#like the point they made was because the novel is from the perspective of three characters from nobility Chloe must identify with them

[bubbeshfk]

My favourite part of Immortal Longings discourse is witnessing people getting confused and angry when they slowly realise that Calla is not the revolutionary girlboss TM they thought she was and then call the book bad for it

[3hks]

How to Get Better at Writing Without Actually Writing

Are you looking to improve your writing without needing to write? I'll admit, I am definitely that kind of person--I have the hardest time even finding something interesting to write--despite that, I have noticed that my writing has vastly improved over the past year or two when it was hardly a hobby, and here's how I did it!

ANALYZE DIFFERENT WORKS

Yes yes, everyone tells you to READ, READ, and READ, even I will agree. However, unlike what some people tell you, you don't actually have to read all those classics like Heart of Darkness or The Hobbit. Of course, those books are very beneficial, but if you find no interest in those types of books (like me), then don't read them!

If you prefer reading casual stories posted by online authors, whether it be a fanfiction or their own, original story, it still qualifies as reading! As long as you are able to find a work that you particularly enjoy, that's all you need!

When reading, the key to improving at writing is to always study the story. Take a moment to look at certain words or phrases that stick out to you. How does the author use them? What do they mean? Keep track of the characters' development and how it affects them. Additionally, note things like powerful scenes, dialogue, and more to have an idea of how you can create something just as impactful. For example, if a text made you cry, think about how and why you reacted like that. This can actually help you re-create events that hold the same effectiveness, if not more!

To add on, if you really dislike reading just that much, then you can always analyze things like shows, movies, etc. However, this will prove to be less efficient because you often don't get access to the text behind the shows. Still, it's a good way to study the plot, characters, character developments, dialogue, and relationships!

2. PROOFREADING

No, I'm not saying that you should be an editor; this actually ties back to my first tip. Remember how I said that if you don't want to read classics, then don't? Well, this is because forcing yourself to read them is completely unnecessary (unless you like them or want to write like the author, of course). As a matter of fact, reading poorly written stories can be very helpful for improvement!

When we read books or novels that have obvious grammar errors, repetitive words, and choppy sentences, we will realize these mistakes and point them out to ourselves. Being able to scout out faults means that we are able to learn from them and grow! Noticing these things will also help prevent you from making the same or similar mistakes!

3. STUDY TIPS ONLINE

I used to go search up websites on Google whenever I wanted help with a certain topic. Of course, not all of the sites are reliable and/or helpful, but some point out good ideas that a couple of us just need! This can be especially useful regarding the things that we are unfamiliar with when writing. They can offer a base foundation and tips on how to start and finish!

They can also serve as a great inspiration for fresh ideas and new perspectives!

Yes, these three tips are pretty simple; however, I have found that they work very well for me! People vary from person-to-person, so it can't be guaranteed the same effect, but this is the best I got! HAPPY VALENTINES DAY! <3

Happy writing~

3hks :)

[ineffable-endearments]

The Crow Road by Iain Banks

I finished The Crow Road and had a little time to think about it. I'll put my thoughts under a Keep Reading in case anyone is trying to avoid spoilers.

As I speculated before, I think it's likely that The Crow Road is more related to Good Omens in philosophy than in plot. I mean, it's not that the plots necessarily have nothing in common, and we could be very surprised in the end of course, but now that I've read the whole book, its philosophical commonalities with GO are both apparent and kind of inspiring. Also, if I were a writer, I'd be more interested in dropping hints about what themes are important than telegraphing my whole plot ahead of time.

So here, I will describe the book and point out themes that I believe may reappear in Good Omens 3.

This is a long post. If you read it, make a cup of [beverage of choice].

Update on 4/20/2024: I made a second post: The Crow Road and Good Omens: Further-Out Thoughts

Below are mentions of suicide, death/murder, and sexual acts.

The Crow Road centers around a character named Prentice McHoan, a university student in Scotland who starts to sort out his complicated relationship with his complicated family as he explores the mystery of his uncle Rory's disappearance. Although the book is mostly from Prentice's perspective, the narration jumps around in time with the McHoan family. There are quite a lot of important characters to keep track of; the bare-bones summary I put below doesn't even include some of the important ones. I wanted to make the summary even shorter and simpler than this, but the truth is that this book is not short or simple, and if I made the summary any simpler, it might be downright misleading.

There are at least three major cultural aspects of The Crow Road that I am inexperienced with: the overall culture in the 1950s-1980s (I was born in 1988, so of course wasn't here for the relevant decades), the international experience of the Gulf War (again, born in 1988), and the history and culture of Scotland itself (I'm USAmerican with only reading as a source). As a result, I'm sure there are important dimensions to the book that I've missed. If someone has a different perspective taking some of these things into account, I'd love to know about it.

Also, keep in mind, there is a great deal of descriptive writing in this book. There are a lot of pages about the geography of Scotland, and about Prentice as a kid, and about Prentice's father and uncles hanging out together in their youth, and about various family incidents, and about Prentice spending time with his brothers and friends. At first, these passages seem to just make things more confusing, and in my head, I accused them of being "filler." But they definitely serve a purpose. They're a way of showing and not telling the characters' attitudes and relationships to each other. More importantly, because we get to actually live these experiences with the characters, they are what give all the plot points below their deeper emotional impacts. In other words, the everyday experiences give the plot its deeper meaning. They resonate with one of the core themes in the novel: that our experiences in life, rather than any supposed existence after death, are what matters.

The Crow Road's story is like this:

Prentice is rather directionless in life, and he seems to have trouble investing any energy in his own future as he moons over his unrequited feelings for an idealized young woman named Verity. Soon, Verity ends up in a romance with Prentice's brother, Lewis, and Prentice feels that Lewis "stole" her from him. Prentice has also become estranged from his father, Kenneth, over spirituality. Prentice believes there has to be something more after death because he feels it would be incredibly unfair if people didn't get anything other than this one life; Kenneth is not only a passionate atheist, but is offended by the notion of an afterlife.

Prentice's uncle Hamish, Kenneth's brother, has always been religious, although his religion involves a number of bizarre and offbeat ideas of his own, with inspiration from more traditional Christian notions. Prentice is not really sure about this ideology, but he's willing to talk to Hamish about it and even participates during Hamish's prayers, whereas Kenneth is openly scornful of Hamish's beliefs. Hamish interprets this as Prentice being on "his side."

Prentice has a few opportunities to go back and talk to his father, and is begged to do so by his mom, Mary, with whom his relationship is still good. Mary doesn't want either of the men to give up their inner ideas about the universe; she just wants them to agree to disagree and move on as a family. Prentice says he will visit, but he just keeps putting it off and off and off.

Prentice acquires a folder containing some of his missing uncle Rory's notes in the process of hooking up with Rory's former girlfriend, Janice Rae, who seems to have taken a shine to Prentice because he reminds her of Rory. Using the contents of the folder, Prentice wants to piece together the great literary work that Rory left unfinished, which Rory titled Crow Road; however, it becomes apparent that Rory didn't turn his concepts into anything substantial and only had a bunch of disconnected notes and ideas. He hadn't even decided whether Crow Road would be a novel, a play, or something else. The few bits of Rory's poetry for Crow Road read are bleak and depressing.

Prentice also spends a lot of time with a young woman named Ash. They've been good friends since childhood and seem to have a somewhat flirtatious dynamic now, but they aren't in a romantic relationship; mostly, they drink and hang out together. Ash tells Prentice bluntly to get his life back on track when she finds out he's failing at school, avoiding his family, and engaging in shoplifting. She is a voice of reason, and when Prentice insists to her that he's just a failure, she reminds him that actually, he's just a kid.

Prentice's efforts to figure out Rory's story or location stagnate, and he continues to fail at school and avoid his father. He then receives word that Kenneth was killed while debating faith with Hamish. In fact, Kenneth dies after a fall from a church lightning rod, which he was climbing in an act of defiance against Hamish's philosophy when it was struck by lightning; Hamish is convinced that Kenneth had incurred God's wrath. Ash is there for support when Prentice finds out about the death.

With Ash's help, Prentice returns to his hometown again to help manage Kenneth's affairs. Prentice speaks with a very shaken Hamish, who is handling Kenneth's death with extreme drama and making it all about his own feelings. Hamish tells Prentice that Kenneth was jealous that Prentice shared more in common with Hamish's faith than with Kenneth's lack of faith. However, this isn't really true, and as he contemplates his father's death, Prentice begins to internalize one of the last things Hamish reported that Kenneth had argued: "All the gods are false. Faith itself is idolatry."

As the chapters go on, Prentice is compelled by some of the meaningful items related to Rory that he discovers in his father's belongings. He gains a renewed sense of purpose trying to solve the mystery of where Rory went and what happened to him. Among the interesting items are an ancient computer disk of Rory's that Prentice can't access with any equipment he can find; Ash uses her connections in the US and Canada to find a computer expert who can finally open the files on it. This takes quite a while, since the disk has to be mailed and Ash's connection is investigating the disk only in his free time.

Prentice also discovers that his feelings for Verity have changed. He no longer feels angry with Lewis for "stealing her." At first, Prentice's narration describes this as his feelings "cooling" as a result of the trauma of losing his father, but interestingly, this soon means Prentice gets to know Verity as a sister-in-law without getting caught up in jealous romantic feelings. Verity gets along well with the family, and Prentice is actually happy to discover that she and Lewis have a baby on the way. Prentice's relationship with Lewis improves greatly as well, partly because he is no longer jealous and partly because he realizes he does not want to lose Lewis, too.

Ash's connection who was looking at Rory's computer disk comes through and sends the printed contents of the files to Prentice. The files reveal to him that Rory likely knew Prentice's uncle, Fergus, murdered his wife by unbuckling her seat belt and crashing their car. Rory had written out a fictional version of events and considered using it in Crow Road. I'm not clear on exactly how certain Rory was about Fergus's crime, or whether Rory would have intentionally reported Ferg, or whether Rory even had enough proof to publicly accuse Ferg of murder, but people would likely have connected the dots in Rory's work and become suspicious of Ferg. For this reason, Prentice believes Ferg murdered Rory as well.

Prentice confronts Ferg. He doesn't get a confession and leaves Ferg's home with no concrete proof of anything; Ferg denies it all. But Prentice is soon physically assaulted in the night, and it seems Ferg was almost certainly the culprit, because he hadn't been home that same night, and he had injuries (probably from being fought off) the next day. A day or two later, Ferg's body is found unconscious in the cockpit of a plane, which crashes into the ocean. It's uncertain whether this was a suicide, but Prentice suspects it was. Rory's body is then soon recovered from the bottom of a waterway near Prentice's home, where Ferg had sunk it years ago.

