in me: Black Heroines” series will screen David D. Williams’ 1993 film Lillian and All by Myself: The Eartha Kitt Story (1982) on Wednesday and more running through the weekend. “Television Movies: Big Pictures on the Small Screen” also continues through Friday.

NITEHAWK CINEMA (NYC):

Out in Brooklyn the Nitehawk in Williamsburgwill show the 1998 horror sequel Bride of Chucky on Friday night at midnight and Allison Anders’ 1993 film Mi Vida Loca as part of its “California Love” series on Saturday morning. (Not rep but another option for Saturday morning is seeing Rashaad Ernesto Green’s Premature which will screen at the Nitehawk on Saturday with the amazing Zora Howard and cinematographer Laura Valladao doing a QnA. (Also on Monday, the Nitehawk will screen the incredible 2018 doc Varda by Agnès, which I highly recommend. Meanwhile, Prospect Park will screen Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain from 2005 on Saturday morning and then IT will screen Premature on Monday, again with Howard and Valladao doing a QnA in case you have to miss the event on Saturday.

BAM CINEMATEK (NYC):

Starting Friday, BAM is doing a special series “Kelly Reichardt Selects: First Cow in Context” which will offer screenings of movies that inspired the indie filmmaker’s upcoming film, First Cow, which opens March 6. This weekend’s offerings include Agnès Varda’s The Gleaners and I, the 1953 Japanese film Ugetsu, Satyajit Ray’s Pather Panchali (1955), the 1978 Italian film The Tree of Wooden Clogsand more, as this runs through Weds with Melville’s Le Cercle Rougefrom 1970.

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

This weekend’s “See It Big! Outer Space” offerings including Ridley Scott’s 1979 sci-fi classic Alien and John Carpenter’s 1974 film Dark Star, which was said to be an inspiration for Scott’s film. As usual, Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey will screen on Saturday afternoon as part of the exhibition.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

Elem Klimov’s Come and See will continue through the weekend, as will Visconti’s L’Innocente, while the weekend’s “Film Forum Jr.” is Barbra Streisand’s Yentl from 1983 and then keep an eye out next week a new series called “The Women Behind Hitchcock,” which should be fairly exciting.

ANTHOLOGY FILM ARCHIVES (NYC):

Dušan Makavejev’s 1971 film WR: Mysteries of the Organism screens tonight and Sunday, as part of “Dušan Makavejev, Cinema Unbound” (that should really pull people in) while “Dream Dance: The Films of Ed Emshwiller” runs through Friday. To be perfectly honest, I know nothing about either of these filmmakers and if their films interest you, you’d be better off clicking on the links and doing some reading. Sorry.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

This week’s Weekend Classics: Luis Buñuelis Diary of a Chambermaid from 1964, while the Waverly Midnights: Hindsight is 2020s is Tim Burton’s 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes, starring Mark Wahlberg, and Late Night Favorites: Winter 2020, it takes the weekend off.

QUAD CINEMA (NYC):

Pandora and the Flying Dutchman will run through the weekend to next week but with only one or two screenings a day, but then on Friday, the Quad will pick up the new 4k restoration of Horace B. Jenkins’ Cane River (1982) that has been playing at BAM the past couple weekends with the filmmaker’s son Sacha Friday evening and Saturday afternoon.

ROXY CINEMA (NYC)

Thursday’s Nicolas Cage movie is Werner Herzog’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans from 2009.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART (LA):

Friday night’s midnight movie is WilliamFriedkin’s Cruising (1980), starring Al Pacino.

STREAMING AND CABLE

This week on Netflix, we get Brett (The Hero, Hearts Beat Loud) Haley’s romantic drama All the Bright Places, starring Elle Fanning and Justice Smith, on Friday, as well as the first season of I’m Not Okay with This, a new series from the Stranger Things team, starring Sophia Lillis from It, and the South African spy thriller series Queen Sono, as well as the second season of Altered Carbon with Anthony Mackie.

