#i think the crucial difference though is that although they are both ruthless in the same manner

[honeyviscera]

please please pleaseee asano be different from your father....... grow to become your own person i am BEGGING for ur development. see i see in his eyes that he fears his father and hates what he does. all asano's missing is the crucial realisation that e-class is not the enemy. that failure is okay. i just NEED HIM to connect the dots that a) he fears his father/his father is bad b) his father hates failure c) e-class is the antithesis to his father's values d) e-class is not the enemy they are not the dirt you walk on. i NEED HIM TO CONNECT THESE PIECES ASANO PLEEEAASEEEEEEEE

[i-want-my-iwtv]

I hope the rumours of Louis being a brothel owner aren't true, but if they are I can sort of see why they're going for this route? I mean, with a black Louis they can't have him being a slaver anymore, so maybe they're trying to find something that is also morally reprehensible for him to be.

TL;DR: My kneejerk reaction was to be saddened, and I don’t like that this is starting up, and will continue to fuel, fandom drama. Ultimately, if we want peace, we’ll embrace the fact that the existence of this adaptation doesn’t take away from the existence of the books, and it also doesn't mean we have to acknowledge it.

It makes me wonder whether AMC wants us to make a storm about this. We’ll see...

After all, what makes this adaptation any more important than the graphic novels of the ’90s, the graphic novel Claudia’s Story, movie!IWTV, or movie!QOTD? In fact, many fans here on tumblr consider VC to be a trilogy only!!! and don’t accept the majority of the PUBLISHED CANON so what makes anyone think we have any obligation to swallow this AMC adaptation as some kind of gospel?

I see movie!QOTD as a buffet of ideas carried in an official fanfiction work, and I don’t accept as my headcanon the various things it changed about the books that I didn’t particularly like, such as merging Magnus and Marius (which, IMO, effectively made both characters more morally reprehensible). I accepted the things I did enjoy, like casting a Black/POC actress to play Akasha. I see this AMC adaptation as a buffet of ideas, some can be taken, and some not, it’s just another official fanfiction work.

[Anon, I need to catch other ppl up on the information, too.]

Deadline.com informs us that in the AMC adaptation for Interview with the Vampire, Jacob Anderson has been cast as Louis. I'm not familiar with him, but it looks like he’s a successful actor, from Game of Thrones and other things, he’s also joining Series 13 of Doctor Who. I’ll have to check him out from an acting standpoint!

Aside from his talent as an actor, this is by far the most controversial thing that's happened in VC fandom recently. I've been thinking about this for a few months now, talking about it privately online and offline, still gathering my thoughts. So this post is not engraved in stone, it’s initial thoughts on this.

I’m glad to see ppl talking about it and I’m sure we’ll have more public discussions. I’m trying to discuss it very carefully, but also, this is an entertainment blog, my opinions are mine alone, and I’m not looking for dogpiling on anyone, I have no obligation to respond publicly or privately to anything. Plenty of other ppl have differing opinions on this. So take all of the following with more than a grain of salt, I’m not being salty, I’m providing the links to the little info we’ve seen pulicly, I’m giving my initial thoughts, and I’m also trying to add a little levity because ultimately, again, this is an entertainment blog, and I try to add a little humor to help with such serious topics, humor can help ppl talk about controversial things.

-----

The casting of a POC/Black actor (I’m sorry I don't know the preferred terminology, let me know if you know what Anderson prefers) confirms at least one part of theilluminerdi articles that stated that Louis’ race will be different from the books. I didn’t post about these before bc I wasn’t sure how reliable theilluminerdi’s sources are (and I'm still not sure), but this was one major aspect that theilluminerdi announced before Deadline did, so now seems to be the right time to share those articles. For now, you can go check them out yourselves rather than have my reposting of the information, trigger warning: mentions of sex workers and race in the changes to the canon story of Interview with the Vampire.

>>>theilluminerdi articles from May 21, 2021 and July 15, 2021:

www.theilluminerdi.com/2021/05/21/interview-with-the-vampire-amc

www.theilluminerdi.com/2021/07/15/interview-with-the-vampire-amc-2

^Meme of Dr. Ian Malcom from Jurassic Park reads: “Your writers were so preoccupied with whether they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

I’m using that meme with a little levity here, clearly an AMC adaptation of vampires in which the producers/writers have chosen to change the race of a main character (arguably the original protagonist of the series) isn’t in the same VICINITY as the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park that broke out of containment and killed visitors to the park, but John Hammond’s intention for the creation of that park was very good, as I assume this race change was intended. Time will tell.

“But with this place, I wanted to show them something that wasn't an illusion. Something that was real, something that they could see and touch. An aim not devoid of merit.”

“Creation is an act of sheer will.” 

- John Hammond, Jurassic Park

Race is a more complicated subject than ever, so for AMC to make this bold change, I hope they have POC and Black writers on staff and are handling this very carefully. Even then, no racial group, including POC and Black people, are a hivemind, disagreements are bound to happen in the writing room, whether in good faith or bad. People have different intentions and motives, compromises will probably be made with the story in many ways, we all know how it goes with collaborations; the end product is a shared vision among multiple creators. This could be a potentially controversial adaptation, I don’t know whether they’re aiming for that or not, but with the elements it has so far, it seems to be headed that way.

Here's a comment by "Angellus" on the 5/21 article. It's undeniable that there's going to be the accusation of racism thrown at anyone who has any negative view of this change, regardless of their reasons. I find it unfair and narrow-minded that any negative response is automatically assumed to be coming from a racist point of view. To say that changing Louis' race is unequivocally an improvement fails to take into account how that change has a Domino effect on all of the other parts of the story. Not the least of which is that, if he is still a slaver/slave holder/plantation owner/(insert your preferred term) that adds a whole new racist element to his owning Black/POC people, even though, apparently there were Black/POC plantation owners. 

Not the least of which: How will this change impact his relationship with Lestat? Particularly when Lestat has the added issue of being described in those articles as having “mind control abilities” and “insistent that he gets what he wants and when facing rejection,” a terrible combination in terms of consent, even in a relationship of the same race, let alone invoking Caucasian/white dominance over Black/POC people, AND Lestat being the catalyst to Louis’ questioning his sexuality:

Lestat is insistent that he gets what he wants and when facing rejection, petulance can quickly turn to ruthless rage which causes frenzied acts of horrifically brutal violence. Lestat also has mind control abilities. Lestat initially infuriates Louis, but this soon turns to fascination which leads Louis to question his religion and sexuality. 

^Screencap reads: "I love how racist everyone is in the damn comments, this doesn’t pervert the story you’re all racist and it’s disgusting. I’m looking forward to it, I hope you keep crying your salty racist tears asswipes."

It makes me question whether Angellus truly believes what they wrote, if this is an ideology, or a troll. I would suggest their use of the term “pervert” is correct though, pervert means: “alter (something) from its original course, meaning, or state to a distortion or corruption of what was first intended.” That’s what this race change does, factually. Although, in this context, “distortion or corruption” carries a negative connotation. It would take a lot to show how this change does not meet the definition or “to pervert,” though.

I hope the rumours of Louis being a brothel owner aren't true

I agree 1,000%, I was hoping that these were just rumors. But, aside from the race change, if this were the only change, I find Louis being a brothel owner to be equivalently morally reprehensible to being a slaver/slave holder/plantation owner/(insert your preferred term). Ideally, they’d change his career to something that doesn’t involve benefiting from the bodies/labor of others in any morally reprehensible manner.

I mean, with a black Louis they can't have him being a slaver anymore, so maybe they're trying to find something that is also morally reprehensible for him to be.

He might still be a slaver. Who knows. Being morally reprehensible as a mortal man didn’t seem to me to be crucial to the story, but they still could have chosen something better. It seems to me like they want a brothel so they can have eye candy for an audience who want to see sex workers, maybe full frontal nudity. 

-----

What also gets my attention is that Anne and Christopher Rice have not yet posted publicly about it, which leads me to believe that this change wasn’t their choice. They take every chance to brag when they’re proud of something, every chance to crowdsource about casting ideas or which VC books Anne’s fans liked best, etc., and in this case, as of Aug. 31, 2021, (and to be fair, maybe I missed it), I haven’t seen either of them post about this on the official VC FB, Anne Rice’s FB, Annerice.com, Christopher Rice’s FB, or christopherricebooks.com. If it had been their choice, I think they would have gladly trumpeted their credit by now, but maybe they’re waiting to do it in a specific venue. Time will tell.

[him-e]

So curious about your Witcher Season 2 thoughts and who you ship! :)

As someone who has no context and no idea where the story is going and isn't familiar with either the books or the game, I'm super intrigued and excited for season 3. The scope and stakes of the story are finally starting to shape up and I can't wait to see what Ciri's destined to become and what will be Geralt and Yen's role in this. A few scattered thoughts:

I loved Voleth Meir as the season's big bad and hope to see more of her, but I felt like her arc was done a bit confusingly (though I'll admit I didn't pay enough attention to episode 2 which is crucial to understanding what's going on, so I'll probably rewatch it)

I think the show still has to decide whether it wants to have some monster-of-the-week episodes, or be 100% about the overarching plot. I'd prefer the latter, although this would mean losing small gems like 2.01 (did anyone else love the gothic romance vibe and the spin on the beauty and the beast trope?). Trying to do both makes the pacing a bit weird.

Having Yen be without magic powers for the entire season was a bold choice that I can only applaud. Frustrating, at times, especially because we don't really have a big "gets her powers back and starts kicking ass" climatic moment, but that's part of why it's interesting. We see a different Yen this season - somewhat understated and melancholic, more vulnerable and withdrawn than ever, but we also see how cunning and fearsome she can be even without her magic. This is clearly tragic for her because she shaped her entire identity and purpose around her powers, and sacrificed a lot for them, so her motivation throughout the season is entirely sympathetic.

Both Fringilla and Francesca are ambitious, passionate and ruthless and I loved both the Dinner of Death scene and Francesca going biblical on the Redanian infants. In general I love how this show has so many powerful, unapologetic and morally grey female characters.

Loved the Witchers' Castle Black!

Has anyone started calling Ciri a Mary Sue? Was her training montage long enough to justify becoming accepted by the witcherdudes special club? di d she b l e e d en o u g h?

I just love Ciri ok.

However, it is a bit annoying that Vesemir is only briefly tempted to kill her when she's possessed by Voleth Meir, and quickly comes around. It wouldn't feel so strange if the lesson previously learned, via Eskel's arc, was that sometimes the best and most compassionate thing to do with someone who's been possessed by an evil entity is kill them. I do think the writers wanted to use Eskel as foil to Ciri and as foreshadowing of what would happen to her, but the subtext is a bit messy/confusing here.

I scoffed at poor Roach's death. Unnecessary, sudden and cruel. I wish we'd seen more of Geralt's pain.

Geralt is a soft, soft boi.

I YELLED AT THE WILD HUNT. riders on the storm. YES GOOD.

*

Who do I ship? Well, primarily Geralt and Yennefer, of course. But also Geralt and Ciri (in a weird way: I'm completely sold on their surrogate father/daughter dynamic, but I'm such a sucker for psychic bonds and being each other's destiny). I'm kind of into Fringilla/Cahir and possibly Fringilla/Francesca, and in season 1 I had a brief moment of "what if they kissed?" with Yen and Vilgefortz, but mostly because the actor is just absurdly hot (not especially vibing with him & Tissaia tho).

This season's surprise ship for me was Yen/Cahir - when she freed him instead of executing him and they fled together I was like RELUCTANT ALLIES! ENEMIES TO FRIENDS TO LOVERS! But ultimately, I'm too intrigued by the idea of Ciri/Cahir as enemies to lovers, which I've had since season 1 and hope it's -actually- going somewhere. Yeah, lots of shipping material here. I'm being fed well.

