#FOR CONTEXT SHE ASKED IF SHE HAD A SCENE IN HER BOOKS WHERE ONE CHARACTER HAD A HAND OVER ANOTHER CHARACTERS MOUTH AND LICKED THEIR HAND

[juliette-cai-enthusiast]

Hey uh. Chloe Gong just replied to my Instagram DM and posted it on her story. What the fuck.

[mxtxfanatic]

What I find so interesting about Jin Guangyao's explanation about why he finally decided to kill Jin Guangshan is that even though he's lying in his retelling to get the others to lower their guard, the original convo and the impression it left on him gives us such interesting insight into the Meng mother-son duo. This is what he says in Guanyin Temple:

“Why was a sect leader who spent money like water unwilling to do the smallest favor and buy my mother’s freedom? Simple—it was too much trouble. My mother waited for so many years, weaving together so many difficult circumstances when she talked to me, imagining for his sake so many hardships. And the real reason was only a single word: trouble. “This is what he said, ‘It’s especially women who’ve read some books who think they’re a level higher than other women. They’re the most troublesome, with so many demands and unrealistic thoughts. If I bought her freedom and took her back to Lanling, who knows how much fuss she’d make. It was best that I let her stay where she was just like that. With her conditions, she’d probably be popular for a few more years. She wouldn’t have to worry about her spendings for the rest of her life.’ “‘Son? Oh, forget it.’” Jin GuangYao’s memory was extraordinary. With such a word-by-word repetition, one could even imagine that drunk expression of Jin GuangShan’s when he said these words, “Brother, look, these three words are all that I’m worth to my father, ‘Oh, forget it.’ Hahahaha...”

—Chapt. 106: Hatred, exr

This is the actual scene and context of what Jin Guangyao is repeating:

Jin GuangYao had long since gotten used to this. He knew when he should appear and when he should not. He gestured towards Xue Yang and stopped in his tracks. Xue Yang clicked his tongue, his expression quite impatient. Just as he was about to go downstairs and wait, he suddenly heard Jin GuangShan’s gruff voice, “Women—shouldn’t it be enough as long as they water their flowers, powder their faces, and make themselves look as pretty as possible? Calligraphy? What a disappointment.” Those women all wanted to please Jin GuangShan originally. With these words, a flash of awkwardness passed over the pavilion. Jin GuangYao’s figure froze somewhat as well. Soon, someone giggled, “But I heard that back then in Yunmeng, there was a talented woman who charmed the entire world with her poems and songs—zither, chess, calligraphy, as well as painting!” It was clear Jin GuangShan was dead drunk. The wine could even be heard from his stammering voice. He mumbled, “That’s——not how things work. Now I’ve realized. Women shouldn’t play with those useless things. Women who’ve read some books always think they’re a level higher than the other women. They’re the most troublesome, with so many demands and unrealistic fancies.” ... Up on the pavilion, the women agreed with laughter. As though he remembered something from the past, he murmured to himself, “If I bought her freedom and took her back to Lanling, who knows how much fuss she would’ve made. If she stayed where she was, she might be popular for a few more years and she wouldn’t have to worry about her spendings for the rest of her life. Out of everything, just why did she have to bear a son, a son of a prostitute? What could she have hoped to...” A woman asked, “Sect Leader Jin, who are you talking about? What son?” Jin GuangShan’s voice drifted, “Son? Oh, forget it.”

—Chapt. 118: Villainous Friends Extra, exr

Jin Guangyao's scheming seems to be a trait learned from his mother. We've already seen and heard from multiple different characters by this point that Meng Shi bore a son in hopes that it would get her bought out of her brothel contract, but she did more than that. She learned the arts and education. She cultivated herself into appearing like any young woman from a noble family, even though she was a prostitute. The purpose of this crafted image was to attract the attention of a nobleman who would fall for her charms and hopefully free her from the brothel. The final part of that plan was to bear a rich man a son as, like one patron said, leaving a son to be raised in a brothel was both cruel to the son and embarrassing to the nobleman. And she wasn't aiming just to have her contract bought out, but to be bought out and her status elevated to that of a nobleman's wife, a plan that left her peers bitter. Unfortunately for Meng Shi, she picked the one lecher with a face thick enough to do exactly what the other patrons wouldn't. She bore a son, and Jin Guangshan disappeared like smoke. On top of that, her having a son decreased her popularity amongst other patrons. All of that hard work ruined in one fell swoop.

Jin Guangyao takes his mother's scheming and intensifies it. Instead of picking and sticking to one persona, he shapeshifts into soft, gentle, learned, efficient, helpless... whatever he needs to be in front of those he wants to curry favor with. However, he is also able and willing to do what his mother (willing or not) couldn't have: when those above him disrespect his station, he kills them. He forges a friendship with Lan Xichen by helping him escape the QishanWen and revealing curated moments of vulnerability with the other man to feign intimacy. He shows his efficiency and dedication to quality work to Nie Mingjue while subtly manipulating the man into attacking his enemies for him. He reveals his bloodthirstiness and petty, vindictive nature to Wen Ruohan, which earns him a spot as the clan leader's right hand man. And all the while, he is silently killing those who remind him of his low reputation, quelling dissent about his rise to power. But just like his mother, there's one target he cannot catch: his shameless father.

I won't make the argument that Meng Shi was wrong for attempting to use a child to manipulate her way into a marriage. The woman was enslaved to a brothel; there were no good means of escape in that system that didn't rely on manipulating some of the most immoral men in society. However, her lack of consideration (or possibly prioritization, since we do not get her actual thoughts) on how her actions would affect the child she schemed to have did backfire on her son. Meng Shi wanted her son to be what she thought his father would want: the powerful cultivating son of a cultivation clan leader. Jin Guangyao carries this same wish with him, that he be seen as his father's son. Instead, Jin Guangyao would be forever known not by who his father was but who his mother was: a prostitute.

What ultimately gets Jin Guangyao to commit to his father's death is not that Jin Guangshan disrespected his mother, but that he finally heard from the man's own mouth that everything he had been taught by his mother was a lie. It's not that he just hadn't found the correct persona that would make his father acknowledge him. It's that he would never be able to shapeshift his way into his father's acknowledgements. It's that no matter how many images he cultivated with how many different people, no matter how many people he killed in front of his father's face or behind his back, he would never be Jin Guangyao, proud son of the Jin Clan. Even to his own father, he could only be "the son of a prostitute" too uppity to realize that she'd never be a nobleman's wife and her son would never be a cultivator's heir. And that's why his father's death isn't the only product of overhearing this convo: Jin Guangyao's first order of business is actually to raze his mother's brothel to the ground along with all its patrons and prostitutes, already planning for the establishment of a Guanyin Temple with his mother's face in its place:

Jin GuangYao, “No, thanks. Save your energy, Young Master Xue. Will you be free the next few days?” Xue Yang, “Won’t I have to do it no matter what?” Jin GuangYao, “Go to Yunmeng for me and tidy up a place for me. Make it clean.”

If he were to be forever damned as his mother's son no matter how much he changed, then let her change for once. Let him be not the son of a prostitute but of a goddess, instead.

[gffa]

People shouldn't be too hard on Mon!

I absolutely love and is grateful of Freed's understanding and appreciation of the Jedi, apparent in the book, apparent in the interview he'd given for the book:

"For me, the excitement of the time period here, is that I tend to think of 'Star Wars' as a setting with plenty of room for grey area stories and moral ambiguity, but there are very clear lines of good and evil as well. There's no version of 'Star Wars' in which you look at the Emperor and go, 'Well, maybe he had some good ideas.' No, the Emperor is evil. And the Jedi and Luke at their best are good. Everything else exists somewhere in there. This is a period where the remains true but no one really knows that the Emperor is evil.

"As far as the public is concerned, this guy just won the worst war in living memory. The Clone Wars were this horrendous affair and Palpatine has put an end to it. Yes, he's declared himself Emperor but he's not the embodiment of all evil. There's not even a Death Star out there. On the absolute good side, the Jedi have sort of been tarnished in recent years. War scrapes away at the shining morality of any organization."

I think Freed really understands what Lucas meant when he said "The Jedi have been corrupted by this war."

...but I still don't hold it against Mon cause she's going through hell and she spoilerspoilerspoilerspoiler in the later half of the book. I think she's fascinating, wonderful, equally valid character with equally valid viewpoints as Bail within context of their own worlds and experiences in this novel.

The editor of the book said it best:

Bail – knows the truth about Palpatine, the Empire, and the fall of the Jedi. Caught between his commitment to truth and justice at any cost, and the duty he has to the daughter he’s been entrusted to protect.

Mon Mothma – a master politician, who believes – like so many – that opposing Palpatine is part of the regular game of politics. She doesn’t yet realize, Palpatine stood up from the game board years ago, and she’s playing against shadows.

Mon and Bail are allies, but not really friends (at this time). Padme was their link, and now, she’s gone. Where does that leave them?

For Mon and Bail especially, the secrets Bail holds that he cannot reveal leaves a gulf between them. And what does it mean when they find themselves at odds with each other, over truths they cannot speak?

prev anon) I'm talking about their different mindsets and experiences and viewpoints born from those and I'm not excusing Mon's... *spoilers* anyway I hope you enjoy the rest of the book! It's so nice seeing an author like Freed, who usually writes non-force side of sw, handling the jedi with such warmth, understanding and awareness

This was such a reassuring message to get, thank you! I've been avoiding spoilers for the book as best I can, but I'm only a quarter of the way through it and I was wondering how the various themes were going to go, but Freed's interview quotes and your comments have made me glad that I'm picking up what this book is putting down, because that's exactly how I've been reading it. (And why I'm hoping to encourage more people to read it--though, I will give a warning that this book can be uncomfortably prescient about current events in a way that I wouldn't say Alexander Freed Is A Witch, but that can be very hard to read about if you're not in the headspace to deal with a lot of reflections of the dumpster fire we're currently in.) As for Mon, I hope nobody comes down on her for this, because as much as I scream, cry, throw up, etc., over Bail's scenes, in general I lean a bit more towards Mon's way of doing things, because I think her approach is her answer to the question, "But what can actually be truly achieved?" That she is looking at an incredibly shitty situation with only shitty options and asking herself what can she actually get done, what does she have a snowball's chance in hell of success with? And she knows clearing the Jedi's name at this point in time is not on the table, not when there are a million other things that might actually do tangible good for the galaxy. And I don't disagree with that! I love the Jedi more than anyone, but clearing their name isn't more important that, say, trying to stop the Wookiees from being classified as a non-sentient species! Clearing their name isn't important enough to blow all your political capital and having nothing to show for it when there are people who you can help, with a chance that will actually succeed! Bail's idealism isn't stupid, he's incredible and the galaxy needs a shining light like him, it's necessary for the bigger hope for the future, we can't make it through the dark times without bright, shining hope. So even when they don't always think positively of each other, I never get the sense that Bail and Mon don't understand that the other is doing what they think is best. They just disagree on what that is. And it makes sense! Bail knew and was friends with the Jedi! He knows the truth about Palpatine and how important all that Force shit is to what's going on here! Mon is operating with the idea that this is a political battle--and she's not entirely wrong, she's necessary to the recovery of the galaxy, too, just as Luke is necessary to save the day, so too is Leia, and I sort of see that reflected in Bail and Mon's approaches--one is focusing on the mystical and one is focusing on the political and I think both are important here. So, I have nothing but hearts for Mon Mothma and what she's trying to do for the galaxy.

