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cctinsleybaxter · 4 years

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2020 in books

2020 was a year of changed reading habits; people reading more than ever or not at all, some changing their tastes and others turning to old comforts. While there weren’t any huge overhauls on my end, more free time did mean a total of 32 in a wider range of genres. In the past couple of years I found a lot of the things I read to be kind of middling and ranked them accordingly, but this year had some strong contenders in the mix. With college officially behind me I love nonfiction again, and I really need to stop being drawn in by novels with long titles that ‘sound interesting.’ A piece of advice to my future self: they will only make you angry.

The Good

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky I loved the BBC radio play when I first listened to it back in 2017, but didn’t know if I could stomach the idea of actually reading the 700-page book, especially since I already knew the plot (spoiler alert: this had no effect and I gasped multiple times despite knowing what was going to happen; Fyodor’s just that good at atmosphere.) The story follows Prince Lev Myshkin, a goodhearted but troubled man entering 1860s Petersburg high society and meeting all of the wretched people therein as he navigates life, laughs, love, unanswerable questions of faith, and human suffering. I care about it in the same way I think other people care about reality TV shows and soap operas. I’m so personally invested in the drama and feel so many different emotions directed at these clowns that it’s like being a fan of Invitation to Love (with an ending equally upsetting to that of the show ITL is from, Twin Peaks.)

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlanksy I adored this book. The first half reads a little like a Wikipedia article, and I was worried that it was leaning too clinical and would be disaffected with colonialism and indigenous peoples, but even that oversight is corrected for as the text goes on. It’s not going to be for everybody because it really is just the world’s longest encyclopedia entry on, well, salt, but it’s written with such excitement for the topic and is so well-researched and styled for commercial nonfiction that I think it deserves any and all praise it’s gotten. We have to talk about that time Cheshire was literally sinking into the ground, and companies who were over-pumping brine water to steal each other’s brine water said ‘no it’s okay it’s supposed to that’ so were legally dismissed as suspects.

Midnight Cowboy by James Leo Herlihy Cried. 10/10. The plot of Midnight Cowboy is very classic and actually has a lot in common with The Idiot, as 20-something Joe Buck moves from the American Southwest to NYC and meets myriad challenges as a sex worker. I’ve been obsessed with the movie for a few years now and the book made me appreciate it anew; I think it’s rare for an adaptation to take the risk of being so different from its source material while still capturing its spirit. The movie doesn’t include quieter moments like the full conversation with Towny or time spent in the X-flat, nor does it attempt to touch Joe’s internal monologue or his and Rico’s extensive backstories, but these things are essential to the book and are some of the best and most affecting writing I’ve ever read. Finally! The Great American Novel!

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones I would firmly like to say that this is probably the best horror novel ever written. The setup is very traditional in that it’s about a group of friends facing supernatural comeuppance for a past mistake, but delivery on that premise is anything but familiar. A story about personal and cultural trauma that raises questions about what we owe to each other and what it means to be Blackfeet, with a cast that’s unbelievably real and sympathetic even at their absolute worst. Creepypasta writers trying to cash in on the cultural mythos of lumped-together tribes wish they were capable of writing something a tenth as gruesome and good as this. It could very well be a movie the visuals and writing style were so arresting, and I can’t wait to read whatever Jones writes next.

Found Footage Horror Films: Fear and the Appearance of Reality by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas This is the least accessible title on the list since it’s a college textbook for people with background in film, but it was so nice to read a woman unpacking film theory with the expertise and confidence it deserves that I have to rank it among the best. I had an absolute blast reading it and am going to have to stop myself from bringing up the horror of 1960s safety films as a cocktail icebreaker.

Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy by Heather Ann Thompson

The year’s toughest read by far, but also its most rewarding. Thompson uses mountains of documents, government-buried intel, and personal interviews to explain what happened at Attica from beginning to end, and does a fantastic job of balancing hard facts and ‘unbiased journalism’ with much-needed emotion and critical analysis. It’s more important reading in the 2020s than any kind of ‘why/how to not be racist’ book club book is going to be, and the historical context it provides is as interesting as it is invaluable. The second half drags a bit in going through lengthy trial processes with some assumed baseline knowledge of legalese (which I did not have. All that criminal minds in 2015… meaningless), but aside from that editing and prose are some of the best I’ve seen in nonfiction.

The Bad

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn A friend and I decided to read this together because I’m obsessed with how insane the author is and wanted to know if he can actually write.

He cannot.

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All by Laird Barron Barron is an indie darling of the horror fiction scene, so I was excited to finally read one of his collections but can now attest that I hate him. If you’re going to do Lovecraft please deconstruct Lovecraft in an interesting way. I had actually written a lot about the issues I have with how he develops characters and plots, but one of the only shorthand notes I took was “he won’t stop saying ‘bole’ instead of tree trunk” and I feel like that’s the only review we need.

Bats of the Republic by Zach Dodson Look up a photo of this author because if I had bothered to glance at the jacket bio I honest-to-god wouldn’t have even tried reading this.

This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone I went in with high expectations since this is an epistolary novella I’d seen praised on tumblr and youtube but oh my god was there a reason I was seeing it praised on tumblr and youtube. This is bad Steven Universe fanfiction. Both authors included ‘listening to the Steven Universe soundtrack throughout’ in the acknowledgements, and to add insult to injury there’s a plug from my nemesis Madeline Miller.

The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton The premise of this one plays with so many tropes I like that I should have been more suspicious. It’s a dinner party with stock characters one would expect of Clue, and rather than our protagonist being the detective he’s a man with amnesia stuck in a 24-hour time loop. Body-hopping between guests, he must gather evidence using the skillsets of each ‘host’ until he either solves Evelyn Hardcastle’s murder or the limit of eight hosts runs out. I read a lot of not-very-good books, and it’s so, so much worse when they have potential to be fun. This is how you lose the most points, and how I abandon decorum and end up writing a list of grievances: • Our protagonist can only inhabit male hosts, which I think is a stupid writing decision not because I’m ‘woke’ but because wouldn’t it make sense for him to also be working with the maids, cooks, and women close to the murder victim? • Complaining about the limitations of hosts makes some sense (e.g- there’s a section where he thinks that it’s hard to be an old man because it’s difficult to get to the places he needs to be quickly), but one of his hosts is a rapist and one of his hosts is fat. Guess which one gets complained about more. • One of the later hosts is just straight-up a cop with cop knowledge that singlehandedly solves the case. We spend some time being like ‘wow I couldn’t have done it without the info all eight hosts helped gather’ but it was 100% the detective and he solves the murder using information he got off-screen. • The mystery itself is actually well-paced and I didn’t have a lot of issues with it (e.g, there’s a twist that I guessed only shortly before the end), which makes it all the worse that the metanarrative of this book is INSANE. No spoilers but the reveal as to why our unnamed protagonist is even in this situation is stupid. I just know they’re going to make it into a movie and I’m preemptively going to aaaaaaaaa!!!

Trust Exercise by Susan Choi The fact that this was the worst book I read all year, worse even than the bad Steven Universe fanfiction, and it won multiple awards makes my blood boil. I could rant about it for hours but just know that it’s a former theater kid’s take on perception and memory, and deals with sexual abuse in a way that’s handled both very badly and with a level of fake deepness that’s laughable. Select fake-deep quotes I copied down because at one point I said ‘oh barf’ aloud: -I’m filled with melancholy that’s almost compassion. It’s sad the same way. -[On a friendship ending] We almost never know what we know until after we know it. -Because we’re none of us alone in this world. We injure each other.

There are also bad sex scenes that I can’t quite make fun of because I think (HOPE?) they’re supposed to be a melodramatic take on how teenagers view sex, but I very much wanted to die. Flowers were alluded to. Nipples were compared to diamonds.

Honorable/Dishonorable Mentions (categorized as the same thing because, well,)

The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North This book was frustrating because the first third of it is fantastic. It’s set up to be a takedown of the manic pixie dream girl trope, jumping from person to person discussing their relationship with the titular Sophie, and indirectly revealing that she was just some girl and not the difficult and mysterious genius they all believed her to be. Then in the third act, BAM! She was that difficult and mysterious genius and she’s now indirectly brought all the people from her past together. I wanted to scream the plot beefed it so bad, but the good news is I really liked this octopus description.

It was the size of a three-year-old child, and it seemed awful to me that something could be so far from human and obviously want something as badly as it wanted to get out of the tank.

Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women by Kate Moore Cool new nightmare speedrun strat is to hear a 2-second anecdote from a documentary that people used to get radium poisoning from painting watch faces, be curious enough that you buy a book to learn more, and be met with medical and legal horror beyond anything you could have imagined. This was almost one of my favorite books of the year! Almost.

Radium Girls is very lovingly crafted and incredibly well-researched; one of those things that’s hard to get through but that you want to read sections of again as soon as you’ve finished. The umbrage I take with it is that it’s very Catholic. The author and many of her subjects are Irish and their religion is important to them, but it casts a martyr-y narrative over the whole thing that I found uncomfortable. Seventeen-year-old girls taking a factory job they didn’t know was dangerous are framed as brave, working-class heroes, but there’s not a set moral lesson to be gained from this story. Sarah Maillefer didn’t make “a sacrifice” when she agreed to the first radium tests, she agreed because she was terrified. She didn’t think she was helping she was begging for help.

The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Tsing Tsing is an incredibly skilled researcher and ethnographer; there are so many good ideas in this book that I’d almost consider it essential leftist text… if I could stand the way it was structured. Tsing posits that because nature is built on precariousness she will build her book the same way, allowing it to grow like a mushroom, and thus chapters don’t progress linearly and are written more like freeform poetry than a series of academic arguments. Some people are really going to love that, but I’m me and a mushroom is a mushroom and a book is a book. I don’t think in the way Tsing does, and while I tried to keep an open mind it’s hard to play along when something is this academically dense and makes so many ambitious claims. As if to prove how different our structuring methods are, I’ve made my own thoughts into a pros and cons list

Things I liked: • ‘Contamination’ as something inherent to diversity • ‘Scalability’ as a flawed way of thinking (Tsing has written whole essays about this that I find very compelling, but a main example here is that China and the US have come down on Japanese matsutake research for being too ‘site specific’ and not yielding enough empirical data) • Discussing how Americans were so invested in self-regulating systems in the 1950s we thought they could be applied to literally everything, including ecosystems • “The survivors of war remind us of the bodies they climbed over- or shot- to get to us. We don’t know whether to love or hate the survivors. Simple moral judgements don’t come to hand.” • Any and all fieldwork Tsing shares is amazing; I especially liked reading about the culture of mushroom pickers living in the Cascades and their contained market system

Things I didn’t like: • Statements that sound deep but aren’t, e.g- “help is always in the service of another.” (Yep. That’s what that means. Unless an organism is doing something to help itself which then nullifies your whole opening argument.) • A very debatable definition of utilitarianism • “Capitalism vs pre-capitalism,” which seems like an insanely black-and-white stance for a book all about finding hidden middle ground • A chapter I found really interesting about how intertwined Japanese and American economies are, but it tries to cover the entire history of US-Japan relations. Seriously, starting with Governor Perry and continuing through present day, this could have been a whole different book and it’s a good example of what I mean when I say arguments feel too scattered (the conclusion it reaches is that in the 80s the yen was finally able to hold its own against the dollar. Just explain that part.) • A chapter arguing that ‘true biological mutualism’ is rarely a focus of STEM and is a new sociological development/way of thinking which is just… flat-out not true

For all the comparisons art gets to ‘being on a drug trip’ this anthropology textbook has come the closest for me. Moments of profound human wisdom, intercut with things I had trouble understanding because I wasn’t on the same wavelength, intercut with even more things that felt false or irrelevant. I can’t put it on the nice list but I am glad I read it.

#2020 #books #long post #(in case the read more isn't working)

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xoxardnekoxo · 4 years

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Movie Review: Mulan (2020)

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

Ah, Mulan. One of my all-time favorite Disney movies. I loved it so much I had a life-size plush Mushu, a Disney Beanie Baby talking Mushu, a Mulan Barbie, every action figure made, a chirping Crikee, and even a Mushu/Crikee alarm clock. It’s no surprise that when Disney announced a live action version of this movie, I was all over it. The three-time delay in theaters due to the pandemic was disappointing, but then again, so was having to pay $30 on top of a monthly fee I already pay for Disney+.

When the movie was first announced, we knew right away that three things would be lacking that were in the beloved cartoon:

1. Mushu 2. Shang 3. Songs

I immediately jumped on this band wagon at the announcement of no Mushu:

Supposedly the actual country of China strongly disliked Disney’s animated interpretation of an actual legend from their homeland. I don’t know the full details, but I do know that with that in mind, Disney wanted to make the live action version of the movie more authentic to the actual story. This really wasn’t meant to be a remake of the cartoon, but a more accurate take on real events.

I know it’s Disney and that usually means music, but honestly, I’m okay with no songs. I outgrew musicals 15+ years ago. I was even okay with no Shang (but it makes no sense when there is an obvious, if unfulfilled, love interest in this version as well).

Much as I love Mushu, I was still eager to see this movie because I’m a fan of Asian culture in general and was curious to see how this movie would play out. Imagine my surprise when I learned that this version would consist of a phoenix and a witch.

How is that any different than a dragon? Is it because dragons are kind of sacred to the Chinese? A phoenix is similar - it’s a bird that is reborn from fire. And a witch? I highly doubt that actually happened in the original story. Did it? I don’t know, but my point remains.

Unlike the cartoon, Mulan in this adaptation knows quite a bit about combat already. We can see her as a child using her skills quite often, and her father tells her to contain her (strong) chi. Speaking of chi, it’s mentioned quite a lot in this movie. Apparently what makes Mulan such a strong/good fighter and leader is her strong chi. Chi is mentioned so much all I could think of was this:

(Chobits anime)

Mulan doesn’t have her dog (Little Brother) in this movie, but she does have a little sister. Interestingly enough, the original story depicts her as having a younger brother, but he was too young to fight. So if Disney was going for accuracy, they still could have gone that route and stayed true to the source material.

As with the cartoon, Mulan does meet the matchmaker, but she doesn’t go in alone. She goes in with her mother and sister, the latter of which is terrified of spiders. Instead of a lucky cricket causing a catastrophe during this “audition,” a spider decides to scurry in and scare the younger sister, prompting the cacophony. So really, it’s the sister’s fault Mulan brings dishonor in the matchmaker’s eyes.

Mulan’s father is frequently chastised by her mother for encouraging her boy-like behavior. “She is your daughter, not your son.” Rude. But remember, this is a different era. The only way a female could bring honor to her family was to be a good wife and bear sons. Still, harsh.

So we all know what happens next. One man from every family has to join in a fight against some turd determined to take over the empire, in this case one who is using a witch to help him, and Mulan takes her father’s place since she fears for his life. But she has good reason to - the poor guy needs help walking and even her mother said he won’t return from battle this time. Way to sugar-coat it, lady.

So we get to the men’s camp... no wait, first, we get lost and a phoenix (symbolic, since it appears no one else is able to see it at all) shows up to guide Mulan to where she needs to go. Yes, instead of asking the ancestors for help, her father asked the family guardian (phoenix) to watch over her. Okay.

Eventually we get to a large tent shared by all the soldiers. Yes, this time, they don’t all get their own individual tent. And of course, all the men are running around half dressed, throwing things at each other, rough-housing, you know the drill. It’s especially amusing when one of them loses his towel and Mulan immediately closes her eyes and cringes.

Then the commander asks for a night guard volunteer. Mulan proceeds to volunteer for this every night to avoid having to shower with the men. Too bad they all start to notice the smell. Funny, in the cartoon, Mulan absolutely did not want to smell like a man at all. It takes her quite some time before she’s able to sneak into the river to bathe. Too bad one of the guys decides to follow her in and she has to hide herself. :D

During training, rules and penalties are revealed, and the penalty for pretty much doing anything wrong is death. Except one thing - dishonesty. Dishonesty brings expulsion from the army as well as dishonor to the family. Don’t talk to a woman or you’ll die, but pour out some water to make the buckets lighter during a strength exercise and get humiliated.

So we eventually get to a big battle scene with all the flying arrows, and Mulan, of course, winds up by herself fighting the witch. The witch can obviously tell that Mulan is hiding her true self, so she’s all, “You’re going to die pretending to be something you’re not.” Then something pierces the wrap Mulan uses to hide her chest and she decides the best course of action is to go back to her comrades as her female self. The whole “big reveal” scene is her taking her hair down (which she does not cut with a sword by the way - in fact, she doesn’t cut it at all) and walking out of the fog and introducing herself. To me, that was very anti-climactic.

The cherry on top of that is when, after being expelled from the army for dishonesty (weird though, another rule was to not consort with women at all and yet she actually IS a woman and isn’t killed), she returns to the camp and the men immediately accept her for who she is because she’s all, “The emperor is in danger and I know how to save him.”

So the commander allows her to lead a group of men into the Imperial City to save the emperor, who is quite a warrior himself - he breaks out his armor to fight the Hun (not Shan-Yu, I don’t even remember what his name is this time), then Mulan shows up and of course she and the witch team up because, hey, why not? They’re both misunderstood women always being told to stay in their place, except the witch is controlled by the Hun and Mulan is free.

