#the idea of fiction is getting to see the world from another perspective.

[existencebringsonlypain]

I may have posted about this before, but I don't understand the whole proshipper/anti debate. As far as I understand, I'm on the side of proshippers (i think fiction is fiction and doesn't have to reflect reality. because it's fiction.), but what I don't get is why there's such a clear defined binary, and why there's such animosity between the two. It's just a difference in opinion, like any other, isn't it? I understand that either group can "take it too far" (though i dont really get how proshippers could be TOO okay with problematic ships). but i really think either viewpoint is fine to a degree, they both have logic behind them, and it's just a matter of preference, isn't it?

[amerricanartwork]

What's up with 12th Council Pillar, the House of Braids?

Just wanted to share something interesting I noticed in Metropolis while looking at the room names on the interactive map! I doubt I'm not the first person to discover or take interest in this, but nonetheless now that I'm into the worldbuilding for this game, both canon and headcanon, I hope to at least encourage a discussion about what the rooms I found could possibly be for!

*Oh and by the way, spoilers for Artificer campaign, just in case.

Alright, so I was originally looking for how to get to a specific room for an Artificer expedition, but decided to browse around on the map just to refresh my memory on the region overall. Right off the bat I think it's interesting how this region's rooms are denoted mostly with lexical names rather than the more common "Capital letter + 2-digit number" formula. But scrolling to the right is where my interest really got piqued when I saw this name for the room right before that long corridor on the way to the 12th Council Pillar, the House of Braids, labeled "LC_templegate":

And the next room after that, "LC_templeentrance" confirmed my realization that this was a temple of sorts:

Now don't get me wrong, Rain World has always had a fair amount of religious associations, and even just the name "12th Council Pillar, the House of Braids" gave me the impression from the first time traversing it that it was once some high-esteemed, holy location of sorts. But I guess that never really sank in and captured my greater interest until now.

Part of that's because earlier I was focused more on just completing the campaigns from a basic playthrough perspective, not yet as big on uncovering every little lore detail, and another reason I didn't really take it in was that, at the time of my first Artificer playthrough, I wasn't as big on headcanon worldbuilding and trying to uncover/imagine Ancient culture and society outside of very general ideas. But now I think about it, another major part of this lack of realization was because of how the main rooms of this subregion that stuck out in my mind were the low-gravity iterator-esque zones. Many of which are explicitly labeled with "LAB", like this one, and they even have the same neurons, inspectors, and/or those gravity-distorting spheres:

I mean, that cube at the bottom even very strongly resembles an iterator puppet chamber!

But then the questions become: what are these rooms for, why are they so similar to the interior of the iterator they sit atop, and why put them in what seems like it was supposed to be a temple? And by extent, is this something unique to Five Pebbles, or do other iterators have similar temple-labs somewhere in their cities?

I guess the reason these parts stuck out to me more than the actual temple association was because 1.) we don't see this low-gravity mechanic and these features anywhere else in the game besides inside the iterators, so it already gets points for uniqueness, and 2.) they're such a great contrast to everything else within Metropolis; even the "temple" rooms still look very similar to the rest of the region in their general aesthetic.

Seriously, what's up with all this "lab" stuff? It's not that I haven't seen these things before at this point, but why are they here, in a temple, of all places?

However, I do really like this idea so far, as I believe it speaks to a theme of Rain World I really enjoy: the seamless blend of science and spirituality. I enjoy seeing fictional worlds where "magical" things are not only objectively real, but have a scientific in-universe explanation, and/or are employed to create magical technology, yet in a way where these two ideas can exist in harmony rather than seeming like opposites. And the Ancients seem to have been very big on that, not only having a very strong cultural sense of spirituality but also being very technologically advanced, and incorporating those spiritual ideas and even elements of the world into their tech (ex: mass rarefaction tech derived from Void Fluid, an objectively real and "magical" substance with direct connections to their religious beliefs).

I have yet to come up with an explanation for what these iterator-esque lab rooms are (and on that note why they so strongly resemble iterator interiors, to the point they even contain their neurons and inspectors, which are supposed to directly aid in their functions). But as of now, just going mostly of basic gut instincts, my current theories are: A.) they exist in the temple so that whatever scientific endeavors carried out within were blessed with a sense of "holiness" in a similar manner to the holy ash Pebbles talks about, and B.) whatever tasks they were used for was one entrusted to the clergy class of this city, probably because the tasks were seen as something very important and connected to the Ancients' spiritual beliefs.

However, as I said I'm hoping to invite discussion with this post. Figuring out the Ancients' design philosophies and intentions for their creations has been a passion of mine when it comes to my headcanons, so I really do want to see if I can find a more concrete, or at least reasonable answer as to what the overall purpose of the 12th Council Pillar, the House of Braids was. Therefore if anyone has any extra details or theories as to what it was, I'd love to hear them!

And if you made it to the end, thanks for listening to my little spur-of-the-moment ramble!

[utilitycaster]

Hi! Because I genuinely do love your take on things and every time I read through them, a new perspective that I had never even considered before makes itself known to me. So, I wanted to ask! Since Twitter (unsurprisingly) already got its hands on this discussion:

What are your feelings on the Mighty Nein being the ones to handle the Weave Mind over Bells Hells? Because for me, I always sort of knew that BH were going to be the ones to defeat Ludinus no matter what. It’s what they’ve been building up for.

However, some people say the M9 aren’t deserving of handling the Weave Mind because that was an antagonist made specifically for the Bells Hells. So, I was interested in seeing your thoughts about this (strange) discussion.

Hi anon, thanks!

I think it's great to have the Nein go after the Weave Mind, and I think, like most takes from the Twitter CR fandom, this is fucking stupid.

Given that Matt is the DM, and he's like "hey, I'm going to have a Trusted NPC call in the Mighty Nein to deal with the Weave Mind" I think the argument that the Weave Mind was made specifically for Bells Hells is not, in fact, true. The Weave Mind is an antagonist who was introduced with Bells Hells' campaign, rather like how Ludinus Da'leth is an antagonist who was introduced with the Mighty Nein's campaign and who has been the nemesis of Beau and Caleb in particular, and yet Bells Hells will be going after him in this scenario (and, to be clear, I think this is fine; I've expected Bells Hells to face off against Ludinus in the end).

I would be interested in understanding if the motivation here is "I wish the Nein were going after Ludinus and Bells Hells were going after the Weave Mind" which I think is far less interesting given that Ludinus has been such a consistent enemy of Bells Hells as well but at least I can puzzle out a not terribly intelligent but consistent sort of logic in it; or if this is a "I wish the past two parties weren't involved in this campaign at all" argument in which case, far too late for that; or if this is someone who specifically doesn't like the Mighty Nein throwing yet another tiresome and embarrassing temper tantrum on Twitter. But my opinion doesn't change; I think it's far more satisfying to see Bells Hells take on Ludinus than the Weave Mind, whom half of them haven't even met.

More generally, the idea of "doesn't deserve to fight the Weave Mind" is stupid on another level. I understand why people talk about which actual play character they wish to get the final blow on a particular enemy, even though dice will ultimately decide this. When it lines up - Vax with Thordak, Yasha with Obann - it's immensely satisfying. But you do not need to be the most wronged person to make meaning of a How Do You Want To Do This (FCG and Otohan being an obvious case here). Technically, the Volition deserves to fight the Weave Mind more! Half of Bells Hells hasn't even encountered the Weave Mind in any capacity! Braius and Dorian haven't been to the moon! Sometimes, you're fighting because it's part of, for example, a three-pronged plan that needs three separate simultaneous strike forces. Bells Hells can't do all three at once despite having claims to each of the targets unless they split up. Would you rather the parties split up in a mix of each? Because I'm not opposed per se but that could get pretty confusing all around. And if we're going to step out of the Watsonian argument that in-world, they can't do all three at once, see my next paragraph to address the Doylist "but Matt didn't need to set it up this way" one.

I am on the record as loathing the whole "it's their table and you can't criticize it because it's their game" bullshit. You can do so. You can do so even if there are very good reasons for their choices. You're always entitled to your own opinion and as long as you're not harassing people, it is morally neutral to say "this piece of fiction/art/whatever didn't do it for me," end of sentence. With that said. It's fine if people wish Campaign 3, like Campaigns 1 and 2, were more exclusively focused on one party's adventures rather than the all-hands-on-deck story that it is. But it is that story, and pretending this wasn't the result of a number of intentional choices by Matt and the cast and various collaborators is profoundly stupid at this point. I had my complaints as well, early on, but the time to get over this was episode 1, when Orym and Fearne and Dorian and Bertrand showed up with their ties to EXU and C1. Or it was episode 6, when Laudna revealed her connection to Delilah. Or episode 35, when that connection to Keyleth was leveraged. Or episode 50, when Beau and Caleb appeared; or Episode 51, when multiple past PCs were present at the solstice; or Episode 66, when we further met with Keyleth; or Episode 86, when Sending came back on and both Caleb and Jester spoke to the party; or Episode 92, when we cut back to the Crown Keepers; or Episode 94, when Essek showed up; or Episode 99, when Downfall began. If you're still holding on hope now in the endgame, I think it's too late. That's not the campaign this is, and it never was, and you can wish that you had something more self-contained like Campaign 1 or 2 but with Bells Hells, but that's all it is - a wish, unfulfilled.

[salmonskinrolltf]

On Gay-To-Straight TF Stories

I’ve been seeing a lot of comments flying around regarding gay-to-straight transformations, so I thought I’d establish my personal code of ethics and perspective on this type of story, just so anybody reading my work is on the same page.

I am a proud gay man and in no way wish to be straight. Gay conversion is torture and it does not work, full stop.

However, my perspective is that erotic TF fiction exists in the realm of fantasy, where every aspect of the story is depicted in a controlled environment that cannot physically harm the reader or the writer, allowing for a safe exploration of different expressions of sexuality. This is why rape fantasies can be popular in erotic fiction, even with readers for whom sexual assault is a major source of fear and worry. The tacit consent involved in choosing to read a story containing those elements goes a long way in establishing a healthy and safe approach to the material.

For me, where my interest in gay-to-straight stories comes from is the idea of opposites. I love sending my characters from one end of the spectrum to another. Preppy to jock, twink to daddy, city boy to redneck, and so on. It’s also fun to play with the way stereotypical masculinity does or doesn’t coincide with sexuality.

Gay to straight and straight to gay are both huge turn-ons for me as far as sending a character to the other end of a spectrum. This is not because heterosexuality is any better than homosexuality, or vice versa. It’s just because, for me, the core of transformation is completely uprooting the physical and mental identity of a character. In the same vein, I personally also like corrupting the mindset of a character when I can, stripping away the moral and ethical framework through which they view the world. However, I have made an effort to avoid including triggering hate speech that would take a reader out of the fantasy by getting too real.

You may have noticed that I take the same slightly softened approach with the sexuality of my straight characters. While turning gay characters straight is a good time, I don’t actually have any interest in cis men having sex with cis women. Thus, my straight characters essentially operate more as asexual douchebags than genuine straight people. This is not the case with some other G2S writers, and that is OK too! It’s all about us exercising our creativity in the name of TF and expressing our sexuality and writing abilities in unique and fun ways.

While physical safety is inherently guaranteed by fantasy erotica, emotional safety is just as important, and the needs of each reader vary widely from person to person. If reading G2S stories is triggering for you, I completely understand. I have always tried to tag my stories that are G2S, but I sometimes forget all the tags I’m using at any given time, so going forward, I am going to try and do better about marking any G2S stories at the top of the post in addition to the tags. I want to give people the chance to opt out of reading them, but I have no intention of stopping writing them, and I hope this piece effectively explains my reasoning. 

For those who continue on the ride with these particular stories (which are just one subsection of everything I write), I have plenty of masculinity and sexuality fuckery coming your way.

[sapphicthunderhead]

TMAGP 21 Spoilers Ahead!

Right out the gate we get yet more confirmation that Sam is trying his best to do the right thing, but that his curiosity is a substantially greater motivating factor behind his actions than either his self-preservation instincts (which may be nonexistent) or his moral principles. This is positively fascinating characterization.

Also, this episode really uses setting to help establish tone in a much subtler manner than a lot of podcasts, which require the characters describe to the setting verbally (Penumbra, Sherlock & Co., Malevolent). Of course, I don’t think it’s quite on the level of setting-through-sound-design that The Silt Verses pulls off, but environmental storytelling isn’t as necessary to the plot and world-building in TMAGP as it is in TSV, so that’s not necessarily a criticism.

Celia cracks me up with her talk of “complicated immigration status.” Every scene featuring Celia is heavy on Dramatic Irony from the perspective of we who Know (have listened to TMA) and bring an element of mystery to the plot for any and all audience members, be they in the Know or not— just a little bit less for the former. Reminds me of the early days of TMA in the way. Jonny does a great job of introducing a mystery element seamlessly into all his horror fiction, and I think the two complement one another perfectly. For another example of this, see his book 13 Storeys (it is spelled that way deliberately). I highly recommend the audiobook on Audible.

(Did anyone else subconsciously assume Jack was some sort of sinister Fear receptacle before this episode? Celia seems genuinely emotionally attached to him, so I’m a little less concerned now.)

On to the statement itself: FUCKING MAGNIFICENT. I am positively infatuated with this one. So much suspense! So much information, such a beautiful bit of storytelling, and yet NO ANSWERS! I am dying for an explanation here, in the best way possible— because I also found myself perfectly content to just enjoy the events unfolding while I was listening.

I really felt that the authorial tone and style Jonny used for this character, Mr. Kennings, harkened back to one of the major inspirations for TMA: the ghost stories of M.R. James, one of my favorite horror authors (alongside Shirley Jackson). I first read his collected works after Jonny mentioned him in a Q&A, and I was hooked; I have since re-read his work a couple of times.

