#something about this series hits my autism but like in an evil way

[rewind-time]

Doai Sitcom au but Alex is evil

I randomly had an au idea based on a book from the Shadow and Bone series, an in-universe folk-tale called "The Too Clever Fox"

(Spoilers for said book)

This au focuses on the idea that Alex is a veldigun hunter, with Lankmann being more of a figurehead/puppet so that Alex can do their thing without alerting any veldigun that THEY'RE the reason veldigun are going missing, not Lankmann.

In this au, Winfrey hasn't yet been captured, but other than that the plot starts the same, with a sandwich.

Clyde and Winfrey are residing in the area around Eastridge, along with another Veldigun pair, Simon and The Flock, who were visiting at the time.

One day, The Flock goes missing, and shortly after, Simon too.

Clyde goes looking for them, discovering the Foundation's presence. Clyde already knows about Lankmann, and it is NOT happy about this

The pair decide to observe The Foundation and the workers, watching as Lankmann claims to be curing those who were veldigun, and then taking notice of Alex, who seems to be uncomfortable with goings-on, and also like they might be high up in The Foundation.

Clyde plans to consume Alex's mind, only to end up holding the human ransom for sandwiches, and pretty soon Clyde finds itself getting attached.

Alex tells it that they don't enjoy working at the facility, but are forced to, and afraid they'll be killed once they have no further use to Lankmann.

Clyde considers introducing Winfrey, but ultimately chooses to play it safe, since Winfrey could be more easily noticed by the County members than it could.

Alex suggests that they might know of a way to get into the Foundation from a passage hidden in the forest, and Clyde, with the hope of getting the other veldigun back - despite their differences - Agrees to their plan.

On the day they plan to infiltrate the facility for the rescue mission, Winfrey chooses to keep hidden and watch from nearby, to ensure Clyde is safe, which it really wasn't.

Reaching the "entrance", Clyde goes into the tunnel first, to ensure Alex would be safe, only to find itself blocked off by Caretakers.

It turns back to find Alex is just standing there, and has the horrifying revelation that it was tricked.

The veldigun is backed into a corner and quickly restrained by caretakers (It never figured out what those things were, and probably never would.)

"Why?"

"Because I'm a hunter, it's what I do."

"I wanted to help you"

"You always do, even the cleverest beast can be lured to its fate with the right words"

"But Lankmann-"

"Herbert Lankmann is a fool who can barely stand being near me, but his greed is stronger than his fear, so he stays, and works away his terror, and while you all witness his claims, played the fool by words that could almost be real, I make my way through the woods."

"..."

"It is always the same trap. You wanted to protect your friends, the bird was driven by its hunger, the scarecrow missed his companion. The trap is loneliness, and none of us escapes it, not even me."

Terrified of ending up how like the other veldigun, Clyde, The Eastridge Demon, The Smiling Snatcher that haunted the county for so long, does something it had never done before, it cries out, and Winfrey, hidden among the trees, answers.

Winfrey, despite their height, gets in, and scatters the caretakers with relative ease.

Seeing what Alex had done, Winfrey attacked them, almost killing them, before seeing Clyde, and quickly escaping with it so that it can heal.

What happens to Alex after this- I'm not quite sure, maybe they contract Veldigun disease, maybe they bleed out, maybe Lankmann realises they're gone and makes haste to get the hell outta Eastridge.

It's up to interpretation

End of my rant, Doai autism hits different.

[anchoredgalaxy]

no hang on i'm not done bitching about acosf. the scene where nesta's like "rhysand's a dick" and cassian and azriel both respond with "HOW DARE YOU INSULT PERFECT RHYSAND" is one of the worst scenes i've read in a book. this series' biggest problem is the author's insistence that i should like some characters and dislike others and this one scene is like that distilled into Irritation Juice. i do not care how much the book tries to push "SEE RHYSAND'S THE BEST GUY EVER ISN'T NESTA TERRIBLE FOR DISLIKING HIM" because he's really fucking annoying and i wish he had stayed dead. if rhysand was actually a well-written character, the narrative wouldn't be pushing for me to like him so badly.

[transmasc-wizard]

Writing Autistic Emotions: Grief

hello hi greetings to all the allistic writers with autistic characters who have stumbled upon this post! I've decided to start a series of posts that talk about autism and emotions, specifically in regards to how your autistic characters may experience/process/show their feelings.

You already know (I hope, anyway) that autistic people tend to express our emotions in a different way to our allistic counterparts. This post in particular will encompass something I'm sure all you evil evil (affectionate) writers are inflicting upon your characters, including your autistic ones: grief.

Autistic grief is not like neurotypical grief. (That's a link to a great article, btw.) Autistic people are not going to process grief like allistics, and showing this with your characters can give extra accuracy.

Essentially, autistic people often do not do the whole "feel your emotions strongly, cry your eyes out, want to be around people and share in your struggles, are really sad and upset" thing. That's just not how a lot of us tick.

For instance, I lost a family member in 2020. Everyone around me was crying, talking about how they missed her/telling stories about her, constantly thinking of her, throwing themselves into funeral plans, etc. I... cried twice.

Once a few hours after I found out about it, and then once months and months later when it actually hit me. I didn't want to talk to people about her, I didn't know what I was feeling (that is called alexithymia and is common in autistics), and I didn't understand everyone's need to dwell on her. As my low-empathy and high-alexithymia brain processed it, I came to the conclusion that crying & socializing was exhausting and it did not bring her back. However, I was also often tired, frustrated, and irritable during that time--that was my grief.

Autistic grief may look like:

seeming to not be grieving at all, only to have the emotions hit several months later

seeming to be ignoring the source of grief/unbothered by it

having most of the distress stem from everyone dwelling on the source of grief and making us be involved, instead of the source itself

increased meltdowns and/or shutdowns

increased sensory sensitivity/sensory issues

difficulty understanding why everyone is taking so long to grieve and crying so much (especially if we're in the first bullet point, aka not processing until long after everyone else is done)

feeling really really intensely, especially in regards to anger. This is the opposite end of what I am, so I won't touch too heavily on that, but autistic emotions can 100% be extreme

having difficulty describing their grief beyond "It feels bad"

not even realizing we're grieving, but having high exhaustion and stress levels that signal we definitely are

less energy for socializing and communicating; isolating themselves

difficulty with everyday tasks

lowered verbality (a semi-verbal autistic being nearly nonverbal, a usually verbal autistic talking much less or having much more difficulty with it, etc)

throwing ourselves into our Special Interests to an even higher degree as a way to cope (we already use them to cope in everyday life, after all)

using our self-soothing stims a lot more (i.e. i rock when under stress; grieving may have people noticing a lot more rocking from me)

TLDR: autistic people's experiences of grief often manifest in us becoming more "visibly autistic", having difficulty with our emotions/increased alexithymia, exhaustion, and in general not grieving in the "typical" way.

I'm not saying autistics ALWAYS grieve like this (we're not a monolith) and I'm not saying NTs can't also have this way of grieving, but these are just some aspects of grief that autistic people often experience that you can give to your autistic characters. Other autistic people feel free to add on & allistics feel free to rb!

[thechangeling]

5, 9 and 42 for the autism asks 💕

Hey! 🥰

5. There are a lot of things I could say for this answer. But the main one is that I wish people knew that we have a very hard time naming and identifying feelings sometimes. To me emotions take a while to hit me and even then sometimes it's still hard to figure out what's going on. To me all emotions basically feel the same. Like pain. Pain or tightness in my chest. I basically have to figure out what it means based on the context.

9. My very first spin (special interest) was when I was 4 and I was obsessed with Blues Clues. Especially Magenta. Magenta even became my favorite colour for a really long time.

42: All right buckle up kids. So Angel the series is the spin off show of Buffy the vampire slayer. Angel is basically Buffy's vampire ex boyfriend with a soul who left the town of Sunnydale to go to LA and fight demons because he knows he and Buffy can't be together anymore (essentially because he's a vampire and she's the vampire slayer.) It's worth mentioning here that vampire don't have souls. Angel got his back through a curse that was put on him against his will as a punishment for killing this girl (sorry I feel like I'm just dumping information on you lol,) who was a member of a Romani tribe. This was way back in the 1700s btw.

The thing is, without souls vampires lack the moral compus that allows you to make morally correct decisions. It also stops you from growing and learning and changing. Vampires are static. They never change. They can feel but it's always selfish and self serving. Without a soul, love looks more like obsession. Before Angel had his soul he was known as Angelus and he was a horrible brutal killing machine essentially. He was the absolute worst of the worst. But then he was cursed and he got his soul, and now he's trying to redeem himself for all of the horrible things he did.

So that's essentially what Angel the show is about. He goes to LA to atone for his sins and fight evil without Buffy. The entire show is about redemption and becoming a better person and finding forgiveness and empathy from people. The show serves as a metaphor for alcoholism. Angel is the alcoholic who has gone off human blood and made a commitment to being good and essentially staying sober.

In his fight against evil he meets up with people who want to help, some new faces and some people he knew from Sunnydale (they were on Buffy) and they decide to create a detective agency so they have a more organized approach to helping people. And thus Angel Investigations is born. People with supernatural problems essentially hire them to deal with it, usually dispatching some demon or vampire or whatever and then the team gets paid.

Also occassionally there's some big apocalyptic threat that they have to fight. But going back to the alcoholism metaphor, you could say that his closest friend Cordelia is kind of like his sponsor. Now Cordy started out on the show Buffy The vampire Slayer as a spoiled, rich, shallow popular girl who in the beginning was an antagonist to Buffy and her friends but then as she learned of the supernatural world, she began to help them. Towards the end of the third season of Buffy and almost the end of high school, Cordelia's family loses all of their money and she loses essentially everything she had and her sense of who she is. She can't go to college because she can't afford it so she moves to LA in an attempt to have a career as an actress and runs into Angel who she knew before as Buffy's boyfriend. She starts helping him and comes up with the idea for the agency in the first place as a way to make money but as time goes on she becomes more motivated to actually help fight the forces of evil (I'm trying not to give away spoilers but I'm terrible at giving summaries.)