The witch can transform into a hawk or something like that (probably a shout out to Shan-Yu’s pet from the cartoon) and she actually flies in front of Mulan to save her from getting pierced by an arrow. So of course she dies in our protagonist’s arms and is all, “Take your place.” And of course, as expected, Mulan saves the day. And let me just say, how many times can one possibly kick an arrow and send it flying straight toward a designated target? It happens at least five times in this movie, and just once is a one in a million shot. Yeah, cool effect, but totally not accurate, Disney. I thought that was the whole point of this movie - more accuracy to the source content. And you also wanted to appease China. Too bad it didn’t work this time around, either.

The movie ends with Mulan being offered a position on the emperor’s army (nice cameo by Ming-Na Wen, the original voice of Mulan from the cartoon!), but she chooses to go back home - where her sister has been matched to someone who isn’t afraid of spiders.

Yay! Then Mulan’s commander and some other guys show up and offer her the same job the emperor did, only in front of her entire village, so everyone knows she has now brought honor to her family and the country, prompting the matchmaker to faint because she was proven wrong.

So then she does take the job after all, and that’s pretty much the end. Shang isn’t in the movie but there is one fellow soldier she seems to have fun with in practice combat, and he’s super eager to accept her as a woman, even saying she’s the best soldier they’ve got. But nothing comes of that - the two part ways as friends, but honestly, I think it’s okay in these circumstances. Throwing a love story into this rendition just wouldn’t work.

So all in all, not a bad movie, but I think I probably should have waited until it was available on regular Disney+ or DVD instead of spending $30 on premiere access. But I would have spent that going to the theater anyway, so I guess it’s not so bad. I do know a lot of people absolutely hated this movie and it’s gotten bad reviews. I didn’t mind it, but I think my favorite live-action Disney movie so far is Aladdin. This one is probably in second place, though. I think the reason people dislike it so much is that there are so many things missing that were in the cartoon. But again, this is not meant to be a remake of the cartoon - it’s meant to be a more accurate version. But you just can’t make everyone happy.

Overall, I’d give the movie a 7/10. It could have been better, could have been worse. I still prefer the cartoon but it was interesting to see this version as well. Now to see what other live action movies get made... and we’ll see if The Little Mermaid can beat this with a black Ariel. I think I should audition for the role of Snow White - I have the short hair, pale skin, and am always talking to animals. If Ariel can be black, Snow White can be fat!

#xoxardnekoxo #Movie Review #Mulan #Mulan 2020 #Mushu #Shang #Li Shang #Crikee #Disney #spoiler alert #Disney princess

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wellknownwolf · 4 years

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I want to move into a new phase in my relationship with fandom, as I mature with new experiences. I'm not sure what exactly that looks like though. What is your take on the parasocial affection inherent in an RPF like Rhett & Link? Or even the deep attachments that can form with fictional characters? Or a desire to emulate fantasy worlds? I'm sorry if I've made you uncomfortable with all this, it's just that it's been a long time coming, and once I got started I couldn't stop. - Natasha (5)

First, let me post the full question, since it came in 5 parts:

Hey, it's me again. Your 'mystery inquirer', as you so adorably dubbed me. You're right, I had forgotten I'd sent in that ask. Just now, I couldn't help but think about a scene from Life After, as I am wont to on a frightfully regular basis, which is what got me back here. When you said you pondered over my seemingly simple, banal question for a good while, and wrote out a beautifully thoughtful answer like you always do, it made me happy.

Your narrative voice is similar to my own, and it made my chest ache in a certain way to have gotten such a response to what felt like a random shout out into the abyss (though it obviously wasn't, I sent it directly to you, I guess it's more what it felt like taking a chance on a conversation with a random stranger online). And now I'm cringing a bit at how melodramatic all sounds. But I'm committing to it, anyway. That's the beauty of anon, eh?

Wolfie (is it presumptuous to call you that? Please do forgive me the liberty I'm taking), I must admit. I'm quite envious of this community you have with @missingparentheses, @lunar-winterlude, and other wonderful people. Since childhood, I've been head over heels in love with fandom. Not a specific fandom, I've been a traveller through dozens, but fandom in general. I've read probably thousands of fanfics, spent countless hours daydreaming about beloved characters and their stories.

To the point where, in my most recent and worst depressive episode, it may have been for the worse, if I'm honest. Escapism and yearning to the point of impairment, engendering a sense of constant bereavement. But it's taught me so much about life and its wonders, I can't write it off as just some damaging habit. It's such an integral part of who I am, a deeply curious soul (shout out to my Enneagram Type 5-ers out there!). But I don't anyone to share it with, and it can get quite lonely.

.....................................................................

Thank you for giving me so much to respond to, Natasha. Thank you for continuing to reach out. I accidentally wrote something like a paper in response to your thoughtful question. I even conducted a little research and cited a source. ENGLISH TEACHER, ACTIVATE!

Also, for what it’s worth, I feel at times that I communicate exclusively through shouts into the abyss, so it’s a language with which I am at home. In fact, it is this very technique, this experiment with intense vulnerability at the hands of a virtual stranger, that earned me one of my absolutely most-treasured friends: @missingparentheses. I have poured out a great deal of my own melodrama to her, and she has received it and reciprocated it in a way that, three years later, continues to teach me how to be a better friend. In short, I’m a firm believer in diving straight in when it comes to new friends. Cringe not; I’m on board.

So let’s dive.

R&L is really only the second “fandom” with which I’ve been involved. Third, if we count my preteen obsession with ‘N Sync (and considering how much wall space I dedicated to their posters and self-printed photos, we probably should). My point is, while I don’t have much experience with the community facet of fandom, I do relate to your feeling of near-obsession. Or clear obsession.

I know the feeling of escapism you’re describing, and I know the yearning and melancholy that can come on our worst days, where we feel like “real life” will never measure up to the color and brilliance of the worlds we spend so much time considering. These worlds, these characters and their relationships, their challenges, victories, and defeats all seem so purposeful: they’re the plot points we use to craft the stories in our heads (regardless of whether we’re writers at all). It can be much harder to view ourselves as protagonists worth analyzing, viewing and reviewing through new lenses, perhaps because we’re warned against navel-gazing, perhaps because our self-perception just won’t allow for it. Maybe a little of both.

But yes! It teaches us! We DO learn about life, other people, love, risk, all kinds of things through what we consume in these fandoms, so I would never classify it as a “bad” thing. We hone our imaginations and learn to pay attention to our own emotions as we recognize feelings from our favorite shows, games, books, and characters arising in ourselves.

I used to be a little afraid of the fact that I was always telling myself stories, internally imagining myself as someone else, a player in the worlds I often loved more than my own. I suspected that someday, somehow, I would be caught playing pretend all the time in my own little ways. I was a bright and ambitious young woman, so why would I give so much of my mental energy to such frivolous pursuits?

In my first semester of graduate school, though, I learned from a Lit. Theory professor who intimidated the hell out of me that we all do this. We’re all telling ourselves stories all the time, some of which are true and close to objective reality, some of which are more subjective to whatever fantastical (or fandom) material we last consumed. I’ve whispered my own dialogue in the shower, but so have you whispered yours in your head (if not also out loud in your shower!). And through this act, however it is performed, I have made those worlds part of my own. So have you. In this way, they are real, and I no longer feel fearful of being “found out.”

When we have those moments of doubt, though, when we wonder whether we’re going too far, it probably stems, at least partially, from the “us v. them” divide between fandom and mainstream society. We love our little worlds, but we also feel that twinge of anxiety that we might be bordering on obsession, that our guilty pleasure might be discovered and we will be socially punished for it, namely, as Joli Jensen writes in “Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization,” because “the fan is characterized as (at least potentially) an obsessed loner, suffering from a disease of isolation, or a frenzied crowd member, suffering from a disease of contagion. In either case, the fan is seen as being irrational, out of control, and prey to a number of external forces” (13). According the consistent covert (and overt, at times) messages of the mainstream, “[f]andom is conceived of as a chronic attempt to compensate for a perceived personal lack of autonomy, absence of community, incomplete identity, lack of power and lack of recognition” (Jensen 17). Yikes. That doesn’t feel good to admit about ourselves, does it?

Luckily, it’s bullshit.

Treating “fans” as others (outsiders, people who can’t form relationships or find fulfillment in the “real world”) “risks denigrating them in ways that are insulting and absurd” (Jensen 25). Those who take this stance, who see fans as victims of hysteria or desperate loners, do so in order to “develop and defend a self-serving moral landscape. That terrain cultivates in us a dishonorable moral stance of superiority, because it makes other into examples of extrinsic forces, while implying that we [members solely of the mainstream] somehow remain pure, autonomous, ad unafflicted” (Jensen 25). In short, that us/them thinking just makes people feel better about themselves by pointing out an easily-identifiable “other.”

I have also grappled with the concept of parasocial affection, particularly with R&L. I was well into writing my first Rhink fic when the thought crossed my mind, “Oh my god, what if I actually met these people someday? How would I look them in the eye? I’d feel like a crazy person (again)!” From the safety of the Midwest, I laughed off the thought. And then a year or so later, they were announcing their first tour. And I was still writing, here and there, still deep in my affection for them, sometimes wrestling with the thought that I’ve devoted so much energy to people who would never know I exist.

It doesn’t matter that the attachment was in the most obvious, tangible ways only one-sided. As an adult who is ever-learning how to navigate the worlds of her own creation and the ones over which she has far less control, I view my intense attachment to characters both real and fictional with deep fondness. And while I may not receive affection or attention directly from the sources (R&L, fictional characters, sports teams, who/whatever we build fandoms around), I am still earning some very real rewards for my involvement: Because of them, I found my way to a participatory culture in which I was supported and encouraged to express my creativity. This gave me the push and interest that I needed to hone skills that have not only made me a better writer, but also a better teacher and mentor. With fandom comes the ability to immediately strike up a conversation over shared interests. With fandom comes a sense of belonging in what we have proven is an awfully divisive world.

Right now, I’m consuming far less fandom-related material than I did a few years ago. I don’t really watch GMM anymore and I’m on a break from Ear Biscuits (though I still love it), Gotham ended over a year ago and I’m not in the habit of reading fics right now, and I can’t yet play the remade Final Fantasy 7, so that’s out for me, too (though I know I will fall deep into that well once the game is in my hot little hands). This all happened by itself. I never consciously moved away from these sources; I just floated on to other interests and other levels of interest, knowing that if and when I wanted to dig back in, I could always come back.

I used to feel quite sad at the thought of someday “moving on” from these intense interests. I couldn’t fathom somehow falling out of love with those bands, actors, or video games. But for me, the transition into wherever I am now has not been painful in the least. I’m glad I knew the intensity that I did, and I’m happy with the distance I have now. And there’s a good chance I’ll be fanatic about something else someday. I’m looking forward to it!

Here are some responses that I couldn’t organically fit into my essay:

Yes, you can call me Wolfie if you’d like. That name started with @missingparentheses (her second appearance in this answer!), and quickly became a reminder to not take myself too seriously.

Second, I don’t think I know any other Type 5s! I’m a type 8.

Also, here’s my MLA formatted citation for the Jensen source:

Jensen, Joli. “Fandom as Pathology: The Consequences of Characterization.” The Adoring Audience: Fan Culture and Popular Media, Routledge, 1992, pp. 9-29.

#ask me anything #fandom meta-discourse #bc I always said I wouldn't get involved in fandom discourse #oh no I'm us/them-ing in my tags!#shame on me!

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weerd1 · 5 years

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Star Trek DS9 Rewatch Log, Stardate 1908.13: Missions Reviewed, “Rules of Engagement,” “Hard Time,” and Shattered Mirror.”

A Klingon lawyer petitions the Federation to turn over Worf after the destruction of a civilian ship in the middle of a battle in “Rules of Engagement.” While using the Defiant to protect a Cardassian convoy, Worf fires on a decloaking ship to find it was in fact this liner in the middle of the fight.

As the investigation proceeds, the Klingons argue that Worf fired in Klingon bloodlust, so only they can judge him. Sisko knows this will allow the Empire to gain political sympathy and hurt Federation holdings and support to Cardassia. The Klingon advocate maneuvers deftly though until Odo finds that the entire list of victims had actually died weeks before in another accident. The Empire has staged this for political gain (DISHONORABLE!!!).

Absolved, Sisko does remind Worf that he did fire on a ship without identifying the target, and that is not the Starfleet way. Worf knows he will have to be more discerning if he plans to stay in Starfleet.

The Klingon drama here isn’t bad, but the actuality in the courtroom breaks down in a few places. Some of the Klingon’s arguments don’t make a lot of sense, and the fact he tells Sisko straight out that they’re doing this for political gain doesn’t seem a great strategy if the Empire went to all this trouble to frame Worf. I do like the fact they acknowledge that Worf was wrong to fire without full target identification though, and despite wanting to be the lawyer in the courtroom to object to Klingon BS, it’s a solid character piece, inspired by the US shooting down an Iranian airliner in the Persian Gulf in 1988.

In “Hard Time” we seem to join O’Brien as he completes a 20 year sentence in an alien prison for espionage.

Turns out the way these aliens do things is to create a time-condense VR prison, so by the time anyone realizes they have O’Brien, he’s already served two decades. They bring him back to the station where he struggles to reintegrate and refuses counseling. However, after telling Bashir he was “alone” all those years, we see there was a cellmate. As O’Brien’s behavior becomes worse and worse- assaulting Quark, screaming at his daughter Molly- Bashir catches him about to shoot himself in the head with a phaser.

O’Brien reveals he had the companion in the cell the whole time, but killed him a week before “release” over a misunderstanding over food. O’Brien can’t forgive himself for what he has become, but able to acknowledge it now he can begin healing, and accepts both medication and counseling for PTSD.

The annual “Let’s Screw with O’Brien” episode comes through with a doozy, and Colm Meany is to be commended for his performance. Managing to examine the nature of incarceration and punishment as well as how PTSD can affect someone who has come home from hardship, this is quite the effective episode. Sid Fadil (Or as he is known by this point, Alexander Siddig) also does a great job as Bashir desperately tries to reach out to O’Brien. To handle PTSD and prison issues so well in the mid 90s…well, let me say it ONE more time, Star Trek is always relevant.

In “Shattered Mirror” Jake comes home to find that the Mirror Universe version of Jennifer Sisko is visiting Ben.

Jake is immediately taken with her and begins to treat her like she is really his mother. When Ben leaves them alone though Jennifer takes Jake back to the MU in order to lure Sisko there. In the MU, the Terran rebels have seized DS9 and the Klingons are sending Regent Worf to retake the station. Worf keeps Garak on a leash, as Garak tried to Grimma Wormtongue his way into convincing Worf the whole thing was the Intendant’s fault as she is still captured on the station. Smiley O’Brien has brought Sisko over to help as O’Brien brought the plans to the Defiant back from the Prime universe last time he was there, and they need Sisko to help put the finishing touches on their version. Sisko does, and offers to command the ship as the Klingon fleet arrives. Meanwhile, the Intendant has convinced Nog to release her so she can escape. She kills him, and along the way runs into Jennifer and Jake. Mirror Kira shoots Jennifer, but leaves Jake alive as a message to Ben Sisko.

The Defiant wins the battle, and Garak indeed convinces Worf to claim that they were betrayed by the Intendant, putting out a hunt for her. Sisko returns in time to see this version of Jennifer die, and he and Jake mourn the loss of Jennifer once again.

DS9 definitely is going back to this particular well too often, and again I just get the feeling Ben is a little too eager to help out here. The thing is the Terrans-as we know from TOS and as is made VERY clear in Discovery—are not really good guys, and even here resorted to kidnapping Jake to get their way. Andrew Robinson and Michael Dorn get to really ham it up as Garak and Worf though, but by now Nana Visitor must really be chaffing in that rubber suit. An OK episode, but I have a tough time caring what happens to everyone’s MU counterpart.

NEXT VOYAGE: Jake channels an alien to get some writing done in “The Muse.”

#star trek #star trek: Deep Space Nine #DS9 Rewatch

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thesffcorner · 5 years

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An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors

An Alchemy of Masques and Mirrors is an adult fantasy written by Curtis Craddock. It follows Isabella, the eldest daughter to Comte des Zephyrs, who is born without her sorcery. Growing up in a world that treats her as either a demon or an object, she only has one friend; Musketeer Jean-Claude. When she gets betrothed to a prince from a neighboring Kingdom, she sees this as an opportunity to have a new life; though a web of assassinations and conspiracies may threaten this future. I had a real hard time getting into this book, and even as I was reading it and was fully intrigued by the plot, I had this sense of dread that the book will go in a direction I would not like, or the ending would make me very mad. I’m happy to report my fears were for naught, and I ended up really enjoying this book. There were definitely elements and plot points that annoyed me, but the plot and characters were strong enough for me to enjoy my my time in this world. So let’s start with what I think will be the biggest draw and the biggest deterrent from reading this book.