[captain-aralias]

Trivia Tuesday!!! (The Sweet Fruit of a Palm Tree)

Creators: give a “behind the scenes” look at one of your works. This could be things that got removed or changed, the origins of ideas/details, whatever you like!

tagging some people who might want to share trivia: @sharkmartini @krisrix @annabellelux @llamapyjamas @sharing-a-room-with-an-open-fire​ @ninemagicks​ @milo-fanarts​ @carryonvisinata​ @f-ing-ruthless-baz​

(yes, i am on leave from work this week with nothing to do - why do you ask?) 

i have almost 2,000 words of cut scenes from my 3,000 word @goldendayszine zine fic - and those are only the scenes that I saved. there was also an ending from simon’s POV but i think it must have been very similar with different names because it’s not in any of the versions i emailed to people, or my cut scenes doc. 

i have never cut so much. 

some scenes and lines i cut for space; most i cut and re-wrote because they were ruining the mood. in almost all cases the fic is much better without them.

please enjoy if this is the sort of thing you enjoy. i think there are genuinely some interesting choices here! 

cut-cut-cut: 

original title was ‘The British Museum Job’ - which is objectively a better title, but the more the fic was about baz’s mother and how he wanted to date simon, and the less it was about a heist, the less that title fit. so i changed it.

--

in approximate chronological order. bits in bold made it into the original. italics are comments from me. 

--

Snow keeps yawning as I try and show him my favourite parts of London without explaining what I’m doing. He’s not even tired. (We slept in the same room again last night. I know he slept most of the night – I heard him snoring). I’ve already offered to buy him a coffee.  

“Thanks, but I still don’t trust you not to poison it,” he said. Which was hardly romantic.

We walked along Regent Street because I thought he might enjoy the lights. (He didn’t even look at them.) Down through Piccadilly Circus and up Shaftesbury Avenue. I thought about suggesting a show – it would have filled the time perfectly – but that really would have felt like a date. And anyway, he told me he hated musicals before I could buy the tickets.

“If you’re going to do something, you should just do it. Not just sing about it for five minutes.”

reason for cut: 

space. although it’s also unnecessary. 

--

I might even tell him I was kidnapped.

That I was alone underground for weeks. That thinking of him was the only thing that got me through it.

It could be our first really intimate moment.

But before I can do it (not that I was going to do it), Snow strides off. He’s actually weaving through the crowd in the direction of one of the exhibits, his expression purposeful – and I have to grab his hand and pull him back into me.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

Snow scowls at me, as though I’m the one being unreasonable. “There’s a vampire here.” I raise my eyebrow. He frowns. “I mean another one. Obviously.”

My gaze follows Snow’s pointing finger towards a man with long dark hair and a well-tailored winter coat. He’s with a brunette woman, leaning against her as they peer into a case of shabtis.

Even from several feet away, I can tell he’s human. They both are. He smells like coffee and steak; she smells like cream.

And next to me Simon Snow smells, as always, like the thing I want to eat most in the world, which at the moment seems to be a bacon sandwich warm enough to melt the butter.

I should have fed before trying to spend the evening with him. Or perhaps I shouldn’t be trying to spend the evening with him at all. I could have done this on my own.

“That’s not a vampire,” I tell Snow, trying to sound bored. “He just looks like me.”

“He was biting that woman’s neck,” Snow insists.

I roll my eyes. (It helps distract me from thinking about how much I’d like to bite his neck).  

“I think he was kissing her, Snow.”

Snow looks dubious. “On the neck?”

“For Crowley’s sake.”

We’ve barely started the Egyptian section, but I don’t want to be here anymore. In the place my mother brought me. Not now that both Snow and I are thinking about how (unlike the poor man Snow was about to assault) I actually am a vampire. One of the creatures who caused my mother’s death.

“Come on,” I say. “Let’s get out of here.”

Mercifully he follows me. He must believe I can identify vampires. Which I think I can, even though I’ve just never tried it before (I can definitely identify people who aren’t vampires). Although he’s still grumbling as we take the stairs back down to the ground floor.

“I don’t think that bloke did look like you.”

“Fine, Snow.”

“He wasn’t even that good looking.”

I don’t react. (Not visibly anyway.)

He says things like this sometimes. It doesn’t mean anything. Objectively, I am good looking and Snow isn’t blind. Of course he noticed. He noticed in the same bored, completely dispassionate way that I’ve noticed that his ex-girlfriend is good looking. She’s gorgeous. Objectively. It doesn’t mean I want to date her.

Snow turning up at my house for Christmas doesn’t mean he wants to spend more time with me.

And this isn’t a date.

But somehow – even though I know that absolutely that none of this means anything – it feels good to hear him give me a compliment. I want him to think I look good – it’s why I wore this suit in the first place. (Yes, all right – it’s for him, not the vampires. I know I’m delusional, but at least I look fucking incredible.)

A moment ago, I was ready to give up. I was ready to go and sit in a coffee shop or an alley somewhere and glare at Snow until I was sure the vampires were done feeding.

But now Snow’s lit another pathetic flame of hope inside me. This might not actually be a date, but I want it to be one.

reason for cut: 

space. but when i went back to re-write it, i also though the mood was wrong. this is quite an antagonistic scene between the two of them. it’s about how simon wants to get on with the job at hand (killing vampires) and it’s about how baz is a vampire, but in a way that baz quite rightly tells us makes him sad. nobody wants that!! so you see i kept simon complimenting baz, but made it into a much more straightforwardly lulzy compliment. i also do not have time to introduce random secondary characters who have no lines. they’re gone. 

--

here’s a slightly different version of the above: 

We’ve barely started the Egyptian section, but I don’t want to be here anymore. On this … whatever-it-is with Snow. I don’t want to be in the place my mother brought me. Not now he has so eagerly reminded me of what I am. A dark creature. One of the monsters who caused my mother’s death.

“Let’s go,” I say. “You’re clearly bored.”

“I’m not bored,” Snow says, although he is at least following me. “I’m concentrating on the mission. I’ve never seen another vampire before. Do you think they’re all fit like the goblins?”

reason for cut:

as above. but it’s getting closer. 

--

originally the shakespeare exhibition was an exhibition on aztecs, because of all the GOLD, you see, and because there was an exhibition about aztecs in the museum at some point. i thought the exhibition could be called - get it - ‘golden days’. i don’t think i ever told milo this idea, but it would have made it into the fic if this had been a movie and no one had to draw attention to the idea. 

--

remember - bold is what i kept in the published draft.

All I need to do is remember a single thing that Snow likes doing and then find a way we can do it together. It can’t be too difficult. We’ve lived together for seven years and I’m obsessed with him. You’d think I’d have a list.

I don’t – but I could make one.

Things I know Simon Snow enjoys, a list:

Food. Which is fine – going to a restaurant is actually a perfectly good date activity, even though I don’t eat in front of other people. We can do it later, but at this point we still have five hours to kill. I don’t think even Snow wants to eat for the next five hours. (Does he?)

Following me around.

Making my life miserable.

Fighting dark creatures.

Going on ridiculous quests for the Mage to retrieve magickal objects and/or fight dark creatures. I don’t get it – Snow seems to almost die every time – but he does seem to enjoy them

Playing football.

Watching football. And other sports. I’ve seen him at a few lacrosse games, but I don’t know whether he actually enjoyed them. It’s possible he felt like he had to watch Wellbelove play

Talking to Bunce and Wellbelove about whatever ridiculous quest they’re currently on. Although, now they’ve broken up (again), perhaps Wellbelove is off the list. But I’m not exactly going to summon Bunce here either. That wouldn’t be a good date.

Video games?

As I’m thinking, we get to the bottom of the stairs and enter the Great Court. I don’t usually spend much time here when I’m visiting the museum – too much sun streaming in through the glass panels in the ceiling – but it’s dark now and artificial light doesn’t bother me.

There’s an exhibition on Aztecs on in the Reading Room space. It’s being advertised on long banners hanging down across the expanse of white space. I’d like to see it – another time.

“What now, then?” Snow says.

I still haven’t worked that out. (The list wasn’t as helpful as I’d hoped.)

reason for cut:

space. this was one of the first things to go. it doesn’t say anything that we don’t already know. i liked the idea of writing a list to be more like rainbow - but like baz i couldn’t think of anything simon liked ... and that was the point! 

--

“What the fuck?” Snow hisses at me as we get in line to pay for tickets. “You can’t do this.”

“It’s research.”

“It’s treason.”

If he asks, I’ll tell him that Shakespeare wrote about vampires in Timon of Athens. (He didn’t - obviously. But the odds of Snow having read that particular play are non-existent) (even I haven’t read it – it’s obscure. Terrible for spellcasting.) I’d tell him that there’s a crucial spell I need to understand before we go and deal with the creatures who killed my mother.

But Snow hasn’t asked. (He probably never asks the Mage why he needed to find the Third Gate or what was so important about all the white hares he was looking for in sixth year. For Snow it’s enough that there’s a job to do and that he can do it – I shouldn’t like that about him, but I do.)

He also isn’t objecting. Well, no – he is objecting, but he isn’t stopping me. He isn’t asking me any questions I can’t answer. He’s going along with it – letting me buy us both tickets for the exhibition and following me into the slightly darker interior of the Reading Room.

“Which one even is the First Folio?” he asks once we’re inside.

“I don’t know. Perhaps the one under the sign that says First Folio?” I say witheringly, although I’m actually delighted. (He’s helping. He’s part of it. This is going to work.)

“Right,” Snow says. “You mean, the one in a massive alarmed case, surrounded by people?”

We’re about three metres away from it. My heart speeds up as I look at the display. I’ve never stolen anything before – there’s a good chance this will go wrong. This is an idiotic idea. But it’s getting me closer to Snow.

Also, although I wouldn’t have chosen to do it this way, I do love the idea of owning a copy of the First Folio. It won’t be useful tonight, but I’m sure I’ll be able to work out something to use it for later.

“So, what’s your brilliant plan?” Snow says. “Hide in a cupboard until everyone’s gone home?”

He’s not being serious, but that probably is the most sensible thing we could do. And we’ve got the time.

But I don’t think I can handle being trapped in a confined space with Simon Snow for minutes, let alone for hours. Even if I hadn’t recently been trapped in a coffin for weeks.

He smells far too good for that.

“We’re magicians,” I tell him, remembering to sneer. “One of us is, anyway. I can do this in broad daylight without anyone noticing. All I need is a distraction – that’s your job.”

“What kind of distraction?” Snow asks.

“Collapse,” I suggest. “Start shouting about colonial theft, whatever appeals to you. Just as long as everyone turns to look at you. I’ll even cast, Your attention please.  Then I’ll take the book while everyone’s looking at you. I can cast a silencing spell on the alarm.”

“What about the cameras?” Snow asks.

I don’t want to tell him I’d forgotten the cameras.

“And I’ll cast Nothing to see here on myself,” I say smoothly – although I have no idea whether the spell works on technology. It’s not something we covered at Watford, a school where technology is banned. (I really hope my attempt to bond with Snow isn’t going to result in me being arrested. Think what my father would say when I had to explain myself.)  

“Penny usually uses Through a glass darkly,” Snow says. I shrug – I don’t know that spell.

“What’re you’re going to do when they find the book’s missing?” Snow prompts.

“Walk quickly. The attention spell won’t wear off before we leave the Museum.”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t count on that,” Snow says.

“What do you suggest then?”

“Spelling something to look like the book we’re nicking and leaving it in the case.”

He’s right – spells last longer if they have something physical to catch hold of. The attention spell will eventually wear off, but a transfiguration spell could last years without anyone noticing.

I’m grudgingly impressed. (And also increasingly alarmed about the kinds of things that Snow and Bunce have been up to. How many of our national treasures are carefully spelled replicas?)  

reason for cut:

this isn’t really cut - it’s just re-written. again, the mood is wrong in this version. simon is angry not flirty. the timon of athens bit is cut for space - it’s the kind of pointless baz ramble about magic that i’d include if time wasn’t an issue. 

you can see the seeds of what was eventually printed here - baz has never stolen anything, simon’s stolen lots of things and is competent at it. there’s the idea of the distraction - although i like it better when simon comes up with that one too. 

the real thing is much better though, right? i think i cracked it when i realised i didn’t have to play ‘you cant do that’ straight - because baz is right: simon enjoys this shit. 

--

these are bits and pieces of the above that don’t fit into a wider narrative:

There are tourists surrounding the case right now. And at least one security guard. My Nothing to see here is good, but it seems foolhardy to rely on it entirely. It works best when the person being distracted doesn’t want to see what’s happening. (It only sometimes works on Snow, for example.) It might not work on the security guards.

and another one:

I try not to smirk too broadly. “Right, then. Do something distracting. I’ll be back in a minute.”