And I don't see them as antagonists here, I see them as two people who look at each other with the understanding that there is deep love and compassion for people in the other, that they want this other person on their side not just for political alliances but because they care, and maybe they want to scream in frustration that the other person can't see what they see, but I don't feel for a second that this is going to end with them anything other than them as friends. Their scene in Rogue One implies she knows about Bail knowing a living Jedi, if not directly knowing about Obi-Wan Kenobi, which isn't something he would tell just anyone. I'm hoping for the same with Saw, there's going to be conflict about their approaches, and I love that that's clearly a theme/why these three characters were chosen as the pillars of this book, that each of them are shown to have their reasons why and that each of them serve a purpose. I scream/cry/throw up more about the Jedi because that's the most fun for me, but I am enthralled with Mon's chapters just as much, the political tightrope she's on, and I would encourage people to read for those aspects just as much as I would encourage them for crying about the Jedi. ANYWAY, EVERYONE SHOULD READ THIS BOOK FOR YOURSELF, I'm having fun with the snippets I'm posting, but the book is so much more than those things! It's one of the best SW for rounding out the characters and filling in the transitions between the movies and TV shows, but in a way that keeps the tension and emotional gut-punches despite that we know where it's going. ALSO, MON MOTHMA AND BAIL ORGANA ARE THE BEST, I'M WILLING TO FIGHT THE INTERNET OVER THIS

[justafewberries]

Something i didnt quite understand in the book is why in the arena they had to kill the game makers is theres any bigger piece to it or is it just pure brutality?

Thanks for your ask!

The answer comes from a few different places, but it ultimately leads back to David Hume’s essay Of the First Principles of Government. (It's a short read, and I highly recommend it!)

In Of the First Principles of Government, Hume discusses implicit submission. He maintains governing bodies derive their power from public opinion, and it is exactly why all of the characters acted the way they did in that scene. I will break it down by character, but first I want to examine some context in SOTR.

In the text, the training scene right before Plutarch begins to question Haymitch foreshadows the later scene:

“There’s this moment, just as I get to my feet, where I look around, and I’m armed, and they’re armed. A half dozen of us hold sleek, deadly knives. And I see that there aren’t many Peacekeepers here today. Not really. We outnumber them four to one. And if we moved quickly, we could probably free up some of those tridents and spears and swords at the other stations and have ourselves a real nice arsenal. I meet Ringina’s eyes, and I’d swear she’s thinking the same thing.” [...] “The more I think it over, the more my dismay grows. Every year we let them herd us into their killing machine. Every year they pay no price for the slaughter. They just throw a big party and box up our bodies like presents for our families to open back home.”

When you read this as context to the scene in the arena, it is the same idea. The armed tributes outnumber the Gamemakers, and in the arena, everyone is on equal footing. The tributes have the numbers and the momentum of days in the arena behind them. 

There are two lines that are thematically significant in this section. The first line is from a Gamemaker: 

The Gamemaker with the drill raises her mask and straightens up to a full height. "That’s right. And all four of you are in absolute violation of the rules. You must immediately withdraw or there will be repercussions." "That’d be a lot more impressive if you weren’t shaking like a leaf," observes Maysilee, fingering her blowgun. 

The only defense the Capitol worker has is that of governing status. She attempts to assert the rules of governance on her side by claiming that they are all in violation of the rules, and therefore they must submit to the Capitol by leaving them alone. Even she knows, as her shaking voice exposes, there is no true way to enforce this rule. This is where David Hume’s essay comes in:

"When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion."

The force is always on the side of the governed. The governed, in this case, are the tributes of the arena. Yet, in the arena, where the purpose, according to Dr. Gaul, is to strip man down to his base instincts, a governing body cannot exist. The government exists to make sure man doesn’t regress to said instincts. Therefore, the government cannot exist in the arena in the same way it does in the rest of Panem. Ergo, the public opinion needed to enforce the rules is obsolete, to the point where both parties are on equal grounds. There is no illusion of power. 

The second line is: 

Silka seems stunned into inertia as well. “What’d you do? Did you kill Gamemmakers? They’ll never let us win now!”

Silka still believes there are winners in the games. In fact, she goes so far as to say “let us win”, thus she recognizes that the Capitol has true control over who wins, and prior to this, she expected to be able to win. Now, she believes winning is a right that the Capitol can revoke, which lends itself to the idea of Hume’s secondary principles of government:

"There are indeed other principles, which add force to these, and determine, limit, or alter their operation; such as self-interest, fear, and affection: But still we may assert, that these other principles can have no influence alone, but suppose the antecedent influence of those opinions above-mentioned."

Because Silka expects to be able to win, she is stunned into submission under her expectation of particular rewards:

"For, first, as to self-interest, by which I mean the expectation of particular rewards, distinct from the general protection which we receive from government, it is evident that the magistrate's authority must be antecedently established, at least be hoped for, in order to produce this expectation."

On the other side, fear stuns Haymitch. Hume details how fear is a form of submission:

"No man would have any reason to fear the fury of a tyrant, if he had no authority over any but from fear; since, as a single man, his bodily force can reach but a small way, and all the farther power he possesses must be founded either on our own opinion, or on the presumed opinion of others."

Haymitch recognizes how futile it would be to take down a few Gamemakers. It is the same reason he deduces when he reflects on his time in the training center. They may outnumber the peacekeepers in the training center, but what would happen? It would be a fruitless rebellion, and public opinion would squash anything that could potentially develop from it. Hume’s discussion of fear is not exactly fear of the tyrant himself, rather, fear of the power he possesses over others. Snow had public opinion on his side outside of the arena. Killing a few Gamemakers here would just bring upon the tyrant’s arsenal.

Maysilee and Maritte, however, both recognize that the perception of power via public opinion doesn’t exist in the arena. Both realize they cannot be punished more than they already are. I don’t usually quote the movies, but I think Reaper’s taunting of the Capitol when he rips the flag down in the 10th Games suits this philosophy extremely well: 

“Are you gonna punish me now? Are you going to punish me now?”

Both girls act because they are disillusioned with the power of the Capitol. They refuse to submit. They are free from the secondary aspects of self-interest, fear, and affection. Maysilee alludes to the idea that winning was never going to happen in the first place: 

Maysilee’s voice drips honey. “Still chasing that sad little dream, Silka?” 

While one can interpret this by assuming Maysilee means she was going to kill Silka, it can also be taken to counter Silka’s belief of a fair win, calling it a dream. Maysilee likely recognizes the Capitol can always give advantages to people they want to win, or send mutts on whoever they don’t like. We see this with Titus in his games. She doesn’t submit. 

I would like to cross reference this with the 10th Games in Ballad, where Coriolanus and Sejanus entered the arena. Dr. Gaul used Coryo’s experience in the arena about a lesson on human nature: 

“Without the threat of death, it wouldn’t have been much of a lesson,” said Dr. Gaul. “What happened in the arena? That’s humanity undressed. The tributes. And you, too. How quickly civilization disappears. All your fine manners, education, family background, everything you pride yourself on, stripped away in the blink of an eye, revealing everything you actually are. A boy with a club who beats another boy to death. That’s mankind in its natural state.”

Later in the scene, she talks about how the death of Coryo and Sejanus would not have brought anyone closer to winning. This is the same idea, just from the perspective of what would have been the Gamemakers, had they survived: 

“What did you think of them, now that their chains have been removed? Now that they’ve tried to kill you? Because it was of no benefit to them, your death. You’re not the competition.”  It was true. They’d been close enough to recognize him. But they’d hunted down him and Sejanus — Sejanus, who’d treated the tributes so well, fed them, defended them, given them last rites! — even though they could have used that opportunity to kill one another.  “I think I underestimated how much they hate us,” said Coriolanus.  “And when you realized that, what was your response?” she asked.  He thought back to Bobbin, to the escape, to the tributes’ bloodlust even after he’d cleared the bars. “I wanted them dead. I wanted every one of them dead.”

Interestingly, he makes a point about human nature that calls back to what Hume is saying:

“I think I wouldn’t have beaten anyone to death if you hadn’t stuck me in that arena!” he retorted.  “You can blame it on the circumstances, the environment, but you made the choices you made, no one else. It’s a lot to take in all at once, but it’s essential that you make an effort to answer that question. Who are human beings? Because who we are determines the type of governing we need. Later on, I hope you can reflect and be honest with yourself about what you learned tonight.” Dr. Gaul began to wrap his wound in gauze.

While initially it seems to validate Dr. Gaul’s argument that humans, by nature, are violent creatures, his refutation actually provides the basis for the very reason Maysilee and Maritte killed the Gamemakers. “[They] wouldn’t have beaten anyone to death if [the Capitol] hadn’t stuck [them] in that arena”. 

The arena does not strip people of their nature. It forces them to submit for the very secondary aspects Hume provides. The governing body forces them to kill, and by stepping into the arena, where the Capitol has stripped itself and all beings of their own power to display what it believes to be human nature in its primitive form, it has erased the protection of public opinion. 

The Capitol holds no real power in the arena itself. Sure, they bomb it afterwards to clear out the four tributes. Sure, they sic the mutts on Maysilee and Maritte, but they do not govern in the way they do over Panem. 

Inasmuch, the Gamemakers died because the arena disillusioned Maysilee and Maritte to their implicit submission. The moment the Gamemakers entered the arena, they were powerless as of their own creation.

I hope this makes sense. Thanks for the ask!

[chaotic-ravenclaw]

UNPOPULAR (?) OPINION

(pls don't attack me for this 😭😭)

THE PERCY JACKSON SERIES WAS A PISS POOR ADAPTATION!!!