Writing: The best way I can describe Craddock’s style is a mix between The Three Musketeers and Nevernight. The world-building and the plot focused on political conspiracy, marriages and royal bloodlines, as well as just the aesthetics of the book were straight of both Dummas’ work but also the much maligned 2011 film. The way this plot and world are conveyed however (as well as a lot of the magic system and religious aspects of the book) reminded me a lot of Jay Kristoff’s writing. Craddock has a style that I can only describe as overly-specific, overly-descriptive, and quaint; he uses very specific nouns for everything, from the clothes, to the different parts of the flying ships the characters move around on. And when I say specific I don’t just mean dictionary, I mean specific to the time period this is based on, which is 1600 France. It took me so long to parse out what title Comte and Comtessa and Le Roy are equivalent to, who all these different bloodlines and families were, and the fact that all the names of families, characters, cities, ships and castles were French didn’t help one bit. To give you an example, here is just a sentence from Chapter 1. ”All around him, deckhands scurried about, tugging on lines, adjusting sails in a madman’s dance, choreographed to the boatswain cry”pg. 9 And another from a bit later: ”Jerome stood on the rolling deck as if nailed to it, not a hair of his white, powdered wig out of place. He jerked his chin toward the bow and said, “We’re coming in widdershins on the trailing edge”, as if that clarified the matter. “If we don’t overshoot and ram the tower, we should make harbor within the hour”” pg. 11 This, again, comes down to personal preference. If you like this style of writing, and you don’t mind spending the first few chapters kind of confused and just coasting until you pick up on the world and the language, you will certainly find this enjoyable. By chapter 5, I was well caught up in the writing style, and really enjoyed how much personality Craddock managed to inject in the chapters, based on whether we were following Jean-Claude or Isabelle. It also made the world feel that much more well-rounded and real, since at no point did the characters stop and exposit for 3 pages about how things worked. However, if you struggle with this type of writing and world-building you will not have a fun time, because in addition to having to adjust to all the French terms and period words, you also have to contend with all the stuff that’s purely fiction to this world, like otomations, aether, artifex, and sanguinare, to name a few. I won’t lie and say I wasn’t confused; but I liked the plot and the characters enough to keep reading. World-Building: I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned this in any review, but I’m a huge fan of The Three Musketeers. I’ve seen almost all the versions outside the BBC show, and I’ve read the books; they were the first classic I was ever really in love with as a kid. I also love flying ships that look like Caravels, so this world was perfect for me. San Augustus was a fascinating world; it’s a floating island that is held in the sky by magic which is never explained (which isn’t a bad thing). Since it’s floating in the air, people travel on this massive ships like the ones it Treasure Planet, which run on aether, a substance that seems to be the equivalent of whale-oil in the Dishonored games. I know I’m mentioning a lot of visual media, but it always helps me visualize the world, and there was more that reminded me of Dishonored, like the otomations which I imagined were like the Clockwork soldiers and the blend between technology and magic of the world. Where Nevernight comes into play was the fact that this world too is built on the ruins of an ancient civilization of Gods, which is where a lot of the technology, and magic comes from. The people who live in San Agustus today know very little about the Saints that inhabited the world before them, and though they use some of their technology, most of the artifacts and knowledge are collected by the Temple, the religious order of the world. The magic system was another thing that reminded me of Nevernight, and it was very cool. Saint Augustus is ruled by descendants of the Saints, who lived at the same time as the Builder. Each Saint controlled a different type of magic (now categorized by the Temple). Isabelle’s family, the Des Zephyrs are sanguinaires: they have bloodshadows that they use to feast on other humans. They can also hollow out a human and turn them into a bloodhollow, which they can possess to communicate with people or spy on them. The ruling family of Aragoth, the family Isabelle is to marry are glasswalkers, which I found the coolest powers. They can cast their reflection through mirrors and walk in the real world in various locations. Their mirror image is limited by hunger and thirst, and they see everything in reverse, but the mechanics of the power and the creative use it’s put to in the novel were really fun to read about. As for the religion… it was an interesting choice. I had some gripes with it. It’s clearly based on the Old Testament; a woman who was close to the Builder was curious to find out how his inventions worked, and tried to learn math which somehow awoke a demon which destroyed the Builder and all the Saints. Supposedly, in a time of great turmoil and violence, the Builder will be reborn and will resurrect the worthy in a Judgement Day type scenario. Seeing as the basis of the religion is profoundly sexist and even misogynistic, in this world women are not allowed to learn the sciences or the old language, and in some cases even reading is seen as heresy. The one thing they especially can’t do is learn math or astrology, which is precisely what our lead Isabelle really loves and studies. Moreover, women in this world seem to be seen as just walking wombs. They are sold into marriages, and being able to give birth is their only function. I couldn’t tell if this was a thing of the nobles, since we do see working women that are not aristocrats, but there are very few non-noble characters in the book. But rest assured, the society is profoundly sexist one part that made my stomach churn, was a bit where 12 year old Isabelle tells us she carries around a maiden blade, which she isn’t to use to ward off attackers, but to kill herself rather than risk being raped and bring shame upon her family. This was so incredibly unsettling, I even looked it up to see if it was a real historical thing, and apparently it is not. Even if it was, why would you write it in your FICTIONAL book? I will be fair and say that most of the sexist and misogynistic structure of the world is not meant to be seen as a good thing; the characters do lament the state of affairs, the ones we are meant to find likable disagree with seeing women as broodmares and prizes (for the most part; there are quite a few moments where Isabelle defaults to being owned by her father or being owned by her husband which was also Yikes). Craddock does try to show that the sympathetic men do see Isabelle as a person more than a womb with legs (though again, most of them with the exception of Gran Leon think she either needs protecting or want to sleep with her), and he does make sure all the female characters we get, even the villains have agency that is not tied to the men around them. I also have to give him props for having actual female friendships and having characters who are usually either background or written as shallow and vain, have a voice, like the servants, the handmaidens, the ladies in waiting, etc. However. When it comes to male authors, I am always wary of WHY they feel the need to write the world as horribly sexist in the first place. It’s not an oppression they can claim, and everytime I see it in fiction, even if it’s done with the intent to subvert it or question it, I feel squeamish reading it, and don’t trust them to handle it well. Even if the point is to make a point about sexism or misogyny, that doesn’t mean I want to endure 300+ pages of women being treated horribly, assaulted, kidnapped, silenced or otherwise harmed for the benefit of 100 pages of gratification. I have grown jaded of these kinds of stories, and though I really did like the world, and all it’s steampunk musketeer glory, and all the political intrigue, this was not something I could overlook. Everytime I would have fun, I would be reminded that this society sees women as just their womb, that they are completely indispensable and disposable. And I would stop having fun, and start dreading that the next page would have a rape scene or unwanted pregnancy, especially seeing as the main theme of this book is pregnancy. I didn’t trust Craddock as a writer because he chose to set this story the way he did, and while I will admit that was fully my own fault as a reader, I think it’s worth pointing out that we have to endure enough mistreatment in the real world, and I don’t necessarily want it into our fiction, even if it’s made clear that the author disagrees with it. Themes and Plot: The world-building leads me to my next point which is the plot. I’ll start with the bad first and then move onto the more positive stuff. I mentioned at the start, that this book centers on an arranged marriage between Isabelle and Prince Julio of the neighboring Kingdom of Aragoth. The King of Aragoth is sick and dying, and his eldest son, the heir, Prince Alejandro, is refusing to divorce his wife Princess Xaviera or take in a mistress, despite her not being able to bear children. Margarita, the King’s second wife wants her son, Julio to take the throne, and to leverage his eligibility, she wants him to marry and have a child. As all marriages are arranged through the Temple, an artifix, Kantelvar is sent to arrange the one between Isabelle and Julio. What I want to focus on is the theme or pregnancy, childbirth and being infertile. First off, I find it incredibly icky whenever male authors chose to write about women’s abilities to have children or even worse, their inability to have children. It always, always boils down to the character either being told or thinking herself that she’s some kind of monster for not being able to conceive. I HATE this trope, and unfortunately it’s present here. All we ever really know about Xaviera is that she can’t have kids. We know Alejandro loves her, and we know she can apparently wield a sword and pistol (not that we ever see it), but as a character she is simply reduced to her infertile womb. There is even a scene, which was profoundly ill conceived, (no matter how pure the intentions were) where Isabelle tells Xaviera she understands what it’s like to have your entire personhood being boiled down to your disability (Isabelle has a wormfinger). It’s a nice sentiment, except not being able to have children is NOT a disability, and the experiences are nowhere near SIMILAR, let alone the same. Yes, it’s horrible to feel like your body is betraying you, or working against you if you want to have kids and can’t. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have to go through something like that, ESPECIALLY if you live in a society where that is what your entire worth as a human is boiled down to. But this is not a story for a man to tell, especially not if you want to focus so heavily on how other people think Xaviera is worthless, and not XAVIERA, the person who is seen as worthless and who actually has to experience this pain! There is never a scene in which Craddock dissuades the readers from thinking that it’s COMPLETELY unfair and sexist that Xaviera’s competence at being a Queen is negated because she can’t have kids; instead we focus on Alejandro and how he’s just such a good guy because he loves his wife so much that he won’t cheat on her or divorce her. Xaviera deserves a better story than being sidelined to be a foil to Isabelle’s working womb, and I absolutely hate this storyline, even more after we get a reveal that makes Xaviera;s infertility completely moot. Then, there’s also the whole thing with Isabelle’s mother having 3 miscarriages before she gives birth to Isabelle and dying while giving birth to her brother. Her character is mostly comedic relief, and though she may have been a vain, bad person, treating her miscarriages as some sort of divine punishment is incredibly offensive in a book that’s otherwise genuinely funny and clever about it’s writing. Isabelle’s entire birth scene left such a poor taste in my mouth, that I contemplated DNFing the book; it’s played mostly for laughs, with the Comtessa struggling to push Isabelle out, and yet Craddock wrote it the artifax giving a sermon about how the pain women experience in childbirth is the punishment from the Builder for destroying his Kingdom with their curiosity. Not only is this verbatim something religious fundamentals use to torment women with to this day, it’s so incredibly tone deaf and ill-placed in this supposedly lighthearted scene, that I was ready to quit. Then there’s Isabelle. There is a LOT to unpack with her, but unfortunately I can’t, without spoiling the whole book. What I can talk about is how she is treated as, again, a walking womb, for the whole first half of the book. She is arranged to marry Julio because she’s off saint’s blood, has a fertile womb and can’t do magic. It has nothing to do with her intelligence, or her skills or even her damn beauty; no it’s because her womb works and Julio needs a baby. And literary no one, not Jean-Claude, not Isabelle, not even Julio is opposed to this idea, at least until we find out the real reasons for the marriage. She is literary boiled down to her womb, and treated like a prized racing horse, and she is the LEAD CHARACTER. Again, this is not necessarily supposed to be viewed as good, but that’s only after we find out why the marriage was orchestrated. Up until then, no one questions this, and I cannot describe to you how uncomfortable it was for me to read all the 10 000 times people care about Isabelle’s womb more than her, encourage and downright blackmail her into sleeping with a complete stranger so that he can Euron style put-a-baby-in-her, and everytime someone calls her breeding stock or broodmare. That felt good to get off my chest. Let’s talk some positives. My favorite part of the The Three Musketeers is the bit about the Comtessa having her diamonds stolen, and the King asking her to wear them at the ball, and the Musketeers having to go make a new set and bring it in time for the ball. This plot is that same rush of tension and political maneuvering mixed with humor, except the conspiracy is so complicated, there would be no way I could describe it to you all without spoilers. What I can talk about is how through very different approaches and skill sets, Jean-Claude and Isabelle figure out what is happening parallel to each-other. Jean-Claude is like a Musketeer version of Hercule Poirot. He is incredibly good at improvising and acting, he has a way of getting people to talk to him and reveal information they don’t want to, he knows how to lie, fight, shoot, run and has a bit of a temper. While with Isabelle we learn more of the mechanics of the plot, with Jean-Claude we learn about the people involved in the conspiracy, and their various motives. I really enjoyed Jean-Claude’s detective skills; also since he’s the Musketeer, he gets the brunt of the action scenes which were all very fun. Isabelle on the other hand, is more like Sherlock Holmes. She’s good with words and people, but not the Jean-Claude’s effect, and she’s more than a little socially awkward and insecure, especially at first. What she’s good at is logic, facts and math, and she uses her analytical skills to deduce answers and see irregularities and inconsistencies around her. Though a lot of her skills are ones that she’s not supposed to have, like being able to read the Old Language, or know about how ships run and machines operate, her real skill is the ability to appeal to people and what they want, and she has a real knack for diplomacy that I really enjoyed watching develop throughout the book. The entire focus of the book, and Isabelle’s character arc is about soft power; she isn’t a sword fighter or a gunsmith, but she’s very intelligent, kind and clever, and combined with her deduction skills and wordplay, she makes a formidable political player. There is a reason Gran Leon picks her to be an ambassador, even if it’s with hidden intentions; she sees the loopholes in others’ plans and weaves her own, manipulating people when she must, and offering a branch of friendship when she can. I already mentioned the scene between her and Xaviera, but there are many more examples in the book of her making unlikely friends without even really trying to; my favorite scene was her duel of wits with Gran Leon.

Characters:

Outside of the plot which was excellent and incredibly clever, I loved the characters. There are so many of them, that I couldn’t possibly cover them all, and a lot I can’t talk about because of spoilers, so I’ll just talk about the leading duo, which is Isabelle and Jean-Claude.

Jean-Claude was my favorite person in this whole book. He was exactly what I imagined Aramis to be like; funny, sarcastic, too clever for his own good, very capable, and yet quite flawed. His father-daughter relationship with Isabelle was heartwarming, though I didn’t much care for how he saw her as someone who constantly needed protection, until she was to be handed off to another man to protect. He sees her as capable, but I wasn’t a fan of how he seemed to never quite understand that she was more than just whatever man was beside her.

He had the funniest quips, and keeping in with the theme of wordplay I liked his little anaphore game with Isabelle.

The other great thing about Jean-Claude, was how his moral compass was at odds to his loyalty to Grand Leon. He owes everything to Grand Leon, as he had handpicked Jean-Claude to be his own Musketeer, but when he finds himself in situations of injustice, Jean-Claude has a hard time standing by, even if it means potentially endangering his standing. He’s a flawed character, and sometimes he was too arrogant or too blindsided to see the full picture, like with Vincent and Thornscar, and he is like any good Musketeer quite fond of self-indulgent pity.

One of his best quotes:

”Majesty, please excuse me for bleeding in your presence, but someone just tried to shoot the princess’s coach and bomb me, which is rather backward of the way I would have done it, but I’m thankful for his incompetence” pg. 249

Isabelle on the other hand is a lot more subdued, which makes perfect sense, seeing all the things she has been through. She has had a very abusive childhood, with her father trying to force her sorcery to come out, as well as being bullied and shunned because of her wormfinger.

I tried looking up to see if wormfinger is a real thing, and I couldn’t find anything, but as best as I could understand it, it’s a hand deformity where the hand has a single, unresponsive finger. Since this society is incredibly focused on looks and sexual appeal for women, Isabelle is considered a freak and even a devil-child, which isolates her. However, what I really appreciated was that she accepts her disability as just another part of herself, not some kind of burden, and she is content with herself. The book also doesn’t focus on her appearance, other than general descriptions, (which was true for all of the characters, points for you Craddock).

Isabelle suffers from a lot of trauma, especially concerning her own voice and words, as something happens to her, which is a direct result of someone misconstruing her words to hurt her. However, she’s still if not happy, then content, and though she’s not the bravest character in the book, she pushes through regardless, and tries to meet all her obstacles and overcome them, no matter how daunting they look.

There is a very mild romance in the book, but it’s so insignificant to all that happens that I hesitate to even call it a subplot. I liked this too; most of the relationships Isabelle builds are with friends and allies and what motivates her is entirely her friendship to Marie. I loved that her strongest allies outside of Jean-Claude were always other women; Marie, Valery, Gretl, even Xaviera. Her friendship with Gretl was especially important, as she is the only character who treats Gretl as a human rather than some kind of object and the disability representation for Gretl was I thought well done.

Conclusion:

Though I might have come off harsh on a lot of aspects of this book, it’s only because the parts that were good were great, and every time we took a detour from those parts into bad territory it was all the more jarring. It’s a really fun book, and if you are looking for a gunpowder fantasy with a world we don’t often see in fiction, a focus on diplomacy, politics and a kick-ass pair of leads, then I recommend it.

However, if talk of fertility, childbirth, miscarriage and the threat of sexual assault unsettle you you might want to stay away; as much as I’d like to separate the adventuring from this, these are the main themes of the book, and it’s impossible to ignore them.

goodreads

#an alchemy of masques and mirrors #an alchemy of masques and mirrors review #moni talks #book review

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highlevelencounters-blog · 6 years

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Call of Cthulhu: an over long analysis

In trying to give any video game a fair review, one faces difficulties, because games try to be and to do such a varying range of things. I think this is especially true of Cyanide’s Call of Cthulhu. There are so many metrics by which one could measure the game. Is it engaging? Is it scary? Does it do what it does well;? Is it well made? Is it true to its Lovecraft source material? Is it true to its roleplaying game source material? Is it worth the price? If you are short of time, and I would not blame you if you were, then very quickly: yes; no; yes; depends what you mean but no; sort of; yeah and that depends but probably not. If you are not short on time, then let me explain myself (in very great detail) by taking these points in turn. It is difficult to appraise the game without spoilers, but I will warn you when they are coming. If you do not want them, skip to the next heading.

Is Call of Cthulhu engaging?