As the mysteries are solved, Prentice realizes his feelings for Ash are romantic love. However, it's too late, he thinks, because Ash is about to take a job in Canada, where she may or may not stay. Prentice also hesitates to approach her because he's embarrassed about his previous behavior, venting all his angst about Verity and his father. He isn't sure she would even want to be in a relationship with him after that. But the very night before Ash leaves, she kisses Prentice on the cheek, which leads to a deeper kiss. They finally connect, have sex, and confess their mutual feelings. Ash still goes to her job in Canada, but says she'll come back when Prentice is done with his studies that summer.

The relationship's future is somewhat uncertain because something could come up while Ash is in Canada, but Prentice is hopeful. The book ends with Prentice getting ready to graduate with his grades on track as a history scholar, fully renouncing his belief in an afterlife while he acknowledges the inherent importance of our experiences in our lives now, and enjoying his time with Lewis and Verity and his other family members.

What's the point of all these hundreds of pages?

Well, look at all of the above; there's definitely more than one point. But the main point I took away is that we get this one life, with our loved ones in this world here and now, and this is where we make our meanings. There is no other meaning, but that doesn't mean there's no meaning at all. It means the meaning is here.

It's not death that gives life its meaning. It's the things we do while alive that give life its deeper meaning.

The Crow Road is described (on Wikipedia) as a Bildungsroman, a story focusing on the moral and philosophical growth and change of its main character as they transition from childhood to adulthood ("coming-of-age novel" is a similar term that is interchangeable, but more vague and not necessarily focused on morality/philosophy). And, indeed, all of the plots ultimately tie into Prentice's changed philosophy.

After his argument with Kenneth, Prentice feels childish and humiliated, and as a result, he refuses to go back home, which leads to a spiral of shame and depression. Kenneth dies and Prentice realizes it's too late to repair the relationship, which also leads him to realize it's what we do in life that matters, and that therefore, his father's argument was correct after all.

At the end of the novel, Prentice outright describes his new philosophy. However, I can't recall one specific passage where Prentice describes the process of how he changed his mind (if anyone else can remember something I missed, do let me know). There is, however, a moment when his narration indicates that Hamish seems less disturbed by his own part in the incident that led to Kenneth's death and more disturbed by the notion that his beliefs might actually be true: there might actually be an angry, vengeful God. In other words, Hamish's philosophy is selfish at its core.

My interpretation is that when his father died, Prentice realized three things: how utterly self-serving Hamish's devout faith is, how Kenneth's untimely death proves the importance of working things out now rather than in an imaginary afterlife, and how much profound meaning Kenneth had left behind despite having no faith at all. After these realizations, a determined belief in an afterlife no longer makes our lives here more profound like Prentice once thought it did.

Also, it's worth noting that this incident changes Prentice's idea of partnership, too. He loses interest in this distant, idealized woman he's been after. In love as in the rest of life, Prentice lets go of his ideals, and in doing so, he makes room for true meaning, both in a sincere familial, platonic connection with Verity and a sincere intimate, romantic connection with Ash.

But what about the sex scene?!

Yes, indeed, at the tail end of the story, Prentice and Ash have sex and admit they want to be in a relationship together. Prentice's narration describes them sleeping together and having intercourse not just once, but many times, including some slow and relaxed couplings during which they flex the muscles in their private parts to spell out "I.L.Y." and "I.L.Y.T." to each other in Morse code. This is relevant because earlier, they had been surprised and delighted to discover that they both knew Morse code; it isn't a detail that came from nowhere.

I didn't get the impression that this scene was trying to be especially titillating to the reader. It was mostly just a list of stuff the characters did together. I felt the point was that they were still anxious about being emotionally honest, a little desperate to convey their feelings without having to speak them out loud, and awkward in a way that made it obvious that their primary concern was the feelings, not the sexual performance. They cared about each other, but they weren't trying to be impressive or put on a show; contrast this with previous scenes where Prentice would act like a clown in front of Ash to diffuse his own anxiety. I've always thought that being able to have awkward sex and still enjoy it is a good sign.

Okay, so what does this all have to do with Good Omens?

Here's where I have to get especially interpretive. I'm doing my best, but of course, not everyone reading this will have the same perspective on Good Omens, the Final Fifteen especially. I believe similar themes are going to resonate between The Crow Road and Good Omens regardless of our particular interpretations of the characters' behavior and motivations, but I suppose it could hit differently for some people.

The TL;DR: I see similar themes between The Crow Road and Good Omens in:

The importance of mortal life on Earth

Meaning (or purpose) as something that we create as we live, not something that is handed to us by a supreme being

Sincere connection and love/passion (for people, causes, arts, life's work, etc) as a type of meaning/purpose

Relationships as reflections of philosophy

The dual nature of humanity

Life on Earth as the important part of existence is a core theme in Good Omens, and has been since the very beginning. We all already know Adam chose to preserve the world as it already is because he figured this out, and we all already know Aziraphale and Crowley have been shaped for the better by their experiences on Earth. But Good Omens isn't done with this theme by a long shot. I think this is the most important thematic commonality Good Omens will have with The Crow Road. Closely related is the notion that we create our meanings as we live, rather than having them handed to us. Isn't this, in a way, what Aziraphale struggles with in A Companion to Owls? He's been given this meaning, this identity, that doesn't fit him. But does he have anything else to be? Not yet.

Partnerships as a parallel to the characters' philosophical development also resonates as a commonality that The Crow Road may have with Good Omens. Prentice's obsession with Verity goes away when he starts to embrace the importance of life on Earth and makes room for his sincere relationship with Ash. Note their names: "Verity" is truth, an ideal Prentice's father instills in him; "Ashley" means "dweller in the ash tree meadow" in Anglo-Saxon, according to Wikipedia, and "ash" is one of the things people return to after death. Prentice literally trades his high ideals for life on Earth. We see in Aziraphale a similar tug-o'-war between Heaven's distant ideals and Crowley's Earthly pleasures, so I can see a similar process potentially playing out for him.

I don't particularly recall a ton of thematic exploration of free will in The Crow Road. However, there is a glimmer of something there: Prentice feels excessively controlled by Kenneth's desire to pass down his beliefs, and part of the reason Prentice is so resistant to change is simply his frustration with feeling censored and not being taken seriously. As the reader, I do get the feeling that while Prentice is immature, Kenneth made major mistakes in handling their conflict, too. And Kenneth's mistakes come from trying to dictate Prentice's thoughts. There is likely some crossover with Good Omens in the sense that I'm pretty sure both stories are going to take the position that people need to be allowed to make mistakes, and to do things that one perceives as mistakes, without getting written off as "stupid" or "bad" or otherwise "unworthy."

Suffice it to say that the human characters in Good Omens will also certainly play into these themes, but it's hard to write about them when we don't know much about them except that one of them is almost certainly the reincarnation of Jesus. This also makes me suspect perhaps the human cast will be 100% entirely all-new, or mostly new, symbolic of how Aziraphale and Crowley have immersed themselves in the ever-evolving, ever-changing world of life on Earth. Alternatively, if we encounter human characters again from Season 1 or 2, perhaps the ways they've grown and changed will be highlighted. For example, even in real-world time, Adam and Warlock have already, as of the time I'm writing this, gone through at least one entire life stage (from 11 in 2019 to 16 in 2024). They'll be legal adults in a couple of years, and if there's a significant time skip, they could be much older. If characters from Season 1 do reappear and themes from The Crow Road are prominent, I would expect either some key scenes highlighting contrasts and changes from their younger selves or for stagnation and growth to be a central part of their plot.

The more I write, the more I just interpret everything in circles. Hopefully this post has at least given you a decent idea of what The Crow Road is like and how it may relate to Good Omens.

I'll end this post with a quotation that feels relevant:

Telling us straight or through his stories, my father taught us that there was, generally, a fire at the core of things, and that change was the only constant, and that we – like everybody else – were both the most important people in the universe, and utterly without significance, depending, and that individuals mattered before their institutions, and that people were people, much the same everywhere, and when they appeared to do things that were stupid or evil, often you hadn’t been told the whole story, but that sometimes people did behave badly, usually because some idea had taken hold of them and given them an excuse to regard other people as expendable (or bad), and that was part of who we were too, as a species, and it wasn’t always possible to know that you were right and they were wrong, but the important thing was to keep trying to find out, and always to face the truth. Because truth mattered. Iain Banks, The Crow Road

[whetstonefires]

Do you have any opinions on Scholomance?

I do! I like it a lot. I really enjoyed all three books, blitzed through them easily and was much more excited to see how the plots unfolded than I'm used to these days, as a jaded adult, and I also really appreciated them as works of craft.

Especially the first one, I spent the whole time being all 'wow!' at how simple it was. So easy to read, but no waste. You really need to know what you're doing, to get that kind of pared-down elegance of form to work and still fit so much content in.

Like these are dense, there's a fantastic stylistic minimalism that allows El's character all the space it needs to breathe by making absolutely every other thing and person in the whole novel also do character work for her, which is exactly where the first person voice shines.

Also great use of character perspective to make the pacing feel really natural, so the fact that the first book takes three weeks, the second book takes one year, and the third book is like. Five or so incredibly stressful days spread out over the course of a few weeks? Doesn't feel imbalanced.

I actually got distracted from the story a few times by noticing the strength of Novik's technique. 😂 This is a me problem, in itself it's the opposite of distracting. Very low-profile.

I think the Scholomance is a great example of how far you can go in specfic when you aren't cringing from the label 'derivative,' because the Scholomance books feel very fresh ad clean specifically because nothing in them is concerned with standing out as 'original,' whatever that's supposed to mean, only with being well-executed and suitable to its task.

Hm, maybe that's where Liesel was born, the intersection of the efficient narrative style and the vast proportion of the story that concerns the maximization of utility and the instrumentalization of persons by themselves and others, and the forces that incentivize these behaviors. Or maybe she's just the narrative counterweight to Orion 'Head Empty' Lake lmao. How's that for a principle of balance, Galadriel?

I really did enjoy how beautifully it was laid out, over and over, in dozens of shades of humanity, how no matter where you go in an exploitative system almost everyone is being driven by the same survival instincts.

Because I don't think I've ever seen made so cleanly clear why you just can't expect any person or small group of people, no matter their level of goodwill or status, to unmake one of these systems from the inside; how it's not a matter of people being bad but of every single person being very...small.

And then not retreating into the idea of a person who is Big coming and breaking the cruel system from the outside as some kind of panacea, because 1) that is terrible, even if it's necessary and done in the best way possible and 2) that's not a sustainable answer to anything. Getting a balance between the protagonist being able to effect change and not subscribing to the great man theory of history can be really tricky!

