#I'm not mad. I swear. (narrator: she was in fact mad)

[spiritsglade]

for the character ask game i would loooove to hear you go off about essence :))

[character ask game!!]

oh birdie you knew exactly what you were doing when you sent this in didn't you.

My first impression

I think I probably ran into her first in fic but I don't actually remember anything in that regard. First impression with the comic was that this was a character with a pretty design but somewhat... confusing of a storyline.

My impression now

God her canon portrayal is so annoying and inconsistent I SWEAR. Jason and her misunderstanding and misinterpretating what's going on and immediately jumping to kill each other has happened EVERY TIME and what is the point!!! Her backstory and motivations are so opaque and the flashbacks to their time together in the All-Caste keep on dangling the promise of an interesting story in front of me and then not delivering. Lobdell and Tynion IV when I GET YOU--

However I've thought about her too much and now I have brainworms. She is the side character I have adopted as my own. I understand her better than her creators ever will <3 (I have extrapolated a lot of conclusions from like 3 panels out of all her appearances. It is working out for me.)

Favorite thing about that character

The concept for her character. Particularly as a daughter to Ducra and one of the original Untitled. The fact she's been banished from the All-Caste apparently for not being willing to give up her "dark powers" when Ducra did? That's so interesting to me. It could be such a good parallel to how Jason's moral code causes a rift between him and Bruce. Tell me more. Lobdell you will surely explore this further, won't you? Lobdell aren't you gonna-- LOBDELL

Least favorite thing

Can I complain about Lobdell again. I will not. Instead I will complain about how her little like... intro narration box? You know the thing where comics will give you a little line to tell you who a character is if you don't know them already. Hers is that she's the "last human descendant of the All-Caste" which is just WRONG? She is the DAUGHTER OF THE UNTITLED. She is like, objectively not human at this point. JASON is the last human descendant of the All-Caste, maybe. Y'know, the first human they've taken in in over a century and the first in millennia to survive a cleansing? Y'know, that guy?? Also she literally reinstated the All-Caste at this point in the timeline why are we calling her the last human descendant. She's literally they're leader right now. I'm so mad I'm so mad I'msofmkgekmreklgm

Also I really don't like that her Blood Blades draw only the blood of the guilty or whatever like it does to Artemis in RH:O #45. Or the whole capturing souls thing in #35. I hate it I hate it I hate it girl please go back to fighting people with your smoke magic.

Favorite line/scene

I overall think the scene in RH:O #35 was bad but I do particularly like her lines here.

I have never wanted to lead the All-Caste... I am a soldier. Heart and soul.

Oh girl. Girl you are never escaping the legacy of your mother. Ignore the fact that Ducra is literally still alive even though we established that she died in the first issue and her ghost vanished back in RHatO v1 #27 I'm not mad.

Favorite interaction that character has with another

Her fight with Kori in RHatO v1 #22

I think using Tamaranean tech like this is very clever!! Essence is immortal, ancient, and very powerful, but alien tech was also a weakness for her back in Issue #7 and I think that's a nice touch.

Also the fact that Kori literally summoned her to try to talk and help Jason and they end up trying to kill each other for several pages is so funny to me. Like. In the next volume Essence also fights Artemis and possesses Isabel like... girl are you jealous that he's seeing other women? Is that what this is?

I think the thing with the amnesia arc where all of Jason's friends were trying to help him from different angles and with incomplete information and in the process fucked over each other's attempts forever could have been really interesting if written well.

Close runner-up:

Right before this Essence says:

We need to talk, Mother. About the great darkness that looms over all that lives. About a mistake you must at long last rectify.

It's giving the "I think we're gonna have to kill that guy" meme to me. And that was entertaining. These are the depths I need to sink to find hope.

A character that I wish that character would interact with more

ISABEL ARDILA. Genuinely fucking impressive that Lobdell managed to write them literally sharing the same body and have them not interact at all. I don't even know how he did it. He deserves an award. How does Isabel feel about this arrangement? How does Essence feel?? Like Issy you chose on purpose to pick up the sword again and keep letting Essence use your body in RH:O #49. Let's talk about that--no we're not going to? We have to move on and do Duela's arc and Red Hood: The Hill now? Oh. Oh okay. That's fine then.