Yes. Not the most engaging game, mind, but its story, characters and general sense of intrigue carry the game. There are technical problems with the writing that I will deal with below, but those are the video game equivalents of bad grammar and spelling errors (of which, while we are on the subject, I noticed a bit in the subtitles and item descriptions). Despite the animation problems, also mentioned below, the characters are well fleshed out both through direct speech and context. The graphics are nothing sensational, but are definitely good enough to create a world you want to explore. One of my favourite things, though, is that the game does not treat you like an idiot, nor does it leave you behind. My problem with the few investigation-based games I have played before is that they are determined to leave no man behind, so they bash you around the head with everything that they have lying around. Call of Cthulhu does not do this. Cut-scenes and mandatory conversations make sure you know what is going on even if you are not paying attention to anything else that is around you, but if you are looking at the details in the world, even the ones that are not in any way highlighted by the big buttons that appear over everything that you can interact with, then you can start to piece together why things are happening, as opposed to just finding out that they are happening. Intelligence, time and exploration are rewarded with details, but none are essential for understanding the gist of the story. It is difficult to say much more without spoilers, so here are some SPOILERS:

While Officer Bradley was clearly the best character, standing out from most modern video game characters you see today by being wonderfully human, but not in a broken, flawed way, I want to prove my point about good characters by pointing to Charles Hawkins. While this character is never explicitly explained, we know he has been in on everything since the beginning. He is literally a wife-beating monster and definitely a villain of the piece. But he is also conflicted and caring. He genuinely wants what is best for Sarah, even if that means abusing her. He is a bad, angry man, but he is trying to do right. And the beauty is that the game never actually tells you this. It shows you. No one really ever says anything about Charles’s character, but reading into what he says and watching what he does really gives you a feel for his character. Which is impressive for a character with such little screen time.

Is Call of Cthulhu scary?

No. I do not play horror games so I am not the person to ask really. Or maybe I am the perfect person to ask. Either way, for what it is worth, I was not scared by this game. I hate being chased and a couple of sequences made me tense up in my chair, but I would not take that as a massive indication of anything. The same fear of being chased is what made me stop playing Mirror’s Edge and that game is very far from scary. In the game’s defense, however, jump scares are cheap and I hate them and this game seems to aswell. I counted exactly two and one of them was mostly just a creepy musical trill and the other one was so obviously coming it did not even startle me. So Kudos there.

Does Call of Cthulhu do what it does well?

Yes. What I mean by this is, if you boil the game down to what it actually is, it does that well. What that means, is that it is a very good walking simulator. If that is not what you want, do not play this game. This is a walking sim with some very light RPG elements and a few sections where, undoubtedly, someone higher up the chain came in and said “we need a stealth section!” or “we need a combat section!” or “we need a horror section!” or “we need an action section!” and the developers obliged, put in one instance of each and moved on. These sections, except maybe the fun but very basic stealth section, are by far the weakest parts of the game (oh my, that combat section!). The exceptions are the many puzzles, which, like the plot in general, do not treat you like an idiot. Except for one part of one, which honestly feels like the developers made a mistake (what is supposed to be the clue for where to look for the answer instead just straight up gives you the answer, despite the fact that all the stuff for actually reasoning out the answer is right there in the game!).

I only have one problem with the walking simulator nature of the game. There are a few sections which are clearly only there to pad out time. Most of the game is a pretty tight linear tour through the story, but occasionally you are given an adventure game style ‘puzzle’ that just boils down to, “walk around this area you have already walked around for ages until you find the thing that you have to poke to make the story progress”. Anyone who has played the game will know what I mean by ‘the bust bit’. And there is another section which might work as a horror piece, maybe, but just seemed to me to be “run around this same small area 5 or 6 times till we arbitrarily let you out”. ‘Lamps’ is the clue word for that one, if you’re curious as to what I mean. But these are nit-picks. Generally the game is an excellent walking simulator.

Is Call of Cthulhu well made?

That depends on what you mean. Games are hugely multifaceted, but what often differentiates a good game from a poor one is the ability of its developers to work to its strengths. It would be an unfair criticism of Indie darling Limbo to say that it had bad facial animations. It definitely did, but this is not a problem because the characters effectively have no faces. This seems like a facile point, but I think it is important to remember that Cyanide, the developers of Call of Cthulhu, have previously been known for the Styx games, a few Games Workshop titles, a buttload of cycling games and little else. Call of Cthulhu is not triple-A, but it’s not Indie either. The game, at least visually and narratively though, tries to do everything a triple-A title would attempt to do, as opposed to the usual Indie approach of making at least one aspect in some way minimalist. This is not an excuse, merely something to keep in mind as I say that the animation is some of the worst I have seen in games for a very long time. It’s not quite as funny as Mass Effect Andromeda’s, there is not quite enough going on for it to be quite as bizarrely broken. Dialogue lines would come out of characters whose mouths were shut, arms would constantly drift around like they had slightly confused minds of their own and I hope the ‘facial expressions’ were enjoying their trip to the uncanny valley.

The writing was a bit all over the place as well. Writing, mind, not story or character construction. There is a reasonable amount of choice in the game, but an annoyingly large number of the lines of dialogue do not seem to match up with the choices you make. In the first main scene, you can go straight into a conversation with someone and mention in one conversation branch that you know that a character is a big deal on Darkwater island, and then immediately choose another conversation option where you reveal you have never even heard of Darkwater island before. In a subsequent scene, a man told me he would meet me somewhere later, but then, when I got there, my character had several lines questioning why the man was there. There are numerous moments like this and it really takes you out of the experience every time it happens. A similar issue is present whenever you enter an enclosed space and your vision starts distorting. I only knew that this was a representation of the main character’s claustrophobia because the developers mentioned it in press releases. I did not notice any mention of it in the actual game.

A bit more nit-picky, but there are a few times when the game simply does not tell you something that would be useful to know. The most egregious of these is when they give you something which has limited uses but do not tell you either that it has limited uses or how many uses are left until you have used them all up. It is never a particularly large problem, but it would have been nice to know.

Still, looking at the game as a technical work, I must say that the graphics are nice. The art style has a Dishonored feel to it, which I personally have lots of time for. It is not quite as stylised, but the game is generally very pretty, which is a good thing too since you will spend a lot of time shoving your camera into every corner of it.

Is Call of Cthulhu true to its Lovecraftian source material?

Ah, the fun question. The answer really depends on how much of a deep dive you want to do. But before I jump in, it is important to note that the developers explicitly said their game was based on the table-top RPG, rather than Lovecraft’s stories. What follows, then, is a piece of literary critique (read: w**k) and not necessarily a criticism of the game. It will also be absolutely riddled with SPOILERS:

Call of Cthulhu gets a lot right about the common conception of the Lovecraftian aesthetic: the green tinge that permeates everything gives it a distinctly Cthulhu-y vibe, the rural town is a common motif of Lovecraft’s (the game is very Shadow Over Insmouth here) and Cthulhu as an entity is almost used well. As I said at the top, SPOILERS! Cthulhu actually shows up, for about one second, in one of the game’s four endings and is presented as an unstoppable, maddening, world-ending force. This is doing Cthulhu right. There is no fighting Cthulhu: once he has been awoken from his fhtagn, the world will crumble around him. The only hope one has is to prevent that from happening, so it is appropriate that, if it is allowed to happen, the game gives you no chance to resist. The game also takes a good approach to sanity and curiosity. Fuller is the character who most explores the concept of curiosity and it is shown to warp and twist him as it opens his mind to new possibilities. This fear of curiosity is at the heart of Lovecraft’s writings. The game also plays with sanity, another of Lovecraft’s main themes, although most of the mechanical implications of that are better discussed in relation to the Call of Cthulhu table-top RPG.

However, there is one thing that the game gets seriously wrong about Lovecraft. In those moments when the game is scary, the story itself is not one of cosmic horror. Much horror is about holding a mirror up to humanity. It is about showing and exploring our darker sides. Werewolves explore our animal nature, vampires (at least traditionally) were an exploration of sexuality, serial killers explore human psychopathy, zombies represent rampant consumerism. The monster, at the end of the day, is us. This is not the goal of cosmic horror. Lovecraft is not writing stories about people. His horror is metaphysical. “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all of its contents” is how he begins his story The Call of Cthulhu and this one sentence, I think, underpins all of his work. His protagonists go mad not because they saw something scary, they go mad because they saw something they cannot explain. Their very understanding of reality is thrown out of whack and they are shown that the safe, pedestrian, societal lives they thought they were living were facades: the ignorance that our subconscious chooses for us to protect us from realisations about the universe and our tiny, utterly insignificant part in it. His entities are often not even evil, they are simply so alien and disinterested that we matter as much to them as ants matter to us. This is why Lovecraft was so revolutionary, he moved away from the traditionally biblical kind of horror where the monsters are manifestations of our own sins and turned instead to the secular world of science for his horrors. “The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little”, he continues in Call of Cthulhu, “but someday the piecing together of previously disassociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age”. I say again, Lovecraft is not telling stories about people. He is telling stories about the universe and our inability to understand or cope with it. The truth that science will one day unlock, Lovecraft seems to be suggesting, is that we do not matter at all. This is cosmic horror. But Call of Cthulhu (the video game, that is) seems to miss this. Pierce’s sanity (or insanity) progression comes the closest. I say more on this mechanic below, but the final choice that Pierce must make is the most Lovecraftian moment of the game.

There are four endings to the game, one default and three others unlocked through story actions, which is a system I like. On a very quick side note, I also really like how there is a save point just before the end, allowing you to go back instantly and replay the endings you did not choose, but only if you unlocked them (I unlocked three of the four endings on my first play-through). Suicide and accepting the ritual both present “go mad from the revelation” endings, each with a different but totally appropriate flavour of madness, while the ‘it’s over’ ending represents a flight back into a dark age, Pierce sticking fingers in his ears and yelling “la la la it’s all a dream!” I also like here that you have to unlock all but the ritual ending. I was annoyed with this ending until I found this out. The game does not really give you any reason to complete the ritual. The Leviathan and the cult have all clearly been bad the whole way through the game, there is not ever any good reason for Pierce to surrender at the last moment and perform the ritual. Having it as the default, though, makes this lack of motivation slightly more excusable, as it represents Pierce simply surrendering to what he has been told is his destiny, as opposed to having worked for the will to fight back in some way. The fourth ending, the counter ritual, is by far the poorest, which is a shame because it could so easily have been fixed. You know that Drake is planning something, but Pierce, or at least my Pierce, was never told exactly what that was. My Pierce would not logically even have known that there was a counter ritual, never mind how to do it and certainly never mind what it actually does (a point that I am still completely in the dark about). This is something, as far as I can tell, that the game never explains, even if you do choose this option. Just a little bit of exposition, probably delivered by Drake, would have cleared this all up.

But I digress. Call of Cthulhu is essentially a game about people. It is about a group of people who are more or less tricked by some powerful alien being into doing its bidding. And as I said above, it does this well. But in being about people and their struggles, it fails to focus on what Lovecraft himself actually focuses on. Now, a quick disclaimer: I do not know for a fact that Lovecraft was a racist and viewed minorities as ‘less human’ than white people (although there is evidence for this in his work), but I am going to assume this is the case, at least in some way, for what I am going to say. I think it is telling that most of the cultists in Lovecraft’s work are minorities, because this distances even his human villains from the (I think) exclusively white protagonists of his stories. This separation between the human and the alien is completely ignored in the sequences in which Pierce is visited by the Leviathan in prison. The fact that the Leviathan would take humanoid form and use human manipulation tactics to get Pierce to do what it wants is totally non-Lovecraftian. Where is the horror at our utter inconsequentiality here? Cthulhu is scary because it does not care about us, we matter so little there would be zero point in it or any of its ... associates (for want of a better word) attempting to use tactics to manipulate human kind. In The Call of Cthullhu (the story now, not the game), Cthullhu pretty much tells people to come and they just do. No need to take human form, no need to use psychological methods. Lovecraftian horrors use us like the dumb insects that, compared to them, we are.

Further the visions that haunt Pierce are visions of people, mostly, and the awful things that they do to each other. He questions his senses, but he never really questions his position in the universe or what it would actually mean if all the things that he is seeing were true. Lovecraft’s protagonists usually do believe what they see and this is what drives them mad, while Pierce is driven mad by questions about whether or not to believe what he sees. The biggest crime though, the moment that really made me feel that the developers had missed the point, is in the after-credits half of the ritual ending. Here we see the cultists all engaged in a murderous brawl, screaming with delirious madness as they punch and kick and bite each other while, presumably, Cthulhu gets on with the important job of destroying the world just off camera. But this is the wrong kind of madness. Sure, everyone would go mad as their understanding of reality snapped at the vastness and alien-ness (alienitude? alienosity?) of Cthulhu, but for all of them to just go kill-crazy? It doesn’t make sense. That does not seem to be the madness that comes of having your entire knowledge of reality shattered. It feels more like a madness that makes a flashy ending to a video game.

Is Call of Cthulhu true to its roleplaying game source material?

Yes, broadly. Firstly, I am not a CoC (which is what I’ll call the rolepaying Call of Cthulhu, because this is getting stupidly confusing) expert. I have played and run a few games, but it is not my main game. That being said, I think I know enough to say that Call of Cthulhu does a good job of translating CoC into a video game. Its plot is a little more big-leagues (bigly) and showy than your average CoC game, but that is fine. It’s the same thing that happens when a film is made from a TV series. And in this regard, Call of Cthulhu is hardly a huge offender. This might just be me, but I really like stories that know how to reign in their scale and Call of Cthulhu does a pretty good job of this. With the exception of one particular sub-plot (which is by no means overblown just a little elbowed in (the whole painting sub arc, btw)), everything is pretty well contained and not much is thrown in to escalate things to stupid levels as the game progresses.

Call of Cthulhu continues the well-practiced trend of CoC games of being incredibly linear, but while this is an actual problem for roleplaying games, where the only limitation is imagination, in a video game, which is fenced in by budget and deadline constraints, this linearity is not so much of a problem.

An area where Call of Cthulhu differs from CoC is in its use of skills. The skill list for 6th edition CoC (which is the edition I know, so don’t pester me about 7th ed) is over 50 skills long. Call of Cthulhu, on the other hand, has 7 skills. This means you never have those horrible moments where you absolutely NEED a successful library-use roll or else-you-will-all die-in-the-next-encounter-because-you-did-not-know-the-monster-is-weak-to-salt-but-you-put-all-your-points-into-Fast-Talk-so-I-guess-you-are-all-just-going-to-die-and-no-I-am-not-still-bitter. This, I feel, is an improvement. It could be argued that it reduces the scope for roleplaying, but with the limited conversation options and the actually quite well written and characterised Pierce, you are never going to be totally in control anyway. Call of Cthulhu is also paced very much like a CoC game as well, with slow, social information gathering at the beginning, ramping up to more action/horror moments later. This does make some of the skills more useless later on in the game, but this is not a major problem and a difficult one to avoid (and certainly one that CoC games usually fail to avoid). Also like CoC, there is, I think, a clearly right thing to do at character creation, but while in CoC it is because some skills (I’m looking at you, operate heavy machinery) are simply pointless, in Call of Cthulhu character gen is the only time you can use experience points to level up Occultism and Medicine, something you are definitely going to want to do and something the game does not do a good job of telling you.

CoC’s main selling point, as a system, is its sanity mechanic, something that Cyanide obviously spent a great deal of time looking at when making Call of Cthulhu. I have heard that some people did not think it was used well, but I have to disagree. Sadly though, to explain why I have to make liberal use of SPOILERS!

In CoC, sanity is effectively your character’s long-term health bar. Your sanity level sticks around from adventure to adventure with very little you can do to raise it if it falls. It is, in many ways, your character’s expiration date. It goes down whenever you see something Cthulhoid, but there is a random element to it. Clearly, this would not work for Call of Cthulhu, not in the same way anyway. If Call of Cthulhu were a CoC game, it would take at most three or four sessions, and that is not really fast enough for a character to melt completely into a gibbering puddle of insanity. So Call of Cthulhu does something very different and I think it does it very well.

At the beginning of the game, you have some control over your sanity being reduced. The most clear example of this is when you have the option of whether or not to read the Malleus Monstorum. But as the game continues, you have less and less choice over whether you get to see sanity-breaking stuff or not. It basically just happens to you. This means that really, your loss of sanity is almost 100% controlled by the game’s story. Therefore the moment that you break mechanically is also the moment that weird stuff starts happening, by necessity, in the story. Pierce starts to have visions, some of them obviously fake, some of them much more plausibly real, and because his sanity has broken we know that we are in a situation where we should be questioning everything, as opposed to earlier in the game when the lines were much more clear cut. This is a co-opting of mechanics by story, which I have not really seen before in a game. The game gives you something that appears to be in your control but then slowly and subtly takes it back. You could see this as a reduction in player autonomy, because it really is, but I think this fits very well with the themes of destiny and inevitability in the story. It also produces an organic way to show the deteriorating mental state of Pierce without it being exposition-y. If we had felt, right from the beginning, that the sanity bar had nothing to do with our own choices, the moment when Pierce breaks would have felt contrived. But by giving us that illusion of choice we are engaged with the progression of that sanity bar in a way that we would not be otherwise and when it finally shifts from stable to psychotic, we do not see this as a simple narrative move, we see this as an organic part of the story and the choices we made in it, even if really it is not. I also love how the sanity manifests itself. It is subtly done and I think interesting debates could be had about what is real and what is not (I have strong feelings about when the last time we really see Colden is, for example). A brilliant example of this is how we shoot Fuller in what is obviously a dream-scape and then come back to what we think is reality and find we have shot him there too. But this, itself, is also shown to be an illusion when, in one of the ending sequences, we hear him talking to a nurse. It is all very Inception-y and I really like it. It was a nice subversion of expectations, as I was expecting the sanity meter, as a player influenced mechanic, to be able to affect only aesthetic things and maybe minor story elements. I noticed this exactly once (a painting had blood spatters on it which disappeared when I approached), but the way the game takes control of the mechanic and allows it to have serious narrative impact, while a removal of player autonomy, was very refreshing.

