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llycaons · 3 years

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what did you dislike in death parade? i remember only starting it years ago but don't recall much now

oh I saw it years ago too...like in high school? and I still have no idea why I stuck it out to the end. every single episode just made me so angry and miserable. I ended that show feeling empty and gross and the only thing I was glad about was that I wouldn't have to watch another episode. like I do not recommend finishing it, anon. I put this under the cut for length

okay to start with pros, the opening was excellent, the animation was beautiful, and the character design was really fun. but outside of that...the vibes were miserable and it was written to be ansgty for no real reason. so almost every episode focused on a person who had recently died and often a loved one/someone connected to them who was also dead was there and these games in the bar would decide whether they went to hell or not...or something? and sometimes only one person could go to heaven? so you'd have really tragic and awful stories with good people who'd done nothing wrong being doomed for eternity...

so in the first ep there was a newlywed couple and something something the wife lied to the husband about cheating on him because she wanted him to be safe which sent her to hell even though she was a good person and he was legitimately horrible...like what's the fucking point? it was emotional torture porn. I don't remember a lot of the stories but every one I remember was deeply misogynistic and involved women suffering or sacrificing themselves for the men in their lives. like the female fan who was like 'it's my choice to die for my (male) idoll!' or something trying to spin it into like an empowerment scene? or the one about the girl who had been sexually assaulted who ended up in the afterlife with her brother and the cop who watched her being assaulted and did nothing because he needed evidence?? and the focus was more on her brother because he was really mad about it and not because SHE was the one who's been hurt? it was a setting disrespectful of its own characters, designed to put them in impossible and painful positions and to this day I don't know what the point of it all was thematically or narratively

like I get why fans would say 'oh it say a lot about the human condition!' but I really don't think it does, I think the writers just tried to make things as difficult and angsty as possible and try to pass it off as 'deep'. it said nothing meaningful, its recurring characters had basically no personality until the very end (which I found...not terrible but definitely not worth it), it was an angstfest and it treated women (and survivors of assault) like garbage while never interrogating why these things happened or exploring any other avenues for women to exist in or act. the recurring female character had memory loss and that meant she was very passive and had little personality for the majority of the show. the ending had some haunting scenes but it handled suicide extremely superficially and the main guy finally expressing emotions was not satisfying enough to make any of this worth it. I literally don't remember what happens to the woman and I know the bar system is still in place by the end so...idk I got no praise for the finale

mostly it just made me feel really shitty and hopeless and miserable, which I'm not looking for in my media. I like hopeful stories, stories that make me feel good, stories that provide some commentary or introspection, dark stories with hope and light at the end of them, and fun stories, or at least stories that make a unique point or make their point in a unique way. and dp wasn't any of those for me. it wasn't even engaging or entertaining! I couldn't stay emotionally invested because each main character was cycled out every episode and they all had horrible endings, the two recurring characters had no relationship to speak of until the very end and seeminly no internality, and the worldbuilding was very bland. and it was not entertaining because...like I was bored most of the time. it actually made me feel the same way as f/ma 03 did by the end, or hann/ibal. in retrospect I have slightly more respect for 03 which despite its many flaws had some solid scenes and never bored me, and hannibal is genuinely well-made which is more than I can say for dp. its popularity really was a flash in the pan bouyed by pretty animation and a fun op, but it's nowhere now because it was a bad and shallow show. if it was still popular I'd hate it a lot more but some things deserve to be forgotten. so I'd say don't bother with it unless you like those darker stories, which I know some ppl do! but I just don't see any value in it

sorry for writing five paragraphs about a show I barely remember but I love getting asks like this because being a hater is such a beloved hobby of mine lol. so thanks anon! hope you have a good one

#the only anime I regret finishing more than this one was darker than black s2 and that is saying something #asks #suicide m #rape m #ask to tag

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aprito · 4 years

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hello <3 since i got these asks at the same time i decided to combine my thoughts on them in this post. yet another annoying sjw essay from yours truly on this blog

before i get into these i think i need to preface why im like. i guess overly hyperfocused on a certain unproblematic base (same age au / platonic canon) for them and avoid the ped0philic content like the plague lol

tw for pedophilia ment, rape ment if that makes you squicky. ALSO THIS IS LONG AND RAMBLY

as i’ve mentioned a couple times already, ive been into the ship since i was 12, back when it was very very common to not only post untagged (nsfw) canonverse content of the two in writing and in drawing but also non con and the like, so you can imagine how bad my first impression online was. thinking back on it ...as a child i found it disturbing but didnt really register how problematic it really was?? (i know, but i also lived in the middle of nowhere and had no one explain this to me)

skip to 2014 aka me coming back to naruto at 17ish and i had kinda become hyper aware of the fact that there was an increasing amount of people online who had come forward with explaining how fictional problematic content, mostly pedophilia, had been used to groom them into starting relationships with adullts. it was also a time where a lot of people didnt believe these victims, not registering how common it was for minors to be online friends with adults who had no boundaries and no qualms exposing them such content. not gonna get into my personal life here but i was lucky to not having gone through this myself. like... it kinda was my first time truly realising how fiction can EASILY be used to manipulate others irl (and yes i will not argue this, if you dont think fictional media can form and manipulate people’s opinions on attitudes, countries, cultures and virtues, pick up a book about the effects of propaganda media at least once please)

i, being young, still liking the dynamic but not really the romance, would point this out here and there in the fandom and get into fights with grown adults in their mid 20s who assumed i automatically hated the ship(s) and tried to restrict their freedom of speech or whatever, heard everything from the “age of consent doesnt exist in naruto” to the “sasori looks like a child what does it matter” despite people clearly playing on him being older and experienced. it made me so upset that people were just consuming all this content uncritically and exposing children to it tbh?? not really just sos but a lot of minor/adult ships in naruto in general. and thats where i sat down and thought, i do not want to be a grown adult talking down to children that point out how unsafe the fandom is. theyre absolutely right in drawing these boundaries and calling out adults who defend the uncritical consumption and creation of this content. i do not want to consume or create content that predators could use to groom minors, and i absolutely do want to let younger people in fandom know that i am respecting their comfort zones and want them to have a safe and fun experience. after all, naruto is not an adult show and i think a lot of people forget that!!!! i am not perfect in that regard but its something that i, at the age of 23, am very passionate about and strive towards to.

and i guess thats where same age au was born for me and i have been sticking to it ever since.

so finally we can move to the first question

aside from the fact that we both dont like canon sos, i dont think it would work out even if i wasnt prejudiced to it anyways. in all honesty, 35 year old canon sasori is not a redeemable character to me, given the fact that he’s easily amongst the cruelest villains in naruto (torturing and killing and taxiderming people for his own fun personal gain, never for a goal that served anyone but himself. how do you redeem having over 300 corpses in your backpack that you felt absolutely no remorse for killing). sasori was legit one of the only cruel villains that didnt had someone else pull the strings, which sends a clear message on kishi’s part, who absolutely loves to redeem villains LOL.

being that old, he obviously had already been very manifested in what he believed in, even if it was shakey, to the point where the first crack in that world view (sakura and chiyo protecting each other) immediately had him give up on his life all together. that, in my opinion, is not a man who’s going to know what healthy relationships would look like, regardless of it being romantic or not. 35 year old sasori to me has the same appeal as an expired can of tuna and he’s probably very happy 6 feet under. he’s supposed to be a failed gaara in that sense that he had no one to look out for him and therefore was never going to experience anything but a bad ending in life. its fine that hes dead honestly, it wraps up his short character development the best IMO.

adding to that, seriously, sakura was obviously interested in knowing why he was that way, and called him out for being seriously fucked in the head, but it’s weird to me that people assume she had any interest in actively rehabilitating him, let alone starting a serious romantic relationship with him. sakura who’s not only very, uhm, immature and straight forward when it comes to her romantic viewpoints also, as a big bootlicker, wouldnt soil her standing in the village by starting anything with a disgraced and far too gone criminal like sasori. shipping that version of sasori with sakura intimately is still going to set her up for a huge power imbalance that would be difficult to handle imo, even if she was the one in the fight ultimately exerting her power over him. i would still look at it and think damn she deserves better than having to play therapist for man like that lol.

additionally, even if you ignored all of this, you cant really ignore that sasori had already known her as a child, and that had been his first and most impactful impression of her. i dont think that sasori would look at 35 year old sakura and see her as a grown woman and not the little green girl she was in the fight. plus, you easily fall into predatory comparison territory between the “childish” and “womanly” and i have seen way too often in fic just being boiled down to her now being fuckable. a lot of of ships do this and i would just like to remind yall thats it not normal for adults to want to start relationships with children they have seen grown up or known as a child when they themselves were fully grown adults. therefore, maybe if sakura hadnt met sasori before it would be less of a problem? but that also obviously defeats the point of the dynamic and the reason he died in the first place. so yeah, it sounds kind of doomed especially if you were to make it romantic.

WHICH BRINGS ME TO THE SECOND QUESTION

let me preface this that im not fundamentally against age gaps, even if im not super interested in it. after all, colorblind had a 5 yr age gap (with sakura being 21), even if, say, i wrote similar fics today i probably would make it smaller lol. i think it can be handled well if both parties have enough life experience to deal with it, and the author is cautious of where the age gap starts, i think a 10+ year age gap would be fine in a scenario where the younger party (i guess sakura) was at least 25-27ish, meaning she has completed most of her most formative life stages and probably had been in relationships before, meaning she would be able to handle it without having to fear a huge power imbalance. the older the younger party is the less the age gap is going to matter tbh .TsukiHoshino and AngelOfDeath10 both handle age gaps in their fics really well imo, so i do not mind reading about them.

unfortunately, a lot of people in this fandom think making sakura barely "”””legal””””” (18, not even 20 which is hilarious to me because the source material is obviously japanese) because they both cannot stand her being past her “prime years” of being young fertile and fuckable to much older men as well as thinking a 20 year old is automatically old enough to handle that type of relationship. ive seen a lot of unironic takes that believe it will absolve them of callout posts if they throw around age of consent and “shes 18 now suckers!!!” enough lmfao. absolutely hilarious. aging a minor up without aging the adult down seriously reeks of predatory “cant wait until youre 18″ narratives and thats why i find it similarly disturbing as straight up pedo shipping.

ultimately, sasosaku is and will always be a inherently problematic ship in canon, which is why i think it should always be handled a little more responsibly in fandom spaces, ignoring or outright excusing the main problem factor, which is sasori, isnt going to convince anyone that the dynamic in itself is well written and interesting enough to explore in aus, like giving sasori the redemption most of us wanted him to have by aging him down to a point in time where he was still realistically going to allow being positively influenced, similar to gaara.

so really, what i think is well handled age gap and how most people handle age gap in the naruto fandom are two different worlds at times lol

tl;dr

canon shippers have never been anything but gross when i was younger and i didnt wanna be like that, even if youre “smart”enough to differenate, actual creeps dont really care and might use your content to blur the lines, sasori isnt rly redeemable so romantic canonverse realistically wouldnt make much sense and is still iffy, age gaps are fine if they are handled well, but given that the dynamic doesnt really need the age gap to still work im not that invested on making that an essential part of my shipping experience.

thank you for reading and hope this makes sense!

#nonitxt #meta #another hot take from me #but seriously if you're offended over these #unfollow me lol idc #defending predatory content is not a hill im gonna die on in this life

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some-creep · 4 years

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CREEP RANKS: The intoners by what war crime they’ve committed or at least what I can remember them doing.

I will use a random list I found on Wikipedia that is 100% accurate in order to see which intoner has committed the MOST war crimes. The winner will be sent to federal prison and await execution. I don’t really know what most of these things mean which makes me the expert on making these calls. My rule is law, after all. Anyway, here’s the list we’re going to pretend to be following:

Willful killing, or causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health Torture or inhumane treatment Unlawful wanton destruction or appropriation of property Forcing a prisoner of war o serve in the forces of a hostile power Depriving a prisoner of war of a fair trial Unlawful deportation, confinement or transfer Taking hostages Directing attacks against civilians Directing attacks against humanitarian workers or UN peacekeepers Killing a surrendered combatant Misusing a flag of truce Settlement of occupied territory Deportation of inhabitants of occupied territory Using poison weapons Using civilians as shields Using child soldiers Firing upon a combat medic with clear insignia.