Next week, it’s March, and the latest Disney-Pixar movie Onward takes on Ben Affleck in Warner Bros’ sports drama The Way Back. I’m not sure if I’ll be given a chance to see either.

By the way, if you read this week’s column and have read this far down, feel free to drop me some thoughts at Edward dot Douglas at Gmail dot Com or send me a note on Twitter. I love hearing from readers!

#Greed TheInvisibleMan ElisabethMoss Movies Reviews Streaming Festivals Repertory TheWeekendWarrior

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rantreader · 6 years

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The Wrath and The Dawn by Renee Ahdieh

5.5/10

The Dawn and the Wrath by Renee Ahdieh is the retelling of the classic tale 1001 Nights. We follow Shahrzad ‘Shazi’ as she marries Khalid, the Caliph of Khorasan, who kills a new wife every day, but Shazi is the exception. was excited to read a modern adaptation with a kick-ass character. However, I feel like I expected too much and was left disappointed.

The plot really excited me at the beginning. Why was a wife being killed every day? When will Shazi get her revenge? How is the revolution going to happen? It was so exciting, and then it turned into a romance. You would have expected it, and maybe I’m a little bias, but the romance ruined what would have been a good novel. It just happened way too early for it to be believable. Maybe I just need to know why someone is killing women to sympathise with him. It does work as it gives Shazi a moral dilemma, but it wasn’t one I was interested in. It just destroyed the book. Towards the end, I was slightly on board, but it felt too forced to happen earlier on. If Ahdieh focused more on espionage or the pending revolution, I would have loved it even more. However, if you’re a sucker for a romance, you’d love this.

Shazi is a Gryffindor. Once I realised this, I understood why I loved and hated her at the same time. She is confident in herself and I think everyone should have a bit of Shazi within them. On the other hand, she is such an idiot. Let’s ignore the fact that she fell in love with Khalid while he was still seen as a murderer. When someone questioned her motives – after she had survived for multiple sunrises instead of being murdered after one – she was shocked. I just don’t understand what else would have happened. Her handmaiden, Despina, does call Shazi out on her recklessness, but I don’t think she grew throughout the book. I just found myself shaking my head at her a lot.

The use of fables, which would have been a must in the story, was a little underwhelming. It started off great, but the tales didn’t really go anywhere. However, it also had a strange impact on the rest of the book. Andieh seemed to write the entire book with the slightly forced and awkward tone you would associate with classical tales. Maybe the fact that she used the Arabian Nights theme only put emphasis on the awkward writing. It was just another factor that disappointed me.

Don’t go into this book with high hopes and may enjoy it, especially if you’re interested in rough men being changed by a strong woman. I just expected too much so I will have to give it 5.5/10.

#Book review #The Wrath and the Dawn

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lelianasface · 8 years

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My Thoughts on The Masked Empire (Spoilers)

Okay, first of all, TME wasn’t about Brialene at all?

Briala’s hero’s journey is at the center of the novel. She’s the protagonist and Celene and Michel are side characters who serve as foils to her character. I don’t read much western literature outside of what I need to in my English classes for my minor (I’m an English minor), but I saw a huge Shakespearean influence, particularly from Henry IV and King Lear. I noticed this because one of my own characters is basically a foil of Hal (deliberately) before I read TME but his arc was about coming into his own as king of Ferelden and figuring out how to do right by minority groups, and not the exact fucking opposite.

Back to Briala!