Is Call of Cthulhu worth the price?

At time of writing, Call of Cthulhu is selling for £40. It is not worth that. You can go and pick up Divinity Original Sin 2, a game that is basically empirically perfect, for £10 less than that and get at the very least ten times as much play time out of it. Where the price point of Call of Cthulhu should be for you is something only you can decide. £15 seems like a more reasonable price point to me. What I look for is usually a strong enjoyment/hour ratio as opposed to a good hour/money ratio, and Call of Cthulhu has a very good enjoyment/hour ratio, but this is certainly helped by its short length. At the end of the day, I would say that whatever you would be willing to pay for two engaging, thoughtful, just below Hollywood tier films is probably the right price for Call of Cthulhu. Especially since the game has basically no replay value. In many ways it is very average, but if you have a thing for walking simulators or Lovecraftian worlds, then this game is a must buy for you. But maybe wait until the price has dropped.

#Call of Cthulhu #Cthulhu #Lovecraft #Game Review #Essay #Cosmic horror #Literary analysis #Roleplay #HashtagsHaveNoSpaces

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swilmarillion · 7 years

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What was college/university like for everyone (leasure time included) or basically their lives as young adults?

Ah, yes. Life before attempted world domination. A much simpler time :D

Gothmog never went to college. He’s a smart guy and all, but he’s a very hands-on learner and also tends to only be motivated to learn or do something if he thinks it’ll be valuable to him. The rigid structure of higher ed just didn’t appeal to him. He ended up in the army, mostly to cash in on the whole signing bonus deal. Oddly enough, he was pretty miserable. He didn’t like his superiors and hated the pointlessness of drills and exercises. He’s not big on rules for the sake of rules, and he definitely doesn’t like to be treated like garbage, which is how he felt about his whole army experience. He ended up getting into a little trouble--like, getting high, stealing an army jeep, and going AWOL kind of trouble. He got a dishonorable discharge which was...not great. He ended up bouncing around for a while, trying to stay out of trouble, and wound up at the bar, working as a bouncer. When Thil started, the two of them really hit it off and became good friends pretty much immediately. They were both in that early twenties, having a hard time meeting people and I’m super lonely phase of life, so they kind of glommed onto one another. Gothmog’s spare time has remained largely unchanged throughout his life. He likes to cook and eat delicious food, watch horror movies, and dick around with his friends. He’s a good, simple guy.

Thuringwethil always had a lot of ambition. She wanted to be a high-powered lawyer, making an obscene salary, able to afford designer clothes and shoes and vacations basically anything she could ever want. In college, though, her life was the polar opposite of what she wanted. She went to an expensive private school for undergrad and law school because it was the top school, and she wanted the best. Still, it was expensive, and she worked constantly just to tread water. She was an impeccable student, straight As her whole career. She was also really good at networking, both with professors and students. She has this uncanny ability to get things from people--secrets, favors, etc--without investing much on her end. She ended up with a lot of connections that she still uses today. She did competitive debate and was really good at it. She wrote for the law review and the school paper, and she did assistantships with a couple professors that took up a lot of her time. In her (pretty limited) spare time, she liked to read trashy romance novels and trawl social media looking for things she could use against her classmates. Oh, one other interesting thing. She had this job when she was an undergrad, one of those pretty low-paying part-time gigs, where she worked in the biology greenhouse, taking care of plants. The manager really liked her and would show her some tricks for taking care of the plants. She kind of developed an unexpected love of plants that has stuck with her even to this day.

Melkor was basically that jerk in every movie that never goes to class and yet inexplicably does really well in his classes (mostly). Okay, let’s be honest, he barely passed the ones he didn’t care about--all those liberal arts classes like music appreciation and poetry. Not interested = not going = not trying at all. Ds get degrees, right? But his engineering classes? Math and physics? He aced them, every time. It was really infuriating to a lot of his professors. He showed up to class a handful of times, turned in homework that had obviously been completed on his way to class, and still managed to own his exams. Most of his professors agreed he was brilliant, but also an asshole. He was insufferable to his classmates and had very few friends. He didn’t do any formal extracurricular activities, but he did do a lot of tinkering around. He checked out books way above his formal education level and built some truly incredible prototypes when he was still in college. That’s how he spent a lot of his free time; the rest was spent doing a lot of really reckless partying, going to concerts, getting into fights, etc. His professors pretty universally agreed he was either going to revolutionize the field or end up bombing a public works building. In their defense, he kind of ended up somewhere in the middle.

And we come to Mairon, the biggest, most high-achieving nerd you’ve ever met. He went to college early because mr. smartypants was done with high school super early. Having him in class was...an experience. He was an exceptional student--did all the homework, everything done on time, participated in class discussions...the works. But he was also wickedly, unbelievably smart. Ahead of the class, smart. He’d ask questions in lecture that stumped the professors, regularly. He would raise points that called established theories into question. He was also kind of a loner. He wasn’t mean to classmates or anything, but he didn’t have a lot inc common with them,and they were honestly a little afraid of him. He spent a lot of time with professors, talking about schoolwork and theory and basically just absorbing everything he could. Mairon was homeless when he started college, but after hanging around Aule’s lab for a while, Yavanna took a liking to him and let him live with them. He spent most of his free time studying and doing independent research. He did very little for actual leisure, but he did enjoy writing anonymous call-out pieces in the school paper and pitting competing interest groups on campus against one another. You know, basic mischief. He really didn’t have any friends. He was too busy, and too aloof. The only people he hung out with were his labmates (almost never outside of work) and Yavanna, who he got super close to. He also fooled around with Eonwe every so often, mostly to blow off steam, and picked up random dudes when Eonwe was busy and he needed a little, um, you know. It wasn’t until he met Melkor and came to Utumno that he started having friends like a normal person, and that he got to put all that knowledge to good use.

#swil answers #fyd asks #darkkryptonite

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qqueenofhades · 8 years

Text

i know you [i walked with you once upon a dream]: five

Post-1x16 canon divergence. When Lucy Preston, a history professor at Stanford University, is visited by a strange man who tells her that her entire world is a lie, she is drawn into a mystery more dangerous than she could have dreamed, and a hunt for a past she can’t remember. But who, or what, is she going to find – or lose – along the way?

chapter four/AO3

Wyatt Logan’s first impression of the place is that it looks like a huge blue aquarium with the water drained out, walls of glass for the crowds to press in and gawk, the trained whales doing tricks for their captors and everyone hoping you don’t spend too long thinking about whether this is, strictly speaking, entirely ethical. He’s been rousted out of bed (well, the couch, with the TV still on and droning SportsCenter) and driven here, while the person on the other end of the phone had that harried sound to their voice that usually means a VIP was shot or a building blown up. They said they needed him, and they said they needed him ASAP. He might be on leave, but he’s still Delta Force. No choice but to pull on his pants, grab a Red Bull, and go.

Now, as Wyatt’s shown into the conference room and shakes hands with a lot of identity-badged government types, surreptitiously checking his breath to make sure it doesn’t smell too much like alcohol and biting his tongue on the questions that he knows won’t get an answer. Yet, at any rate. This has all the hallmarks of a rapid-response mission debrief, and while it might be good to get his head back in the game, Wyatt can’t help but wonder why they picked him. His last review with the Pendleton brass ended with the gentle but pointed recommendation that he could use some time away from the service. They know the thing with Jessica has been hard. (Hah. They know it’s been hard.) So he’s been doing – not a whole hell of a lot. Sports talk shows. Cheap beer. Sitting on the couch. Staring at the wall. Maybe a mission is just what he needs.

The rest of the government types make their entrance, along with Connor Mason, the smarmy British CEO of the company whose premises Homeland Security seems to have swiped. Wyatt’s heard of these guys. They were just in the paper for some big cutting-edge engineering project. He glances at Mason’s assistant or techie or whatever he is, who he vaguely remembers in the haze of hurried introductions as Rufus, Rufus Carlin. Wyatt has a momentarily impulse to wave to him. He clenches his fist until it goes away.

The security shades are lowered, and the briefing starts. As Wyatt guessed, it’s indeed a mission, and moreover, they are quite insistent on it being him who does it. He charitably holds back from the obvious objections this raises, but when they get to the main problem, he can’t. “What? Are you serious? You’re trying to apprehend a terrorist suspect, and your big plan is to send an untrained woman, an unarmed civilian, in with just a GPS tracker by herself? No wonder she got kidnapped! I’m shocked she didn’t get killed!”

“Mr. Logan, given the intelligence available, and the particularity of the situation, we considered the options and decided it was the best available.”

Wyatt whistles. “Wow. I really don’t want to know what the others were then, do I? Chickens on fire? A big sign telling any terrorists to stand with their hands up until the cops got there?”

“We realize that on face value, this was a risk.” The agent looks cool, as if they’re not going to sit here and be questioned by him. “However – ”

“I’m not asking all of you to think like special ops – and for that matter, I would have been raked over the coals and booted out on the spot if I’d suggested that plan to a superior with a straight face. I am not even asking you to be highly trained risk managers. I’m asking whether it ever occurred to you for one fucking second that this was like giving an angry baboon a Tommy gun: that the outcome was both terrible and idiotically avoidable.”

“Mr. Logan, we made a decision – ”

“Stupid,” Wyatt says. “Let’s be clear. You made a stupid decision.”

Rufus Carlin coughs. It sounds as if it might be intended to conceal a laugh. Whatever, Wyatt didn’t come here to be the Jon Stewart of late-night security crises, but he’s really not in the mood for this. It almost sounds like a bad joke, since surely no credible intelligence agency would have made that decision with a straight face. It would only remotely have a chance of working if there was a personal connection of some sort between the suspect and the victim, if they could set it up as a sting. But if this woman knows terrorists on enough of a familiar basis to make her an option to catch one, why haven’t they –

“Do I even get to know who she is?” Wyatt asks. “This woman that you clowns decided to dangle out for bait?”

Glances are exchanged. They seem to be debating it. Then one says, “Her name is Dr. Lucy Preston. She’s a history professor at Stanford.”

Wyatt’s heart inexplicably skips a beat. They click a photo up onto the screen, and yes, it’s her, the brunette he met the other night, being hassled by more of these award-winning geniuses. Or at least, he thinks it might have been them, since all the sunglasses-and-suits types look alike. He did flash them his Army ID card, so that might be backfiring on him now, if they are having their revenge by making him clean up their messes. Damned if he knows how that works, but still. For some reason he wasn’t prepared for and doesn’t understand, this catches him off guard. If it’s Lucy – Dr. Preston – who’s been snatched by this weirdo, Wyatt isn’t quite as disinterested in the whole clusterfuck as he was a moment ago. Hell if he knows why.

“Ah,” he says, doing his best to sound neutral. “And who has her?”

“His name,” says the lead agent, the beefy, bearded one who Wyatt recalls as Neville, Jake Neville, “is Flynn.”

Wyatt, for an even more baffling instant, is convinced he knows exactly who that is. Has an odd memory of sitting in an apartment, talking to a woman, telling her that the man was a Russian spy – only for him to see Flynn (was it Flynn?) outside, jabbing something into a boy’s arm. He thought it was poison, some kind of drug or other malicious substance, but it turned out to be epinephrine. Saved the kid from dying of an allergic reaction to the bee sting, said something to the woman, and jumped off the balcony. Wyatt got a few shots off at him, but he managed to drive away. Car. Black car. Kind of vintage-looking. Why does this memory feel – not quite present? Aside from the fact that it’s not even a memory, seeing as it never happened, and it’s strong enough to make Wyatt rub his eyes and briefly wonder if he fell asleep, had some kind of intense and localized dream. What the hell.

“And,” he says after a moment, realizing they’re looking at him, “you want me to go after him. Again. By myself. Because either you don’t have enough of a budget to pay for more than one operative on your exfil missions, or there’s something you’re not telling me.”

“Would you say you’re familiar with Mr. Flynn? Or Dr. Preston?”

Wyatt opens his mouth to say no, of course he isn’t, but something stops him. It’s at the least unfair to Lucy (Dr. Preston, he reminds himself again, he doesn’t know the woman) to let her suffer for the total incompetence of the feds, and he’d kind of like to have a clear shot at this jackoff himself, even if he doesn’t know why. And while they’d again be sending only one person to deal with a clearly dangerous man, a trained Delta Force operative is not the same as an unarmed academic when it comes to such things. Wyatt can’t believe he’s considering it, when thirty minutes ago this sounded like the worst idea he’d ever heard, but. . .

“So what?” he says abruptly. “I get on the plane to Paris, you drop me in, I find these two, I rescue her – what are my orders in regard to him?”

More glances. Then Agent Neville says, “Frankly, Mr. Logan, we would normally issue kill-on-sight instructions for this man. What he has done, and what he will do – there’s no room for any wishy-washy hand-wringing about it. He deserves to die. But as it happens, we need him alive.”

“Questioning?” That one’s pretty obvious. “You really think you’re gonna make him talk?”

Neville smiles, a bit unpleasantly. “Oh, I think we could, if we put our minds to it.”

Wyatt looks away. He has captured suspects before with the implicit knowledge that they’ll be submitted to “extraordinary rendition” or “enhanced interrogation” or whatever Orwellian gobbledygook they’re calling it these days, and he also knows that as a soldier, you don’t enlist because you think you’ll always have the luxury of accepting missions that you are personally morally comfortable with. Flynn is clearly dangerous, he’s on the run in Paris with Lucy (Wyatt gives up trying to call her Dr. Preston in his head) and frankly, right now, if the brass says jump, Wyatt has to ask how high. He can tell this is a test. They’re sending him, and only him, because if he fails, they’ll have all the excuse they need to chuck him out permanently. Dishonorable discharge, no pension. Good luck getting a civilian job after over fifteen years in the service, training for classified missions and serving in conflict zones. And something more. Something else. Whatever is happening when he had those bizarre flashes of non-memory, and his conviction that he knows these people – knows both of them – better than he understands.

Wyatt takes a moment to consider all this. He’s not in a huge rush to accept, but he also can tell that it’s going to get finicky for him, fast, if he refuses. What exactly does he have to go back to? A sagging sofa crumbled with corn chips and more bad dreams about Jessica? At least this way he’s doing something. At least this way he doesn’t feel completely and irredeemably useless.

They look at him. They seem to be waiting on his answer.

Wyatt blows out a breath. There are still any number of sardonic comments to be made about him saving their asses from their own breathtaking stupidity, but he also senses that they aren’t going to help him very much. Lucy is probably tied up in some squalid basement with a lunatic. He gets her safe. Then he worries about Flynn.

“Fine,” he says. Shrugs. “Bonjour, Paris.”

--------------

Lucy is, in fact, sitting on a narrow bed in a garret that looks like a poet or three definitely died of consumption here in the nineteenth century, waiting for Flynn to get back with dinner – she ordered him that if he was going to haul her off, he was at least going to feed her. He gave her a black look, but complied, and has been gone for the last thirty minutes in search of takeout. She wonders if he’s been captured; they have to have put out an alert for him across the city. She isn’t sure if she wants that to have happened or not.

She wanders to the grimy window, judging the possibility of opening it and escaping across the rooftops, but it’s three stories down to the alley below, she doesn’t want to take chances climbing out as she is known to not be the most graceful or coordinated person in the world, and she isn’t sure where she’d go even if she did. Besides, she hasn’t endured this much hassle, most of it caused by him, to just turn and leave when potential answers might finally be in her grasp. It’s possible he is in fact going to hurt her, but for better or worse, she doesn’t get that sense. Hurt everyone else, yes, and gladly. Not her. This doesn’t make him a good man, or a safe one. But at the moment, he is the best, and possibly the only, choice she has.

Just to be sure, she checks the door. It is assuredly still locked. She isn’t planning on hanging around if he turns rabid, but she’ll have to think of a good plan later. Instead she stands by the window, affecting casualness, as the city gets dark outside and the lights come on. It’d be beautiful, if she wasn’t, you know. Where she was.

At last, the key finally rattles, the door bumps and creaks open with a shower of dust, and Flynn ducks through, slamming it behind him. When he’s ensured it’s locked, he throws a bag at her, which Lucy just manages to catch. “There,” he says, sounding put-upon. “Dinner.”

“Can’t just kidnap a woman in peace, can you?” Lucy says coldly. It smells delicious, but she doesn’t want to tear into it too quickly, even though she’s starving. “This is such an inconvenience for you, isn’t it?”

He actually looks surprised, and for a moment, slightly ashamed. Then he shrugs. “You aren’t a prisoner, Lucy. As I told you ninety years ago in this same city. You’re welcome to leave if you want. But I don’t think you will.”