Two: Has Two actually committed any war crimes? I don’t think so. Let’s go through the list. She doesn’t seem particularly into torture. She wasn’t really going out of her way to kill combatants. Monsters probably don’t count. I’m not going to count them because the game doesn’t. No POWs, no hostages, no poison, no killing of unarmed civilians… I mean Cent wanted to basically make child soldiers for her but she wasn’t on board with that idea. I think she moves into that underground shrine or whatever that was. Did she kick people out? If so that’s a war crime since she is being stationed there for like… combat reasons. But other than that I don’t think she’s really done that much. In fact, she’s personally taking care of war orphans. Sentence: A better, more wholesome game than this.

Five: Five is pretty shitty, but like, in a selfish way. She’s too self serving to commit THAT many war crimes. She’s definitely into willful killing and causing great suffering, also torture and inhumane treatment as we know from the DLC. While I think she would do a lot of these things if given the chance, she’s also too lazy to go out of her way to do any of these things unless they directly and immediately benefit whatever arbitrary thing she wants right now. And, like, mood. Sure she would use civilians as human shields if it helped her in the moment, and she would use poison weapons if it seemed fun, and she would take hostages if she could play with them but she never does because it never comes up. This isn’t a ranking of what would they do it’s a ranking of what they actually did so Five takes a shockingly low place on this list. Sentence: The all you can eat buffet is closed down for good and you’re out of batteries for your vibrator.

One: I don’t pay a lot of attention to anything One does despite her central role in the narrative. But I do know that One basically moved into an area and decided this is mine now and took over like. All of Europe but upside down. So I think we can give her deportation of inhabitants of occupied territory and settlement of occupied territory. She’s also into killing but maybe less needlessly so so maybe we don’t give her that one maybe her killing was the normal amount of war killing. It’s harder to judge intoners as they are all literally one woman armies so they do a LOT of killing. Sentence: Watching all 9 hours of this game and trying to remember every little thing that happened. Wait One could actually do that shit nevermind.

Three: Three literally kills civilians for fun torture purposes to build soldiers. I love her. So we’ve got, willful killing and great suffering, torture and inhumane treatment, presumably taking hostages as that’s how she got soldiers to experiment on, directing attacks against civilians, and using poison weapons if we blame her for the forest being all fucked up which why wouldn’t we. Despite being actually the lazy intoner she’s done like, way worse war crimes it seems. Good for her. Crimes so horrible even her disciple fucked off. Sentence: Transferred to Doki Doki Literature Club to live out eternity in an endless loop of going insane and killing yourself in front of that boy you like.

Four: This list was basically inspired by Four herself. Thank you Four. Mostly because one of the only war crimes we know was “killing a surrendering combatant”. Which Four absolutely fucking does. And I love it. Also according to DoD1, Elves are neutral? Which means they weren’t enemies to begin with. Which means they were probably civilians despite being pirates. Four says its bad to kill civilians but that’s basically what she was doing. Four doesn’t think any of what she’s doing is a war crime since it’s for One, but she’s also in the going out of her way to cause havoc during battle because killing is fun boat. Sentence: Four was personally judged in the Nuremberg trials.

Zero: In a shocking turn of events that surprises no one Zero checks basically every goddamn box. She definitely enjoys herself some willful killing. She’s always destroying shit beyond a reasonable level. Forcing a POW to serve in the forces of a hostile power? The disciples, hello. Do they get a say? No. Too bad. No fair trial. Taking hostages? “I kill my sisters, I take their men.” In the prologue Zero talks about how she hasn’t killed any medics yet but would be willing to. She also says she’d kill women, children, and the elderly if they stood in her way. We have direct canon confirmation she’d do these things, not just inferences. Mikhail is basically a child soldier as he is a baby who is very traumatized by all of the things that they are doing. She fakes surrender to kill Four. I’m pretty sure she has a lot of those soldiers running in fear but she kills them anyway so we can check off killing a surrendered combatant. I can’t be bothered to look up all the weapon effects but one of those is probably a poison effect. And I’m sure at least one of those is a three edged blade, which goes against the Geneva convention or something. Zero is the ultimate war criminal. Sentence: Dooming humanity to extinction for all of her horrible actions.

#Drakengard 3 #drag on dragoon 3 #drakengard #drag on dragoon #i love making lists that are completely pointless and arbitrary #i hope everyone else likes them too #creep ranks

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postmodernmulticoloredcloak · 5 years

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15x11. A game of cosmic moves, heroes, and queer subtext

This was a very interesting episode that is about a game. The game being played by two cosmic forces: God and Death. The gamblers from the title refer to both the players in the pool hall, but also to the big game that is being played by Billie, who previously mentioned taking “a calculated risk” with breaking her rules. She’s playing a game and we wonder whether Chuck is realizing that.

But it’s also an episode about people handling phallic objects and playing with balls the entire time, which has a long history on the show of being associated to Dean (and men). Plus there are swords (the phallic object for excellence) and hearts, specifically hearts ripped out, which have a long history on the show of being associated to love and sex (2x17 Heart and multiple other werewolf episodes, 11x13 Love Hurts...), and it’s no coincidence Dean mentions suffering from “heartburn”: while it’s about the digestive system, the word itself evokes the heart. Of course it’s also about Sam, who’s texting Eileen at the beginning. But it’s also about Cas, who faces another soul-sucking angel, and much has been written about that kind of mirror back in the time of 10x20 Angel Heart.

So, Fortuna. And, interestingly, her son who is called Pax, which is Latin for peace, and thus drops the concept of peace/paradise in the episode. The pool hall is run by Pax, and it works a bit like heaven, especially the old way heaven was run, when the Grigori literally fed off humans’ souls. If you replace ‘luck’ with ‘soul’ you really realize what this episode is about and what it parallels to.

In fact, I think that the episode purposely blurs together callbacks to angels and demons: the pool hall Grigori torture scene is reminiscent of Alastair, for instance, there are callbacks to Crowley, to Abaddon*, to soul-selling deals (the cowboy mentions having gotten a year of extra life, the amount of time Dean got when he made his demon deal...), but also to Michael (who literally trapped Dean inside a bar, like Evie was forced to work at the bar of the pool hall) and heaven.

*In 9x17 Mother’s Little Helper, which also features Dean playing pool (and Misha’s unsubtle directing choices), demons stole souls to make an army for Abaddon quickly, and Sam released them. The episode also featured the concept of addiction - Dean and the First Blade, Crowley and human blood, the title of the episode itself refers to drugs - and now the pool players are unable to stop playing until their luck runs out, although the game is rigged.

Now, Fortuna is a clear parallel to Chuck; she keeps people trapped in her joint to play for her amusement or whatever, just like Chuck does with his narrative. But I mentioned before replacing ‘luck’ with ‘soul’, right? That makes Fortuna the goddess of ‘soul’. Who’s the cosmic lady that rules over souls and is also making someone play the moves of her own game? Yep, Fortuna is both a parallel to Chuck and Billie. Who are indeed the players of the cosmic game that is being played.

Fortuna “reads” the players like they were stories, just like Chuck writes people like characters, but also like Billie reads the destiny of people from the books in her office. Now, Fortuna calls Dean a “beach read” and laughs when he calls himself a Tolstoy, which is a clever bit because what really is a beach read is Chuck’s pulp novels, it’s Chuck’s narrative for them, while the real Dean (et alii) are much more complex and interesting than what Chuck’s story would reduce them to. Her dismissal of Dean and interest in Sam also mirrors Chuck in a way, and we wonder whether there’s some reason for that: Dean is better at pool than Sam, as Dean states and Sam doesn’t contradict him. Pool becomes the way they challenge the deity that is pulling the strings, and Sam loses. Is it a coincidence that the thing they were supposed to trap Chuck with in the last episode was shaped like a smooth ball...?

But I also think that this could be foreshadowing of Dean & co. also putting their foot down with Billie, because it’s pretty clear that whatever plan she has for Jack, they won’t accept to play it like she wants to. The Ma’lak box plan has already been labeled a bad idea by the narrative, and I’m sure that the story will frame Billie’s plan also not as the good thing to do, but they’ll find a third way between Chuck’s story and her plan.

Fortuna differs from Chuck in a fundamental way: she understands what makes a hero. Eventually she rewards them despite their loss -- it’s not about winning, it’s about trying despite zero chances of success. They went against the goddess of luck in her own joint, they were doomed from the start, yet they tried anyway, because they care. Reminds you of something? Death made a deal with Dean, his brother’s soul in exchange of being able to being Death for a full day. Dean lost, and yet Death rewarded him anyway, because Dean was never going to be able to succeed, but he showed something in his attempt.

Fortuna’s power outdoes Chuck’s “damage” (they indeed have an “average” luck: not because they are “normal” now but because they have wins and losses, they lost Jack and now they get him back, and so on...) because she acknowledges them as “heroes” -- not because they defeated her, but because they tried anyway. It’s not being exceptional, not being stronger or whatever, but it’s about being... very human. Trying against unsurmountable odds. People against something bigger than them. That’s why they are heroes -- because they’re human.

They’re human and they care about others, even if they’re strangers. Fortuna and her pool hall are a strong parallel (even in visuals, and, well, in the inevitable homoerotic subtext layer) to Lee’s bar. Lee's bar was based on the sacrifice of innocent victims so that he could prosper; Fortuna steals luck off the people in the pool hall, until they’re sucked dry, except of luck instead of blood. Lee, in fact, was killed with a pool stick, and the meta about the homoerotic subtext writes itself. Here, the homoeroticism is maybe less ridiculously blatant than in the episode with Lee, but, hey. Dean first plays a light match with a woman, then an intense match with a rugged man with a cowboy hat; Sam only plays with a woman. Yeah. *stares at the camera*

Last week, the episode with Garth was a manual of queer subtext, now the focus is more on other aspects, but it’s still an episode about pool, i.e. sticks and balls and shooting things inside openings. I think I don’t have to explain here. You have the history of pool in the show -- Dean and Ash, Dean and Crowley, Dean and Lee... but there’s also something that is not strictly about sexuality but in general about existing as a societal “other”, an outcast, a “freak” in the Dean side of the meaning since forever in the show.

Sam states that he learned to win at pool from his brother, and acknowledges that they had to hustle all their life to eat (a little reminder that they didn’t always rely on magical credit cards to pay for living expenses...), but Sam’s history with pool wasn’t an easy one. At the beginning of the story, he was against using that kind of things to get money. From 1x08 Bugs:

Dean: So what are you saying? That Dad was disappointed in you? Sam: Was? Is. Always has been. Dean: Why would you think that? Sam: Because I didn’t wanna bowhunt or hustle pool -- because I wanted to go to school and live my life, which, to our whacked-out family, made me the freak.

Abnormality versus normality, big theme of the show and particularly clear in season 1. Sam rejects the hunting life, the life he led with Dean and John, to seek a “normal” life. But he was always trapped in a mental trap made of the concept of “freak”, because of the life he’d led growing up and the sense of being unable to fit in with normal people. On the other hand, Dean armored himself with the claim of being “abnormal”, or not fitting with normal people; but that was a mechanism of defense because he was troubled by being different. Except that the story explored how Sam’s “difference” was tied to the supernatural (his tie to Azazel, the demon blood) while Dean’s “difference” was always framed as something fundamentally human, fundamentally tied to his relationships with people. You know what the subtext was always about.

So hustling pool was always a metonymy for a wider picture, the life the Winchesters led in the margins of society, in an underclass environment Sam rejected and took a long time to accept, and Dean embraced because he felt like he couldn’t belong anywhere but there. (“I’m a freak among normal people because I’ve been raised in an abnormal environment” versus “I’m a freak so I belong in an abnormal environment”, in substance.)

So, hustling pool doesn’t equate queerness per se. In Sam’s case it definitely doesn’t, but Sam embracing it equates him embracing being different in a class sense and in a general hunting-life sense. But in Dean’s case, his “being different” was always connected to a different set of subtextual meanings. Sam was “wrong” because of the demon blood and all that jazz, Dean was “wrong” in a sense of societal expectations.