There relationship is something that has always been super special to me and I think it always will be. The sponsor element to their friendship is super evident in episodes like Sommunambulist, as is the addict metaphor.

Spoilers:

Sommunambulist is essentially about an old protege of Angelus' named Penn, someone Angel sired when he was Angelus coming to town and committing a bunch of murders identical to the ones he used to commit back in ye olden times. He tries to draw Angel back into his old life that he had without a soul.

We can read this as a fellow addict coming back into Angel's life, finding out that he's trying to stay sober now and trying to draw him back in with the allure of drinking. In this episode there is also Kate, a police officer that has been helping Angel with his cases by using her resources. They are allies of sorts. Now she's working the case of the people murded by Penn and she doesn't know about the supernatural world. She ends up in a position where her life is in danger but Angel saves her, revealing that he is a vampire to her. She understandably freaks out and later on goes to do research on vampires and on Angel. She learns all about Angelus and all of the horrible things he did before he got his soul. She judges Angel and Angelus as the same person and holds Angel responsible for Angelus's actions even though he didn't have a soul as Angelus.

So through Kate we see the person that only sees the addict as they once were, as the horrible things they did and the people they hurt. She refuses to see this new person. She doesn't trust this new person.

But Cordelia does. And during their scene on the rooftop, the final scene of the episode, Angel says to her "I wonder if anything really changes."

He's clearly let both Kate and Penn get inside his head, and now he's wondering if he actually can find redemption. Angel's probably also wondering if he himself has actually changed. I think when we here his line "I wonder if anything really changes" we can read that as him wondering if he has changed. If he is capable of change.

He's clearly spiraling, and as easy as breathing Cordelia catches him.

"Sure they do. You did."

She reassures him so effortlessly, like there's no doubt in her mind. Because there isn't. She believes in him.

It's also worth mentioning that in the show there is this omnipresent almost god like force called the powers that be. The powers are like the ultimate force of good supposedly and they send Angel visions of people in trouble through Cordelia. She gets the visions and then tells Angel who to save.

During their conversation on the roof, Cordelia tells him, "the message in my vision didn't come for Angelus it came for you! Angel. And you have to trust that whoever the powers that be..be...are...is, anyway, they know the difference."

The second step in AA is believing that a higher power can restore you back to sanity. On Buffy, Angel was killed at the end of season 2 by Buffy who had to kill him to stop the world from ending. But then he was mysteriously brought back at the beginning of season 3 and know one is sure why or what brought him back. This is actually never explained on either shows but I think it's heavily implied that the powers that be brought Angel back to life and gave him a second chance.

End spoilers:

But anyways, I'm getting ahead of myself. You should really watch the show, it's so good. You don't neccesarily have to watch Buffy to understand it but I still reccomend watching them both because they're so good.

[urproblematicfav-arsonk]

There's a lot of things about Borderlands 3 that makes it kinda a garbage game. And all of those things are valid and true but a aspect of bl3 that deeply bothers me isn't something I've really seen people talk about?? Maybe they have but I missed it but I want to say my interpretation. (Also like, spoiler warning throughout all of this post)

To start off with: hi, I'm a autistic afab nonbinary person and this is relevant for this little rant I'm bout to go on.

I want to begin by stating why I love this franchise so much.

Borderlands, whether you like it or not, is INCREDIBLY queer. And not in a coded kind of way, it's just flat out gay as fuck. And that means so fucking much to me. Borderlands 2 was one of the first times I ever felt fully represented in a game. Zer0 being this dumbass making Yugioh references and generally being a fun garbage boy and also being nonbinary meant a lot to me and I adore him to this day (nonbinary people can use gendered pronouns fuc off). And getting more and more into this series and finding out that basically every character was on some level queer was really cool to me. Maya being asexual and most of the characters being attracted to multiple genders so honestly and off handily was so refreshing and amazing to get to play through. The casual mentions of a woman's wife or some man's husband in the echo's you find or Moxxi talking about her ex girlfriends was one of the reasons I loved this so much.

Another thing I loved particularly about Borderlands 2 was how feminist it was. I can not tell you how quickly I lost my shit at Mr. Torgue talking about the friend zone being misogynistic(it is btw). And the repeated jokes about fully murdering men for being rude to women was some of the highlights of my first playthrough. Punching a guy till he explodes because he disrespected a sex worker?? Fucking immaculate.

SPEAKING OF SEX WORK.

Mad Moxxi is a icon. She is a mother of MULTIPLE children, a survivor of rape and assault and a fucking bad bitch who runs a now intergalactic titty bar. Getting to have not only a sex worker be respected in a narrative, Moxxi is fun and a genuinely complex character who isn't defined by her job or her appearance. She is emotional and strong and funny and flawed but amazing person.

And then there's the way the male characters a represented and treated. I'll be honest here, I haven't really played Borderlands 1, mostly because have been spoiled by auto pick up and also I just didn't feel like it. So my idea of most of the men are based entirely off of Bl2, the pre-sequel and Tales. Anyway, Mordecai in particular is a character I really liked upfront. I love how a lot of his motivation and character is driven by his love of animals and Bloodwing. He's kind and though troubled knows when to get his shit together and be there when he needs to be. His casual "are you okay?" After the latter falls in the Arid Nexus was such a nice moment and the way he genuinely tries to be there emotionally for all of the people around him who he cares for is so fucking rare to see in a male character. And his arc of giving up alcohol to focus on being a better bird dad and you getting to help Brick make Mordecai a special gift to celebrate his sobriety is so amazing and I'm so proud of him.

Mr. Torgue is my dad and I love him. As mentioned, he is normal and believes that the friend zone is absolute garbage talk is ICONIC™ and the best scene in that game fight me. Torgue is a crybaby. He is an emotional person who is not afraid to express his pain and hurt when people are mean to him. He respects women and loves unicorns. The fact that is physical appearance is a big muscle guy who screams but is the literal opposite of toxic masculinity will forever make him the best male character of all time and I love him and he is my dad.

Roland was a character that I was never in particularly attached to but I still respect him and did enjoy his presence. I really appreciated his leadership style being primarily based on empathy and logic as opposed to him being a big meanie man with a HUGE dick who yells at people. I always really resonated with the echo from Tannis talking about how she came to Sanctuary. Roland going out of his way to bring Tannis to safety while completely respecting her autism and struggle with socializing really made his death hit harder when Tannis was very obviously distraught by losing him. It really seems that Roland was the only one who didn't treat her differently. And as someone who's autistic, finding people who legit 100% understand and respect you and just let you live the way you want/need to is kinda hard and those are the qualities I'd personally want in a leader.

Angel is also a big spot of affection for me. Handsome Jack being a irrefutably horrible person who Angel flat out says gaslights people and killed her means a lot to me considering 99% of Bad Parent stories end with "I forgive u" getting to see an abusive victim take that narrative and say fuck you was powerful and meant a lot to me coming from my own abusive home life.

There's a lot of other things I love about Borderlands but if I keep going I won't stop lol so let's get into why Borderlands 3 makes me so uncomfortable.

One of the main things that bothered me was the sexism. Its nothing too horrifying but given how feminist bl2 was it was really shocking and a bit hurtful the number of times women are called bitches or made to seem crazy. If you recall I brought up how you punch a man to death for calling a woman a bitch? Yea no, in this game we mock women for having boundaries and opinions because lol she's just a CRAZY BITCH who just needs to stop acting so hysterical am I right guys?

Yea the whole mission with that stupid bear thing and his ex robot girlfriend made me insanely uncomfortable and upset. I kept waiting for the gotcha moment where it says actually this bear guy is a dick and he shouldn't use language like that but no we just,,,,,, are supposed to laugh along. I hate it.

Even though Borderlands 3 is still very much queer, this game introducing 2 new trans characters as well as a whole DLC about a gay marriage and one of the playable characters being a lesbian there was this some shit that bothered me.

The mission where you crash and ruin a lesbian wedding.

That mission made so upset and uncomfortable. I hated how traumatized and hurt Tumorhead was as I murdered her family and wife. I hated how unfulfilling the mission was where PLOT TWIST the lady was actually a spy or whatever. I hate how there's a mission about ruining some poor psycho ladies wedding. I would've much more preferred a mission where Idk Bloodshine asks you to help her kill a spy who's causing problems and then fucking go around Promethea collecting wedding decorations or something. OR MAYBE JUST NOT A MISSION WHERE YOU KILL LESBIANS FOR NO FUCKING REASON.

I'm mad, anyway.

I also hated how Tannis was treated in this game. Under absolutely no circumstance would Doctor Patricia Tannis ever willingly take up a position of leadership. She is a severely autistic woman who gets nose bleeds from talking to people she wouldn't just be like "I'm in charge now pls talk to me!!!" Fuck off. And the joke about her dating a minecart isn't funny. The whole thing with the chairs, though funny in its absurdities was still a very important and powerful moment of character exploration. Tannis is insane. She is traumatized and hurt and in a moment of severe torture, she humanized some inanimate objects to cope. Tannis crying over the echo over Phillip is a heartbreaking moment of true vulnerability. It is also funny, because that's how good dark comedy works. It can be both hysterical and emotionally ruining at the same time. So what exactly does Tannis divorcing a minecart mean? What is this saying about her character? Why is it funny? Because lol lol reference??? Again, fuck off.

I hate how the Calypso twins childhood is handled. Troy implies it was horribly abusive and traumatic. But when we met Typhon whatever, he acts like it wasn't that bad??? He acts like he just didn't buy his kids the latest iPhone and oh no whoopsie now they're evil, my bad guys. It feels super weird and I don't like it.

Speaking of abusive parents. THEY DID MY GIRL ANGEL DIRTY SO BAD. This was literally when I decided I hated this game. Angel being the one who killed her mother and not Jack was fucking horrible. Especially after the literal foreshadowing in borderlands 2 implying he did. The fact that Jack is treated like a fearful man making what he thought was the right decision was insulting. I get that MattPat manipulated the fandom into thing Jack is a uwu bean but fuck you, you're the writers and you should fucking know better. Handsome Jack saw his daughter had power and turned her into a living battery for him to use as he saw fit. He was not scared and he was NOT right. Fuck you and fuck you for framing child abuse as chill and ok if your spooked enough like that. And the mission directly contradicts the echo's in Get To Know Jack. If Angel killed her mom why does she ask Jack where her mommy is when he's putting her in her chambers?? Why is it in the echo Jack is aggressive and forcibly and hurtfully makes her go into her chambers but in the memory, he's quiet and passive about it?? That's literally just flat out bad writing. Also fuck you.

