#tl ; dr: woman thinks she's a delight but turns out she's just rich

[aegor-bamfsteel]

It's almost funny how anti-feminist fire and Blood actually is. All the female characters either have cartoonish characterization (the evil stepmother, the tyrannical queen), or have no personality whatsoever. Rhaenys is the "Queen who never was" but actively supports the murder of her son and the daughter of her 'usurper' cousin? Laena is the rider of Vhaegar and... brave? Baela and Rhaena love their stepmom and stepsiblings, have no ambitions, character defining traits or resentments.

GRRM actually goes out of his way to mock American feminism in Fire and Blood. He has Mushroom, a crime and sex addicted (male) jester, refer to the Maiden’s Day Ball of 133–in which Aegon III was to choose a bride amongst the maidens of the Kingdoms—as “the Maiden’s Day Cattle show”. This is a reference to the radical feminist protest of the 1968 Miss America contest at Atlantic City, which included signs such as these:

Although maybe not as well known today especially outside the USA, the protest had a profound effect on the image of second wave feminism. The protesters claimed in a 10 point manifesto that the pageant judged women like animals at a county fair (to the point they mockingly crowned a sheep Miss America), was racist (having only crowned white women so far), supported the military-industrial complex, was consumerist, led to double standard stereotypes (“both sexy and wholesome, delicate but able to cope, demure yet titillatingly bitchy”), celebrated mediocrity by elevating beauty rather than intelligence/ambition as the goal for girls to aspire. They also set up Freedom Trash Cans in which to throw away makeup and bras (the inaccurate report that they’d burned these items gave rise to the stereotype of feminists as bra burners), among other tactics.

All right, so I think it’s obvious that GRRM intended the “Maiden’s Day Cattle Show” to be a reference to the 1968 “Miss America Cattle Auction”, since women were judged based on their appearance and perhaps a brief interview for the ultimate benefit of a young man, Aegon III. There are a few things I found annoying about the reference. One, is that the narrative does not criticize the pageant, quite the opposite; the great lords forced the cruel Lord Peake’s hand in letting Aegon get a chance to choose his new bride, rather than be betrothed to Myrielle and thus give the Peakes long-lasting power. Two, is that it’s Mushroom—who, as mentioned, delights in telling us about the sexual exploits of especially noblewomen—who mocks the ball as a Cattle Show, rather than a woman of any social class; this takes the criticism of beauty standards and women reduced to objects for the pleasure of a male audience (as it was in the original protest)….and turns it into a sassy remark by a man who loves to talk about women as sexual objects. It’s not the families or House Targaryen being criticized for having the ball take place (in fact, Rhaena and Baela presenting Daenaera with a “found your queen” is presented as a dramatic, triumphant moment over the grasping Lord Peake) and parading their daughters around, it’s Mushroom mocking the women as objects only worth their carnal beauty and riches (“Each maid seemed lovelier than the last…. It would be hard to picture anything more beautiful, unless perhaps all of them had arrived naked”. Btw yes, he does wax lyrical on Daenaera’s beauty even though she’s 6). GRRM was so proud of this reference that he partly named the chapter after it: War and Peace and Cattle Shows. Knowing that it comes from an iconic USA feminist protest against beauty standards for women, and how he used it as a joke for his favorite character Mushroom to mock women, I can’t find it funny. Just annoying, and maybe a little insulting.

tl;dr yes I agree, F&B wrote many female characters lacking in nuance (either evil stepmothers, Mary Sues, or tragic victims. Not to put the blame on victims, but that GRRM uses these types of characters to just suffer and then die horribly, with little attempt to treat the issues they face from their POV). The author mocked feminist iconography in a few instances in this book. Not just with the “Maiden’s Day Cattle Show” (though that just seemed the most obvious) but with his one-note stand-in (whose role in the story is to get hundreds of Faith Militant killed in an unsuccessful rescue from a public execution) for Joan of Arc “the Maid of Orleans”, who has been an icon of Western feminism since the contemporary writings of Christine of Pisa.