She comes into her identity in the book, by overcoming her internalized racism. The book mentions how she’s more embarrassed at least as a child about her “dusky skin” than being an elf so a big fuck you to all who whitewash her in fanart- but it’s more than that. While Briala, unlike Michel, never expresses a desire not to have been an elf at all (or elf-blooded, in Michel’s case) and hardly shies away from her heritage, she initially glorifies the Dalish, though the book clearly frames her as more circumspect than her fellow city elves, who see them as an ideal and hope for the future. At the end of the book, however, she puts the city elves before the Dalish, as it seems to her from her dealings with Clan Virhen that they are not going to help the city elves, or that they do not consider the city elves part of their own. (While this is admittedly a one-dimensional view of the Dalish, and one clan does not stand for them all, the Dalish are very concerned with blood purity; given that one of their insults is “seth’lin” or “thin-blooded,” I do think she made the right call, though I hope at least one Dalish clan proved her wrong. )

Disclaimer: These are all just my opinions and I often have a really unorthodox way of analyzing things.

The call to adventure comes when she goes to avenge the death of Lemet. When she’s arrested/captured by Gaspard, Briala is forced out of her comfort zone farther than she’s ever been. Celene razing the slums of Halamshiral begins to open her eyes to Celene’s truth- that in reality, it’s Briala’s hand which has been making the lives of the city elves better, and that she doesn’t need Celene to do it/Celene isn’t doing it fast enough/Celene isn’t doing it for the right reasons. Felassan serves as the supernatural aid which pushes her to save herself. Entering the forest (or wherever tf they went once the Civil War started) was the beginning of her transformation. Her challenges come in the form of her physical and mental battle. During the battle with the sylvans, she realizes they feed off rage and fear- her rage and fear towards Celene. Her internal battle mirrors the supernatural events in the forest. She is tempted back towards ignorance to the painful truth that though Celene loves her, it will never be enough for her to really fight for the elves.

As Felassan guides Briala, she traverses the abyss; one could argue that her arrest and capture by Gaspard is the abyss but I don’t think so. The low point is realizing all of her patience with Celene has been for naught, and she’s stranded in the forest with a clan that does not believe she belongs, after being rejected by city elves who think she doesn’t understand their plight after living in the Winter Palace. It is realizing that though being Celene’s lover is the only life she’s ever known, Briala will always be a handmaiden to Celene, just a pawn in her game. When Briala overhears Celene’s false promises to the Dalish, she hears the same lies and promises that she has believed for as long as she’s been with Celene. She finds herself without a group to call her own.

Moving through the eluvians, Briala becomes more confident, and her transformation accelerates. She finally realizes the truth Felassan has been guiding her towards- that Celene was the one who had her parents killed and that Celene does not care about anything as much as she cares about her own power; power for the sake of power.

She bests Celene by ordering Michel to keep Gaspard alive- not with daggers, but by using the rules of the very game Celene killed her parents over. She beats not only Celene, but Lady Mantillon, by depriving Celene of one of the most valuable weapons in her arsenal: Briala herself. And she asserts that she will save the city elves and she is one of them. Whatever privileges she had, she was essentially a prisoner there, and the harassment she received from humans there, sexual or otherwise, marked her apart from them. Whatever fancy clothes Celene’s influence “gifted” her, it was a poor mask to wear. No one would ever consider her anything other than an elf. She embraces this truth and promises to give her people a better life with her new

The final gift Felassan, her mentor, gives her before his death, is the gift of time. By refusing to take the passcode (so Fen’Harel can’t get it) she is able to begin her revolution before the events of Tresspasser, and in my canon, my Inquisitor enlists her as the eluvian expert, so hopefully she regains control of them.

Archetypes/Tropes:

Hero/Innocent- Briala

Mentor- Felassan

Trickster- Imshael

Shapeshifter- Celene

Knight (this one isn’t really an archetype but it’s obvious)- Michel

Villain - Gaspard

I don’t think Celene was the villain, though she was a villain. I do she’s more compassionate than, say, Lady Mantillon was. However, actions trump intentions every fucking day, and that doesn’t mean fuck all given that she prioritized her power over the poor elves in Halamshiral :(

The fact of the matter is, while Briala goes through a complete hero’s journey, Celene returns home to the winter palace without having learned anything at all, which is a fucking shame but it’s what it is. She has become better at the game. If there’s a “moral” here, it’s that Celene had the potential to be compassionate and the potential to be a true ally to the elves, but over the years of playing the game, the “mask” she wore became harder and harder to take off. That mask became who she was the longer she had it on, and by the end of TME, there’s nothing left of the girl Briala may have once loved.