Anyway,

I think that's really all I wanted to say about this topic. Obviously, there are also things that suck about bl3 but I'll try to chill and not make this too long.

I mostly wanted to make this to see if people cared/are bothered by the same things I am. I've seen how some of the fandom treats the more emotional and gay aspects of this franchise(the people throwing a fit over Amara, the friend zone line, not respecting trans peoples pronouns, sexualizing and being gross about Moxxi)

Anyway that's it byeeeeeeeeeeeee

[apricops]

@discoursedrome​ said: you gotta liveblog about this, it's from before the bingewatching era so I'm very curious to hear you speedrun the entire narrative arc of the series

Unfortunately I have already made it to season 4, specifically we just watched the episode Something Blue. I’ll do a mental dump of things thus far, spoiler warnings for basically the first half of the show. Feel free to ask me my thoughts on anything not covered below.

Season 4 specifically:

There’s something very Bugs Bunny-ish about Spike. It’s like, y’know how some demons are like “I exude an aura that saps the energy from people around me or makes everyone near me run in terror”? It’s like Spike has an aura where if you’re near him you now have to play along with the joke, whatever that joke may be. I hated him when he was introduced but I also see in retrospect how his initial success was key to making him the bumbling comic villain, by having him actually fall from power.

Starting with season 4, you can tell the costume designers were happy that they didn’t have to pretend like Alyson Hannigan was frumpy and unattractive. I honestly didn’t recognize her for a second because she was just dressed like a normal person instead of bright pink overalls or whatever.

Before we watched Pangs, Aria said “this episode might be a little uncomfortable” and I was assuming it was because there was going to be graphic footage of eyeballs getting split open or something, but no, it was just a very bungling and ham-handed attempt to go “so, Native Americans, right?” where the only onscreen Native Americans are bloodthirsty spirits.

Very glad that Angel is gone-ish. Even knowing nothing about Buffy beforehand, the first time he came back felt so obviously “whoops, fans love him so let’s bring him back” and he generally didn’t do much after that besides breathe heavily and tell people they don’t understand.

Funny thing about TV depictions of college #1: the professors teaching entry-level classes are always hard-asses when from my experience and the experiences of everyone I’d talk to, you’d have to literally walk into class snorting meth before the professor would gently ask you to put the pipe away.

Funny thing about TV depictions of college #2: the writers clearly only having an entry-level understanding of any given topic. The show will be like “omg she’s revolutionizing the field of psychology, she’s the best psychology-knower on the planet” and then they’ll show her class and she’s like “so, fucken... basic Freudian bullshit, am I right?”

Riley when geared up looks so much like a live-action version of Leon Kennedy.

The very obvious gap in the opening credits where Cordelia was supposed to be. Where it’s like “Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar! Alyson Hannigan! ................ Nicholas Brendon!”

More general thoughts:

This is gonna sound very @kontextmaschine​ esque but wow does this show reflect that sort of... repressed nerdboy sexuality where it’s all like “ha ha what if this demon lady had contrived plot-related reasons to tempt you with her demon boobs” and “what if there were strong/threatening female villains who sexually assaulted you (but joke’s on them, we’re just indulging our submissive fantasies).” There’s something... a bit tacky about it.

Unfortunately it also works on me sometimes because evil Willow did things to me.

I can definitely tell how it would be so different waiting week after week to see the various twists and turns, and how Buffy changed the game.

Very variable quality of fight scenes. In season 4 specifically it seems like they discovered wires and there’s a lot of times where the character vaults up really high and spins around and then delivers a very flaccid kick. With seasons 1 and 2 it felt like Buffy just did the same three kicks from different angles. The fight in the mayor’s office was my favorite thus far because it had the whole usage of props and the environment and wasn’t just two people throwing each other into the wall.

Speaking of which, and I know it’s one of those “it has to be that way for TV” things but it’s just funny how everyone’s skill and ability varies wildly depending on the demands of the plot. When Buffy’s fighting some unimportant villain of the week she can hit a fly from 30 paces but when she’s fighting a recurring villain she’s all “ohh no I am unable to defeat this person who is right in front of me, just talking,” like fuckin just throw a stake at him!

Late 90s CGI, oof.

Late 90s slang, oof.

Speaking of the mayor, he’s been the best villain thus far, though from what I’ve heard that’s not exactly a hot take.

The unfortunate implications of how every character who’s not straight and white is either clearly evil or dead by the end of the season.

Having autism makes watching TV weird. I mention this because of a conversation I had with my gf that went roughly like this:

gf: “Wait, do you not get how Anya’s supposed to be like, violating social norms all the time and that’s why people don’t like her?”

me: “What do you mean?”

gf: “Like right there, she didn’t knock before entering. That’s why Giles was all “vOv?” with her.”

me: “But it”s a TV show. It’s a Joss Whedon show. It’s like how nobody ever says “goodbye” during a phone call, you’re not expected to, you just enter the frame and say your one-liner. Half the time they’re being quippy while classmates around them are actively dying.”

So I guess I don’t recognize the line between “this social norm is violated because it’s more convenient for TV” and “this social norm is violated because the character violates social norms.”

Anyway, it’s a good fun show, which feels like a thing you aren’t supposed to admit to on social media.

[chriscdcase95]

Halloween: Why the Thorn Trilogy was as underrated as "Twenty Years Later" was overrated

So yeah, I said it. And now I’m gonna explain it.

This may be some nostalgia of mine talking but as a long time fan of the Halloween series - I am talking when I was ten years old, when I was first getting into horror genre- I grew up on the old Halloween sequels consisting of the Thorn trilogy and the Twenty Years Later story lines. I know they are considered separate continuities and timelines, but y'know broad strokes, Easter-eggs, and the fact early script drafts for Twenty Years Later (Or H-20) intended to tie them together before they were cut from the final film, you can make the case they are ostensibly canon to each other, but that’s about it.

The Thorn Trilogy isn’t considered the best of the series; many fans looking down on the fifth and sixth film as being the least popular of the films. I think the only reason they aren’t considered by fans the worse in the series is because Resurrection exists, and was that followed by Rob Zombie’s remake duology. On the flip side, H-20 and 2018 are considered the golden calves of the franchise, and for the life of me, I never saw the appeal of the formers popularity. Now I can see why people have problems with the Thorn trilogy - especially regarding the cult and curse plot element of the sixth film. Unpopular opinion, but the sixth film was my favourite of the series - maybe has to do with my autism appealing me with both world building and the familiar - or that it seemed to tie up one storyline, but at the same time set up so much that I was disappointed that it didn’t continue.

For context, this post is partially inspired by Schaffrillas Productions video about Shrek 2. In this I will be using the criteria of what he describes as a “Perfect Sequel” which I’ll apply to the Halloween series, and as his Shrek 2 video says, there’s no such thing as the perfect movie; there’s too many variables to cover in a single movie alone, while a movie can preform it’s functions as a sequel perfectly even that doesn’t mean the movie itself is perfect. The “Perfect Sequel” criteria goes as such; expanding the universe; continue the story; introduce new themes or expand on old themes; leave an impact on the franchise.

Like Schaffrillas Productions, I will use this criteria to determine what the Thorn trilogy did right over H-20. Now am I gonna throw the 2018 sequel into the equation ? Maybe for compare and contrast purposes, but the 2018 sequel hits those same beats. There really is no competition between H-20 and 2018, I don’t question why the latter is considered a fan favorite. What I am primarily doing here is comparing the old sequels, and 2018 barely comes into the equation.

Does the Thorn Trilogy expand the films universe ? Does is continue the story ? As far as continuing the story goes ? Well that’s a no brainier; Halloween II begins where the original film ends; Return of Michael Myers picks up ten years later with Michael waking up from a coma after his seeming death in the second; Revenge follows Return and that leads to Curse. You get the picture, there’s an overarching story here.

“But does it introduce new themes that impact the franchise ?” You ask. Not the Thorn trilogy itself, but the second film does. Halloween II kinda sorta introduces a supernatural element to Michael by hinting a connection to the an ancient element of Halloween - more specifically the lord of the dead Samhain-  but more importantly revealing that Michael and Laurie are brother and sister. The supernatural stuff is explored exclusively throughout Return to Curse, but ever since it was revealed the entire Halloween series hinged off of Michael and Laurie’s familial connection. Even in 2018 where they discontinue the sibling aspect, the theme of family permeates the plot, with the focus hear being on Laurie, her family drama, her need to protect them and how Michael not only affected her but her family.  

In what’s relevant here is Michael and Laurie’s family connection is the focal point of the Thorn Trilogy, albeit not through Laurie herself; our lead character in Return and Revenge is Jamie Lloyd, the orphaned daughter of Laurie Strode and niece of Michael Myers, and she is what made their relationship the most plot relevant. Before Michael even wakes up from his coma, we are introduced to Jamie being haunted and even bullied over the fact that she’s and orphan and how her uncle is the infamous boogeyman. Her mother is gone, and she never even met her uncle, and yet both their shadows hang over her. Once Michael learns he has a niece that’s still alive, that’s all he needs to get up and at ‘em and nothings gonna stop him from getting his hands on her. And once he does in Curse ? It’s their baby he’s after next!  Yes, their baby. Michael is the biological father of Jamie’s son Steven, who becomes his new target and finds an adoptive family in Tommy Doyle, Karla Strode, and her son Danny, who take the responsibility to protect Steven from not only Michael, but an evil cult that will no doubt be following them for some time. So we have something set up; a possible future confrontation between Michael and his vengeful son, and defeat the cult that has been mentoring Michael and orchestrating his rampages from behind the scenes.