[ofpowdered]

🌙 — ALL ABOARD ! The HMS PROMETHEAN welcomes ( WINIFRED HASTINGS ) to the expedition in their capacity of ( THE SOCIALITE ). They are ( thirty-five years old & female ) and might be painted as ( ROSAMUND PIKE ). When you strike up an acquaintance, address them as ( she / her ). Their deeds on land precede their arrival — people say they are ( an absolute darling who encourages vices around her, a beauty of grace and poise, a carefully constructed trophy ) but ( filled with the turbulence it takes to adhere to strict societal standards, hollowed out, longing for attention no matter the kind ) when the tide turns. Their purpose aboard the Promethean falls in line with ( retaining her kingdom of jewels and pearls for just a while longer ).

A (MAYBE NOT SO) BRIEF TIMELINE:

from a smaller, well-off family in new york city (AMERICAN, BABEEYY!) but she was always, always viewed as the darling one, the soft-faced angel, could do no wrongs. learned very quickly that this was a great way to get what she wanted. soft because it gave her what she wanted; soft quickly gave way to spoiled. she is kind so long as she is cared for.

always knew she would marry well one day, doesn’t find any shame of it. marriage was always meant to be an economic proposition. she is not meant to live for herself.  

marries when she’s sixteen years old to a man twice her age. he is a friend from her father’s business world traveling from london. she meets him twice before the marriage, and she leaves behind her life, her family, and her name in new york to travel back to england with him.

appears to fit in wonderfully. the life of the party, a lovely hostess, an icon of fashion and inspiration. people learn her name. people envy her name. she quickly learns to navigate the social circles, to utilize gossip to her husband’s advantage, to build a temple. all is well. all is well.

years pass in dizzying splendor until she is nineteen. when she discovers her husband in an affair, she smiles and apologizes for interrupting him. she then walks out of the home but not before leaving A Scene behind. she disappears for the next three months. everyone thinks she’s dead; half the people think her husband killed her. she absolutely loves this attention.

runs around london pretending to be someone else for a few months and then comes home because she Cannot Survive alone and without attention and without money.

goes back to pretending things are fine for the next ~ten years

wow this family sure is dysfunctional, huh. at least she has money and friends, right? right??? wrong! turns out, her husband has a horrible gambling problem. also drinking. also women. also just bad at business. wow, who knew. she keeps their family name together by a thread, but she won’t discover the depth of his problems for a few years.  

it happens almost over night. the debt collectors come, and the family name becomes synonymous with a fall from grace. she has no friends, no lovers, no servants, no one that stand by her. when she speaks to her husband for the last time, she tells him that she’ll walk straight into the ocean. that she’ll at least die with dignity, with beauty, unlike him. he laughs at her.

the promethean is a fortress that she thinks she can rule. she sells some pearls to purchase passage and decides to keep up appearances for a little while longer, but the image of splendor is quickly crumbling around her.

jealous of pantea going out in a way that will forever be remembered as beautiful and wholly tragic. winifred thinks about this a lot. probably not healthy. also entirely pro-marcus. 

THE INSPIRATION:

i am mostly thinking of her as:

Ultra Feminine: image is incredibly important to her. the terror of beauty? how there are so many Ideas about beauty and how they have all been pushed onto her and she's swallowed them all and the sort of madness it takes to adhere to them. the relationship women have with mirrors? how you look at yourself and see yourself in parts, you're never really allowed to Just Exist. and her really clinging to that, to the idea that she can find safety within beauty / image / others desire for her. truly viewing herself, to an extent, as an object

truly lots of ideas centered around her believing that she has crafted herself into a deity. that she is adored and important and lovely. and then to recognize how absolutely fragile that status of godhood is? to lose it, when she loses all her money.

true neutral in a lot of ways but kind of like how aphrodite is at the same time viewed with love and terror ? both splendid and cruel at times?

her arc: either recognizing herself as a full human with ideas and purpose outside of status or slipping into the full madness of viewing herself only as an object for someone else to use

[aion-rsa]

The Nevers Part 1 Finale Is The Most Surprising Hour of TV in a Long Time

https://ift.tt/3uSp933

This article contains major spoilers for The Nevers episode 6.