I would like to start by saying absolutely no hate on the actors!! They were perfect for their roles <3

I'm not just gonna be complaining the whole time, there were some things I did like and I do mention them as well.

1) the pacing was all off. I get that they only had 8 episodes to cram all that info and action into, but it really was WAYY too fast paced. The fight scenes didn't feel like fight scenes coz they were over in seconds, and just a lot of the info you're supposed to find out gradually or just know from context clues is outright said instead of shown and spaced out.

Also, just some of the dialogue was really cluncky and weird/unnecessary and made it very awkward to watch at times.

And then the only two long fight scenes dragged on and ended in ways that just completely disregarded a major character moment. Which leads me to no. 2

2) The arch scene. I actually really liked how they changed it to a shrine of Athena's in the show, it really showed how much Annabeth trusted her mother, and when Echidna was able to pass through anyway, the betrayal was a nice touch which really showed how much trouble they were really in.

HOWEVER!!! What I DIDN'T like, was that last fight scene with Echidna and the Chimera, which actually really upsets me coz it was our first decently lengthed fight scene. I didn't mind the fight overall, but the ending was a cop-out.

The scene in the book where he jumps out of the arch is supposed to show how much trust/faith he has in the gods and his father. He trusts that Poseidon will catch him. And yes, ik, Uncle Rick "thought it was closer" and didn't realise the river didn't go directly under the arch, but surely the fact that it wasn't closer holds that much more weight if he had jumped?

3) They completely butchered Grover, Annabeth, Sally and Gabe's characters.

Grover is supposed to be this scared but BRAVE and LOYAL satyr who loves nature and whose entire purpose is to PROTECT young demigods and find Pan (the god of the wild).

Instead, we get this guy who rats out his friend for doing something he didn't even do, AGREES WITH ARES about fucking WAR of all things (I get it was a ploy to get information but I'm still not really vibing coz it was just so out of character), and WAITS OUTSIDE till the fight is finished before running in and asking if it was over yet. And if all that wasn't bad enough, they've turned him into the exposition guy. Uncle Rick, does show don't tell mean nothing to you?? He deserved a lot better than what he got.

Annabeth in the books had so much depth and character dimension; she wanted to break free from her stereotypes (dumb blonde, girls can't fight/are weak etc); she had a lot of faith in the gods (especially her mother - I'm really glad this was shown in the show); she wanted a way to prove herself to the gods.

Instead her character is moulded down into a singular trait. 'Mean'. I personally think it's a step up from her movie counterpart's singular trait of 'girl', but they could also just do her one better and give her an actually fully fleshed out personality.

I understand that, due to her appearance, they obviously can't do the whole dumb blonde thing (which I really don't mind), but they could throw in some struggles about her race and the 'girls are weak' thing too. Obviously they'd have to be careful to handle it respectfully but it's definitely doable. Like, there are so many thing they can do with her character and all they did was make her mean.

I would have liked it to have been more obvious that she wanted to prove herself to the gods, because it's such a big reason why she chose to be part of the quest. Like, the bathroom scene should've made it more obvious that she was scoping him out to see if he was the leader of the quest she was prophesied to be in, instead of that stupid janky line about capture the flag.

I did, however, like that they got rid of her little crush on Luke, because the fandom ruined their sibling relationship because of that. (I can already see the arguments THATS gonna bring up lol). I interpreted her little crush on Luke as something similar to like when you'd have a teacher crush on primary school. A silly little crush because "they're pretty and were nice to me" kinda vibes. A platonic crush if you will ?

ANYWAYS, I'm glad they fixed that up, but I really would've liked to see her and Luke act more like siblings before he left. Like, half the confusion the first time round was coz we didn't get any proper sibling moments before (or after really) Percy came to the conclusion that Annabeth liked Luke. It just would've been a nice touch.

I also really didn't like the fight with Luke at the end (they changed WAYYYY too much) but the thing I dislike the most was that Annabeth was there. She wasn't supposed to be there. Half her struggle through the rest of the books was that she couldn't come to terms with the fact that Luke was on the Titan's side, and tried to hurt/kill them multiple times when they got in his way. It's supposed to be a slow process for her, but having her there would (realistically) speed up that process, and undermine her feelings and struggles from the books.

On another note, I didn't like how they dealt with Cerberus. It felt so unfeeling, when it was supposed to be a more emotional interaction. Annabeth loves dogs, and that was supposed to be one of the moments you learn more about her. It was supposed to be sad when they parted, but instead it was more of a "that thing is going to kill us, we need to get the fuck outta here" kind of situation.

One last thing for Annabeth coz this is getting long. The Fields of Asphodel scene was rubbish. If there had to be one of them stuck there, it should've been Grover. I truly believe he'd have the most regrets out of the three (eg. Thalia dying under his care, losing the teleportation pearl, trusting Luke, regret for ratting Percy out perhaps? Etc). But realistically they all would've planned roots. They each have regrets weighing them down. Anyways, I just thought it was stupid

Gabe is meant to be the absolute worst. He's meant to be an abusive asshole who couldn't give two shits about Sally and Percy. He's meant to be demanding and messy.

Instead we get this somewhat likeable guy whose worst crime is sitting in his chair for hours at a time. We're supposed to hate this guy, so why am I finding him kinda funny? Like yes, he's still kind of a dick, but he's not so irredeemable as he once was, and this version of him DEFINITELY doesn't deserve to be turned into a statue 😭😭

Like, miss ma'am, just divorce him, move out, turning him into a statue was so unnecessary in the show 😭😭

And I hate to say it, but the movies actually got him right.

And that leads me into Sally's character. In the books she's this brilliant woman with a heart of gold who loves her son more than anything. She married an abuser to protect her son from worse things, so he could grow up with a relatively normal childhood without fear of being hunted by monsters 24/7.

She's supposed to be a bit timid, a bit scared of Gabe because HES AN ABUSER. Sally isn't supposed to have her girlbossness yet! She hasn't gotten to the point where she can leave him (both because she's staying to protect Percy, and also because after being with someone like that for a prolonged period of time, it starts to get to you)

Side note - she's also not supposed to keep contact with Poseidon?? It kinda defeats the purpose of keeping Percy underwraps?? (I'm talking about that one flashback in the diner, it doesn't really make sense)

ANYWAYS!! Instead of some quality character development/growth, we get a character who unrealistically doesn't need it coz she isn't really a victim in the first place. They took away part of her character by taking away her trauma. The way that Sally and Gabe are portrayed really takes away from Sally, and the point that her character is at in the show doesn't make sense to her situation in the show's current timeline.

Also, the way Sally treats Percy in some of the flashbacks is fucking disgusting. THAT is NOT my Sally Jackson. My mother is emotionally/vocally abusive and neglectful, and that is exactly how she treats my neurodivergent younger brother. Maybe I'm projecting or looking into it too much, but seeing that in the show from one of my favourite characters in the books was so jarring, I almost started crying.

Because Sally is supposed to be the best mum, everyone loves her coz she's such a wonderful human being, and that's how she's been treating her son. It just makes me second guess how bad my own mum really is. Obviously everyone has their flaws, but getting angry and yelling at a child because he's scared/upset/doesn't want to do something has never been one of hers.

Alrighty, I'm gonna stop yabbering on coz I feel like this is WAYY too long, but I have a lotta thoughts and feelings about this coz PJO is my comfort fandom lol.

Please gimme any thoughts/opinions you like to share <33

[fatcatlittlebox]

I had an ask about Adar's message that he carved on the body and it turned into another meandering meta so I figured I'd just get into it in a separate post. The question was what do I think the message actually means. And I think the answer is both -- there's Sauron's message and Adar's message. Yeah. Like so many themes in TROP, there are different dialogues happening.

I think the real literal translation is from Black Speech, as I've analyzed before in previous metas, a gauntlet or missive from Adar about taking Galadriel hostage. I'll get into that in another long ass post, but what I found interesting is what Annatar claims it says: "Where is he?" It's also the title of the episode. This question is important. We can start by asking ourself, who is the "he" here? Annatar is talking about himself. No surprise there, but I think he is literally referring to a different self -- Sauron or Halbrand. He's dissociating. He did this notably, when he stood over Adar and is about to execute him saying "You don't know what he did!" Halbrand here is referring to Sauron. Another version of him. Past, present, or alternate persona.

One of the reasons I love this shot so much is it conveys so much. On either side, Halbrand is flanked by Galadriel and a horse. A calm horse. A non-galloping horse. This time she's urging Halbrand to stop and think. Galadriel is the mentor in this moment. And with Galadriel in the foreground she seems to overpower Halbrand here -- she is his master. But the context of this shot is super interesting for the purposes of this discussion. This scene is mostly intercut with closeups of every player's face and this is the only line that Halbrand utters that is not a close up. "You don't now what he did." Compare it to the shot below. The shot with him and Adar is quite a distance away from the action and that's symbolic of Halbrand dissociating from Sauron and the deeds he is referring to. These are separate personas. "He" did evil. "He" is abhorred. And in Halbrand killing Adar, he would be purging himself in effigy.

But before that, in the forge scene with Galadriel, Halbrand says, “You don’t know what I did.”

This switching between third person and first person is fluid with Sauron and Halbrand because I think he is splitting into different people. Here Sauron speaks for himself and his actions. You know that he is Sauron (perhaps even Mairon) in this moment because whenever he stares into the fire, this repentant Sauron emerges. He is taking ownership and he means it. And it tracks because he is contrite. He tells Galadriel, "I'm sorry." For her brother, for her pain. Furthermore, there are instances in this scene where his voice is a different register: deep, guttural and almost ancient.

And I believe there's a reason why Charlie has mentioned this analysis of his character more than once: to paraphrase, Sauron is a successful deceiver because he actually believes he is the persona he has created. Which begs the question, does this mean just psychological dissociating or actual splitting and compartmentalizing pieces of himself? We already know in the lore that Sauron poured "his cruelty, his malice and his will to dominate all life" into the ring. If he can do that with the darkness in his soul, it stands to question -- can he do it with his goodness? He’s also not the only Tolkien character to do this. Later Smeagol does this as Gollum. I think the question "Where is he?" is a clue as to why Annatar seems so disconnected and empty in comparison to how Sauron was as "Halbrand." There's something missing in him, something absent. Where is he? Halbrand is lost- but not gone. Let's go back to the opening line of the show again, "Nothing is evil in the beginning." Interestingly, it leaves out the second part of the quote which is in the book -- "Even Sauron was not so." That is a glaring, purposeful omission. One that I think that the show is aiming to explore by showing his fractured evolution.