Anyway I think they could turn the bodysharing into a beautiful symbiotic relationship if they tried. Essence/Isabel as a ship is slept on I swear.

Another character from another fandom that reminds me of that character

Jerboa III/Boa from Wings of Fire. Her mother (Jerboa I) was an animus (basically a dragon that can do whatever magic except raise the dead) who created her and then basically kept editing her personality and existence for like 2,000 years so she could have the ideal daughter. Obviously this is very fucked up. Eventually Boa catches onto this, betrays Jerboa I and kills her, but not before Jerboa I curses her. We don't talk about what happened to Jerboa II. (We know that she "went wrong" and Jerboa I "disposed of" her.)

Do you see the vision. Ducra implanting "pure life" in Essence's body. Banishing her when Essence railed against what Ducra wanted for her. Essence's entire life being dedicated to this fight against the Untitled. Like we are very much getting into headcanon territory with Essence when I make this connection but Boa manages to escape her mother and also the entire fucked up legacy of animus magic and I think that is lovely for her. Manifesting that for Essence.

She's also Hornet from Hollow Knight just a little bit. To me.

A headcanon about that character

She is more headcanon than actual canon substance to me at this point. Um. She has mommy issues re: Ducra. Her banishment from the All-Caste was because Essence refused to purge the "dark magic" (The essence of the Well of Sins she carried in her, the bond that tied her to the other Untitled that Ducra had long cleansed from herself.) They'd been having disagreements since the beginning of time that just happened to be what finally made it boil over. I'm still a little vague on this but I think Ducra setting up the All-Caste and the truce with the Untitled had some long term negative consequences for the world (like how in RHatO #5 the Untitled in Middleton, Colorado had the townspeople under its thrall). Essence doesn't want to spend the rest of eternity waiting for the day the Untitled inevitably decide to take over the world, but Ducra is all 'this is your duty' about it. Also remember that the Untitled are Ducra's siblings and Essence's aunts/uncles.

Anyway Jason's admittance into the All-Caste was the trigger for Essence acting out against Ducra properly for the first time. Him being this fresh new perspective so hellbent on vengeance really helped her realize that she wanted more from her life than to be another soldier in Ducra's war against her siblings.

Do you see the parallels I'm shoving in here between her and Jason. I am just saying.

A song that reminds of that character

Alas I must expose myself as a non-music listener. I'm sorry. Random Gods from the Rain World soundtrack that's the best I can do.

An unpopular opinion about that character

Honestly I don't think anyone cares about her enough for there to be popular opinions but uhh. I think this panel is incorrect about her and Jason's relationship.

Boy and girl are always there for each other.

Are they? Are they??? God I wish they were. Goddammit.

Anyway. I think Essence building the All-Caste was actually the most boring fucking direction to take her character but I can't even be that mad because she was barely a coherent character to begin with. However, her recruiting for the All-Caste... where the fuck is she gonna get these recruits for this secret old as time warrior monk sect?? Why exist at all when all the Untitled are allegedly wiped out (i.e. the entire reason the All-Caste existed in the first place)?? Escape from the shadow of your family's legacy come onnn Essence you can do it I believe in you!!! AUGH.

Favorite picture

Shoutout to RH:O #35 for having some really pretty panels of her.

ANYWAY THAT'S IT FOLKS. If you actually read all of my inane ramblings, um. Thanks! I'm normal about Essence.

[twilit-tragedy]

I wish I could find a nice way of saying "I'm not passing on these genes" as well as "advanced parental age is a risk factor for XYZ in the next generation" to people who 1) share said genes, and 2) are having kids in their late 30s. Every time my family asks for my thoughts on having children and demography / natality in general, it feels like a minefield.

[thatscarletflycatcher]

North and South, 2022, Episode 2 thoughts

So... overall, a step down from last episode, and a significant one.

There's still the same problems with the runtime not allowing the story to breath, most noticeable on this episode during the proposal scene, in which the speeches of the characters are cut awkwardly, or the conversations between Margaret and Mrs Hale and Margaret and Frederick. They chose to keep "ask Mr Lennox for his opinion on the mutiny case", but in such a reduced way that it is a mere comment Frederick makes to Margaret on the train station. At that point... why not cut it all off completely?