So pool is connected to queer subtext in a stricter sense but also in a larger sense, the semantic area of otherness, of outcast, of freak, of being in the margins. And they play for the ability of going against God -- a God that, in Fortuna’s speech, is framed in opposition to other deities (non-christian deities, female deities, non-white deities) and that represents societal order.

Now about the game. In 5x07, whom this episode is obviously a big parallel to, the high-stake game was poker. Another obvious parallel is to the Ingmar Bergman movie The Seventh Seal, where a man plays a game of chess against Death.

In 5x07, Sam won, now he loses. It’s a fundamental difference that brings us back to what the current narrative is telling us about what makes a hero. All the stuff about luck and whatnot is irrelevant -- Chuck wants us weak, Dean says, and he’s probably right, Chuck is doing this to undermine their confidence, but it’s not a matter of strength/weakness or even confidence. They’re heroes because they’re human, because they’re not special. Against someone stronger than them, like a deity, they lose. But the point is that they play. That’s what matters. They’ve always faced adversaries more powerful than them, situations where they couldn’t win. But they fought anyway. And now, Fortuna is right in saying that they need to fight Chuck by their own rules, not the rules of his game: Chuck will win his own game, because he’s God and they’re just human. But if they play their own game, it will become irrelevant that they’re just human and he’s all-powerful. And, of course, their game means more players, just like Garth attacked the big vampire from behind.

The point is that Dean and Sam aren’t particularly strong or special in any way. They’re going to win because they are not alone.

#spn meta #spn 15x11 #my spn thoughts #spn spoilers #spn

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escapekissed · 4 years

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💕 cid/barret

HAVE WE DISCUSSED SHIPPING BEFORE?: yes || no

MY INTEREST LEVEL OVERALL: i’ve wanted this for so long || can’t wait || i think it’ll be fun || kinda feeling it || maybe with a lot of plotting || i need to think about it || not interested, sorry

HOW WE SHOULD DO THIS: jump right in || slow burn || pre-established || build up to it in a thread || anything goes

DYNAMICS I WANT TO TRY OUT WITH OUR SHIP: friends to lovers || rivals to lovers || enemies to lovers || mutual pining || battle couple || childhood friends || high school sweethearts || star crossed lovers || long time lovers || old married couple || newlyweds || sickeningly sweet couple || secret lovers || fake dating/marriage || best friends hiding their feelings || arranged marriage || soulmates || other

final thoughts: i think about how cyberpunk as we know it today was shaped a lot by black & poor & lgbt disabled people making tabletop rpgs, zines and romhacks, and how they thought of cybernetics in a completely different way than the tropes we see today in fandom interpretations of the two most famous black ‘cyberpunk heroes’---barret and vic stone.

there are incredible things in their narratives for sure---cyborg’s episodes about his own limitations with his connection to technology in the original cartoon--and what makes him human in his episode where he meets a robot cult, both make me cry and made me obsessed with the character as a child. while doom patrol focuses too much on torturing cyborg and positioning him as privileged over the other disabled (white) characters, his narrative of trying to find out what part of him&his body&autonomy is his own and what part of his belongs to his ceo father’s corporation is Entirely Aligned With The Original Intentions of Cyberpunk tho muddled by the writing team’s lack of focus on him. meanwhile barret’s simple existence in the narrative as the heart of the game in a genre that often lacks men of color, let alone disabled black men revolutionary single fathers, stands out immensely. and what’s more in line with the original values of cyberpunk than revolutionaries with cybernetic enhancements going against evil capitalist corporations?

but these characters always get sidelined by fandom, who focuses on smaller, paler, characters they deem more ‘attractive’ or ‘relatable’---and characters that are surrounded by ‘ships.’ even tho they’re both the heart of the shows they’re involved with, the comedic relief, the one that can always give advice in fan work or in the media itself---they aren’t deemed ‘shippable’ and in fandom, that makes them less loveable. pair that with the fact that as disabled characters, they’re always forced to feel ‘burdened’ by their disability (which is a natural feeling---but often feels like the only thing able-bodied people focus on), to feel like ‘monsters’ or ‘more robot’ than people, and it puts a sour taste in my mouth with their overall representation both in fandom and in the side media itself. it feels like there’s so little love for them! they’re not even allowed to love themselves!

barret x cid could be revolutionary bc cid is an engineer that loves machinery, and could appreciate MORE THAN ANYONE a part of barret that barret canonically believes (in the novel that i refuse to read) makes him a monster. i want barret to love himself as much as he loves the world despite all his trauma and his failings. barret being viewed by cid as beautiful and handsome for his arm and his sacrifice... well i just think that’s neat, and i think any ship with barret is good if he’s getting the love and focus that he deserves to get. and i also think like. crass engineer old man getting feelings for this man with the dopest arm he’s ever seen. two scientists, a batlte couple, that can bicker like an old married couple but still trust each other implicitly with wisdom over any of these ‘kids’? it’s great. it’s just great all around. sorry for ranting LOL

#racism tw #ableism tw #ooc: replies #i always wanna ship this with u pal!!!#soulcluster

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tortoisesshells · 5 years

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Turn, 1x02 & 1x03:

BAKER. Baker, my poor dear.

"Captain Simcoe's gone to heaven, and we did that." uh, Anna, are you sure about the location?

"This rum tastes like piss." Simcoe you little shit.

Hey, look! Rogers' coin has a snake among the greenery? Could it be ... a snake in the garden??? I’ll see myself out.

God, if only S1 treated Abe/Anna like Rogers's dismissive "that's all right, I was in love once, was married at the time" and just moved along.

I love everything about Simcoe's creepy dialogue in the torture cellar. How is Simcoe always the most unsettling thing on screen? "I have enjoyed reminding you all over the world." Jesus.

On to the next: “Of Cabbages and Kings”, yesssssss.

That kid had DOOMED written on his forehead from the start, the poor thing.

"We're still speaking of her tits, right?" How did Kevin McNally get through this scene with a straight face?

Caleb and Anna! Brotp! Even if Caleb's being a bit of a dick, here, in dismissing Anna's help, they still clearly have such a long and fond history. I don't, as a rule, like kidfic, but I imagine Caleb and Anna acting like the kid versions of Gustave and Danielle, at the start of Ever After? Anyway.

Hey, I'm super here for that weird moment of Simcoe and Tallmadge parallels/contrasts when Simcoe says, "Only if ordered to. We must all obey our order, mustn't we?" Tallmadge doesn't, and that's why we love him, but Simcoe, however much he hates it, does. Idk where I'm going with this.

"This is mutiny! This is madness!" "This is New Jersey!" poetic cinema.

For a brief, really weird moment my first time through, I really thought Ensign Baker/Mary Woodhull was going to be a thing, and obviously not, but I maintain Baker has a crush on Mary. I mean, who wouldn't?

The whole repetition of "British Grenadiers" in this episode is so - weird? - for me for reasons totally unrelated to the show. I can't hear it without thinking back to Hornblower: The Wrong War, since it's in the background incessantly there, and it's always a signal The Good Guys (in-episode narrative) are arriving, but here, it's still the same jaunty air and heralding nothing but ill. Anyway.

The conversation between Mary and Anna is So Good at outlining both characters, and Mary's jab about children (and how that staggered Anna, just a bit)!

The resolution to the farmhouse standoff - again, great characterization for Tallmadge - the emphasis on keeping his word, the sense that he has a responsibility to be not only just but merciful, else what's the point of the Revolution? And yet, the standoff shows the Revolution isn't (only) what he imagines: it's a way of making a living, an adventure or escape, a thing to be cautiously supported or avoided if you want to survive. The farmer dies, leaves a widow, and Scott executes two men. Not to go back to The Wrong War, but from Tallmadge's expression I can't help but thinking of Hornblower's speech at the end: "Sir, I have nothing to say. The cannons were lost, the men died [...] What were we doing there, sir? We were not wanted. We brought nothing but destruction, death, and defeat." God, at least Hornblower had Dadmiral Pellew. All Tallmadge has is the threat of court martial and the question of what the hell all of this is for?

See also, maybe, the "War is war and Hell is Hell," scene from M*A*S*H, I guess.

At least Caleb got a rocking cover of "Spanish Ladies" to escape to?

#polkaknox rewatches turn #polkaknox talks

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estrangedocean · 5 years

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To whomever it may interest.

I recall a vivid memory in which I was in the living room with my parents and family. Being about four years old, my mom was speaking about the things I would do as I grew up. I would finish school; then I’d go to university, get my bachelors, then I’d finish my masters, and finally complete my Ph.D she said. All of this would take quite a long time, perhaps as much as 30 years. Funnily enough, as I heard closely every dreamed aspiration she had for me, I spurted out a slowly looming question that lingered in my head and said, “If that’s the case, then, when will I marry?” The sting of desire was alien to me, and it didn’t mean much to me back then. However, out of all the questions a kid would ask, why would I ask this one?

Love shared by two people for each other is intense, passionate, scary, and an all consuming fire. When I fall for someone, it is a cathartic process by which I empty myself so that I can fill my being with the object of my desire. For “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” If I truly love someone, I empty my heart and being (existence) for them; if I truly love someone, I live for them, and everything else comes afterward and is of little importance in comparison to my burning desire for the object or person. Once I’m burned with the insignia of love, I am truly and wholly theirs. This innate desire that props up for different objects in my life is an essential aspect to understand who I am.

I love God, I love philosophy, and I’ve devoted my whole life to them. Someone asked me “How do you wish to live your life?” I replied by saying, “by studying philosophy and theology, and spending my entire time thinking about them.” This is how crazy I am, greater than this motivation, greater than the desire to live for that which I love, I have nothing. If I do fall for a woman, it would be no different, my entire life would be forfeit; and it would not grieve me, it would make me happy beyond compare, as it would fulfil the deepest desire which lingers throughout my deepest crevices in my being.

The Snares of Language

Today, failure is widely considered unacceptable, and it is necessarily frowned upon. For most, “failure is not an option.” These are not cliches that people believe in, these are the core and fundamental values which make up many people today. In my take, the most important commandment in the Bible is “Be Holy, for I am holy.” Propositions like this can be found throughout the Bible, and there is a counter narrative that goes against the language of success that you find therein. God has plans for Israel to prosper, he wants her to multiply, and be fruitful. Being fruitful and being successful are the same thing, but a tree that is premature and has failed to grow can bear no fruit. Growth is a necessary part of begetting fruits; and fruits doesn’t necessarily mean children (just a reminder).

One can imagine being in a relationship that seems to have utterly failed, but failure is part and parcel of life. Failure is not the end of all things, it is an instruction from God that there is something that needs to be attended to. This is more important than merely gaining success from having a stable relationship with seemingly has no blemishes. For scars and imperfections are easy to hide, but they are very hard to embrace and ratify. For this reason; failure is essential most endeavours in life, and they don’t have to big ones, little ones count too, as any kind of failure is an opportunity to teach us something. This doesn’t mean that successes are irrelevant, it only means that failures are important aspects which signify an area that needs work, so that you may grow and finally succeed in being fruitful: that is success, and it cannot be had without the sweat of the brow.

Sacrifice & Love I

According to the modern practitioners of the distortion of the term sacrifice, they think it means to “give something up, for something else.” To give an example, if you wish to sacrifice yourself for someone, it means to give up something that you love, so that you can satisfy someone else. This interpretation has had terrible consequences on those who truly seek love. Consider for a moment that a woman who wishes to “sacrifice” herself for her man, and so she notes, that even though the man is deceitful and cheats on her, she has to give up her ideal of loving a man who loves her back just as much, in order to satisfy him. Here we see that she has a desire for an ideal, something that he fails to live up to, but she nonetheless uses her will to make a choice and abandon that ideal for him.

The curious dynamic here is that her will necessarily separates itself from her desire, and it moves to diminish her desire and aspiration to love and be loved by a man who loved her back just as much or more. She has “given up” her deepest desire, and her will has taken the forefront, even though she may not feel anything for the man anymore. This shows everything that is wrong with the idea. For there is a clear desire that the woman clings to, however, she has to abandon it for the sake of a promise made purely by the will. Naturally, this will become incredibly harder for her overtime. While such an act indeed takes a lot of courage, it is ultimately doomed to fail.