So that was something, huh? To those who have not yet seen The Nevers episode 6 “True” yet, the above headline may seem fairly overwrought. Really? The most surprising? Wasn’t the Invincible finale just like two weeks ago? To those who have seen the episode in question, however, that designation probably rings true.

How else are we supposed to describe an hour that begins, not in 19th century Victorian era London like the show’s first five episodes, but rather in a far flung future in which 5 billion people are dead and Earth’s atmosphere is toxic? There may have been more surprising twists in TV’s recent past, but it’s hard to recall a recent episode that upends a show’s central premise so extremely, so relatively late into its run. And thanks to the coronavirus pandemic interrupting the show’s production, The Nevers won’t even be able to continue to pursue this rich dramatic vein until “Part 2” of the show’s first season arrives at a still-undetermined later date.

As conceived by prolific TV creator Joss Whedon (before he left the project perhaps in part for also being a prolific jerk), The Nevers first presented itself as a fairly standard superhero tale. It is set in the Victorian era and features a pretty direct allegory: as culture goes through distinct changes, so too do many Victorian women, gaining supernatural powers and banding together as the “Touched.” 

That was all fine and dandy but this sixth installment, written by Jane Espenson, really levels up the show’s potential in a profound way. The Nevers isn’t just a show about change, it’s a show about failure to change. Humanity’s petty squabbles over millennia eventually lead to a world in which our only hope of survival is through inter-dimensional travelers known as the Galanthi. But ever the difficult species, many humans turn up their noses at the notion of divine intervention. Now humanity’s last chance lies in the distant past, surrounded by smog, damp umbrellas, and corsets.

This is, to say the least, a lot to unpack. Thankfully, we’ve gone ahead and done all the unpacking for you. What follows are some major questions raised by “True” along with our answers, some of which have been supplemented by the show’s star, Laura Donnelly. You can find that entire interview over here. 

For now, however, let’s get started with the obvious…

Wait…what? What was that?

I know, right?

No, seriously. Like…what just happened? Give me a TL;DR

The Nevers’ sixth episode answers a lot of questions and raises even more. We will go in-depth on all of those questions in a moment, but to break it down into only a couple of paragraphs:

It turns out that The Nevers takes place in a (hopefully) distant apocalyptic future in which the Earth is ravaged and the majority of the human population has perished. Suddenly a dinosaur-like alien species known as The Galanthi appear from portals and deposit spores that “improve” some people, giving them a stronger sense of selflessness and all around good vibes. The Galanthi also assist scientists in big projects like water purification and renewable energy. In response to the Galanthi’s arrival, the remnants of humanity split off into two factions: the Planetary Defense Council (PDC), which believes the Galanthi are helping; and Free Life, which are skeptical of them.

As this episode picks up, a woman known by only her military rank “Stripe” is involved with a PDC team to make contact with the last Galanthi. Unbeknownst to Stripe and the team, the Galanthi and his scientist friends have hatched a plot to go back to the late 19th century to give humanity a fresh start and a chance to avoid their catastrophic future. After committing suicide, Stripe finds herself in the body of Victorian England breadmaker Amalia True, who had just made her own suicide attempt (possibly succeeding as well). Cue: episodes one through five of The Nevers.

If that brief description is still a bit too complicated, Donnelly provided Den of Geek with an even more economical run down:

“I think the important information is crystal clear, which is essentially: the Galanthi is an alien race that is here to help humanity from itself, and that Stripe is Amalia.”

Now onto the other lingering questions. 

When does The Nevers take place and what happened to Earth?