But it wasn’t just the style of this episode I enjoyed. The substance was also very satisfying. I find the idea of the scholars and administrators of the Institute bickering like petty children whilst using their most formal jargon, attempting to conceal their contempt for one another behind a flimsy facade of civility, incredibly amusing. I also found Kennings’ jabs at the British monarchy and his concern about soil toxicity and its effect on the laborers and foremen at the construction site allowed me to follow his perspective somewhat sympathetically— although I was horrified when he did nothing to assist the poor man whose decrepit old doppelgänger emerged from the earthen wall of the ditch to drag him underground. But I should have expected it. Kennings worked for the Magnus Institute, after all.

As an aside, this tragic event could have a couple of possible symbolic meanings. The description of the haggard elderly counterpart of the younger construction worker, who drags himself out of a wall of dirt that Mr. Kennings specifies exhibits “tell-tale indications of heavy metals in the earthen edges of it,” evokes the idea of a young man confronting what his life looks like if he continues to sacrifice his health and safety to this dangerous line of work. It could also be the reverse: the old man killing a younger version of himself who made poor choices (because he had so few choices or none at all, because he had to support himself or a family, who knows?) that would otherwise have killed him slowly and perhaps agonizingly, the toxic gas seeping out of the soil and into his lungs and blood. By the end of the statement, I was surprised that the writers had titled the statement “Breaking Ground” instead of “Poisoned” or something along those lines.

Alice trying to protect Sam from the scary little men in the computer was very amusing. Silly Alice, he serves the plot now! There’s nothing you can do to stop him, my dear! Mwahahahaha!

Lena Kelley being worried about Gwen wasn’t entirely unexpected, but does further emphasize the contrast between her and Jonah-Elias. Still unclear whether Lena is a cog in the Fear machine or is actually doing anything to protect humanity, but she clearly thinks she’s doing the latter. Can’t wait for her disillusionment arc, epiphany, and/or moment of self-awareness.

Then we have Gwen, Ink5oul, and…. What the fuck is that. What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck? That can’t be Jon. Another Archivist? Gertrude? Doesn’t sound like it. Who? What? Definitely an extension of the Eye, but the voice is unfamiliar.

Returning to the subject of Kennings’ statement: this series continues to emphasize that there are no clear delineations between Fears. Doppelgänger? Stranger. Dirt? Buried. Pollution? Extinction. All of the above? It’s just fear. That’s all that matters.

[pacific-rimbaud]

i was reading your thoughts on how fans felt about l&oha and while i concur it is a perfect piece of work in my head and have reread it 5x, i wonder if you think fans tend to be harsher/more critical of hermione and let draco slide? i see it a lot in fics where he's more of an alphahole type

Oh, man. Okay. The can is open, the worms are loose. Rant under the cut.

I'm actually going to set men aside entirely. Just. To the side with you. I desperately need more realistically complicated men, too, but that's a whole separate discussion. Right now: women.

There must be whole dissertations out there on the phenomenon of readers hating female characters with negative traits. I'm a fandom old, so I didn't grow up identifying with Hermione, and wouldn't have even if I'd been young enough to. I did that "which character are you" test just now and my top three matches were Janis Ian from Mean Girls, Jughead from Riverdale and April from Parks and Rec, which, massive grain of salt, etc. BUT gives you an idea. I am not a Hermione and never was, so she's never been a comfort character or self-insert for me. Some of my favorite fictional women are Sophie Hatter (mean, irrational, petty, old and mostly loving it), Harrowhark Nonagesimus (evil stick), Phryne Fisher (zero fucks to give). What I like about Hermione is how imperfect she is. I'm a "cleverest witch of your age I've ever met" truther (book!Lupin is absolutely saying "you're the canniest 14 year-old child I have personally met, saying this as a guy who doesn't get out much," not "you are a once-in-a-century genius"), and from my perspective, she's often wrong and often a dick, and not in a fun and fiesty burn-down-the-world BAMF way. Which. Good for her! Be human.

And that's the thing. I personally don't want Hermione to be perfect, I want her to be what I think she is, textually, which is intelligent, hardworking, loyal, competitive, compassionate, controlling, belittling, rude, petty, insecure, vindictive, volatile. She has the right to be that way, because she's human. The desire for perfected women (or unapologetically and unstoppably awful ones, another brand of female power fantasy) is not limited to Dramione fandom. I think it's amplified in DHr by many readers who DO identify as former gifted children, books-as-coping-mechanism kids and Strong Female Personalities who felt marginalized in childhood and want to see Hermione have it all: she's slim, she's tiny, she's fragile as a bird, she'll break your neck, she'll step on your throat, she'll tear down the system, she'll heal all wounds, she does not need help, she holds all the knowledge, she holds all the cards, she is forever wronged, she can do no wrong, her vagina is tight, her nipples are hard, her hair is on point, her waist is tiny, her tits are bouncing, her ass is in the style of Now. And like. This isn't at all unique to DHr and Hermione. It's pervasive in fiction written by and for women. Female power fantasies are obviously feeding a massive hunger. It's just not what I personally want. Personally, I find it alienating and uncomfortable, which I know equates to, "That is wrong and shouldn't exist" to a lot of people, but that's its own tale as old as time.

There's a disconnect that happens too often where a reader wants one (1) thing from their fiction, and receives something else, even when the contents are clearly labeled on the tin. In this case, wanting a female power fantasy and encountering a woman who's written with flaws makes people upset. And maybe if we could be more honest with ourselves about what we're looking for when we read, work to accept that not everyone wants the same experience, and learn to close a book when it's not working for us and say, "No shade, this isn't for me," it would be less upsetting when we encounter a character who isn't written to meet our personal expectations. I will open a book, realize the FMC is a female power fantasy archetype and close it, because that's not what I show up for. I like my women gritty and weird and foolish and vulnerable and liable to hurt people and feel terrible about it. Give me all the exhausting chatterers and evil sticks and jocks with swords and their hearts on their sleeves (their hearts ripped out), give me shy Anne Elliot and her suitcase full of regrets and the ugly fuckup who never has a glow up, give me dirtbag stoners and Fleabag and Alicent Hightower apologetics and every role Natasha Lyon has ever played. It's not a moral high ground, it's about a preference for seeing actual, demeritus flaws on the page and on the screen. Blame that woman. It's her fault. She has so many faults. Then show me how to forgive her so I can figure out how to forgive myself.

The thing is, I love women. I love women so fucking much. I want to be around them, to get to know them, to read about them, to watch them on TV and see them in films. And personally, I like them ugly. Physically. Spiritually. Morally. Give a woman a Bad Personality and watch her succeed in the most self-injurious way possible, fuck you. Give her a gaping chest wound and line it with teeth. Stick a piece of grit in that girl's tightly sealed shell so that a pearl is her only option. Make her love other women, make her fuck it up, make her have to earn them back.

Thankfully I do feel like we're getting more ugly women in fiction, especially BIPOC, queer and marginalized women who deserve gross, weird, nasty representation and not just didactic moralism, patronization and misguided sainthood. Some readers won't want that, and that's fine. Again, personally (it's all so personal, please, please remember that when you hit that comment button), I'm here for it. If you write about women like this, know that you have a thirsty reader here. I'm swallowing them up. I'm smacking my lips. I'm smashing my mug on the cafeteria floor and calling for another.

[dr0wnmyselfinwhiskey]

No one asked for this, but I need to get it out of my system, so here are my thoughts on Rite Here Rite Now (mostly in regard to the lore and what I noticed during the movie, as far as I can remember). This turned out way too long, you’ve been warned.

Seestor must have known for quite a while that she’s gonna die, and prepared for Copia to take over her position

Maybe she invited Mr. Psaltarian to overlook the orderly transition and keep an eye on C when she’s gone. That might also explain his grumpy attitude towards him, I bet playing nanny to a 50+ year old autistic man isn't exactly Psalty's idea of a dream job

Would also make sense if the additional coffin in “Tax Season” was meant for her

Speaking of “Tax Season”, where Copia plays ‘Driving Miss Daisy’. Could that be another hint that Psaltarian is supposed to be the calm and wise character guiding the now ‘widowed’ Copia? Interesting parallel

Another thing about Psaltarian (now that we know his name is written like that): most of the Psalms stem from King David, who, among a lot of other things, is considered the patron of the Meistersinger (master singers) and in the Dies Irae announces the approach of the Final Judgement 👀

Anyway, Sister’s illness was kept hidden from Copia, or maybe he knew but deliberately ignored the signs, and I loved how this was solved visually by having Sister sitting in a baroque chair in all shots from Copia's perspective, but in the counter shots from her perspective you can see the back and the backrest of the wheelchair 💔

During the father-son-conversation between Nihil and Copia (I didn’t cry, you cried), Nihil tells him how he always wanted to entertain people, and he can even do that after he died and then says something like "Do you think I imagined it like this?". Perhaps this indicates that Nihil, now that he's reunited with Sister in the afterlife, is ending his stage career for good and Miasma will be retired from the set list? I hope not, but to me, it sounded a bit like that. Overall, the movie felt to me like a farewell to many characters, especially Sister and Nihil, whose story is concluded by the scooby-doo-esque part during MOAC

Would also fit the overarching theme of the film: letting go, not clinging too much to the ephemeral, coming to terms with the fact that everything in this world is subject to change (a beautiful message, tbh, I totally wasn’t crying about that 🥺)

Speaking of change, I guess by now everyone and their aunt got the hint that Copia is apparently a fucking twin?!?

With this new information, can we just talk about how cruel Copia's naming is? It literally means "copy"? Hello?? Seestor, wtaf?!

Anyway, going by the visuals provided, I’m leaning towards fraternal twins (one blonde, one dark-haired) and there are a lot of theories about who the twin could be

I’m not a fan of the Defroque theory, because I just don’t see how he would be the frontman of the band, as he has an assigned actor with his own face and voice. But on the other hand, I was certain he would play a bigger part in the Ghovie, since he was featured in the JHKM Video and in the teaser-thing they did for Download. But he wasn’t even mentioned?

I love the Terzo theory, although I don’t think that one very likely, given TFs reluctance to repeat things. BUT, I always thought Terzo and Copia looked quite alike, and they are around the same age. And we’re talking about a fictional satanic cult here, there would certainly be ways to bring him back from the dead, so why not?

However, I think this twin storyline is the perfect opportunity to introduce a completely new character, like they did with Copia back in the day. Imagine the door opening and a man standing there with Copia's old face. And Frater Imperator is like ????? (But that might also be just my love and nostalgia for his old look speaking, OG Copia is my babygirl, I don’t think TF will pull that off, again because he doesn’t like to repeat things and C’s old mask was changed for a reason, so why go back?)

TF also said in an interview that he doesn’t want to just have Papa after Papa after Papa. What if the new guy is something else? A bishop? They also wear mitres. Or the whole shadow in the door thing is just TF trolling us again? Or the Romulus & Remus reference was meant literally and Copia and the new guy will try to kill each other? Damn, I’m so excited for whatever that silly swedish man has cooked up in that silly head of his! 🫶

Just one last thing I noticed because on my second viewing I paid close attention to the backstage set and all the trinkets and knick-knacks. Whenever Sister, Copia or Kevin looked at one of those control monitors or TVs, there were VHS boxes in frame. Most of them were titled after the chapters, I saw a “Meanwhile in Dublin” one, and “Tax Season”. But there was also one titled “Ghost in the Trees”. My research only brought up a song from the band “Thee Oh Sees” from 2008, but I couldn’t really make any connection to something Ghost related. Maybe it’s just a song that TF likes that has “Ghost” in the title?

Okay, I think that's it for now. Maybe I'll do an update when RHRN is available digitally, maybe not. This has already taken way too long for nobody to read it anyway.

[kienava]

So someone asked me to make a post about Blake’s development so far in order to discuss the question of where Blake’s character can progress at this point in RWBY given that her arc with Adam wrapped up in V6 and she didn’t really carry a plot line in V7-8. I do media and story things for a living, but I’m also an intimate partner abuse survivor - needless to say, Blake’s story is important to me. Hopefully my perspective helps answer concerns about Blake’s story being “over,” because I think it’s very much the opposite.

(Continued below the cut because this turned into an entire essay.)

I want to preface this by saying I understand why it might be difficult to picture what Blake’s story looks like going forward. I largely credit this to the relative dearth of compassionate, healing-oriented narratives about abuse survivors in media. A lot of what we see is either revenge fantasies or stories about facing the abuser and arriving at a point of ultimate catharsis. In some sense, this is a broader fault in the standards of western storytelling, which is oriented around that singular, climactic catharsis, but that’s another essay. In truth, a mostly linear progression towards a pivotal point of recovery isn’t how healing from abuse works. It’s a messy process, and life is rarely as linear as in fiction. I think RWBY incorporates that nonlinearity into Blake’s arc very well.

Speaking of Blake’s arc, let’s look at that.

When we first meet her in volume 1, she’s introduced as an aloof, independent loner who’s very resistant to getting closer to people. Most of her classmates perceive her as mysterious and alluring at best, callous and cold at worst. Once we start to understand more of her history, it’s easier to see her attitude as the defense mechanism it is. She wants to keep people at arm’s length because she doesn’t trust them not to hurt her – but she also believes that she will harm people she gets close to just because of who she is. That whole Beauty and the Beast dichotomy, you know? Adam told her that she ruins things. It doesn’t help that he groomed her into a terrorist organization and thus her surrounding community has also labeled her a threat. She’s got a few overlapping layers of distorted thinking to work through when it comes to her image of herself and others. The way she perceives people is, at first, overwhelmingly informed by her traumatic experiences with Adam and the White Fang.