So what comes next ? H-20 gives us Dawson’s Creek with a serial killer. One of the things I mark against H-20 was I felt it lacked the same kind of substance as the previous trilogy. For something that was conceived as the finale of the Halloween saga, I just couldn’t get emotionally invested, and maybe it had to do with the later release of Resurrection and the knowledge of what comes next. Maybe I was deflated that Jamie wouldn’t get justice, or that we wouldn’t find out what became of Little Baby Steven. Sure we got a plot about Laurie being a protective mother towards her son John, but for some reason I couldn’t really empathize with John in comparison to Jamie - not helping his case is that 2018 Laurie has a new daughter in Karen who has the same kind of baggage John had with Laurie, was a more interesting in characterization. John was a just a Dawson’s Creek student who serves as someone Laurie needs to fight for, only to be forgotten in Resurrection. Unlike Jamie or Karen, John was more of a plot device than a character.

As far as expanding on the previous films themes go, H-20 doesn’t really do this. It’s focus is on Laurie and her incoming “final” confrontation with her brother…but it doesn’t feel like it has the same weight. Laurie’s having her nightmares, she’s living in paranoia and the constant fear of her brother inevitably coming after her again, and how it took a toll on her relationship with her son. That’s all well and good, but the problem is the emotions feel underwhelming here. I’m not bashing the acting or anything, but I think I was supposed to take Laurie and John’s screaming match when they argue about Michael more seriously than I actually did (their second scene together by the way). Maybe they should have focused more on Laurie’s angst, and her relationship with her son, but it all felt rushed and emotionally underdeveloped in comparison to Laurie’s emotional scars shown in 2018, which felt like they had a little more weight here. 2018 gave us a slow burn with them, H-20 gave us the last three episodes of Game of Thrones.

Also the fact its Halloween night is barely a factor in this movie. There’s more focus on a trip to Yosemite Park than the actual holiday, and none of the characters don’t even go on the trip itself. Hell, this movie and it’s sequel were released in the summer.

“What about expanding the films universe ?” As I said above, I think the main thing I liked about the Thorn trilogy was it’s world building. It is next to 2018 with the most lore filled storylines in the series, (and I expect more to come from 2018’s sequels). And the Thorn trilogy not only captured the atmosphere, but tied the lore of the actual holiday of Halloween much better than H-20. And for better or worse, we dig in a little more into the mystery that is Michael Myers and his family. Or do we ?

Short answer is “Depends on what version of the sixth movie you watch.” Yeah I know the sixth movie introduces the Thorn cult and curse, but there is are differences between the Theatrical Cut and the Producers Cut on account of things that have been added, cut or changed outright between the two versions. The Producers Cut is the only version Michael being a puppet of the Thorn Curse and tool to this cult. The Theatrical Cut plays around with this idea but doesn’t explore it beyond a theory Tommy has, but isn’t verified in the cut itself. As far as the Theatrical Cut is concerned, Michael is just a rage driven psychopath.

And honestly I get that one of the supposed appeals to Michael Myers is the mystery of his character. Everyone goes off about how he was such a cool villain in the first movie was because of his mysteriousness and the questions left unanswered and go on and on about it. But here’s the thing, the point of a mystery is the need to solve it, the need to explore and find out more about this mysterious figure. Michael being a mysterious figure can work in one or two movies before it gets boring and he just becomes a blank slate, a carboard cut-out. And really that was one of the problems Michael had in H-20. The Thorn Trilogy gives three movies to find out more about Michael, and his familial connection to Laurie Strode is the focus, even with Laurie out of the picture. Some would say because we find out more about Michael, his status as a villain is cheapened, but I always thought he becomes more interesting the more we find out about him.

In H-20, we got nothing with Michael. We don’t find out anything really new or interesting, or anything that really makes him that much of a threat. The whole movie was about a showdown he was going to have with Laurie twenty years after his first rampage, but there’s no real substance with Michael this time around. And this isn’t the same as 2018 going back to basics by following only the first movie - H-20 explicitly follows the second movie so this is the same Michael who hints at a supernatural element, the same Michael who is revealed to be Laurie’s brother, but none of that is really important here. The brother and sister element - the crux of these two characters, isn’t of importance here as it was for the Thorn trilogy; the closest we get to that is the scene where Laurie kills someone she thinks is Michael, which leads to Resurrection.

Michael and Laurie felt more related in 2018 than they ever did in H-20. And speaking of 2018, I know they brought Michael back to his original form, but considering there’s two sequels to that movie in the works, there is only so much you can do before Michael becomes “cheapened” by finding out more about him or become boring by keeping him a blank slate. Like I said, Michael can only really get away with being enigmatic for one or two movies before it just becomes a crutch and excuse which would result in him becoming boring.

As far as world building goes, the H-20 storyline doesn’t really expand the universe besides taking us to a boarding school in California, but I can give it leniency since it was gonna originally be a follow up on the previous trilogy. Now onto comparing characters.

Laurie Strode as a Protagonist

While it goes with out saying that Laurie Strode is a runner up when it comes to being the OG Final Girl. In the same way Michael helped define the slasher villain, Laurie is helped define what the final girl is. In just about every timeline and storyline in the Halloween series, all it took was one night to shape Laurie as her fateful encounter with Michael. In the first two movies, Laurie was a great protagonist, she was the naive, inexperienced teenage girl, and even a sisterly figure to Tommy Doyle. She was a protective babysitter who risks her neck to not just survive the night against a psychotic stalker, but protect the kids that are in her care. And that was just the first movie.

The second movie (which takes place on the same night mind you) things get personal with the brother/sister relationship. In this movie, the family aspect did impact Laurie; Laurie was the first person who finds out the truth and has a dream induced flashback of when she met Michael when she was younger shortly after her mother told her she was adopted. Laurie wakes up and the revelation that the seeming stranger that just murdered her friends is her brother, it puts her into a brief catatonic shock…although she might have been faking it while planning an escape. Point is the brother revelation had an effect on her.

But watching II and Twenty Years Later back to back, I just didn’t feel that it the same impact as it did in the previous movie. Michael’s relation to Laurie wasn’t as important in this film as it did the previous films. If it wasn’t for the fact that the brother-sister thing was mentioned a few times, it didn’t feel like it had that much of a weight to it. It didn’t feel like Laurie was afraid of her brother here, but rather just the guy who terrorized her. Like I said, above, Laurie and Michael felt more “related” in 2018 than they did in H-20, despite that aspect being cut out. The closest we get to Laurie having a moment of “this is my brother” is the scene where she kills some poor sap she thinks is Michael.

The focus in both H-20 and 2018 is about Laurie’s trauma and paranoia about Michael coming after her and her children. But overall I felt 2018!Laurie was the better take on the character, especially in that aspect; we see how strained her relationship with her daughter is and how close she is with her granddaughter. 2018!Laurie’s life effectively went down the tubes and Michael never stopped haunting her, and has burned himself into her very soul, that it would be irrelevant whether or not they are blood related. It’s gotten to the point where her daughter barely has a relationship with her. Despite this and having little to lose, 2018!Laurie has spent forty years preparing for a showdown with Michael, and is just itching for him to come loose again, arming herself, fortifying her house, keeping herself in shape the whole nine yards. Because it makes her that much stronger, makes her a little bit harder, makes her that much wiser, so thanks for making her a fighter.

H-20!Laurie spent twenty years just living in fear of Michael that at some point to the point that she faked her death, but doesn’t do much of else. And honestly despite her trauma and paranoia in this movie, I was less sympathetic to this take on Laurie, because she has a lot more to lose. She hasn’t had her life ruined by Michael in the same way 2018!Laurie has, in fact she lived a more comfortable (dare I say) privileged life, as the headmistress of a boarding school in sunny California, and still has a considerably more positive relationship with her son, and it’s only after Michael catches up to her, she’s ready to confront him and (seemingly) kill him. And I just couldn’t feel the same emotions with H-20!Laurie as I did with the 2018 counterpart.

I thought that H-20 was a little rushed with her character development and arc. But I think what made me unsympathetic is because Resurrection made it hard for me to root for in retrospect, and the fact H-20 was originally going to be directly tied with the Thorn trilogy; keep in mind as far as the Thorn trilogy goes, Laurie was killed in a car accident, which left her daughter Jamie virtually alone, with her mothers death taking an obvious toll on her, which dear old uncle Michael is out to kill her. H-20 reveals Laurie faked her death, and considering the original plans to tie the two stories, this effectively means that Laurie faked her death, abandoned Jamie with seemingly no regard for her, and let Jamie go through Hell alone. And I’m supposed to feel sorry for Laurie because of twenty years of nightmares ? Yeah, 2018!Laurie is the mother that Jamie deserves.

Which leads us too…

Jamie Lloyd as a protagonist

Now Jamie was considered a fan favorite upon her introduction, and in my opinion is one of the most thematically important characters in the series. As I explained above, Jamie is the linchpin of Michael and Laurie’s relationship, being both Laurie’s daughter and Michael’s niece. From such, both characters shadows hang over Jamie, despite and because of Laurie being out of the picture. Despite being a child, Jamie is subjected to the trauma of her mothers passing and her relationship with the boogeyman being public knowledge (and other children bully her over it, I can’t get over that).

Now there’s two kind of protagonist dynamics that Laurie and Jamie fill that contrast each other; Laurie is the protector of the cute, Jamie is the cute. But Laurie’s not around, and Jamie would be completely alone if it where not for her foster sister Rachel, Rachel’s friends, the local and state police and a mob of vigilantes. Well unfortunately, the Jamie Lloyd Protection Squad are a non issue to Michael who had squad of his own in the form of the Thorn cult, and these fuckers don’t play around. The world will stop at nothing at kicking Jamie down, and kicking her while she’s down, just for existing. If that’s not enough, she is held captive for years by a cult, forcibly impregnated by Michael and disemboweled in the sixth movie.

Did I mention Jamie was an eight to nine year old kid in the fourth and fifth movie ? I can see why Danielle Harris is disgruntled that she couldn’t return. Fun fact, Danielle Harris wanted the sixth film to have Jamie die killing Michael once and for all to save her baby. But because this is Jamie Lloyd we are talking about, she’s not allowed to get justice. You could make the argument that Jamie gets points dying to save her baby in the actual movie…but it wasn’t Danielle Harris playing, so whatevs I guess.

