#the Real author is at his best when he's not preoccupied with his new POV character being a woman

[captain-lonagan]

book im reading was a decent mid tier whodunnit set in the 60's. had an old man detective with an accent and everything. the detective is about to give his monologue revealing everything. i turn the page to see it. the book has fucking ended. theres something from the editor saying that they did not receive the final chapter of the book, and apparently, the author died last night. the book has now completely switched to the editor as they try to solve the mystery of the author's death and find the missing chapter (using clues from the manuscript of the author's manuscript)

when they did the switch and i realized that we were fully going over to Editor POV i got fucking vertigo dude. i was so confused amd thought it was legit at first and then i realized the dead author and the author on the front of the book had similar but different names and Lost My Shit

[darkstarofchaos]

Romanticizing Abuse is Gross.

Did you know that romanticized abuse sells so well, publishers actually encourage people to write it? I didn’t, but apparently that’s a thing, so y’all are getting another rant from me. Enjoy.

I don’t really even know where to begin with this, so let’s just start with, why is this a thing? Why are people so drawn to abuse narratives? Do they enjoy the possessiveness? Are they fascinated by the power imbalance? Is the fantasy of being the sole focus of another’s attentions just so alluring that they can’t help themselves? Do they believe this is what normal relationships look like?

Oh, but I’m overreacting, aren’t I? After all, everyone knows it’s not real. They’re just stories. It’s not like humans have been using stories to teach lessons since the dawn of time or anything. No one in the history of ever has seen someone on TV or in a book and wanted to be just like them, or modeled their behavior after fictional characters. And we certainly don’t put important life lessons in a story format so kids can understand them better.

News flash! We don’t just stop learning from stories when we hit a certain age. The narratives we are given to consume establish our baseline for “normal”, and if our experiences don’t fit those narratives, we feel like there’s something wrong with us, when in fact, the problem may be our situation.

And so it is with abuse. We see abuse tossed into a blender with “but it’s okay because they’re in love” then pureed into an unappetizing slop, and we drink it down without question because “this is what love looks like”.

How about no? That is not what love looks like, and if it is, I don’t want it. Kill it with fire.

I mean, I get it, some people have warped perspectives just as a matter of course. E.L.James, author of 50 Shades of Grey, seriously believes she wrote a love story. And you know, I actually gave that book a shot; not to see if it was any good, but to see if it was as bad as I had heard. And it was freaking worse. The best part, for me, was the last few pages when Ana finally wised up and left her control freak stalker. That was great! Good on her. (Wait, what do you mean she goes back to him in the next book? What next book?)

Fun fact, after she finished the 50 Shades trilogy, James went back to tell it again from Christian Grey’s POV (because we all need to endure that dumpster fire a second time), and fans of the original books were upset because it made Grey look like a control freak stalker. Gee, I WONDER WHY? Last I checked, giving people bugged phones and dictating their lives to them and following them across the country and pushing them into BDSM relationships they never actually agreed to was romantic! Isn’t it just amazing what a shift in perspective can do?

Bear in mind, I use “BDSM” in a very loose sense. BDSM is a fully consensual exchange of power in a safe environment. BDSM involves trust, discussion of what all involved parties are and are not comfortable with, and respect for one another’s boundaries. BDSM is not some guy requiring you to sign a freaking non-disclosure agreement in order to have sex with him, then getting upset when you don’t want to follow the rules he laid down without your input. Get it? Got it? Good.

Look, romanticizing abuse has its place in fiction. That stalker whose perspective you’re writing from certainly thinks his actions are justifiable because Love, and goodness knows far too many victims stay in abusive relationships because they’re convinced the person they’re with loves them - or would, if the victims themselves weren’t somehow flawed. And thus we have what is probably the single most disturbing, harmful aspect of this fucked up paradigm: “but he truly does love her!”