Also did I mention, I love El, and I love most of the cast, even the dreadful ones. How am I going around with this many feelings about Li Shanfeng who doesn't appear until the actual climax?

The romance murdered me a bit, but it took up no more space than it absolutely needed to do its job, and I respect that. Also I appreciated Orion as a love interest; Novik has a slight record at this point of a version of that style of male love interest who's like a caricature of Mr. Darcy but old, which was shaping up to be my least favorite thing about her body of work.

...Orion is kind of like if you took the human king from Spinning Silver and gave him an alignment flip come to think of it, so he's not coming out of nowhere. Lmao.

Which reminds me (re: romance character typing) I've heard Novik didn't want it to be known she was astolat, which this series has renewed my sympathies if so. Because if I were a published novelist I wouldn't want people going 'you know, that resolution was really emotionally satisfying! reminds me of that fic she wrote where optimus prime and megatron get stuck in a hole underground and hatefuck about it.'

I don't even like Transformers. That fic almost made me cry. Actually I suspect it reads better if you don't like Transformers because I'm sure it does not give a shit about canon.

Anyway, whoever pointed out that one of the things El has going on is she's Enoby (and we're going to sit down and explore what the true reason to put your middle finger up at preps is, and what are some constructive ways to channel that socioeconomic wrath, and what it means that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism) was right and I'm not entirely over that either.

Fucking love El's mom as a character. Spectacular level of parent relevance and usefulness. A+.

Aadhya and Liu are also characters who fucking delivered.

Re: minimalism though, I laughed at the start of The Golden Enclaves when I realized that none of the enclaver characters who'd gotten development in the the first two books were from London, the enclave El was theoretically shooting for when we met her.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

I read GRRM’s interview regarding book vs show canon and I thought the way he was approaching an adaptation of his own story, and fiction as a whole, was very interesting. I do wonder though - does the concept of having a separate show canon kind of become like a cop-out? Because in that case, any TV/film adaptation can just decide to change the plot as they see fit and go “oh, well, that’s our canon, the book is a different canon.” Doesn’t it cease to be an adaptation after a point, or at least become a loose one? In the HotD context, a lot of the changes being made I actually quite like because I can see them fitting in the canon, because there’s nothing suggesting otherwise.

But say, Sansa marrying Ramsay (or, alternatively, the moment that show was dead to me) we can say with absolute certainty did not take place and will almost definitely never take place. D&D knew that too but they went ahead with it anyway; it’s not quite like the Scarlett example where it makes no difference to the story because this change does. I feel like the whole point of adapting written words into something visual loses some of its sanctity if we just accept TV changes a whole separate canon, as opposed to simply a change made by the writers (good change or bad change is up to personal opinion).

I have followed your blog for almost a decade so I’m really curious to hear your thoughts on the subject.

GRRM's "Scarlett example" -- his question of "how many children did Scarlett O'Hara have?", because in the book Gone With the Wind she had three, one with each of her three husbands, whereas in the movie she only had one -- has been his go-to when asked about the difference between book and show canon since at least 2012. Or to quote him from 2015,

How many children did Scarlett O’Hara have? Three, in the novel. One, in the movie. None, in real life: she was a fictional character, she never existed. The show is the show, the books are the books; two different tellings of the same story.

This is IMO one of the most sensible ways for an author to look at adaptations of their work (even if I have gotten rather tired of GRRM using the Scarlett example specifically, pick something different George, we've seen it before lol). There is book canon and there is show canon. They are different parallel universes. They're separate canons because they contain changes made by the writers, and also because the very process of moving from the written word to visual media must involve some kind of change.

And this applies to all adaptations. That's why I brought up X-Men comics vs the Fox X-Men movies vs the X-Men cartoon (original 90s and 2024's '97). For example, there's 4 different versions of the Dark Phoenix Saga between those canons, at the very least. Wait, sorry lol, I forgot the Ultimate canon version. And the various in-comics alternate universe versions. And god knows when they finally bring the X-Men into the MCU they'll probably do yet another DPS there too. And that's only one of many storylines that are radically different between the various canons.

Or look at the various Interviews with the Vampire. Is the new tv show "not an adaptation" because its Claudia is a teenager rather than 5 years old as in the book or portrayed by an 11 year old as in the movie, thus resulting in extremely different relationships and a reshaped plot? (Among many other changes?) No. IWTV has book canon, movie canon, and show canon.

And I can't speak that well about Transformers since it's not a major fandom of mine, but go take a look at their various continuities if you want some more perspective about just how very far the meaning of "adaptation" can stretch.

Or hell, look at Stephen King, where among his many many many adaptations, some of which just barely resemble the original text, the only one he sued to have his name removed from was The Lawnmower Man, because they literally used an entirely different story and just slapped his title on it.

And then there's the movie Adaptation, which is a wildly meta-adaptation of the non-fiction book The Orchard Thief (it's a story about the process of adapting that book and involves a fictional version of the writer, the screenplay writer, and an entirely invented screenplay writer's twin brother)... and it was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for multiple film awards (and won a few times), and the original writer even said it kept to the book's themes.

Suffice it to say, HOTD has a long, long, long way to go before it could ever "cease to be an adaptation after a point". Changing the timeline to make Alicent and Rhaenyra the same age, or doing Blood & Cheese differently, do not even compare to what some book-to-visual media "loose adaptations" have done. Even GOT, as wildly terrible as their non-book storylines could be, both their changes to the text and after they had no actual text to work with, never became a "loose adaptation". Certainly it became a less than faithful adaptation -- and let's be real, it always was unfaithful for both themes and the essential elements of so many characters -- but it also always was a remarkably accurate adaptation of the whole span of Westeros (in geography and breadth of characters) and the general (not specific) book plot. (Consider previous attempts at adaptation that GRRM rejected, such as a single 2 hour movie, or eliminating Jon and Dany for being "irrelevant", or only making a Jon movie with none of the other storylines, etc.) Which is why, when GOT was different (and awful) it was such a betrayal, like a zombie or evil alien wearing the skin of your best friend or beloved child, and worse, that this twisted lookalike was the only version millions and millions of viewers ever saw and believed to be true.

But again, this just underlines what GRRM has said. "The show is the show, the books are the books." There is book canon and there is show canon. They are separate things. Parallel universes -- very close parallels, often touching in many places, but sometimes they're quite different. Sometimes the differences in adaptation enhance the themes of the original canon; sometimes the author may even consider certain adapted characters (Shae, King Viserys, Helaena) to be better than his original canon; sometimes you know there's only those tricky NDAs (and payments of lots of money) that prevent him from expressing his disappointment in more ways than dropping the Sansa TWOW preview chapter only days before the release of GOT S5. But perhaps if we're lucky, maybe one day we'll have yet another parallel canon to compare to the others.

[writingquestionsanswered]

Hi! I’ve noticed these days that my writing is struggling between sounding very formal and proper versus sounding casual. On one hand, I’ll have a sentence that looks like it came straight out of a 1940s British series, but two lines later there’s some casual dialogue that’s closer to an American teen novel. I grew up with both types of books tbh, so maybe that’s why? How do I stabilize my writing style and make it a little more consistent? Thank you!

Stabilizing Voice in Writing

There are three types of "voice" that play a role in how your writing sounds... authorial voice, narrative voice, and character voice.

Authorial voice is your writing style as an author. In many ways, it's your "writer personality." It's what makes your writing distinctive from another writer's. While authorial voice tends to be consistent across all stories, it will evolve with time and may even change slightly for particular projects--especially when crossing genres. Authorial voice includes things like how much/little description you use, how simple or ornate that description is, how you use word play, and the types of words you use. Narrative voice is the "voice/voices" with which the story is told. This is made up of point-of-view (the perspective from which the story is told, for example, first-person or third-person limited), as well as your writing style and use of language. Anything the narrator says falls under narrative voice.

Character voice is the way a character's personality comes through in the things they think and say. It includes things like whether they're concise or wordy when they speak, slang and catchphrases, quirks of speech like saying "um" or "uh" a lot, how their attitude is reflected in what they think and say, accent, and the kinds of words they use.

When you have a first-person narrator, narrative voice and character voice are combined, because the character's voice IS the narrative voice.

So, there are several quick exercises you can do if you want to stabilize the voice in your writing:

1 - Do a little analysis of your own writing style (so far). Remember: writing style is something that evolves over time, so you might not have a fully established writing style yet, but you should be able to look at what you write and start to see some patterns. In your case in particular, do you gravitate more toward formal speech than casual speech? Can you think of any writers whose style matches what you'd like your writing style to be? Try reading more of their books, or read a chapter an analyze the writing style to see what you can mimic.

2 - Think about the narrator of your story... Even if it's a third-person omniscient, faceless narrator, it can still help to assign a sort of mental picture for who this person might be and who they're telling the story to. Is this someone who experienced it telling the story in third-person long after the fact, with 20/20 hindsight, to someone who might be interested? Is this a god who watched it all unfold and is retelling the tale to an audience of other gods? Is it an old grizzled storyteller telling the story to a rapt audience around a campfire? Try to choose something that makes sense as far as who might be telling this story, who they're telling it to, and why. It's not that you're including this as part of the story, but rather as a sort of placeholder for your brain any time you're in narrator mode. If you can slip into this narrator's shoes as you write the narrator parts, it sometimes helps you "get into character" and stick with a consistent, relevant narrative voice.

3 - Establish character voice... Character voice does have an impact on narrative voice, even if the story isn't told in first-person. In third-person stories, who the characters are can tell you a lot about who your narrator might be (so it might help to do this step before #2 above...) For example, if your characters do happen to be a bunch of 1940s Brits, you can start to think about who they are and what they experience to figure out who the narrator might be. In this case, it probably wouldn't make sense for the narrator to be a god telling the story to other gods (as that feels too mystical for this narrator), but a grizzled storyteller recounting the tale around a campfire might make sense.

If your story's being told in second-person (You walked to the window... Like a Choose Your Own Adventure) or first-person (I walked to the window...) character voice relates even more to narrative voice, because in second-person, even though the narrator is not the POV character, the narration is still being filtered through the POV character's personality, knowledge, and experiences. And in first-person, the narrator IS the POV character, so the narrative voice and character voice are one and the same.

By doing these exercises, you can start to hone each of these voices to find some stability. Happy writing!

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!

LEARN MORE about WQA

VISIT MY Master List of Top Posts

COFFEE & COMMISSIONS ko-fi.com/wqa

[ririban]

I really cannot fully explain just how much The Case Files of Jeweler Richard means to me. I will never not be grateful about having come across it when I did. Like, I’m from India, and India isn’t the best place to actually be exposed to what being queer means. For the longest time I didn’t even know that the acronym went beyond the letter T. The word aromantic meant nothing to me because it wasn’t a word I knew. All I knew was that when my friends were getting crushes and dating, I was desperately trying to find new excuses for why I didn’t have anyone I was interested in. Because “I don’t want to be in a relationship” was an answer that earned me strange looks.