Courage is no substitute for the limitations of man. Torture him enough, and he will give. This is the nature of mortality, and it is the reality of things achievable with torture. By this definition of sacrifice, the wife has to give up what she desires in order to stick with a promise of marriage to the man. The word takes precedent, but it cannot substitute desire. If this continues, without the grace of God, her will will weaken and slowly fade; and even if it doesn’t, this paints for us a picture which divorces desire from the will, and makes love; an act of sacrifice, subordinated purely to the will of the human.

Although her choice to make the promise of marriage and seal it with a kiss is something that could only be done with her willing it, it couldn’t have been borne without love. Courage is underpinned by love, even if men and women are afraid to the brink of collapse, their bodies and feet move, because it is love which fuels their action. It makes no sense to say that a man is going to stand up for a woman because he simply wants to. A man stands up for a woman because he is motivated by something; either by virtues of justice and truth, or by love. Any man or woman who is not motivated by desire to do these things, is but an irrational being who does things purely on the basis of their whim, or something far worse: apathy. Justice, truth, love, these virtues motivate act, and action does not precede virtues and desire. Similarly, the seal of marriage and her kiss is posterior to something prior, to the desire tempered in the fires of love. It is ultimately this, that the modern definition which uses the language of “giving things up for what you want,” fails. It fails to capture the reality of love, her power of influence as a desire, and it eviscerates desires from will completely.

Sacrifice & Love II

Consider another scenario: suppose we raise a being in a cave, although we give him or her everything she desires, we deprive her of food and any knowledge of it. We shoot nutrients through her veins, and she has no concept of the notion of food. She might be inclined towards something; an outward movement from her soul would be present, but we couldn’t really say that she is ever hungry, or that she has ever felt what it is. Inclinations are such movements, which have no specified object, no goal.

Desires are different. When I desire, I desire “something.” There is always an object attached to the end, and my desire directs and leads me towards it. The job of the desire is to necessarily lead you to her object. Once we do know what we want, there is a final aspect to the puzzle, our dear friend will. The activation of choice is the final part which determines whether we indulge in our desires, or we overlook her force and change our course. The term sacrifice comes from two words, “sacer,” and “facere.” Sacer, means “sacred,” whereas “facere” means “to make,” and “artefact.” When conjoined, it means “To make sacred.” Although the term sacred has religious connotations, it doesn’t have to. For all it means by sacred, is “to set apart for specific use, purpose, or person.” Lots of things can be sacred, including persons. To love, means to sacrifice, to sacrifice, means to make sacred, to make sacred, means to set yourself apart for that which you love.

When in love, then, the desire one has for something will be overbearing, and it could not be merely willed away. This is why love is usually considered to be a desire that transcends and overpowers the will; you cannot merely will to fall in love, and similarly, will to fall out of it. It is an overarching desire that directs both your being and your will towards the object. If then, the woman truly loved her husband, then she desires to see him happy above all things. If that is the case, then she will not be “giving up” anything, it will be subservient to seeking happiness for what she wants the most: to love her man and make him happy. She will set herself apart to get what she desires above anything and everything.

Fencing

But what then should we say about her feeling upset? The infidelity of her husband will necessarily make her upset, and what place does it have in our philosophy? Jealousy is a strong tool because it means to be deprived of something that is rightfully theirs. After marriage, her husband is rightfully hers, and she is his, the good of both these people lie with each other, and not other men and women. For if other men and women have not set themselves apart for them, how then, can their efforts of desire surpass one who has literally forfeit her life for the happiness of her husband? They can’t.

One could now argue that we see that more than one person can pledge allegiance to a flag, and similarly, more than one person can swear their love for another person; however, now I turn the question on to the one who has ever felt such a thing as love. Why would you entrust the object of your deepest desires, someone or something you feel so strongly for, in the hands of someone else? Is your desire not strong enough to make you believe that the goodness of the object lies in your hands? Is your desire not strong enough to make you fiercely attack someone who wishes to threaten your man or woman, or your relationship? Don’t you know that you should have the task and that only you could make them happier than anyone else? If you don’t, then you should thoroughly question how strong your love is.

Can we honestly trust thing that we hold dearest to our hearts to someone else? I don’t, and I wouldn’t. This feat requires an extraordinary faith in other human beings, more faith than you’d have on what is necessarily in front of you, i.e., your desire for someone, and I refuse to have this faith. For if I love someone, I refuse to leave it someone else to make them happy. People are untrustworthy, and I have no reason to believe that the person who challenges my love with theirs will make the one I love more happy than I can. This is the battle of love, and only a defeatist with a confused faith in humanity would abandon their dearest in the hands of others. If you want to do something right, you do it yourself. You can only assure yourself that this task can be done by you, leaving it to others is playing Russian roulette, if you are cynical enough to do this; then indeed, you shouldn’t have ever loved at all.

Guarding their heart and directing their will, guided by the desire for their beloved everyday is the only way a strong relationship can be maintained. Only the ones who truly feel such a burning desire can raise their hearts and feet to have courage and act. Anyone’s hearts which hasn’t been raised to the level of action, is still young and their love has yet to mature. However, when it does mature, rushing with their feet will hardly be a problem; what will be an issue, is how jealous this will make others feel, as this will radically change your life and transform you, and it will keep changing you, making you stronger everyday as you grow deeper in that love.

Who do we love, and how do we know it?

Growing up, I always desired the ideal of helping a girl who is need. As a man, I’ve been taught to protect people, especially women. There is a natural attraction that occurs between the damsel in distress and the knight in shinning armour. However, this doesn’t tell us the full picture. We live in a world which is inhabited by more than 7.5 billion people, and there are many people in distress. If one is to choose who they love simply on the basis of need, then they’d have to love everyone, there’s only one problem: you can’t love everyone, you cannot be in more than one place at one time, and you will always have a priority in your heart. Being in need is a common attribute, lots of people need help. The bane of the knight in shinning armour is that he pours his heart out for that which is commonplace and everywhere.

Suppose that a man confesses his love to a beautiful woman, because she is beautiful. Beauty, although definitely desirable, is not that uncommon in our world. We see men and women with beautiful appearances everywhere. If the man decides to pour his heart out for a woman for this seemingly common trait, then, what if someone who is equally beautiful or more comes up towards him? Given that we do not control our desires, the man will not be able to control his desire, in the sense that it will plant itself in his heart, and there will be a war of attrition. This is an entirely undesirable state of affairs, and it is for this reason that one should be discriminative with love. One should love things which are noble and rare.

For if you love things which are rarer to find, there is less of a chance that this desire can be uprooted by other temptations in this world. The harder it is to find a man or woman who has a trait that you are attracted to? The harder it is for someone else to replace the object of your desire and uproot your beloved from your heart. This is not to say that beauty is irrelevant; if you are not sexually attracted to your partner, that is a decisive end to romantic aspirations about passion and love. While sexual attraction and physical beauty are important, they shouldn’t be the primary things you should be attracted to. When you’re looking into a person, you should be searching them for virtues. For these are rarer and harder to cultivate, and as for physical appearance, we have everything under the sun that can fix and rectify; and though important, it is of secondary importance to the primary traits that we are attracted to.

A kingdom needs to be defended from outside attacks, for this we have foreign policy, a peaceful way to resolve disputes. However, if a kingdom loves her own people, she shouldn’t be afraid to take necessary action in order to save them. The question is not whether it is justified that they should protect their people, it is rather, whether the actions it takes upon the rest is necessary to protect her people. Letting go of some people forever might be a necessary action in order to save a relationship, these are the hard facts about life. No heart can serve two masters, it will either hate the one and love the other; or vice versa. We can draw a scenario in which you are contacted by your best friend and by someone you claim to love, where your decision to save either one of them will necessarily lead to the death of the other.

This is what I call the victory of priority, and the heart can only ever have one thing above all else. Similarly, it is in times like these that we realise who we truly love. These are times of test to help us grow and see where our happiness really lies. Anyone who wishes to save both the friend and the one they claim to love, is but fooling themselves, and others. For no human being can be present in two places at once, and no one can be there for two distinct people, at all times. You cannot set yourself apart for two distinct things, where serving either one deprives the other of your aid. You can only ever set yourself apart for one thing, whoever hasn’t come to this realisation is living but a false and confused dream, and isn’t strong enough to love. That is to say, they haven’t loved. Only the ones who love can set themselves apart, to the exclusion of someone or everyone else. The moment you say “I do,” to someone, you’re saying, “I don’t,” to everyone else, this takes courage and is built upon the strong desire of love.

I for one, am attracted to courage and passion, something that I don’t see in most women. This saddens a part of me, but it also gladdens my heart, since if and when I do fall for someone completely, she will be very special and won’t be easily uprooted from my heart from he wiles of the world. In order to discern that you love someone, you should sit down and think of the person you like, then, write in the order of priority, the things you like about them. Then, consider whether the qualities that you like about the person are rare, and if they are incredibly rare? Then be assured that you’re very close to love; indeed, this kingdom is worth living, fighting, and dying for.

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trinuviel · 6 years

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When the Land is Cursed - Catastrophe and Magical Pollution in “A Song of Ice and Fire”. Part 2: Asshai-by-the-Shadow

(Asshai by the Shadow. Art by René Aigner)

In my previous post about the Doom of Valyria, I framed the blighted lands of the Valyrian peninsula and the surrounding Lands of the Long Summer in terms of magical pollution. I argued that it is possible that magic was partially the cause of the Doom in some form - possibly related to spells that the Valyrians used to make mining active volcanoes a feasible project. The Valyrians had a tendency to meddle magically with the natural order of things and in that sense, the Doom is framed textually as the punishment for such hubris.

What I found particularly interesting is the fact that the Doom not only shattered the Valyrian peninsula and turned it into a smattering of islands in a new sea - but that it also left the land blighted far beyond the the peninsula itself. I’m specifically thinking about the city of Mantarys where children often are born severely deformed, in a way that is eerily reminiscient of the effects radiation damage in the wake of nuclear disasters in our world.

However, the ruins of Old Valyria and the Lands of the Long Summer are not the only places in the world of ASoIaF that suffers from magical pollution.

There is at least one other place that is magically polluted in a similar manner but perhaps to an even larger degree.

I am speaking of that mysterious place at the end of the known world: Asshai-by-the-Shadow. It lies in the far eastern reaches of Essos where the Jade Sea meets the Saffron Straits. It is just north of an unexplored landmass called Ulthos. It is about as far from Westeros as you can come.

THE CITY OF ASSHAI

Asshai is a mysterious place - its origins are lost in the mists of time and even the Asshai’i don’t know who built this city. It is a forbidding place:

Few places in the known world are as remote as Asshai, and fewer are as forbidding. Travelers tell us that the city is built entirely of black stone: halls, hovels, temples, palaces, streets, walls, bazaars, all. Some say as well that the stone of Asshai has a greasy, unpleasant feel to it, that it seems to drink the light, dimming tapers and torches and hearth fires alike. The nights are very black in Asshai, all agree, and even the brightest days of summer are somehow grey and gloomy. Asshai is a large city, sprawling out for leagues on both banks of the black river Ash. (TWoIaF, The Bones and Beyond: Asshai-by-the-Shadow)

This description of the gloomy cityscape of Asshai also brings to mind the trope of Foreboding Architecture.