As I already said, what made Jamie a little more interesting for me than H-20!Laurie is that her connection to Michael being more emphasized here than with Laurie. This was first shown in the fourth movie and expanded upon in the fifth, which implies Michael has some sort of psychic and emotional link with Jamie. Under Michael’s influence, Jamie attacks her foster mother, and is subsequently institutionalized, and is still terrorized by Michael through nightmares, visions and seizures, as Michael continuously taunts Jamie with the murders of her protection squad. That’s when it hit me; Jamie and Michael are Ying and Yang, and that’s why it worked. Where Jamie was innocence, Michael was purely evil.

Michael is the human personification of evil, it only makes sense he be connected to someone who is pure and simply innocent. These two effect each other, and compliment each other. I’m honestly curious how this connection played out during Jamie’s captivity, because despite everything she’s been through, she was still innocent enough to try to reach out to Michael a final time. In the fifth film Michael has a bizarre moment of humanity and feels brief remorse due to Jamie’s influence and on the flip side, Jamie has a brief moment of darkness due to Michael’s influence. So of course I’m going to avoid a certain Mad Titan’s quote about perfect balance, because the meme is too easy. It dawns on me that I may be reading into something that isn’t there, but dear reader is what all theorists and analysts such as myself do ?

And speaking of perfect balance, that is another reason why I think a storyline about baby Steven introduced in the sixth film is a wasted chance. Not only is his *ahem* “origin” anti-hero backstory material, but think about what Steve represents; he’s a living combination of Jamie’s innocence and Michael’s evil. He is someone who not only carries Laurie and Jamie’s legacy on his back, but Michael’s legacy as well. Thematically speaking, he is prime material to be the one to one day kill Michael once and for all. But we got more of Michael fighting Laurie, so I guess that’s cool.

Michael Myers as a villain

Okay, what can I say about Michael as a villain that hasn’t already been said ? I mean what movie does him best ? Many would say the first two. But what does a better job at “expanding” Michael. Many would also say the 2018 sequel, but that’s not primarily what I’m comparing here, so we are sticking with the old school sequels. Michael’s main appeal to the bulk of the fandom was the mystery aspect of him in the first movie. But “Michael is cool because he’s mysterious” can only work for one or two movies before it becomes a crutch and as a result turns Michael into blank slate. And considering that 2018 has two sequels in the work, Michael is likely to get some “expansion” to keep him interesting, and that’s because the appeal to a mystery is the inherent need to solve it. 

But that is beside the point. In my personal opinion, Michael’s appeal wasn’t that he was a mystery, but that he was the human personification of evil, and from such I think the only way Michael can really be cheapened is if he was given something to humanize him like love, empathy or sympathetic qualities. And no, the single tear in the fifth movie ultimately means nothing considering what happens down the line. So as long as Michael is evil and doing inherently evil deeds, I don’t see it as cheapening him.

So how does one expand on Michael and his evil correctly ? Make him a bigger threat with each passing sequel, and give him more heinous deeds under his belt.

In the second movie, he massacres a hospital to get to Laurie. The fourth movie has him slaughtering an entire police force and a vigilante mob just to get to Jamie. The fifth movie has Michael track down Jamie’s friends and foster sister, and display their corpses as a way to taunt Jamie. Sixth movie, he disembowels Jamie after she gives birth - mocking Jamie for trying reach out to him no less! - before seeking out and trying to kill their baby, and massacres a group of followers for thinking they can control him. There’s also Steven’s conception, which is universally regarded as too far even for Michael. 2018 has Michael kill a child onscreen, exceed the body count of the first movie before he even gets his mask back -and just to get his mask back- kills several people in different houses in a matter of minutes, and uses a cops severed head as a makeshift Jack-o-Lantern. You see that ? In almost each sequel, Michael was more of a threat, and was more “creative” when it came to his evil. He fulfilled a function as a villain and evil personified with no real humanity and no moral restraint.

What about H-20 ? Compared to those other movies, Michael was boring here. He kills three people at the beginning of H-20 and three more in the third act, but isn’t really creative or spectacular (except for using a skate for one kill). The bulk of the movie is Michael just traveling to the boarding school Laurie is hiding in, but doesn’t really do anything of substance. I wouldn’t mind too much, but back in the day this was billed as the final movie. The only creative thing Michael does is fake his death and that isn’t revealed until Resurrection which was near universally disowned by the fandom. Give Resurrection this, it adds more to Michael’s rap sheet. We do get a brief montage at the beginning of H-20 that implies that Michael has gone on a killing spree across the country, but the problem is it breaks the “show don’t tell rule”.

I’ll give them this, we do get a comic book miniseries called Nightdance set in the H-20 continuity, that expands on Michael’s evil and menace in ways I won’t spoil here because I recommend it, and it’s not as well known as Resurrection despite being considered by some to be the better follow up. It’s almost a shame this wasn’t made into a movie, because in the actual movies in that timeline Michael didn’t feel as threatening or menacing, took a lot of the edge off his character, and made him especially weak compared to the previous sequels. You could make the argument that the movie was mainly focused on Laurie’s facing her demons, the problem was that everything was rushed and undeveloped in that department, so Laurie’s character arc doesn’t really make up for it.

Compare and contrast this with 2018, which gave us a slow burn focus on how Michael effected Laurie, Laurie’s relationship with her family and quickly shown us the stakes Michael’s threat poses. It really makes me question why H-20 was seen as such a golden calf back in the day. It seems to me that is was mostly because Jamie Lee Curtis made a comeback for that movie.

Conclusion

So that’s my reasoning for why the Thorn trilogy hits the “Perfect Sequel” beats over H-20; it had more lore and world building; had a greater focus on the themes introduced in the second film; a more sympathetic protagonist; Michael’s evil was empathized more; and an atmosphere closer related to the actual holiday of Halloween. 2018 had some of the same beats at the Thorn trilogy, but I’m not gonna a final decision until the 2018 sequels are finished. It’s a personal standard of mine to wait until the story is over before I make a final decision.

I will give 2018 points so far for building it’s new lore and developing it’s new characters in one movie, but I think it has it’s problems too. Mainly that 2018 felt more like a big “Fix It” fanfic brought to the cinema, and was a little heavy when it came to self referencing humor, call-backs and leaning on the fourth wall, and fandom wish fulfillment. 2018 isn’t a bad movie, it’s one of my favorite sequels, but even so I can’t get around the whole “fanfic-ish” feel I got from watching it.

Pretty much the one thing H-20 has over 2018 was that it didn’t try too hard to be Scream, which was a formula most late 90’s horror films followed. At most we were given a quick Scream cameo, that could possibly shatter the canon if I think of it too much. H-20 went out of its way by not copying Scream during the writing process. Little known fact, but while H-20 was intended to be the last Halloween film, the studio had this rule was that Michael Myers wasn’t allowed to actually be killed off, so a sequel was planned in advance to clarify he was still alive; the original plan was that “Michael” would be a obsessed fan and copycat; that idea was scrapped possibly for following the “Scream formula” too much, and what we got instead was the infamous paramedic twist in Resurrection.

[preservationandruin]

Edgedancer Liveblog 4

Lift has her mission--find another Radiant in the city before the Skybreakers do. In the process, she writes a friend, talks to an assassin, encounters a dysian aimian, realizes who the city’s other radiant is, and the series successfully passes the (low) bar of Elantris’ ableism. 

Due to the Weeping stopping, and a surprise Highstorm hitting, the seasons and the planting are all off, which is worrying the farmers--understandably. There’s been no new rain in the city for too long. 

And apparently, Lift has met Hoid: 

“Ol’ White-hair said you can’t be crass, so long as you’re talkin’ ‘bout art. Then you’re being elegant. That’s why it’s okay to hang pictures of naked ladies in a palace.” 

“Mistress, wasn’t this the man who got himself intentionally swallowed by a Marabethian greatshell?” 

“Yup. Crazy as a box of drunk minks, that one. I miss him.” 

Listen, if that’s not Hoid, I will eat a shardblade. 

Anyway, Wyndle makes the point that he can’t read every book in the archive in order to find anything weird happening, and so Lift has to come up with another plan--so she decides to go steal some “important-looking” clothes. This is gonna be good. All I’m picturing is like, the trench coat that’s just three kids in a trenchcoat, except instead of three kids it’s just Lift and Wyndle, and Lift is somehow standing on Wyndle, who’s make his vines look like feet. 

Anyway, Lift is saying she’s from Azir and is a friend of the emperor, which...isn’t false? Although it sounds like a bullshit lie. 

Anyway, Lift does not convince people, and instead they realize that she matches the description of the person the Guard Captain told them to look out for, which is Bad, especially because Hauka is there when they realize it. Lift is almost captured but manages to get a message to Azir on a spanreed (with help from Wyndle, who is the one who is actually literate out of the pair) and Azir responds in time. 

To the message “This is Lift, Tell Fat Lips I need her. I’m in trouble. And somebody get Gawx. If he’s not having his nose picked right--”

Which, you know, the fact that they responded to that says a lot about how highly they see Lift. So Gawx manages to bail Lift out, which is great. And Lift gets some food. Somehow, she also ends up with someone else’s hat. 

And she’s demanded the title of “Your Pancakefullness.” I’m gonna laugh my ass off I love Lift. 

Anyway, Gawx is worried--he’s heard reports, now, of the storm that blows backwards, the one with red lightning. Lift writes to remind him that while the future is terrifying, he can’t forget about the present, the mundane. Of course, she says it in a much more Lift-ian way. 

She also has gotten people looking for reports of strangeness--strangeness like herself, she says, giving a description that makes her glow and the seeds on her pancakes start sprouting. 

And then we get this touching part of conversation: 

“’Lift,” Ghenna read. “Are you going to come back? We miss you here.”  “Even Fat Lips?” Lift asked.  “Vizier Noura misses you too. Lift, this is your home now. You don’t need to live on the streets anymore.”  “What am I supposed to do there, if I do come back?”  “Anything you want,” Gawx wrote. “I promise.”  That was the problem. 

Anyway, the storm comes, and the scribes are trying to get Lift to go to a bunker. Well, good luck with that. But Lift realizes that she can tail the work of the other Skybreakers. 