[jasmineandcedar]

The bigger picture | the poorly picked bonds

I’ve been memeing for days, so I wanted to write about something a little more serious. One of the main reasons why I'm excited for Elain's book is it's implications for the agency of the females of Prythian.

Sometimes I think our obsessive love for individual characters in the fandom leads us to not see the forest because we are so obsessed with the trees. But this can turn things a little smaller than they are sometimes, and we narrow down the stories to such small concepts as vibes between certain characters, maybe even individual lines or scenes. I for one am quite obsessed with Elain and Azriel’s dynamics and sigh dreamily at their individual scenes and lines.

Nothing wrong with that, fandom is the space for vibes. And the trees can be very nice. But I want to zoom out and look at the bigger implications of Elain and Azriel's love story, and why this is the story it seems SJM has been wanting to tell for years, has been carefully setting up, and which needs to be told (and why I’m excited to hear it told). The story about the poorly picked bonds.

Female empowerment is an overarching theme in ACOTAR. SJM has said as much, and we can see it in the books. Focusing on the spinoffs, Nesta's book opened up the title of warrior to females, in a social context where they had been excluded from it, despite their competence and willingness. Elain, the quiet dreamer and hopeless romantic, has been set up to grapple with the issue of females' choice in love in her book. 

The ugly side of the coin that is mating bonds

This has probably been pointed out before but since I'm still quite new here I hope you can forgive me if I'm beating a dead horse. The importance of telling the story of a rejected mating bond stretches far beyond just setting up a thrilling forbidden romance trope for Elriel. SJM has framed the rejection of a bond within the context of mated females being seen as the male's possession in Prythian, with the Autumn Court being seemingly the worst (as confirmed in Azriel's BC).

[Rhys, about mating bond rejections] For the females, it is usually easier to ignore, but the males … It can drive them mad. It is their burden to fight through, but some believe they are entitled to the female. Even after the bond is rejected, they see her as belonging to them. Sometimes they return to challenge the male she chooses for herself. Sometimes it ends in death. (ACOWAR)

[…] On the continent, there are territories that believe the females literally belong to their mate. (ACOWAR)

The last we heard of the mating bonds was SJM depicting Elain as losing her boldness around Lucien, and Azriel pointing out how the bond in Elain's case has given her to a male she does not want, asking, ‘what if the Cauldron was wrong?’ In doing so, SJM reminded us of what Rhys and Feyre said in ACOWAR in relation to Elain, Azriel, and Lucien: ‘Sometimes the bond picks poorly’, ‘Is there no free will’, ‘Why not make them mates?’

We have seen two stories told about mating bonds that worked out. But we’ve known since ACOWAR that isn't always the case. Yet we still haven't heard of a rejected mating bond. Certainly not a high stake one like Elain and Lucien’s. Rejecting a mating bond has therefore implications for every female in Prythian. Whether it is simply rejected by Elain, or if she, through her nature of being Made, finds a way to not just reject but actually break the unbreakable bond. 

A (high stake) mating bond rejection has implications for females like Rhys and Tamlin’s mothers, shackled to bad men because of the cultural and religious importance of the mating bond. It has implications for females like Elain, shackled to a male they never chose and do not want (regardless of if we might find the male to be good, because females owe nothing to males simply because they're nice and good). For females like Mor and others who are queer, and more/exclusively into women, and might still be shackled to a male. It has implications for all the females threatened with carrying the responsibility of driving a male they never chose mad should they reject him and refuse to succumb to being his possession. For females mated to Autumn Court males, threatened with the responsibility of their true love's death should he/she be forced to take part in the Blood Duel and fail. This is the ugly side of the coin that is the mating bonds of Prythian. The side which story hasn’t yet been told. The side which story SJM has set up across four books. About the poorly picked bonds.

The power of Elain's choice

As it appears, we are getting Elain and Azriel’s POV for the next book, and not Lucien's (as the spinoffs are dual POV of the love interests). Given Prythian's history and customs, I think there's a narrative strength in centering the female and her choice when telling the story of their rejected mating bond. Elain's POV, and the POV of her love interest, not because he is Azriel but because he is who she has chosen. And he has chosen her too, despite her being 'given to another' according to the customs of Prythian, a fact even Rhys and Feyre (however reluctantly) are using to their advantage when navigating court politics and try to maintain peace. Azriel is not wrong to question that this is how the mating bond is viewed in Prythian.

Aside from the minor detail we haven't gotten to Elain's actual story yet, it is understandable why SJM hasn't made Elain simply casually reject the bond yet. It is understandable why Azriel has been staying away even though it ruins him. SJM doesn’t have Elain and Azriel just playing forbidden romance for the thrill. And there aren't just short-term political implications of them pursuing each other, potentially resulting in the longer term loss of fragile peace. A rejected mating bond grapples with philosophical questions of agency and fate, as SJM pointed out in her TODAY interview. And as we see in the books, SJM has given it major social and political implications. This is the stuff for a long book. Because it's so much bigger than Elain. Her reclaiming her agency is also reclaiming the agency of the females of Prythian. That's the power of Elain's choice.

And it makes sense it should be the notoriously defiant Azriel who, at her side, defies fate and tradition over his love for Elain regardless of who fate has given her to, which could result in females as a whole gaining freedom from the poorly picked bonds. Azriel, who SJM so clearly has depicted as not only defiant but as uniquely supporting and standing up for the females in his life, and as hating backwards traditions and customs. SJM has tied this story to Elain and Azriel, weaved it into their arcs across several books so seamlessly and with such forethought it is sometimes missed. Because you really have to read all books to see this overarching bigger picture clearly. But when you do, I think it is very clear. 

I think this is the immense potential of Elain's book and Elriel's forbidden love story. It isn't just Elain going "ew, swipe left" in a paragraph. It is about the females of Prythian getting their freedom and agency back. It is about the other side of the coin that is mating bonds. About the poorly picked bonds. And I very much look forward to hearing this story told.

(and Lucien will very likely be just fine!)

[whateverisbeautiful]

I love waking up and reading your Richonne posts. You pretty much hit on every scene and I am so thankful for that.

Could you go over maybe a 2 part take of what you think had happened during the months of them getting to know each other during the prison times. Also, the months they got close together in Alexandria before they became official. Since, the show robbed of us seeing those scenes. I would love to hear your detailed theory on it because you know these two characters so well!

A 2-parter? You’re speaking my language, anon. 😋 Thank you for this message. 🙏🏽 And for some reason my mind read this ask and added in “a detailed play-by-play” of what I think happened and so that’s pretty much what I ended up writing. Starting with Part One - the time in between Seasons 3 and 4 at the prison that led to Rick and Michonne being like this in the season 4 premiere ⬇️💗:

I always like to think about what specific context from the actual show could most inform these type of unseen scenarios and then shape what I envision from there. So I first started thinking about where Rick and Michonne landed in the season 3 finale. 

If I remember correctly they both rode in the car together after saying their goodbyes to Andrea, and Daryl drove the bus. I feel like that car ride might have laid another small stepping stone toward growing Rick and Michonne’s fondness for each other. I don’t imagine that they even talked much in the car because it was a somber vibe after losing Andrea. But I can picture Rick seeing Michonne quietly emotional in the car, and for reasons he’s not fully aware of yet seeing her upset affects him and his want to comfort her is stronger than he’d expect.

I can picture something like when they pull up to the prison after Woodbury, Rick just lets her know that Andrea isn’t the only one who thinks it’s good that Michonne found them. And the silence after is so clearly his “I’m glad too.” But you know how back then Rick tended to say something that felt like it was almost going to be a profession about his fondness for her but then he’d sorta retreat - I think he’d do that and just add that they all are glad she’s with them. And Michonne would just give an appreciative smile and walk away because she’d still be pretty heartbroken over losing yet another person she cared about. 

Then I think going forward, that loss, on top of the loss of her boyfriend and baby, makes Michonne maintain a friendly distance from everyone in team family for a while. Like she’s always keeping herself busy by independently tending to tasks that help around the prison, going on runs, and trying to track down The Governor. But Rick still keeps an eye on her from afar.

And if I remember correctly, because it’s been a minute since I’ve watched these seasons, Rick and Michonne both weren’t members of that new committee that was formed. So I can imagine that maybe there were times when some of the other people closest to them were in meetings or away which may have prompted Rick and Michonne to chat a bit more - but still keeping it light and brief, not having extended conversations yet. Perhaps both would find themselves observing each other at times - Michonne seeing Rick out farming, Rick seeing Michonne out taking down walkers around the prison’s perimeter. Except maybe not watching her with binoculars this time lol.

Then, going off of info from s4, I think during these months that we didn’t see something that might’ve slowly but surely made Michonne lessen some of her lone wolf ways is when Daryl asks her to join him on runs. She agrees to go with him and they build a friendship.

And then whenever Michonne is back at the prison she starts getting closer to Carl too because they bond over things like books and comics. And perhaps Michonne and Carl especially bond when she brings back a bag of candy for him after one of her runs. They share some together and learn Michonne doesn’t mind the stale M&M's, and that becomes a running joke between them. 😊

So with Michonne getting closer to two of the people closest to Rick - Carl and Daryl - that starts bringing Rick and Michonne around each other more often too in a more social context. And this is where that crush we saw had clearly formed by the s4 premiere really starts taking root.

Like Michonne and Carl build this really natural, lighthearted, playful rapport and then it leads to Michonne lightly joking with Rick too. I picture that Rick is a bit bashful around her but they still occasionally have that flirty subtle-but-not-subtle “must’ve been something else then”/“you want to drive” type exchanges.

And Daryl definitely peeps these moments at times and knows you don’t even have to be an observant tracker to pick up on the stuff between Rick and Michonne. But he keeps those observations to himself...for the most part lol.

Michonne has playful banter with Daryl too but subconsciously she can feel that her exchanges with Rick feel different. And Rick loves it whenever Michonne spends time with them around the prison. It feels like family. 

Other TWD scenes that I think give a glimpse into what that time between s3 and s4 might've looked like are when Rick asks if she’s okay after she hurts her ankle, and when Rick washes up and asks if Michonne needs help with cleaning up those walker bodies. Lots of exchanges like that going on. Showing they care and like each other but are moving slowly toward really getting close.

And through these exchanges - of which it’s rarely ever just the two of them in private because Carl or people are usually always around - Rick and Michonne start to pick up on more and more things they like about each other.

I like to imagine that perhaps whenever the community had some downtime in the evenings or nights, it’d so often end up being Michonne, Carl, and Rick hanging around each other. With Judith there too sometimes, who Michonne seems to keep this subtle distance from as the baby triggers too painful a wound. 