Some of the statues were so lovely they took her breath away, others so misshapen and terrible that Dany could scarcely bear to look at them. Those, Ser Jorah said, had likely come from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai. (On Vaes Dothrak, AGoT, Daenerys IV)

This trope is mainly associated with video- and computer games but I do think that it is relevant in this context. Another trope that seems to come into play is Evil Is Not Well-Lit, which corresponds perfectly with the rather sinister reputation that Asshai has when it comes to magic:

The dark city by the Shadow is a city steeped in sorcery. Warlocks, wizards, alchemists, moonsingers, red priests, black alchemists, necromancers, aeromancers, pyromancers, bloodmages, torturers, inquisitors, poisoners, godswives, night-walkers, shapechangers, worshippers of the Black Goat and the Pale Child and the Lion of Night, all find welcome in Asshai-by-the-Shadow, where nothing is forbidden. Here they are free to practice their spells without restraint or censure, conduct their obscene rites, and fornicate with demons if that is their desire. Most sinister of all the sorcerers of Asshai are the shadowbinders, whose lacquered masks hide their faces from the eyes of gods and men. They alone dare to go upriver past the walls of Asshai, into the heart of darkness. (TWoIaF, The Bones and Beyond: Asshai-by-the-Shadow)

Several of the most powerful, mysterious and somewhat sinister magic practitioners that we meet in the novels have all spent time in Asshai: Mirri Maz Duur, Melisandre of Asshai and Quaite of the Shadow. Even a maester of the Citadel, Marwyn the Mage, travelled to Asshai to study magic.

(Asshai. Art by Marco Iozzi)

One curious aspect is that Asshai is a HUGE city. It has enormous land walls and it covers enough ground to contain Volantis, Qarth, King’s Land and Oldtown. However, despite its size it has rather few inhabitants. Its population roughly corresponds to a good-sized market town, which probably means that it has a couple of thousand inhabitants. This, of course, raises the question of what happened to the original population. Thus, Asshai is a variation upon the trope of the Ghost City:

A Ghost City is the larger version of a Ghost Town, and is used in visual media as shorthand for 'something terrible has happened'. A city typically contains millions of people, and the viewer knows that only the hugest of disasters could completely clear it of its inhabitants. [...] Usually there is one person, or possibly a few people, left to contrast the vast emptiness. (TVTropes)

However, Asshai is a thriving trade port despite its forbidding aspect as it is known for gold, gems and esoteric knowledge. Strange treasures can be found in the black bazars of Asshai - and ships travels from all parts of the world to partake in its riches.

THE SHADOW LANDS

Asshai is situated at the tip of a mysterious area called the Shadow Lands. It is a landscape of mountains and rivers, of which the most prominent is the river Ash that runs through a deep and narrow valley called the Vale of Shadows.

Though the landscape is harsh, the Shadow Lands are not entirely unpopulated. Certain areas are inhabited by the so-called Shadow Men. Not much is known about these natives of the Shadow, other than that they cover their bodies in tattoos and wear red laquered wooden masks. They are also known for piracy and reaving.

(Shadow Men. art by HBO)

Many stories exist about the Shadowlands but a common denominator is that these lands are home to twisted and monstrous creatures - demons, dragons and worse.

Some legends claim that the dragons originated in the Shadow:

She had heard that the first dragons had come from the east, from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai and the islands of the Jade Sea. (AGoT, Daenerys III)

There might just be some truth to this legend as the three petrified dragon eggs that Daenerys Targaryen receives as a wedding present came from the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai. Furthermore, during Bran’s first vision when he lies unconcious after his fall from the Broken Tower he sees this:

He lifted his eyes and saw clear across the narrow sea, to the Free Cities and the green Dothraki sea and beyond, to Vaes Dothrak under its mountain, to the fabled lands of the Jade Sea, to Asshai by the Shadow, where dragons stirred beneath the sunrise. (AGoT, Bran III)

That is an interesting little tidbit of information and I wonder if it will play a part in the story to come novels. Some fans believe that GRRM initially planned to have Dany visit Asshai but that he ultimately dropped that plot (x). I’m not so sure about that because the story has set Dany up with a narrative arc as a failed saviour from the very beginning.

However, from a Doylist perspective, Dany’s proposed solution to the problem of the raped women becomes part of a pattern in her narrative arc where she attempts to save people from something (rape, slavery), only to end up with solutions that are very similar to the conditions she wanted to save people from. She wanted to save the Lhazareen women from wartime rape by putting them in a situation where they would be subject to marital rape. She wants to save people from slavery but end up using unpaid labour as well as profiting from people selling themselves into slavery. (x)

It is true that the shadowbinder Quaithe wants Dany to visit Asshai:

"To go north, you must journey south. To reach the west, you must go east. To go forward you must go back, and to touch the light you must pass beneath the shadow." Asshai, Dany thought. She would have me go to Asshai. "Will the Asshai'i give me an army?" she demanded. "Will there be gold for me in Asshai? Will there be ships? What is there in Asshai that I will not find in Qarth?" "Truth," said the woman in the mask. And bowing, she faded back into the crowd. (ACoK, Daenerys III)

By not going to Asshai, Daenerys may have been set up by the narrative to fail as a saviour for the third and most important time - because she doesn’t learn whatever truth that Quaithe wants her to learn. The Rule of Three dominates Dany’s narrative and after ultimately failing to save the Lhazareen women from rape and after failing to definitely end slavery in Meereen, I fear Daenerys is set up a third and final time as the saviour of mankind.

GRRM has said that if Asshai appears in the novels it will be through flashbacks. If that is the case, then we may learn the truth that Quaithe alludes to and I think it is very possible that this truth relates to dragons. It is worth noting that there’s dragonglass in Asshai, just like there is on Dragonstone. It is, apparently, one of their important export goods.

STYGAI - THE CORPSE CITY

Asshai is not the only city in the Shadow Lands. In the Vale of Shadows lies the ruined city of Stygai, also called the City of the Night because it only sees sunlight for a brief period of time each day.

On its way from the Mountains of the Morn to the sea, the Ash runs howling through a narrow cleft in the mountains, between towering cliffs so steep and close that the river is perpetually in shadow, save for a few moments at midday when the sun is at its zenith. In the caves that pockmark the cliffs, demons and dragons and worse make their lairs. The farther from the city one goes, the more hideous and twisted these creatures become...until at last one stands before the doors of the Stygai, the corpse city at the Shadow's heart, where even the shadowbinders fear to tread. Or so the stories say. (TWoIaF, The Bones and Beyond: Asshai-by-the-Shadow)

Stygai is yet another example of the trope of the Ghost City but unlike Asshai, Stygai is completely abandoned - and a place of fear, even among the shadowbinders.

The name itself is interesting. Some fans believe that Stygai is an intertextual nod to the story “Shadows in the Moonlight” by Robert E. Howard (x). That is certainly possible but it is also worth remembering that in the English language “stygian” is used as a synonym for “extremely dark, gloomy or forbidding”, which certainly fits the description of a ruined city in the heart of the Shadow Lands. In the literal sense, “stygian” means something like “of or relating to the river Styx”. In classical Greek mythology, Styx was one of the rivers that constituted the border between the Earth and the Underworld (Hades), the realm of the Dead - and that definition is certainly also pertinent to the city of Stygai, which borders the black waters of the river Ash.

THE LAND IS STERILE

One curious feature of Asshai and its environs is, in my opinion, extremely important: the land is completely sterile! Outside the city nothing but the inedible ghost grass grows:

Down in the Shadow Lands beyond Asshai, they say there are oceans of ghost grass, taller than a man on horseback with stalks as pale as milkglass. It murders all other grass and glows in the dark with the spirits of the damned. (Jorah Mormon to Daenerys Targaryen, AGoT, Daenerys III)

In fact, the Asshai’i are entirely dependant imported food and fresh water as the waters of the river Ash are blighted and unhealthy.

The waters of the Ash glisten black beneath the noonday sun and glimmer with a pale green phosphorescence by night, and such fish as swim in the river are blind and twisted, so deformed and hideous to look upon that only fools and shadowbinders will eat of their flesh. (TWoIaF, The Bones and Beyond: Asshai-by-the-Shadow)

Incidentally, this little detail about the fish living in the Ash sounds eerily reminiscent of wildlife affected by nuclear fallout or extreme chemical pollution. The very climate is unhealthy:

There are no horses in Asshai, no elephants, no mules, no donkeys, no zorses, no camels, no dogs. Such beasts, when brought there by ship, soon die. The malign influence of the Ash and its polluted waters have been implicated, as it is well understood from Harmon's On Miasmas that animals are more sensitive to the foulness exuded by such waters, even without drinking them. Septon Barth's writings speculate more wildly, referring to the higher mysteries with little evidence. (TWoIaF, The Bones and Beyond: Asshai-by-the-Shadow)

The mention of Septon Barth here is an interesting and possibly important bit of information. I have previously written about Septon Barth and his writings on magic and unnatural creature. There are Doylist reasons for believing that his writings may contain clues to the magical mysteries of A Song of Ice and Fire. Furthermore, Samwell Tarly has in his possession the possibly only surviving copy of Barth’s Dragons, Wyrms, and Wyverns: Their Unnatural History.

He [Maester Aemon] asked Sam to read for him from a book by Septon Barth, whose writings had been burned during the reign of Baelor the Blessed. (AFfC, Samwell IV)

This book is a Chekov’s Gun waiting to go off at some point in the story.

There’s another important detail about Asshai where the water is undrinkable, where livestock die and where no edible plants grow:

There are no children in Asshai!!!

Asshai is so polluted that its inhabitants can’t even reproduce! They have to import food and water - and they cannot have children. Thus, there are plenty of signs that Asshai is a severely polluted place - but is the pollution of a magical nature?

She was stronger at the Wall, stronger even than in Asshai. Her every word and gesture was more potent, and she could do things that she had never done before. (ADwD, Melisandre I)

In this quote we should pay special attention to this sentence: “stronger even than in Asshai”. The implication being that Melisandre’s magic is stronger in Asshai than in other places (except for the Wall). There’s a reason that so many practitioners of magic travel to Asshai - there is of course the existence of ancient texts but it also appears as though the place itself enhances spellwork. The combination of the Ghost City trope and all the signs of pollution indicate that some kind of magical cataclysm once took place in the Shadow Lands and I suspect that Stygai was Ground Zero for this catastrophe, which turned Asshai-by-the-Shadow into the most polluted place in the world of A Song of Ice and Fire.

ASSHAI AND THE GREAT EMPIRE OF THE DAWN

As previously stated, the origins of Asshai are lost in the mists of time. So who, exactly, built this incredibly large city? On r/eddit the user u/sangeli has posted an elaborate and well-argued theory that Asshai was built by the Great Empire of the Dawn (GEotD).

In ancient days, the god-emperors of Yi Ti were as powerful as any ruler on earth, with wealth that exceeded even that of Valyria at its height and armies of almost unimaginable size. (TWoIaF, The Bones and Beyond: Yi-Ti)

u/sangeli argues that the GEotD is the only real candidate as the founder of Asshai in terms of the time period, the geographical location and its power. The GEotD was ruled by the gemstone emperors (Pearl, Jade, Tourmaline, Onyx, Topaz, Opal, Amethyst and Bloodstone). u/sangeli argues that the GEotD had dragons, which isn’t impossible since there are hints in the novels that there are, or once were, dragons in the Shadow.

According to legend the GEotD didn’t survive the Long Night and u/sangeli argues that Valyria could be the product of an Asshai’i diaspora - and a fragment of Septon Barth’s lost book Dragons, Wyrms, and Wyverns: Their Unnatural History seems to suggest something of this kind:

In Asshai, the tales are many and confused, but certain texts—all impossibly ancient—claim that dragons first came from the Shadow, a place where all of our learning fails us. These Asshai'i histories say that a people so ancient they had no name first tamed dragons in the Shadow and brought them to Valyria, teaching the Valyrians their arts before departing from the annals. (TWoIaF, Ancient History: The Rise of Valyria)

I’ve previously mentioned that it is always worth paying attention to what Barth says when it comes to the history of the world, magic and dragons. Furthermore, this particular quote comes from the companion book The World of Ice and Fire where it is emphasized by the lay-out by being separated from the main text by a sidebar. There are Doylist reasons for taking the text in this sidebar seriously as GRRM himself has written the text in the sidebars of the book whereas his co-authors are responsible for the main text (x). Furthermore, u/sangeli argues that there is at least one clue in the novels that support this theory - the fever dream that Dany has when she miscarries during Mirri Maz Durr’s sorcerous ritual:

Ghosts lined the hallway, dressed in the faded raiment of kings. In their hands were swords of pale fire. They had hair of silver and hair of gold and hair of platinum white, and their eyes were opal and amethyst, tourmaline and jade. "Faster," they cried, "faster, faster." She raced, her feet melting the stone wherever they touched. "Faster!" the ghosts cried as one, and she screamed and threw herself forward. A great knife of pain ripped down her back, and she felt her skin tear open and smelled the stench of burning blood and saw the shadow of wings. And Daenerys Targaryen flew. (AGoT, Daenerys IX)

The ghost kings of Daenerys’ dream all have the silver-gold hair of the Valyrians but their eyes are described as gemstones, more specifically the gemstones that the emperors of the GEotD were named after. I have to say that this is a pretty compelling clue and though I don’t agree with everything in their comprehensive theory, I do find their argument that Asshai was the centre of the GEotD and that Valyria may have been founded by an Asshai’i diaspora after the Long night compelling.