So let me get this straight. Creeping into people’s rooms at night - without permission! - and watching them sleep is romantic because...? Feel free to fill in the blank, because I’m a little preoccupied with thoughts of being robbed, raped or murdered. You know, those things that normal people are concerned about when they wake up with uninvited guests in their homes? Or how about possessive jealousy? Where’s the romance in that? I can understand the desire to feel safe and wanted, but there’s a difference between someone who steps in when they see that you’re uncomfortable with a situation and someone who takes offense to the very idea of you interacting with members of the opposite sex (or with anyone at all if they’re really controlling).

Oh! And how about that dependency? S/he can’t live without the other person, so it must be Love! Y’all remember that bit in the second Twilight installment? You know, Edward leaves and Bella spends something like four months doing absolutely nothing because her heart is broken and she has nothing left to live for? Yeah, that is not how healthy relationships work. If you’re giving up on life because someone you only knew for, like, a month broke up with you, you aren’t emotionally mature enough for romance and proooobably need therapy.

And while we’re talking Twilight, I’ve seen Edward referred to as a “gentleman” by fans. Are we looking at the same dictionary? Because he is no gentleman. Let me just break this down for you. Walking your date to their front door = gentleman. Looming over you when you’re trying to talk to male friends = possessive jerk. Holding a door for others = polite behavior. Telling people what to do = controlling behavior. Watching your lover sleep in your arms = romantic. Sneaking into someone else’s house to watch them sleep = you guessed it! Not. Romantic. Simple.

So does all of this mean that love and abuse can’t coexist? I would argue no, simply because people are complicated and many abusive acts such as spanking, forcing others to eat, and trying to control aspects of others’ lives are done with good intentions. But I also think that, if a well-meaning abuser comes to understand that their actions do more harm than good, they should be willing to change those behaviors. Additionally, the author has a responsibility to portray the abuse as such, regardless of the abuser’s intentions. Hitting someone, in any way for any reason, is still hitting them, and the behavior of the victim should reflect the harm it causes no matter whose perspective a story is told from.

And now I’m tired, so I’m just going to leave this here. G’night, world.

[newmayhem]

Character Analysis: Alexander Weatere (Part 3)

As always, I’ll keep using original names if I’m talking specifically about the original iteration and in quotations and stuff, but I’ll be referring to everyone by their new names in all other situations.

Alejandro in the present

For this last part, I wanted to do a breakdown/analysis of Alejandro’s scene with Roksana at the end of the book. Of the very few scenes of him we get, this is the only one to take place in modern day and I can imagine someone reading it for the first time and being taken aback by it. There’s undeniably a lot of judgement, unrealistically high expectations, and overall hypocrisy on his end, and it’s so different from what Roksana had been telling the readers of his character all along:

I was hoping I could convince you not to follow those creatures ... but I guess it's too late, isn't it?" …

He turns around, and for a moment I look into golden eyes that are mirror reflections of my own. But then he looks past me, at the area where Aubrey and I fought. I see Alexander's gaze linger on the blood that pooled on the ground when I cut open Aubrey's shoulder. "Why?" he finally asks, his voice soft. "There had to be some other way to deal with this." I look into Alexander's eyes again and see the judgment there. It does not matter that I am his sister. He does think I am a monster. I laugh, and Alexander flinches, because it is a bitter sound. "Would you rather I just let Aubrey get away with it?" I say. "I thought he killed you, you know. Did you want me to just forget that? Or did you think I could turn the other cheek and ignore murder?" Alexander looks away for a moment, pain filling his features as he hears my scornful use of words from the Bible, which he always held so dear when we were children. "I thought you would hate me for what I had done," he says. "And just what have you done?" He pauses, shaking his head, and then reluctantly meets my gaze. "After Lynette was burnt, I would have done anything to protect her. I prayed that I would learn how to control my power, and ..." He takes a deep breath, steadying himself. "A woman heard me praying. A Triste. She taught me more than I ever wanted to know about the vampires and every other monster on this Earth. I listened because she also taught me how to use my gifts." From a curse to a gift, I think. Does he still consider himself damned? "A few nights before Ather ... changed you ... I caught her trying to feed off Lynette. I stopped her, but ..."