But when Michonne starts to really care for them and feels herself getting closer to them - finding herself thinking about Rick and Carl while on runs and looking forward to their little exchanges - she starts going out further and further to look for the Governor - and subconsciously, part of that is to distance herself.

Rick isn’t crazy about her going off alone to find a certified madman but only really shows his disagreement in facial expression and maybe an occasional remark to Daryl about how he wants her to be safe. (And Daryl knows Rick wants that and more when it comes to Michonne, ijs.).

Maybe one time Rick does mention to Michonne that she doesn’t have to go out so much or so far but she’s adamant that it is something she has to do - hence why she makes that “It’s worth a shot" comment when she’s talking to Rick and Daryl in the s4 premiere.

She might already know Rick feels a type of way about her going on these missions cuz he briefly mentioned it before (and because he can't help but wear his emotions right on his face lol), but her subconscious also knows that staying around Rick too long is too vulnerable and wakes up too much within her that she thought died a while ago. 

Finally, I picture that there’s one night when Rick, Michonne, and Carl are just enjoying some downtime chatting together as usual but then either Carl falls asleep or somehow he leaves to talk with one of the kids around the prison and it’s a rare moment where it’s just Rick and Michonne together.

And that night they start talking on a more personal level. They don’t divulge their life stories or anything because I don’t think they really deep-dived into getting to know each other like that until the second half of season 4. But in this conversation, they do open up just a bit more and give more insight into how they think and operate, which they refreshingly find to be quite similar. And in the areas they learn that they’re different - they find that refreshing too.

And I like to think that their talk on this one night was one of those things where -  you know how people say they were conversing with their person in the early stages of getting to know them and they just never wanted the moment to end and they could have stayed talking to that person forever and damn near do talk to them for more hours than they realized? It was like that. 

Rick and Michonne both know in the deeper parts of their psyche that spending that time together just felt right. Falling for each other is still something they're doing subconsciously rather than cognizantly at this point, but what they are aware of is that they do enjoy each other a lot. And how right it feels to spend time with each other also subconsciously scares them a bit. Almost like it’s too right too fast. So those walls go right back up after that conversation ends and they don’t really get a chance to talk on that personal of a level again until the prison falls.

Even though deep down both of them really would like to have that time together again, and low-key Rick is so eager for another chance to just be around her like that, that just hearing her riding back from one of her outings has him springing up from his farming session with Hershel in order to run and greet her and ask if she’s going to stay a little while. 

And that’s my take on what I think happened between Richonne in the time between season 3 and season 4. 👌🏽😌

And Anon, you know you’ve tempted me with a good time by asking to have a part two about the time between No Way Out and Richonne’s canon episode The Next World. So I'll try and have a (possibly less lengthy 😅) Part Two on the way soon. 😊

[blorbologist]

S3 eps 7-9 thoughts below the cut

This is all fresh after the episode and I gotta be up in a couple hours so it won't be fully thought out but...

I love a lot of the creative choices being made! But I think many weren't implemented well, or balanced nicely.

Just! as someone who has deconstructed Campaign 1 and made deviations to the timeline of events and etc (mind you, without the same goal of condensing things for television… but somehow the show has an equivalent perc'ahlia focus to a ship-centered fic?) I think… I can see several avenues of narrative choices that would strengthen the ideas they're going with instead of weakening them.

(My credentials here are 'almost 300k canon divergent AU that converged on a handful of similar plot points to TLOVM', but also the aims of an AU fanfic =/= that of a show. I understand and respect that challenge the team faced. But when a single amateur can point out issues that would be pretty easy to solve and detract from a very enjoyable experience... there might be a Problem)

Ripley doesn't need a sob story, she's getting a book anyways leave it there. Fully agree with @/aq2003. The whole point is that she's monstrous and evil and got her PhD out of a fucking cereal box. Percy is less like her than he thinks. But he dies and she just??? escapes??? IF Percy had to die without VM being present, having Ripley either die of her wounds right after or be unable to flee and get torn to shreds by them would have been excellent.

On that note - only Vex and Cass seem to show strong emotion about his death. Keyleth's supposed to be his best friend, and he and Grog were close this season, but. Well, not like we have any platonic relationships. Everyone's just Kinda Sad.

MAYBE IT'S BECAUSE OF THE MUSIC OVER PERCY'S DEATH HUH. Flashbacks to watching Vampire Diaries as a teenager and pop songs coming on over the end-of-episode drama.

Again just. All the platonic, non-familial (Pike n Grog count. to me. buddies <3) relationships are so scant, which is especially hard on characters who lean on that so hard! Grog and Keyleth especially are hurt by this. Does Keyleth have a single conversation (not quip, conversation) that isn't with Vax? And in group contexts she only loudly brings up her distrust of Raishan without any of the solid backbone it has in fact. (Also her going from Raishan was right last time we should trust her now / She betrayed us! Knew it! / oh maybe she didn't and I should apologize. girl. come on. please)

I have Concerns about 'late Game of Thrones teleportation' syndrome happening here. Scanlan goes from Wildemount back to Whitestone (which are completely different continents) with no explanation. Kash and Zahra make it to Emon (again, different continent to Issylra) just in the nick of time. Which, sure, would take a couple of days to carve Percy a nice likeness (but you have a druid who can manipulate stone right there), and if Kash and Zahra changed their minds and set out as soon as Vax talked to them they might make it! But uh. There's a lot of transport that's omitted, while the scenes give the impression everything is happening within a short period of time. And a lot of these conversations are one-on-ones with the relevant characters without acknowledging they couldn't be there without magical transport. Where is Allura or Gilmore or Keyleth in the back of these shots twiddling their thumbs 'hey can we teleport to the next person on our HELP US list'?

IDK what's going on with Kash. He's likely gonna be used as a lead-in to Something to rez Percy (and him?) but. That quick buildup of him being too carefree to getting smushed was very transparent and Zahra's grief didn't feel earned (though it WAS baller. yes they made them bleed girl <3).

The fact Vax didn't ask him At All about the resurrection ritual in the Tomb stuns me tho. You think Vax remembered the offhand comment Kash made about the body needing to be warm while his sister was dead? We as an audience could have used a reminder, and Vax too. Because anyone who Doesn't remember this one line from S2 is Extra frustrated at everyone for being stupid.

Raishan or Ripley being moved to be the 'Vox Machina, united, with all their Vestiges' fight is... hmn. You could argue Raishan has solid buildup (what with the cameo in Brimscythe's lair), and it does follow campaign canon. She lacks the devastating power to justify the use of all the Vestiges (tbh given Thordak it might feel like a curbstomp unless her necromantic plans are successful)... but I could see it working. But why the fuck has Ripley escaped A THIRD TIME. Percy even duped her twice! How many times are we gonna do that song and dance?

If anything, I'd have moved some Ripley stuff here. If she escapes so be it but VM putting the fate of the world on hold to avenge their friend, THEN have Percy be back for Thordak, would be tasty.

... wait does this mean Percy might not have Cabal's Ruin by the final dragon fight of the season? ffs-

DID NO ONE LOOT CABAL'S RUIN FROM THE FACTORY.

Thordak fight was baller, having all our NPCs there to worry about? a bit much. Cass why are you here. Go home before Whitestone loses its last de Rolo.

Also. Thordak my dude I know you're insane. mad even. but uh... you sent your children into battle. A TON have already died by the time you sadly nuzzle the hatchlings. This was kinda your fault. There's a reason animals don't send their babies into combat. then again you're a large reptile who talks about milk so what do I, a reptile researcher, know -

(Don't give me that crap about reptiles being bad parents we have several snakes who require maternal attendance after birth or they're Asocial Weirdos, crocodilians are VERY goo parents, and there are social lizards too.)

'fix him - FIX HIM' being gutted fucking killed me :c

I sure hope Pike's 'IT'S ME' was uh. about faith in herself. Not abandoning the god she spent all of S1 figuring out how to devote herself to. While wearing the Vestige associated with another god. the vestige that explicitly made this possible and not a nuke fire falls u all die tpk. haha. ha. (@/burr-ell)

Yes yes yes I know the voiceover and visuals fill in for 'I hear my mother in the morning. Fuck you'. but. idk. Felt like the grief of that moment was taken out of it? Also it's a banger line

Raishan's little killsteal attempt being bumped from Vorugal to Thordak was tasty! Go green girl go! ... except it did nothing but set up a few quiet moments before she turned on everyone again.

The amount of times I'm seeing things happen Again in this is... not great.

Glintshore is Not Glinting. Where is my broken glass difficult terrain?

Perc'ahlia arc fuckin impeccable tho. Delicious

And Pike got lots of fun and stunning moments so far! And Grog takin down the lair!

I love a lot of this though. The hallucination gas. Percy vs Ripley in the factory was so cool. Percy downright being Put in a Box for a while. VEX'S CONVERSATION WITH SYLDOR!!! SO MUCH!! Her being the leader and feeling so responsible for all this, and seeing herself become her father! ELAINA BACKSTORY! Scanlan leaving the party only to miss Kaylie too! Thordak being A Dad! Percy's death/Vex's grief being the catalyst for Vaxleth! The animation was fucking stellar - Vax killing Thordak, Percy's death, Pike mastering the Plate.

I don't have concrete thoughts on how I'd restructure the episodes/season (seasons?) to better balance platonic and romantic relationships, and utilize the changes to their fullest potential. But damn if the temptation to do ANOTHER canon divergence rewrite / exploration of cause and effect to make things hit a bit more nicely... make myself a challenge to only use X amount of scenes per episode/chapter, to try and match the difficulty of adapting this to television... idk

[licncourt]

Maybe a long ask but if you had to pick one highlight from each book from the vc, what would it be? The standouts moments from each book, or the ones that have stuck with you till now.

That's a really fun question!! Easier for some books than others for sure and tbh a lot of them will probably be whatever the Loustat Thing was in that particular book because nothing else good was going on, but I'll do my best! Picking the stupidest thing from each book after a certain point would take half the amount of thinking 💀

Interview with the Vampire: this one is going to be the hardest for sure because every single line makes me feel crazy and sweaty, but if I really had to pick just one I would have to say the prostitute scene. I think it’s Anne’s best character building for them both in IWTV and I find it just as layered and striking and impactful every time I read it. I have lots of thoughts about it here and here if anyone’s interested!