I did eventually learn that something called aromanticism exists by the time I went to college, but I never really bothered to learn what that entailed. Then I met a friend who happened to be asexual, and she pointed out that based on what I told her, I might be aroace. And I thought about it for a while, but wasn’t really convinced. More importantly, the idea of sticking a label to myself kinda scared me because it felt like it was something irreversible.

And then Jeweler Richard happened. I really enjoyed the first episode, even shed a couple of tears. The inclusion of a canon lesbian character in the second episode was a pleasant surprise (I did not know about Tatsuki back then. Present day me is annoyed we never got to see her in the anime). But it went from an anime I simply enjoyed to a story I absolutely fell in love with in episode 8: The Angel's Aquamarine. This was the episode in which we first found out about Tanimoto’s views on romance, and I found myself understanding where she was coming from. Online people were discussing how she came off as aromantic, and that made me think again. But, again, “sticking” that label to me wasn’t something I was comfortable with.

That changed when I came across a certain passage in volume 6. For those of you who haven’t read the novel yet and are okay with spoilers, Tanimoto visits Étranger after being invited by Seigi. There she has a conversation with Richard, during which he tells her this:

“Humans are creatures that can only recognize the present moment as reality. But that present changes, moment by moment. For example, someone who was bisexual in their twenties might decide to identify as heterosexual in their thirties. Or someone who considered themself heterosexual at age seventeen might realize that they’re gay at age twenty-five. Someone who may have considered themself polyamorous and open to relationships with anyone might feel as though they’ve met their soulmate at age fifty-five and become monogamous. Of course, this isn’t true of everyone—but from a statistical perspective, changes of this nature aren’t at all unusual. It’s just like how, if left to their own devices, our hair and nails will continue to grow.”

The reason I was scared of declaring myself as aro was because I worried that it was something I’d never be able to take back. That becoming aro to the people around me wouldn’t allow me to one day say, “no, I don’t think I actually am aromantic”. I would’ve rather stayed in a state of being confused than make a decision I couldn’t undo. But then Richard told Tanimoto that it’s fine. It’s fine to change your mind later on. That a label isn’t fixed to you, and isn’t something you have to carry throughout your life if it’s something you no longer identify with. And idk if I can even begin to explain how important that was to me. Because those were the words I needed.

It’s okay that I’m not interested in being in a relationship. It’s okay if I call myself aro. It’s okay for me to no longer make up excuses because a simple “I’m not interested in dating” is enough. This is a comparison that only Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint fans will get, but The Case Files of Jeweler Richard is to me what Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse is to Kim Dokja. JR did not save my life in the way that TWSA did for Kim Dokja, but it had a bigger impact on my life than any other story. I’d like to believe that the love I have for JR is similar to the love Dokja holds for TWSA.

As a final point, this confidence in myself and my identity isn’t all that JR gave me. Another important thing that happened in my life thanks to it is that I made many lovely friends in the fandom 💕

[aangarchy]

So while rewatching the live action trailer a 50th time i kind of started thinking about something.

There's a few moments in atla that always seemed untouchable to me. Not only because they were well executed when it comes to storytelling, but also bc we never actually see the moments in question. Examples are: the attack on the air temples, Ozai burning Zuko, Katara's mother's death. We hear about these from other characters who happened to be there, or in case of the air temples: we hear the moment being retold as history. It's the latter i want to expand on.

The original cartoon never shows us even a glimpse of the attack on the air temples. You could say "well it's a kid's show they can't show a brutal genocide" but honestly, we're talking about a cartoon that showed a skeleton on screen in the third episode, showed the main character getting electrocuted and plummeting to his death, and showed a man being drowned by a spirit. The reason they didn't show it imo, is because it makes sense for the narrative. This attack was a century ago. Everyone that witnessed the attacks and was old enough to remember them is dead. Bumi is the only person we know of that was alive at the time and old enough to somewhat remember, but he wasn't present. It's comparable to world war one for us. There's nobody alive currently that properly remembers WW1. We're being told about it in history class, we get shown those weird black and white videos of smiling soldiers on their way to their death, pushing carts through the mud, them shooting a few canons, the trenches etc. But there's no first hand recollections. The creators really drove home the point of the airbender genocide being ancient history to the current inhabitants of this world by never showing us the attacks itself, and only having it be a known historical fact. It's just something that happened, it was long ago, nobody remembers it. All they know is there's no more airbenders, they're extinct, and nobody remembers jack shit about airnomad culture and philosophy except those that study it (aka professor zei) and even then, it's based off of destroyed architecture and hard to find historical texts that i'm sure the Fire Nation tried their best to erase. The viewers of the show only get information about air nomads through Aang, and whatever flashbacks from his own memory he provides. It leaves us wanting to know more, and it feels extra tragic knowing we'll only have Aang to rely on to tell us the tales of his people (for atla specifically, i know we now have more info due to the avatar novels).

Netflix however, literally opens their trailer with three shots of the attack. The comet, then the fireballs being shot, then the firebenders and airbenders facing off. I don't like this decision to show the battle that took place, because then the point of it being ancient gets a bit lost. We as the audience get more information than the main characters have, and idk but to me that kind of ruins the experience?

Same with Zuko getting his scar. Not only are they gonna show us that, they put it in the trailer. Why? This is a very important character moment in the show that we don't even get to see bc it's told from Iroh's perspective and he looked away the moment it happened. Before this we were given crumbs as to how Zuko got his scar. And Netflix is just tossing it our way like Peeta tossed bread at Katniss Everdeen.

I might feel differently abt this when the show airs (although not likely lol) but currently i'm just kind of mad at these creative decisions being made man

[aleksanderscult]

One thing that’s always puzzled me is how, during Alina’s time at the Little Palace, she and Aleksander only shared a handful of meaningful interactions—maybe three or four scenes at most. I understand he had a lot on his plate as the leader of the Grisha and had his duties as a general to manage, but it still feels like there was a missed opportunity for more connection between the two. If Aleksander really wanted Alina to see his perspective and not turn against him (even though I feel like she would still do that because it seems like Mal is always her only goal… 😪), wouldn’t it have made sense for them to have more conversations and moments together? It would have deepened their dynamic and possibly made Alina’s later decisions even more complex.

It’s almost like—more like it is—that Leigh Bardugo forgot that Aleksander had been waiting for the Sun Summoner for centuries, and then, when Alina is finally there, he’s practically absent. I get that he’s extremely busy, but why not add other scenes? There’s just this big gap in their relationship, which feels like a lost opportunity to flesh out their bond further. Why do you think Bardugo made this choice?

The lack of interaction feels so intentional, but I can't help wondering how the story might have shifted if we saw more of them together.

What about you? What changes would you have made to their dynamic in the first book? Maybe more time spent on Aleksander revealing the weight of his past, or moments of vulnerability between them that would complicate Alina’s view of him?

I understand your confusion, anon, but think about it from this perspective and all will make sense: This was Leigh Bardugo's very first novel.

See where my point is? And once you realize this then you understand why this book feels so amateurish. Most of all, it lacks another 100-150 pages of character development where Alina spends more time at the Little Palace and around the Darkling.

This way the reader would get more content about their mentor-student relationship, Bardugo would have the proper amount of pages to explore the Darkling's manipulation and Alina (and the reader) would feel even more bonded with the Little Palace. In canon we jumped from September - October straight to late December - January. We only got a recap of her time there.

Now what would I have done?

As an aspiring author that currently practices to writing and developing stories, I would explore Alina's time there more. It's important not to drag a novel with useless scenes but write down moments that even though would feel simple at first to the reader, will make so much sense afterwards when all is revealed and will make the reader go "Aha!". In short, that's what Bardugo should have done with the Darkling's scenes. I would personally have him around Alina even more but I wouldn't make him seem evil. On the contrary, my Darkling would deliberately let Alina be viciously trained by Baghra and then when he would step in he would be kinder, more understanding and more tolerant in order to gain Alina's trust. A manipulative person wants you to see them the way they want you to see them. (In canon, Aleksander was kind because that's who he was and not because of some grand plan which was such a waste). I wouldn't make him fall in love with Alina but Alina would have feelings for him something that my Aleksander would take advantage of, even after his schemes would be revealed. (I love some good-written manipulation, haven't you guessed it yet?)

Ah yes, of course I would change Alina's character. When you're in a foreign environment you unintentionally trust those that are kinder to you. With Alina I don't know what the fuck happened (mother issues). But I wouldn't write any POVs from the Darkling. I find it much more juicy when you don't know what the enemy is thinking, especially when he's cunning. It makes you guessing his next move and surprises you with it.

Also about the relationship between Genya-Alina. I would make the former more vengeful and darker (I'm sorry but I can't resist to such women in fiction 😩). She would be more focused in her mission than being a true friend to Alina and her kind words and actions towards the latter would be just a mask. In truth, my Genya would only care to see the royal family burned. This whole "I'm sorry for betraying you gonna go and betray the Darkling" wouldn't exist. She would know what she would be fighting for.

[derekscorner]

Fated Rantings: Heaven's Felt

I have finished Heaven's Feel (all three films)

And hot damn what a story that was. As early as the first movie I found myself enjoying the route more than I did with Unlimited Blade Works.

It wasn't that strong a notion at first due to the first movie having to set up the story which means it had to retrace some moments from Fate or UBW. I was even disappointed that it just skimmed over Shirou meeting Saber for the first time.

I did expect it to skim some moments due to the nature of Fate/Stay Night. I said it previously but Fate/Stay Night was originally a visual novel (one that is getting a remaster for Steam/Switch as of me writing this) with multiple routes and endings. A staple of the visual novel format.

As a result each route has the same starting point. Some may feel it wear on them if they watch these back to back like I've done since last year.

Even so, I can't say it bothered me that much. Yes, Skimming over the summoning of Saber let me down a tad but the rest of the first movies opening act was decent. I liked seeing the different perspectives of the scenes I had saw in Unlimited Blade Works just a week ago.

It is also fair to mention that movies of a series typically expect you to have seen the thing it's based on to begin with.

Then the second half of the movie kicks in. The changes began rather quickly which I was thankful for. As soon as Kirei mentioned Kiritsugu's previous occupation and the 4th war I realized the story would shift- THEN BAM!

That Berserker battle. It was brief but that movie budget made it so good. It was then that I also noticed another change, the movies are more graphic than Zero or UBW.

In this movie, when Shirou takes a hit for Saber from Berseker, you see his guts fly out as he rolls around like a busted toy. It doesn't escalate to high but you do see inside of large cuts or severed limbs. And I am only praising it because it actually added to the horror-like atmosphere Heaven's Feel has.