Also, the scribes have just sort of learned to accept that Lift will do her own thing so they’ll be like “go to the shelter! the door will be locked where you’re going” and then sigh and just be like “...don’t break anything please” 

Lift is also feeling for the Parshmen who will be left out for the storm--even though they’re going to turn to Voidbringers. They still don’t deserve that. 

Anyway, Lift runs into the Skybreakers, including Szeth, who is talking to Nightblood--who he calls “sword-nimi.” 

And Wyndle says he can sneak into the room. All on his own. He’s getting braver!!! I’m so proud of him. 

We get a bit more about Lift’s mother. 

When you were always busy, you didn’t have to think about stuff. Like how most people didn’t run off and leave when the whim struck them. Like how your mother had been so warm, and kindly, so ready to take care of everyone. It was incredible that anyone on Roshar should be as good to people as she’d been.  She shouldn’t have had to die. Least, she should have had someone half as wonderful as she was to take care of her as she wasted away.  Someone other than Lift, who was selfish, stupid.  And lonely.

So Lift’s mother had been caring for people, and then had wasted away and died, probably from illness, and Lift was the one caring for her at that point--Lift, who was around ten. That’s...that’s enough to break someone. 

Anyway, Wyndle comes back, and the two main Skybreakers walk past without noticing her--but Szeth (or, more likely, Nightblood) does, and first tosses a sphere at her, then unsheaths Nightblood--to see if she’s evil or not, I assume, and Lift experiences the nausea that good people feel around Nightblood--and then leaves. 

But they’re all three heading to execute someone, so Lift and Wyndle follow them. Turns out, it’s very hard to follow people in an abandoned city. The two main skybreakers start flying--Lift is jealous--and Szeth, pointing out that the last time he flew in that storm he died--refuses to. They say he’ll never really become a skybreaker. 

Anyway, so he stays behind and talks to Lift, which she isn’t expecting. She backsasses him, which is great. She also is clearly wary of him--and more wary when it becomes clear that he’s a bit deranged. 

Anyway, turns out they’re looking for the weird guy from the Orphanage--so Lift starts going there. One of her, against two Skybreakers, and Weird Guy might be a Lightweaver; we just don’t know. 

She gets to the orphanage and is taken inside, asking for her last meal there; she listens to the other children there. And she realizes what she wants--she wants a little control. Over her powers, over her life. She wants to be the one who chooses her fate, and she hears the uncertainty of the other children. 

And Lift also realizes she may have healed Mik’s disability, which I...have mixed feelings about? It looked like it was caused by a head trauma, so that seems reasonable to me, but if this goes down the line of “surge of growth can heal mental illness” I’m gonna be a little skeeved off. 

But Lift chooses to go outside, to see what happened to the old man. And she finds something--a body--and thinks it’s the old man’s--

But it’s not. It’s the body of one of the Skybreakers. The other is there, too, also dead. The walls start moving. 

What the fuck is this old guy because it’s not a lightweaver. He says that his people are watching the radiants--he’s made up of cremlings, yikes. And says that the Old Radiants named him an ally. 

“We watch the others. The assassin. The surgeon. The liar. The highprince. But not you. The others all ignore you...and that, I hazard to predict, is a mistake.” 

He also says “I pass for human almost as well as a Siah, these days.” 

Aimian. This is what a Dysian Aimian is! A human-shaped sentient colony of cremlings. Holy shit. His name is Arclo, and he calls himself one of the Sleepless. He also mentions Axies. 

HOLY SHIT. 

The Stump is the radiant! Lift didn’t heal Mik--she did! She launders money to get spheres that aren’t dun because she needs the stormlight! 

...and just earlier today, Lift had people write up a warrant for her arrest, putting her under Nale’s jurisdiction. 

FUCK. 

And also we get the confirmation that stormlight doesn’t heal people who were “born sick” which honestly is such a step up from Elantris’ autism-curing eugenics bullshit (I’m sorry, I’m calling it like I see it). 

So Lift runs into the Orphanage, starts letting off Light, and yells this: 

“Darkness! The one they call Nin, or Nale! Nakku, the Judge! I’m here!” 

[angelicxprowess-blog]

Heyyyyyy I kinda wanted to ask a personal question? I wanna write a character who has autism and I was wondering if you could help me? Like if you could just name some things that characterize autism to you personally that would be absolutely amazing tbh. If not that's totally cool I don't wanna pry sorry. Thanks!!

Dont worry!!! I like answering these

Okay well firstly, it does not have specific things to get a diagnoses. Me and both of my brothers are either diagnosed with ASD, or have it suspected, and while mine and the 9 year old’s is more similar, me and the 17 year old’s is completely different.

Most autistics I’ve seen prefer being called an autistic person than a person with autism but I think that's just down to preference. Autistic person is just more common.

There are many many different ways to stim. When I do it its usually cause Im happy, excited or stressed out (and sometimes I do it cause its fun). This can be either hand flapping, jumping, when Im sitting down kicking my legs in the air, hitting my leg, making noises (”ah, ah, ah”), stroking my hair and other stuff. Not a lot of people are understanding and a lot of comments are made, and sadly from what I’ve seen, a given so...

Echolalia! This is where you repeat words and phrases you hear. This can be from a song, the last thing you heard, or just anything you remember. Some autistics only communicate with echolalia, but I dont think that's very common.

Communication is hard. I struggle with working out if people are happy, sad ext just by looking at their face unless its at the extreme, and I cant pick up sarcasm when spoken very well unless I’m told its sarcasm (doesnt stop me from using it though). People can say what they think is an easy question, and I have to think about it step by step which can make it seriously confusing. For example; I know this sounds silly but I struggle with doing the washing and I ALWAYS miss steps, and I have broken down just because there was too much going on. Also sometimes, how I communicate can make things tricky for others. When I was much younger my voice was very flat and didn't have much emotion in it at all (I now make it over exaggerated) which got me into trouble a lot because people couldnt tell when I was joking, when I was being sarcastic or they thought I was always being rude. And my wording still makes things difficult sometimes for people to understand even though to me, what I’m saying is obvious. 

Sensory overload. I’m not sure if its an autism only thing but its common and is hell. This is where there is too much stimulation going on (texture, sound and all that), to the point where you just stop being able to process it all and everything goes to shit tbh. This can either cause stimming to be done while being exhausted, or a tantrum (its not funny: dont act like it is), or the complete stopping of as much sensory stuff as you can. I do a tantrum and stim at the same time which is kinda embarrassing for me.. During this I usually scratch at myself, punch myself, keep crying and screaming, (headbutt walls which hurts), bite at myself and other stuff. I have a pill to calm me down (not for autism: I have really bad anxiety that stops me from being able to leave the house a lot) which mum suggested I try using during it but it doesn't do much...

SI’s! Special Interests. Mine is Kuro which is kinda.. really obvious... This basically means that your interest in it is huge to the point where it could almost be like an obsession.. Most things I’m a fan of reminds me of Kuro is some way. Its pretty much all I draw and write about, and talk about. Also! It doesnt have to be a TV series or game thing; it can be anything. About science, songs, books, history ext ext! The stereotype is trains so.. If you’re gonna make it that please be careful cause it gets :/ They can last either a really long time, or a week. Depends on the person. Kuro has been my SI since I was 13 (5 years), but I’ve had some that only lasted a month.

Eye contact can be evil. Its either “Am I looking too much?” or “I cant look them in the eye am I being rude???”. We dont really understand the balance there...

It can make learning really really difficult if done in a way that doesnt fit you. If you just speak: I'm not gonna remember anything. And if you go too fast: Yeah still not gonna remember anything. This doesnt mean the person is not intelligent, it's just that our brain is wired differently and picks up information differently. If you leave me to learn on my own, I got named one of the top of my class. If it’s a teacher, I got told that I wasnt trying hard enough and was a waste of space (that teacher was an ass). 

Things need to be done in a certain way and if something disrupts this its Bad. I have a very specific routine in the morning and if somebody interrupts it I will not get up and will scream. If I’m reading something, I will talk to you when I want to talk to you and if you interrupt, I wont be able to continue the book from where I was and will have to start it over and will be PISSED. When cleaning everything is done in a very specific order and if you’re still in the room, I just wont do it. If we’re missing something I need, I wont do it. (I haven't cleaned my room in ages cause we dont have the hoover rn). This doesnt mean you are organised btw!! Just things gotta be done in a certain way.

One of the things I do is refer to myself in third person a lot. I’m not really sure why this is, but its like 

Friend: Are you tired..?

Me: Lizzie’s tired... She needs sleep

I know a few other autistic people who do this, so I’m pretty sure its because of that! I think some people do do it just to join it but xD But I don't think its very common so :/ Not many people use it in books or tv unless a character is playing so ;u;

Since some people think this and its... really wrong. Age regression isn't a symptom of autism. You can be autistic and regress, but it’s not a symptom. Also while its true for me and my 9 year old brother, you don't inherently act younger than your actual age, though that can be a symptom (When I was a lot younger (5-7) I had to go to a special class because of this although we didnt know what caused it then). Though since a lot of people see it has inherent, I would avoid that.

If the character acts like Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bang Theory, change them as soon as you can. (Biggest walking offensive stereotype) Ngl my favourite character that is confirmed autistic is Christian Wolff from The Accountant, although there is some stereotypes (Math being the SI, complete stoicness, also there are signs that the therapy he went to is ABA which freaked me out and him doing this thing to CAUSE an overload (Flashing Lights, way too loud metal music and scraping a metal bar up and down his leg) its pretty good!!! (Also guns and explosions)

Autism speaks is shit. Do not support that crap. They do more harm than good and act like its a disease, which its not. You cant cure it, its just how your brain is wired and there is nothing you can do about it so *shrug*. ABA is bad too and traumatises its patients (that's where they train you to act allistic (non-autistic). You’re either born with it, or you don't have it (Doesnt mean you can only be diagnosed young. You can be diagnosed at any point in life, although its easier when you’re younger. Mine keeps being put off from being finished (even though I’ve been told I am) because to the world, I’m a feminine girl and we apparently cant be autistic which is bullshit, and because I was nearly 18 (we’re gonna finish it soon).