“Ninety years ago – ?”

He shrugs again, jimmying the ancient light switch until it pops on. “1927. We were here. You talked me into letting Charles Lindbergh live, see if he could change. He still ended up being a dick. So in case you were wondering, you were wrong about that.”

Lucy stares at him. Any possible response to this statement – well, there really isn’t any possible response to that statement. “Yeah,” she says at last. “I spent a lot of time wondering if I talked you out of murdering Charles Lindbergh in 1927.”

Flynn sits down on the creaky chair across from her. He’s so tall that they’re still almost eye to eye, and she folds her arms involuntarily, wanting some air of authority, however feigned. “You really didn’t read the file?”

“Was I supposed to have time while you were stealing a scooter, breaking into a bakery, and shooting at government agents?” Lucy finally sits as well, back on the bed, opening the bag and pulling out whatever savory-smelling item is inside. “Or didn’t that come until later?”

Flynn has the grace to look slightly chagrined, though that isn’t very much. “Have you figured it out?” he says instead. “Smart woman like you?”

“Maybe.” Lucy looks at him stonily. “You not only think we know each other, you think we’re some sort of – I don’t know what. A bit like. . . time travelers.”

“Actually,” Flynn says, with the air of someone commenting on the weather. “Exactly like time travelers.”

Lucy blinks. “And you just – what? Tell people that?”

“You’re the one interested in preserving your precious past, Lucy. Not me.”

“It’s not my precious past!” Good god, this man is the most confounding and frustrating person she has ever met, which she is swiftly remembering (and regretting) after her decision to try to get information out of him. “It’s just. . . history!”

“History,” Flynn says, “can be changed.”

“How?”

He eyes her, as if wondering how much trouble he is actually going to go to in order to explain this. Then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a few folded sheets of paper – which, when Lucy opens it, proves to be a photocopy of some kind of handwritten book. Some kind of handwritten book that looks like. . . her handwriting.

“The journal itself doesn’t exist any more,” Flynn says, by way of apparent (non)-explanation. “You never had any reason to write it. But I copied some of it before I went, and. . . that’s the basic gist of it. Are you going to tell me that none of it is at all familiar?”

Lucy stares at it. She can’t deny that it does look like her handwriting, and he is watching her impatiently, as if they’ve done this already once before and he wants to just skip to the part where she believes him. Names leap out at her from the page. Mason Industries. Mothership. Lifeboat. Garcia Flynn. Wyatt Logan. Rufus Carlin.

Rittenhouse.

“So,” she says at last, when she’s reasonably confident her voice will be level. “That’s your big story. That Mason Industries invented a time machine – two time machines, actually. You stole one of them – why doesn’t that part surprise me? – and Wyatt Logan, Rufus Carlin, and I used the other one to try to stop you from taking down all of history.”

“Not history,” Flynn says flatly. “Rittenhouse.”

“Right. Creepy secret society. Your mortal enemy.” Lucy looks at him with that same flatness. “I’ll admit,” she says at last, “that if you were going to make up that story, you’d probably put a more favourable spin on it for yourself. But you have to know this sounds utterly deranged.”

“I’m not interested in arguing about whether it’s true, Lucy. It is. You know the part in the stories when magic starts happening, where the token rational character insists that there’s some normal explanation for what’s going on, that there’s nothing out of the ordinary? That everyone else is just making things up? You know how that character is always wrong?” His eyes are dark as two pits, depthless. “How about we just agree that you skip that part?”

“But – ”

“Let me guess,” Flynn says. “You’ve been having strange memories about Houston,1969. About thinking you were there, that you had something to do with the moon landing, even as that scholar’s brain of yours tells you that you hadn’t. And either 1754 or 1934. Maybe, at a stretch, 1972 or 1893.”

Lucy stares at him again. “How did you – ”

“Because that’s where it’s started to split.” He considers her, weighing his words. “In the middle. I destroyed the Mothership, as you said I could. It turns out that this was a bad idea on both our parts. It reset it to the timeline where none of this had technically happened, but it built in so much paradox that it’s starting to happen anyway. The changes we made are bursting back into existence randomly, like cluster bombs. We can’t be sure when or where they’ll hit – or who. And if you care about your sister, you’re going to help me find a way to stop it.”

Lucy’s spine stiffens. “If you’re threatening Amy – ”

“I’m not threatening her!” Flynn looks completely exasperated. “I’m warning you that in the new existence, the one that came about as the result of our meddling, she was gone! She was never born, and my wife and daughter were dead! You already said that Lorena vanished. It could be that she’s already just. . . gone, and there’s no getting her back.” A muscle works in his cheek. He does look genuinely frantic. “If the timeline remembered that she was supposed to be dead – don’t you see? Your sister could be the next to go! Just like that.”

Lucy is thoroughly rattled. She likewise should have a logical answer for this, but she doesn’t. “But my. . .” she says at last, faintly. “My sister exists. She’s a person, she’s real, she’s here. How can she just. . . not?”

“I don’t know.” Flynn stares at the ceiling, bleak and drained. “But it happened before. She was gone. And the only thing you wanted was to get her back, the same way I wanted nothing more than to save my wife and child. If you wait until she’s gone again this time, it’ll be too late.”

Lucy has absolutely nothing to say to that. So this is what he wants: for them to join forces to stop their respective loved ones from vanishing in a puff of unsustainable spatial-temporal paradox, thanks to changes to history that they themselves made with the aid of a time machine. Cracked, of course, does not begin to cover it. And it would be difficult enough if they were ordinary people. Wanted fugitives from God knows how many federal agencies, with the added complication of whoever he thinks these Rittenhouse people are. . . Lucy can’t think of any feasible way to pull it off. As well, she’s a historian, not a quantum physicist. She can advise on the general facts of the past, but for putting up the hood and tinkering with the engine. . . yeah, she’s lost on that. There’s still no scrap of proof for his story, either, and she represses the academic’s urge to ask for it, for a citation, for empirical, verifiable evidence. She’s scrawled it on her students’ papers all the time. Show me where the text supports this argument.

They remain staring at each other for an excruciating moment longer. She again has to concede that she doesn’t know why he would make this up. It does look like her handwriting in the photocopy, and everything he’s known about the unreality of her reality. . . that nagging feeling that something is out of place, that things are out of order and memories can’t be counted on. It does exactly match the version she got from Lorena, about what Flynn told her, so if he is a delusional liar, at least he’s a consistent one. Agent Christopher did use the word “unprecedented” when talking about whatever he wants to do.

What the hell.

Lucy remains irresolute a split second more. Then at last, she looks at him straight. “Fine,” she says quietly. “What do we do?”

Given Flynn’s apparent predilection for kidnapping and grand theft larceny, she shouldn’t be too surprised that the answer involves this, and it also doesn’t, to her ears, sound like much of a plan. He says that one of the rules of time travel (cool, Lucy thinks, good to know there are rules) is that you can’t travel on your own timeline, go back to anywhere you’ve already been, so you have to be indirect about changing things. Can’t just pop back five minutes before and get a do-over on that bad day or anything else. He’s confident, however, that a scientist of sufficient genius, if given a sufficient incentive, could create a one-time loophole to circumvent this. All he needs to do is reverse the decision to destroy the Mothership, so reality is allowed to proceed more or less as it was, with the possibility for the changes to exist harmoniously with the new timeline. That way, they still have their loved ones, but they don’t put so much stress on the space-time continuum that it threatens to snap at any moment and erase them. Everyone wins.

“Really?” Lucy repeats skeptically. “Which scientist?”

“Rufus.” Flynn looks at her as if it’s surprising she needs to ask.

“And what? How do we get him?”

“I grab him, of course!”

“What? No!” Lucy glares at him. “I did not agree to help you hurt people!”

“I wouldn’t hurt him. Just borrow him until he figures it out.”

“Your kind of borrowing is known as kidnapping!” Lucy puts her hands on her hips. “After you caused enough of a mess fiddling around with reality and the Mothership and putting strain on the timeline, as well as kidnapping people, your solution is to – put more strain on the timeline and kidnap more people? No!”

“You agreed to help me, Lucy.” His voice is low, almost a growl. “Help me.”

“Not like this.” Lucy regards him defiantly. “Think of a better plan.”

Flynn is inordinately frustrated by this principled stance, wheeling away with a curse. “It’s going to be dangerous enough if we bring the Mothership back. Or – ”

“Or what?” Lucy flashes back. “You’ll steal it again?”

Flynn looks as if he is very much regretting buying her dinner earlier. Good. She hopes he’s regretting a whole lot. “I am,” he says after a moment, clearly doing his best to keep his voice level, “trying to think of something that will do what we need to, as efficiently as possible. There’s still the Lifeboat, even if it doesn’t currently work. Get Rufus to create enough of a loophole for us to use it to reverse the decision to destroy the Mothership. This time we’ll just blow its controls and CPU, so it’s useless, rather than eradicate it entirely. Nobody even has to die this time. I thought you’d be pleased.”

“Nobody has to die this time?” Lucy repeats. “As opposed to what, all the other times?”

Flynn waves a hand impatiently. “Nobody anyone would miss.”

“I’m not sure you get to make that call.”

“What, and you do?” He paces to the window, peers out, and pulls his gun from his jacket, checking that it’s loaded, which is not the most comforting action for a still-probably-crazy man holding you technically captive to undertake. Even if Lucy doesn’t think he’ll use it on her, that doesn’t rule it out on anyone who might try to interrupt. Someone has to be looking for her. You’d hope so, at least. That after all the fuss and furor and the fact that Flynn snatched her when she was supposed to be the reason they snatched him, there has to be some beating of feet involved to get her back. The question, though, is whether she’s going to let them.

Lucy can’t believe she’s actually, genuinely thinking about helping Flynn, but it’s clear enough that something is going on, Lorena did vanish, and she’d rather not take chances. She thinks wryly that it might be far easier for her to suggest non-murdery alternatives if she knew for a fact that this was actually real and not just his extensive fantasy, but still.

“Tell me,” he says after a moment. “Aren’t you a little bit curious?”

“About what?”

“The past.” His teeth flash in a sardonic grin. “Being there. Seeing it.”

“By the sounds of things, I didn’t have much time to sightsee,” Lucy says coolly. “Not if you were acting like this.”

Flynn absorbs that with an obnoxiously unruffled shrug. It’s true that they seem to have fallen into a kind of familiarity, almost without meaning to, if she’s prodding him about things they’ve done which she can’t, strictly speaking, remember. She returns to the bed and finishes her dinner, which has been somewhat interrupted by all this revelation, and has a moment to wonder if they’re planning to stay here tonight. Flynn isn’t the sort of person who’s going to stay long in one place, with a mission in mind and a manhunt on his tail, and they’ll probably try to sneak out once he’s sure it’s full dark and they’re not being observed. Lucy should likely try to get a few winks while she can, as she hasn’t slept since the plane ride to Dubrovnik and she’s starting to see double with exhaustion. She crawls onto the bed, curling up on her side. World in danger of ending or not, she needs a damn nap.

As she closes her eyes, she catches the quickest glimpse of a strange expression on Flynn’s face, as if it’s caught him off guard that she trusts him at least enough to fall asleep in his presence, to think that he won’t hurt her or otherwise let her come to harm. If she’s wrong, she’s wrong, but so be it. Later.

Lucy must indeed sleep, because she’s jerked out of a strange dream some interminable time later. It’s very dark. Flynn is sitting on the floor next to the bed, which can’t be very comfortable, drowsing with a hand inside his jacket – or at least he was. Whatever has roused her has caught his attention as well, and he gets stealthily to his feet, pulling his gun. Crosses the floorboards without a creak, waiting by the door, as there is another faint thump on the stairs outside. A click, and a clunk. The handle moves quietly. Someone’s trying to get in.

Lucy goes tense, drawing her legs up and tempted to dive behind the bed in case gunfire breaks out, as the latch works and saws back and forth. Flynn remains tense as a diver on the edge of the high board, waiting, waiting. Then the lock gives, the door opens, and he pounces like a jaguar.

There’s a muffled yell, a crash, the sound of something – it doesn’t take an expert to guess that it’s a gun – flying out of someone’s hand, and the further sound of a silent and furious struggle, grunting and huffing and swearing, as Flynn tackles someone on the landing outside. There is the distinct noise of fists hitting flesh, struggling bodies, a thump, a bang, and general semi-silent pandemonium as they roll inside the room, still whaling on each other. Then Lucy jumps up, dives for the light switch, and lays hold of it just in time to discover Flynn busily engaging in beating the daylights out of someone. Someone who is, impossibly, familiar.

The name bursts to her lips before she can stop it.

“Wyatt?”

He twists his head sharply to stare at her, which isn’t a good idea, as Flynn promptly punches it while he’s distracted. He flails back, landing a glancing blow, as Lucy pulls Flynn off and there are several further moments of general confusion until the chaos subsides. Wyatt sits up spitting blood and swearing, seems inclined to reach for his gun, and in the interests of preventing a full-blown firefight from breaking out, Lucy jumps in the middle. “What are you – ” Yes, he was the one who rescued her from the goons the other night, but he’s also supposed to be the one – of two, at any rate – who was her time-traveling teammate. “What are you doing here?”

“Rescuing you.” Wyatt wipes his mouth and grimaces. “Though this wasn’t what I was expecting.”

“Yes,” Flynn growls. “I know what you were expecting.”

“You.” Wyatt regards him coldly. “They definitely got the dick part right.”

“Lucy’s fine. You can toddle along. Typical. Always interfering even when you can’t remember.” Flynn is no slacker in the baleful-stare department himself. “Or is it that you – ”

Wyatt completely ignores him. “You all right, ma’ – Lucy?”

She considers for a long moment. She’s not about to stay blindly beholden to Flynn on his insane crusade, but she isn’t going to abandon him flat-out either, and if the story’s true, Wyatt was her ally – her friend. Whatever both of them are supposed to remember, he doesn’t, and before any decisions are made in haste, he should at least be aware of what’s at stake.

She pauses, then reaches for the photocopied pages, ignoring Flynn’s hiss of disapproval. If these belong to some mythical journal she was supposed to have written once upon a time, she gets to decide who sees them, and this feels instinctively right in a way she can’t define or explain, to do this. With that, as Wyatt is still looking utterly baffled, she holds them out to him.

“Here,” she says quietly. “I think there’s something you should know.”

#timeless ff #lucy x flynn #garcy #garcy ff #once upon a dream

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ruffsficstuffplace · 8 years

Text

The Keeper of the Grove (Part 74)

Note: This chapter was codenamed “Winter Has Come.”

Alarms were blaring all over the Valley, millions of Fae all running through the streets, shuttering up and barricading homes and businesses; hauling their valuables, animals, and loved ones to the Tree of Life; or fortifying the streets and bridges, setting up turrets, shields, and elementals, be they for traps or to bolster their forces.

The watchers flew all around on the backs of giant birds, calling out to each other and warning civilians, airlifting to the young, the elderly, the disabled, and the sick, to safety, or providing air-support and visibility should worst comes to worst and the communication crystal arrays went down.

Civilian use of the Tubes was restricted, the coordinators working overtime to get as many watchers all over the Bastion as possible, with Ruby and Weiss as priority passengers; they stopped for a brief kiss, before off they went, to the Watcher’s Roost and the Heart of the Maker’s Forge.

It was still noisy as ever in that underground foundry, only instead of work songs, it was panicked shouting and barking orders. Makers slaved over the assembly lines triple-time, hurrying to produce as many munitions as possible, emergency supplies, and materials for repairing and rebuilding the Bastion.

Weiss ran straight through the organized chaos and to the Thumper, not even aware of the sweltering heat for the pounding of her heart, the sweat already pouring down her skin. She skirted around a large congregation of Fae all desperately praying to the statue of Talos, or lining up to get their slips for their last wills and testaments.

There was already a bullet waiting for her this time, watchers waving their arms and calling out for her to hurry.

She got into it along with a handful of other weavers, before down they went, into Abner’s laboratory.

The normally quiet and peaceful halls were already swarming with makers, weavers, and watchers; Weiss was rushed through the crowded halls as they all helped bring Abner’s golems to life, armed themselves with salvaged and hybridized technology from the human territories, or secured and protected the most vulnerable and valuable of Abner’s equipment, supplies, and experiments.

She finally ended up in the observation room for giant prison cell, like the Raucous Room, except the walls all glowed with the ethereal gold-white of 100% pure etherite. She had to shield her eyes until Abner’s spider limbs handed her a protective mask and water.

Weiss put the mask on, and began to drink. “What the hell is all this?” she asked in-between much-needed sips.

“How we’re planning to save your sister AND the Valley at the same time!” Abner said as he manned several controls at once. “This, my dear, is the ultimate in prisoner confinement: a nigh indestructible cell that will be impossible to escape from, physically or magically, and will happily absorb the very worst Winter can do with the Mk. IV, and then some!”

“Are we going to just keep her here?!”

“Up until you can convince her not to annihilate us all, at least!” Abner replied. “We CAN forcibly remove her from the Shepherd Suit Mk. IV, but as I’m sure you suspect, it will be MUCH more difficult, risky, and costly than if you can convince her to surrender.”

Weiss nodded. “Can we get someone to get something from Keeper’s Hollow?”

“Well, it’d have to be EXTREMELY important, I’ll tell you that!”

Under the mask, Weiss smiled. “Trust me, it will...”