…

Alexander pulls his gaze from mine, and this time it falls to Aubrey's blood on my hands. "Rachel, how could you do that? I never thought I'd see you with blood on you, willing to kill another. You walk with them as if you are one of them."

This raises some questions for me, mainly - How could Alejandro have possibly believed that Roksana survived literal centuries if not by drinking blood?

I wouldn’t put it past him to hold out hope that she had been surviving on animal blood or that she was feeding on humans without killing them (hopefully volunteers?). But could it also be that maybe a part of him was secretly hoping that she had starved herself to death and preserved her ‘innocence’ rather than survived by drinking human blood? It would align well with what we already know of his character. And idk if I actually want to go there, but it could be a metaphor for  issues of female sexuality/virginity and sexual assault in that I see a lot of parallels between this mentality and how there are so many female saints who were martyred because they chose death over losing their virginity (and this would work pretty well since I’m re-setting the story in a more Catholic culture).

That said, upon closer inspection, I can gather that Alejandro’s definition of turning to the dark side specifically involves seeking revenge, fighting, and causing bloodshed. 

That last bit, though, the bloodshed, actually makes a lot of sense in how it illuminates his hypocrisy.

Alejandro, as a triste, also feeds on the life force of other living beings (mainly humans) in order to sustain his immortality. The only real difference between the feeding necessities of a triste and those of a vampire is that with vampires, there’s blood involved- it’s visceral, it’s messy, you can see it, you can smell it, there’s no denying the destructive force of it.

This tells me that Alejandro seems to be, at least on a subconscious level, more preoccupied with keeping up the appearance of being ‘good’ regardless of whether or not there’s any truth or depth to it. This is also evidenced in Alejandro not being willing to empathize with Roksana’s experience when she tries to explain to him her very valid motivations behind her seemingly reprehensible actions.

As a side note, to circle back to Alejandro’s definition of turning to the dark side, another possibility this brings up is that maybe Alejandro somehow found out Roksana was headed back to Puebla, he sensed that she might be going back to initiate a revenge plot, and his mission was specifically to keep her from doing that. I will expand on this in a separate post that’s specifically about Roksana (and Alejandro’s) motives for returning.

Going back to what I had mentioned earlier, the contrast between who Alejandro was (or rather, who Roksana remembered him to be) and what he became is very stark.

As devout and morally rigid as Alejandro was as a human, you can still see that he was a good guy who genuinely cared about people (in fact, most of his moraly rigidity was directed at himself). However, when we meet him again in the final scene, he’s seemingly lost all sense of empathy. We even see in Persistence of Memory that he’s taken to shaming people (sometimes people he doesn’t even know that well) and picking fights about religion.

So how did it get to that point?

Well, Alejandro’s training was very intense. Pandora is notorious for training most of her students literally to death and we know that Alejandro was kind of...soft, for lack of a better term, so there’s no doubt that his training, on top of everything else he’s had to endure, traumatized him.

Based on how I’d imagined his human life/outlook to be (in part 1), it makes sense that he’d deal with this hardship the same way he dealt with growing up in a racist society - by doubling down on his belief in whatever the current authority deemed good and right (Pandora in this situation) and working hard towards the standard that’s been prescribed to him.

I noted that Alejandro referred to his powers now as a ‘gift’ whereas before, he considered them a curse. Roksana even calls this out.

Alejandro didn’t intend to, but ultimately, he gave up so much in order to become a triste. Because of this, he really needed to believe that he made the right choice, that none of the hardships and losses he suffered were for nothing, that he is indisputably on the side of good, and that his powers are a good thing. Anything less than that would be considered a waste.

Something else to consider regarding, in particular, Alejandro’s judgement of Roksana, as well as the stark difference between Alejandro now and then - perhaps both Alejandro and Roksana had kept each other perpetually frozen in time in their respective memories and therefore, had stopped seeing each other as actual human beings with complex morals and motivations.

For Alejandro, he and Roksana were forcibly separated before their personal differences had a chance to really manifest into any sort of direct confrontation, so in his mind, she’s still his beloved twin, his other half, someone who was undeniably on his side.