By Inquisition, it’s possible she had become a master of the game, but the fact that she couldn’t reign in the response to a single play shows otherwise. There were a thousand ways to overcome the situation in that theater- the fact of the matter is, she already wanted to quash the rebellion by force and she used the play to justify it, playing into Gaspard’s trap. When I say I don’t think of her as a villain, I mean that she’s not a textbook bad guy but she IS an antagonist and someone who did shitty things that need punishment/to be defeated or vanquished OR a pretty darn massive redemption arc. Given that you can kill her in DAI but you can’t redeem her, it’s clear which path she’s headed down regardless of whether she’s alive in your canon.

RE: Brialene

Celene is downright cruel to Briala and the fact that even in private at some points, Briala calls her “majesty.” The fact that she needs to sneak out of Celene’s room, like, it’s not healthy in the slightest and I’m really fucking sorry Briala had to go through that TBH. Celene may have loved Briala, but if she really cared about her, she would NOT have kept her in that situation; she would have let Briala go, because while the relationship was a respite for Celene, Briala was constantly thinking about keeping Celene happy and even feeling obligated to have sex with her so she could get sleep, which is yikes??? Like, if I woke up at 4 am groggy as shit and my gf was awake, I wouldn’t want to have to placate her with sex. I’m not saying it wasn’t consensual, just not very healthy. Also Celene...killed Briala’s parents and then slept with her for years w/o telling her which is????? Bad???????

In conclusion: if you ship this, please just think about it for a hot second and then stop.

Also some light reading on tropes if you find them interesting like I do:

TV Tropes

#briala #the masked empire #celene valmont #dragon age #inquisition #celene critical #michel critical #brialene critical #anti brialene #abuse mention #analysis #mine #gaspard critical ???#does that need to be tagged?#also im adding more in a bit because i forgot to discuss how michel is a foil for briala

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journodale · 4 years

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The problem with “Queen’s Shadow”

For the past few months, I’ve been meaning to write this particular essay but was motivated to finally put it to pixel, so to speak, by the fact that it was the subject of the most recent iteration of the Star Wars Show Book Club. The book is Queen’s Shadow, by author EK Johnston, and rarely have I been as disappointed in a book as I have with this one.

(Spoilers from here on out).

The book traces the end of Padmé Amidala’s last days as Queen of Naboo, and her taking on the role of Senator for the Chommel sector, but the problems begin here. For a book about a life-long politician, who gets herself enmeshed in political intrigue and who is forced to navigate a strange and somewhat hostile system, it’s a bit shocking to see just how inept the actual politics in the book was handled.

I’m trying to be as fair as I can be to Johnston because I know that anyone who writes a Star Wars book is inundated with hate mail from fans with an agenda, however my issues with this book are both in that the politics were mishandled, but also that for all of the research that Johnston put in the book on the handmaidens, she completely left out all of the rich political material that should have given her the details for the plot. I get that her focus was on the characters, which it should be. But you also can’t completely abandon your plot for the sake of your characters, and in some instances, that is exactly what Johnston ended up doing.

One of the problems throughout the book is that Johnston doesn’t have a good grounding in the basics of how politics works, so everything is treated with a certain amount of handwaving. A big example is what exactly Amidala’s job was as elected queen (which is essentially a president in monarchical trappings, but so many authors in the Star Wars canon seem completely oblivious to this fact, and keep going on about “monarchy, elected or hereditary” which are two completely disparate concepts). It would seem obvious to me that she would be more likely to perform the ceremonial functions of a head of state, which might also include the functions of Commander-in-Chief of the military, and some input into foreign affairs; this would leave the more head of government functions to Sio Bibble as Governor of Naboo (akin of a prime minister it would seem), but none of this division of powers or responsibilities is really laid out, which would a pretty profound impact on how it would shape Amidala’s politics.