All three movies feel like they were drawn to be a horror film in many scenes. The way the shadows bend or literally come alive, the way servants are mercilessly hunted by Angra Mainyu, or even the Sakura dream sequence only to learn she's eating people.

The gore just makes it hit harder how terrifying the situation is in Heaven's Feel.

Down 'n Dirty

The gore and horror presentation aside there was another factor I was curious about, the romance. Now some reading this may wonder why and others will think they know why and that has to do with Fate's reputation of hentai.

The original visual novel had hentai scenes in it, that is an objective truth. So did its canonical sequel Ataraxia. This was done because Nasu thought it would help sell the story and...well they were right.

The whole initial reason King Arthur was gender bent into a woman was also for this logic. He knew his native Japanese market and appealed to it.

Once Type-Moon got going those hentai scenes were removed. Later stories lacked it at all. Yes, the artwork and designs for characters is definitely made with sex appeal in mind but it's a far cry from where it started.

To be honest I find the whole thing fascinating because the series tendency for gender bending and "coomer" art is based in a writer just trying to appeal to the broadest audience.

They even use this for in-lore jokes quite often. For instance, the original draft of Fate/Stay Night, the world in which King Arthur is still a man, was reworked into Fate/Prototype years later.

They even do this fun thing where the voice actors for Merlin and female Artoria swap roles in Fate/Prototype. Female Arthur voices the female Merlin and the male Merlin now voices the male Arthur.

Some gender bends are literal jokes such as the female Nero Claudius (seen in the gif above^) who was gender swapped just to trick Fate fans into thinking Saber (Artoria) was in Fate Extra.

And others are that way because that historical figure was believed to be a woman or it was left ambiguous such as Nagao Kagetora.

Aka Nasu is very self aware of the Fate gender bending and porn jokes and plays into it.

Back to Romance

I went a bit off tangent there but I needed to explain that bit to focus on why the romance between Shirou & Sakura was a curiosity for me. In my desire to learn Fate lore I saw more than one video or fan comment quoting Nasu and others at Type-Moon.

One thing that stuck in my mind was that the initial Saber and Rin scenes were added just to balance it all but the scenes with Sakura were considered crucial to her plot.

I now understand why. No, before you ask, you do not get a hentai scene in Heaven's Feel. However, Heaven's Feel does fully commit to the physical nature that Sakura & Shirous relationship grows too.

Yes dear reader, Shirou gets laid. Get your middle school snickering out of your system, I'll wait.

The whole film just hammers home just how much Shirou existing means to Sakura. For them to go that far only seems natural, for her to hold on despite her horrible life makes sense.

This poor girl was violated years on end by crest worms as Zouken warped her into a fake grail. Her adoptive brother raped her for years on end just because he's a little shit with inferiority complexes.

Hell, Sakura is still traumatized by her father giving her to the Matou's in Fate/Zero.

Despite all that, even though she believes Shirou wouldn't want her for being so...um "damaged", he sticks by her side anyway. All together it makes that bond very genuine.

There's no forced melodrama or silly misunderstandings, just two kids trapped in a mess with no idea what to do.

A more complete Continuation

Even now I sit here in awe of it. I have sit through Fate 2006 and Unlimited Blade Works, two works in which Sakura is barely a passing note. Hell, even in Fate/Zero she's barely there but Heaven's Feel made me care.

It goes beyond that though. I found Heaven's Feel to be a better or more complete resolution to the mess left behind by the 4th Grail war depicted in Fate/Zero.

There are some questions I had throughout such as;

Why did Zouken summon Assassin in this route but not others?

Did a fragment of the grail survive in every route or is that a Heaven's Feel thing only?

Why didn't Rin have Shirou make the jeweled sword in UBW?

Why did Gilgamesh attack Sakura? Is he not for Kirei's plans in HF?

Small things like that. They don't break anything at all but I felt that I should mention them because I still think Heaven's Feel is a better continuation of Fate/Zero than Unlimited Blade Works despite such questions.

There is no grand reasoning for my feelings. I just liked that Heaven's Feel addressed things left behind in Fate/Zero more than Unlimited Blade Works did.

Such as Illya. She got so little time in UBW that I was a bit shocked. Even Fate 2006 gave her some attention. I mean, know each Fate work is a timeline of it's own but UBW and Heaven's Feel both heavily reference Zero.

All three were made by ufotable after all so it makes sense. Anime only fans may even see ufotable's adaptions as their own pocket in the Type-Moon multiverse.

I was sad her happy ending was to die but I can't help but feel slightly happy for her since she was shown running to Irisviel who's soul has been in the grail since Fate/Zero ended.

They even went out of their way to animate a scene that I can only assume was a minor one in the visual novel. It's a scene in which Illya over hears Fujimura talk about Kiritsugu's many trips to Europe. He failed her in many ways but he never stopped trying to see his daughter.

Then there was Rin. The story gave her less attention as I'd expect but I feel that it compliments how she's portrayed in UBW or even Fate 2006.

It was a nice touch that the one who made it possible to save Sakura was Rin. She has her own baggage about Sakura's life and while blunt and unable to relate to her trauma (by her own admission) she still got through to Sakura and all it took was letting her know that she loved her.

That's fucking beautiful man. Shirou even mumbles that they won due to Rin's actions.

There's also the aforementioned Kiritsugu. Shirou gets more insight into his fathers life and previous actions than other routes. It played into Kirei's obsession with him and Shirou's.

Shirou himself has a much more compelling arc in Heaven's Feel than UBW or even the Fate Route. Thanks to what he learns about his father he focuses on being a hero of justice but this time for Sakura.

His ideals aren't as foolish, they're focused. When he is focused on being one person's hero over everyone's he becomes a much more interesting character to me.

Hell, Zouken tries to convince him to kill Sakura at one point thinking that he'll do it because Kiritsugu would but no. Shirou acknowledges that he would betray his ideals for her .

That not only helps Sakura later but grows him way further than his fight with Archer in UBW did.

Seeing this I can understand why the "Miyuverse" Shirou is so loved.

I know I'm comparing routes but I can't help it. I'm sitting here conflicted because I liked this more than Saber's route. I am a Saber shill/simp at this point but I can't help but feel that Heaven's Feel is a better narrative conclusion.

Shirou is more compelling, I was made to like an ignored character, the story tackles some remnants of the 4th Grail such as Angra Mainyu whom we only saw hints of at the end of Fate/Zero, the grail system being destroyed at the end, etc.

It just feels tighter as a narrative to me. Although the reasons listed aren't the only explanations as to why.

No, the biggest contributing factor by far was Kirei himself.

Opposites

This man, this fucking monster, once again became far more interesting than he should be. I talked about him when I finished Fate/Zero which I'll link here: https://derekscorner.tumblr.com/post/737296248042815488/fated-rantings-ground-zero#notes

This man's obsession with Kiritsugu persisted for ten fucking years. Even now he can't accept him nor can he seem to accept the fact that they weren't as parallel as he believes.

All Kirei really gained from the 4th Grail War was realizing that he enjoys making others suffer. He's known from the start that he was broken inside but was cursed with the common sense to know it.

That contradiction is shown in his occupation. His whole tussle with Zouken and Assassin is badass to be sure. A 500yr old mage and a heroic spirit are fended off by this man, this fucked up preacher.

A badass to be sure but what caught my eye was him using scripture to harm Zouken. As far as I know, you can't just throw around scripture in Fate, you have to fundamentally believe in it to some degree.

Kirei is shown often genuinely reading his bible or kissing his cross. Actions that seem stupid when he makes it a hobby to ruin lives.

He goes on about how Angra Mainyu deserves to be born or about how something is neither good nor bad until it's gained knowledge. A solid argument but only when normal life is concerned.

Angra Mainyu is a man-made god, a devil, a focus of humanities evils into a spirit. All at the sacrifice of some unnamed boy centuries ago.

It was active during the 3rd Grail War, it's been very self aware within the Grail since then, and it's shown tormenting Kiritsugu and Illya.

Angra Mainyu is very much aware. It has knowledge, it is evil.

No, what Shirou calls him out on here saying "that's bullshit" is Kirei just wanting to see Angra Mainyu cause as much harm as possible...or so he thinks.

Personally I think that's half of it. The other half is Kirei's question. Although he should logically see that Angra Mainyu is evil by it's nature alone he still wants to know it's thoughts.

How does it feel to be born this way, how will it feel once it's fulfilled it's purpose, does it consider itself evil when humanity made it evil.

He feels compelled to know these things because he himself was born broken. Kirei knows deep down that nature is very much as real as nurture. No matter what he's done he's been broken.

He tried to love a woman but only cried because he felt that he should've killed her if she was meant to die. He had a loving father for whom no tear was shed when he was murdered.

He killed his mentor and aided Kairya just to see their torment. He told Shirou about Kiritsugu to see his reaction because he, like Zouken, thought Shirou was the same.

He fully believes that witnessing Angra Mainyu be born will answer his own burning questions about his nature when there is nothing to answer.

Angra Mainyu is man-made, nothing it can say can truly rectify Kirei's broken soul.

His Parallel was a Boy

The point, as I understood it, was that Kirei couldn't get his answers from Kiritsugu. His obsession, how he talks about him to Shirou, he never got over that.

Then he saw the grail. It even revived him from death but that won't give him the answer either. Even if he had witnessed its birth.

It is only at the end when he fighting a child that Kirei finds his true opposite. Shirou has nothing due to the 4th war, he considers his survival a sin.

Kirei considers his entire existence a sin yet he says it himself. They're opposite extremes of that same emptiness. I was frequently reminded of Fate/Zero because Kirei was.

Kirei died in that last war and was stuck in time in more ways than one. There is no way to answer or fix him.

It's damn poetic that both Kirei and Shirou realize something by admitting how unlike Kiritsugu Shirou has become. A fitting finale to a compelling monster.

This whole time Kirei's true opposite was a boy.

Finale

I'm sure I had more to say but I don't think this can get much longer. Plus some things weren't worth whole paragraphs. Such as my love for the battles and animation.

The small things like Shirou calling Archer a dick when he chucks him down like a sack of potatoes. Hell, Archer's entire arc this film is neat to see due to how passive he is. When Shirou is willing to be Sakura's hero or save Illya Archer's attitude changes on a dime. To the point that he'd even give up a literal arm.

I loved seeing Rider get more lines and screen time. She has a decent character that I now wish I got more of in other Fate works.