I cast Nothing to see here on myself and take a few steps towards the case. My heart is beating wildly. The tourists surrounding it are definitely not looking at me. manage to take a few steps before Snow catches up with me. Taking my shoulders and steering me off towards a completely different case full of Tudor props.

“What is it, Snow? Couldn’t think of anything?”

His arm is still around my shoulders, drawing me in. Frankly I’m struggling to

“Sorry, was that really your entire plan?”

--

“Perhaps I’ll think about bringing them back after the British return the artefacts they stole from the rest the world.” I nod towards the nearest case. “My great-great grandfather hasn’t been back in Egyptian soil for hundreds of years. They wouldn’t even let us take him back to be buried in Pitch Manor.”

“Your––” Simon starts, and then he stops, frowning, as he presumably remembers that I am of Egyptian descent. “That’s not your grandfather,” he says – but he isn’t certain.    

“Didn’t I tell you I’m descended from royalty?” I say archly, which is enough to make Simon laugh. He presses his face into my neck, which I love.

“It was definitely implied.”

“That’s what my mother told me anyway,” I concede.

“I think she might have been having you on.”

(missing some thoughts here)

“It’s one of my clearest memories of her

“I’ll bring the books back,” I tell him. “I only took them in the first place to get your attention.”

Simon smiles at me in the reflection in the glass cabinet, his face superimposed over the golden burial mask below. I can see his chin hooked over my shoulder and his arms wrapped around my waist.

“Well. It worked,” he points out.

reason for cut:

again - space! i was right at the end and i knew i was running out of words. but i also think that being forced to cut the royalty joke which i hung onto for some time through several drafts was good for the fic. we dont need baz talking about the sarcophagus - we were there, we already read it at the beginning. 

the thing with the eyebrows that simon says in the published draft doesn’t quite work still, but what it does is kick us back to the memory (are they related? yes - we know they aren’t) in the same way that baz is doing actively in this draft. 

and what you see in the published version is that the point of the fic is (as we see here) that simon and baz are happy in the future, but also it’s that baz can talk to simon about his mother and... about the british museum. so the emphasis isn’t quite right if we end with ‘well it worked’. 

the emphasis should be on baz’s mother. i’m trying to get at it in this draft, but it’s in the middle rather than the end - shift the mother stuff/museum stuff to the final line, and bob’s your uncle. 

--

here’s the real thing: The sweet fruit of a palm tree 

[villainever]

God, We're All Tired: Female Conflict in Killing Eve's Season One Finale

So I'm sure 1x08 has been analysed to death, but seeing as we're winding up to the end of Killing Eve's second season (sad face), I thought I'd jump in with a completely unsolicited reflection on the ultimate culmination of Villanelle and Eve's mutual obsession and pursuit. I'll kick off by saying that from the start, we knew this moment would be interesting, for a whole slew of reasons: Firstly, from the get-go, we were shown that Killing Eve was here to subvert and reconstruct; it's deeply oriented within its genre, but it's irreverent, and even what I would describe as a reclamation of spy-fi. Specifically, it's a female-led narrative taking ownership of a set of texts and tropes that have consistently objectified and excluded women by turns. From its inception, the psychological thriller genre has delighted in a) withholding women's agency, and killing/torturing/assaulting them, both to shock viewers and to lend pathos to the motivations of male characters, and b) revelling in their "expiration" from sexual desirability, and casting the "ailing crone" as the villain orchestrating events. Killing Eve has absolutely no interest in ever reducing its women to their component parts. There are no pedestals, and there are no pitchforks. As a show, it hits all the golden points of suspense television, and completely reimagines the rest; it's a masterpiece balacing act of keeping the classic cat-and-mouse recogniseable, while allowing Eve and Villanelle to each be both the predator and the prey.

Secondly, our two protagonists are women. Highly unusual and exceptional women -- that's inarguable -- but nevertheless, they've been socialised in particular ways. What's so fascinating here is that both have been injected with a comfort in and enjoyment of theatrical violence that's usually reserved for male villains. However, even at their most ruthless, there's an innate intimacy to both of them -- unlike, say, for example, the Joker, Villanelle's flamboyance and love affair with destruction never manifest as mass-killings or the eradication of infrastructure (like blowing up a hospital). Villanelle exacts each murder with the creativity of the truly engaged and passionate, but it's always personal and unique, usually one-on-one. She doesn't have a vendetta against the world, either; she finds beauty in it -- in ice-cream and movies and nice architecture or fun clothes. Similarly, Eve is enthralled by Villanelle's flair for the deadly and the dramatic, but it's not born out of a spite for humanity, but a sense of artistry and a consuming need for some adrenaline in her otherwise numb and mundane life. These complexities muddle their emotions and motivations, and make it difficult for even the most television-literate to semi-accurately predict their storylines.

Thirdly, Eve and Villanelle are never positioned as diametrically opposed. This in itself is not exactly out of the left field -- a lot of media with a dark focal point or mature subjects introduce heroes and villains who share key traits (e.g. Sherlock and Irene, in CBS's Elementary), or even comparable goals (e.g. Black Panther's Killmonger and Nadia both want to open Wakanda's borders). In most cases, though, the antagonist will represent some kind of seduction to the 'other side', that the protagonist inevitably resists the allure of (e.g. Andy realising Miranda isn't who she wants to grow up to be -- successful but alienated -- and goes back to her excuse of a boyfriend in TDWP). But while Eve and Villanelle are very much established as one another's temptations, we also see that they'll grant the other access to a part of the world that is, for now, barred from them: Villanelle and Eve will stop each other from being bored. They "resist the allure" not because they fear moral wrongdoing, but because they cling to their respective images of themselves -- Eve, as someone "nice and normal", who happens to have a grey area for a hobby, and Villanelle, as someone independent, in control, with no lines she wouldn't cross. Way back in the pilot, we're shown that they don't actually WANT to destroy each other. Villanelle is too interesting to Eve, Eve is too attractive to Villanelle. Yes, they pose a significant threat to their respective lifestyles, but as we've had proven, they're becoming willing to risk that if it means gaining something more. They don't reflect a sinister alternative timeline of "look what you could've been" (which is inherently hero-centric, and Killing Eve pays as much attention to Villanelle as Eve), they offer each other a "look what you could still be", that is at once dark and hopeful -- something that they've really elaborated on in this second season. But 1x08, even though it is very much the symbolic collision that is the centrepiece of all chase stories, is not their first meeting. Villanelle goes to Eve's house in the (iconic) 1x05. So why not save that for the finale? Why not build and build and have that tension released right at the end? Because, crucially, 1x05 generated more tension. The show's writing is so substantial that it doesn't worry about losing its audience after the moment they've been waiting for happens. It's one of the reasons you could have the entire plot of Killing Eve spoiled, and then still enjoy every episode when you watch it yourself: it's the How that we love as much as the What. Killing Eve takes the time and space to revel in its style, characters, and setting -- but that's another essay. In 1x05, their meeting is high-octane, and crucially, it's brief. We get a snapshot of how their infatuation and fixation translates into chemistry. And they both become real to one another. Eve's last reservations begin to fade as she realises that she can survive an encounter with Villanelle, and her sense of self -- most importantly, the subconscious idea that she's somehow special -- is vindicated (Eve's slight narcissism, and how the show makes it compelling and intoxicating, is yet another thing I could go on about). For Villanelle, Eve is allowed to be more than just great hair and a worthy threat. She's someone challenging and entertaining. What's so incredible about that first meeting is that it's proof that this dynamic isn't running on mystery and fumes. It's sustainable. They continue to appeal to one another once they're in the same room together. They appeal even more. Their sexual tension skyrockets, and the whole dance becomes extremely personal. They can't write one another off as playthings, although they largely continue to attempt that, at least for a short while. With this in mind, let's move on to that finale. Not only is Eve trashing Villanelle's apartment hilarious, and a perfect articulation of the humour/danger cantilever that makes Killing Eve awesome, but it provides a critical catharsis for the audience before the actual confrontation. By this point, the price for Eve's obsession is starting to rack up -- her job is circling the drain, Niko's dodging her calls, her self-image is blurring. Eve has a whole lot of feelings, but she's allowed to express them on her own, symbolically taking them out on Villanelle by ruining her things, which become a vehicle for venting her frustrations without actually affecting their relationship. When Villanelle does arrive, Eve's ready. This scene would've worked if it was some sexy wall-leaning, banter, and Eve surprise-stabbing Villanelle in the middle of a conversation. I think that's probably how a lot of screenwriters today would've done it, scrawling it off by rote and relying on Villaneve's chemistry and Comer and Oh's excellent acting to nail the bit. Instead, we get this civil conversation, and then they lie down together, first relaxing, and then gravitating towards one another. I don't believe that Eve knew until the millisecond she decided to do it that she would actually try and stab Villanelle. I actually gave this mini-essay a title, and it's "female conflict". That's because I think that this entire sequence wouldn't have happened in a show created by men, or featuring male characters. In violent shows, we get violent conflict. Killing Eve is unquestionably a violent show, but it's distinct from its contemporaries in that the characters aren't there to prop up the violence; the violence is there to reveal and develop the characters. But after a whole season of elaborate murder and tyre-squealing pursuit, we get this stillness. Yet, it doesn't feel for even a beat like bathos. It's absolutely a climax, and it's both suspenseful and arresting. It really illustrates that the show is about fascination: they're hungry to know everything, like Eve says. There's no performative combat. We can't guess what's going to happen because neither can they. Their obsession isn't a "this town ain’t big enough for the both of us" situation. It's a "this town is only the both of us". Their worlds are reduced to each other and they don't want to squander it with fighting, because fundamentally, Eve and Villanelle are so much more similar than they are different. Again, I say this is so fitting for female characters because they see this co-existence as an option. It's so simple, but the idea of your protagonist and antagonist sighing, "Fuck, can't we just have a lie down after all this?" and making it satisfying is incredibly radical. Because it's so personal, and intimate, and human. At every interval, the writing asks, What would we actually do at this moment? Not, What precedent has popular culture set for this moment? Too often, I think we give characters responses that we've seen before in texts, because we watched/read it, accepted it, and just filed it into our own work, knowing it's what the audience expects. But this scene with Eve and Villanelle is so heart-wrenchingly in-character. It's two people charging at each other full speed, not to hit each other but to be close to one another. And like so many other tiny beats over the course of the season, Killing Eve luxuriates in this proximity. We get to breathe. It's gentle. It's a gentle pause between two people who could utterly eradicate one another, but choose not to. It's ladden as well with such a specific but familiar kind of exhaustion, and it's an act of defiance, too. Killing Eve rejects the hegemonic (and predominantly masculine) cultural assertion that conflict (or even sometimes, in the less typical texts, debate and negotiation) is the way to resolve difference, and indeed, that difference must be resolved. That one must overpower the other. That your enemy is an alien and cannot be connected with, related to. The fact is, a lot of even this first season isn't spent chasing, it's spent running. Eve and Villanelle take an interest in each other early on, and it quickly escalates from intellectual to sexual to emotional (insofar as either of them are capable of that). By 1x05, they've caught up to each other. The rest of the time, though, they're fleeing from how much they want each other, how alike they might be. And in Villanelle's Paris apartment, they concede: I love you more than I hate you. I need you more than I should. And it's with that concession that we as an audience can experience their relaxation, too. It's what we've -- consciously or not -- been waiting for. That acknowledgement. But Margot, you say, you've been talking about how this isn't about violence -- have your forgotten that Eve STABS Villanelle, literally three seconds after this? I have not, The Only Follower Who Read This Far. So why engineer all this, and then have Eve knife Villanelle straight in the gut? Because even though they have this liminal second together, their story isn't resolved. Killing Eve goes absolutely wild with power dynamics, and I could discuss that for hours, too -- Eve is older, but Villanelle is more experienced; Eve is more stable, but Villanelle is more adaptable, etc. But generally speaking -- partially because Eve is, at the beginning, something of an audience surrogate -- the scales are in Villanelle's favour. She's dangerous, clever, has no fear of legal consequences, and has more freedom and greater resources. Killing Eve is allergic to any pedestrian predictability, so it shakes up this arrangement. In stabbing Villanelle, Eve proves to both of them what she's capable of. Prior to this, they had an impression of their similarities, but this throws into sharp relief exactly how deep those run. Eve immediately regrets the stabbing, because it wasn't about getting rid of Villanelle. She doesn't want to hurt her so much as show her that Eve has power too, has recklessness too, can keep up. This interaction isn't the product of an inability to relate, but a desperation to connect. This joins them together, affirms their relationship. Eve isn't trying to dominate her, to win, not really. She's telling Villanelle what she's capable of, and equating them. We get this confirmed in how Villanelle perceives in the stab wound as a symbol of affection (2x02, 2x05), and how Eve says she continues to think about it constantly (2x05). I believe that while Villanelle always respected Eve, if Eve hadn't stabbed her, Villanelle would've remained confident that she, quietly, had the upper hand. That if ever need be, she could be more cunning and cruel and decisive than Eve. But Eve's put them in the same ring, and also removed one major wall between them -- Villanelle's murderous side is a key part of her character, and after this, she knows that Eve isn't intruiged by her despite this, but because of it, and because it’s at least partially common ground. Eve isn't Anna (another comparison I could go off on a tangent about, but I'll spare you). In sum, I think that the season one finale was beautifully rendered, and reflected Killing Eve's appreciation of itself. It let the characters interact genuinely, it refreshed their dynamic, and allowed them development separately (Eve's new understanding of her own capacity for harm; Villanelle's new experience with vulnerability, and not being able to predict others) and together (intertwining them irrevocably, further aligning them). It's one of those rare scenes where it's completely surprising at the time of viewing, but in hindsight, seems inevitable, and you can't imagine it any different. I can't make any predictions for the season two final episode other than I expect something equally unexpected, something just as loyal to the characters and their relationship, and their capacity to embrace and antagonise each other. This essay is probably borderline incoherent. It really got away from me. I set a timer for half an hour and told myself that whatever I got written in that time, I'd post. Thanks so much for your kind comments on my rant yesterday, and I hope this is at least vaguely what you were looking for, @ the people who said they'd read another. You're my favs. If you've got something else Killing Eve-related you'd like me to yell about, let me know! Or if you want to come chat, I promise I'm friendly! I’m using the tag “#villainever writes” for this rambly stuff atm, so if I ever write another of these I’ll have a digital drawer to put it in hahah