The show takes place in an unspecified future…at least until Stripe is sent back in time to inhabit Amalia True’s body in the Victorian era. As for what happened to Earth, the simplest answer is probably “humans.” It would appear that all of our centuries of selfish nonsense has rendered the third rock from the Sun a shell of its former self. The air is unbreathable and unable to accommodate pretty much any life. Stripe shocks her crew by “possuming” a.k.a. taking her oxygen-rich helmet off while in battle. Stripe is also later stunned to see actual organic fruit in the lab.

What are the Galanthi? 

The Galanthi are intergalactic and possibly inter-dimensional helpers. No one knows why they first emerged from their portals to assist humanity on Earth but it is fairly clear that they’re here to help…even if Free Life would beg to differ. Their appearance seems to be that of classic scaly monsters. The only time we get to see one is in a video that the scientists recorded. That Galanthi is quadrupedal and about three times the size of a human being. It has Cthulhu-like tentacles on its face. The scientist cheerfully notes that he wasn’t expecting the beast to be this playful, as it nudges him with its head like a cat.

According to Stripe and Knitter, at one point there were around 20 Galanthi but Free Life has been bombing their facilities. As far as anyone knows there is only one Galanthi left on Earth and it’s the one inhabiting this facility. This poor Galanthi is traumatized, however, as Free Life tortured all of its scientist buddies to take away its hope. Now it spends its days in a windowed room in the ceiling, mourning its loss.

What are Free Life and the Planetary Defense Council (PDC)?

The Planetary Defense Council (PDC) is the organization that believes in the mission of the Galanthi. Stripe’s team is made up of PDC personnel and they’re tracking a spatial anomaly to find and defend a Galanthi. Free Life, on the other hand, does whatever it can to make the Galanthi go away. Free Life also doesn’t believe in some of the customs that the PDC has adopted, like concealing one’s own name as sacred. The Free Life representative in this episode’s Chapter One is delighted to tell people his name. 

It’s unknown how many people are involved in each faction, but it would seem that Free Life has the upper hand. There is potentially only one Galanthi left. As Stripe eventually explains to her new friend Knitter (Ellora Torchia), the side that banks on hope rather than fear is at an inherent disadvantage. A sizable percentage of the PDC aren’t even true believers in the Galanthi. They are scared of them but believe they are a necessary evil for humanity’s survival. We see how tenuous even the “believers’” belief in the Galanthi is when one of the PDC team betrays his crew.

What was with those Victorian artifacts in the lab?

Somewhat surprisingly (to me at least), this one has an answer already! Thanks to Donnelly, we now know that the scientists were plotting with the Galanthi to send humanity back to one specific timeframe to make things better. The Victorian artifacts were a part of that research. Donnelly explains:

“You realize that the reason that they had an exit portal was because they had a plan for that, that they weren’t coming back. Obviously you see that with the Victorian artifacts in the room. In fact, this plan was brought together with the scientists. They were working on that together.”

The Galanthi was going to exit through its portal, but it wasn’t abandoning humanity – just getting primed to enter into the next stage of its plan in Victorian England.

Who is Stripe?

Stripe is our hero. Played in the first chapter by Claudia Black, Stripe is so called because names are sacred and cannot be revealed. Instead she goes by her military rank.

“At one point they say something about declaring colors and they kind of all go through what the different names are for the different ranks. She’s a Stripe, which is not very high up,” Donnelly says.

As evidenced by her morphine addiction and cynical attitude, Stripe is not necessarily the consummate soldier.

“She’s been kept to a certain level,” Donnelly adds. “And I think that’s down to the fact that she has very strong PTSD and there’s just a lot about her personality that has kind of kept her slightly higher than a foot soldier. She’s not in any level of authority.”

All we know for sure about Stripe is that she hails from southwest Canada (which is fitting, given that the show films in Vancouver) and that her real name is Zephyr Alexis Lavine. There is surely more backstory to come eventually and we get to see glimpses of her military past when she interacts with the Galanthi at episode’s end.

The person that we know as Amalia True this entire time has been Stripe inhabiting her body.

Did Stripe Commit Suicide? 