The Vampire Lestat: I'm going to cheat slightly on this one because I absolutely have to mention the Loustat reunion scene because it completely changed my brain chemistry at 15 years old and it's maybe my favorite romantic scene in any book ever, but in terms of just. Oh my God what a scene. I would have to choose Lestat's turning in the tower. It's such a visceral rape allegory without feeling forced or clunky. Something about the context of being turned into a vampire really taps in the almost body horror aspect of experiencing a sexual assault and the feeling of being fundamentally changed in an awful and permanent way. It’s so hard to read but in a good way.

Queen of the Damned: It's hard to pick a specific scene here (besides the obvious Loustat stuff at the end), but in general I think the Devil's Minion chapter is some of the best writing and relationship crafting that Anne ever did. In just one chapter she created something so enduring and fascinating with Daniel and Armand, enough to build essentially a whole fandom off of. She said so much with so little and it might be her last great masterpiece within VC.

Tale of the Body Thief: I had a hard time with this because there are some surprisingly great Lestat character building moments throughout this book, but the scene that always sticks out to me is the conversation between Louis and Lestat in the church close to the end of the book. It’s incredibly poignant and indicative of how much love there is between them just by showing the pain they can cause each other. It’s also a very humanizing moment for Lestat with where his character is going, he’s rendered so well here. It’s some of the most satisfying characterization for him in the 90s, it really shows his constant war between hardness and tenderness and old and new versions of himself.

Memnoch the Devil: Armand's suicide in this one always gets me because of how tragic it is in so many ways. In his mind, the events of the book confirm to him that his deepest held childhood beliefs AND the beliefs of the cult he'd finally freed himself from mentally and physically are true. All that healing is undone in moments and it's such a gut punch to watch him implode like that and see this pillar of a vampire crumble under his trauma. Knowing that it was originally meant to be a permanent death is even more chilling.

The Vampire Armand: Maybe because of his semi-death in Memnoch, I really enjoy the scene where Armand drinks from Lestat while most of the main vampires are gathered in the church. It’s not part of the main backstory that’s being told in the book, but I think it’s a striking moment after the events of the last one. This is just a personal favorite though.

Merrick: horrible, horrible book but omfg the scene where Lestat revives Louis after his suicide attempt holy shit....it makes me feel insane it's so good. I wish it was one million pages long.

Blackwood Farm: I honestly don't think I have one for BF ?? I don't remember a single thing about that book besides the ghost twincest

Blood and Gold: I do not give enough of a fuck about Marius to have a highlight from this book I’m sorry, I just can’t.

Blood Canticle: I've only read this book in full once and not with a lot of dedication, but there's this one part where Lestat just kind of shuts down, lays on the bed, and admits that modern life is too bright, too fast, and too loud and he's scared and lonely. In such an absurd fever dream of a book that really feels like rock bottom for Anne's writing, it's a throwback to TVL Lestat that feels so incredibly honest. It's such a small thing, but it's my biggest "oh....he's still in there after all" moment in very later canon. I would also have to mention just the opening monologue from Lestat too though because it's certainly memorable and certainly a highlight.

Prince Lestat: LOUSTAT MUTUAL I LOVE YOU SCENE was my immediate thought, but I would have to officially say the Louis chapter epilogue because it’s the only real closure and full circle moment we get with him as a character. I wish there could have been so much more and that it didn’t feel like an afterthought, but I’ve changed my stance over the past year or so and I guess I’m at peace with Louis lobotomy. Whatever it takes to make him happy I suppose + it was the only good outcome with Anne’s general vibe in regards to him. Even if it’s not truly satisfying without narrative buildup, it makes me very happy every time I read it.

Realms of Atlantis: Lestat officially asking Louis to marry him come to live with him at the chateau. I was 16 when this book came out and I remember where I was when I read this like old people with the moon landing. It almost makes up for aliens.

Blood Communion: This is kind of a Blackwood Farm book to me where most of it is just ??? even after reading it two or three times, but I think the ending is very sweet and kind of the best case scenario for all of this so I do have a certain fondness for it. I think most people would agree that at the very least it’s nice and enjoyable which is not always true of a VC book.

[elainsgirl]

hi! so, i want to know. what’s your opinion on feyre being crowned high lady in acomaf? do you think it was too soon? in my opinion, i really think sjm should have waited. they were in the middle of a war, and sure, rhys swore her in as high lady— because he loves her. and he saw potential. but part of me still thinks it was too early. now i’m not sure if sjm did it to pull some power feminist move but i wish we could’ve gotten a scene where rhys taught her or showed her the ropes of politics, and she could be actively learning about her court— the people she’s now ruling with rhys. and we could see her ruling, or governing. i think the most she’s done is surface level stuff, reports or paperwork, volunteering etc etc.

did the people of velaris get a say? or what were their thoughts on the matter, in regards to this twenty/twenty one year old woman now being in charge of their entire lives. we know how the people in hewn city / court of nightmares feel about them so we won’t delve into that. but do you really think the IC take feyre seriously as their high lady? i remember in the high lords’ meeting when eris sl*t shamed mor and then azriel beat him, rhys just nodded to feyre and then she went to stop him and he just did? was that intentional, or was that to show everyone that “she is a high lady, she has authority just as much as rhys”. or that time when they both told azriel to pull all his spies out (i can’t remember the context but it’s somewhere in acosf) and azriel looked to rhys when feyre commanded something, as if to say “are you sure?” it’s like they look to rhys for confirmation and then he immediately shuts them up with “she is your high lady. her word is law.”

what are your thoughts on this? i mean they aren’t perfect people. they’re flawed and i still like them don’t get me wrong i just.. i think they make questionable choices. like when they stole the book of breathings from tarquin. i mean they couldn’t have asked? or when feyre told him to tend to his wounded and tarquin snapped and then rhys said “she’s the high lady of the night court, she can do as she wishes.” …yeah, of the night court. but they’re not in the night court, they’re in tarquin’s court, the summer court, and imo that part just rubbed me the wrong way. it gave a sense of entitlement.

Hello,

One of the most polarising topics in the fandom: Did Feyre deserve to be highlady. I would say Feyre becoming Hl made 100% sense and was fitting for her storyline as well as what was expected of the fantasy genre at the time. Was it too soon? Absolutely. It was something that should have had more build up and happened in acowar, not acomaf. This is a slippery slope considering the acotar series is YA. Its not going to delve or put too much thought into things like actually fleshing out the politics and logistics of the world especially when you consider how acotar focuses more on romance. Looking at it in a surface level way, the way Im sure Mass intended: Rhys crowning Feyre Hl was the big romantic gesture, what set him apart from the other acotar men - it put him leagues above everyone else, he became the “IT” boyfriend for showing how much faith he has in his wife etc. Feyre showed she was fit to be a leader throughout acotar and acomaf. When her family was thrust into poverty, who stood up and led them when they where scared, confused and lost? Feyre. Who was brave to hunt for them - essentially being a provider? Feyre. Who stood by her father and protected him when he was being attacked? Feyre. Who is now easily one of the most powerful characters with powers of all 7 HLs? Feyre Archeron. This way, yeah - Feyre being HL so soon made sense because she has already shown the traits for it and how fitting for the role she is. Now, looking at it in a deeper level: Does Feyre know much about the politics of the court as well as her own? Not really. Is she updated on the law? We dont know therefore we can’t say much as Mass herself never fleshes out these points. Its all surface level: Mass showing us Feyre looking over reports and whatever else is her way of telling us that feyre is right for the job and is doing great. We arent meant to actually care or read about Feyre learning about the politics or how she’s contributing to the community- bcs its not the point. Mass gave Feyre her big arc - becoming Hl, its now done and dusted. She isn’t going to go into it in-depth bcs thats not where Mass’s interest lies, why? Bcs its YA and a romance heavy series. I think reading the series as an adult is more frustrating as your quick to point out how certain things are bushed over and bit too unrealistic as well as you might want to explore or have an expanded view on the world but for the og series we have to remember its written for a younger audience who picked the series up to get lost in a magical fantasy world filled with good looking men, pretty places and badass characters they can self insert with.

As for your second point: I think you make a fair observation. It does seem like the IC find it hard to take feyre seriously straight away which gives the illusion she doesn’t truly have power/a say or isnt as equal to Rhys as we were led to believe defeating the point of her being the first HighLady which was a huge deal. If you want to give the benefit of the doubt: The IC can be adjusting to them having a new boss that they have to listen too. That period where you have a new leader alongside your old one, is always a bit awkward and filled with uncertainty. Hopefully this is something Mass fixes in the next book where we see the IC obey Feyre without hesitation or looking to Rhys for reassurance. Alternatively, bringing back a point you’ve made: it could be due to Feyre’s young age. Sure, Feyre is aged up and maybe a few hundred years old after becoming fae but she is still technically 22. That is her maturity level. All the experience she has - which has nothing to do with actually ruling and making political decisions- can be fit into less then 22 years, 14 yrs if we’re being more realistic and count from the age of 8 where her ability was tested. That is nothing compared to the years of experience everyone else in the IC has, especially Rhys. Her young age or lack of experience can cause doubt/hesitation. For example, when Feyre made a command but Az looked to Rhys first, you could take it in a “are you sure about this? Do you approve of this? Am I doing the right thing? Is Feyre making the right decision?” Kind of way. It’s definitely something that would be very interesting to explore. Maybe Feyre notices and begins feeling frustrated which can lead to her developing more into her leader role and being more assertive.

I get you anon, I love these characters even if they’re not perfect. Its totally valid to question and wonder about certain aspects of the series - thats what makes it fun and can lead to such insightful discussions. You’re right, lots of these characters make questionable choices but truthfully I think it comes down to Mass not caring enough to flesh certain subplots out. Its like she just wants to go from point A to point B without explaining too much on how you get there. Which is expected and fine, her choice.

The whole sunmer court scene was sketchy and could have been handled better. It showed that Feysand arent that much of good rulers and need to work on politcal relationships. I think Mass wanted to give Feysand that air of importance and power - unstoppable by anyone and a couple that doesn’t follow the rules making them superior but when you actually think about it - it is unrealistic. Unless they want to start a fight - feysand have no control, say or power over what happens in someone elses court, they’d have to behave and show Tarquin he has the power that they respect. It does give a sense of entitlement and “im better then you” energy but ig thats what Mass was going for.