The fact that she was appointed to the Senate rather than elected is also not congruent with the established discourse about the democracy of the Republic. It also makes no sense that the current Queen of Naboo decides on the senatorial appointment for the whole of the Chommel sector. There is also little sense to how the Senate operates, nor is there any discussion about the corruption that Senator Palpatine promised to fight when he was elected Supreme Chancellor. Johnston has no clue about how committees operate within an institution like this, which is why it gets handwaved through when Amidala gets onto Organa’s committee which seems to be largely devoid of a topic that they would be conducting the work of a legislature in, be it in scrutinizing legislation or holding the executive to account. If you want political intrigue, you need to know how the system works so that you can actually work it, or have it work against your protagonist. This was especially reflected in the big solution that Amidala brokered at the end of the novel around Bromlarch’s planetary aqueduct system. Her “cooperation agreement” should have been taken care of by the markets, not having senators cut trade deals. If there was work for the Galactic Senate, it would be in dealing with the whatever barriers were preventing trade – hyperspace lane tariffs, for example (which would fit in perfectly with what touched off The Phantom Menace). Amidala’s experience with the Senate in the book isn’t even reflective of some of the most incisive comments in Attack of the Cloneswhere she talks to Anakin Skywalker about politics, and the problems when people don’t agree.

Mina Bonteri’s inclusion in the book is a giant wasted opportunity, because Bonteri should have been the idealist looking to fight corruption within the system that ultimately drove her to the Separatist cause. Instead, we got some ham-fisted two-by-foreshadowing of the upcoming Separatist Crisis by having Amidala essentially overhear Bonteri in communication with Count Dooku, implying that Dooku was her puppet master. That certainly wasn’t the Bonteri portrayed in The Clone Wars series, and it cheapened her to be portrayed in this way.

Likewise, the inclusion of Rush Clovis in this book also completely abased his character to the point that he was downgraded to simply being a creep, which is not how their relationship was described in The Clone Wars. It was made clear that Amidala and Clovis had had an actual relationship – even Master Yoda knew of it. The book reduces this to having Clovis try to kiss Amidala without her consent, and while may fit with some of the contemporary #MeToo messages, ultimately it means that Amidala was infantilized by denying her the opportunity to have had an adult relationship before she reunited with Skywalker six years later. That it just made Clovis out to be skeezy was lazy writing.

My last bugaboo is one that’s common to many a Star Wars novel or short story, which is the hackneyed portrayal of media. While this is nothing unusual, the fact that the reporting on Amidala was focused solely on her wardrobe is frankly insulting to readers. There would have been plenty of legitimate media criticisms of Amidala’s arrival at the Senate given what her last appearance did with the call for a vote of non-confidence (again, a wasted opportunity to explain the procedural mechanism around that, which Amidala would have learned as part of her political arsenal), but in every single story where the author features a reporter, their sole focus is on clothing. How is this even allowed?

Johnston has a sequel-prequel for this book called Queen’s Peril coming out in a few weeks, which focuses on Amidala’s early days as Queen of Naboo, and I’m already dreading it because of the aforementioned lack of attention to detail about just what her job as queen was in this book. Even more alarming is Johnston lobbying to write a book centred around Palpatine, which one presumes would involve so much more fudging the details of a system he was manipulating. Would that an editor at Lucasfilm Books or someone in the story group start to treat the politics of the universe as a bit more grown-up, because there’s so much good stuff to use in there, and it’s a shame that it’s being ignored in favour of more handwaving.