As for Roksana, her last image of Alejandro was of him trying to protect her. It didn’t matter that their relationship had already started to fracture. In light of Alejandro’s murder, everything else just seems petty. It’s no wonder that he’d forever after be not just idealized, but practically sanctified in her mind. This idealization of Alejandro (and the guilt over his death and her frustration with him in the time preceding his death) could also explain why Roksana (who, admittedly wasn’t as devout as her brother was) became so much more morally resistant to becoming a vampire. I will go into this in a separate post. 

And because this story is all from Roksana’s (unreliable) point of view, we have no choice but to take this idealized picture of Alejandro as truth until the present reality shows Roksana otherwise.

This raises another question that I will also go into separately- in the rewrite, should I stick with the original first person pov? If not, what are the best ways to adapt it? Should there be multiple different first person povs?

[christiwind]

Abraham’s Daughter - Chapter 5

Sousuke’s POV

The briefing is about to start. I know I should be more focused on the task at hand, but my mind keeps going back to Kaname.

Kaname.

My life changed so much since I was assigned to guard her. I find it still difficult to be a normal teenager, and more often than not screw things up. I know that. I am trying, though. And she helps me.

But the feelings I have for her are so new, exciting and frightening at the same time. I want to keep her safe, I want to protect her, I want to see her smile and laugh, and I want to be part of her life. I know I’m not worthy of her. How could I be? I’m a mercenary. A killer.

She opened up a softer side in me, though. A side I didn’t even know existed. A side I want to explore further. It was because of her I got a taste of what normal means. What living in peace could look like. But to keep that peace I need to find those who hunt her and want to exploit her.

I promised her I would call her once I reach the submarine, but it’s past two a.m. in Tokyo and she is probably asleep. And she should be. Tomorrow is the Kanji test. She needs her rest. But I texted her telling her I arrived safely.

“Attention,” Lt. Com. Kalinin says as he steps into the front of the briefing room. We all stand up and salute as the Captain enters. If I wouldn’t know what Tessa is capable of, I would find her mere presence among us ridiculous. But she is a brilliant strategist and a kind human being who is the epitome of all the good Mithril stands for. I am glad I have met her, too.

“Please, sit down everyone,” she says in a grave voice.

We all do as instructed and watch as the Lt. Com. prepares the screen, while typing on the connected laptop. Immediately, a message appears on the wide screen.

To: Teletha Testarossa. Tuatha de Danann submarine, Mithril

Subject: Allegiance proposal

Ms. Testarossa, for a while now I had the pleasure to watch you operate your high-tech submarine, Tuatha de Danann. I am very impressed by it. Don’t worry, I do not wish to take it away from you. I have no need for it in my world.

I wanted to seize this opportunity to applaud your hard work and dedication to keep the world safe. Also, I want to congratulate your fantastic team, both the AS pilots and the entire submarine personnel.

In the attachment to this email you will find a thorough investigative report on several Mithril members who are at least suspicious. Of course, I am kind in saying so. I am no fool. Mithril hires mercenaries and only part of the people there, value honesty, justice and peace above all else.

Believe it or not, Ms. Testarossa, I am your ally. If I wanted to hurt you, I would’ve. But as it so happens I want to protect the very same people you want to keep safe. You will most likely show this email to your most trusted staff members, and I even recommend it. I am, as far as you know, a faceless entity who wants to deceive you.

But as a token of my honesty, I will attach a file which will allow you to investigate certain members and find out if they are honest or not. These very members will meet in two weeks-time to negotiate a special contract with your sworn enemy, Amalgam. Details about the meeting place and the people involved are in the attachment, as mentioned.

Your window of opportunity will be open just for a short while. After it closes you might never get the chance again.

It is up to you.

Whether or not you decide to accept my help, I will continue to monitor both Mithril and Amalgam and if necessary take the ones down who want to destroy our planet.

Sincerely,

Abraham’s Daughter

“What the hell?” I hear Kurz right next to me.