[war-in-time]

my personal view on sotr: as a book it came out, to me, as a way of collins to write something that would've make us cry, or feel. the neverending cameos, the love story between haymitch and lenore dove .. nothing more than those booktoks "tropes". she went for a cash grab and was just checking boxes i guess. i wonder if she ended up with haymitch as her pov because he's a beloved character and a covey for the simple reason that the fandom went almost nuts with the revelation of snow's hidden love life. who could have thought! the evil guy had a situationship with some girl from the same district as our sweetheart. what irony. i think it worked - it was enjoyable, added some context and clues about the trilogy and the character in general. but this trope to work twice, but in a heathcliff/catherine + romeo/juliet way? she could have done it without ruining haymitch's character forever and instead giving us a couple with the same attributes and the context we needed, because haymitch and lenore dove didn't do much except for annoying me with the costant declarations of the love they shared for eachother every two pages. hell, what about something that happened in the dark days for istance? braveheart (1995) comes to my mind. a guy that clinges so much on his gf's ghost because he doesn't have anything else in the world (for me it makes sense in war times to cling to whatever connection you have at the moment, something that gets you going), not even a family, a ma and a brother? but first we get to know the girl, their dynamic; we see them falling in love and then her dying; we don't need their love shoved down our throats to make it more believable or real because we see it and feel it with our own eyes and heart. all i can't think of is that sotr went straight to my head, it didn't even touch my heart as the og trilogy did. annie cresta, finnick odair? didn't know that well about their love story or how they fell in love but cried anyway when finnick died and cried when annie had their child (and annie probably has as much screen time as lenore dove, more or less). lol even star wars managed to make a well made prequel movie that did not end well but made all of us bawl: rogue one. but suzanne collins couldn't do the same? it doesn't even feel like the same writer to me. where's all the mystery, all the subtext, the things we all could speculate about? there's so much to write about thg universe, lore that she could have expanded and created away from our beloved and already known characters; what she does here with sotr not only fells flat but also lazy. everybody keeps bringing up the world outside of panem (canada perharps?) but she never let us see what's there, what kind of world they live in. also: both the covey girls are telling us that panem wasn't always like the one we know and, before the dark days, they were - apparently - free to go wherever they pleased. and you don't use this information at your own advantage? there's so much we don't know about this country and the people that lives there and ugh! all she chose to feed us are stories i could've find on my own on ao3

This book was 100% a cash grab no matter which way I look at it. Everyone (minus myself) has wanted a book about Haymitch for years and a lot of people from my shaky recollection were upset when Bosas came out because it was not something they had asked for. So if Lionsgate wants to make a new Hunger Games movie or Collins has run out of original ideas, it’s not really a surprise this became a thing.

It is an emotionally charged book, that is the main comment I’ve seen people who aren’t critical of sotr making on it, and they’re really not wrong. There are scenes that have a lot of emotional punches that I’ll admit I did feel something towards. Granted I did listen to the audiobook while driving and credit where credit is due, the narrator did an amazing job conveying the emotions across; becuse those same emotional beats did not land when I read the physical copy. They were very bland and just kind of there.

Side note: if anyone hasn’t listened to the original trilogy read by Tatiana Maslany, they should. The way her voice trembles when she’s reading Katniss on the verge of tears has made me cry while listening to it.

You also mentioned booktok tropes and I’ll admit I hadn’t thought of that when I was reading sotr. That’s a genre of books I stay very far away from because a lot of them are self published and I’ve seen a lot of grammatical and spelling mistakes in them. Something that should not happen in a book you’re putting out into the world; take some pride in your work and edit it. The one single book that I did read that I know people on booktop loved read very similarly to sotr: a very shallow romance where it’s horrendously oversaturated and very over the top. The writing is also very simple and the author absolutely hold the readers hand for the entire time to make sure you don’t miss the messaging.

See I never cared much for bosas, I’ve read it once, see the movie, haven’t touched it since. Was it interesting to see Snow’s descent into killing everyone that stood in his way? Yeah it actually was. But it also made Snow look like a psychopath from a very young age which I’m gonna be honest I don’t get from Snow in the og trilogy. That can be explained away but one book being in his head and the others not, but it also opened up the start of plot holes. There were a lot of covey kids in that book, and somehow in less than 40 years there’s only three covey in district 12, and another 24 years after that there isn’t any and nobody ever mentions or talks about them? I don’t know seems like trying to force a concept that doesn’t work into a story.

You wanna know what did work? Adding Padme Amidala into the Star Wars prequels. As far as I’m concerned they are the only prequels to anything that I can think of that work. Yes some of the writing, mainly dialogue, in this movies was horrible but the overall story they were trying to convey in the prequels was solid and it fit into the universe without contradicting the originals. Apart from one scene in the originals where Leia says she can remember her mother there aren’t any major contradictions (and the medichlorians or whatever the hell they called them), all the loose ends are tied up by killing everyone off so nobody can ask “what happened to all the other Jedi,” becuase we saw order 66. And as cringy as Padme and Anakin’s love story was, it is believable, we actually get to see them falling in love instead of just being told “were in love, here’s us saying we love each other over and over again,” like how Lenore and Haymitch do from his pov alone.

You also mentioned Rogue One which is one of my all time favourite Star Wars movies. You get to know the characters for such a short amount of time, but in that time you get to learn their personalities, how they interact with each other, their motives, and ultimately they sacrifice themselves for the good of the whole universe. When Jon and Cassian hug at the end when they’re on the beach and they’re seconds away from death? You feel that personally because they had real development and the director made sure by that point in the movie you’d be mourning their loss. Something that Collins barely tried to do in this book and it fell flat when she did attempt it at the end with Lenore.

Finnick and Annie is a great example too. I don’t know anything about Annie outside of how she survived her arena and the fact that she’s got full ptsd from it. But, I do know how Finnick acted when he was separated from her and the sheer joy when he got her back, and that wasn’t something I saw when reading sotr.

I think it’s a real shame that we got basically no new characters in this book. I liked Maysilee and Wyatt, a lot and I think it was a shame to introduce two actually well written new characters and not give them their own book as the main characters. Imagine how good a pov from either of their perspectives would have been? Of course that wouldn’t happen because Collins is allergic to new ideas but we can dream.

It’s really a shame to have this huge world and know virtually nothing about it. That being said I did assume Canada was part of Panem because of where the Capital is located in the Rockies, and the Appalachian mountain region is also pretty far north in the states, and everyone always mentions that district 13 was further north then 12. I think I remember there being a map made for one of the movies but I don’t think I’ve ever actually looked at it, and just going off of the books description Panem sounds bigger then just the States.

I think if Collins were to ever write a book that I would be willing to give an actual shot to, it would have to be away from all of the characters we already know. Far away from district 12 because we don’t actually know anything about the other districts outside of: wood, farming, fishing, etc. I did mention that I’d like to see a Hunger Games narrated by a tribute that wouldn’t survive the games, it would be interesting to have one with at least two pov characters to make this happen, but again, I don’t think Collins will ever write anything original again.

Haymitch was a horrible person to choose for a book because of two very simple reasons: 1) we know he spent almost his entire time in the arena alone so we never actually get to see anything happening in his games, and 2) to remedy that problem she could only do so by adding plots that made no sense and diminished the character greatly, including everything he once represented and showed in the originals.

Lastly, I’ve read many a fanfiction better planned out and executed then sotr, but most people that write fanfic do so for fun and not to make money off of it.

[sparklebunny57]

Sooo, below is an excerpt from my third novel in a series. Essentially the trilogy is about rivalries, friendships and situationships in British politics and how power and ambition affects the human condition. My first two novels were written (and I published on Amazon) in 2010 (Party Games) and 2014 (Power Play) respectively, but this final book (working title End Game) has sat dormant since early 2016 and I keep looking at it...and closing it again. I used to be a prolific writer but I entered a dry spell, and here we are nearly 10 years later and it has barely been tinkered with!

Anyway, I just thought I'd put this out there (a flash-back so it makes sense without having to have read the first two books!), into the Tumblr void, just in case anyone is interested. Now colleagues in Parliament, this scene delves into how the characters' rivalry originated, back in their Oxford days.

For context, throughout the books Jeremy is super nice and Colin is a total bastard, so this is a rather skewed memory of Colin's...

Thanks for reading 🙏

His best man Jeremy turned up at the scene as soon as he had heard, pulled him from the road where she had lain, where Colin sat in shock, and scooped up her shoes. They must have looked a fright in the mortuary in full evening dress, Colin's tailcoat and crisp white shirt spattered with Alice's blood from where he had held her and sobbed. Jeremy, his best friend and his silent support, propped him up when he could barely walk. Colin had no idea how long they sat on the floor of that stark corridor, but by the time they left a new day had dawned. The first day of forever, without her, the love of his life.

Oxford University, November 1988. Her twisted body lay in the road, battered and scraped, her ebony sling-back shoes scattered across the pavement and her eyes staring, unblinking. Colin remembered it as though it were yesterday, a constant ache in his heart which his beautiful Katie tried every day to soothe. As with these things, it had happened so fast. Alice's last wave, her last smile, were carved into his memory. She was crossing the road, you see, and she just didn't look. He had called her over, wanting to hug his new wife, stunning in her gorgeous scarlet gown, then show her off at the Oxford Union ball, his clever soul mate with her whole life ahead of her. Jeremy had fancied her, he knew that because he had asked her out before that spiteful Linda Watson came along and changed him, filling his head with ideas and false promises. But Colin beat him to it, his first victory, and swept Alice off her feet into marriage only months later. They talked politics and ambition as they lay draped in each other's arms, laughing about Jeremy's quiet, awkward ways and looking to their future. Together. She stole his heart. If only he didn't feel as though he had, in turn, stolen her life. One minute she was looking at him with such love, the next her gaze was dead. A life gone, a love crushed by metal and rubber. The horrendous sound of the car making contact with her body came back to him in his dreams, jolting him awake as he lay in sweat-sodden sheets. Once or twice over the years, he was physically sick with the memory.

It was after that Jeremy turned on him. He told him at her funeral – her funeral, for fuck's sake – that he would run against him for the presidency of the Oxford Union for Trinity term.

'I wanted it all along, not you! You do this, then we're done, I will never speak to you again, do you understand?' Colin had shouted over Alice's fresh grave in the teaming rain. But Jeremy, his one true friend, betrayed him, encouraged by that scheming, interfering bitch who he could see right through. Colin Scott always stuck to his word. Even beating him to the leadership of the Party twenty-five years later couldn't calm the sheer hatred in Colin's soul for his Oxford contemporary, ignited on that cold, dark day in 1988. Jeremy's first act of war all those years ago rendered their friendship as dead as Alice's beautiful body, buried on the same day.