It’s pretty strongly implied that Blake bent the rules in the forest and intentionally selected Yang as her partner. When we first see Blake dashing around in the shadows, Yang is taking down a Grimm while sassing it to death. Blake talks later about how Adam’s charisma drew her to him initially, so it’s no surprise that when she was choosing her next partner, she gravitated to the same superficial qualities. During the first White Fang arc, after her self-destructive spiral, Blake starts to genuinely trust her teammates for the first time. That trust is tested when Yang fights Mercury. In this moment, Blake is confronted with the possibility that a pattern might be repeating itself: what if she was drawn to Yang for reasons beyond the superficial? What if Yang doesn’t just share Adam’s positive qualities, but his negative ones, too? The impulsiveness, the violence, the abuse – but Blake stops herself. She chooses to trust that Yang isn’t Adam, and she says as much. She’s accepting that Adam is in her past and electing to move forward. How perfectly, neatly linear. 

Then the end of volume 3 happens.

For an abuse survivor, the idea that an abuser you’ve gotten away from might come crashing back into your life is possibly the scariest thing in the entire world. This is exactly what happens when Adam shows up, and Blake’s worst fears come true. He makes a point of hurting someone she cares about simply because he can to prove that he still has power over her. Blake runs because she thinks the only way she can protect the people she cares about is to be away from them. That paradoxical duality of (1) fearing harm will be done to her by others and (2) doing harm to others herself rears its head. 

One specific question I was asked is why Blake talks about Yang so little in volumes 4 and 5. If Blake isn’t talking about the people she left behind, is she even thinking about them? I say, well of course she is. It’s coloring her entire attitude.

When Blake returns to Menagerie, she’s back in the place where she met her abuser. She’s at her parents’ house, a place that has been a symbol of everything she left behind when she ran away the first time. Now she’s run from another home. Menagerie is riddled with traumatic memories for her, both interpersonally and on a structural, systemic level. Everywhere she goes could be a place where Adam said something awful to her, made her obey him in some way, asserted control. She also has to confront him in person again, too.

With Adam around, of course she’s not going to risk mentioning Yang. He got one inkling that Blake cared about someone else and cut their fucking arm off. The one time Blake mentions Yang by name, her voice cracks so obviously it’s like she’s forcing herself to get the word out. Through both of these volumes, Blake has other external goals, but she’s still trying to protect someone she cares about. At this point, she’s constantly struggling with two motivations: hope and fear. She wants to make the world a better place, but she’s terrified of what she’ll have to confront in order to do it because of what she’s already lost. Her choice to reunite with her team and fight shows that ultimately hope wins out.

In Volume 6, Blake and Yang facing Adam is essentially the B plot of the whole volume. He appears in flashes before the major confrontation at the end, but the damage he’s done to both of them is intrinsically tied into Blake and Yang’s relationship throughout.

The end of this volume offers the climactic moment of confronting and overcoming the abuser. Afterwards, Blake collapses and cries. Catharsis! Yay! We’re done now, right? This may be why, to some people, defeating Adam is the obvious “end” of Blake’s character arc. Again, I’d argue that this perception comes from how abuse is often depicted in media, but there’s also a very intense pressure in the real world for survivors not to speak out and share their stories. Even people who are abuse survivors might not publicly claim that label for a multitude of reasons. Namely, it fucking hurts to think about it, and also sometimes people are real weird about it. I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t want to carry that weight around all the time. We can see some inklings of Blake dealing with this challenge over the course of the show, though they’re subtle. Early on, she explicitly avoids talking about Adam until she absolutely has to, and even when she does start to unpack what he did, she often talks about it with visible shame (averting her eyes, etc). Unfortunately, shame is a very common sentiment for abuse survivors to carry, and addressing it is a major part of Blake’s journey as she starts to heal in volume 6.

Another point of interest posed was to look at Blake’s role in volumes 7 and 8. There’s an argument that she doesn’t really do anything or that her role is as a somewhat generic support figure within the group. I wholeheartedly disagree.

While Blake doesn’t carry a plotline herself during the Atlas arc, she and Yang embody polarized attitudes towards the global conflict the group is facing, and that contrast serves the larger narrative very well. Because she was raised by activists in a context where she was constantly thinking about civil rights, Blake wants to address the broader ideological conflict at play. Yang, whose childhood consisted of raising her younger sister, wants to help people in a practical, immediate way. Blake is an abstract, big-picture thinker, and Yang is more focused on what’s right in front of her. This isn’t a dig at either of them; it’s just a difference in prioritites. At first, Yang worries that these differing priorities will be a source of tension between them, but when she and Blake talk things through they’re able to understand each other without judgment. Blake is learning to reconnect with the idealist she used to be in her early youth, someone who fought for a cause purely because she wanted to make the world a better place. She’s able to embrace that side of herself around Yang even though they have different priorities, and they’re still able to support each other’s goals.

Furthermore, on a purely interpersonal level in V7-8, Blake has interactions with other characters that speak specifically to the healing journey she’s been on. Yes, these are significantly quieter moments than a fight to the death on a bridge over a waterfall, but that doesn’t mean they should be written off. Quiet and peace are part of healing, and that doesn’t have to undermine the story’s integrity. Dramatic tension is still possible amidst this, as we saw in Blake’s talks with Yang where they discuss their team’s split strategic approaches. When Blake talks to Nora about the importance of not losing yourself in someone else, that’s her speaking from experience. She’s lost herself in a relationship before, and she knows how hard it is to come back from that, but she survived. She healed. The asserted importance of self-compassion in relationships has a unique gravity coming from Blake. She has a strongly developed ability to balance interpersonal empathy with community- and global-level stakes, which we’re already seeing glimmers of at the beginning of V9 as she steps up to come up with a plan on the island. 

In summary, Blake’s arc isn’t just about that final showdown with Adam. She faces her abuser, runs away, faces him again, and again, finally evicts him from her life for good - and after that, her story continues.

She goes on to find ways to heal from her past. That process involves renewing compassion for her loved ones, her community, and the world as a whole; learning how to love without fear; and reconnecting with who she was before she was forced to become aloof and detached to protect herself. Although the circumstances of abuse convinced her that she was a coward, she is, and has always been, an incredibly brave character. She’s finally recognizing that at the current point in the story. Ultimately, I think this is the thing connects her to Yang and the rest of team RWBY so strongly: they’re brave enough to love and have hope even when forces of adversity tell them they shouldn’t dare to. Blake is a courageous idealist with a heart full of compassion, and ultimately not even Adam could destroy that about her.

My serious answer to the question of where Blake’s character will go now is that I think she’ll be a sort of de facto leader on the island as Ruby spirals into existential depression. Hopefully that arc resolves in a way that’s consistent with the show’s overall message about hope winning out, and past this volume Blake will still carry that optimistic but grounded revolutionary spirit and continue to be a center of compassion and hope.

My catharsis-oriented answer is this: aside from being trapped on a magical fairy tale island, Blake is free for the first time in a very long time, and she can go wherever the fuck she wants.  

[blackautmedia]

Tears of the Kingdom and the Orientalism of the Mummy - Dehydrated Ganon

Plenty have talked about the portrayal of Ganon and the problems with both him and the Gerudo as a whole. I haven't seen as much talk about dehydrated Ganon specifically and wanted to share some of what I'm aware of.

TotK in many ways can be read with the number of plot points it lifts from classic mummy films, which in turn means it also picked up all the racial history and tropes that come with that.

Dehydrated Ganon and Phantom Ganon are mummies. He's explicitly referred to as such several times in the game and the game's opening relies on a number of classic mummy movie tropes in its presentation as introducing a corpse-like Ganon.

Here's an excerpt from the The Mummy On Screen: Orientalism and Monstrosity in Horror Cinema.

Male archaeologists, heroic adventurers and female heroines are all drawn to enigmatic corpses and/or racial ‘Others’, being variously hypnotized, transformed, romanced, coerced and/or transported away from their humdrum lives, sometimes through time to re-experience an ancient past in which they once lived, sometimes through space to Egypt where the monster stalks or seduces them.

Helen in The Mummy (1932) is a woman who succumbs not only to the influence of the Mummy but also to the lure of Egypt itself and its ancient ways that still hold sway.

 If one accepts Wood’s thesis, one can see the Mummy film as having a formidable formula, with the Orient serving as an effective site and its chief monster functioning as a potent medium for the release of the suppressed.

The game is built on Zelda being zipped to the past and her experiences in an ancient, mystical world and seeing the founding of Hyrule while Link is integrated into the resources left behind.

After Link and Zelda were drawn in by the Mummy's call to investigate beneath Hyrule following the rise in illnesses from the gloom.

Zelda is whisked away to ancient Hyrule where she spends time with her very heavily Native coded (which would need an entirely separate post on the tropes associated with that and the way the game uses Anti-Native tropes) Zonai pals.

She's in a rush to return home, but this new space also ends up being a big learning environment for her. She's exposed to this ancient and alluring culture that fascinates her and provides many of the wants and needs she expressed in BoTW.

She's given the supportive parents she's needed--a supportive father figure who explicitly supports her utilizing study to achieve her goals and a loving mother to teach her how to use her powers. She even gets a cool engineering/history auntie who shares a lot in common with her.

All of these things are stolen from Zelda because of the evil mummy.

The game makes great effort to play into the exoticized idea associated with the Zonai, right down to infusing Link and Zelda in their culture with Zelda given a new outfit, home, and lifestyle, and Link gifted with Rauru's power.

The Zonai in TotK are characterized less by their beliefs or the perspective of Mineru or Rauru and more framed in relation to the resources they provide others--the secret stones, the Zonai devices, the exotic, mysterious, ancient powers and knowledge, the zonaite you mine, Rauru's arm, etc.

That leads into another issue with how Tears reinforces the idea of Native extinction in how the Zonai are more characterized for the resources everyone is extracting from them rather than their actual peoples' thoughts and feelings and how that form of erasure harms real Native people outside of the fiction.

There's also the aspect of how the land and resources of these Native people are almost destined to fall into the hands of largely white, "civilized" Hyrule leaders with every other group serving under Hyrule's order geographically and narratively while the Zonai are people we only interact with in memories or as spirits.

The Orient until the second half of the nineteenth century had largely proven a fruitful terrain for colonial conquest and achievement for the British, but from the Indian Mutiny of 1857 towards the end of the century various military setbacks began to point worryingly to a decline in British power…In the aftermath of such events, rather than being perceived as ‘passive’, with ‘no capacity for violence’ (Mercer and Julien 1988: 108), the inhabitants of the Orient became more forbidding, a change in perspective reflected in the literature of the period that simultaneously portrayed anxiety concerning Britain’s own newfound sense of vulnerability.

Richard Marsh’s The Beetle...depicted Egypt as every bit as capable as Transylvania of bringing a primitive threat to the civilized West.

As Marsh’s novel exemplifies, the legacy of the ancient Egyptians had transformed over the course of the nineteenth century from one that bestowed valuable knowledge into one that offered secrets best left unearthed, being increasingly tainted as the years unfolded through its association ‘with the mysterious and supernatural, the questionable and disreputable’.

Mummy films rely very heavily on presenting the "other" as an exotic and almost tempting place for the civilized white protagonists to find and change themselves.

They also acted as a way to depict non-white people to bypass several censorship restrictions in earlier decades, so you often see them framed as romance films with an emphasis on a commentary about that dangerous, tempting allure of the mummy being used as a commentary on interracial relationships and intermingling of the civilized and uncivilized with a white gaze in mind.

Many mummy films also would utilize racial coding to characterize the mummy as hostile, dangerous, tempting or seductive in relation to the white, civilized character, something done with several other movie monsters like Dracula, King Kong, etc.

No matter the Zelda game, the structure ends up being largely the same with Ganon in that Hyrule or wherever is shown to be peaceful until the "evil man of the desert" invaded and defiled their space with his wickedness and disrupting the order of the gods and the status quo.

Dehydrated Ganon specifically is another extension in linking Ganon and his wickedness and evil to his heritage and status as a SWANA-coded character, in a lot of using tropes associated with Black people, etc.

He's not just evil because he's a selfish overlord, he's an evil "other" Middle Easterner invading the pure and peaceful environment the game made the effort to set up, and his constant presence looms in the game in how his corpse-like mummy servant is busy carrying out his will.

The Mummy and Nubian were a particularly suitable pairing considering contemporaneous racial stereotyping...Elizabeth Young years later highlighted others, identifying the black ‘brute’ as a stereotype that ‘carried particular force’ in 1930s cinema as ‘a monstrous beast.

Cultural attitudes towards African Americans manifestly became intertwined with contemporary ones concerning those of North African Egyptian Mummies in this version of the play.

In addition to Zelda being taken to the ancient past, we have the element of Ganon stalking and scheming to his rise to power in how he defiles the sanctity of ancient Hyrule continuing in the pattern of referring to him as the "man of the desert," another means of codifying Ganon as inherently evil by way of his heritage. There's almost constant reference to his home, the desert and anything else associated with othering him.

Ganon has previously used religious iconography in how the Gerudo crest used to very closely resemble the symbol of Islam.

He also uses racial coding associated with antisemitism in how he's a green-skinned, hook nosed magic-wielder.

There's Anti-Black imagery in his muscularity and chains and how he devolves into a mindless, savage brute.

There's all the decades of sentiments toward SWANA people wrapped up in him and the mummy is a continuation of that in how dehydrated Ganon is presented as a stalking, corrupting presence who defiles the sanctity and draws the civilized white protagonists in with his tempting allure. Phantom Ganon is a looming threat who can arise out of nowhere.

I know dehydrated Ganon is the same dude as regular Ganon, but I do think there's an extra element to discuss in how Tears uses decades of old mummy horror and the racial coding that comes with that to further the idea that Ganon is an evil SWANA man who needs to be feared and eradicated.

[randomwriteronline]

Bionicle and Plato's Cave: Mata Nui help us Random has been thinking again

HI. MY BRAIN HAS ONCE AGAIN BEEN SCRAMBLED. WHY DOES THIS KEEP HAPPENING.

A thing about stories is that there aren't really fully, one-hundred percent original ones. This is not a bad thing, it just happens.