[storywonker]

Series review: Gaunt’s Ghosts

(I posted this a few days ago over at r/fantasy because I’m having a go at their 2019 book bingo; the Hero Mode for that requires you to write a review of every book you read for the bingo)

Originally, I intended to simply read The Warmaster and Anarch for the tie-in Bingo hard mode square. I’ve been a fan of Dan Abnett, and Warhammer 40k’s longest-running book series, since I was a teen, but I hadn’t really read any of the books since about 2014, and I figured: hey, it might be worth rereading the books to see if they hold up.

They do.

For those unfamiliar, Gaunt’s Ghosts is a long-running (15 novels and two short story collections, with three other novels in the same broad chunk of the 40k galaxy) military sci-fi/fantasy series set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe. The books centre around the Tanith First-and-Only, commanded by Colonel-Commissar Ibram Gaunt, a regiment of the Imperial Guard whose world has been destroyed, leaving them the last survivors of their culture. Due to this, and their reconnaissance and stealth specialisation, they’re known, both in-universe and out, as Gaunt’s Ghosts. Their battleground is the Sabbat Worlds Crusade: an Imperial effort to reconquer a sector of space overrun by the forces of Chaos.

The series is roughly divided into four ‘arcs’, although two of these were defined after their release and there are storylines that run through the entire series.

We kick off with the Founding, comprising:

First and Only

Ghostmaker

Necropolis

The Saint:

Honour Guard

The Guns of Tanith

Straight Silver

Sabbat Martyr

The Lost:

Traitor General

His Last Command

The Armour of Contempt

Only In Death

And, latest, The Victory:

Blood Pact

Salvation’s Reach

The Warmaster

Anarch

Of these, I feel the first two books are a little weaker, but from Necropolis on the series hits a consistent level of quality that it never really dips from.

So, what makes such a long series worth reading? Why am I even bothering with this?

First: Dan Abnett writes the best damn battles in fantasy or science fiction. Yes, I understand that’s a bold statement. No, I haven’t read Malazan. I’ll stand by it, though: fifteen books that mostly comprise military engagements of one kind or another, and I can’t say I was bored at any point, or tired of Abnett’s battles. There’s a mix of gritty realism (insofar as anything in 40k is realistic), clear, lucid writing, and an eye for small, vivid details that keeps the firefights both engrossing and easy to understand. I don’t think at any point in the series I was confused about where a character was, or had to reread a passage because I didn’t understand what happened. That’s an impressive piece of craft, and it’s one Abnett’s kept up and improved over the twenty years he’s been writing this series. The little details are great, too: characters noticing how mass laser discharge feels like a visceral shock on a quiet, rainy night; the persistent bruise on a sniper’s shoulder from the heavy kick of an overcharged weapon; characters shouting ‘clear’ so their eardrums survive the backblast of a rocket launcher.

Second: Abnett’s character work and long-form plotting is excellent. He’s referred to it in interviews as ‘soap opera’, and there’s elements of that, certainly. The bonds and rifts between the soldiers of the regiment are a key point of the books, and there are innumerable small moments that humanise the Ghosts in between the shooting; gambling rings, family dramas, comrades discussing the quality of the regiment’s moonshine. This is all great stuff, and, after a while, eclipses the battles as the reason to keep reading, because, at bottom, we don’t want our favourite characters to die.

Which they do. A lot.

Abnett makes expert use of the ensemble cast to both kill enough characters that no-one feels safe and to introduce enough characters that the series doesn’t begin to feel fruitless despite the death toll. Many of the major characters as of The Warmaster and Anarch weren’t even in the first six or seven books, as Abnett keeps the Tanith’s strictly limited manpower pool topped up by periodic drats of new soldiers. Characters who started as broad sketches become more and more detailed as they ping-pong off each other and the enemy; ones who remain spear-carriers (las-carriers?) begin to matter more and more as their minor appearances build up. This cast also injects a lot of variety, as the narrative shifts focus to different parts of the regiment.

Abnett also uses these reinforcements to inject a much-needed influx of female characters. Where the first two books have only two speaking female characters (they’re very much a product of late 90s Games Workshop in that respect), by Anarch female characters are a major presence at every level of the regiment, the majority well-drawn and fleshed-out characters.

Speaking of variety, Abnett also varies each book’s war by changing the kind of military story each one tells. Where Necropolis is a massive, Stalingrad-style siege, Honour Guard is a quest narrative with the Ghosts being part of an armoured column and The Guns of Tanith is an airborne assault on a mountaintop city.

Even where the setup is similar (each of the first three arcs ends in a siege), Abnett varies aspects of the plot and theme to keep things fresh: Sabbat Martyr is part siege, part assassin-hunt; Only In Death is a siege story where the fortress is haunted, alternating between blazing action, the hopelessness of a trapped unit cut off by the enemy, and some utterly chilling psychological horror (it is, in my opinion, the best book in the series). Although the Tanith are usually a small part of whatever war they’re fighting, the length of the series means that the overall course of the war for the Sabbat Worlds develops and twists over time.

All of this means that, by the time we roll around to books 14 and 15, the Sabbat Worlds Crusade feels like it has a tremendous amount of weight and history behind it. Locations that were mentioned in throwaway briefings have become real places that we’ve visited. Enemy warlords mentioned in passing have grown to be massive antagonists. And, above all, the characters at the centre of the Crusade, mentioned only as distant names directing the action from afar, become central to the narrative.

The Warmaster and Anarch are, although released as two novels, best read as one single narrative (indeed, the whole Victory arc is one single narrative, including several novellas and short stories included in the Sabbat Crusade anthology). It takes the Ghosts to the Forge-World of Urdesh, mentioned as a manufacturing centre for the forces of Chaos as far back as book four. A freak warp-accident jumps the Ghosts ten years forward in time, and the crucial nature of the cargo they recovered in Salvation’s Reach thrusts them into the heart of the Crusade. These are novels about change, as the Ghosts adjust to their new position and importance, and the new draftees from Verghast and Belladon introduced in Salvation’s Reach settle in and prove their mettle.

The Warmaster, for all it radically shifts the scope and feel of the books, feels very much like a setup book. It ends without a great climax (lack of denouement is one of my criticisms of the series; generally there’s only a few pages of falling action after the battle turns in the Ghosts’ favour), instead keeping a cliffhanger ready for Anarch. It’s a character-focussed book, mostly setting up things to pay off in Anarch.

And pay off they do. Anarch is one of Abnett’s barnstorming arc-end books, and joins its three predecessors as some of the best in the series. Switching seamlessly between some of Abnett’s best horror-writing (which neatly combines with one of his most impactful character punches), the normal (but still very good) blaze of battlefield action, and tense infiltration, Anarch contains a cool or noteworthy moment for just about every member of the ensemble. It also includes a lot of deaths; I think probably the most of any book so far, and of several major characters. Abnett is ruthless in pruning his cast, but each one feels impactful.

What Anarch does that the other arc-end books don’t is set up more storylines for the future. This may be the consequence of The Victory being the most serialised arc yet, but by the end, not only has the war for the Sabbat Worlds changed for ever, but the Ghosts are set on a trajectory that promises to take them to even deadlier battlefields. Payoff for the plots set up in The Warmaster comes thick and fast, as does the resolution of other, longer-term plots. One in particular seems to have been started all the way back in book 3, a 19-year real-time gap. The regiment that emerges from these two books feels very different from the one that entered them, but no less interesting and engaging for that.

So, in sum: if you like military SFF with strong character-work, want to read some of the best battles in the genre, and want a long-running, interconnected series, check out Gaunt’s Ghosts.

Bingo Square: Tie-In Novel (Hard Mode)

Recommended for fans of: The Black Company, The Heroes, Grimdark, military fantasy.

[thelatelockdownlist]

A Series on Series 03: Nalini Singh’s Guild Hunter

Hi! I’m Alex, a YouTube Newbie and this is The Late Lockdown List where I talk about the list of things I’ve got on my mind since the lockdown started. 

Anyway, for those of you who were here for the previous episode, welcome back. 

For those of you who are new, today on the third episode of A Series on Series, 

we’re talking about Nalini Singh’s other paranormal/supernatural series, Guild Hunter.

Since the series has been out for quite some time, if you haven’t read it and are sensitive to spoilers, well, I talk a lot about certain details. 

However, I’m going to tell you if there are particularly crucial plot points that I’ll talk about. You’ll see this when I’m about to spoil a plot

First off, what is the Guild Hunter series about?

We start with a question: How are vampires made/turned? 

From a bite, right? You’re thinking Dracula, Buffy, Angel and maybe even Twilight. But in this series, vampires are made by angels. That's right, the winged creatures. This series starts with one particular Guild Hunter, Elena Deveraux. I'm not going to spoil the story by telling you exactly what happens to her. I am, however, going to tell you that in this series -- of which there are currently 13 books and 4 novellas, you have vampires who work for angels for 100 years to serve out their contract. In turn, the angels work for archangels who make up the Cadre of Ten, who effectively rule the world.

The Guild Hunter series begins in earnest with the first book Angels’ Blood

with Guild Hunter Elena Devereaux and the Archangel of New York Raphael

https://the-guild-hunter-series.fandom.com/wiki/Raphael; credit to Jennifer H.

-- no last name. 

We first meet Elena at work, tracking down a runaway vampire. 

The Guild Hunters are humans -- mostly -- although some are ‘hunter-born’ like Elena who are gifted with an almost preternatural sense of smell that can track vampires. At the end of her track, she finds the ‘baby’ vamp, a vampire newly turned, and returns him to his ‘master,’ an angel. Said angel tells Elena she has a new assignment which terrifies her: New York. 

Apparently when an angel says New York, it can only mean one thing: the Archangel Raphael who rules North America.

Raphael has a mission for Elena:

To hunt down the blood-born Archangel Uram.

SPOILER END

It reads a little like a detective story, chasing down a bad guy who’s way more powerful and centuries older than you and you have your partner, an archangel. There’s adventure and humor and plenty of steam along the way. One of my favorite characters: the butler. And no, he didn’t do it. 

At the end of the book, 

after Raphael kills Uram, a severely injured Elena -- close to dying, really -- asks Raphael one of angelkind’s most forbidden secret: how vampires are made. Raphael says that angels secrete a substance that turns a mortal into an almost-immortal - a vampire. However, not all humans can process this substance without dying violently. It’s why there’s testing. Before this, a great number of humans died while being ‘made.’