Then there's the whole Saber Alter and her battle....I can't. The fight is fucking amazing but just picturing Shirou ending her hurts me. TuT

Oh well, I'm ranted out now. Bye~

=======================

For my other experiences with Fate go here: https://derekscorner.tumblr.com/tagged/fated-rantings

[benkyoutobentou]

Ranking the books I read in Japanese this year

It’s the end of the year and I don’t think I’ll be finishing any more Japanese books this month, so I thought it would be fun to rank what I read! I read twelve novels in Japanese this year, hitting my goal (but not quite reading one a month). There won’t be twelve rankings here, though, because I read multiple books from the same series and will be combining those.

9. コーヒーが冷めないうちに - 川口俊和: This book just didn’t do it for me. I listened to it on audiobook in February for a target language listening challenge and got stuck in a vicious cycle of not paying attention because the story was boring me and being bored of it because I wasn’t paying enough attention. Most other people I’ve seen who have read it in Japanese also thought it was boring, though, so I’m not mourning any loss.

8. 宝石商リチャードの謎鑑定 - 辻村七子: I really wanted to like this series but the negatives outweighed the positives so much that I only read the first volume. The most damning part of this for me was that I couldn’t stand the writing style. It was extremely confusing, and having a language barrier on top of that just made it miserable. I’m really glad I read this with others because I was not the only one who found the writing style to be ridiculously confusing for a book that doesn’t even handle confusing or difficult topics. Seriously, the writing was so bad that I considered continuing the series in English. But the characters were good.

7. あん - ドリアン助川: Now we get into the books that I enjoyed, just not as much. I liked this book well enough, but it was just a bit middling. I wasn’t overly invested in the characters or story and I found myself wondering how on earth this story could go on for another hundred pages. It was sweet, but ultimately I don’t think the story will stick with me at all.

6. ちょっと今から仕事やめてくる - 北川恵海: This was another audiobook read and although I know I enjoyed it, I really don’t remember much about it. I’m also not sure if the twist, which I did think was really good, actually happened or was something I misunderstood (I’m pretty sure I understood it though). Overall, this one goes on the to-reread pile, just as soon as I can find a physical copy of it.

5. 旅猫リポート - 有川浩: This was an adorable story perfect for cat lovers, but the end had me a little bored. Honestly though, it was quite the experience to go from being a bit bored to crying my eyes out in the span of ten pages. The writing style and the main cat’s perspective was super charming as well.

4. 人間失格 - 太宰治: This was my first classic in Japanese and wasn’t as difficult as I expected. Dazai’s writing style is a pain in the ass, but I will admit that it started to grow on me as the book went on and now I find it endearing. It also wasn’t as depressing as I had heard it was, and I really enjoyed getting a perspective of that time period.

3. 美しい彼 - 凪良ゆう: I only read one volume of this, probably exclusively because I suddenly couldn’t stand romance when I had fifty pages left of this. What can I say, I love a good toxic gay romance. The writing style is chronically readable and the story is super engaging.

2. No. 6 - あさのあつこ: I’m a fan of the anime for this and the novels have not let me down. I’ve only read two so far, but the story and characters are super gripping. I really love the emphasis on dialogue in this series, I really feel like it makes the characters pop more. The only problem I have is this odd quirk in Asano’s writing style, where the majority of the series is told from third person point of view, but will suddenly switch to first person point of view for a single sentence. It’s not enough to deter me, but it is a little odd to see.

1. キノの旅 - 時雨沢恵一: My number one favorite read in Japanese this year and no one should be surprised. I’m a massive Kino fan and read three volumes this year. I love books that I can analyze the hell out of and this is exactly that. Additionally, I think the writing style and the way both Kino and Hermes are characterized adds so much to both the stories and the underlying meanings that Shigusawa is trying to get across.

[eleemosynecdoche]

Okay. Oil fire serious posting, huh? Now my friend @rlyehtaxidermist is a patient, forbearing soul, and I've been known to get a little hot under the collar at times. The language may get spicy. You have been warned.

Anyways, there are people apparently trying to do some kind of shipping war over this interpretation of Touhou 19 and of Sanae and Tsukasa. They level three basic charges- that there's no support for it, that it's a shallow sex ship, and that Tsukasa is obviously manipulating Sanae. Let's take it from the top.

1. No Evidence, Not Canon

Well, I could go and take screenshots and get the Japanese text and screenies of confirmed "sex isn't real in Touhou" people trying to puzzle out the parts of the Japanese text where Sanae and Tsukasa use very familiar language with each other. But I won't.

Why does it matter? Like, take it as a given that this is the case, that this ship is created from nothing. What would that mean? That people need to stop talking about it? Or restrict their posting about it to some kind of space for non-canon shipping? Is that reasonable?

Look, shipping characters on the basis of them being in adjacent stages has a history in Touhou. Some of them, like Parsee/Yuugi, got ZUN offering some support for it much later, through indirect means. Others, like Nitori/Hina, are kind of unpopular nowadays. People still make art and comics and doujin novels for those unpopular ships based on proximity. And why shouldn't they?

Some of my favorite doujin works- Ōkawa Bkub's "Charm" series, ALISON Airlines's drug-themed and mind-expanding works, Komaku Jūshoku's Ran-chama shorts- are far outside the boundaries of what ZUN produces. I think it's good that people take what ZUN puts down and run with it. I think that's a much healthier way to creatively engage with an artistic work you enjoy. It also gave us Higurashi When They Cry, Umineko When They Cry, Undertale and Deltarune, and other independent works where the influence isn't quite as obvious.

Anyways, all that freedom brings with it people being allowed to ship in ways you think aren't canonically supported, as part of being able to creatively reinterpret the work they're engaging with.

2. It's A Shallow Sex Ship!

Now let's be fucking clear here- what people are implying by this is pretty clearly "You're using this shipping to get off!"

Look. Do you really think that people are likely to be getting off to the idea of sex that's unglamorous and kinda mediocre, a bit awkward? If there is some kind of fetishist of that kind posting about SanaKasa, I'll buy them a drink to salute their extremely broad and abstract sexuality, which would be quite rare indeed.

I'm being mean. The more likely thought process here is that social assumptions around whether anyone would use direct and somewhat crude language about weird sex without being aroused at that moment or being some kind of perpetually-horny sex pervert are shaping how people react to seeing posts where a foxgirl's tail is used as a proxy for her having an erection.

So set that aside. I'm gonna talk about why the sex posts are meaningful to me personally.

I'm not an old hand of Touhou fandom, I came to it as a grown adult with the period between Legacy of Lunatic Kingdom and Hidden Star in Four Seasons as my entry point. But what I learned very quickly is that there's a lot of Touhou stuff, posting, art, comics, fanfics, where people offer up sexual content that I find deeply unappealing (mostly because it's dull, het, and not infrequently invokes sexual violence). And then, eventually, I realized that there was a kind of reaction to this state of affairs.

This was the sense that Touhou fandom was divided into bad sexual stuff and good desexualized stuff. And sexual stuff from a lesbian or WLW perspective was lumped in as part of the bad, with an assumption it was made for men too. And so if you wanted to enjoy the lesbian overtones of Touhou, the Touhous better not be having sex!

This is in turn correlated, I think, with the sense of Touhou as the whimsical side of the "cute girls having tea parties" media metaconcept. All of this ties really heavily into a broader social understanding of sexual desires between women, between nonbinary people, (or even between men much of the time) as intrinsically predatory and needing to be desexualized to be acceptable.

But Touhou isn't a series about cute girls doing cute things at tea parties in the text. In the games, it's a bunch of rude women threatening each other with violence in erudite ways, then engaging in elegant examples of that violence, and finally going drinking together. There's intrinsic sexual tension to all of that. It's people flirting with each other, showing off their stuff, and then getting to know each other at a bar.

Touhou's gotten more explicit about the sexual side of things. Tsukasa, who's drawn with what are instantly recognizable as sexually charged expressions, lidded eyes and insouciant gestures, whose outfit loosely resembles both short pajamas and a romper dress with the skirt cut away to show off the built-in bloomers, is a noteworthy chunk of that, and then she gets treated both in the fandom and in UDoaLG by powerful beast youkai as, essentially, a born slut.

But the sexual aspects have been there since Perfect Cherry Blossom at the latest. The implicit flirtatiousness, the women with extremely close relationships. So what talking about Tsukasa having bad sex and falling in love means to me is a couple of things- it's an acknowledgement that sex is going on. It's also a way to engage with Tsukasa as a character who's engaged in what is only barely subtextually survival sex work, and offer up the possibility of love in a very normal and unglamorous sense, for Tsukasa to be sexual and yet loved and fully worthy of love.

Making them both transfem or transfeminine-coded (i.e. Tsukasa probably didn't transition, but her penis is still effectively a trans woman's rather than that of a cis woman who shapeshifted in terms of how characters understand her position and body) is in turn an extension of that, of how trans women's bodies are fetishized (especially in sex work). And taking these bodies we, as a group of people, have, and treating them as sexual, but in a more naturalistic way yet playful way. And so for me it's just a matter of being truthful- this is describing the situation in terms of the world as I know it, within certain specific boundaries of Touhou I like to use.

This humongous nerd can have a loving, fulfilling relationship while not being good at sex and having to figure that out. This poor little kon kon can be loved without it being transactional, without having to try and become purified and sweet and "More tea, Miss Sanae?" Even bad girls (in several senses) can love and be loved. If you're gay enough with your cringe girlfriend, a miracle will happen.

All of this is of course my hyperprecise sexual fetish. Every last word of it.

3. All According To Tsukasa's Keikaku

"Tsukasa's just manipulating Sanae!"

Why is it important that Tsukasa be an undefeatable schemer and manipulator?

Let me put it this way. If Tsukasa can manipulate everyone equally well because everyone has weaknesses in their heart or whatever, that's blandly cynical. It makes her out to be some kind of overwhelming malevolence. If Tsukasa is really really good at manipulating powerful, perceptive, and forceful women, but completely unable to affect naive, slightly gullible, says exactly what she's thinking Sanae beyond marginally? That's funny! The one person that should be a cream puff to manipulate is beyond manipulation!

It's thematic! Someone who's open and honest and not trying to manipulate other people can't be manipulated in turn, because she's rejecting the game. It's relevant to Tsukasa's character! UDoaLG makes it clear that tube foxes are despised, that they're seen as weak and unable to fight like real women do. Tsukasa has to manipulate people because it's her only way to keep from being crushed, or so she thinks, because she's immersed in that reality.

Sanae isn't manipulatable, but also doesn't really try to crush her. Sanae offers a relationship between equals, even if they have different power levels.

It even plays into neurodivergence and mental illness- think of Tsukasa as someone unsure if she's manipulating people or not. Sanae being autistic and not manipulatable provides a reassurance that she's capable of doing better.