Stories keep repeating one another whether we like it or not, maintaining their own identities through a variety of changes, and Bionicle repeats many, many stories within itself: you've got Polynesian mythos, fantasy epics, dystopian fiction, cosmic horrors, torahic and/or biblical episodes, a subversion of Pinocchio, an Odissey cut short... The works. I'm half certain one would manage to fit some parts of the Divine Comedy in there, probably.

But speaking of deeply allegorical works, the Organic Annal is that too - specifically bearing a resemblance to one of Greek philosopher Plato's most famous allegorical myths, that of the cave.

For those who do not know it, please have a simplistic bastardized version of its first half, which is the most relevant in this case:

A group of men have been, since birth, shackled within the deepest recesses of a cave. They are sat facing a wall upon which a fire casts the shadows of figurines (a tree, a donkey, a vase, etc) placed before it: this is all they've ever known, what they perceive to be reality. Imagine, then, that one of these prisoners manages to free themself from their restraints, and for the first time looks back. Thus they discover the figurines, the fire, and the lie they thought was truth; and though it would be easy to consider these new idols the "true" reality, the prisoner looks past them and sees that the cave stretches forward. As such they crawl through it until they reach the outside world: the sunlight forces their eyes down as they are not used to it yet, and their first taste of this new environment is a reflection in a puddle, or maybe a lake, wobbly and not quite clear. Only when they've accustomed to the Sun they can raise their head and properly discover the real world.

The myth of the cave is an allegory for the philosopher's quest in search of true knowledge, which resides not in the imperfect physical world, but in the perfect metaphysical realm of ideas.

This is not, necessarily, the allegory I believe the Innard Scoresheet represents.

The Biological Chronicle is, to me, a story about stories. About making stories, about being swept in the flow of a story, about recreating ourselves in stories over and over and over again.

I promise it will probably make more sense later.

But back to the point: the myth and the Flesh Record follow a similar structure and have a similar message. That is the thesis of this post until I inevitably get derailed again. Let's look at that.

In applying the steps (shadow, copy, reflection, reality) of the philosopher's journey towards enlightenment to the Meat Diaries, I'll do what Plato would bludgeon my head with a stick for and take them much more literally: the places described are physical ones, and the characters actively move between them. This is not because of any personal wish to specifically spite some dead Athenian fuck, but because that is literally what happens in the Entrail Annotations, whether through actual movement or changes of perspective.

The island of Mata Nui is of course the first step: shadows cast upon a cave wall.

There is a certain irony in this. Mata Nui shares the same allegorical location as the cave, yet physically is its complete opposite - an open space signaling the end of an enormous interconnected system of caves. The journey starts from the end. Great job everybody, we've found reality! This philosophy shit is easy.

But the island is still very much the cave. It looks prettier and livelier than the cave, but it's still a prison in which the Matoran have been confined with no chance of escaping; it's still cut off from the world at large, be it beneath it ir around it; it's still a place where beings who do not know any better blindly believe what is told to them. Only seven people know the truth (or what they believe to be the truth) and spin it in tales of shadow puppets: simplistic retellings full of gaps to fill with magic and terror and prophecies. The Turaga mean no harm - they had no way to know when or if they would have ever returned to Metru Nui, and it made no sense reminding the Matoran of a place they may end up agonizing to see without being able to - but it remains that Mata Nui is a cave, a prison of ignorance.

Things change after Mask of Light: shackles broken and door opened, the silver sea stretches before the Matoran and offers them a sight familiar yet different, more defined.

Metru Nui is the figurine, the copy held in front of the fire. It's the first introduction to the Matoran Universe proper, the first step towards the cave's exit. Here we see how the Matoran are supposed to work, how this sort of society is meant to function, and it... well, it sort of sucks the joy out of it, doesn't it? The soft edges of the figurine's shadow have been replaced by hard protodermis sides that leave no room to the imagination, letting us see the craftmanship clearly. And it's... it's kind of unpleasant. Kind of dull and mean and so... unmagical. I'd like the shadows again please. Those were nicer.

(Plato describes this exact happenstance in the philosopher's journey - upon seeing something closer to the truth one might feel repelled and want to return to simpler times. But we persevere. We must.)

Or perhaps this step is not Metru Nui itself, but the Turaga's recollection of it. The city they knew is now gone, abandoned to itself and rotting miserably alone for a thousand years, and yet they still cling to that pristine image their minds have sculpted for it, forgetting details, crafting imperfect copies of its reality: their own stories place it in a time before time, turn it as they say in a "city of legends", of great minds and a great hero and a strange tension pervading it that they might not consciously recognize. This is their basis for the stories they told, and they believe it to be the truth. It is not. The truth is deeper behind them.

The Matoran Universe as a whole is a reflection in the water. We've gotten out of that cave, but it's still too bright and our eyes can't adapt quickly enough: this will have to do for now.

But what is it a reflection of? A body? That's a given, since the whole thing is housed inside one. Yet this body does not behave like a body, its organs don't act like organs. They are landmarks and settlements, and there are species and parties involved in their own more or less treacherous businesses, and death is everywhere and seldom spares anybody, and evil isn't a singular incomprehensible thing but many perfectly identical pieces, and everything is happening all the time and I would like a break. Please. I can't handle all of this. It's too close to how everything already is. Let's go back to the figurines. They were worse than the shadows, but not to this extent. Please. I just don't want to see the bad guys win. I just don't want to see my friends die.

(Upon seeing something closer to the truth one might feel repelled and want to return to simpler times. But we persevere. We must.)

The Matoran Universe is a terrible place, but it's still far away. The edges are wobbly when the surface shifts: the stakes are universal in size, the rivalries are exaggerated, the situations are fantastical, the evil so terrible and terribly simple. It does what it does because it simply does it, and after all why else should it do it? In its increasing complexity it's still simple and sometimes a bit silly. It's still dolls that you can hold in your hand to make fly around.

As @sepublic mentions briefly here, Bara Magna is by contrast just so human. Before the big bombastic Rock-Em-Sock-Em Jumbo Edition ending and peeling away the sci-fi elements, these are stories of people trying to live. This is reality.

People are sleazy. People have priorities that not always include the well-being of other being put first. People are evil for reasons beyond just "power" or "money" or "why not". Strakk is a massive selfish bastard and also he is the one motherfucker who gets me because to be very honest I too would not want to wade through a desert crawling with quicksand and huge bat winged serpents and raptor riding marauders and spartans so bloodthirsty they don't even name their children until they make a new body count record without being paid well enough. Mata Nui's idealized honor makes him a complete anomaly because nobody is a prince in shining armor here. They're all covered in bones and doing their best not to start a war again.

Even his quest, despite what it entails and how solemnly he presents it and the information we as readers have (his identity as a usurped god exiled from his own body), is surprisingly real - in fact, his struggle is actually the same as Kiina's: both of them are strangers to the region suddenly separated from their people during a time of great strife and desperately wanting to reunite with them. The difference being that while Kiina had no chance to do such a thing, Mata Nui was built to fix both of their problems.

This is what the Matoran Universe is made in the image of. And while it very much deviated across time, the core of it remained the same: elemental tribes and variegated species caught in a dance of death, biting each other's tails endlessly.

This is the world the MU beings find once fully free. It's rough, but they've been through something like this before.

They'll handle it.

They always have.

That is the will of the Non-Mineral Journal.

Of Bionicle, the story-that-ended.

BUT.

Not necessarily of Bionicle, the story-that-does-not-end.

Now we are getting into "Random Experiences Getting The Brain Scrubbed By The Hard Back Of A Sponge And Makes It The Problem Of Everybody Listening To The Inane Yelling" territory. I'm talking walking into headcanon if not straight up just fanfiction territory. Possibly also sensible speculation but I don't know how to tell. Please do come smack me if you feel it is needed.

It's wild that Bionicle has managed to endure for what now (2024) are 23 years. The endless rebuildable possibilities intrinsic to being a LEGO product have certainly helped, but at the same time I really do feel like it wouldn't have held this strongly without its story.

I will admit I'm not a building kind of person. I had some ancient LEGO bricks when I was little and what I usually did with them was stacking them in a really tall line and try to keep it upright until they fell and scattered like lemmings booking it for a cliff. Getting into Bionicle would have never been possible for me had my dear beautiful friend @cantankerouscanuck not innocently dropped me links to Legends of Metru Nui, Web of Shadows, and the Crosswired Geeks website asking if I could have please considered skimming through it. This was back in september 2023. These pieces of plastic have been irreversibly fucking up my brain for nine months, and it was only possible because the plot and characters were written in a way that actively sunk its teeth into my skull and did an alligator death spin so potent that I'm still reeling from it, thinking about it.

I do think that's one of the main reasons why it's still going, why people still talk about it. It lives on through fans who still look at all the enormous potential left by the gaps and holes in the story and work on them, analyze them, make their own versions of them. So this second section is about that part of Bionicle, the story that just does not end, carried on by others.

So back to the point, what actually kickstarted this entire line of thought (the Squishy Note and the allegory of the cave are sort of the same lol) was a headcanon I have about the characters that have been actually missing from this analysis: the Great Beings.

You Know.

The Guys Who Kickstarted Every Single Thing, And Notably Continuously Did All Of It Wrong.

From my own prior knowledge I had understood that they are all Glatorian, and I just learned that they also were, apparently, given their incredible weird fucked up mental powers that made them into godly creatures by a space octopus.

I am going to take both pieces of information and discard them.

There is nothing necessarily wrong with them, except maybe coming from the leftest field available like a sack of granite to the face, but I feel like this kind of explanation for who and what they are isn't really satisfactory to me specifically. It does fit with the allegory of the cave still, technically - they are part of the real world, the ones who created every layer of detachment from it on purpose (somebody must have shackled those prisoners at the bottom of the cave, after all) and have managed to get to a higher level of reality still, following the platonic quest for knowledge into something that resembles the iperuranium, the perfect metaphysical world in which ideas reside.

But also... I'd like for there to be a limit to how higher we can go, you know? Into the cosmic horror? Because everything is cosmic horror in the Doctor's Report already. We live on a god's face. We live in a god's body. We are a god's cells. Our universe is a tiny manmade action figure in a larger universe. Our god is just a synthetic soul. The real older gods made it and sent it around to do their bidding. Also they're all gonna kill us when we figure out our universe is fake. Cosmic horror. Cosmic horror for miles. These are fucking LEGOs. Why is there so much existentialism in them.

So yeah, at the cost of sounding boring the psychic octopus from outer space might be a little bit too far for my personal tastes.

This does not mean I am immune to adding onto the cosmic horror.

Because my personal interpretation of who/what they are still adds onto the cosmic horror.

It just doesn't also include "giant aquatic fauna with psychic powers" in the already very large salad of sentient sapient species who have stakes in this universe, because I think we have enough of those.

So what is my platonic ideal form for them?

The Great Beings are human beings. Straight up just people. They're the readers, the players, the writers, the designers, the creators and tellers of the chronicle itself - they have this immense dominion over everything around them because they are the origin of everything around them in a sense, but their constant failings make sense because for all the influence and power they are still human, and that makes them very, very fallible. I mean, mr Greg "I will rewire your brain chemistry forever with some of the best stuff you'll read as a kid, and also for undiscernible reasons doors aren't canon" Farshtey would be one of them. Things make a lot of sense.

(this is impossible in Stone Cold Canon by the way and I am aware, because if we got to properly see the Great Beings they would have needed to be products to sell, but this is not a matter of probability it's a matter of Vision. like can you imagine how fucking cool would have been a Bonkle movie where the characters finally meet the Great Beings face to face and when it happens the style just completely shifts from 3D animation to a stop-motion and live-action combo with the Great Beings played by people and the characters portrayed by their actual sets with all of the lack of expression and stiff hands and all. do you see it. im about to blow up)

And so, we return to the allegory.

What are the shadows on the wall? Are they still the Turaga's tales? Then shouldn't they be their memories, as well? Everything that comes out of their mouth is hazy either with nostalgia or simplification, and none of it can be real. Yet they present it as such, because to them it is. Their ignorance is the same as the Matoran's, but they do not grasp it because they can't. Mata Nui to them is not the cave, it's the reflection in a lake: an imperfect mirror of reality. They cannot see the fire nor the figurines.

They are the figurines. Man-made creations confined under artificial light in a vast underground system, as large as a whole galaxy and yet so small, so isolated, so far back into the cave they are never meant to know anything other than. The shadows were their own but they can't realize that, and they can't realize they themselves are copies. The Matoran Universe is a puppet show that Teridax shuts down as he takes its reigns: he banishes its fire, Mata Nui (who is a gnostic Demiurge, a god made by gods demanding worship despite its falsehood - another copy not fully aware of being a copy) and shuts the entrance, plunging it all into darkness. No more knowledge. It is not something dolls need, after all.

Bara Magna is not the last step. It is not yet reality, not yet the truth. It's closer, much closer, but it's not: it's the lake, the puddle, the reflection that distorts when something is thrown into it. The stakes are more realistic, the characters and motivations, but not yet real. There is still a layer of separation: the elemental powers, the alien setting, the strange beasts, the supernatural history, the secrets pointing to things much bigger and more fantastical than anything reality could be, the way it is cut short by no fault of its own. What does it reflect? It's not the Matoran Universe, since that is a model based on Bara/Spherus Magna. It's not Mata Nui, because that is an attempt at recreating what the Matoran Universe was, at least in part. So... Is it the real world? Our, world?

It must be.

The Great Beings (us, the players and readers and writers and artists) shaped all of this. This universe is their creation, their work, and it is based on what they know, on their reality, because all stories are.

Maybe it was a story as close to real as possible that turned fantastic and wild until it became mythical, or maybe it was a simple story that grew so complex and grounded that it became life-like. It doesn't matter. It's a long story, a really, really long one, and maybe they're tired of it, or maybe they don't know what to do with it, or maybe they just think it has run its course, or maybe... Maybe they don't know how to tell it again. Tell it like this again.

So... I guess the thing to do is clean up.

Full tabula rasa.