Then Raphael kisses Elena,transferring a substance that’s supposed to make her a vampire… 

Cut to a year later in the Refuge, the angels’ secret hideaway where their children grow up, Elena wakes. However, she is not a vampire. She’s… an angel! 

As it turns out, the substance Raphael transferred was ‘ambrosia’ -- the mythical food of the gods. It turned Elena not into a vampire, but an angel. No one can remember this happening so she’s quite  unique -- among creatures whose love of the ‘quite unique’ can be deadly.

SPOILER END

And Nalini Singh does it again! I’m serious about her talent for building these intricate and fascinating worlds. 

You know what this series sort of reminds me? Dominion. 

Yeah, that two-season show based on the movie Legion with Paul Bettany. 

I loved the premise, but the execution fell a little flat. 

Anyway, I never really put vampires and angels together, much less angels ‘making’ vampires. If you have, please tell me which books these are and I’ll try to read them. 

Singh introduces new mythologies into the angels and archangels. The hierarchy is there: Archangels in the Cadre of Ten ruling vast lands 

and possessing different great and terrible powers, the angels who work under the archangels, the vampires who serve the angels, and the humans who are sometimes left to fend for themselves. 

I like how different the Archangels are. They’re all known to be ruthless and oftentimes cruel. Raphael is characterized as both, and is infamous for having tortured a vampire who betrayed him and left said vampire in the middle of Times Square as a warning. The others have their own quirks, but I’ll let you find out what they are when you read the series. 

I’ll tell you their names and territories though, and forgive me when I mispronounce some of the names. I’ve never heard them, and therefore have my own way of saying them: 

Zhou Lijuan

https://the-guild-hunter-series.fandom.com/wiki/Lijuan; credit to Jelena Price

the oldest, often called an Ancient, and the only one of them who has a last name ;) controls China; 

Charisemnon, Archangel of North Africa; 

Elijah, Archangel of South America and Raphael’s closest ally; 

Favashi, Archangel of Persia (for the first few books) and is the newest archangel; 

Michaela, Archangel of Central Europe and former lover of the Archangel Uram of Russia; 

Neha, Archangel of India; 

Astaad, Archangel of the Pacific Isles and 

Titus, Archangel of South Africa. 

and of course, Raphael. 

And then there’s The Seven -- Raphael’s most trusted and loyal men: 

Dmitri, a vampire, the oldest and Raphael’s closest friend; 

Naasir, a ‘vampire’ and the second youngest; 

Galen, an angel and Raphael’s weapons master, originally from the Archangel Titus’ court; 

Illium, AKA Bluebell; a blue-winged angel who grew up in Raphael’s territory in The Refuge; differently spelled, also means the largest part of the hip bone AND the former name of Troy

https://the-guild-hunter-series.fandom.com/wiki/Illium; credit to pandorangheldeviantart.com

Aodhan, AKA Sparkle; an angel and Illium’s best friend; 

Venom, (real name: Tushar) the youngest and a great cook

and 

Jason, Raphael’s spymaster and possibly one of the few angels who did not grow up in the Refuge.

And of course, Elena. She has had her own share of tragedy. I don’t want to tell you the whole story because believe me, reading it is infinitely more satisfying, but I can tell you a little bit. Her father disowned her when she was 18 because he disapproved of her joining the Guild. You see, being hunter-born, Elena didn’t exactly have a choice. If a hunter-born does not use his/her gifts, they end up going mad. She has a tragic backstory, but you’ll need to find out for yourself. 

Hunter-borns are usually the best trackers in the Guild, stronger than most humans and immune to vampires’ mind control. However, they are highly susceptible to an older, powerful vampire’s scent-lure. One consistently comic point in the series is how Dmitri, a 900-odd-year-old vampire, especially gifted with scent-lure, consistently baits Elena by wrapping her in his signature ‘perfume’ every time they meet. And every time he does this, Elena either threatens violence against him or just outright throws a dagger at him.

I also love Elena’s bond with the rest of the Guild members. Her best friend Sara Haziz, the director, is especially protective of her. Elena and Ransom Winterwolf (you gotta love these names) bicker like siblings all the time.

While the series essentially revolves around Elena and Raphael, the other characters get their moment in the sun, too. 

And since I’m a sucker for cherubs, imagine a place filled with little children -- with wings, flying around like drunken bees! You see that in the second book.

While I love all of the books, my favorite so far has to be Archangel’s Legion

This is when the big battle between Raphael and Lijuan finally happens. At the end, when all hope seems lost, 777 (and that has to mean something) Legion angels come to their rescue and turn the tide. Even better, all of these angels can regenerate FAST! Some angels have that ability, but not at that speed. 

The Legion is sworn to Elena and Raphael, who they call the aeclari. As far as I’ve read, the word means warrior, but that’s it. Neither Elena nor Raphael know, and the Legion don’t seem to know how to define it.

SPOILER END

The book that follows it, Archangel’s Prophecy

is a cliff-hanger. I mean, Elena has to be alive. She has to be.

The next book, Archangel’s War

didn’t come out until September 2019 and it’s an absolute testament to Nalini Singh that I have a countdown on all my devices for when a book of hers comes out. Thirteen books in and I’m still all a-quiver in anticipation. 

And because I wrote this script in 2019 -- intending to do this video that year as well, but didn’t -- Archangel’s War has been out for quite some time. I won’t be talking about it, but it is quite a gratifying read. There’s a part in the book that’s heartbreaking, but necessary. And that just gets to me.

Honestly, I can talk more about this since I already read the latest one, Archangel’s Sun

which came out November 2020, but I didn’t want to strain your patience. However, since this story comes in the aftermath of the war, it’s more light-hearted than the previous ones. BUT it’s the story of an unlikely pairing that’s -- think of it as a ‘mature’ romance -- only since angels don’t exactly age and are effectively immortal, the maturity I’m talking about is more of status and years lived. Seriously, it’s a great book and such a welcome relief after the heightened suspense and intensity of the previous ones.

Not that I don’t appreciate the heightened suspense and intensity of the novels, I do! It’s just that if you’re like me and get very invested in the lives of fictional characters, it CAN get a little overwhelming. So this book was a respite -- a much needed one. 

However, paranoid as I am, I feel like this is a lull. 

But I’m ready for the oncoming storm. 

And that’s it for me. Thank you for indulging me. Catch you in the next episode, when I talk about Deborah Harkness’ All Souls Trilogy starting with the first book, A Discovery of Witches, which is also a TV series.  

[sunlitroom]

I would love to know your opinion on Sofia's and Carmine's relationship. I don't quite understand it, she was seeking his love and approval but then decided to kill him?

Thank-you for the question anon.  I was feeling a bit under the weather, and some meta was the perfect distraction :)  Brace yourself, lengthy reply ahead:

Parents.  Can’t live withthem, can’t live without them.  Not in Gotham,at least, where parents exert a punishingly strong influence over theirchildren – alive or dead.

The shadow of Jim’s fatherlooms large over him, and he has (weirdly, but that’s a whole other post) idealisedhis father’s ability to lead a double life – to simultaneously maintain anapparently idyllic family home and a murky professional life.  Actually – a triple life, because severalpeople saw him as a shining professional example.  Jim ties himself in unhappy knots trying tolive up to his example, can’t seem to escape it.

Neither can Bruce – whose whole life is shaped by his parents’murders.  Even when Bruce thought he hadrevenged them by killing Ra’s – he still can’t find any closure. He abandonedhis moral code to avenge them, and afterwards found himself still grieving andalone, and now tormented by the thought that he’s let them down.

Oswald has very similar problems.  He adored his mother – difficult though thatrelationship looked.  All his actionswere motivated by his desire to justify her belief in him.  But she wound up dead, and even though it wasTabitha who put a knife in her back, Oswald feels a huge amount of guilt at herdeath, as well as a persistent fear that she might not be proud of him – alongside the ‘usual’ grief.  This was all reinforced with Elijah’s murder.  Oswald got his revenge, but I’m willing tobet there’s a horrible little thought buried deep that events were precipitatedby his appearance in Elijah’s life.  He’sweighed down by grief and guilt, as well as the thought that the only peoplewho ever loved him are both already gone. It’s worth noting that the parent/child relationship he’s recentlyforged is with an orphan.

There’s others, too. Barbara’s chilly upper-class parents, whose removal is presented as keyin her character progression.  Jerome’s backgroundwas marked by abuse, and he kills both parents as punishment.  Selina’s mother abandoned her (twice).  Ivy’s parents died.  Jonathan’s father experimented on him, butJonathan still mourns for him.  Fish seeminglykeeps her mother hidden in plain sight. Carmine is manipulated through Liza’s resemblance to his mother.

So, parents in Gotham are crucial – but their absence evenmore so.   The moment we see Carmine andSofia, then, we should probably have guessed that the clock was ticking for him, evenbefore we heard about his illness.    

When we first meet Sofia she is living with Carmine.  However, we’re told that this is a newdevelopment, and that she’s only been able to have a relationship with him sincehe became ill.  That’s odd for a start, sincehe seemed to have a cordial relationship with Mario – who had turned his backon the family business.  That’s got to because for resentment.  Sofia’s followedin her father’s footsteps, yet he gets on better with the child who chose to dosomething different.

Sofia mentions to both Jim and Oswald that she was sent awayfrom Gotham at 13 for her own safety. Given that she is insistent that Gotham is her home and ‘birth-right’,that’s another seed of resentment planted: her father sent her away from herhome, and from him.  She claims now itwas for her own safety (although I find this questionable, tbh) – but a 13-year-oldis unlikely to have been as rational as that. It’s not implausible to think that she’d have been left conflicted:angry, homesick, missing him, wondering if he even misses her at all.

We hear other bits and pieces about her childhood before shewas sent from town.  She seems to havebeen aware of what her father did, and saw things that a child shouldn’t see.  Her father demanded toughness from her whenshe broke her ankle.  She’s acutely awareof the position she held, reminding the restaurant owner of the earrings hegave her for her birthday when she was a girl. There’s virtually nothing we hear that isn’t about her role as a daughter,as a Falcone.  It’s everything to her. 

Even Jim – in a rare moment of perceptiveness – was able tosee that Sofia is driven by a need to prove herself to her father.  Oswald tests that theory out, and we see thathis comment ‘my parents loved me without condition’ hits home.  Sofia’s usually stone-faced or wearing a mask– but that got a reaction.  So Sofia presumablydoesn’t feel that her father loves her – and that there’s some invisible conditionto winning that love

The big confrontation she has with her father is actuallyexcellent for revealing what a clusterfuck their relationship actually is.

First up – you have all the mafia stuff complicating their relationship.  Carmine isn’t only her father, he’s also herDon.  There’s a bit in the Godfather thatillustrates this really well.  The Don’s oldest son is scolded like amisbehaving child for disobedience.  That’sgoing to sting in a ‘good’ relationship, but in Sofia and Carmine’s?  A relationship that’s already pretty fractured?  That’s likely to be intolerable.  

Secondly, you’ve got this idea of conditional love.  It’s logical that Sofia might have thoughtremoving the man who ousted him, getting the GCPD under her thumb and winningthe city back might have won love and respect – but when she tells him this, Falconeisn’t interested – is contemptuous of her, even repulsed.  

Sofia can’t believe this response.  This was both the best gift she could give,and the definitive way of proving her worth and winning his love – and it still isn’t good enough.  It’s also worth acknowledging that it’s also a definite‘fuck you’, though – even if it doesn’t superficially seem like one.  She defeated the man who defeated Carmine, she corrupted the man he sought to corrupt, and she won back the city he lost.  She’s not only proved herself, she’s bested him.  There’sunderlying anger and bitterness, then, evident even in her attempt to win hisapproval.

Third, you’ve got Carmine’s little comment about wanting tosee what she would do: Who is this daughter I raised?  That points to estrangement and lack ofknowledge.  To Sofia, who seems to have spenta lot of time moulding herself in her father’s image – who identifies herselffirst and foremost as a Falcone –that’s got to be infuriating.  He doesn’tsee her, doesn’t know her.

Fourth – you’ve got the moment when he hits her.  I don’t think either of them flinched enoughfor that to have been a first time.  Shedoesn’t look disbelieving and shocked after, and he doesn’t lookregretful.  