THE LONG NIGHT

If it is indeed correct that Asshai was the centre of the Great Empire of the Dawn, then the stories of this legendary civilzation may hold the clue to the kind of cataclysm that left Asshai, Stygai and their environs permanently polluted to the degree that the very land is sterile. According to myth, the end of the GEotD came when the Bloodstone Emperor usurped his older sister the Amethyst Empress:

When the daughter of the Opal Emperor succeeded him as the Amethyst Empress, her envious younger brother cast her down and slew her, proclaiming himself the Bloodstone Emperor and beginning a reign of terror. He practiced dark arts, torture, and necromancy, enslaved his people, took a tiger-woman for his bride, feasted on human flesh, and cast down the true gods to worship a black stone that had fallen from the sky. (Many scholars count the Bloodstone Emperor as the first High Priest of the sinister Church of Starry Wisdom, which persists to this day in many port cities throughout the known world). In the annals of the Further East, it was the Blood Betrayal, as his usurpation is named, that ushered in the age of darkness called the Long Night. Despairing of the evil that had been unleashed on earth, the Maiden-Made-of-Light turned her back upon the world, and the Lion of Night came forth in all his wroth to punish the wickedness of men. (TWoIaF, The Bones and Beyond: Yi-Ti)

I don’t think that it was the act of usurpation itself that caused the Long Night. It is much more likely that it was the Bloodstone Emperor’s practice of magic (such as the dark arts of necromancy) that ushered in the Long Night. I think that only a magical catastrophe of extreme proportions can explain why Asshai and the Shadow Lands are so severely polluted that nothing is fertile in this particular region. Exactly what caused the Long Night remains a mystery - so far - but it is possible that Stygai was the Ground Zero of this catastrophe since this city is completely abandoned and even shadowbinders fear to enter it.

ON THE DANGERS OF MAGIC

GRRM has hinted that the Others work as a kind of analogy of climate change in his story:

I mean, we have things going on in our world right now like climate change, that’s, you know, ultimately a threat to the entire world. But people are using it as a political football instead of, you know … You’d think everybody would get together. This is something that can wipe out possibly the human race. So I wanted to do an analogue not specifically to the modern-day thing but as a general thing with the structure of the book. (GRRM)

Thus, I don’t find it impossible to think that an improper use of magic can function as an analogue to pollution within the narrative. After all, the text itself warns against the use of magic on more than one occasion:

“Take a lesson, Bran. The man who trusts in spells is dueling with a glass sword. As the children did. Here, let me show you something.” He stood abruptly, crossed the room, and returned with a green jar in his good hand. “Have a look at these,” he said as he pulled the stopper and shook out a handful of shiny black arrowheads. (Maester Luwin to Bran, AGoT Bran VII)

“We free folk know things you kneelers have forgotten. Sometimes the short road is not the safest, Jon Snow. The Horned Lord once said that sorcery is a sword without a hilt. There is no safe way to grasp it.” (Dalla to Jon Snow - ASoS, Jon X)

There’s no safe way to use magic and it is dangerous to meddle with nature through the means of sorcery.

(Sadly, I haven’t been able to source all the art work)

#asoaif #a song of ice and fire #game of thrones #meta #asshai #asshai-by-the-shadow #the shadow lands #stygai #dragons #the great empire of the dawn #the bloodstone emperor #the long night #valyria #magical pollution

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pippki-writes · 3 years

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An Ill-Fitting Name: Snippet 7

NOTES:

Snippet 1; Snippets 2 & 3; Snippet 4; Snippet 5; Snippet 6

Going off into another POV now, but since it’s part of Isaiah’s story I’ll throw it under the same tag. Eventually Isaiah learns to make a friend. I am mostly posting these in the order my deranged mind wrote them, so if you were expecting coherence? An overarching narrative structure? I’m so sorry, you should recalibrate those expectations.

&&&&&&&&&&&&&

I have been in exile before. Some more beautiful than others. The first thing I learned is not to hope. Others may find it sustaining, but for me, hope served as a reminder of the things I couldn’t have in exile, and the contrast of it would always threaten to break my heart. It’s bad enough to see a human heart broken, but ten times worse for one of my kind.

So. I do not hope.

The second rule of exile is knowing, invariably, that this is the worst one yet. Even if this is not objectively true, the exile one must presently endure is always worse than one that’s been completed. It does me no good to think of exiles past, whether they were much easier or far more torturous. They are not the existence I must suffer now.

A tolerable exile is full of knowns. What I can and can’t do. Where I can and can’t go. Much less preferred is the exile I’m in now, and not simply because it is the one I must live through. It’s an exile without a definite end. It will end eventually—they all, eventually, end, when you live as long as I do—but the conditions that would set me free? The infuriating sort: you’ll know when you know. When you see it. When you feel it. I’d rather be sentenced to a thousand years cast away from every life before, at least knowing I can count the days, can know where I stand, than this.

This is a most unusual exile. I can spread night-black wings and take to the skies, wherever I want to go, but I am trapped. Heard, but not understood. Seen, but never known. I cannot speak—only sound the call that comes of a sharp beak.

Hell, I can’t even understand the other crows.

At least, not in the meaningful ways they understand each other. And not in the ways I understand people. Nor do the crows understand me—I confuse them, I think. It’s not just that I can’t communicate properly. Nor is it because I’m quite obviously bigger than they are. I wonder if they can tell, somehow, that I am more than this shape, that I’ve been twisted and reformed, and bound down from a mischievous too-big existence into the body of a crow.

He wouldn’t tell me why a crow. Angry gods don’t need reasons. That’s the sort of thing that angry gods say, when they do things for no reason at all.

It’s easy to forget sometimes, when you’re lost in the thrill of pushing someone else’s buttons, that the someone in question is an angry sort of god. That the power you wield is NOT the same. That a mood can turn faster than a breeze and cut you down very quickly.

He’s not the only reason I’ve ever been exiled, but his are always the worst. And as I seem to have trouble learning, doubt it’ll be the last time he does this to me. Doesn’t matter now. I pissed him off good, and lost a lot for my trouble.

It’s been—let me count, hm, the numbers of the years don’t exactly line up nicely for easy math—seventy four years now. Seventy four years of carrion and French fries snatched from parking lots. Seventy four years of learning what polite puzzlement looks like from a corvid. Seventy four years and counting, accepting the facts that define my current fate.

Sometimes, he’s told me the terms of an exile. “You will stay among these islands until the last fogs leave for the season.” Or, “you will stay with this doomed cause until it drives you mad.” Sometimes he would even say why. “You don’t appreciate beauty,” or “your indecision damns you,” things like that. What had he said this time? “You’re so insufferably selfish. You think you’re clever, but all you do is think of yourself. You don’t care about others, and if they knew better they wouldn’t care about you.” Yes, it had been about like that. As good as I had gotten for a why.

Crows are social creatures, which is why seeing just one is a bad omen. But most people these days have forgotten what signs portend ill and well. Or maybe the signs have shifted. Whatever the reason, the young man (all men are young, when you’ve lived as long as I have) didn’t seem concerned by the presence of a crow all on its own perched on the back of a truck in the parking lot. He pulled out his phone, not daring to approach, his fingers spreading the picture on the screen, trying to get closer with a camera that no doubt couldn’t. He is strange, though I am stranger, and I watch him concentrate, his one good eye flitting from the screen to look at me, and back to the screen again. One good eye, the dark brown of rich soil, and the other eye missing, a ruined starburst of scar tissue radiating out from an unseeing sliver of white. An old wound, by the look of it. He straightens up, tapping on the screen, and takes one last look at me before going into his motel room.

Later, scattered carefully in the mulch near the door he went in, I find a few handfuls of crunchy cat food. I have had many forms, have eaten many unusual things suited to those forms. Crunchy cat food is pleasing to the body of a crow. I wouldn’t have eaten this sort of thing in times before, but now I gladly do.

The next day, I am on the roof, and the young man is focused on me, waving and pointing at something in his hand. A peanut. More of them, scattered in the mulch, and he deliberately tosses the one in his hand among the others. I top my head to the side, and wait for him to leave before collecting the offering. The peanuts are unsalted. I think I prefer the cat food.

Somehow, it seems I’ve gotten my preference across to him over the course of several days. I glide down from the rooftop to the little pile of kibble at my spot next to the shrub, and I do so before the young man has returned to his room. I tolerate his presence, not too close but not as far as before. As I grab a piece of my little snack, I see over to the side, he’s holding up his phone, slowly and carefully, camera open, to frame us both in the picture. He aims his other hand so that it points to me in the image, and even from this distance I can see mirrored on the screen of the phone, he is smiling. A genuine smile. Hesitant at first, like maybe his face had forgotten how to express excitement. I’m sure that’s how my face will look again one day, when I get it back, the memory of emotions having slipped away to the rhythms of weathering decades of avian existence.

Most immortals have tried to kill themselves at some point, and I’m no exception. Usually at least once per exile. I thought maybe this time I’d succeed. Surely, as a bird—

But no. There I was, broken wings, blood spilling, neck wrong-angled, thinking this time I’d won, like an idiot let down my guard and closed my eyes, waiting for death to come—

And there he was instead. Snapping my wings back into shape. Putting my neck back in alignment with uncaring, clinical precision. Gathering my blood from all its spilled places and returning my vitality. I was angry, and tried to tell him, and hoped he could understand every four-letter word when all it sounded like was a shrieking string of “CaaW”s.

He tsk-tsked and wagged a finger at me lightly, no indication on his terrible face that he could understand what I’d tried to convey. “Not allowed,” was all he said before he disappeared again.

The young man is even closer. Not close enough to touch, but he puts the cat food in the usual place and then sits on the curb in front of his room. I glide down from the rooftop and flutter to my feet. He has a nervous energy about him—I usually see him pacing the parking lot, opening and closing a pocket knife in his hands, or whittling sticks down to nothing, but for now his hands are empty and he simply taps the tip of his shoe up and down on the asphalt. I get the feeling he’s resisting playing with the knife because I am so near.

“I’m calling you Cat,” he says softly, “since that’s the food you seem to like the most.”

I turn towards him and top my head to the side. I have had many names in my time. Some better than others. This one feels appropriate.

“You can call me—“ he stops himself and chuckles quietly. “Whatever birds call people, huh?” He lapses into a thoughtful silence for a bit, watching me, before resuming. “Will you be my friend, Cat? I don’t...exactly have a good track record, with making friends...but I’m trying. Trying to be different this time.” He’s talking to his shoes now, staring at them intently, a crease formed in his forehead. “I’m not a good person—I wasn’t, I’m still not, I’m not going to be...but I am different. Not good, but...better.” He gives a little sigh. “And I think I’d like to make friends. Starting somewhere. Whaddaya say?”

I do what I can. A soft call in response—low-high-low, with a little hop and flutter of my wings. His expression brightens.

“All right! I’m gonna find you the best cat food I can.”

I do not name the bastard god I’m beholden to, because it would give him satisfaction if I so much as even think his name, but I admit with great hatred in my heart and coursing through my hollow bones that he was right, the bastard, that I would know. It is no certainty, but I can feel the possibility that the young man who calls me Cat and who would be my friend could bring this exile to an end.

But I’ll be damned if I know how that’s supposed to happen.