And once we're done we can take these figurines we still have left, the last proof of all this immense work, this spiraling dive into who and what we are, how we function, how we create, how we imitate and recreate ourselves in fictional worlds that are our own and yet completely alien over and over, and make new ones. Distorted reflections that become imperfect copies to place before a fire so that their shadows can play out a new story upon a cave wall, for those same dolls to believe they are real.

God I got sidetracked severely

[kristailine]

Tekken 8 storymode thoughts/rant/review

Obviously will contain spoilers

But I have to say that

Surprisingly, I really liked Tekken 8's story (which is something I really didn't expect. I was preparing to gaslight myself that I liked the story because I was expecting a mid plot. But I can definitely say that I genuinely enjoyed this installment's storymode)

I'm going to remove my kazujun stan lens for this review

Jin has always been an after thought to me. The only time I care about him is if it's connected either to Kazuya or Jun (as a kazujun shipper). But the way he was written in Tekken 8 added layers to him and developed his character well. Don't get me wrong though, IT WOULD NEVER REALLY ERASE THE FUCKED UP SHIT THEY DID WITH TK5-7, but Tekken 8 was sweeping up some of the garbage left behind.

I always joke about Jin and his war crimes. Obviously, waging war is bad irl, but this is fiction okay. Anyway, Tekken 8 somehow managed to make me really feel like Jin didn't want to wage war. It was more of a result of his own self deprecation. Add to this, he was already suicidal before he took over the Zaibatsu, but after Tk6, he just really sulked into the idea of having to carry his sins and let it define him for the rest of his life.

The way they turned Jin from this guy who's hopeless and is submerged in his own hatred towards his bloodline and himself to this guy who finally acknowledges that all of the bad things are a part of who he is, but it doesn't have to be who he completely is, was really really really written decently. This whole character development with Jin instantly makes Tekken 8 on par, if not equal to, Tekken 4 story writing. And I was really impressed and blown away with how they unfolded the development. Because I really didn't want the romanticization of all his past mistakes, and his allies just cheering him on. Instead, his allies actually acknowledge JIN AS A DEVIL literally and figuratively (e.g Hwoa saying Jin has those dope-ass powers, Leroy asking Jin who is he, Xiaoyu saying she isn't scared of Jin despite the devil look), but they all believed in the chance they gave him to atone for everything he's done wrong.

I wish we could've gotten more about the history of the devil gene. It's still a very vague concept, and I was kinda expecting Tekken 8 to answer most of the questions about it, but still no.

Although as a Jun stan, I'm upset she never really appeared in the real world, I have to say that I really like how they still kept going with Jun's persona as a mysterious woman. If you see a previous post of mine, I have always been scared that Tekken 8 would finally be the franchise who would ruin Jun's character, but they played safe with it. She's still as mysterious as ever, but they allowed her to show more of her kindheartedness.

Like I said, I really wish we could've gotten more. I wish we could've also got to explore Kazuya's perspective. It's been like 6 consecutive games, and we still haven't had a storymode that focuses on Kazuya's character (always the one sided villain). Although, I understand why they couldn't do it (maybe because of budget constraints, and it would really diminish and compress the quality of Jin's char dev if they're gonna focus on both of them). I'm assuming at least that we get Tekken 9 and have it shine a spotlight on Kaz.

Overall, I really liked it. It gets an 8/10 for me!

More things I kinda didn't like:

- Where the hell is Yoshimitsu???? He appears in the tournament and then goes Bye Felicia once Kazuya absorbed Azazel LMAOOOOO. His bio about investigating the Mishima bloodline and whatever didn't really reflect on the storymode :<<

- Nina and Steve.... Uhhh.... We already had them in Tk 7, and I was at least expecting that they would continue it in Tk 8

- The Asuka Kazama erasure.... She's just treated as another one of the side characters at this point. I fear she's just only in the game now because of Lili. She's very underdeveloped and underutilized and I feel so sad about it :<<

Tekken has a very interesting set of characters with amazing dynamics and chemistry with everyone else. It has a huge amount of lore to explore as well. And they could really do better by exploring and developing most of the characters. Here's to hoping we get a story expansion DLC not just for the main story, but also for the other beloved characters in the game.

[got-into-worm-by-mistake]

Interlude 15.x Live Reactions

(This is going to be a very - no, insanely - long post)

As I noted, after this I'll be trying (ha!) to read faster, and on my phone more so I can just get this done.

This is gonna be an interesting read. Purportedly, after all, this is where we're supposed to get the idea that Amy raped Vicky. Though supposedly Wildbow had to do a line by line analysis to make that point on reddit (which I have not read) and I feel like if you have to do that for something like rape, you've kind of failed your task as a writer, at least in terms of conveying what you meant.

I wish, even more than usual, I could be coming into this fully blind but I'm not. I know the 'official' interpretation of this scene is rape, and that the text of the sequel makes it canonical that Amy raped Vicky here, but I also know large numbers of people never got that take, and Wildbow somehow spent years not noticing massive swaths of his readership didn't realize rape had happened... supposedly.

We'll see if I come away convinced that rape is the best reading that can be constructed from this scene, though from what I gather, it's more that a rape reading in this scene feels wildly out of place with all of Amy's other stuff.

It's certainly hard to reconcile the Amy we just saw in Arc 14 with Raping Vicky, though 14.10 makes it not impossible.

Of course, since I'm not coming in blind - I'm aware of the official version, and I've seen some people make the arguments in support of that reading and I've seen a bunch of arguments against that reading, etc - it's not like that all won't be hanging over all of this.

And the thing is, on a certain level, it doesn't actually matter. In the context of the universe itself, it certainly matters, but from the perspective of all these characters not actually existing in the real world, it doesn't really much matter to me.

On the level of Amy's actions: What she does do to Vicky that everyone agreed on (changing her brain, then mind controlling her in 14.6 and 14.10, not immediately removing the 'love me' change from Vicky's brain, wretching her - intentionally or accidentally or a mix or w/e - and not fixing her brain at any point there, and so on) is a gross and horrifying betrayal and a deep, deep violation of Vicky's mental and bodily autonomy. Making actual, real rape a thing that happened here as well is just icing on a cake, really, in a lot of ways, in the context of Worm. (Ward can and will be safely ignored for the rest of this post - in just a moment anyway)

For another, while it appears a lot of readers and fans did turn on Amy - her popularity in the fandom and in fics and stuff purportedly took a bit of a nosedive after the rape was made clear in Ward and in Wildbow's various WoG, though apparently there were still people who read Ward and missed that rape was made clear (Maybe use the word? Apparently Wildbow doesn't even use that word in Ward), it wouldn't actually change much for me.

(Now ignoring Ward)

See, some of my favorite fictional characters have comitted rape.

Damon Salvatore? Mass murderer and... though the narrative doesn't really linger on it, he rapes Caroline Forbes in early Season 1, and his girlfriend that he gets at the end of S2 (I think) and is dating in early S3 is a relationship so full of Compulsion (mind control ability vampires have in TVD verse) that it's moved well past dubcon, I'd say. And there's probably other shit like that in the man's past. Again, the narrative doesn't linger, but it's fucking rape. Still love Damon, amazing character, my trash son, but yeah, committed rape. Absolute monster, by any reasonable standard.

Regina Mills - again, mass murderer, tyrant, and... at the very least, she raped the Huntsman for possibly up to 38 years. (Again, it's never clearly stated, but she ripped out his heart - which in OUAT verse is a thing dark magic allows that lets the holder of the hard dictate commands to the person and also just kill them if they crush it - and then commanded her guards to bring him to her chambers. Ten years later, she casts the dark curse, and the Huntsman's cursed persona is having sex with her about once a week, at least, for the next 28 years, though given the nature of the curse, only Regina and later her son Henry are aware of the passage of time.) Regina is my favorite OUAT character, has an amazing redemption arc, and is unquestionably a hero to the point where she's crowned the 'Good Queen' in the series finale by Snow White (i.e. the girl she became evil while chasing revenge on). The narrative doesn't really linger on it, I'm not even sure the writers quite realized that it was rape, but I never believed it anything else. Still love her, because she and the Huntsman are both entirely fictional. Not real people.

On BtVS, Faith attempts to rape Xander, and basically does rape Riley while in Buffy's body (Riley is Buffy's boyfriend and thinks it's Buffy he's having sex with. Also she also effectively rapes Buffy by having sex with Riley while in control of her body). I still love her, one of my favorite characters. Again, the narrative doesn't really linger on this (the show in general has a bad habit of not lingering on female-on-male sexual violence or sexual harrassment).

Also on BtVS, Willow wipes her girlfriend's (Tara) memory so she forgets a pretty serious argument they were having, and then they have sex the next day, which Tara would probably not have had if she was still angry with Willow. While the show never calls it rape, I and large parts of the fandom consider it as such. (Tara never calls it rape either, though she is incredibly furious with Willow when she finds out, and they break up - and then get back together 12 episodes later, buuut :shrug) Still big fan of Willow, Tara/Willow is still the biggest ship for willow and one of the largest ships in the fandom.

Now, it's true that in all four cases, the writers either didn't realize it was rape, or didn't care and never really address it, but the key point is that I am perfectly capable of being a huge fan of Amy and wanting to see her redeemed/get better/etc (which I am and do) and accepting that she committed rape. So it's not like I'm going to just insistently refuse to see rape

Now, apparently part of the argument against the 'rape happened' reading is also how 15.x fits into the rest of the work, both before, and after, with regards to the fact that (apparently) Amy doesn't really talk about Vicky with any sort of sexual element, just a worshipful adoration, etc, (and the fact that rape never comes up and so forth) which I won't know until I get that far. But again, it is worth noting that large numbers of people didn't get rape as the intended reading, which again, seems like a pretty big detail to fail to convey to the reader. It's worth nothing that the comments for 15.x on the actual worm website mention 'mindrape' and that it felt 'rapey' but not 'rape' full on.

Now, with a much larger preface than intended, let's actually read this godforesaken Interlude.

Actually, having done the live reaction below, I'm gonna put it all below a readmore

Some of that was fatigue, some of it was hunger, some was thirst.  She had no idea how much time had passed.  She might have been able to guess from her period, but her body had decided such would be a waste of precious resources.  It hadn’t come, and she had no idea how many weeks or months it had been.

You only keep a Kidnap victim for weeks or months if you think there's a chance of a ransom. The fact that Carol's parents refused to just fucking pay the goddamn ransom for that long says a lot about how shit they were. Carol absolutely sucks as a mother, but she did have a pretty shitty starting point (though, somehow, somehow, Sarah managed to be at least halfway decent, so Carol could have come out better, but now I'm trying to compare traumas here and that's pretty sucky, but remember this is a Carol Dallon Hate Blog)

“Amy has always insisted she couldn’t heal brain injuries.” Alan winced.  “I see.  The worst sort of luck.” Carol smiled, but it wasn’t a happy expression.  “So imagine my surprise when, after weeks of taking care of my husband, wiping food from his face, giving him baths, supporting him as he walked from the bedroom to the bathroom, Amy decides she’ll heal him after all.”

Love how she just glosses over the part where Bonesaw actively did even more, possibly eventually fatal, damage to Mark's brain. Even when she does Mention Bonesaw invading the house below, she doesn't mention that part.

I feel like Mark would be able to mention that, so I'm sure Carol is just conviently ignoring the part where Amy was faced with 'Mark fucking dies if I don't break my rule'

“Oh, I imagine she was.  Victoria went looking for her after she ran away, returned home empty-handed.  I think she was even more upset than I was, with Amy taking so long to heal Mark.  She was almost inarticulate, she was so angry.”

So that would suggest that at least at first Vicky doesn't tell Carol what Amy did to her. Which would fit with Vicky saying she hadn't told anyone back in the early parts of Arc 14 (don't remember which chapter she said it) but the context could have just meant 'didn't tell the Protectorate/PRT' Though, it does still leave the open question: Amy was running around the city for fucking DAYS, a week possibly? between Interlude 11h and when she shows up in Arc 14.2 or 14.3. Did Carol even look for her? Why isn't she looking fucking now? She's your daughter, right, and Slaughterhouse Nine is looking for her too?

Is Sarah looking? Mark? Crystal?

Even if you don't love her or care about her, you shouldn't want S9 to have ahold of her, so maybe look for her rather than FUCKING FILE PAPERWORK?!

Carol fidgeted.  “Oh, that wasn’t even the worst of it.  Victoria’s been flirting with the notion of joining the Wards, and she went out to fight the Nine just a few days ago.  Apparently she was critically injured.  She was carried off for medical care and nobody’s seen her since.”

Ah, so this is now happening post-S9 leaving the city (though there's still no mention of Carol looking for her) and she's... not even looking for Vicky?

Like, okay, big city, might not be able to find her, but I feel like if I had a kid that I purportedly loved (as Carol does supposedly at least love Vicky, in her own horrible abusive sort of way) and said kid was missing and I had superpowers making it safe to go looking, I would be looking, damn the goddamn paperwork.

This woman just can't actively not suck.

Also, of all the people to be talking about this to, why the fuck is it Alan Barnes. Just a weird character to use for this. Is it supposed to be a juxtaposition - Carol was a neglectful bitch and Alan a too supportive parent and both ended up screwing their kids up?

“Or dead,” Carol said.  She blinked a few times in rapid succession, fighting the need to cry.  “I don’t know.  I was patrolling, searching, and I felt my composure start to slip.  I feel like shit for doing it, but I came here, I thought maybe if I took fifteen minutes or half an hour to center myself, I could be ready to start searching again.”

Okay, so there's that, so she was looking and just (understandably) needed a moment, but again - did you look for Amy at all earlier? Did fucking anyone? Somehow no member of New Wave actually showed up anywhere during Arcs 12 or 13 or 14, apart from Amy and Vicky.

He’d tried to attack them?  Carol couldn’t understand it.  He was the one who’d taken care of them.  When he’d appeared, she’d been happy.  And now it felt like that had been ruined, spoiled. She felt betrayed and she couldn’t understand why.