Last up, and probably most importantly – he manages toneatly voice Sofia’s whole problem in one crushing sentence.

Anyone but my daughterwould be dead right now.

For me – I think it’s likely that this is the final straw – because this is Sofia’s catch 22.  Sofia’s self-image is bound up in being aFalcone.  She might be cunning and manipulativeand ruthless – but all her success in Gotham is ultimately dependent on beingFalcone’s daughter.  She happened to bethere when Jim went to Carmine for help. Her name piques Oswald’s interest. It helps her influence political figures.  It makes Victor turn traitor.  It ensures that the restaurant owner carriesout her wishes.   She mentions it sooften that Barbara starts to simply eyeroll at the sound of it.

But this reliance on her name means that her successes can alwaysbe claimed by Carmine – which is exactly what he does in this scene.   She’s a somebody only by merit of being hisdaughter.  Without that, she’s a nobody.  Her achievements are meaningless, and were totallydependent on her family name.

So, what’s left for her? At the end of the day, I think Sofiaultimately psychologically needed him gone more than she needed his appreciation.  In fact, I wonder if the only reason that theywere able to have a relationship latterly was because she knew he wasdying.   With Carmine safely dead – Sofia gets to be the Falcone, and the memory of herfather, which can be snipped and twisted to meet her needs, much more manageable and useful to her than the man himself.

Does this sound plausible to you, anon?  Thanks again for asking - and I’d love to hear what your theories are :)

[dreamofcentipedes]

Hello! I really enjoy reading your thoughts on Tokyo Ghoul, and I was wondering if you have any thoughts on where Mutsuki's character arc might be heading? (Besides Kaneki and Touka, Mutsuki's probably my favourite character, but I'm preparing myself for a lot of pain while still hoping for some redemption.)

Aw thanks anon! I have many thoughts on Mutsuki; maybe too manythoughts on Mutsuki, so do you mind if I go overboard and extend this questioninto a mega Mutsuki analysis post? I figure now’s as good a time as any.

(NOTE: Basedon Mutsuki’s internal monologues here, here and most definitively here, Ithink it’s clear that Mutsuki considers herself to be a woman and merelymasquerades as a man due to her fear of male sexual attention stemming from herchildhood trauma. Thus I will be addressing her with ‘she’ and ‘her’ pronounsaccordingly. Discussion below about ‘gender confusion’ and the like is entirely unrelated to transgender issues, and solely applies to these characters’ individual psyches.)

As soon as we see Mutsuki, we are instantly reminded of Kaneki - specifically Kaneki as he was at the start of the series, the persona we call Kuroneki. She has the same wide, innocent eyes and a similarly prim and proper haircut, with her head stuck in a book. And of course, if you were left with any doubts, the eyepatch vanquishes them immediately. As we get to know her better, we find out she is polite and kind but meek and easily frightened, without a great deal of faith in her own abilities. It’s not exactly subtle paralleling, but then, it’s not meant to be. 

Because while in :re, Kaneki is slipping out of the mould of his tragedy, there needs to be someone to take up the mantle of the tragic hero. The gift of a sequel series spared Kaneki from his death at the end of the original, but the author must maintain a balance - tragedy must have its tribute, and here is a person as ideally suited to the role as Kaneki once was.

In fact, Kaneki in his amnesiac ignorance ends up symbolically helping Mutsuki down the path he once walked. In the Christmas chapter - the same chapter where Kaneki’s own self-discovery takes a new turn with the gift of his mask - Kaneki offers Mutsuki a new eyepatch, without having a real reason other than instinct. He feels as though Mutsuki ought to have a new eyepatch because he subconsciously remembers how he changed in the past.

Mutsuki is pushed along little by little towards her ultimate revelation on Rushima Island throughout her time in the Quinx Squad, with snippets of the truth slowly revealing themselves to her. This evolution is sped along by several encounters with various characters representing different aspects of herself - the true self that she has been suppressing. Kaneki was the first, but the second of her doppelgangers was Torso.

Even before his torture irrevocably changed her, the two were already alike in their abusive backgrounds and, most importantly, their mental confusion between love and violence. Seeing one’s doppelganger is traditionally a harbinger of death, and in Tokyo Ghoul, an encounter with your doppelganger escalates your character’s tragic arc, often to that very final point. It is Torso who first begins to unravel the relative security she had felt living as a man, together with the web of lies Mutsuki had spun around herself to protect her. We learn more about Mutsuki as her own safeguards are torn down around her, much like with Kaneki before her. Our initial assumption that Mutsuki is transgender is disproved when we get deep inside Mutsuki’s head and it becomes clear that she considers herself to be a woman. 

It establishes that Mutsuki is comfortable with living a lie in order to protect herself - and if she’s willing and able to hide her gender from the rest of society, who’s to say she’s not hiding something from herself? But already, ever since Torso lands that first crucial blow against the safeguard of her false gender, she finds it quickly crumbling as she is compelled into situations like the Auction that require her to dress (and therefore be treated) as female, and it isn’t long before Urie finds out her gender and eventually Saiko too. Because it’s not just Torso that finds out, it’s also the reader. And once the reader knows, the author can begin gradually undermining her defences to fit her into the tragedy she was written for.

I’ll be talking a little more about Torso later, but for now I’d like to get to Mutsuki’s third doppelganger: Juuzou Suzuya. 

The two bond very quickly out of an unspoken connection to each other. Indeed, they share much in common: their sadistic tendencies, their reliance on gentle paternal figures to make up for their lack of a real childhood, and  the ambiguity of their genders stemming from their sexual abuse as children. The latter connection in particular is highlighted by the inclusion of Big Madam (also of confused gender) in the arc, reminding us of Suzuya’s past and making us suspect similar activity in Mutsuki’s, and by the two of them dressing up as women for the Auction. While Suzuya believes them both to be pretending to be women - both to be lying - the truth is that Mutsuki is actually being honest, suggesting a misunderstanding in Suzuya’s connection with Mutsuki. 

Although they’ve never discussed their pasts to each other in any great detail, Suzuya senses their similarity, and tries to help Mutsuki along by training her in the same lethal artwork that allowed him to cope and find purpose in this brutal world - until Mutsuki eventually even joins Suzuya’s squad. But again, Suzuya misunderstands how they are similar and how they differ. Suzuya’s trauma left him numb to feelings of empathy and love, and so he used his bladework, and the strength it gives him, as a distraction from that hole. Mutsuki is still connected to those feelings, only in a very twisted way. She instead starts filling that hole with knives, mingling violence hopelessly with her notion of love. There’s no better proof of that fundamental difference between the two than their individual reactions to Uta’s masks.

When Suzuya finally learnt how to love, he learnt to do it in a healthy way, and so he couldn’t bring his knives against the image of Shinohara because violence and love are completely disconnected for him - when he killed Big Madam, it was not out of personal desire for revenge (a reaction to the spurned love he should have been given by his maternal figure), but merely out of duty. Love can never involve violence, and violence can never involve love - those two sides of his personality are entirely cut off from each other. Mutsuki, on the other hand…

…sees the two as the same, having gone down the second of two opposing paths stemming from similar trauma. And so Suzuya’s attempt to aid Mutsuki only escalated her tragedy, just like Kaneki’s gift of the eyepatch, and even Torso’s warped attempts at love.

The last of Mutsuki’s parallels are solely antagonising figures. In the midst of the Auction, three of Mutsuki’s parallels intersect due to their mutual interest in her.

Mutsuki catches Nutcracker’s attention at the nightclub and she is quick to take advantage of her. She embodies the sexual abuse that made Mutsuki who she is today - only in reverse - and where Mutsuki covers up her sexuality, Nuts flaunts it. But like Mutsuki, Nutcracker just wants to be loved, and ends up expressing that desire in violent ways.

But as soon as Mutsuki escapes from Nutcracker, she runs straight into another of her parallels. Karren is another female character who masquerades as male, and whose actions, good and evil, are motivated out of a powerful desire for love. But she quickly finds herself battling for control over Mutsuki with Torso - yet another of Mutsuki’s parallels.

 After the Auction Operation forced her to confront her femininity by dressing up like a girl, she spent the rest of it wandering through a maze of her own mind, running into a grand total of three of her alternate selves all seeking to control her in this space alone. The effect? Mutsuki begins remembering the thoughts that she had locked up, presenting them to the reader for the first time:

But with these memories unlocked, a certain gruesome aspect of Mutsuki’s behaviour does as well, as we learn later on at Rushima.

Being attacked on all sides by agents of her inner psyche externalised, she is slowly pushed to a very dangerous point that requires a very dangerous spark to fully ignite. 

Ken Kaneki underwent his transformation as Aogiri started to gain power. Tooru Mutsuki underwent hers towards the end of it. The Rushima arc serves as an excellent parallel to the original series’ Aogiri arc, as Mutsuki finds herself trapped in the tragic hero’s role that was once Kaneki’s. But where once there was Yamori, now there is Torso. Mutsuki is trapped by Aogiri, all alone, in the hands of a mad torturer. Her hair becomes pale and dishevelled as Kaneki’s once did, and she remembers something vital about her family that kicks her transformation into motion. She adopts the nervous habit of her torturer, accepts her sadistic urges, and gives her torturer a taste of his own medicine.

And right afterwards, she goes on a battle spree, far more confident in her kagune and far more ruthless in its use. Mutsuki’s ability to suppress large parts of her memories lines up with the entire conundrum of Haise’s existence.

Urie functions as the Touka to Mutsuki’s Kaneki; someone initially cold to Mutsuki who warms up to her and becomes the most determined to save her when she’s captured. But even then, at the start of their heartwarming, but sadly doomed, relationship, Mutsuki only thinks to show love towards Urie after being wounded by him. As @linkspooky points out, she is completely accustomed to abuse by male figures at this point. For Mutsuki, love and pain are one and the same.

But where does all this lead? With all these parallels set up, where can we see Mutsuki’s journey finally taking her?

Nutcracker is dead. Karren is dead. Torso is dead. If the original manga is taken as a separate entity, in that world, Kaneki is dead. Is there hope in the precedent set by Suzuya? While I do think Suzuya will survive the series, I’ve already established the great point of difference between the two, and I think it will be what keeps Suzuya alive. You’re right to prepare yourself, anon. I don’t think Mutsuki has much hope of surviving this series.

Will she be redeemed? I think, before the hypothetical raid on :re that I believe will be happening soon (especially since Mutsuki has considered it as Kaneki’s possible hiding place), a confrontation with Urie may lead her to question her actions, but it won’t be enough to stop her. As she hunts for Kaneki in :re, she will find her efforts will come down to nought as members of the CCG begin defecting and her way is blocked by enemies. Her single last thread of hope will lead her to a God of Death, and as his scythe takes her eyes out she will deeply regret ever coming to this place, but all too tragically, all too late.

We’ve been given reason to doubt Suzuya’s loyalty to the CCG for some time now. He asserts his obedience too boldly for me to trust him completely. If he does defect, he would be ideal to fill Arima’s shoes and have Mutsuki meet the tragic fate that originally was meant to be Kaneki’s, especially since they already have the mentor/student relationship Kaneki and Arima would go on to have. To have these two, so similar and yet so different, fight each other to the end would be a fitting end for Mutsuki’s arc. Urie’s attempts at reason, like Touka’s before him, won’t be quite enough to stop her. I’m sure Suzuya would try not to kill Mutsuki…but I’m not sure it will be that easy. 

The tragedy will have its due.

EDIT: In case I’ve linked you to this, you can probably tell this is an old meta! So the Mutsuki analysis still stands, but ignore all the predictions - this manga is more optimistic than I hoped!

[mst3kproject]

407: The Killer Shrews

Whatever else one might say about The Killer Shrews, it is a huge step up from The Giant Gila Monster in at least one respect – it is actually about the titular monsters, and those monsters actually interact with the human characters! So far, so good.  Then we get to the monsters themselves, and... oh, dear.  This movie wouldn't quite be better without the shrews in the way that last week's feature would without the lizard, but they're still a very significant problem for what would otherwise be a serviceable film.