Meanwhile, at the Watcher’s Roost, Ruby was in full-gear and being lead straight to the heat-map, the entrance to the Valley flashing bright red with Winter’s armoured face atop it. Things had quieted down as most of the watchers had already deployed, but the mood was tense and grim, the senior watchers all huddled over refining their strategies and monitoring the progress of the others out in the field.

Ruby waved at Qrow, he grabbed her hand and pulled her straight up to the chair specially reserved for her. <What’s the plan?> she asked as she stood on the seat, leaning on the edge of the heat-map for support.

<The plan is that you stay here while Qrow engages Winter,> Glynda replied via holo.

Ruby’s eyes widened. <What?! She’s going to vaporize him! I’m the only one that can stand a chance against her!>

<We know,> Qrow replied, <which is why the plan isn’t to fight her, it’s for me to distract her long enough for us to set up a trap.>

The heat-map disappeared, to show a schematic of a barren crater somewhere far away from the Bastion or the rest of the Valley’s settlements, with live-feeds of weavers hurriedly making a giant teleportation circle in the very center of it, infusing it with magic before they as much as they possibly could to hide the signs that they had ever been there.

They explained the rest of the plan such as Abner’s cell, Weiss being there to calm her down, and worst comes to worst, how they were going to forcibly remove Winter from her suit, hopefully without killing her from the trauma of the spine-jack’s removal.

<And what if it doesn’t work, and she gets away and kills you...?> Ruby asked.

Qrow pulled out several teleportation charms. <Then that’s where these come in. They’re connected to my vital signs—I get fried, all your gear comes straight back to you, and hopefully you can get her on the second try.>

Ruby reluctantly pulled her mask and cloak off, then handed them to Qrow. <Why are you doing this, Uncle Qrow...?>

Qrow smiled. <Killing your girlfriend’s older sister isn’t exactly the best way to win her over,> he said before he put on the mask.

Ruby’s eyes moistened. <I love you, Uncle Qrow,> she said as she wrapped her arms around his waist, buried her face in his chest.

Qrow grunted as he felt her horns digging into his chest, before he hugged her back, burying them back into the old, familiar scars under his clothes. <I love you too, Ruby… I’ll try not to get horribly murdered out there.>

<You better not!> Ruby cried as she pulled away.

Qrow put on her cloak, a pair of fake reindeer horns and ears, before Ruby handed him the Keeper’s scythe. He hurried on the Roost’s wellspring with a group of watchers; it was all going fine until he suddenly felt horrible pain shoot up the arm holding the scythe.

<AGH!> he cried, clutching it with his other hand, trying to get it stop it from shaking.

<Qrow! What’s wrong?> one of the watchers barked as their mender ran up to him.

Qrow grunted, shook his head. <I’m fine, let’s go!>

The others didn’t look like they believed him, but it wasn’t as if they had much of a choice.

“Please...” Qrow whispered to the scythe as the weavers prepared him for the trip and fortified him with last-minute spells. “Let me protect her… just one last time, I swear!”

He felt pain shoot up his arm again. He stiffened, bracing himself for more agony, before it faded away into nothing. “Thanks…” he whispered into the scythe. “… And I promise I’ll mean it this time.”

The weavers cleared him to go, and Qrow jumped into the wellspring.

Winter’s ride to the Valley was quiet, taking a rover to conserve her suit’s power, the two specially modified Tinmen she was bringing with her currently shut down to the same. She passed the time reviewing her suit’s newly added and modified systems and weapons, optimized for the unique conditions of the Viridian Valley, and of course, her main target.

At the very back were all of the crates of plushies she had brought from the Plushie Palace less than a month ago, sans Eluna for obvious reasons.

“ETA at five minutes,” the rover’s AI said.

Winter shut off the holos in her HUD. “You can come out now,” she said as she spun her chair around to the back. “I won’t report you—I’ve got better things to do with my time.”

One of the crates opened, and out climbed an AFA soldier in full combat armour, a sword in its sheath attached to his belt alongside the one sidearm and his comm-crystal. His foot caught on the edge, and he went ungracefully tumbling out onto his back.

Winter didn’t comment. “What’s your rank and name, soldier?”

“Ah—Private Jaune Arc, ma’am...” he muttered, debating if he should stand at attention, or take off his helmet then stand at attention.

“What are you doing here, Arc?” Winter asked. “You know where this mission is taking place, what it’s about, who we’re fighting, right?”

Jaune passed. “Uh… were those rhetorical questions, ma’am, or did you want me to actually answer them...?”

“Take a guess, Arc,” Winter replied as she spun her chair back around, looking out the windows of the rover to see the twin mountains of the Viridian Valley looming ever closer.

Jaune sighed heavily as he walked up to the seat next to her, sitting down with his head hung. “I’m a disgrace to my family name, ma’am. I’m the latest in the line of the Arc family, and every single generation, at least of one us was a soldier or a war hero of some kind—except me.

“I’m just a failure...”

“You had to have passed the entrance exam, didn’t you?”

Jaune paused. “… I faked my records, ma’am.”

Silence.

“… That’s a very serious crime, Arc. The test is there for a reason—it proves you’re capable of surviving out there, of protecting others when the time comes. What if someone has to rely on you, and you both find your skills lacking?”

Jaune groaned. “I know! … That’s why I stowed away. If I come back, I can live with myself and happily take my dishonorable discharge! If I don’t… well, at least I’m sure I make pretty good bait.”

“Heroes don’t throw themselves into battle hoping to die an honourable death, Arc,” Winter said. “They do so to protect others, to fight for what they believe is right, to stand up when no one else will. The act of sacrificing yourself for others is not inherently good—sometimes, it’s just an unneeded, avoidable casualty that causes more problems than it solves.

“I’m not going to use as bait, Arc! You’re a human being, not a worm.”

Jaune raised his head up and smiled a little. “Then maybe I can hold her off for a while with this...” He said as he pulled out the sword on his belt, revealed the sheath to be a shield, too.

“That looks like a First Settler relic...” Winter muttered as she examined the intricate detailing on the metal and the hilt.

“It’s because it is,” Jaune replied. “It’s been passed down to every Arc who goes into the AFA as a good luck charm—even when we reinvented guns, it’s helped us all survive.”

“I’m surprised you’re not worried it’ll break in combat!’

“Pfft! These can withstand pretty much anything.”

“What is it made of…?”

“That I… really don’t know. I’d say it was etherite but it doesn’t glow. It is pretty light, though—well, for an ancient sword and shield, at least.”

“ETA at less than a minute.”

Jaune sheepishly looked at Winter. “So does this mean you still want me on this mission, or should I just stay in the rover?”

Winter stood up and put a hand on his shoulder. “Get ready, Arc,” she said as walked past to power up the Tinmen.

Jaune nodded, and held his head up high. “Yes ma’am!”

The rover began to slow down as it reached the entrance of the Valley, managing bumps and rough terrain until it was simply faster to walk.

As the Tinmen booted up, Jaune noticed the markedly different designs of them, like they were just power cores on legs. “What’s up with those Tinmen, ma’am?” he asked as the inside of the rover was filled with the bluish-purple colour of Candela’s wellspring.

“They’re more power banks for my suit than fighters,” Winter replied as she headed to the hatch. “Watch yourself, Arc—if one of those things blow, you do not want to be anywhere near it!”

Jaune gulped. “I will, ma’am...”

The rover stopped, and they all stepped out, the Tinmen first. To make up for the complete lack of offensive systems, the androids were producing a powerful repulsion barrier all around them; even several feet away, Jaune could feel himself being pushed away.

“That is a LOT of power...” he muttered as he pulled out his sword and shield, held it close to him.

“We’re going to need it,” Winter muttered as she readied her weapons systems.

At his request, Jaune took point, the Tinmen between them, and Winter taking up the back.

She was fine with the arrangement, up until she found him screaming from, wary of, and stopping for every last noise and suspicious movement, becoming more frequent and dramatic the thicker the foliage and the trees around them got.

Winter sighed. “Halt!”

Jaune screamed, jumped into the air, and spun around, his shield and sword raised. He couldn’t see her exasperated face as he sheepishly lowered his weapons, but he could just tell.

“Arc: retreat back to the rover, and stay there until I return, or go back to Manor Schnee evening the next day if I don’t. The emergency rations will be more than enough for you.”

“Sorry, ma’am, but I’d rather not… I’d feel a lot safer with you and your lasers around. Besides, the Keeper might come for me and kill me while you’re away...”

“Assuming you don’t end up getting killed by all the other horrifying shit that lurks here in the Valley...” Qrow said from just behind him.

Jaune froze.

Winter raised one hand. “Duck!”

Jaune dropped to the floor.

A huge chunk of the tree behind him exploded into ash.

“Missed me!” Qrow cried from a tree branch above them.

Winter gritted her teeth, activated her wings, and rocketed off after him.

The Tinmen rushed on after her, Jaune got up and clumsily scrambled on after them.

“Wait!” he called out, before he tripped on a root and fell on his face. He picked himself up, spat out the leaves in his mouth, and continued running, a little more carefully this time. “AGENT SCHNEE! WAIT FOR ME!”

Animals big and small ran, branches and leaves exploded, the night was lit with flashes of blue laser-fire. Qrow continued to evade her, using his own natural speed and the cloak’s teleportation runes to just barely avoid getting vaporized. Winter’s helmet sensors were going crazy like the cameras at Manor Schnee, crackling and spiking with magic and error messages, not to mention the sensation of a plasma knife cutting into her brain and twisting all about…

… But she wasn’t letting that stop her.

All the while, everyone at the Roost, the Tree of Life, and Abner’s laboratory watched through spy cameras, or figures on the maps as they got closer and closer to the trap.

The Tinmen thundered through the forest with ease, their hoof-feet and reverse-jointed legs managing any terrain they found themselves in, if they didn’t come crashing through the bushes and vines, crunching roots underfoot.

Jaune panted for breath as he followed the path of destruction they were leaving, tripping and falling into a ditch that the Tinmen easily jumped over.

Qrow burst out of the trees, and into the crater; he teleported down to the ground, just before a giant laser almost scorched him into non-existence.

Winter shot out of the missing chunk of forest soon after, her shoulder-mounted cannons smoking as she flew up into the air. “STAY STILL AND LET ME KILL YOU, DAMN IT!” she cried as she fired a barrage of missiles, explosive orbs raining down on the crater.

“HOW ABOUT I DON’T?!” Qrow yelled back as he flashed in and out of existence, the magical rose petals he left exploding into blinding crimson clouds.

Winter screamed in frustration, blind firing into the fog, before she flew in.

“It’s working!” Abner cried, laughing. “It’s working!”

The Tinmen reached the edge of the crater, stopped as they detected the fighting going, redirected power to their shields and linked them together. Jaune smacked dab into their expanded and reinforced barrier, getting knocked flat on his back.

Inside the fog, Winter had realized her mistake, her optics completely failing from the overload of magic in the air. “Do you think this is going to work?!” she screamed as she prepared to fly back out.

“Yes~” Qrow said from just beside her.

Winter fired a blast there.

“Missed me!” Qrow said from her other side.

Winter fired another shot in that direction.

“Nope!” he said from in front of her.

Winter cried out as she thrust her hands forward, energy blades extending from her wrists.

“Jeeze, did they lower the standards for Queensguard or something…?” he said from behind her.

Winter whirled around with her blades, Qrow just barely avoided getting slashed.

“I don’t need to see you to kill you, you know!” she cried.

“Well might want to open your eyes, honey, and see what you’ve found yourself in.”

The red mist cleared. Winter looked down, finally noticed the glowing lines of power radiating from all around her, the circle in the center that she was standing smack dab in the center of.

Tendrils of magic erupted around her, wrapping around her body, and her HUD spitting out all manner of errors and warnings as she began to float up into the air.

Qrow casually strode in front of her, casually took off the mask, and smiled.

Winter opened her visor to glare at him. “You mother-fucker…!” she spat.

“You’ll thank me later, Ice Queen!” Qrow chirped as he casually saluted her goodybe.

Jaune’s shield came flying in from the side, slipping onto space between the ground and her feet. The tendrils were chopped off as the shield began to spin round and round like crazy on top of circle as the metal disrupted and absorbed the magic.

“AGENT SCHNEE!” Jaune cried as he threw himself at her.

Winter flew off from the circle, Jaune taking his place; the shield flew up and rejoined its owner, the tendrils wrapping all around him, instead.

Everyone watched in horror as they pulled Jaune through a rip in reality, and spat him out into the center of Abner’s etherite containment unit.

All was quiet everywhere in the Bastion.

“Well...” Abner muttered. “WE’RE FUCKED!”

#white rose #rwby #fanfic #the keeper of the grove

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dailybuglenow · 3 years

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TUESDAY, 1 JUNE 2025. EDITED BY J. JONAH JAMESON

S.H.I.E.L.D. UNDER FIRE: WHAT IS PROJECT KOBRIK?

Two hours ago, a mysterious hacker known as the WHISPERER leaked files exposing a top secret S.H.I.E.L.D. security program, nicknamed KOBIK, which would allow authorities to use reality warping Infinity Stones to make changes in the fabric of reality without public knowledge. Here is an abridged version:

FOR AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, COMPLIMENTARY OF THE WHISPERER:

Confirmed: The Infinity Stones used by Thanos in Earth-13130 (main designation) were destroyed 26 / 4 / 2023.

Confirmed: Infinity Stones of Earth-616 have crossed over via human hosts. Known hosts are H. Bautista (Time) and R. Ryan (Reality). Task Force IS set to track down the other four.

Project Goals: Renewal. Rehabilitation. Restoration. KOBIK is a solution to a never ending problem and can happen quietly without notice of the general public. Government approval is currently pending but trial phase is authorized in a sealed off space.

Agents signed off: A-13, A-19, A-26, A-27, A-32 (view ten more)

Timeline: <data compromised>

Location: Pending, but aimed towards <data compromised>

WHAT THIS MEANS:

Data analysts have been reviewing the encrypted files and are still working to make a full report. After the danger of Thanos and the genocide he caused, the public is rightfully unsettled by the idea of the government relying on Infinity Stones to solve problems. Former Assistant Director Maria Hill recently took on the mantle of Director from acting leader Alphonso Mackenzie. When asked for a statement, Hill responded strongly:

These accusations have gotten completely out of hand. First of all, Kobik was a proposal, nothing more. I have a lot of proposals on my desk. It doesn’t mean they become reality, if you’ll excuse my choice of words there. Beyond that, for those criticizing even the intent of the proposal -- given what just happened to us -- the recent Thanos “Cleanse” Crisis -- If we could prevent that kind of tragedy -- or worse -- with a minor, carefully considered use of this program, shouldn’t we? Isn’t that our obligation? What we should be discussing today is the criminal who leaked classified intelligence, and in doing so, put lives at risk. Because, rest assured, finding out whoever did this just became my favorite priority.”

The closest S.H.I.E.L.D. has gotten to arresting the Whisperer was this morning in New York City, but former Captain America Sam Wilson stood in the way. Why the Falcon would work with the hacker is unknown, but the Avengers declined a comment. C.I.A. Agent Sharon Carter spoke for the government via Zoom this morning, citing the entire leak as “an unfortunate slip-up, but as the reports say, the government has not approved of this method.” With the Whisperer still on the run, we’ll continue to check for any updates on Project KOBIK and its validity.

— Ben Urich, Daily Bugle News Senior Reporter

CRIME RATES PLUMMET: A BLESSING OR A CURSE?

As recently reported, major crime rates across the country have declined by 30% in the last thirty days. In this case, major crimes pertains to those being caused by higher tiered criminals, like the kind you’d see in a costume squaring up against the Avengers. This change began with no warning and the Avengers have not commented, instead remaining divided over conflicts like Wanda Maximoff’s hostile takeover of Westview, NJ, the governments continued support of Law S.315, the Underage Superhuman Welfare Act and the now disbanded terrorist organization the Flag Smashers following the death of their leader, Karli Morganthau.

While it seems like we may finally be getting a reprieve from the danger that’s been so prevalent ever since the Avengers officially banded in 2012, some disturbing rumors have also come to light. The Bugle received an insiders tip that inmates have been disappearing from their cells across the country. As you may remember, former President turned Green Goblin Norman Osborn did a disappearing act five months ago and has not been seen since despite having an active warrant out. Osborn had been telepathically lobotomized by Emma Frost (for more info on mutant amnesty, check out Irene Merryweather’s Krakoa column), leading some to wonder how he would have been able to escape the Raft without a trace or apparently any aid. Others inmates whose statuses are unknown include Adrian Toomes/The Vulture (Ravencroft Institute for the Criminally Insane), Agatha Harkness (Westview resident), Benjamin Poindexter/Bullseye (Ravencroft), Georges Batroc/The Leaper (the Raft), and Wilson Fisk/Kingpin (Ravencroft). Our insider was able to confirm others have also been reported but could not provide names.

S.H.I.E.L.D. is currently in hot water due to the KOBIK Report that also dropped this morning (see page one) and we are left to wonder if security has dropped or the agency has something to hide. S.H.I.E.L.D. officially disbanded in 2014 after it was revealed that they had been infiltrated by H.Y.D.R.A. all the way up to the highest levels. The reemergence of S.H.I.E.L.D. comes right as Maria Rambeau’s agency S.W.O.R.D. has gained more attention due to their work with the Maximoff Anomaly. S.W.O.R.D. Director Abigail Brand went on the record saying she knew nothing about Project Kobrik or the escaped inmates because “That’s simply not my job. We focus elsewhere.”