Stockholm Syndrome is a hell of a drug. But trigger trauma isn't much of an excuse, Carol, really fucking isn't.

“We didn’t know where you were.  But let’s not fight again.  The important thing is that Tattletale pointed us in the right direction.  We think we know where your daughters are.” Daughters?  Plural? Carol couldn’t put a name to the feeling that had just sucker-punched her.

Right, because with what little you know about the situation, you shouldn't actually have much reason to be that worried.

Technically, you're right this time, which I really kind of hate on the 'Carol Sucks' level of my personality, but you have no valid basis, because your paranoia was not actually well-founded.

The Brockton Bay Brigade closed in on the man who stood by his leather armchair, wearing a black silk bathrobe.  He held his ground. “If you’ll allow me to finish my wine-” he started, bending down to reach for the wine glass that sat beside the armchair.

Marquis really is the textbook fucking definition of classy, isn't he? :rofl:

 It meant she didn’t fall on her rear end, and she could pick a more appropriate posture as she snapped back into her human shape.

I mean, falling on your ass in a fight is just bad from a tactical standpoint, but also, I mean, you can't go losing style points, right?

The needles retracted.  Marquis rolled his shoulders, as if loosening his muscles.  “Broke your foot?  How clumsy.”

If nothing else, he's fun.

Well, only in a sense.  They still hadn’t touched him, and two of their members were out of commission.  Three, if she counted Fleur being occupied with a wounded Lightstar in her arms.

And so let's use his child against him! Great move!

Let's invade someone's home without checking to see if there's any innocents around! GREAT PLAN!

Was he distracted?

Maybe ask yourself why.

Though, I will say - Marquis didn't have to play Coy. He quite literally could have just said 'my daughter's in that closet'. They might not have believed him, but it wouldn't have been hard to show them.

I'm not saying I don't get why he didn't, but technically Marquis didn't make the most optimal choice here.

But that... happens.

“Careful now,” Marquis chided her.  “Don’t want to get decapitated now, do we?”

*giggle*

Instead, she turned and charged for the closet, creating a sword out of the crackling energy her power provided, slashing through the plates of bone that had surrounded it, then drawing the blade back to thrust through the wooden door-

I dunno. I know it's Amy - we all know it's Amy, at this point, even people reading Blind - and we're inclined to dislike Carol anyway at this point, again, even people reading Blind, I assume - but this just seems incredibly foolish.

Like, I guess maybe leaping straight to 'there's a kid there' might be a bitch much, and Carol in particular probably would have a hard time imagining Marquis as caring about another person because she's projected her issues with her kidnapper onto him for... reasons, but I mean, he could have a wife (or husband, I suppose) or girlfriend or all manner of things in there you may not want to hurt, and like... I dunno, I'd at least fucking open the closet before swinging in there? Maybe?

Fic idea - Marquis is a little too slow, but instead of killing her (I have read one fic where that happened. Marquis, understandably, kills Carol right after) he like, maims Amelia or something, cuts off her arm, or gives her a major scar or something.

That could be a really interesting story. Especially if Marquis still gets beaten, or Carol gets away and has to look at her daughter after having done that.

(I may hate Carol, but I can't imagine she'd be blithe about having maimed an innocent child, even Marquis kid, in the middle of a fight.)

*ads the fic idea to the list, which won't stop growing*

She stared down at him.  That long hair, it was such a minor thing, but there was something else about him that stirred that distant, dark memory of the lightless room and the failed attempt at ransom.  Her skin crawled, and she felt anger boiling in her gut.

This is so insane and then you take that projection and add a second layer onto Amy and like what the ABSOLUTE FUCK is wrong with you sick little woman?

“What were you so intent on protecting?” Manpower asked.  “This where you stash your illegitimate gains?”

Because Marquis didn't just say he didn't really care if they destroyed his expensive home a few minutes ago. Jesus Christ Manpower really is a dumb brute, isn't he?

“Her mother’s gone, I’m afraid.  The big C.  Amelia and I were introduced shortly after that.  About a year ago, now that I think on it.  I must admit, I’ve enjoyed our time together more than I’ve enjoyed all my crimes combined.  Quite surprising.”

Is that actually a thing anyone does? Or ever did? Is that a Canadian thing? Or a new england slang? 90s Lingo? I feel like no one has ever called Cancer 'The Big C' before.

That feels like something a writer - not necessarily Wildbow - invented and people just ran with even though it wasn't actually a thing people did.

If Marquis had realized how fucking terribly Carol would have raised Amy, I have to imagine he'd have settled for foster care instead. :rofl:

The idea disturbed her.

Why? Maybe get some fucking therapy for that, bitch? Seriously.

WHY THE FUCK DOES THIS DISTURB YOU?!

Maybe ask yourself that question?! But then, I suppose if you were capable of a single iota of self-examination, you would not have been such a shit mother and indeed, shit human.

That cultured act, the civility that was real.  Marquis was fair, he played by the rules.  His rules, but he stuck to them without fail.  It didn’t match her vision of what a criminal should be.  It was jarring, creating a kind of dissonance. That dissonance was redoubled as she looked at the forlorn little girl.  Layers upon layers, distilled in one expression.  Criminal, civilized man, child.

Right, and how dare something not line up with your view of the world? How DARE?! Surely the problem is with the thing, and not you?! SURELY!

“Then you take care of her,” Brandish replied, even as she mentally prayed her sister would refuse.  There was something about the idea of being around Marquis’ child, that uncanny resemblance, having those memories stirred even once in a while, even if it was just at family reunions… it made her feel uneasy.

*shakes head* jesus christ.

I wonder what Amy Pelham's relationship with Aunt Carol would have been like. A lot of 'why doesn't Aunt Carol like me?' I imagine. Which might have led to Sarah berating Carol into getting help sooner, because I can't imagine Sarah wouldn't have loved her daughter Amy as much as Eric and Crystal.

Though who knows. May just be grass is greener.

“You should.  Amelia’s Vicky’s age, I think they would be close.”

*nervous, awkward, darkly ironic laughter*

“I’m sorry to bring it up,” Brandish said. “But it’s relevant.  I decided I could have Vicky because I’d know her from day one.  She’d grow inside me, I’d nurture her from childhood… she’d be safe.”

And you did a bang up job with her! Two thumbs up! /s

“That child deserves better than I can offer.  I know I don’t have it in me to form any kind of bond with another child if there’s no blood relation.” Especially if she’s Marquis’. “She needs you.  You’re her only option.  I can’t, and Fleur and Lightstar aren’t old enough or in the right place in their lives for kids, and if she goes anywhere else, it’ll be disastrous.”

I can't believe I'm saying this, but: Sarah, Sarah, look at me.

Listen to Carol. For once in her life, she's actually right about something.

Look at me Sarah. Listen to your sister.

You could grow to love and trust that little girl, too.”

Truth is, she probably could have, but it would have required Carol getting over herself, and that, as it turns out, was borderline impossible.

I don't believe it would have been completely impossible - people always have a choice - and that's why, at the end of the day, I will never let sympathy for Carol rise beyond the barest of minimums, because she had a responsibility to be better, to get better, not just for Amy, but for Vicky, and she didn't, and so again, This Is A Carol Dallon Hate Blog.

Was the girl in shock?  Carol couldn’t muster any sympathy.  Amy was stopping her from getting to Victoria.  Victoria, who she’d almost believed was dead.

See, this is just...

I mean, I'm glad Carol didn't kill Amy here, but Carol has not even an iota of concern for Amy, and yet, once she sees the state of Victoria and supposedly finds out that Amy raped Victoria, she suddenly has enough sympathy for Amy to not kill her?

I -

Seriously. Absolute bizzaro world shit here, Wildbow.

“So I thought I’d put her in a trance, and make it so she’d forget everything that happened.  Everything that I did, and the things that the Slaughterhouse Nine said, and everything that I said to try to make them go away.  Empty promises and-“

Okay, so like, you can Amy's lying here, but all we have to go on is what she says, you know? If Wildbow wanted us to get the takeway that Amy's lying here, he kind of needs to make that more clear.

Like, far from done, and I am kind of biased against WB at this point, to say the least, but it's just really fucking hard for me to see this girl acting like this if she just raped her sister.

I mean, really, man, if that really was your intent, you did a REALLY bad job of conveying it, and when you fail as a writer you don't fucking take that out on the readers.

(Right, sorry, I said I was ignoring Ward. Back to doing that)

She could never be my daughter because she’d never stopped being his.

She doesn't even remember him, you crazy psycho!

Amy kept talking, her voice strangely monotone after her earlier emotion, as if she were a recording.  Maybe she was, after a fashion, all of the excuses and arguments she’d planned spilling from her mouth.  “I wanted her to be happy.  I could adjust.  Tweak, expand, change things to serve more than one purpose.  I had the extra material from the cocoon.  When I was done, I started undoing everything, all the mental and physical changes.  I got so tired, and so scared, so lonely, so I thought we’d take another break, before I was completely finished.  I changed more things.  More stuff I had to fix.  And days passed.  I-“

I'm having trouble seeing it. I really am.

I get that we're supposed to see 'break' as like... Amy raping her or something but -

But that -

no.

 It might even have been something objectively beautiful, had it not been warped by desperation and loneliness and panic.

Everything about this scene just paints Amy as pathetic and pitiable. She really is a sopping wet poor little meow meow here.

I'm not saying a rapist can't also be pitiable - someone can be victim and victimizer, of course they can - but if you want the pitiable character to be seen as a rapist, or, you know, hated, for what they did -

Especially when it's from fucking Carol's POV, and Wildbow just got done explaining how little regard Carol actually has for Amy, how she has no sympathy for the girl and everything.

If there's any POV that should not be painting Amy as pitiable, but as the rapist we're supposed to believe she is, it's Carol's right?

Then I’d go and spend the rest of my life healing people.  Sacrifice my life.  I don’t know.  As payment.”

Wildbow makes the most woobifiable character in the world, and then gets self-righteous when people woobify her.

News at 11.

And with everything laid bare, there was not a single resemblance to Marquis.  There was no faint reminder of Brandish’s time in the dark cell, nor of her captor.  If anything, Amy looked how Sarah had, as they’d stumbled from the house where they’d been kept, lost, helpless and scared. She looked like Carol had, all those years ago. The weapon dissipated, and Brandish’s arms dropped limp to her sides.

All this does is make Carol look narcissistic in the weirdest and worst way. She can only give a shit about someone who reminds her of... her?

But I mean, the whole reason she supposedly loved Vicky is because Vicky came from her, so she should have that take priority over...

I'm sorry. I'm just not seeing it. I'm not -

And Carol's actions here, even with the 'she looked like carol had' just...

No. This is weird. This is confusing. This is nonsensical. And I'm sure as shit not getting a 'Amy Raped Vicky' takeaway here.

Even allowing for Jack's comment about 'indulging' in 14.10. When Amy didn't agree or anything, and Jack would have no way to know what Amy did or didn't do when he wrote that letter we see in 14.11.

Like, if I squint and force myself to twist my brain into nots I can... pretend I can see it... but even then...

I mean, maybe Amy's lying, and characters lie and misrepresent and so on, true, but unless the text gives us a good reason to believe they are, which it hasn't yet...

I mean, it's the official version, the official narrative, that it's Rape. That's the WoG. And like...

Even if I didn't have my, admittedly largely unfounded, suspicions that Wildbow is just flat out lying about his original intent or meaning, I do believe that WoG should be an enhancement to and addition to the text, not a direct contradiction.

It really does seem like WB ended up falling into the trap of figuring he could just let his WoG paper over mistakes in his writing rather than getting it right the first time?

Carol stared as Amy shuffled forward.  The cuffs weren’t necessary, really.  A formality.  Amy wasn’t about to run.

I mean, this is another thing I don't get. Amy haters harp on Amy 'running away from responsibility/consequences' but I mean... quietly going to the Birdcage, an unaccountable black box of a prison where (IIRC from what I've heard) 2/3s of the prisoners ended up dying by the time of the breakout is sort of the opposite of running away?

I mean, Amy should have fixed Vicky before going, this is true, but it seems clear she wasn't sure she could, and would Carol and Sarah have even let her?

As if she could convey everything she wanted to say in a single gesture, she folded her daughter into the tightest of hugs.

I -

I mean, I suppose stranger things have happened, but of all the times to actually suddenly start giving a shit about Amy, it's here and now?

Yeah, I can't reconcile this with Wildbow's official narrative of things.

“Victoria is gone.  There’s nothing of her left but that mockery. 

Yeah, okay, back to Carol just sucking 100%. That's more familiar ground.

The day I cease seeing her as his daughter and see how she could be mine, he takes her back, she thought.

Well, no one to blame but yourself, Carol.

Yeah, my official verdict is: if this is supposed to be the scene that convinces the reader Amy raped Victoria, then...

Yeah, I'm not seeing it. I'm not seeing anything that makes that implied even with a tortured reading. Even with the most hostile reading, I don't -

I don't see it. I really don't. I'm trying to have as open a mind as possible, I tried to look for it -

This isn't me questioning a victim in the 'was it really rape' way or whatever, I'm questioning whether the writing of a scene conveys the idea that one character committed the physical/sexual act of rape on another, and this scene does not. Maybe there's another scene later on (In Worm) that will convince me, but...

This one sure doesn't.

[thelifeofchuckmovie]

Mike Flanagan reveals one major change coming to his adaptation of Stephen King's story The Life of Chuck, explaining why he chose to alter one particular part of the story. The novella, part of King's 2020 collection If It Bleeds, follows the story of its titular character told backwards, from the moment of his death to when he was a child in a seemingly haunted house. The upcoming The Life of Chuck movie aims to maintain faithfulness to the original story, indicative of what to expect from the horror filmmaker's adaptation.