So I take to the air and decide to go find a shiny button to give my new friend instead. This could just be one of the bastard’s tricks, that I’ll know who can help, but never be able to figure out how to free myself from this exile. And then I realize my latest mistake—deep down, rather than just take each day as it is, this realization has given me cause to hope. To hope for something different. That bastard really does know how to cut me, I think, with an angry flap of wings. This is undoubtedly my worst exile yet.

- NEXT SNIPPET -

#an ill-fitting name #My writing #original story #original work #original writing #original fiction #magic fiction #Fictional gods #Snippets

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philippahsnow · 8 years

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On Blonde, By Joyce Carol Oates (— The Fanzine)

Hollywood acts about Marilyn Monroe as though it had her poster pinned up on its dorm-room wall: much like the “full pedigree of insanity” Norman Mailer describes on her mother’s side, it’s a passion that verges on madness. So, too, is Blonde’s. A fictionalised account of the life and death and difficult menstrual cycles of Marilyn, written by Joyce Carol Oates — an author who, tellingly, also fictionalised the life of Jeffrey Dahmer — it melds the rough and the smooth as much as its subject. It seduces, then depresses. Parts of the story are real (her marriages to Joe Dimaggio and Arthur Miller, though here they go unnamed) and parts of the story are wildly unreal (a scene in which a bathroom attendant hands Marilyn her dead foetus), though as is so often the case with celebrities, “real” hardly matters so long as the story is good.

Everybody who saw me holding the seven-hundred-odd-page novel or heard it drop with a thump to the table insisted I’d never get through it. I finished in four days. This is the beauty of famous women — they are all too easily consumed. Moving from the orphanage to foster-care to pin-up to polyamorous naïf to drug-addled movie star, Marilyn is called Norma Jeane, Beggar Princess and The Blonde in the narrative, but she also gets called “cunt,” “cow,” “slut,” “whore,” and “a mammalian spectacle.” “Men don’t see me,” the real Monroe once said. “They just lay their eyes on me.” With this fictional Monroe, they finish at “lay.”

A sprawling, grand disaster of a novel can be a triumph, provided it’s meant to capture a sprawling, grand and disastrous life. Whose was moreso than Marilyn’s? Ava Gardner — inexplicably called, in Blonde, “The Rat Beauty” — tells Monroe in the book that maybe she’ll be the last Hollywood blonde. I racked my mind for another: assuming that Bardot is considered a crossover, I’m not sure that I found one. Hers is a very specific blondeness; saying that it glowed would only make sense if I meant this abstractly. There are signs and signifiers far paler than ghosts, is what I am saying. Lindsay Lohan dyed her hair this blonde once, shortly before she began to turn into a signifier. If that woman isn’t a walking abstraction, I don’t know who is. “There was something gratifyingly real about being called a bitch, a whore, a blond tramp,” meta-Marilyn thinks to herself about halfway through the action. If the gratification’s less evident, I agree with the “real,” as the squalid horror and her bimbo-glorification make Blonde a textbook for the American ingénue. Assuming those who study history are not doomed to repeat its mistakes, I wish somebody had put a copy into the hands of Britney Jean Spears. “The ancient Greeks had Oedipus,” somebody says in the documentary Love, Marilyn, “We have Marilyn.” Monroe is also like Oedipus in that, in Blonde, she sleeps with a lot of her industry daddies and, doing so, kills mother-women’s careers. Flipping back through the novel, I found I had underlined three points while reading which, taken together, suggested a very particular state of mind. They were as follows:

1) "Her life had grown baffling to her, as an adult life does to those who live it."

2) "I did not believe in pain, and therefore not in painkillers."

3) "And her face, that’s a special kind of cunt. The wet red mouth, the tongue. When she dies, the movie dies. But her dying is so beautiful, I almost came in my pants."

It occurred to me, then, that a person could write their own biography simply by underlining five or six sentences. They might also use the same methods to outline their psychological profile. Madness is genetic rather than contagious, but the feeling of Blonde is catching. The book gets better the more scattershot and unraveled it is, to whit: "but was this funny? was this funny? was this funny? why was this funny? why was Sugar Kane funny? why were men dressed as women funny? why were men made up as women funny? why were men staggering in high heels funny? why was Sugar Kane funny, was Sugar Kane the supreme female impersonator? was this funny? why was this funny? why is female funny? … why did they love her? why when her life was in shreds like clawed silk? why when her life was in pieces like smashed glass? why when her insides had bled out? why when her insides had been scooped out? …why when everybody on the set of the film hated her? resented her? feared her?...why did the world adore Marilyn? who despised herself? was that why? …why did the world want to fuck Marilyn? why did the world want to fuck fuck fuck Marilyn? why did the world want to jam itself to the bloody hilt like a great tumescent sword in Marilyn? was it a riddle? was it a warning? was it just another joke? I wanna be loved by you boop boopie do nobody else but you nobody else but you nobody else"

The same is occasionally true of its subject, whose heavy, soulful and soul-fouled final performance in Huston’s Misfits feels, already, more like séance than acting. (“Finally finished,” somebody has written on Goodreads, of Blonde. “All magic is gone from life now.” I wonder if anyone said the same thing when she died.) Tremulous, sexy female madness is almost unstoppable, signifying as it does desire, profit, and a certain immortality in the minds of men; still, I can’t help but imagine that most of Oates’ readers were women, just as most of those who put up Marilyn’s poster in real, literal life are girls. Like her Dahmer novel, Zombie, Blonde equates attempted transformation with torture: it examines the assembly of the living dead. One might even swap the two titles. Since I was fourteen, I’ve often imagined my life would be better blonde — by which I mean that I might have been more loved, and thus more sane; or, if not more loved, then desired. Desire, I understand now, is not anything like love, protection, or sanity. It can read a little like violence. “Monroe’s greatest secret was her sense of insecurity and unworthiness,” Oates went on to tell TIME magazine. “She had to be seductive to everyone. It was like a compulsion. A woman who doesn’t especially care what other people think of her, whose sense of self is strong, from within, would not try so hard to please. The very notion of bleaching one’s hair platinum blond, wearing so much makeup and squeezing into tight dresses, would not appeal to many, perhaps most women.” Blonde, at so many pages and with so much madness, does not try so hard to please everyone. Women who bleach their hair platinum blonde and wear too much makeup, on the other hand, may find it instructive. I could sum the novel up in a single line rather than four or five underlined: gentlemen may prefer blondes, but Monroe never meets one. Only once the poor, doomed girl had died did I feel myself able to put down the novel and live.

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hermanwatts · 5 years

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Sensor Sweep: Firefly, Lou Antonelli, Nintendo 1985, Robot Anime

T.V. (Medium.com): Every generation has their white whale of a concluded series. Baby boomers got hooked on Star Trek and made a big noise about it until they got movies, spinoff shows, more movies, more spinoff shows… Generation X kept the love of Star Wars alive until they got novels, video games, comics and, err, prequels. Milennials got Firefly. And three years later, Serenity, a movie that, while excellent, reminded us that the story worked better on TV. And then nothing.

Author Interview (Liberty Island): It was four months of Hell for the Sad Puppy finalists– from the announcement of the ballot in April until the WorldCon in August – and essentially a left-wing lynch mob. In the end, the whole fiasco can be considered useful because it made the secret manipulators come out of the closet. Larry Correia has been completely vindicated.

Fiction (Paperback Warrior): “East of Desolation” was Jack Higgins’ (real name: Henry Patterson) 22nd novel, published in 1968 by Berkley and then reprinted dozens of times using different cover art. The book arrived seven years prior to Higgins becoming a mega-bestseller and household name with his 1975 novel “The Eagle Has Landed”. While booming sales never supported the material, the 1960s produced some of Higgins’ finest literary work, evident with this ice-capped adventure starring brush pilot Joe Martin.

Westerns (Mostly Old Books): A taut and violent short western that finds young Jess Remsberg, consumed with avenging the rape and murder of his wife, scouting for an Army wagon train that finds itself outnumbered in a brutal cat-and-mouse battle with a band of merciless Apaches. The tension remains high as the brilliant Apache warlord Chata matches wits step for step with young and ambitious Army Lieutenant McAllister who is close friends with Jess.

Book Review (Pulp Fiction Reviews): New Pulp writer Derrick Ferguson is best known for his action packed adventures, be they the exploits of Dillon, Fortune McCall or Sebastian Red. All of these should already be on your reading list. But back in 1914, Ferguson wrote this truly amazing novella, “The Madness of Frankenstein” that is his homage to the great Hammer horror flicks of the 60s and 70s. Having finally picked up a copy, we were eager open its pages and discover what special grisly treats Mr. Ferguson had whipped up for his unsuspecting readers.

Cinema (Scifi Movie Page): Disney+ has officially arrived, with all the force and weight that Uncle Walt’s 600 lb. entertainment gorilla can muster. The Mouse plays for keeps, and the buzz around event releases like The Mandalorian and the various MCU projects immediately put their streaming service in the top tier alongside Netflix and Amazon.

But Disney’s strengths go beyond their acquisition (and undeniably strong shepherding) of hot IPs such as Marvel and Star Wars. Their library stretches back over 80 years, and a large amount of it is available for streaming.

D&D (Walker’s Retreat): You know you’ve got something worth watching when you get a comment like this: “Yes. Monotheism is the missing link that D&D needs for a medieval authentic feeling in your game. I use it. In addition it does one of two things. It either keeps SJWs away from your game, or it attracts them because they want to break your game or be an antichurch outsider. In those cases they always end up quitting because they don’t get what they want.”

Gaming (RMWC Reviews): The Nintendo Entertainment System represented a sea change in what video game consoles could do and how they were received at home. Released in 1985 in North America, the NES came out at a time when the American market was still reeling from the great industry crash of 1983. Compared to the Atari 2600 which was the previous home console of choice, the NES had better graphics, sound, processing power, and yes, gimmicks. The 1985 launch was actually limited to New York City for the holiday season, and was then expanded in 1986 when it was clear to be a success.

Anime (Wasteland and Sky): As anyone who knows anime knows, there are two kinds of mecha series. First there were the originals, the super robots, then there were those created with Mobile Suit Gundam, the real robots. The former were pulp heroes that went on adventures to stop the villains while the latter were based on soldiers fighting in wars. Different approaches and aims allowed for very different legacies.

Book Review (Matthew Constantine): The second book in The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander, The Black Cauldron is somewhat more complex and more interesting than The Book of Three. Having already been introduced to many of the characters, we don’t need to go through that again and can instead jump right into the action. Taran and friends are tasked with finding and destroying the Black Cauldron aka the Crochan, the magic item used to create near invincible Cauldron Born, undead warriors.

Tolkien (BBC): A pub made famous as a meeting place for fantasy authors CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien is to be made into a hotel. The Eagle and Child in St Giles’, Oxford, has a plaque inside commemorating the writers’ get-togethers. Known as The Inklings, they would regularly meet up with other academics at the Grade II listed pub. The application was approved by Oxford City Council’s west area planning committee on Tuesday.

D&D/Cinema (Tenkar’s Tavern): Comicbook.com shared an article about the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons movie (due Summer of 2021) – Thanks to Luke Gygax for sharing the article on Facebook. The upcoming Dungeons & Dragons movie will feature at least one character with ties to the Forgotten Realms and will focus on a quest for an iconic magical object. ComicBook.com can exclusively report that the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons movie currently in development by Paramount will focus on a group of adventurers looking for the Eye of Vecna, a powerful artifact that dates back to the earliest days of the game.

Pulp Hero (Black Gate): I have to confess that writing The Spider is a completely different experience for me than writing the Wild Adventures of Doc Savage, Tarzan, John Carter, or any of the other classic pulp heroes I’ve been privileged to bring back to life in new novels. With these other pulp heroes, it’s largely a matter of concocting a logical plot and having the heroes go through their customary pieces, although I seem to have quickly become an accidental king of crossovers since I’ve managed to convince the various license holders to permit me to have a few of them collide, such as Doc Savage and The Shadow, Tarzan of the Apes and King Kong.