Perhaps this was fairly clear but in case you had the same confusion this writer did upon first watch let’s make it clearer. Yes, Stripe did commit suicide. Stripe, Knitter, and the rest of the team truly believed that the last Galanthi was exiting the world for good via its portal. Stripe was already a cynic, but she couldn’t handle taking Knitter’s last bit of hope away from her before she was killed. 

As such, Stripe drank a lethal liquid that the PDC seemingly designed for just such a situation and she perished. The last Galanthi wouldn’t let her be dead for long though as it seemingly snatched her soul out of its body and sent it back to Victorian England. 

Who Is Amalia True?

Amalia “Molly” True is an actual Victorian lady, but not a Victorian Lady, if that makes sense. Poor Molly (maiden name not given) is a passionate and talented baker. Unfortunately, the only role for her in this society is that of a wife. Even more unfortunately, the man she is pressured to marry, Thomas True, is a world-class asshole. 

Thomas belittles Molly’s baking talents and even cruelly makes fun of her two miscarriages. Molly reaches her breaking point when she is unable to go to the baby shower of her one-time preferred suitor because “barren” women are bad luck. So she simply drops off some pastries and then hurls herself into the Thames.

Read more

TV

How HBO’s The Nevers Explores a Very Different Vision of Victorian Girl Power

By Lacy Baugher

TV

The Nevers Begins to Uncover the Mystery of Maladie

By Alec Bojalad

At that same moment, Stripe’s soul is guided by the Galanthi into Amalia’s body. Perhaps the creature’s reasoning was “if this woman wasn’t using her corporeal form then someone should.” It’s also not clear just how much of “Molly” remains in Amalia’s body. For now, it appears to be all Stripe/Zephyr. When Amalia confronts the Galanthi at the end of the episode, the creature does bring up some of the real Amalia’s memories. 

What is a Spore?

A spore is essentially the future jargon term for the effect that the Galanthi have on a small percentage of the population. Stripe calls Knitter a “spore” but she points out that the correct term is “empathetically enhanced.” Empathetic enhancement basically seems to mean that the Galanthi make some people just flat out better. 

Shortly after Stripe arrives in the 19th century asylum as Amalia True, she asks Dr. Cousens if anybody has been “better,” “smarter”, or “more compassionate” lately. They have not, of course, but the Galanthi’s spores have opted for a new strategy this time around.

Instead of merely making certain human beings “better” in an amorphous sense, the Galanthi’s spore has instilled in them specific powers. 

“The spores don’t affect everyone they hit. I’ve never known why. But they don’t normally cause random powers,” Amalia says.

To what end have the spores given everyone random powers? Stripe does not know yet and nor do we. 

What Does The Last Galanthi Want?

At this point, we now all understand that the last Galanthi on Earth (we think) sent Stripe back to Victorian England in a desperate gambit to save humanity. Stripe i.e. Amalia has intuited that the Galanthi wants her to gather together all of the “Touched.” To what end though?

Well, that’s what Amalia was hoping to glean from her meeting with the Galanthi, still suspended above her in a cave, at episode’s end. 

“I left my heart to come talk to you. Talk to me!” Amalia yells at the ceiling. 

The Galanthi responds with only a deep growl and then Amalia is knocked back by an unseen energy and begins to experience memories from both Stripe’s and Amalia’s lives. Tucked amid those memories are some glimpses of the future, including Lord Massey firing a rifle Amalia’s way. The vision ends with a young woman we’ve not seen before saying: “Oh Amalia. This is a long time from that little cave. This I will need you to forget.”

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

It’s unclear what any of this means but Amalia does tell Penance later on that she did figure something out from the encounter, we just don’t know what yet. Perhaps it’s not for us to know right now anyway. The Galanthi may as well be God and as Molly True once said “God makes his plans so…here we are.”

The Nevers season 1 part 2 is awaiting a release date at HBO.

The post The Nevers Part 1 Finale Is The Most Surprising Hour of TV in a Long Time appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2S0etkk