[thelonely-shepherd]

can i ask your opinion on the conflation of all the major male figures in natalie’s life. her father and his friend and arthur langdon and how they are all one and the same (to the point part of me wonders if the friend actually is her father and the young woman under his arm who natalie sees post assault is actually her own self and she is just experiencing a disassociative episode as she is wont to) and with all the themes of mirroring and echoing throughout the book,,,,, anyway. your thoughts please.

oh this is such a great discussion topic GRINNNNN before we begin just issuing a warning im the worlds most unstructured and tangenty writer unless i edit so . be ready. and also i have no credentials besides liking books im like 12 years old

ok SO. the two central male figures in the story are mr. waite and arthur langdon. who along with their wives are very obvious parallels to each other. (regarding your idea that mr waite's friend is actually also her father and nat is in a dissociative state, i think thats a great theory and also one i had, but i ended up not sticking with that interpretation for a few reasons. im not going to consider him a central male character bc he isnt really a CHARACTER as much as a.. means to an end? the end being. well. probably the most central scene to the entire book)

from the very beginning of the book mr waite establishes himself as god . it's in his opening monologue. god. i AM god.

and you could say in effect that he IS a sort of god - in the beginning of the novel he DOES hold a lot of power over his household and especially over natalie. i think he is in effect the only "god" figure natalie has ever had (though even from the beginning she does doubt him at least a little) which makes him the central figure of power in her life. even with her doubts , even unconsciously (a good example of this, i think, is when she "combs her hair so it falls carelessly" before seeing him. inherently the act of combing your hair shows that you DO care), everything she does is to please him.

during the assault scene natalie thinks "oh my dear God sweet christ" which i took as. calling out to her father. and of course he doesnt help (if anything the circumstances are directly HIS fault - it's his party, he's allowing his 17 year old daughter to drink with adults, AND i think its been implied that he,. gets around. and these parties are possibly a place where that happens, especially seeing as he has his arm around the waist of a young woman when he's mentioned). this mr waite fault/passiveness happens a lot (think also the scene when natalie returns home and they have that weird talk involving suicide)

when natalie goes to college another male figure enters her life . arthur langdon!! everyones favorite creepyyy fucking english teacher. and what do you know ,.,. not only is he is a DIRECT parallel to mr waite, but these two characters are made aware of each other and become (imo) kind of obsessed with each other. theyre basically communicating through natalie despite never actually meeting, subtly putting down each other's work and inquiring about each other constantly. and i think its mostly in context of their control over natalie - they both kinda strive to be that driving force in Nat's life.

during her time at college, nat begins straying more and more to arthur langdon and away from her father (and he notices.. his letters get more and more (albeit subtly) desperate) . they both occupy effectively the same space in her mind - like you said, theyre almost a conglomerate. but they still exist as extremely lame pathetic JEALOUS individuals within the universe of the story and so they continue to rage this snarky never-actually-meeting power war.

arthur, i think, is the character who causes the downfall of this male conglomerate as a whole. through his faults (natalie is all but done with him after.. i think the elizabeth drunk bed scene(yk the one) ? ) natalie's doubts about her father really begin to come through. she's avoiding going home (does she really have a paper to write lbr...) and when she does go home she forgets about her and her father's office writing review thing (THOUGH what i think is fascinating here is that she tells him that THIS is what she's been waiting for. i think he has been such a massive figure in her life that even though she is becoming disillusioned with him she cant bear to humiliate him . like to see his own illusion of power crumble would also hurt her).

natalie begins leaning a LOT more towards her mother but never enough to actually replace her father with her mother .ACTUALLY scratch that at the end of that scene when nat is leaving she hears her father say somehting and she mistakes him for her mother. i think it was something about not leaving? which is a more emotional statement and one that would usually come from her mother i suppose . so theyre switching up in her head. im not making sense but i may come back to that. BUT when nat has her like.. cry for help moment it's with her father. and her mother has shown that she DOES desperately want to help (not that she would be able to but still). nevertheless nat seeks help from her father who has over and over again shown that he . will not. cannot? is not able to as a person? give help .

and i think its important to note that the final most mentally ill most all overthe place section of the book comes right after nat's opinion of these two men just crashes. which isnt to say that they were providing ANY sort of GOOD structure to her life but i think the collapse of arthur (which affected her view of her father) and then her father was one of the final blows to nats VERY fragile worldview/sense of reality. (important disclaimer my opinion on the events in this book change constantly i think whats so wonderful about hangsaman is that its a book you can interpret in so many different ways it actually drives me insane but its loads of fun and what im TRYING to say in this parenthetical is that this isnt like.. a solid or the only interpretation i have but in the context of this discussion i find it beneficial and or interesting. hurrah!)

ANYWAYS to try and tie this mess together . hangsaman is a book of parallels and mirrors and repetition (two ways to look at a card) and the arthur langdon/ mr waite parallel specifically is one of the most fascinating and central to the story . male figures and god and power and such

[falling-components]

falling kink outside me 1: "The Fallen Woman"

this is the first text regarding erotic falling that i'll talk about, since it's the first i've found a complete record of. the full text of the original blog post can be found at https://sexblogofsorts.com/2015/08/13/the-fallen-woman/. analysis follows. i wouldn't necessarily call this a text on falling kink per se, but rather falling's place in romance and erotica literature, specifically heterosexual romance and erotica literature, and as an act or event that can titillate.

there's not too much to say about it precisely. it's a pretty short blog post from 2015, and it leaves me potentially wanting to send this woman an email about a post she wrote 9 years ago to ask some questions. it focuses largely on the trope of women falling in the context of heterosexual romance- what that says about their relation to the male characters, and the difference it's trying to project between their bodies. it begins by being critical of some examples of it, including a fairly comical example (if you're not reading it with one hand down your jeans i guess) of a scene from 50 shades of grey where the female POV character "shifted backward and sprawled flat on my ass" because the man "sank into an elegant crouch". hm! she ends up drawing a comparison of this scene to an extract from pride and prejudice. of this comparison, of this older text and the new, the author writes: Romance relies on a weak heroine almost as much as it does an alpha hero. In the past, illness was enough to create a situation in which the hero and heroine are thrown together. These days, it’s harder to convince the average reader that a woman ‘needs’ a man, and so romance does everything in its power to recreate that situation of old... ...Because if she doesn’t need rescuing, the author is (ostensibly) breaking the pact they have with the reader.

she goes on to explain how falling is a way to represent this kind of dependence on men of the female characters that the previous analyzed examples showcased, by using falling as a mechanism of showcasing a physical frailty. there's much, much to be said about what this says about heterosexual romance's place in the world from a feminist perspective obviously, but that almost seems distant from the falling. the falling is one *method* of displaying this constructed facade of extreme dimorphism, it is a signifier of it and not of particular erotic interest in of itself in the 50 shades of grey example. the frailty of the POV character and her submission is. and so certainly falling can be tied to that in some way, but falling survives in isolation from cisheterosexuality (obviously, you're reading this blog), and even submission, so what else is there?

the author describes a fairly visceral experience she had witnessing a horrific fall, stating of falling: "I hate seeing it almost as much as I hate doing it.", and "They’re painful, humiliating, scary. But those things can all be sexy." she describes a fascination with injury in both kink and non-kink contexts. falling is positioned as a thing of brutality and fear, and placed in conversation with these ideas in the broader sphere of kink by this comparison.

falling can be a result of submission, but ultimately it being part of or caused by something else is not a prerequisite. it can simply just *happen*. the post writer describes a scene in a book wherein a character falls as "hot", without any particular partner to exist in dialogue with. certainly this resonates to some degree with what i've written about here! the fact that falling is both a scary, terrible thing, and to some degree, a mundane part of life is what gives it some legs in my eye. falling carries a great potential for autoeroticism. in one draft of a post i mentioned "becoming Mother Earth's sub" as a potentially dangerous and powerful thing, but perhaps that's not the whole story.

the simple assertion that falling can be hot is enough for this text to warrant analysis in this blog, i think, given that this being asserted so explicitly and directly is so rare. the author mentioned that: "I did a bit of Google research earlier this year, when I first started thinking about this. Surely, I reasoned, women falling must be an established trope in romantic literature. I couldn’t find anything." if feels like an established trope, and there's examples of it, then why is there nothing said about it? why is falling ambient noise? why do so few people focus and gaze upon it, but not expect you to seek it out to be turned on by it? mystery mystery mystery of mysteries. but there may be more. and if not, we will make it, and make it our own.

[firestorm09890]

On Wuthering Heights and Canto VI (part 1)

if I don’t ramble I’ll die (spoilers, obviously)

so far this is probably the closest canto to its source material. we've got so many of the same things- Hindley being an asshole and treating Heathcliff poorly when running the Heights, Heathcliff only running away after hearing what Catherine said, Catherine getting married to Edgar (Linton, I guess? now that's interesting) and then dying, Hindley drinking his life away, even details down to Hindley asking his father for a violin on his trip where he picked up Heathcliff are the same.

The scene with Cathy talking about the feathers in the pillow was especially interesting to see, because that was such a small thing with a different context in the book and it's here in a different form.

What changed the most is that on his trip away from Wuthering Heights, instead of doing whatever the fuck he did in the book, Heathcliff ended up getting friends, AND got to see Ishmael go and destroy herself in the name of revenge firsthand, so he now has the character development to not perpetuate the cycle of abuse. I like that kind of canon divergence. we'll see if he gets worse from here, though!

I really appreciate them leaning into the gothic horror potential of a ghost in a house (though, of course, given how project moon stories go, it probably isn't just a ghost in a house, but like, that's what it gives the image of right now)

so, Linton. Linton Edgar, from the Edgar family. That's.... weird. Especially since Wuthering Heights already has a character with the given name Linton, and especially since Linton Edgar (LCB) and Linton Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights) are both very sickly (and, ngl, Linton Edgar is just as whiny as Linton Heathcliff....). But Linton Edgar seems to be filling the role of Edgar Linton. Linton Edgar also has an older brother who "left" and that's how he ended up with most of the family fortune, and neither Linton Heathcliff nor Edgar Linton had an older brother. it's definitely a standout when compared to all the stuff from above that's one-to-one with the source material. since they're already setting up some weird mirror world shit, I'm inclined to believe this is also related to that, but what the hell are they cooking

Nelly seems way too cool and cute, which makes me think she'll either betray us spectacularly, or die horribly.

Josephine, on the other hand, is hilarious and I hope she survives no matter what. I wasn't expecting Joseph at all and they went and genderbent him (gotta meet that old hag quota). Her personality is mostly the same, though the dedication to god seems to have been replaced by a dedication to the establishment, which makes sense in this setting.

thrilled to see how things get more fucked up