A small boat arrives at a remote island off the coast of wherever this is (the opening narration suggests the Pacific Northwest). Captain Sherman and his redshirt buddy are there to deliver supplies to a scientific outpost, but plan to stay overnight in order to ride out an approaching hurricane (meaning it can't possibly be the Pacific Northwest).  This is treated as bad news by Mad Scientist Dr. Marlowe Cragis and his assistant and daughter Anne.  After some beating around the bush as night closes in, Cragis confesses that he has created a species of giant, nocturnal, venomous, man-eating rodent.  With supplies running low, the group must make a break for the boat in the morning – if only they can first survive the night!

At its barest and boniest this is the plot of Alien, The Thing, Friday the Thirteenth, The Green Slime, and god knows how many other movies: a small group of people are stranded in the middle of nowhere with something that wants to kill them.  They're picked off one by one, usually ethnic stereotypes first, until the last desperate survivors must destroy their foe and get to the choppah for rescue. Although there are some very good movies with this premise, there are also some thoroughly terrible ones.  The Killer Shrews is pretty mediocre, but does its best with the material and sometimes comes surprisingly close to success.

In the average 'trapped with a monster' movie, the characters are either completely dull or utterly detestable – the latter option usually makes for a more entertaining film, since we can at least take some vindictive joy in watching these assholes get killed.  The Killer Shrews has its share of nobodies: Griswold the first mate and Mario the janitor are the aforementioned ethnic stereotypes, who are in the movie so it can put off the deaths of the white people.  Uber-nerd Bradford feels like he ought to be a joke but never gets a punchline. He dies pretty quickly, too.

The rest of the dramatis personae, however, have a little more meat on their metaphorical bones: Dr. Cragis is fascinated by the shrews' single-minded and ruthless survival instincts, admiring their effectiveness even as they threaten his life.  Anne is as consumed by guilt over her own role in creating the monsters as she is by her fear of them.  Her crush on Sherman and semi-frantic attempts to endear herself to him seem to have more to do with the fact that he represents a chance of escape than with any real attraction.  Jerry's determination to finish the experiments, in spite of his cowardice, stems from a desperate need to atone for his past mistakes.  Captain Sherman is supposed to be our hero, but there's a point when the others nearly have to physically intervene to stop him from throwing Jerry to the shrews.  Everybody in this film has been pushed to the edge of sanity.

So what keeps it from being effective?  There's a few things.  One is the acting – Ingrid Goude as Anne and Baruch Lumet as Dr. Craigis are pretty good, but the other major players tend to be too low-key to really be convincing.  The one exception is Ken Curtis as Jerry, who overplays everything just that crucial tiny bit. Whether drunk, paranoid, or hysterical, he tends to end up sounding like he's in a high school play.

As with The Giant Gila Monster, we begin with a voiceover that provides us with a completely different origin for the monsters than the actual story will do.  Here the narrator tells us that this is a new species, which first appeared in Alaska before moving south into Canada.  The subsequent movie, however, informs us that the shrews were the product of mad science (and for once there’s an actual justification for the experiments besides ‘let’s see if we can create a monster’. Cragis was studying the relationship between size and metabolism).  Seeing as one of the characters claims to have created the shrews himself, I'm going to go with his version rather than Mr. Voiceover's, but it does make me think the opening narrations wern't originally part of either movie.

There's too much exposition.  The script spends a very long time emphasizing the voraciousness of the shrews through dialogue, and while this does also establish a certain amount of character, it would have been far more effective to show us the small shrews ravenous' appetites.  Our imaginations could then have done the job of scaling it up – the idea of being gnawed to death by rats is truly horrifying, and being gnawed by giant rats would hardly be less so.  Having typed that, however, I realized that doing this in 1959 for this particular movie would probably have involved forcing a couple of cute mice to fight to the death, as many times as necessary to get the shot right.  So on second thought, never mind.

The music is unsubtle but it works all right.  Same with the direction, which is actually another marked step up from The Giant Gila Monster.  For the most part Kellogg still just points the camera at what's happening and films, but at least people move around within some of the shots and display body language rather than just putting a leg up on the nearest ledge.

We get no real impression of the hurricane itself besides hearing the howling wind – I don't think there's a single shot in which we are in any way aware of rain.  Just the sound of it hammering on the roof would have done wonders for the feeling of claustrophobia the movie is trying to create.

I think you know what I'm working up to here, though.  While there's a lot of minor adjustments that could have been made to help The Killer Shrews, the main problem is the actual shrews.  They're among the least-convincing monsters in film history.  Trailer Club 70 included them in its bottom five, along with the jellyfish man from Sting of Death and the turkey-headed vampire from Blood Freak.

How do you depict a giant rodent in a movie?  Well, if you're Rob Reiner, you throw a big latex puppet at Carey Elwes.  If you're Bert I. Gordon, you film actual rats in extreme close-up and pretend they match your amusingly adorable fake rat heads.  If you're Bruno Mattei, you put rat masks on your actors and leave the audience wondering what the fuck they're watching (god, I've seen way too many movies). And if you're Ray Kellogg, you shave a bunch of dogs and hope we won't notice.

Well, okay, that's not fair: not every shrew in the movie is a shaved dog.  Some of them are dogs with ratty-looking fake fur draped over them.  Others are puppet heads with long 'fangs' that look like a third-grader's attempt at a saber-toothed tiger prop for a home-made caveman movie.  All of them are tragically cheap and completely unconvincing.  The heads are immobile, so in the shots where a shrew is supposed to be biting somebody, all we see is the puppet's nose being rubbed against a pre-bloodied trouser leg. In another scene a 'shrew' enters the room, and is not only obviously a dog, it's a dog that's happy to see you!  I have never seen a shot so entirely ruined by ordinary canine body language (though bits of Teenage Caveman come damn close).

Considering the sorts of things I tend to talk about on this blog, you're probably wondering why I haven't said anything yet about Anne's decision to give up science and become a housewife. Truth is, that's just not high on the list of things that suck remarkably about The Killer Shrews.  I mean, yeah, it's definitely sexist, but it's handled so much better here than the comparable development in Rocketship XM that I have kind of a hard time being angry about it.  Dr. Van Hoorne supposedly came to realize that the men were right and she was wrong, despite all narrative evidence to the contrary.  Anne Cragis' retirement is her choice, not imposed upon her by the male characters, and emerges organically from her own story.

The men in Rocketship XM asked Dr. Van Hoorne why cooking and cleaning and changing diapers isn't enough for her.  In The Killer Shrews, Sherman asks Anne whether she's a scientist in the obvious expectation of a 'yes', and listens sympathetically while she talks about it.  When she states her choice to retire and lead a 'normal' life, he is supportive of this without placing a value judgment on it.  The fact that Anne is the only woman in the film makes it very difficult not to see her as the writer's stand-in for all women everywhere, but there is at least no explicit statement that science is no place for women.  It's a low bar, but hey.

Remember Terror from the Year 5000, in which a woman promptly abandoned her fiance when the hero appeared on the scene? This happens in The Killer Shrews as well, but again, it's less annoying here.  Unlike Claire and Bob, Anne and Sherman actually get to know each other a little over the course of the story.  Her engagement with Jerry is already ended, for completely understandable reasons, and Sherman represents both her potential escape from the island and a person who listens to her respectfully rather than trying to impose his own will.  It's still a useless romantic subplot that exists to add artificial drama, but we have reasons why these characters behave as they do and it feels more like part of the same story rather than a distraction from it.

All things considered, I'm left with the impression that if writer Jay Simms and director Ray Kellogg had wanted to make movies that did not have giant mutant animals in them and had been given a bit of money to do so, they probably could have done a pretty good job.  The two movies they did make are a long way from masterpieces, but there are some surprisingly good things in them for those who care to stop riffing and look.

[alphawolfice1989]

The Real Barney

In Game Night, we are presented with two drastically different versions of Barney – the idealist fool-for-love hippie, and the ruthless womanizer. Do you think deep inside, Barney is still the vulnerable idealist, or is his real personality rather a mix of the two – a more balanced character like the one we see when he’s alone with Robin?

I think over time Barney has become a mixture of the two. The Real Barney is actually much more the romantic, loving, sweet guy that we see come out with Robin. So much (really almost all) of the ruthless womanizer persona is just a front he uses as a defense mechanism. However, maturity and life experience have shaped him and made him much less the idealist and “fool-for-love”. He’s no longer naïve about love and life. He has a much more practical, realistic viewpoint now. Plus he’s extremely insecure because of those life experiences and so he lacks confidence in himself. He thinks he’s bound to fail, and ruin a relationship, and be a bad boyfriend, and basically not be good enough, particularly for Robin because he sets her above all other women so she requires the absolute best (which is part of the reason why he’ll go to such lengths for other women like Nora and Quinn but seemingly not for Robin because with these other women it doesn’t really matter as much if he’s not good enough or if they reject him, but with Robin it definitely does). While we’re on the subject of “Game Night, upon re-watching I just find what they do to Barney so incredibly cruel. Clearly he is bothered by what’s on the tape. That should tell them, as good friends, that it’s a serious matter to Barney that they should respect, but they don’t care. They physically rip the tape away from him (and, again, shouldn’t that be telling them how serious he is about them not seeing it? He’s obviously embarrassed and upset by it) and Robin is the only one during this altercation who is looking over at Barney, troubled by it and not appearing to agree with what the others are doing. Then when they actually start watching the tape and see what it is, Robin has her hand on his knee in support (at that point Marshall does put his hand on his shoulder, so at least he tries). And when Barney finally shows up at MacLaren’s, Robin is the one to say “Barney, where have you been?” with obvious concern. She’s also the one to reach out and touch his arm and bring him back when he tries to leave again. It definitely feels like the evening they spent bro-ing out in “Zip Zip Zip” increased their friendship and the bond between them (I love too how in “Best Prom Ever” Robin is so concerned for Barney and how he’s going to get into the prom and she doesn’t want to go in and leave him out there alone until he tells her it’s okay, not to worry about him). But it’s surprising to an almost disturbing level how much Ted and Lily in particular are mean to Barney and completely disregard his feelings. This episode also got me to thinking about 7.10. We’ve all debated why Robin came to the bar that night and if she couldn’t ditch Kevin because of his concussion why she just didn’t come. I know there are other reasons I believe she did it (like she wanted to see if Barney was actually there himself; she wanted to tell him ‘no’ without having to actually talk to him and risk telling him ‘yes’ instead) but maybe one of those reasons was also because of what happened to Barney with Shannon. As he’s telling them the story in “Game Night”, Robin is the one who says, “She never showed?” with such concern and she can see how much that hurt him. Maybe Robin couldn’t bear to repeat that. If she hadn’t come to MacLaren’s that night, essentially she would have been doing the same thing as Shannon. Barney was all set to meet her there, waiting for their new life to start, exactly the way he was with Shannon. Robin had heard the story of Barney sadly waiting there on the curb but Shannon never came. Maybe she just couldn’t bring herself to do that to him again. Of course what she does is no less painful but maybe in her mind she thinks the similarity to the Shannon situation would make it worse.

I think Shannon hurt Barney so much yes but I don't know if Robin was using hurting him as an excuse not to go meet him alone. I am still going with her being really scared to share those feelings she buries for Barney in this situation and that's why she brought Kevin along. Robin wasn't thinking clearly when she brought Kevin back to MacLaren's and it's all about how scared she is to put herself out there for Barney but Barney turns out to not be there waiting for her. I didn't realize that Robin seemed concerned in "Game Night" about Barney but I did see some things that were a concern to Robin like him being gone along time with no contact with the others of the group. Maybe Robin's new found friendship with Barney was her main concern, she was trying to be a good friend to him after being hurt all over again with this tape and by his friends no less. I did see her concern for Barney when he returned to Maclaren's but only as a friend.