(Spoilers below)

However, speaking with Talking Scared, Flanagan revealed that one key change in The Life of Chuck has to do with the people in Chuck's head who are facing the end of the world. When asked about Chuck's imagination and its impact on the story, the horror filmmaker explains how, instead of being random, fictional people in his mind, the movie will see these figures as representing real people the main character meets throughout his life. Check out what Flanagan had to say about this significant change below:

I don't think it does. And I felt that way on both sides of it, because when you're first watching the movie, you don't necessarily know that. That's a revelation, if you've not read the story, the movie will reveal that to you in time. But if you do know that, I don't think it changes it at all, because the emotions the characters are going through are so honest and relateable. And we've made a couple little clever changes to kind of make it so that these characters don't only exist in this imagined realm. That they're all echoes of very real people who existed in the real world who Chuck encountered throughout his life. That's one of the big changes we made to this story was that the people you meet at the beginning, you see them again as Chuck encounters them throughout his life, and you can see how and why he pulled them into his imagination, and how they continue to exist in his mind even after the real people have moved on, in one way or another. And so that's one of the very few changes we made for the film. It seemed like a real cool opportunity to do something like that.

Why Flanagan’s Life Of Chuck Change Is Perfect For The Big Screen

Flanagan Is The Perfect Director For The King Adaptation

In King’s original version of The Life of Chuck, part of the story involves an imaginary character named Marty, whose perspective becomes the one the audience follows as his world comes to an end. At first, it’s unclear that this is part of Chuck’s fantasy world, later revealed to be so as the story progresses. While this level of mystery is still going to be present in Flanagan’s adaptation, it’s clear from his plans that his take will blend reality and fiction much more closely than the original novella did.

Despite this change for the adaptation, the director’s alteration of what Chuck’s imaginary world means will work perfectly for its big screen rendition. Flanagan’s movies and TV shows have always toyed with the idea of reality and fantasy blending together, with characters who consistently embody both notions of their respective stories. Having the imaginary world reflect reality maintains consistency with his other work, while also giving King’s story an added layer of meaning onscreen.

Mike Flanagan's next project, The Life of Chuck, is the perfect chance to revive an old Stephen King tradition and break another trend.

This reflection of reality also adds a new layer of mystery depending on how The Life of Chuck's story gets presented. Perhaps it will maintain vagueness about why certain characters appear to be acting in different ways, unraveling the imaginary world in the protagonist's head by making it unclear what's real and what isn't until the very end. This could make the film highly rewatchable too, as layered clues reveal the truth behind the story unfolding.

The Life of Chuck premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2024.

[imptwins]

Why making any concessions to puritan rhetoric is a bad idea

(note for the uninitiated: 'anti' is short for 'anti-shipper', 'anti-ship', or 'anti-fan'; in this context it refers to people who get very vocally militant about opposing dark kinks/problematic ships in media, especially creative fandom spaces. Proship is simply the opposite, people who vocally believe people should be free to make/indulge in whatever as long as a line is drawn between fiction and reality.)

(note 2: this was written for cohost, i cbf rewording it lol)

I very often see people - both websites and individuals - making a concession to the people who come up to them yelling about problematic kinks and guilt by association and 'why didn't you block this person' blah blah blah. It's happened with a few BNFs (big-name fans) in the UTDR scene lately, I've seen it from artists I respect, from friends, hell I used to be in this camp myself. And, of course, it happened to this website about a year back, and the conversation has come up again recently due yet another tumblr exodus.

It makes sense. The most common stuff that antis go after is stuff very few people are into: lolisho/cub, ferals, heavy gore, heavy noncon. It's niche, the real-world applications are unquestionably vile, it's very easy to just say 'I also find this icky regardless of whether I really believe that all people into it are secret criminals, so, I'll just block the people who they say are bad and move on.' I can't tell you the amount of times I've seen someone respond to proship/antiship discourse with "I'm an adult with a job." Going to bat for this content is high risk, low reward. You're not going to make friends, you're going to lose them. YOU WILL LOSE SUBSCRIBER, etc. As a result of all this it's very easy to assume that anyone defending it must be into it.

But I'm not. I'm a writer who often deals with darker subjects, but most of the first-on-the-list anti stuff, I'm not into at all. I'm not into ferals or gore period, noncon I like purely as character exploration, lolisho I can enjoy from the perspective of what I call 'trauma repair.' There's probably a proper term for it. But the tl;dr is I've never been actively aroused by any of these things, not in fantasy and especially not otherwise. Whenever I write them, it's just fascination or character analysis. Whenever I have a 'this character can be any age you want' fic, in my head, they're 18+. Writing noncon is a weird challenge for me because I'm constantly battling with the alternate ending in my head where the victim breaks free, beats the shit out of their captor, etc. This isn't me trying to claim virtue through this, just stating my position.

So… Why do I go to bat for these things? Why do I get annoyed when websites block lolisho, when artists have 'proship DNI' in their bio, etc? It's lost me a couple friends, it's certainly cost me followers and general reach, it's gotten me blocked by countless people I respected the work of. It's earned me a few callout posts, multiple with 1k+ followers, and one particular obsessed stalker who tells anyone who will listen that I actually groomed a child (despite all evidence otherwise). It's caused me a really significant amount of trouble. Why die on this hill?

The answer's kind of simple, when you boil it down: fictional fantasies either affect reality, or they don't. This is why I go to bat for things I'm not into, but it's also why whenever you see someone making concessions to antis, it's never enough. Cohost banned lolisho last year (I believe it's still banned?? Unclear), but the antis still make constant callout posts about this site and its owners. Some of the team have even gone out of their way to state very firmly that they're against these things, they've gone above and beyond just 'ban the bad thing' and broadcast their views about the morality of it. You'll frequently see artists write some huge apology or clarification when a callout post hits, usually involving some variation of 'I do not condone x y z and think it's disgusting.'

It's never enough.

But it makes sense, when you think about it. By drawing a line, you have essentially agreed with the core angle of the people screaming at you: that a fictional fantasy affects reality. That it's dangerous. You will, by necessity, now have people start to work down the list. Incest, ferals, gore, noncon, sure. Any relationship with any kind of skewed power dynamic. Sibling-coded, minor-coded, postminor nonsense. All of these things are less easily agreed to than lolisho, I've seen countless porn artists concede with the core idea that lolisho is immoral, then they act like it's unreasonable that people just keep going until they're being told that a knot on a furry is bestiality, or a 23 year old dating an autistic 21 year old is pedophilia. These are genuine examples of things I've seen people dogpiled for. Seriously look up "postminor" if you want to see how bad this can get, on top of being absurd it's one-for-one the kind of gross ableist shit that Autism Speaks gets into.

But YOU AGREED TO THEM. You agreed with the core concept, that the fantasy must reflect reality. Of course they're going to keep demanding more; by the logic you used to agree with them, you are doing immoral things. If fictional lolisho is immoral, so are the rest of them. It's way easier to look at your average pic on baraag or inkbunny and go 'oh, eugh, vile,' but at the end of the day the cutesy played-for-laughs sleeping kiss, the dubcon bondage that you don't call dubcon, or the meet-cute where they're a bit too drunk, they're all immoral fantasies.

That's not even to get into non-sexual stuff. If the lolisho fantasy is wrong, so is running down civilians in GTA. Suddenly your notifs are full of 16 year-old Jack Thompsons with rainbow flags in their bios.

This really is an all-or-nothing debate. If fictional fantasies affect reality, then even the immoral fantasies that you're personally comfortable with, the cutesy coy playful ones, must be immoral. If fictional fantasies don't affect reality, then even the ones that make you uncomfortable, the ones that have you scrambling to close your browser in case the feds are looking, must be fine.

It should have become very obvious over the last decade that you cannot fence-sit on this. There's a huge internal disagreement going on among progressive/queer/compassion-minded people, on whether these kind of things affect reality, or whether they don't. You can learn to apathetically dismiss stuff that squicks you, or you can learn to sanitize everything you ever make so there's not a trace of contentious theming left. Immoral fantasies are immoral, or only immoral actions are immoral.

You're going to have to pick one.

[setaripendragon]

JSaMN Readalong Liveblog - Chapters 2-3

Honestly, I have no idea if I'll be able to keep up with this, the first one took an entire afternoon, and while I have a lot of free time, I'm not sure I have that much free time XD Either way, I'm going to try, and see how I get on, because this is rather fun, if time-consuming. I've never actually taken the time to write down my thoughts as I read a book before. My approach to fiction is generally that if I'm not so absorbed I forget the real world exists, I'll go read something else, which makes this sort of liveblogging a bit impossible. Alright, here we go.

Chapter 2 - The Old Starre Inn (January - Fabruary 1807)

Every time I read or hear 'the old starre inn', my mind puts it to the tune of The Magician in York. (Warning: song contains spoilers up to chapter 4 of the book, I think.)

Narrator: Chapter 2: The Old Starre Inn Me: All on a winter's day~

I find it very interesting, the fact that Norrell gives them no specifics as to the magic he's done. After all, he hangs so much pride on his status as a practical magician that you'd think he'd want to show off. But it doesn't feel at all out of character, as he sees these 'pretend' magicians as so far beneath him that why would he need to?

Which is in such contrast to Honeyfoot's impression of him as 'humble' that it's funny. But at the same time, I don't think Honeyfoot is entirely wrong in his impression of Norrell. 'Shy' perhaps gives the wrong impression, but I get very vivid vibes from Norrell of that loner kid on the playground who no one wants to play with because they're 'weird', except once they settle into their isolation and do something cool because they're just trying to have fun by themself, everyone's suddenly interested in them, and their response is 'fuck off, it's mine not yours'.

"For the nation's good. He is a gentleman, he knows his duty..." This is such an alien perspective to me. I know it's a very common attitude of the time, and something of a theme in the book, but there's a whole commentary here on community and how people's sense of belonging has changed over time that I don't have the brain-power to make right now.

"Magicians in England are a peculiarly ungrateful set of men." I love this sentence. 'Magicians in England' - you mean the rich white gentlemen calling themselves magicians? Ungrateful? Perish the thought! XD

The fact that York is 'one of the most magical cities in England' with the possible exception of Newcastle is such an interesting piece of worldbuilding, and I can't help but wonder if that's a modern (to the book) thing, that simply scholars of magic happened to gather and set off a positive feedback loop, or if there is some in-world... concentration of magic. Given the connection of nature and magic, and the Yorkshire moors being so very iconic, there might be something to that?

Also, loving another little taste of the Raven King mythos, with the mention of 'the King's city of Newcastle'. Honestly, I've never been overly invested in English history (save for Arthuriana, but that's fantasy), but the way this book builds the fantasy on top of a skeleton of truth makes me much more interested in finding out about reality as much as the in-book lore of the place. (Much in the same way Assassin's Creed made me interested in finding out the truth of the history it depicts to better compare the story to.)

I might have to go on a wikipedia spiral about the history of places like York and Newcastle at some point. If these liveblogs don't swallow my entire weekend XD

"We do not care for men who build their reputations at the expense of other men's peace of mind." I do not like this man. (I know I'm not supposed to like this man, he is a representation of the worst sort of self-aggrandizing and complacent entitlement of rich white armchair-scholars, but it bears saying; I really don't like him XD Much respect to Segundus for not punching him in the face.)

"English magicians were only ever given common ivy." Ah, symbolism. I have a lot of thoughts about why ivy, honestly, and I definitely want to do some research on this later, but the phrasing here is so telling. 'Only ever given common ivy', making it so blatantly not some sort of accolade, but something commonplace and unremarkable. There's also the fact that ivy can be associated with neglect, as it's seen so often on old, crumbling buildings, and as a symbol of nature 'reclaiming' or even taking over that which people have built. (Again with the ominous whimsy of this book; the gothic imagery of an old house all over-taken by ivy matched with the tone in which the comparison is made making light of potential drama of the symbolism.)

There's also the correlation between ivy and lovers (ivy clings and binds and twines around things. And I recall reading somewhere about it being used for symbolism in the story of Tristan and Isolde?) but I don't think that's quite as applicable here, even though my brain does love to chew on it.

I'm noticing now, as well, that the author makes excellent use of 'show don't tell'. Instead of simply telling us that the room was noisy and everyone was shouting over each other, though we do get told that, we're also given the example of an old man being very passionate about some point that no one can actually hear over the noise.

I find it interesting because I've been reading a lot of things expressing frustration with the maxim because, I think, people take it too literally. That you must never tell, and only show, which of course will absolutely ruin your pacing and make your story very boring. But this, here, is what I think it means. Of course we could simply have been told 'it got loud as everyone argued', but the art of writing is not to simply tell people what happened, but to make them feel it. And by 'showing' us this little snapshot, by giving the noise a face in this old man who cannot make himself heard over the din, despite being very engaged in making his point, it makes the whole business feel much more real.

Oh, I feel so bad for Honeyfoot and Segundus in this part. Although I find it very interesting that we never actually got to see whether Norrell did do any magic for them. We cut from him confessing that he's a practical magician to Segundus and Honeyfoot leaving, and we don't actually know what happened in between.

And, of course, neither do Honeyfoot and Segundus. Which is deeply, deeply unnerving to me when I think through the implications. Not knowing where you are is one thing, but not knowing where you have been is a whole nother level of creepy. And yet, the narrative doesn't treat it as a particularly horrifying occurance. (Again with the ominous whimsy.)

There is something of a theme of this, too, in the book, with the truly horrifying things that magic makes people capable of being treated as a sort of just a thing magic can do, rather than lingering on the violations of privacy, personhood, and autonomy. Not to say that I feel that the narrative is treating them as inconsequential or in some way not as bad as they really are, but that it doesn't pass judgement on it, and lets you draw your own conclusions (which is a bit refreshing in this resurgence of purity culture in fandom at the moment).

Like, here, Segundus doesn't react with any particular horror or upset at his confusion and disorientation. Which, honestly, I find only heightens my own horror. He's just... sort of vague and fuzzy about it all, even in his emotional reaction to his memory being vague and fuzzy. (Like how someone with mind control telling someone to 'do a bad thing' is not nearly so horrifying as someone with mind control telling someone that 'you want to do a bad thing')

I find this part particularly gave me shivers, when Segundus and Honeyfoot are being questioned about the library and they're asked of the books:

"Had they been permitted to take them down and look inside them?" "Oh, no."