None of which means she's going to start being a saint or even a decent person, just that she's an awful person whose awfulness is hard to separate from her situation, but she can be in a better situation without having to become good first. She can stay malicious and kinda sucky and we know she's doing it on purpose now! We can say, "you are yucky disgusting, babygirl" and squeeze her into a Pringles tube without guilt. With minimal guilt.

Also, abilities are self-declared and Tsukasa's method of manipulating the other polycule members in Unconnected Marketeers mostly seemed to be encouraging them to do what they wanted to do already. Similarly, she can manipulate Aun in UDoaLG by playing on Aun's desire to be helpful and the dangers of the situation, but Aun also knows it's safe because her other body is back at the shrine. She's not, frankly, massively strong. In demonstrated "power levels" she's a step below Yachie "failgirl" Kicchou. Think about that.

Made it all the way to the end? Congratulations! Imagine a Touhou ending slide where I'm (whatever you think I look like) holding up Tsukasa and Sanae sock puppets.

[merlot-and-chardonnay]

Yet Another HotD Take: or, Aemond in the Line of Succession

Does anyone ever actually think about this scene from Episode 9 of HotD?

When Aemond and Criston were looking for Aegon?

Right after Aemond no-so-subtly implies he's the one who should be king given all the hard work he's invested in ruling. He then says this next line to the knight:

I'm next in line for the throne. Should they come looking for me...I intend to be found.

I've heard some people say Aemond forgot that Aegon had children of his own, and if the guy did end up going missing indefinitely, then his oldest son, little Jaehaerys would technically be next in line.

Thing is...I don't think Aemond actually forgot.

I am actually certain the guy damn well knew what he was saying when he said what he said (try saying that three times fast).

As we know of this episode, with the passing of King Viserys, Alicent and the Greens made their move to quickly surpass Rhaenyra's claim as heir to the Iron Throne in favor of crowning Aegon as king. Aegon, however, was nowhere to be found in the Red Keep, so the search began in the city to find the guy.

Among those looking was Aemond, ever the good solider, who was probably playing in his mind multiple times how the scenario would play out should Aegon not be found.

Look, we saw the mask fall off for just a moment, and we got see Aemond for who he was in that moment...an ambitious individual who sees himself as someone who is most fit to rule above his older sister and especially his older brother.

Aemond mentioned how he was the dutiful brother who trained with the sword and studied history AND philosophy.

And being someone who is presumably well versed in history as he is, it is safe to assume Aemond knows his family's history quite well...and THAT includes being well versed in the reign of Maegor the Cruel.

For those who are NOT familiar, Maegor was the second born son of Aegon the Conqueror by his sister-wife Visenya. Like Aemond, Maegor also learned to fight with the sword; upon the passing of Aegon, when his body was burned, Maegor took Blackfyre from the ashes, AND he waited till he was well in his 20s before he claimed his own dragon.

That dragon being his father's, Balerion the Black Dread.

(in the Fire and Blood novel, Maegor implied Balerion was the dragon whom was worthy of him to claim).

Maegor was all the things his older brother wasn't, yet Aenys was the one to sit the throne after Aegon because he was firstborn. After Aenys passed, the throne should have been passed to his firstborn son who was also called Aegon (surprise, surprise), but before that could happen, Maegor (with the full backing of his mother) swooped in on dragonback and took the throne, making his nephew Aegon the Uncrowned.

Maegor went to great lengths to secure his claim to the throne, and this included killing his nephew on dragonback.

Sound familiar anyone?

I know in Aemond's case, it was an accident, but whose to say Maegor didn't mean to kill his nephew either? The novel after all is written from the perspective of multiple unreliable narrators.

Now that I actually put that into words, Maegor and Aemond actually share some similarities with one another.

They were both second born sons who out-shined their older brothers in more ways than one, such as mastering the skill of sword fighting AND claiming the largest dragons the Targaryens possessed.

And of course they killed their nephews, that's...another similarity.

That being said, from the Greens perspective, if Aegon wasn't found in time, than it wouldn't have been so farfetched for them to believe the throne should pass to Aegon's firstborn son.

However, in this point in time, Prince Jaehaerys is still a child, like maybe five or six years of age, I really don't think Otto Hightower would find the idea of a child sitting the throne anymore appealing then seeing Rhaenyra on the throne.

With that also said, I could see this panning out two ways, IF Aegon someone ran off from King's Landing:

The Greens small council agree that Jaehaerys would sit the throne next BUT only under the condition that regents would reside over matters of the crown until the boy came of age. To which Aemond would happily volunteer and be appointed Prince Regent, filling in for his nephew until Jaehaerys was officially crowned whenever he was deemed mature enough to rule on his own.

Aemond fails to find Aegon and reports to his mother that this is so. He then reports to the Greens council and somehow persuades the council to have him sit the throne next on the grounds that Jaehaerys is way too young to rule. With the backing of both his mother and grandsire, Aemond is crowned king and then proceeds to sends terms of surrender to his older sister.

To be fair, Aemond did get the chance to rule in the main story line. Spoilers ahead:

Into the events of the Dance of Dragons, Aegon was seriously injured in battle and unable to stand in to rule due to the immense pain he was in.

It was at this time Aemond was appointed Prince Regent, wearing the crown and sitting the throne in Aegon's place with the assumption that Aegon would eventually recover and be able to rule again.

In the novel, Aemond supposedly was to have said that the crown looked better on himself than it ever did on his brother.

And, to predict the events of HotD season 2, I think once Aemond gets the taste of this power, he is probably not going to want to give it up anytime soon, especially when he sees what he could accomplish for the realm as Prince Regent in comparison to what his brother couldn't accomplish as king.

Aemond is a man of duty...but he is also a man of ambition. That is a dangerous combo down the line as that can potentially have the makings of a benevolent tyrant, which is one who sees themself as the only one fit to rule and direct.

Why? Well because everyone else is an idiot:

I find this kinda ironic in a way.

Otto Hightower was always fearful of Daemon sitting the throne because he saw the man as a potential second Maegor...

But has, or will, Otto feel the same way when he sees how Aemond takes to sitting the throne as Prince Regent?

I don't know how the show runners will play this out, but it would be interesting to see more of Aemond, especially in his Prince Regent Era, how he takes to it, and just how willing he would be when he comes to realize that eventually he will have to give up this power once Aegon heals over.

FYI I already know how the story will ultimately pan out, but it would be interesting to see Aemond contemplating those particular hypotheticals.

That's my take.

Have a nice day

[lurking-latinist]

The fascinating thing about mediocre Victorian three-volume novel The Pit Town Coronet, which evidently I am liveblogging now?, is (what I know to be a characteristic of the era and the genre, but this one's taking it to extremes) its propensity for jumping between characters. As soon as we've gotten invested in one little scene, we drift away to some other vignette with completely different people, often brand-new people with little obvious relevance. We just spent an entire chapter getting to know a burglar before learning that he intends to burgle Georgina's husband's cousin (whom we barely know). None of the events seem to have any consequences for the characters, because the plot just goes somewhere else. Lucy did get blackmailed for a bit by a servant who had found out she was Lucius' mother, but all he wanted was to get his old job back, and then we got distracted by the new High Church curate and what the vicar's wife thought of him. (To be fair to the author, the new curate did go on to propose to Lucy and she turned him down, and while she was turning him down she seemed to be motivated by guilt over her secret baby, but she had already made up her mind to turn him down anyway because she just doesn't want to be married, so there's no actual cause-effect relationship going on there.)

You know what it almost feels like to me? It feels like a science fiction novel that's more interested in worldbuilding than anything else, and that will give you a chapter randomly from the perspective of the sentient android toaster just because the author wants you to know about sentient android toasters in their world. But this is set in the real world, about twenty years before its publication (I think--it wasn't indicated as set in the past at any point, but there was an offhand reference to the battle of Waterloo being forty-something years ago), and I'm not used to that kind of book being so dedicated to just wandering through its world.

I'm wondering if maybe the author isn't very comfortable with letting his characters experience consequences, develop, and change. He seems to enjoy drawing little character sketches of various types and classes of people (many of them very stereotype-driven, but some--I suspect those from his own class and background--with a certain amount of insight). Maybe letting his characters outgrow those caricatured roles wasn't what he wanted to do. But it's affecting the course of the plot, because he's not writing a series of character sketches; he's setting up events which they ought to change in response to, and don't.

I wonder whether he's planning to set up a huge denouement where everything everybody's done throughout the novel will come back to bite them. I think Georgina's husband might inherit this earldom, in which case Lucius' real parentage will become extremely important, but the thing is it doesn't seem likely anyone will do anything about it! Georgina was massively conscience-stricken when she first agreed to pass off the child as her own, and she was described to us as someone who loved truth but who felt completely bound by a promise she had rashly made to Lucy; but we haven't seen Georgina for chapters and chapters, or her husband, to be honest. Also Lucius and George ought to be old enough to be interesting by now, but they seem to have vanished, and I'm not sure the author is keeping track of the passage of time.

[authorsadiethatcher]

I love summer, but May is my favorite month. Why? Because it's my birthday month. And I chose the picture to go along with this month's State of the Thatcher Address because my favorite color is blue. If you've paid attention to my covers, you've probably noticed that. There's a lot of blue outfits.

April was filled with family obligations, travel, and some medical stuff. I still got lots of writing done, for both of my pen names, but it was not just a work month for me. May will definitely have more words get written as I have deadlines approaching.

I'll talk about May's writing a little further down, but this month should be a good one. And the current weather forecast has the rain giving way to warm temperatures and sun just in time for my birthday. I can't complain about that.

A quick reminder that you can find my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Google Play Books, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Everand. You can also read everything I’ve published under my Sadie Thatcher name since last May on Ream, which is a subscription platform built specifically for authors. You can check out my Ream page below.

Ream: https://reamstories.com/sadiethatcher

And speaking of Ream, I have a Ream exclusive novel called The Muse (extreme dollification) that is now complete. I’ve made the first three chapters available for free. All you have to do is sign up as a follower at the link above to get a taste of my first real story that is too extreme for Amazon.

I also post the occasional bit of flash fiction for followers on Ream. I have one up already and plan to post another one this week. As soon as I'm inspired, I'll add a new mini-story to Ream.

On the Libby Feron front, my fantasy writing is going decently well. I'm working on a series of novellas or short novels that was initially inspired by the pirate attack on Port Royal in the Pirates of the Caribbean movie. But on top of that, I'm also got an idea for a time travel fantasy novel percolating in my head. More on that another time. However, since I don’t talk about my fantasy writing often, checking out https://libbyferon.com/ and signing up for the email newsletter is the best way to stay informed. At some point, there will be a free novella offered.

Now it’s time to talk about what to expect this month. First, I've already released the first book in the His Dreams Series. This is the first time I've written specifically from the male perspective for an entire story. The entire series will be like this.