OMG I totally agree about 'Game Night'. Just watching it last night I was almost shouting at Ted & Lily to leave poor Barney alone in that scene. And when he comes back into the bar they first act all concerned, but then start laughing again. I did notice that Robin was the only one who seemed to genuinely care about Barney's feelings, until Lily at the end when he actually starts crying. Mind you, I guess the whole thing isn't that dissimilar to what they do to Robin in 'Slap Bet', and then it's Barney driving the whole thing, so maybe we shouldn't be so sensitive, idk! :-) I do think Lily softens a bit towards him after this, and of course much more so after SF. As far as Barney's character goes, every human being is the sum of all their parts, so in a way it's a pointless question to ask who is the 'real' anybody. But I do agree that Barney is still very romantic at heart (candles & rose petals, anyone?) as well as very insecure and doesn't think he's good enough for Robin. The difference between current Barney and the way he was in the early seasons is that those insecurities are now very much more apparent - to us, to himself, and to an extent to everyone else, although his friends appear sometimes oblivious to the point of not caring, and Robin simply doesn't seem able to comprehend that this is part of the issue. I do think though that Barney must always have had a wicked, mischievous side, in order to be able to become the womanizer to such an extent and actively enjoy it. It's possible to fake a persona to some extent, but to sustain it for more than ten years with such obvious relish - even if deep down you longed for something more meaningful - it must have tapped into some fundamental aspect of his personality which he'd never had the courage to bring out before. But maybe this was part of the Universe's plan to bring him together with his One. Let's face it, Hippy Barney isn't exactly sexy. Barney's confidence and humour and 'craziness' are crucial to his appeal. I think this is maybe what the writers were talking about when they spoke of Hippy Barney not being as innocent as he appeared. If he didn't have that mischievous, charismatic persona hidden somewhere beneath the hippy exterior, he'd never have met Robin or she'd never have looked at him twice. Same as if her dad hadn't brought her up as a boy, she'd never have acquired many of the attributes that appeal to Barney. It's all part of the bigger picture.

True, what the group does to Barney in "Game Night" is somewhat similar to what they do to Robin in "Slap Bet" but there are some key differences. In "Slap Bet", Barney is convinced that Robin did porn, but he doesn't think there's anything embarrassing in that. He thinks it's awesome. And what's driving Barney in that episode to find the tape (other than his subconscious fixation with Robin) is his desire to win the bet with Marshall. So it's not done out of meanness or a desire to embarrass Robin, the way that Ted and Lily's actions seem to be completely motivated by in "Game Night". Also, when Barney does find the tape and the group is all set to watch it, Barney (still thinking that it's porn) is the one to stop the tape after only a few seconds of "proof" in order to preserve Robin's dignity and so she won't feel bad. But in "Game Night", Barney himself had to physically steal the tape. They weren't going to stop it. They wanted to keep watching and laughing over it no matter how much it hurt and embarrassed Barney.

Yes that is true, Barney does stop the tape in 'Slap Bet', specifically saying he's doing so "in the interests of Robin's dignity". But they do all laugh at her quite a lot when they do get to watch it. I know she's resigned to it by then and has given them permission to watch, but it's still a bit mean, even if it's understandable. I mean, even when Ted apologises to her, he's still sniggering about it, and Barney and Marshall both talk about how they're going to watch it over & over (although I'd be prepared to bet that Marshall doesn't!). But yeah, 'Game Night' is definitely worse by a long way. I think that at this point in the show, the others really don't believe that Barney has any feelings, and to be perfectly fair, he's really only got himself to blame for that. Robin is the only one who's seen even a hint of his softer side up to this point. But maybe what this implies is that they HAD to see this tape, even though it was painful for Barney, in order to start to understand him. It's clear that by S6 they all care deeply enough about him and understand him well enough to try to reunite him with his dad, and then again in S7 when they have the 'Quinntervention' they are all looking out for Barney's interests. They know now just how vulnerable he really is, so this is a real journey that all the other characters have had to make in their friendship with Barney, and 'Game Night' was the first step on that road.

https://barneyrobin.livejournal.com/833608.html

[royalnovels-blog]

MGA Chapter 2029

Chapter 2029 – Dangerous Woman “Lord Protector, what are we to do now? Please think of something. We cannot expose Princess Miaomiao to the Dark Hall’s army by herself,” In panic, the Elf Lord looked to the Protector. “It’s useless. That bell is something that His Majesty bestowed to Princess Miaomiao so that she could use it to protect herself at a crucial moment.” “Never would I expect that Princess Miaomiao would use that bell to block us in here.” “It would seem that girl does not wish for us to sacrifice our lives in vain. She wants to take care of the Dark Hall’s army by herself,” The Protector said. “What? Her Highness actually wants to-?!!!” Hearing those words, the expressions of the Ancient Era’s Elves all took a huge change. Regardless of how powerful Xian Miaomiao might be, they all felt that it would be absolutely impossible for her to take care of several tens of thousands of Ancient Era’s ferocious beasts and the Dark Hall’s army by herself. After all, no matter what, Xian Miaomiao was only a rank six Martial Emperor. However, the ones outside were rank seven Martial Emperor-level Ancient Era’s ferocious beasts. Furthermore, there were a total of ten of them. “Wuuuahh~~~” “Eeaahhh~~~” At the moment when the Ancient Era’s Elves were worried, wave upon wave of screams could be heard from outside the grand formation. When they turned their gaze’s toward the direction of the screams, all of the Ancient Era’s Elves, including even that Elf Lord, were stunned. At that moment, the Dark Hall’s army of elites and the many Ancient Era’s ferocious beasts were being trampled upon. Dead and injured filled their ranks. As for the person that was causing all those casualties, it was none other than the Elf Princess, Her Highness Xian Miaomiao that they were so worried about. At that moment, Xian Miaomiao was holding a sword in her hand. With each wave of her sword, she would cause a vast massacre. Not to mention those with low levels of strength, even those ten rank seven Martial Emperor-level Ancient Era’s ferocious beasts were absolutely no match for Xian Miaomiao. In merely an instant, two of the ten Ancient Era’s ferocious beasts were killed by Xian Miaomiao’s Imperial Armament. “Her Highness is actually this powerful?” “Even rank seven Martial Emperors are no match for her? But her cultivation is clearly only that of a rank six Martial Emperor. What’s going on here?” “Could it be that Her Highness’s battle power is actually capable of surmounting five levels of cultivation instead of four?” The Ancient Era’s Elves were all very skeptical at first. However, after watching Xian Miaomiao’s battle, they verified it to be true. Although Xian Miaomiao was only a petite young girl, the strength that she displayed was truly valiant. As she moved back and forth within the Dark Hall’s army, there was no one capable of stopping her. Not to mention the people from the Dark Hall, even those enormous Ancient Era’s ferocious beasts were unable to withstand a single blow from her. “We’re saved. We have been saved from this crisis! Never would I have expected Her Highness to be this powerful. Likely, she will be able to take care of the entire Dark Hall’s army by herself.” Seeing how ferocious Xian Miaomiao was, the Ancient Era’s Elves that were deeply worried for her earlier started to have a whole new level of respect toward her. In fact, they even began to beat their war drums to cheer for Xian Miaomiao. “Roar~~~” Unfortunately, good things do not last for long. Right after Xian Miaomiao began to massacre the Dark Hall’s army, an ear-piercing roar was heard. Following that, an enormous black dragon appeared in the distance. It was flying toward Xian Miaomiao with its fangs bared and its claws brandished. That enormous black dragon was formed of black gaseous flames. It did not possess a physical body. However, it possessed a pair of bloody eyes. From the moment that black dragon appeared, the Ancient Era’s Elves became extremely nervous. Even though they were within the grand formation, they were still able to sense how frightening that black dragon was. “Earthen Taboo: Chaotic Leaf Sword.” Xian Miaomiao had also realized that the black dragon was no ordinary being. She did not show any carelessness, and instead brandished the Imperial Armament in her hand to unleash an attack at the black dragon. Once the sword attack was unleashed, chaotic leaves began to swirl about in the wind. Those leaves were no ordinary leaves, as they managed to pierce countless holes through the black dragon. However, after the black dragon was beaten back, it turned into black gaseous flames and disappeared into thin air. It turned out that black dragon was not an actual beast. Rather, it was only a martial skill. “Girl, you’re pretty good.” After that black dragon was defeated, a beautiful woman appeared out of thin air. She stood far across from Xian Miaomiao. After that woman appeared, even the Ancient Era’s Elves’ expression took a huge change. That woman was truly alluringly beautiful. Most importantly, they were unable to fathom that woman’s cultivation. Furthermore, after that woman appeared, both the Dark Hall’s army and the Ancient Era’s ferocious beasts all retreated behind that woman in an orderly manner and revealed extremely respectful appearances. It was clear that that woman was the leader of the Dark Hall’s army. After seeing that woman, the expression on the Elf Protector’s face became extremely frantic. He had not revealed such an uneasy expression even when Xian Miaomiao rushed out to fight against the Dark Hall’s army by herself and sealed them within the grand formation. The reason why he reacted like this was because this was the first time since he had started fighting against the Dark Hall that he saw those Ancient Era’s ferocious beasts acting so respectfully. They did not act that way even when before the Dark Hall’s Hall Master. However, that woman had accomplished that feat. Furthermore, he was unable to determine that woman’s cultivation at all. Yet, he was able to sense that that woman was extremely dangerous. All of this allowed him to know that that woman was someone extraordinary. If he was still at ease when Xian Miaomiao faced the Dark Hall’s army by herself earlier, then he was extremely worried right now. “It’s you!!!” After Xian Miaomiao saw that woman, the killing intent in her eyes immediately increased explosively. The reason for that was because Xian Miaomiao had seen that woman before. She was that mysterious woman who had appeared beside the Dark Hall’s Hall Master together with the World Devastator Immortal at the Blood Devouring Killing Formation. “You recognize me? Your memory’s quite good,” The woman said with a light smile. Even though her voice was pleasant to hear, it was also extremely strange. “Even if you are to turn to ash, I will still recognize you,” Xian Miaomiao said while gnashing her teeth. After hearing Xian Miaomiao’s words, not only was that woman not angry, the smile on her face grew even stronger. Her smile was truly charming. She was truly a person of bearing. After smiling, she said to Xian Miaomiao, “Girl, you should have died in the Blood Devouring Killing Formation last time around. Yet, you are still alive.” “Thus, our Hall Master is interested in finding out how you managed to survive.” “He wanted me to bring you back. Are you going to follow me yourself, or must I capture you and take you back?” “Oh, I forgot to tell you this: if you follow me yourself, I can spare those Ancient Era’s Elves. However, if you fight against me, they shall die,” That mysterious woman looked to the Ancient Era’s Elves in the grand formation behind Xian Miaomiao. Although she said those words with a smile on her face, the Ancient Era’s Elves all trembled upon hearing her words. Even that Lord Elf Protector’s body also trembled. In merely an instant, cold sweat filled their faces. For some unknown reason, they felt as if that woman’s words were not an empty threat. Instead, she was actually capable of doing it. The reason for that was because that woman emitted too powerful of a dangerous aura. The more one interacted with her, the more one would become afraid of her. “To boast shamelessly, you are courting death!” Coldness flashed through Xian Miaomiao’s eyes. Then she slashed out with the Imperial Armament sword she held in her hand. “Roar~~~” However, right after that slash was shot forth, an ear-piercing roar sounded from the space before her. Soon, a huge monster appeared out of thin air. It opened its gigantic mouth and brought forth violent wind. That wind was extremely powerful. It turned into wind blades that blocked Xian Miaomiao’s attack. After that huge monster appeared, Xian Miaomiao started to frown. That monster was also an Ancient Era’s ferocious beast. However, it possessed the cultivation of rank eight Martial Emperor. Most importantly, that Ancient Era’s ferocious beast gave off a completely different sort of sensation when compared to the other Ancient Era’s ferocious beasts. The sensation it gave off had nothing to do with its strength. Rather, it was as if that Ancient Era’s ferocious beast had undergone a special sort of transformation. “Little girl, you are not qualified to fight against me.” “This slave of mine is more than sufficient to take care of you,” The corners of the mysterious woman’s lips lifted into a fascinating yet dangerous smile. “Woosh~~~” Then, she pointed her finger at the Ancient Era’s ferocious beast, and a strand of black gaseous flames entered that Ancient Era’s ferocious beast’s body. “Roar~~~” The very next moment, black gaseous flames emerged from all over that Ancient Era’s ferocious beast. It appeared like a black demon. Being engulfed by black gaseous flames, that Ancient Era’s ferocious beast appeared even more imposing, even more vicious. With intense killing intent, it began to unleash ruthless attacks at Xian Miaomiao. “Humph.” Xian Miaomiao snorted coldly. She did not fear that huge monster. Instead, she brandished the sword in her hand and began to collide with that Ancient Era’s ferocious beast. “Boom, boom, boom, boom~~~” The battle between the two of them was extremely intense. It was as if they were the sole rulers of this region, and could bring about the destruction of the entire region. Previous          Main menu           Next Click to Post