Like, everything else we hear from them is just... an obfuscation of the facts? There were a lot of books in the library, some of them were very rare, and that's the impression they've been left with even if they can't remember the specifics, but that? That, we know for a fact to be false.

Which then very abruptly throws Segundus's previous assertion that he knows for a fact that he hadn't seen any magic done into doubt.

Honestly I think that whole sequence is masterfully done. Because at the time, the way Segundus explains it, we're given no reason to doubt his assertion. He says he feels as though he saw magic, but knows for a fact that he didn't. Which can very easily explain away his awareness of the extra lighting and the... (I keep wanting to call it a maze-array, but that's the wrong fandom XD) directionlessness of the hallway, as him having the sense of magic, but not, actually, knowing for sure it was such because neither he nor us the audience were shown Norrell actually casting those spells.

Except then we get that blatant untruth, and suddenly that blank space of time between Norrell's confession at the end of chapter 1 and Honeyfoot and Segundus leaving at the beginning of chapter 2 just opens up with posibilities.

There's also the contrast between Honeyfoot merely being affected in the moment he tries to explain, and Segundus having felt 'heavy and stupid' for the entire week in between meeting Norrell and meeting with the Society. I do love how clear it is already that Segundus is sensitive to magic, the way he noticed so clearly the magical lighting and direction-obfuscation in the last chapter, and now this.

"Other men may fondly attribute their lack of success to a fault in the world, rather than to their own poor scholarship." "But what is my reward for loving my art better than other men have done? For studying harder to perfect it?"

Ooooo burn! He's so catty. What an asshole (affectionate)! Not to say that the Society (and Foxcastle in particular) don't thoroughly deserve it, of course. Everyone in this room is so ready to be offended, they're actively looking for reasons. Their lives must be so incredibly boring that this is how they choose to entertain themselves, holy shit XD

Oh, god. This attorney guy. Robinson. He is so... He's something, alright. "He was so clean and healthy and pleased about everything that he positively shone, which is only to be expected in a fairy or an angel, but is somewhat disconcerting in an attorney." No kidding. And during the whole scene he's so... blandly inoffensive and faux-innocent and defferential that it puts my hackles right up. He is deeply unnerving to me.

'This would be only fair' he says, of a deeply unfair and rigged agreement designed solely to punish them. 'Then surely they would recognise magic when they saw it' he says, as if he's not perfectly aware that they've just been given an incentive to fucking lie about it. 'All your friends have done it' he says, as the only argument he can come up with to try and coerce Segundus into signing the agreement. (Once again, much respect to Segundus for not punching this guy in the face.)

Yuck yuck yuck yuck yuck. Creepy motherfucker.

I love the descriptions of scenery and environment in this book so much, they're so damn evocative:

"The very voices of York's citizens were altered by a white silence that swallowed up every sound." "The winter gloom was quite gone, and in its place was a fearful light; the winter sun reflected many times over by the snowy earth."

Oh. Hmm. I can't be sure, but I think this is the first time the narrator has inserted themself quite so blatantly into the narrative. Things have been couched as observations before, but I don't remember before this the narrator actually referring to themself, or directly addressing the reader, or positing an opinion of their own? (I may have to go back and listen to chapter 1 again to check...)

"brooding blue shadows of the cathedral's west face" "sailing magisterially around the corner like a fat black ship" "he had a strong thin face with something twisted in it like a tree root" More great description and more adjective-adjective-noun phrases.

And then we come to Segundus and Childermass's second first meeting. Again, I feel so bad for Segundus, having his mind and memory messed with like this, but, if you'll excuse me a moment, -shipper goggles on- Segundus still remembers him! "I've seen you... I can picture you! Oh, where?" Can't remember so much as taking down the books that so enthralled him in the library never mind reading them, but he remembers Childermass.

"He thought John Childermass very insolent." Aaaaa, that's my blorbo! He's so cheeky, I love him so much.

"Several looked about them before going inside, as if taking a last fond farewell of a world they were not quite sure of seeing again." And we end the chapter on yet another absolutely magnificent line. Not quite the almost-cliffhanger of the first chapter, but still extremely tantalising, baiting the reader with questions about what, exactly, is going to happen next.

Hmm. Since this one isn't quite as long as chapter 1, I think I'm going to stuff chapter 3 in here, too; try and condense things a little bit XD

Chapter 3 - The Stones of York (February 1807)

"The cold of a hundred winters seems to have been preserved in its stones and to seep out of them." I have been in old churches and this is entirely accurate. I've said it before and I'll say it again, the description in this book is really top tier. Simple, but incredibly evocative and poetic.

"Bells often went with magic, and in particular with the magic of those unearthly beings, fairies." More symbolism, and this one I know less about, but at the same time, it feels right in a way I can't actually explain. Just that the vibes, the atmosphere it creates of bells being this ominous sound associated with something dangerous.

That being said, on thinking about it, I find it very odd that bells are symbols of fairies in this book for two reasons. One is the way that humans often get referred to as 'Christians' as a whole (I remember this gets explained later as a consequence of fairies being bad at telling the difference between humans, I think?), and church bells are the most commonplace example of bells I can think of. So why, then, are bells so specifically associated with fairy magic when there's such a strong connection to the way the book talks about the people who are not fairies?

And also, one of the primary uses of bells, with more significance in the past but with the tradition continuing on to this day, is to tell the time. To put order and structure on the otherwise abstract passing of the day. Which is in direct contrast to everything else we've been told about magic so far. Magic thrives in the places that are not structured to suit humans. Trying to impose scientific reason on magic kills it.

...Okay, I am definitely reaching here, but it just occurred to me that the other primary use of bells is as a warning. I can think of a bunch of examples; ye olden ships and fire-engines, castles and forts and such. All used to say 'something is wrong, action must be taken to avoid disaster'. And that makes me wonder if the bells are less a product of the fairy magic and more, perhaps, some other magic acting as an alarm.

And the only person I can think who could have cast such a wide-reaching, long-lasting spell would be the Raven King. And wouldn't that make sense? Wouldn't a King want to have a warning that some other being is trying to abduct one of his people?

...I'm reaching, but I really like this theory actually. Even though we knew the Raven King had no compunctions about stealing his own subjects away himself. (I still think it fits, as a King would feel entitled to privileges that others would certainly not be permitted.)

Which is a whole 'nother thing I have thoughts on. It's very interesting that the second real bit of information we get about him (after the bit about him having 'only three' Kingdoms being mentioned in one of Norrell's books. I think that's the only time he's actually directly named before this?), is that despite being an Englishman, he has the fairy habit of abducting people to other lands. And that ballad about it!

"The priest was all too worldly, Though he prayed and rang his bell, The Raven King three candles lit, The priest said it was well."

What is this? What does it mean? It does answer a bit of my speculation about bells, I think - they're used as a warning/warding off it seems (given that it's paralleled with praying) - but then there's that bit about the Raven King lighting candles and this, presumably, causing the priest to say 'oh alright then, do carry on'? I'm gonna have to keep my eye out for any more candle symbolism as well, I think.

"This land is all too shallow, It is painted on the sky, And trembles like the wind-shook rain, When the Raven King goes by."

-shakes fist at the author- You weren't content giving me chills with your description in prose, now you're doing it in verse?! -weeps- God. God. I don't have words for how this makes me feel. I am going fucking feral. I want to print this song out so I can eat it. Fuck.

And it's followed up by the narrator absolutely roasting the Magicians of York, which is making me cackle far more than it probably should because I'm still high off that absolutely unnecessary bit of poetry.

I love the way the narrative builds up to the magic. We get the bells, and then a voice, and then what it's saying, and then another one, and then that it comes from a statue, and then the rest of them, and between all of it we get these elaborate descriptions of the magicians reactions and fears.

Going back a little bit. The tale of the girl with the ivy leaves in her hair. This coming in the very next chapter after we were told that magicians are associated with ivy I think can't be a coincidence. And I wonder if the girl being a magician might not be a part of why the stones care so much about her murder? Not that I think murder inside a cathedral is all that common, but I find it hard to believe it only happened once in over 500 years.

"Kings, even stone ones, dislike above all things to be made equal to others." Hmm. Given how many Kings we have this story, I have a feeling this is Significant.

The fact that the stone statues that were to be repaired flinched from the chisel is... Oof. The idea of stone having a concept of harm, enough to fear it, is wild. And it raises the question of how... aware of what they are the statues are. Obviously we have the examples of kings bickering and quarrelling because they do believe themselves to be kings. But are they aware that they are statues of kings, or do the truly believe themselves to be those kings? The first statue seems aware, talking about how 'no one saw but the stones', instead of 'I saw'.

And if they know that they're stones, then... what does it say that they're afraid of the very thing that created them in the first place? Or is the fear of being 'remade' into something different? Is it particular to that statue, and another might welcome the chance to transform?

...Apparently I am my father's child.

My dad: But what is it like to be a tree??? -overthinks it- Me: But what is it like to be a stone??? -overthinks it-

I love this conversation between Segundus and Childermass. Childermass is coming at the thing so side-ways and sneaky, and yet... he's so blatant about it? It's so obvious right from the very start that he's leading up to something, and then he just... waits for Segundus to offer, instead of actually just asking? It's such a weird approach to take.

Also, the fact that we get another of those lovely poetic descriptions of the snow and the clouds as Childermass is waiting really gives the sense of a long drawn-out silence, and I can't help but laugh at the idea of this bizarre little stand-off, these two men just... staring at each other in the snow.

-shipper goggles on- "Until all the world contained was the falling snow, the sea-green sky, the dim grey ghost of York Cathedral... and Childermass." Perhaps it's an aspect of the audiobook that doesn't come through quite as strongly in the text, but the weight put on that last? Putting him on the same level as these... rather ephemeral, magical things, the natural phenomena of the snow and the sky, and the 'ghost of York Cathedral'? As well as the contrast of these... pale, dim, ghostly things, to Childermass who's so often described as dark and ragged. Even without that description here, it makes his presence so stark against this hazy, light backdrop. (And all this implied to be from Segundus's persepective =3)

And then there's all those compliments Childermass pays Segundus once he's gotten what he wanted, too XD (Even if I do kind of get the sense that Childermass doesn't necessarily mean them entirely as compliments. I don't think he thinks very well of people who are too obliging, tbh.)

You know, this is very much my brain veering off into the wilds here, but the thing about Mr Honeyfoot pursuing the tale of the girl with the ivy leaves makes me think of... this idea I've had for a while, mostly inspired by a JSaMN fanfic, On the March, where Childermass 'wakes up' the Yorkshire moors, and the notion of how magic, which in this book is so tightly tied to nature and the wild, could so easily be affected by the location in which it's done.

And if a place like York Minster can be aware of what's going on even when magic isn't being done upon it... then are the stones aware of Mr Honeyfoots efforts on their behalf? Do they see, for whatever value of sight they possess, him fighting this battle for them, and does this earn him anything from them? Can a stone feel gratitude? Is there some reciprocity or good will there? Does Mr Honeyfoot forge a bond of some kind with, or win the favour of, the Stones of York Minster?

There's a fic in this somewhere. (Mr Honeyfoot gets into a disagreement inside the Minster, and a stone drops onto the head of his adversary. Crumbly old buildings, you know, someone ought to check and make sure it's not going to happen again!)

'The Last Magician in Yorkshire' Now there's a phrase you could build an entire other story around. Another quite powerful end to a chapter, though not quite as gripping as the last two.

Well, I'm glad these two were somewhat shorter than all my thoughts on chapter 1. And I'm now more than half way through this week's chapters. I hope I'll be able to get 4 and 5 done tomorrow (or later this evening, maybe, if I feel like it?)

[esther-dot]

just saw a dany fan on twt ''absolutely convinced" that grrm only gave sansa pov because he needed a stark pov in KL umm... sansa was a pov even in agot, when arya and ned were present in KL and there was apparently no need for her to be. grrm isn't suddenly ''forced'' to make her a pov in acok/asos since there are no other starks in KL, she is a character written by grrm, she didn't spring out of nowhere in the story, he himself has her deliberately trapped in KL by the end of agot while arya escapes. the fact that she replaces ned as the stark pov in acok/asos in KL makes her very important as KL is arguably the most important city in the series and the starks the most important house and the heroes. its just... dany fans actually use no brain.

(another really old one, apologies!)

Every now and then I see posts floating around that attempt to remind people that characters aren't people who act without any direction, they're created by the author, everything they do is at his will, and therefore, regardless of how much a reader may like or dislike them, the author has a specific intention for them. I know people were calling Sansa a camera at one point, to minimize her role in the story, but Martin discusses his themes in her chapter too.

I mean, as entertaining as it is to pretend that Sansa (a fictional character) somehow forces Martin to write her, it's through her eyes we experience the beauty of what knights/chivalry are meant to be, the horror of what it has become. I think that’s missed by a lot of fans who never idealized any of that in the first place, but Sansa isn’t stupid, we’re meant to be disillusioned and horrified right alongside her. It is Sansa's direwolf that is killed to show us the weakness and injustice of Robert, the failure of Ned to adhere to his own ideals. It is Sansa who performs to every high expectation and still suffers, assuring us that it is not rebellion or noncomformity that is the problem, but their world.

The juxtaposition between her and Cersei, the eventual comparisons between her and Dany (this is not a shipping thing y'all, foils are just part of lit), that's where we're getting Martin's discussion of female heirs, power, leadership styles (obvy, with Asha and Arianne too), so yes, Sansa is an important perspective on the corruption and cruelty of court life and KL, but the idea that Sansa is present primarily in service of that, not really? She's important in her own right, a unique form of influence in a world that could really benefit from her ideals, even if we haven't gotten her rise to power yet.