I think this should be enough... If you need anymore please feel free to ask xD 

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How do I write an autistic villain without demonizing autism by accident? ;-;

I’m not really sure why you’re messaging this to me. I’m really sorry but I’m not an expert on like.. political stuff about autism stereotyping, just because I’m autistic. And it depends on which country you live in, I know that america has a far more visible sort of cultural presence for stereotypes, due to the whole Autism $peaks controversies. I dont live in america and I’m not super smart or anything, so yeah this is a disclaimer that this is just my opinion and you should probably research answers given by other people too. And maybe ask people about the specific circumstances of what you’re writing, like the context of the setting of the story and what the villain is like, etc. I’d be happy to chat to you about that if you need help! (but again, im no expert, lol)

ANYWAY!

My opinion on the subject is that having an autistic villain is perfectly fine, as long as you’re not villainizing autism. Like...* Don’t make the autism the reason theyre a villain.* Don’t make people scared of them because of the autism, rather than because they’re a villain.* Don’t treat their autistic traits as scary or inherantly villainous.* Don’t make anyone insult them for their autism and act like its justified because they’re evil.

And similarly its bad form to do any of that stuff in regard to any sort of minority really. An example that always bugged me is how Excellus from Fire Emblem Awakening is scary and evil because he’s a murderous monster, yet everyone in the game constantly insults him for the fact he acts ambiguously gay/transgender/effeminate. Like, there’s way too many jokes about people finding him ‘disgusting’ because of some random thing he can’t change, like a sexuality, race or mental illness which plenty of non-evil people have too! It also lessens his impact as a villain because the characters barely even address the actual villainous things he does, and he doesnt seem to have any motive at all. They just ride on the whole ‘the audience will find him gross’ thing as a crutch and forgot to bother writing a good villain.

Oh, and your concerns are indeed valid, yo! Sometimes it is important to think about the context you created a character in, even if you didnt intentionally create any negative messages within your writing.It’s just that the case where a character will be seen as villainizing [minority trait] for being a villain... that’s kind of only in a very specific circumstance? its just that this specific circumstance is very very common in mass media nowadays.It’s ‘The Smurfette Principle’.If you only have one character of a minority in your cast, its easy for an uninformed audience to pick up messages that you’re saying ALL members of that minority are the same as them.If you only have one autistic character and he’s the villain, then you might accidentally be villainizing him. In a world where autistic characters being villainized for their autism is already very common, people could just assume you made them autistic for the same reason all those other writers did- because they think it’s ‘scary’. It feeds the stereotype even if you didn’t conciously intend it that way.

So a very very easy way to fix this problem is just to add multiple characters of a minority into your story, filling various roles from villain to hero to helpful npc. or anything you can think of!

Another good quick fix is to have your villain be autistic, but portray their autistic traits as sympathetic/relateable/a humanizing aspect of them. Not just portraying it as something neutral that doesnt make them scary, but going out of your way to add some scenes showing how they’re just like anybody else. Or even making it one of their redeeming traits!It doesn’t have to outright be something like ‘yo being autistic makes me inherantly good and childlike’, which is a stereotype all to itself, lol. But you could show them experiencing predjudice from another character, in a way that makes the audience sympathise. Honestly having a character attack them for being autistic instead of being a villain would be a good way to do this, as long as that character is actually shown as being wrong for what they’re doing. Or simply showing the villain having common autistic traits, facing common problems, doing common everyday things... that can be enough to portray autism positively. Have them shown doing this stuff outside of the situation of them being villainous. It makes them feel more human and less of an abstract symbol of evil. And because these small glimpses of normality are lightening the mood, they become seen as a positive aspect!

KIND OF AN OFFTOPIC TANGEANT SORRYJust my personal experience as an autistic kid experiencing this story... I personally headcanoned Cyrus from pokemon as autistic. Not because he’s ‘scary and emotionless’, but because his backstory was relateable to me as an autistic person. It’s said that his parents were emotionally abusive, and that he had nobody to turn to because everyone thought he was ‘a creepy kid’. And he was able to find solace by obsessing over repairing machines in his bedroom, and apparantly has trouble understanding people because they can’t be fixed as easily. Stuff like maths and science are kind of a stereotypical Special Interest for autistic children to be given in fiction, I guess because it makes you seem more intelligent when you obsess about that instead of video games, norse mythology, or collecting tiny novelty spoons from around the world XD (Yeah i was a weird kid.)So yeah sorry I went a little offtopic there, but the point is that it might have been by accident instead of intention but that villain has a lot of traits that read as autistic. And when i first played Diamond and Pearl I actually disliked him a lot because of that, I felt like they were villainizing someone who seemed relateable and potentially redeemable. I mean, he seemed pretty depressed too! Give that man some therapy! But when I played Platinum and got to learn his backstory I started to feel like the writers actually did want us to feel sympathetic to him, because of how all those ‘scary’ traits were presented so sympathetically. Like.. the backstory isn’t that he became evil because he was an autistic kid who did creepy things like obsess about machinery and suck at social contact. No, he became a villain because he was abused by his parents, him being ‘weird’ is just intended to make it clear here that he didnt deserve it. It makes him pitiable, it makes him relateable, it makes you feel so much more frustrated that nobody listened to him and saved him from that hell, and nobody even seems to remember him fondly, just because he was ‘weird’. And hell, even his ‘emotion is evil’ philosophy seems very relateable to me as an autistic child. It seems like he learned to seclude himself to avoid angering his parents. That’s the impression I got from his final scene in Platinum, where he finally acts angry at you for beating him, then gets angry at himself for expressing emotion and forces himself to go back to how he usually talks. I get a bit pissed off whenever I see fans of the series claim he actually IS emotionless, lol! This scene made it clear to me that this is just a guy who WISHES he was emotionless, somehow seeing it as the only way to be free of pain. Someone who struggles to deal with his own emotions, or feels like he’s disgusting when he expresses them. And this is VERY relateable specifically to an autistic kid who suffered from an abusive parent! “Quiet Hands” is a kind of common concept that autistic kids might experience, that’s the name for a popular ‘parenting technique’ that really fucks people up. Focusing on making your kid never ‘act autistic’, rather than actually helping them understand things. ‘Quiet Hands’ is specifically about slapping or smacking your kid whenever they show stimming behaviour. (Hand flapping being a common way this symptom can manifest.) We’re taught never to be too loud, and to always always have to restrain ourselves to avoid embarassing our parents. We have to try and learn how to act like ‘normal people’ and become scared of harmless parts of our own brain just because theyre ‘embarassing’, leading to even worse emotional problems as an adult. i mean seriously how is it logical to tell a kid who has troubles with social interaction that they shouldnt even practise it?? Plus its a huge mess to teach these kids to do way more emotional labour than neurotypical kids are expected to do, and then treat them like they’re below average intelligence for not being able to do twice as much as everyone else...

ANYWAY! That’s a thinG! Sorry I went rambling off there about how a particular fictional character touched my heart, lol!I just kinda wish he could be canonically autistic, or if I had similar canonically autistic characters to relate to, instead. So i think having more autistic villains can’t be bad, we’re so badly in need of more autistic characters in general! And villains have a unique perspective of being able to hit our emotions the hardest. I think its easier to cry over someone who has a sad backstory of how they became evil, compared to anything else!So yeah what I was trying to say before I went offtopic is that if the backstory is ‘became evil because autism’, then people will complain. But if the backstory is ‘became evil because someone mistreated them because autism’ then that’s a good way to make people sympathise with autism. Aaaaand I’m bad at explaining this, because autism XD Well, i mean, my personal symptoms and lack of diagnosis til I was an adult means that I’m still working on learning how to communicate correctly, I don’t mean every autistic person writes terrible tl;dr advice posts that degrade into pokemon XDOh man i feel embarassed now, you asked me such a polite question and I didnt know how to answer it very well...I just hope maybe I inspired you to go out and do more research, rather than putting you off with my nonsense!

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Random Reads #1

All hail the debut of a new recurring column of sorts, collecting reasonably short reviews of disparate books.

A Banquet of Consequences by Elizabeth George While A Banquet of Consequences is not the best Lynley and Havers mystery I have read, it’s still great heaping loads better than the last one (Just One Evil Act). In fact, in my review of the latter, I wrote “I wanted a book with Havers triumphant. A Havers showing that, despite her problems with professionalism and authority, she really has something amazing to offer.” And that’s pretty much what we did get this time around.

When Claire Abbott, respected feminist author, is found dead in a hotel room while on a book tour, her death is first ruled a heart attack. After her persistent friend and editor insists on a second opinion, a more thorough toxicology screening reveals the presence of poison. Having met the author and her truly odious personal assistant (and chief suspect), Caroline Goldacre, Havers begs Lynley to pull strings for her so that she can investigate, which doesn’t go over very well with Superintendent Ardery. Happily, Havers does do a competent job, though this doesn’t go very far in improving Ardery’s opinion of her.

Mystery-wise, there were elements that I guessed, but I did still enjoy the element of ambiguity that remained at the end. Too, I liked that in the next volume, the Italian detective from Just One Evil Act (probably the best thing about that dreadful book) is going to be visiting England. He was quite sweet on Havers, as I recall! My one real complaint is that Lynley had hardly anything to do, except intercede on Havers’ behalf, contemplate his relationship with Deidre, and look after an admittedly adorable dog.

Still, it’s good to have my faith in this series somewhat restored!

The End of Everything by Megan Abbott Lizzie Hood and Evie Verver are thirteen years old and have been BFFs and next-door neighbors for as long as they can remember. Lately, though, Lizzie has begun to realize that Evie is no longer the open book she once was. (“I know her so well that I know when I no longer know everything.”) When Evie goes missing, Lizzie does all that she can to help bring her home, while being forced to acknowledge that maybe there had always been a darkness hidden within her dearest friend that she had never noticed.