I also have one last book left in The Secret Series. I plan to finish writing it today and will be submitting it for publishing May 3.

And then there's the new content. I have two new series that will begin to appear in the middle and then the latter part of the month. First is an alien hucow story. A town will be taken over by aliens and the population turned into livestock for the aliens. I'm not sure of all the details yet, but I'm excited to write it.

Finally, there's a series idea I've had for a while that I'm looking forward to. It's been documented that if a male dominated workplace has a single woman, nothing will really change. Instead, the woman is far more likely to conform to the male points of view, playing along so that she can be one of the boys. While the reality of that is unfortunate, it makes for a good setup for a bimbo story, which I'm calling Tokenized, at least for now. All titles and ideas are subject to change with my whims and muse.

So that about does it. You can also hopefully expect a fantasy novella from me as Libby Feron at the end of the month called A Throne of Bones. What a month this will be.

[night-unfurls-its-splendour]

Susan Kay's 'Phantom' Read: Part V (Erik, 1856-1881)

Before we start I feel that I need to talk about a perspective shift that I've had. More than half-way through the book now with the completion of this episode I've come to a realization.

Phantom is not what I thought it was. This epiphany has been slowly dawning but here we are.

My impression of Phantom, based on how I have seen it talked about in the Phandom (and certainly how the reviews on the back of the book present it) was that it was Leroux's story but with the blanks filled in and a few small liberties taken.

I had this impression because I was told that for quite a few years, Phantom was basically considered Canon and also because I have often seen Kayrik (or Kerik) and Lerik (or Leroux's Erik) conflated in discussions.

But as I'm reading I have finally realised that I don't think this is ever what Kay intended.

Don't get me wrong I hate most of the decisions she's made, but this book is a complete re-working of the source material with many elements of the book, some from the musical and some original folded in. For Erik's history she mainly follows the life-history detailed by Leroux, but in terms of Erik as a character, he more closely resembles Musical!Erik than anything (except that Kayrik's deformity affects his entire face, not just half). When we arrive at the Opera, she again adheres to Leroux's history. But once we catch up to the canon events, this time line is swiftly abandoned.

Nadir and Erik bump into each other and resume their friendship.

A few weeks later, Erik finds Joseph Buquet's body in his torture chamber.

A few weeks after that Erik hears the news of the Opera's change in management, and hears Christine sing for the first time.

In the source material, Buquet's body is discovered on the same night as Christine's initial triumph (so three months AFTER Erik began to teach her), the same night that the old managers, Debienne and Poligny, have their farewell celebrations and hand over management to Firmin Richard and Armand Moncharmin. Leroux describes Raoul rushing across the stage, "On which Christine Daae has just triumphed, and under which Joseph Buquet had just died." [This excluded from the original translation.

Why Kay chose to alter the progression of events I don't know, but that combined with a final nail in this coffin for me to realise that I had been approaching this book from entirely the wrong perspective. That final nail is the fact that Christine Daaé, in this book, is dark- haired and not blonde.

Kay does what most Phan-author's do: she cherrypicks her preferred elements from both book and musical (Erik general erudite comportment, his mis-matched eyes, Christine's dark hair) and combines them with her own headcanons to create an AU fic that, because of the reclusive nature of Fanfiction at the time and the fact that this work was published and widely circulated, became, for many fans not interested filling in the blanks themselves, erroneously synonymous with actual canon for a goodly number of years, despite its open contradictions to the source material.

Does that mean I like it any better? Haha fuck no. My irritation with Kay's choices persists. It's just that my ire for this book's influence is more accurately directed at the Phandom at large for making it something of a Golden Calf.

And like the Biblical Golden Calf I am here to pound it into dust and make everyone drink it.

So at this point I was going to complain that Kay never made mention of Erik being Christened "the trap-door lover" in Persia. There's even a CHAPTER of Leroux's novel called "The Masterstroke of the Trap-Door Lover". And this didn't come up even ONCE in Nadir's narrative. In fact the Persian and Leroux's narrator both talk about how Erik "rigged the palaces". Which is to say he made alterations to existing buildings and "turned the most honest construction in the world into a demonic house where one could not speak a word without being watched, or betrayed by an echo. How many family quarrels, how many bloody tragedies had the monster left in his wake with his trap doors?"

In Kay's narrative, Erik doesn't alter any existing palaces, he only constructs the Trick Box inspired palace described in Leroux's epilogue and his love of trap doors? Apparently it just isn't a thing.

Moving on

So of course we have to come back around to his mother. That was inevitable and I do actually appreciate it because we know Erik's furniture in the lair was his mother's.

The part where he views his mother's body is... eighhhhhh.

Erik describes the ravages of time in Madeleine's face and also the ravages of death. He talks about the irony that there's actually some resemblance between them now. And we get... this

And as I looked at her, I suddenly understood her revulsion at last--because now I shared it!

I felt no anger or grief as I looked down upon her . . . nothing except a disgust which enabled me to forgive any act of cruelty that she had ever shown me.

[...]

I did not kiss her, now that I had the opportunity.

I knew that she would not have wished it.

And I no longer felt any desire to do so.

I'm deeply confused as to what Kay is trying to convey here. Is Erik really saying that he doesn't want to kiss his mother because death has made her ugly? He goes on a lot about how death is gross and ugly and like... you just found out that your mom never re-married after you left. Never left the house she raised you in.

The misogyny REALLY steps up to the foreground here as well. He says of his mother's friend, Marie Perrault (the only person in this entire book with any rights imho)

This nervous, anxious, well-meaning lady had taught me to respect all members of the weaker sex.

Which, simply by calling them the "weaker sex"... you clearly don't? And after proclaiming is respect for ALL MEMBERS of the weaker sex, in the NEXT sentence he puts in a caveat about how he's never harmed an innocent woman, and also says something about the Khanom that really made me very, very queasy, and also reinforced my squicky suspicions about why Kay chose to make the cruel and capricious female figure in Persia an older woman (a domineering mother) rather than Leroux's "Little Sultana".

Very annoyed how Kay has graduated Erik's voice from "Automatic Aphrodisiac" to "Literally indistinguishable from Jedi Mind Tricks".

Erik regails us with how, using only his voice he is able to "reduce certain men to a trance-like state of obedience" (once exhibited on Nadir and his son Reza). When he meets Nadir again in Paris we are treated to this observation:

"Do you understand, Nadir? Keep away!"

His hand slid him it carriage door and he stood back with a trance-like obedience. He made no effort to prevent the brougham moving away, but although I knew my secret was safe for tonight, I felt no sense of complacency.

Once before he had broken free of my control, torn down the swaddling cocoon of sound with which I had bound him. Unlike Jules [Erik's lackey], he was not a natural subject; his will was too strong, his sense of identity and purpose too well developed.

Whenever he chose to fight my voice, I knew I would be unable to hold him.

That's a Jedi Mind trick. I'm sorry it is.

This section is actually quite enjoyable where the building of the opera house is concerned, but it takes a downturn, both in terms of the story and just the quality of the writing.

There are two instances of redundancy.

His death excited little excitement.

"My old interest in divination had never left me, and from time to time I still consulted the tarot cards in desultory fashion. It had been a long while since they had revealed anything significant, but now of late, each time I picked a card at random I seemed to turn up Death...

And this latter example leads me to something that really made me want to throw the book.

Since Nadir's narrative I have looked askance at something that has come up repeatedly: Susan Kay goes to GREAT LENGTHS to ensure that the readers know that Nadir I 100% straight. NO HOMO HERE, DEAR READER. ABSOLUTELY NOT. She shoehorns in a dead wife that Nadir never got over losing, and went into unnecessary detail about how when Nadir feels "the itch of manhood" (🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮) he avails himself of a prostitute or an odalisque. It comes up SEVERAL times. And when Nadir pops back up in Paris she makes sure to tell us that he has a mistress that he sees regularly. All of this to bring us to THIS infuriating line:

And so even as I walked with Nadir, talked with him, rejoiced in the warmth of communicating directly once more with a human soul, there was a part of me that looked at him with suspicion and wondered what part fate had assigned him in this new, unrehearsed opera.

Not the Lover, that was for certain. I'd seen enough girls leaving his apartments in Persia to be reassured that all of his instincts were purely heterosexual."

I'm not generally into gay readings of PotO. I don't ship Erik with either Raoul or with The Persian. But I will say that if there is an argument to be made for anyone in this book being anything less than 100% heterosexual, it's The Persian. Leroux makes no mention of him having a wife or anything of the sort. Tie that in with the determined responsibility and complex bond he seems to hold with Erik and a case can be made for our dear Daroga feeling something rather more than just sympathy for Erik. (I don't personally subscribe to this, but the case can certainly be made--I'm more of a DaRaoul girl tbh. I think that's an untapped gold mine).

But not here. Kay bends so far backwards as to have Erik say outright "Nadir is defo straight", while (even more bafflingly) implying that, perhaps, Erik is not. WHY, SUSAN. WHY?

Christine’s introduction is the single most "reads like Fanfiction (derogatory)" thing I've read in this book so far, but I find it very interesting how, when Christine sings for the first time Erik says that she "possesses a near perfect instrument". He says her technique is faultless, and that there's no weakness in either register. My first problem is that Leroux's Erik only ever calls Carlotta's voice an "instrument", because that's all it is to Carlotta. My second is that, according to Christine, her lower register was muffled and her upper register was shrill and her middle register wanted clarity. Maybe that's just Christine being too critical of herself, but I doubt that she had "flawless technique" when Erik began teaching her. Incredible latent talent for sure, but I do believe that she needed help with technique as well as motivation to reignite her passion.

Lastly we have Erik's description of when he first sings to Christine. His narrative regarding his motivation is actually very similar to my own:

She wanted an Angel of Music--an angel who would make her believe in herself at last.

[...] There was no reason in the world why I could not be the Angel of Music to Christine. I couldn't hope to be a man to her, I couldn't ever be a real, breathing, living man waking at her side and reaching out for her. . . .

But I could be her angel.

Is his motive here altruistic? No. But the sentiment is sweet enough. The notion of inspiring Christine's self-confidence is present.

Pity then that he takes a sharp left turn in the very next paragraph and utterly compromises any positivity in his intent.

I could not steal her body--but I could steal her voice and weld it irretrievably with mine; I could take it, and mold it, and make it mine forever...

Softly at first, infinitely softly I began to sing an old, heathen, Romany song. The Hollowed bricks carried the haunting melody relentlessly to her, permitted my voice to envelop her gently like a poisonous mist, seeping inexorably into her mind and staining her soul with darkness.

Well, well.

Once more unto the breach I go...

Masterpost