Be it the eye of the storm or something more sinister is yet to be seen. If we are experiencing a mass outbreak of our most dangerous supervillains, the Avengers are going to need to find a way to get their heads on straight once more. As you may remember, the team is currently without a Captain America after Sam Wilson chose to step down and his replacement John Walker was stripped of the title and dishonorably discharged. With luck, all the convicts are in Bermuda drinking Pina Colada’s and retiring from crime. It seems unlikely, but it remains better than the alternatives.

Like always, the Bugle will report on any updates.

— Christine Everheart, Daily Bugle News Senior Reporter

IN OTHER NEWS:

WEDDING BELLS ARE RINGING! After rumors placed Inhuman Princess Crystalia Amaquelin and Pietro Maximoff (the recently deceased brother of Avenger/Baddie Wanda Maximoff) together, the Inhuman Royal Palace confirmed the news along with Amaquelin’s pregnancy. Although our gossip columnist Miriam Birchwood called the baby long before, it wasn’t until five months after the suspected birth that the Palace commented. This comes on the heels of Amaquelin and Maximoff’s April 19th wedding, where civilians stood at the Hudson to try and catch a glimpse of the many heroes, mutants and royals who were welcomed in New Attilan. Princess Amaquelin was reported to be a victim of Maximoff’s Westview, so it’s likely the Inhumans shared the good news officially since a little time has passed. Congratulations to Crystal, Pietro and baby Luna! Hopefully ex-boyfriend Johnny Storm isn’t too heartbroken. There’s a long line of ladies ready to let the Human Torch warm them up.

TIME TO MIX IT UP! The Avengers recently updated their website to show new teams and rosters. Notably, Wanda Maximoff has retained her Avengers spot despite being called a terrorist by some due to recent actions (for more, check out our annual biyearly special).

LET’S LET LOOSE! The mutants of Krakoa have apparently announced that they will be holding a celebration known as the Hellfire Gala on Krakoa and allowing homosapiens onto the Island for the first time. The name Hellfire Gala sounds little ominous, but I’m there! Who wouldn’t want to see Cyclops rocking some formal wear? Hopefully Magneto breaks out the good cape for this one!

#all #daily buzz #pleasant hill #ben urich #christine everheart

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cctinsleybaxter · 5 years

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2019 in books

The year’s contenders for the good, the bad, and the rest. I used to make a list of the ten best books I read all year, a tradition encouraged by my mom as far back as high school, but out 2019′s twenty-six mediocre offerings it didn’t really come together. Instead I’ve decided to break my ‘honorable mentions’ category into three subsections that I hope you’ll enjoy. In order of when read, not in order of affection:

Honorable mentions [books I liked; 3+ star material]

The Fifth Season by N.K Jemisin was given to me as a Christmas present last year, and I wasn’t sure how much I would like it since I don’t really do high fantasy. Rules need not apply; I loved the world building and narrative structure, and the characters were so much better than I’m used to even when their arcs seemed familiar at first glance. I guessed what was going on with the formatting maybe a little too quickly, but even then it was emotionally engaging and I was eager to keep reading and see what happened next. Haven’t devoured a book that way in years.

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi has been on my list for a while; as a memoir told through short stories it’s hit-or-miss, but so worth it. I especially loved getting to read his early attempts at fiction, and the chapter Phosphorus regarding his first real job as a chemist in 1942 (his description of his absolute disgust at having to work with rabbits, the feel of their fur and the “natural handle” of the ears is a personal favorite.) This excerpt is one I just think about a lot because it’s full of small sweet details and so kindly written:

“[my father] known to all the pork butchers because he checked with his logarithmic ruler the multiplication for the prosciutto purchase. Not that he purchased this last item with a carefree heart; superstitious rather than religious, he felt ill at ease breaking the kasherut rules, but he liked prosciutto so much that, faced by the temptation of a shop window, he yielded every time, sighing, cursing under his breath, and watching me out of the corner of his eye, as if he feared my judgement or hoped for my complicity.”

Slowing Down from Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin is a one-page short story, but I’m including it because it’s the best in the book and one of the better stories I’ve read in general. I won’t spoil it for you since it’s more poem than anything else (and you can read the whole thing here.)

A Short Film About Disappointment by Joshua Mattson deserves to be lower in the order because it’s like. Bad. But I couldn’t help but have a self-indulgent kind of love for it, since it’s a book about white boy ennui told through movie reviews. It definitely gets old by the end (one of those things where you can tell the author lost steam just as much as his leading man), but parts of it are so well-written and the concept clever. 80+ imaginary movie reviews and psychosomatic possession by your traitorous best friend.

The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway has one of the greatest twists I’ve ever read in a novel, and no that’s not a spoiler, and yes I will recommend it entirely on that basis. It does its job as a multi-year sci-fi epic; reminds me a lot of Walter Moer’s early stuff in that it’s a bit Much(tm) but still a good mixture of politics and absurdity and absolute characters. Tobemory Trent was my favorite of the ensemble cast (but also boy do I wish men would learn how to write women.)

My Only Wife by Jac Jemk is a novella with only two characters, both unnamed, a man describing fragmented memories of his wife. It has me interested in Jemck’s other writing because even though I didn’t love it she writes beautifully; reading her work is like watching someone paint. The whole thing has a very indie movie feel to it (no scene of someone peeing but there SHOULD be), which I don’t think I’ve experienced in a story like this before and would like to try again.

Mentions [books I really wanted to like but my GOD did something go wrong]

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou is the most comprehensive history we have of Elizabeth Holmes and her con-company Theranos. It’s incredibly well-researched and absolutely fascinating, but veers into unnecessary pro-military stuff in one chapter (’can you believe she tricked the government?’ yes i can, good for her, leave me alone) and carries an air of racism directed at Holmes’ partner and the Pakistani people he brings onto the company. Carreyrou works for WSJ so I don’t know what I expected.

Circe by Madeline Miller was fun to read and goes down like a glass of iced tea on a hot day, but leaves a bit of an unpleasant aftertaste. It says a lot of things that seem very resonant and beautiful but ultimately ring hollow, and the ending is too safe. Predictable and inevitable.

I was also bothered about Circe’s relationships with Odysseus and Telemachus as a focal point, not because they’re father and son (Greek mythology ethics : non-committal hand gesture) but because it’s the traditional “I used to like bold men but now I like... sensitive men.” Which as a character arc feels not unrealistic but very boring. You close the book and realize you’re not nine and reading your beat-up copy of Greek Myths, you’re an adult reading a New York Times Bestseller by a middle aged straight white woman.

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor could have been the best thing I read all year and I’m miserable at how bad it ended up being. The concept is excellent; a thirteen-year-old girl goes missing in a rural English village, and every chapter chronicles a passing year. I knew it would be slow, I like slow, but nothing happens in this book and it ends up it feeling like Broadchurch without the detectives. Plus, McGregor, you know sometimes you can take a moral stance in your story and not just make everything a grey area? Especially with subplots that deal with things like pedophilia and institutional racism?

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor is about a twenty-something who moves from Iowa to San Francisco in the 90s and explores gender and sexuality through shapeshifting. It was something I really thought I would like and maybe even find helpful in my own life, but I couldn’t stand a single one of the characters or the narration so that’s on me! It does contain one of my favorite lines I’ve read in a long time though:

“And anyway, weren’t French boys supposed to be like Giovanni, waiting gaily for you in their rented room and actually Italian?”

Dishonorable mentions [there’s no saving these fellows]

The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson was supposed to be a fun easy-to-read thriller and what can I say except what the jklfkhlkj;fkfuck. It very quickly goes from ‘oh hey I read books like this when I was 15’ to ‘oh the girl who intentionally gets kidnapped by a wealthy serial killer is accidentally falling in love with his son and can’t stop talking about his eye color now huh.’ I felt like I was losing my mind; why did grown adults give this 5 stars on Goodreads.

The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips is supposedly surrealist horror fiction about working an office job in a new town, and reminded me of that rocky third or fourth year when I really started hating Welcome to Night Vale. All spark no substance, and even less fun because you know it’s going nowhere. I’ve also realized this past year that I cannot stand stories about women where their only personality trait is the desire to have children. People will throw the word ‘Kafkaesque’ at anything but here it was just insulting.

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai alternates point of view between Yale, a gay man living in Chicago in the late 80s and watching his friends die, and Fiona, the straight younger sister of one of those friends now looking for her erstwhile daughter in 2018. It was nominated for the 2018 Pulitzer, and part of my interest was in wondering how we were going to connect the plot lines of ‘the personal cost of the AIDS crisis’ with ‘daughter lost to a cult.’

The answer is that we don’t. The book is well-researched and acclaimed beyond belief, but it is SUCH a straight story. Yale’s arc is fueled by the drama of his boyfriend cheating on him and infecting them both, Fiona is painted as a witness to tragedy and encouraged to share their stories with her own daughter. “You’re like the Mother Theresa of Boys Town” one of the men complains bitterly of her, and the claim goes undisputed. It’s a story that makes a lot of statements about love and families and art that I feel we’ve all heard before to much greater effect.

#long post #stardate 2k19 #apologies for any typoes or bad wording i've been trying to write and edit this for like the past week and a half

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dfroza · 3 years

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Today’s reading from the ancient books of Proverbs and Psalms

for Sunday, April 18 of 2021 with Proverbs 18 and Psalm 18, accompanied by Psalm 30 for the 30th day of Spring and Psalm 108 for day 108 of the year

[Proverbs 18]

[Wisdom Gives Life]

An unfriendly person isolates himself

and seems to care only about his own issues.

For his contempt of sound judgment makes him a recluse.

Senseless people find no pleasure in acquiring true wisdom,

for all they want to do is impress you with what they know.

An ungodly man is always cloaked with disgrace,

as dishonor and shame are his companions.

Words of wisdom are like a fresh, flowing brook—

like deep waters that spring forth from within,

bubbling up inside the one with understanding.

It is atrocious when judges show favor to the guilty

and deprive the innocent of justice.

A senseless man jumps headfirst into an argument;

he’s just asking for a beating for his reckless words.

A fool has a big mouth that only gets him into trouble,

and he’ll pay the price for what he says.

The words of a gossip merely reveal the wounds of his own soul,

and his slander penetrates into the innermost being.

The one who is too lazy to look for work

is the same one who wastes his life away.

The character of God is a tower of strength,

for the lovers of God delight to run into his heart

and be exalted on high.

The rich, in their conceit, imagine that their wealth

is enough to protect them.

It becomes their confidence in a day of trouble.

A man’s heart is the proudest when his downfall is nearest,

for he won’t see glory until the Lord sees humility.

Listen before you speak,

for to speak before you’ve heard the facts will bring humiliation.

The will to live sustains you when you’re sick,

but depression crushes courage and leaves you unable to cope.

The spiritually hungry are always ready to learn more,

for their hearts are eager to discover new truths.

Would you like to meet a very important person?

Take a generous gift.

It will do wonders to gain entrance into his presence.

There are two sides to every story.

The first one to speak sounds true until you hear the other side

and they set the record straight.

A coin toss resolves a dispute

and can put an argument to rest

between formidable opponents.

It is easier to conquer a strong city

than to win back a friend whom you’ve offended.

Their walls go up, making it nearly impossible to win them back.

Sharing words of wisdom is satisfying to your inner being.

It encourages you to know

that you’ve changed someone else’s life.

Your words are so powerful

that they will kill or give life,

and the talkative person will reap the consequences.

When a man finds a wife,

he has found a treasure!

For she is the gift of God to bring him joy and pleasure.

But the one who divorces a good woman

loses what is good from his house.

To choose an adulteress is both stupid and ungodly.

The poor plead for help from the rich,

but all they get in return is a harsh response.

Some friendships don’t last for long,

but there is one loving friend who is joined to your heart

closer than any other!

The Book of Proverbs, Chapter 18 (The Passion Translation)

[Psalm 18]

I love you, God—

you make me strong.

God is bedrock under my feet,

the castle in which I live,

my rescuing knight.

My God—the high crag

where I run for dear life,

hiding behind the boulders,

safe in the granite hideout.

I sing to God, the Praise-Lofty,

and find myself safe and saved.

The hangman’s noose was tight at my throat;

devil waters rushed over me.

Hell’s ropes cinched me tight;

death traps barred every exit.

A hostile world! I call to God,

I cry to God to help me.

From his palace he hears my call;

my cry brings me right into his presence—

a private audience!

Earth wobbles and lurches;

huge mountains shake like leaves,

Quake like aspen leaves

because of his rage.

His nostrils flare, bellowing smoke;

his mouth spits fire.

Tongues of fire dart in and out;

he lowers the sky.

He steps down;

under his feet an abyss opens up.

He’s riding a winged creature,

swift on wind-wings.

Now he’s wrapped himself

in a trenchcoat of black-cloud darkness.

But his cloud-brightness bursts through,

spraying hailstones and fireballs.

Then God thundered out of heaven;

the High God gave a great shout,

spraying hailstones and fireballs.

God shoots his arrows—pandemonium!

He hurls his lightnings—a rout!

The secret sources of ocean are exposed,

the hidden depths of earth lie uncovered

The moment you roar in protest,

let loose your hurricane anger.

But me he caught—reached all the way

from sky to sea; he pulled me out

Of that ocean of hate, that enemy chaos,

the void in which I was drowning.

They hit me when I was down,

but God stuck by me.

He stood me up on a wide-open field;

I stood there saved—surprised to be loved!

God made my life complete

when I placed all the pieces before him.

When I got my act together,

he gave me a fresh start.

Now I’m alert to God’s ways;

I don’t take God for granted.

Every day I review the ways he works;

I try not to miss a trick.

I feel put back together,

and I’m watching my step.

God rewrote the text of my life

when I opened the book of my heart to his eyes.

The good people taste your goodness,

The whole people taste your health,

The true people taste your truth,

The bad ones can’t figure you out.

You take the side of the down-and-out,

But the stuck-up you take down a notch.

Suddenly, God, you floodlight my life;

I’m blazing with glory, God’s glory!

I smash the bands of marauders,

I vault the highest fences.

What a God! His road

stretches straight and smooth.

Every God-direction is road-tested.

Everyone who runs toward him

Makes it.

Is there any god like God?

Are we not at bedrock?

Is not this the God who armed me,

then aimed me in the right direction?

Now I run like a deer;

I’m king of the mountain.

He shows me how to fight;

I can bend a bronze bow!

You protect me with salvation-armor;

you hold me up with a firm hand,

caress me with your gentle ways.

You cleared the ground under me

so my footing was firm.

When I chased my enemies I caught them;

I didn’t let go till they were dead men.

I nailed them; they were down for good;

then I walked all over them.

You armed me well for this fight,

you smashed the upstarts.

You made my enemies turn tail,

and I wiped out the haters.

They cried “uncle”

but Uncle didn’t come;

They yelled for God

and got no for an answer.

I ground them to dust; they gusted in the wind.

I threw them out, like garbage in the gutter.

You rescued me from a squabbling people;

you made me a leader of nations.

People I’d never heard of served me;

the moment they got wind of me they listened.

The foreign devils gave up; they came

on their bellies, crawling from their hideouts.

Live, God! Blessings from my Rock,

my free and freeing God, towering!

This God set things right for me

and shut up the people who talked back.

He rescued me from enemy anger,

he pulled me from the grip of upstarts,

He saved me from the bullies.

That’s why I’m thanking you, God,

all over the world.

That’s why I’m singing songs

that rhyme your name.

God’s king takes the trophy;

God’s chosen is beloved.

I mean David and all his children—

always.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 18 (The Message)

[Psalm 30]

A song of David. For the dedication of the temple.

I praise You, Eternal One. You lifted me out of that deep, dark pit

and denied my opponents the pleasure of rubbing in their success.

Eternal One, my True God, I cried out to You for help;

You mended the shattered pieces of my life.

You lifted me from the grave with a mighty hand,

gave me another chance,

and saved me from joining those in that dreadful pit.

Sing, all you who remain faithful!

Pour out your hearts to the Eternal with praise and melodies;

let grateful music fill the air and bless His name.

His wrath, you see, is fleeting,

but His grace lasts a lifetime.

The deepest pains may linger through the night,

but joy greets the soul with the smile of morning.

When things were quiet and life was easy, I said in arrogance,

“Nothing can shake me.”

By Your grace, Eternal,

I thought I was as strong as a mountain;

But when You left my side and hid away,

I crumbled in fear.

O Eternal One, I called out to You;

I pleaded for Your compassion and forgiveness:

“I’m no good to You dead! What benefits come from my rotting corpse?

My body in the grave will not praise You.

No songs will rise up from the dust of my bones.

From dust comes no proclamation of Your faithfulness.

Hear me, Eternal Lord—please help me,

Eternal One—be merciful!”

You did it: You turned my deepest pains into joyful dancing;

You stripped off my dark clothing

and covered me with joyful light.

You have restored my honor. My heart is ready to explode, erupt in new songs!

It’s impossible to keep quiet!

Eternal One, my God, my Life-Giver, I will thank You forever.

The Book of Psalms, Poem 30 (The Voice)

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