#Star Wars SWSBC

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annettemoriposts · 5 years

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Okay, yes, I created a brand new word called romash to explain how I combine topics like romance and something else (sci-fi, fantasy, paranormal, etc), but combing politics and eroticism…you must think I’m out of my bloody mind. And yet, that is sort of what I did in Pleasure Workers. I tried to think of a new word, but I thought Polierotic would lead people down a completely different path and they’d be disappointed to learn the book is not about polyamorous (which by the way is a real word) relationships. What about eroticpol. Does that generate a vision of a pole dancer? I must have a thing for pole dancers since one showed up in The Dream Catcher.

As with other books, where I try to combine concepts, I will readily admit, the eroticism is erotic-light. I included more intimate scenes in this book than any other I’ve written, but I seriously doubt it meets the standard for most erotic novels. However, the real question is how the hell did I weave in politics?

When I first started forming the novel, there were horrifying stories about immigration and the country’s evolution to a decidedly less compassionate view of the plight of those families who are simply looking for a better life. Additionally, dreamers were a big story and how the current administration was resistant to following through on the promises made to them. I could not imagine living my practically my whole life in the US with a new fear of being sent to a country I know nothing about and can’t even speak the language.

So, I got the bright idea of combining my passion for bringing forth social issues within what I hope is an entertaining story. I also wanted to offer a different perspective on pleasure workers. I prefer not to call the women who work at legal brothels, prostitutes or sex workers because those terms have a very negative connotation. This was another side message, though not necessarily political.

I’m certainly not the first author, nor will I be the last to use the pen to weave in political messages. There are numerous classics that do this and their approach ranges from a political allegory such as Alice in Wonderland, Animal Farm or Gulliver’s Travels to more obvious warnings woven within a startling plot like the Handmaiden’s Tale or 1984. I’ve done more of the latter, versus the former, but one of these days, I think I might like to try a more obtuse political allegory similar to Alice in Wonderland. I could spin more outrageous tales than I’ve already managed to write. Now that is a truly scary thought. You are probably wondering how I might venture further down that track than The Dream Catcher or The Book Witch. Stay tuned, because I don’t think I’m done writing.

Besides the fact that Pleasure Workers is as close to an erotic tale as I will probably write, I am particularly proud of the development of my character Alex, who is complicated for more reasons than the fact that she wasn’t born in the US, yet has lived here for most of her life. As with most of my books, I believe I’ve managed to weave in those political messages without beating the reader over the head. As I’ve said before, I like knowing that maybe, 100 years from now, someone will pick up my book, read it and get a small insight into what was happening in the United States during this timeframe in our history and get the bonus of reading a few particularly steamy scenes.

The book comes out on September 1st and I hope you will check it out. Don’t forget to get Ali Spooner’s The Trophy Wives Club where my character, Alex is introduced. Her book has already received rave reviews, so I don’t think you will be disappointed.

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Politics and Eroticism Okay, yes, I created a brand new word called romash to explain how I combine topics like romance and something else (sci-fi, fantasy, paranormal, etc), but combing politics and eroticism…you must think I’m out of my bloody mind.

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krinsbez · 6 years

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Some Book Reccs

-Anything and everything by Nick Harkaway (I have read; The Gone-Away World, Angelmaker, and Tigerman), which are hilarious genre-bending awesomeness that defy summarization. They are, I think, what TVTropes calls "World Half-Full", where the world sucks but there's still hope and things worth fighting for.

-Kings of the Wyld and it's sequel Bloody Rose by Nicholas Eames. Starts with the brilliant idea of muderhobo adventure parties as rock bands, and makes it work brilliantly.

-Relic by Alan Dean Foster. ADF, is of course, an old pro, and it shows. Basically, after a star-spanning human civilization is destroyed by a gengineered bioweapon, the aging last human makes first contact, when alien archeologists find him living in the ruins of the colony world he was born on. Fortunately the aliens are pretty nice, but they also want to recreate humanity, and our protagonist isn't sure that it's a good idea. In order to obtain his cooperation in the project, the aliens agree to look for humanity's long-lost homeworld. That's what kicks off the plot, I can't say more without giving away the plot, but it's a pretty enjoyable book.