“Confused?” Tessa asks. “I was so too. I received this email about two weeks ago. Several things happened since then,” she says and most of us nod. “While we were preoccupied with the Hong Kong incident I had our best analysts research this matter. Abraham’s Daughter is one of the world’s best hackers. We do not know the identity of the hacker, nor if it is a he or a she.”

“Is this hacker an enemy?” Mao asks.

“We don’t know. I contacted my superiors to discuss this and by mentioning a few names I was led to believe that Abraham’s Daughter might be onto something. This is what this mission is all about. I will leave it to Lt. Com. Kalinin to explain to you the parameters of your mission. But whether or not this information is accurate, we can’t rule out this hacker as a possible enemy,” Tessa tells us and allows Kalinin to lay out the plan and assign jobs for this mission.

The Lt. Com. thoroughly explains what each of us has to do, who the targets are, what to look for, what to expect, and where everything will go down.

According to the information provided by Abraham’s Daughter, the meeting will take place in Cairo. Mithril doesn’t have an alliance agreement with the Egyptian government, so we need to lay low. Only Arbalest will be authorized on this mission. The rest of the Urzu team will go undercover.

The three Mithril agents who allegedly will switch sides are Mark Woodsworth, based in Sydney, Australia and part of the Research Division, Arash Bahadur from the Intelligence Division, and Francesco Giuliani from communications. Looking over their profiles, all of them have extended knowledge about several operations and new tech. They aren’t key players within the organization, but have enough clearance to gather intel on Mithril and its agents. Having these three switch sides would be beneficial for the enemy and make us vulnerable to attacks.

“Any questions?” Kalinin asks, and when no one raises their hand he dismisses us.

Mao, Kurz and I decide to eat a late-night snack. This new information and prospect of several moles ruined my sleep. We enter the spacious cafeteria and sit down at a table. Kalinin soon joins us, as well as Tessa and Clouseau. They sit opposite of us, and I wonder if they have anything else to tell us. I’m sure everything relevant was said during the briefing.

“Who do you think this hacker is?” Mao asks.

“I don’t know. But Abraham’s Daughter is one of the best there is. She was able to hack the U.S. government leaving no trace, and it seems she hacked us, although our computer specialists can’t find a breach,” Tessa says hanging her head.

“She?” Clouseau asks. “I thought the gender of the hacker is unknown.”

“We decided to call the hacker a she, because of the nickname,” Tessa explains. Makes sense. It is already confusing to talk about this person.

“If she didn’t leave any trace, how do we know that she hacked the U.S. government? Or us for that matter?” Kurz asks a valid question.

“She called the White House to tell them they’ve been compromised,” Kalinin states.

“What?” Kurz and I ask at the same time.

“Girl’s got balls,” Mao says with a smirk.

“It’s not funny, Melissa,” Tessa chastises.

“I know it’s not. But still. Why did she even call them?”

“According to our contact in the White House, Abraham’s Daughter called to alert the President himself of the breach,” Kalinin starts explaining. “She laid out how rudimentary his cyber-security is and how easy it was to breach. She then requested that the best computer scientist available to the President should trace her steps to concur what she was saying. As it turns out, she entered their system undetected by their security and breached every firewall implemented to keep hackers out.”

“What happened then?” Clouseau asks, just as curious as I am.

“As you can guess, it was impossible for the U.S. government to vet her, since she never showed herself. But as a token of her honesty and will to help them, she provided them with massive intel on a terrorist cell right there in Washington D.C.,” Kalinin continues. “Obviously, they are still reluctant to trust a hacker who so easily breached their security, but recognized that she wasn’t their enemy. For the time being.”

“It’s kind of what she is doing right now,” Kurz summarizes.

“Yes,” Tessa agrees. “But we still need to corroborate her claims. This is why it’s imperative that this mission runs smoothly.”

We remain in the cafeteria for a while longer, each of us speculating what the real goal of this hacker is. Why hasn’t she come forth before? Why now? Why give us so little to work on?

I wish I was back in Tokyo. I wish I was with Kaname.