In addition to the mystery of what’s happened to Evie, this book deals a lot with Lizzie’s burgeoning sexual feelings. Though she has some contact with boys near her age, she’s really smitten with Evie’s gregarious father. She longs to be close to him, to provide clues that give him hope, to take his mind off what’s happening. She exults in her ability to affect him. In the process, she somewhat usurps the place that his eldest daughter, Dusty, has filled. What I actually liked best about the book is that Abbott leaves it up to the reader to decide—is Mr. Verver’s relationship with these girls crossing a line? Perhaps his intentions are utterly pure (and, indeed, it seems like he might be crushed to hear someone thought otherwise), but there are some things he does and says that just seem so inappropriate.

Ultimately, I liked this book quite a lot (though I feel I should warn others that some parts are disturbing). Abbott offers several intriguing parallels between relationships to consider, and I think it’s a story I will ruminate over for a long time to come.

The Ex by Alafair Burke Twenty years ago, Olivia Randall sabotaged her relationship with her fiancé, Jack Harris. Now he’s the chief suspect in a triple homicide and Olivia, a defense attorney, is hired by his teenage daughter to represent him. Initially, Olivia has absolute faith in Jack’s innocence (and feels like she owes him because of how she treated him) but mounting evidence eventually makes her doubt whether she ever really knew him at all.

In synopsis form, The Ex sounds pretty interesting, but the reality is something different. Olivia herself is not particularly likeable. Setting aside how she treated Jack in the past, in the present she drinks too much and is having a casual relationship with a married man. I think we’re supposed to come away believing that this whole experience enables her to grow past some parental issues inhibiting her ability to find real love, but it’s glossed over in just about the most cursory way imaginable. And because the narration is in the first person, other characters who might have been interesting—namely a couple of other employees of the defense firm helping with the case—are exceedingly undeveloped.

The mystery plot itself is average. The final twist wasn’t something I predicted from the outset, but once a certain piece of evidence was revealed, it turned out to be very similar to another mystery I’d just read so it was a bit of a slow slog to the inevitable conclusion. The writing is also repetitive, with the significance of various clues being reiterated over and over. One genuinely unique aspect of the book is that because Olivia is a defense attorney and not law enforcement, she wasn’t overly concerned with actually solving the case, so much as finding plausible alternate suspects to establish reasonable doubt. Perhaps that is why some things the culprit did were left unexplained and some evidence unaccounted for, though it could have just been sloppy writing.

I don’t think I shall be reading anything else by this author.

Girl in the Dark by Marion Pauw Set in The Netherlands, Girl in the Dark is told in alternating first-person chapters between Ray, a man with autism who has spent eight years in jail for the murders of his neighbor and her daughter, and Iris, a lawyer and single mother who discovers by chance that Ray is the elder brother she never knew she had. She is convinced of his innocence, despite evidence that he is capable of destructive rage, and begins investigating the case and pursuing an appeal, while trying to get her icy mother to talk about her past.

Although the book is advertised as a thriller, most of the time I was more infuriated than thrilled. Leaving aside the question of Ray’s guilt or innocence, the way he was/is treated by others—including Rosita, the opportunistic neighbor who used and then rejected him, as well as one of the employees of the institution he’s been transferred to, who seemingly frames Ray for smuggling drugs into the facility (there’s no resolution to this minor plot point)—generates a great deal of empathy. In particular, there is an especially cruel scene near the end of the book that made me literally exclaim, “Jesus Christ!” Although he occasionally exhibits frustrated fury, Ray is also shown to be sweet and thoughtful, at one time a skilled baker (thriving in an environment that prioritized both routine and precision) and obsessed with the welfare of his tropical fish (currently in his mother’s care).

I didn’t come away with as vivid a sense of Iris as I did Ray. The scenes involving her job and clients were, in a way, mental palate cleansers from the stress of Ray’s situation, largely bland and unmemorable. When she finally gets her hands on Ray’s case files, her end of the story improves, but there are aspects of the final resolution that are kind of ridiculous. That said, I thought the ultimate ending was satisfying and I doubt I’ll forget the book any time soon.

Mr. Kiss and Tell by Rob Thomas and Jennifer Graham Mr. Kiss and Tell came out in January 2015. I had pre-ordered it the previous May, but when it arrived I just couldn’t get into it, despite a few attempts. A couple of months later, iZombie debuted. It had all the hallmarks of a Rob Thomas show and, lo, I love it. So much so, in fact, that I started to feel like I’d be okay without further adventures in Veronica’s world. Mr. Kiss and Tell spent the next two years occupying various spots in my living room. Then, finally, I read it. And I remembered how deeply I love these characters and now I am totally sad that there aren’t any more books beyond this one. Yet.

I was somewhat disappointed that the first Veronica book, The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line, did not follow up on the movie storyline about police corruption ion Neptune. Happily, that plotline gets some attention in this book. Weevil is acquitted of the charges against him, but his reputation and business has taken a hit, so he agrees to a civil suit against the county. Keith works to find others who’ll testify about evidence-planting, and meanwhile a candidate enters the race against Lamb, who’d been running for reelection unopposed. There’s some closure on this by the end of the book, but still plenty of room for more going forward.

Veronica, meanwhile, is hired by the Neptune Grand to investigate a rape that took place in their hotel. The case has quite a few twists and turns, although it surprised me some by not twisting as much as I expected. (So is that, therefore, a twist?) By far, however, the best parts of the book are the conversations between the characters. Veronica and Logan, Veronica and Keith, Veronica and Weevil… I could vividly imagine each being performed by the cast, which is almost as good as not having to imagine. I especially liked that things still aren’t 100% perfect in Veronica’s world, and Logan is only home for a few months before the accidental death of one of his friends means that his shipmates are a man down. Veronica struggles to understand why he feels so strongly that he must return early, leading to my favorite scene, in which Logan reveals what his life was like in the years she was gone, and how he ended up in Officer Candidate School. It’s a bit implausible that they hadn’t had this conversation before, but it’s riveting nonetheless.

In fact, my only quibble is a bit of timeline fluffery near the beginning. On the whole, this was immensely satisfying and I will continue to hope for more books in the future. After all, never giving up hope has worked out for Veronica Mars fans in the past!

The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie This was a reread for me, but one I hadn’t yet reviewed, since I read it shortly before creating this blog. (I did review Christie’s second and third books before getting sidetracked. This time I shall persevere and read them all!)

A soldier named Hastings, invalided home from the front, runs into John Cavendish, an acquaintance who invites him to recuperate at Styles Court, where Hastings had often visited as a boy. It is Hastings who narrates the story of what happens there. In brief, instead of John inheriting Styles Court upon the death of his father, the property was bequeathed to his stepmother, Emily, upon whom he is presently dependent for funds. When Emily is poisoned, suspicion initially turns to her strange (and substantially younger) new husband, Alfred Inglethorp, and then ultimately onto John himself. The cast of suspects is rounded out by siblings, spouses, friends, and servants. Hastings suggests bringing his old friend Hercule Poirot in to investigate.

I did remember “whodunit,” along with the explanation for one perplexing aspect of the case, but otherwise, most of this felt new to me. In fact, I think I enjoyed it even more than the first time. Oh, I still find Hastings annoying, but Christie’s depiction of Poirot’s appearance and mannerisms struck me as especially vivid this time around, and I was left with a more distinct impression of him than I’d held previously. (I had somehow acquired a mental picture of Poirot that had him looking like Alfred Hitchcock!) Although some of the clues are a bit convoluted and/or improbable, the overall solution is satisfying and makes sense. What’s more, my enthusiasm for tackling the rest of Christie’s oeuvre has been rekindled!

The Outpost by Mike Resnick In an effort to broaden my horizons and read more science fiction, I went looking for books that might appeal to fans of Firefly. In the course of that search, I came across The Outpost. The notion of a bunch of space-faring outlaw types gathering at a bar on the edge of the galaxy, swapping stories, then banding together to fight off some aliens sounded appealing. Don’t be fooled like I was.

While it is indeed true that a bunch of space-facing outlaw types do gather to swap their stories, these recitations are actually highly embellished tall tales, and they seem to go on for an interminable amount of time. Finally, during a brief middle section of the book, the bar’s patrons go off and fight some aliens, and getting a glimpse of reality, including several pointless and unheroic deaths, was the best part of the novel. All too soon, they’re back at the Outpost, telling their war adventures with varying degrees of embellishment. It’s at this point that several very boring arguments on the ethics of “improving” history ensue.

It’s true that sometimes, I did smile or laugh at something, but on the whole this book just riled me up. None of the characters has any depth whatsoever, and several are positively odious. Many of the stories told by the guys involve busty and lusty women, and it’s fine if the characters themselves are sexist (to be fair, one of the female characters does call them out on this eventually), but most of the female characters created by Resnick are also vampy vixens whose stories are sex-oriented and bodily proportions repeatedly emphasized.

I listened to the unabridged audio version read by Bob Dunsworth, and I cannot recommend it. He frequently misreads and mispronounces words, so that at one point someone is wearing “flowering” robes instead of “flowing” ones, “defenestrating” loses a syllable, “etiquette” gets a “kw” sound, et cetera. Making it through the book was a tremendous slog, and more than once I cursed my completist nature.

These Vicious Masks by Tarun Shanker and Kelly Zekas I can’t for the life of me remember how I heard about this book. I immediately put in a materials request with my library, but when it arrived I didn’t remember it at all. It does have hallmarks of something that would appeal to me, though: a setting of England in 1882, superpowers, romance, one of the authors mentioning Buffy in the dedication… It boded well.

I found it a bit disappointing at first, however, despite an independent and snarky heroine (Evelyn Wyndham, and is that a Buffy/Angel reference?) and dialogue that made me snicker right from the start. It just seemed so like “Pride and Prejudice with superpowers” that I began to wonder who was meant to be who. (“That charming fellow Mr. Kent, set up as a romantic rival to surly and brooding Sebastian Braddock, must be the Wickham surrogate!”) Too, the constant bickering between Evelyn and Sebastian, as they work together to rescue her sister the healer from a scientist who wants to experiment on her, did grate after a while.

However, in the end the book surprised me. Not just by deviating from the Pride and Prejudice mold or by imbuing people with unsuspected powers, but by taking the plot in a direction that absolutely made sense and which I absolutely did not see coming. A sequel (These Ruthless Deeds) has just been released and verily, I shall read it.

By: Michelle Smith