Review (Porpor Books Blog): Men of Violence: All Review Special’ ($5.99, 93 pp) features reviews (limited to 250 words for an individual book and 500 words for a series) of over 100 paperbacks and comics published from 1953 to the present day, that fall (more or less) into the genre of ‘Men’s Adventure’ fiction. Needless to say, we live in an era in which men rarely read for pleasure, the genre of Men’s Adventure is regarded as affront to a Woke society, and any adolescent who brings a copy of Torture Love Cage (Jack Savage, 1959) to school probably will be expelled, and obliged to receive Counseling before being readmitted.

Book Review (Rough Edges): Almost a year ago, I read the first book in the Casca series by Barry Sadler and really enjoyed it. I didn’t mean for so much time to go by before I got back to the series, but that’s the way it happened. I’ve finally read the second book, GOD OF DEATH, which picks up the story of Casca Rufio Longinus, former Roman soldier who was present at the Crucifixion and was cursed with immortality because of it. Wounds or illness that would kill a normal man can’t claim him, and he’s doomed to wander the world, always making his way as a mercenary soldier.

Novel Excerpt (DMR Books): Wulfhere and Eanhere and their army of bears crept down the valley silently. From a cliff they could see Penda’s men as they sat in a little grove eating their midday meal. Eanhere took half the bears and crept round to the other side of the grove while Wulfhere waited on this side with the rest. Wulfhere crept quietly closer till only a small knoll stood between the Mercians and himself, and he could hear their loud talk and laughter. “Ha, we will root this bear out of his den, and he will go the way of his people!” one said as he emptied his horn of mead.

Art (Karavansara): Turns out this is a Robert Maguire cover for a novel called The Deadly Lady of Madagascar, bt Frank G. Slaughter (nice name for someone writing about deadly ladies) that I will try and find somehow. If I can’t write it, I can certainly read it.

Alt. History (Enter Stage Right): Alternative history (popularly called “alternate history”) is sometimes termed “uchronia” or counterfactual history. It is important to remember that alternative history pertains to events that are in the past at the time when the narrative is being written. So, for example, the 1920s projections of Hugo Gernsback about the 1980s cannot be properly termed as being alternative history – even though his vision of the world of the 1980s is much different from what has actually occurred.

D&D (Sacnoth’s Scriptorium): So, I just got a comment on my post back in September on the new film documenting Arnesom’s role in the creation of D&D. Since the comment seems to come from the filmmaker himself, thought I’d feature it here so as to give the filmmakers a better chance to have their say. Here’s their comment.

Gaming Magazines (Silver Key): Later issues of White Dwarf introduced readers to Thrud the Barbarian. The loinclothed barbarian stereotype born in the pages of sword-and-sorcery (Brak, Thongor, Kothar and their ilk) was by then quite pervasive, and strip author Carl Critchlow had fun with a character that was literally all muscle and no brain—a tiny head upon a massive, muscular body. Issue #50 (February 1984) has Thrud invoking “the sacred jockstrap of Robert E. Howard” before hacking his way through a horde of castle defenders, whom he (mistakenly) believes are holding a princess captive in the tower.

Science Fiction (Tellers of Weird Tales): I’m going back farther now into the past, into spring when, in a week when I was sick, I read The Space Trilogy by C.S. Lewis. Things To Come (1936) was still fresh in my mind when I read these books. That freshness may have influenced my thoughts on Out of the Silent Planet (1938), Perelandra (1943), and That Hideous Strength (1945). I shouldn’t spend too much time on this, but I’m sure I will. There is a lot in The Space Trilogy and it’s hard to move past some of these things without commenting on them and applying them to issues current in this blog and in our world of today.

Weird Tales (Dark Worlds Quarterly): Seabury Grandin Quinn would begin his writing career in The Thrill Book, an early Weird Tales precursor devoted to strange and off-trail fiction. Street & Smith, the future publisher of The Phantom and Doc Savage, ran The Thrill Book for sixteen issues, from March 1 to October 15, 1919. The magazine would publish Francis Stevens’ The Heads of Cerberus, one of the first science fiction novels about parallel worlds.

Sensor Sweep: Firefly, Lou Antonelli, Nintendo 1985, Robot Anime published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

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decolonizingmyfeels · 6 years

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LET'S TALK ABOUT THE GENDER COMMENTARY IN MOTHER!

There's been criticism abound for Requiem for a Dream/ Black Swan director, Darren Aronofsky's latest emotional roller coaster, but the vast majority of it is founded upon a refusal (or inability - who knows?) to note even a snippet of the allegory to be found in it. Were I to have taken this movie literally I'm sure I'd have been similarly frustrated, if not downright annoyed, by the subsequent apparent lack of coherent plot and sudden, drastic, unexplained crescendos and denouements in its pace. Without acknowledging the metaphor rooted in this dizzying presentation however, these criticisms, I feel, hold little relevance to the movie and my intent here is not to exhaust them any further.

The critique I do find interesting, however, is Dahlia Grossman-Heinze's at Bitch magazine, due to the sheer irony of what I had, until then, taken to be an explicitly and objectively feminist film being completely slandered by a feminist magazine, for feminist reasons. I had even assumed Mother!'s feminism played a part in its dismal reception, disgruntling the overwhelmingly white male demographic of powerful movie critics with its rare lack of regard for placing their priorities at the forefront.

Grossman-Heinze, on the other hand, argues she "didn’t need another pop culture artifact about the innate selflessness and nurturing qualities of women as they give and give and give until everything, including their hearts, have been taken from them;" and I’m suddenly wondering why more critics didn't hail this film as prime jerk-off material. Grossman Heinze is as sick as the rest of us of being forced to watch the white male's idealized conception of femininity dote on her man and take the bludgeoning for his mistakes. But I think such a vision of this film in particular fails to recognize femininity, specifically the western social and cultural conception of it, as a concrete entity able to be critiqued and metaphor'd; it instead assumes that to personify this conception is to claim it is a real one representative of actual persons. I personally felt Aronofsky is no more claiming Mother represents actual women than he is claiming that the 'Poet' represents an actual God. Mother!, to me, was a picking apart of a mythos, being of course the western Biblical story and its imagery. The story he is telling is someone else's story, not his, and these are not his characters or archetypes. It was not his fetish to put Mother through this torture. He is simply taking the already written story western culture has told itself for centuries and flipping it on its head. He makes Mother a caricature intentionally, asking - if Christianity's 'ideal feminine and mother' truly existed as she's been described to us, what would her story be? How are we treating her and how would she feel about it? The overwhelming majority of the film is shot as literally as possible from her point of view, from above her shoulder, or in close-up inspection of her face and emotional expression. This in itself is vastly different from the tropes Grossman-Heinze is referring to. What Aronofsky is doing is the equivalent of retelling the biblical parable through the perspective of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Mother, and in trying to recall the last time we saw anything of the sort, we realize just how radical Mother! is as a film, especially one that so sneakily found its way into standard theatres. He is framing for us our own imagery of womanhood, the one we ourselves constructed and have romanticized for so long, while we also spit on everything she supposedly cares about, considering her always an accessory rather than a full-fledged character with an experience of her own.

I understand the apprehension against just another male saviour complex in the case of Aronofsky: yet another man thinking he has anything to say about the plight of women or what to do about it. But it's a fine line to draw between checking that privilege, and tabooing men away from having their own experience of feminism. It can be difficult to draw the line between keeping feminist dialogue centered around women, and from designating the responsibility of it entirely onto women. The latter would only be a continuation of thrusting society's emotional labor onto women's shoulders, expecting them to be our saviors from patriarchal ruin by curating themselves into a new ideal. Yes, we are tired of the old narrative that expects women to prioritize doting commitment and motherhood above all else, but it does not make sense to reject that stereotype by rejecting motherhood and commitment as concepts. We have to make sure we are distinguishing clearly between expectations of women, and actual women, because it is the former, not the latter, that is problematic here. And yes, it is nice to witness women in media taking control of their bodies, and their work, and denouncing those who mistreat her - it is a woman's story that, for centuries, we've not been allowed to see, at least not in a positive light. But Mother's story is also a woman's story, and to deny hers for the sake of feminism is contrary to all that feminism is trying to accomplish. To do so comes dangerously close to declaring there is a 'right type' of woman to portray on screen. Even if not Grossman-Heinze's intent, I think it an important idea to address, for it’s not as if it’s rare to find people within the feminist movement rejecting ideals of womanhood simply by staking their flag in a new one. If it is not okay to depict quiet, docile, mother-oriented women in the media, we aren't liberating women to be themselves, but only perpetuating our connotations of femininity, as we imagine it now, as undesirable. Feminism can't only be about proving that women can be 'one of the guys' too. It can't just be about freeing people from adhering to gender expectations, but also about refusing to think of traditionally feminine traits as inherently shameful, weaker, or undesirable, for those women and men and others outside the binary who do happen to embody them (which is in some degree, all of us).

In regards to the romantic relationship between Lawrence and Aronofsky outside of the film, it doesn't feel appropriate to me to play it as evidence of Aronofsky's inherent martyring of women. To assume anything about the power dynamics at play between them, and implying Lawrence's only role within the relationship is as 'muse' to her man, is to deny Lawrence agency and her own vision of this film as an artistic piece, just as it does to assume that embodying femininity is only the result of having had it forced upon us (read: it is so abhorrent, who would want it otherwise?).

And I can't take seriously a claim that stories about the subjugation and exploitation of femininity are “old hat” and unhelpful to women when, in a possibly narcissistic argument that I'll stand by anyhow, I myself spent days after watching this film reluctantly acknowledging how much I emotionally identified with Mother and with having had my body, investments, and creations shat on by patriarchal values. I was eventually forced to reconcile with the places in which I still allow these things to happen in my life despite all my feminist ranting and literature. It was reaffirming to see a protagonist with whom to identify with over the struggle of knowing when and how to hold boundaries without denouncing the 'femininities' of nurture and patience, especially when so often given only dismissive disrespect, at best, in return. Patriarchy isn't going to end simply by teaching women to embrace masculinity. We must also be willing to have an honest relationship with how we, as a social entity, treat femininity, and that is what this movie is trying to establish.

Jennifer Lawrence did express frustration that Aronofsky refused to be up-front about what this film had in store for us while instead selling it as another, mostly inconsequential, fun-time Amityville-esque horror that would pass through our systems easily some relaxed Friday night, only to leave us choking trying to swallow it down the wrong tube. She knows that in planting false expectations and not warning us of the allegory, we were more likely to miss it, and thus Aronofsky ensured the bombed ratings and criticism that might not have been quite so poisonous otherwise. But as he giggles in the background of the interview, I feel comfortably certain that ratings are not his priority here. He recognized that in disclosing the intent of Mother!, he would have attracted only a self-selective audience already interested in having the dialogue he's starting, rendering the film less impactful and frankly, less entertaining as a cultural phenomenon. Critics claim "we get the message; I sympathize with what he's trying to say. But did he really have to cannibalize a baby?" rather than admitting bluntly '"Did he really have to say we cannibalize babies? Did he really have to ruin the memory of my communion? Did he really have to be so harsh?" Whether he did is, of course, debatable. It could even be argued as a debate about the merits of femininity vs. masculinity, gentle patience vs. blunt force. But regardless of the answer, the method was certainly intentional, and in Aronofsky's history, nothing new. His body of work pretty blatantly reveals a conviction that emotional horror and intense discomfort is the way to hit home with an audience, or is, at least, the fun he gets out of directing.

He leaves us at the finish of the movie with the face of a new woman whose innocent concern juxtaposes the doomed fate we know comes her way, having been forced to witness the Poet's insistence that the cycle must repeat itself, that he has no choice, that his fans have no choice, and that the only one who does is the woman who can choose to surrender the only thing she has left. Aronofsky gives us a new face whose treatment we can again allow to befall her, knowing full well its cruelty, or for whom we can look back upon our own mythos as a lesson in what we could change for the future. He asks if we can dare let go of attachment to our idea of womanhood and instead see actual, real life women, with wishes and needs that may not cater to our own.

#feminism #feminist #femininity #gender #movie review #horror movies #darren aronofsky #film review #jennifer lawrence #mother movie #writers #writing #social justice #movies #patriarchy

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