-Ravi, PI series by Adi Tantimedh(sp?) (thus far comprising Her Nightly Embrace and Her Beautiful Monster) about a British-Indian employee of a high-class PI firm in London staffed entirely by "over talented fuck-ups", as he works weird cases for rich/famous/important people, and deals with personal stuff. Also he has visions of Hindu deities texting and tweeting each other about him, which may or may not be hallucinations. It's hilarious, if often cynical. -Greta Van Helsing series by Vivian Shaw (thus far comprising Strange Practice and Bad Company), about a doctor in modern London who provides care to the secret society of monsters (vampires, mummies, etc.).

-Serpentine by Cindy Pon, a YA novel set in a fantasy version of ancient China, and starring a foundling taken in as a baby by a wealthy family to be raised as a handmaiden and companion to their youngest daughter. The story begins in her sixteenth year, when her life is disrupted by A: hitting puberty and meeting a boy, B: her mistress hitting puberty and meeting a girl, and C: beginning to periodically transform into a snake-monster as their land is invaded by an army of demons and undead.

-The Invisible Library series by Genevieve Cogman, about an agent for an interdimensional agency that exists to secure books from across the multiverse, ensuring they aren't lost; granted, thus far I've only read the same-titled first book, where she gets sent to a Weird Steampunk world and ends up way over her head, nut I loved it.

-Provenance by Ann Leckie, a...I think sidequel is the term, to her justifiably all-the-awards winning Ancillary trilogy, set in the same universe, but in a different part with different characters who are not involved and only tangentially affected by the events of that series. It's a really great book, with great characters, neat worldbuilding, and discussion of some pretty serious ideas (in addition to the main themes of the nature of family and the relationship between history and national identity, there are at least five other aesops in there, none of which slap you in the face) -I'm a few books into the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs, about a half-Native American auto mechanic who can turn into a coyote and was raised by werewolves,in a world where the Masquerade is sloooowly being lifted, one supernatural race at a time.

-Medusa Uploaded by Emily Devenport, about a young woman pursuing a vendetta while also seeking to end an oppressive social structure aboard a generation ship.

-DI Peter Grant AKA Rivers of London series by Ben Aaronovich(sp?) about a London cop who ends up getting himself apprenticed to the Metropolitan Police's sole wizard.

-Motel of the Mysteries by David Macaulay, a slim picture book written in 1979, presumably to satirize Tutmania. The premise is that in 1985 a catastrophe (the nature of which I will not reveal as it's the first gag in the book) wipes out the US, such that by the 4000s, nothing remains but legends. So, when archeologists stumble on a miraculously perfectly preserved motel room they proceed to misinterpret everything. Not every joke lands, and several are based on things that to my knowledge are no longer things, but still pretty funny.

-The Forensic Files of Batman by Doug Moench, a prose work written in 2004 that I'm reasonably certain was meant to capitalize on CSImania. As the title suggests, it's a series of short pieces in which Batman uses forensic science to solve crimes in his first year of operation (the book ends with him deciding to recruit Robin), generally written in the form of Batman's personal memoirs (which he's recording on the off-chance someone might find them useful), though there are a few bits from Alfred or Commissioner Gordon, mixed in with mini-lectures about forensic science, generally written in the form of entries in young Bruce Wayne's diary as he learns about this stuff (though again, there are a few bits by Alfred). Also there's one bit that exists solely to make fun of profilers. It's pretty good, although there's a lot of technobabble about forensics which can get a bit dull at times. But there's lots of good stuff too, at least if you're a Batfan.

- An Unattractive Vampire by Jim McDoniel (that's not a typo, BTW) which takes what sounds like a hoary, generic, cliche concept (an Orlok-style vampire wakes up from an involuntary 300 year nap in the modern day to find that ideas about what vampires ought to be like have changed and he is Not Happy about it), and somehow manages to make it both awesome and hilarious.

#Book Recommendations

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