In continuity with the characterization of the first episode, Mr Hale is still a wise man and has the opportunity to offer wise speeches twice. We get his conversation with Mr Higgins here, but I think it loses much of its emotional impact by having it happen about two months after Bessy's death and after the end of the strike. We also get his delusional talking to a dead Mrs Hale, but in this case it's not seen as pitiful because Margaret means to do the same and Dixon enables her, so what gives.

Speaking of the strike, its chapters are probably the best prose and mood setting of the whole book, and it's something very difficult to recreate, but I feel this adaptation doesn't even try. It even cuts the tension by transitioning from the rioters heading towards Marlborough Mills, with Margaret paying her visit and... exchanging childhood anecdotes with Mr Thornton. I kid you not. There's also Margaret Making a PointTM of saying "perhaps that's why they should allow the women to make the decisions, they might employ some common sense" which is... okay, I get what they are trying to do there, but as is, it's saying that there's class struggle only because women aren't in charge (?) It's not well thought out at all.

In general, the important scenes all get their impact reduced one way or another. The proposal does begin with Thornton's thankfulness, but it's ruined by both John and Margaret being worried about her reputation I kid you not we get: MR THORNTON: {her] losing her dignity in my defense" MRS THORNTON: "You have no obligation towards that girl"... what even) something that doesn't happen in the novel and which consequently GOES NOWHERE in this series so why add it at all. We get the riot scene but the tension was destroyed by the desperate attempt at making John and Margaret have a cute conversation; we get Thornton talking to an unconscious Margaret, but as there is no Fanny there's no Margaret hearing her comments and getting mad about them. The fruit scene is there! But they have Thornton acknowledge Margaret's presence. We get Dixon to mention her affection for Mrs Hale! But we hear her say that she doesn't love her as much as Margaret does. Boulcher's death is completely undermined by the fact that in this adaptation he's a very vocal, self assured man, nothing in his tone and speeches shows despair, and then when his body is brought home we don't even get the moment where no one wants to go tell the widow and Margaret has to do it herself, it's just... done by someone in the background without a fuss.

There are two things in this episode that made me think even more that this adaptation should have had a narrator: one, that Margaret tells Dixon everything (the riot, Thornton's proposal) and then Mr Thornton being with Henderson as he sees Margaret and Frederick at the train station. It's just so awkward and changes things JUST because we cannot possibly have any narration and I'm here asking WHY??? The Henderson thing is particularly grating because not only does he comment on what he's seeing but the conversation begins with his saying he's requiring of his workers the swearing that they won't pay union fees, and Thornton doesn't make any contradicting observation, he says something like "I have always known you to be a strong man" or somesuch nonsense.

Another thing that was... contradictory in a way was Margaret misconceiving Thornton's character twice (once she tells Higgins "Thornton thinks discussion is a sign of weakness" and then she says that not prosecuting the rioters "doesn't sound like him") which is wrong not only because those aren't things Margaret is mistaken about in the novel (she's intelligent enough to know, as is shown, that Thornton will engage people, her, her father, in discussion freely, and then is not at all surprised that he's not prosecuting the rioters) but because the adaptation itself went the lengths of adding two amicable, personal conversations between the two before that! This Margaret has MORE personal interactions with Thornton and yet knows him LESS. I'm also disappointed in the fact that the series is omitting aspects of Thornton's thought that the novel considers are at least somewhat legitimate (i.e. his claim that he has no right to meddle with his workers' life outside of work or how they spend their money) AND adding things like the compliment to Henderson and the child work line.

Another dumb bit of nonsense is that they don't send "Helen" (there's no Mary in this adaptation) away during Frederick's visit, she's even the one to answer the door and get him inside! So it's particularly stupid when 5 minutes later Margaret tells him "Frederick, close the door, we must be careful". Seriously. There's also his saying "if I could find a way to stay..." instead of asking Margaret and Mr Hale to join him on Cadiz (I suppose this is again about propping up Mr Hale --I swear I don't get why the script writer for this series is so dead set on this-- because his refusal to go in the novel, based on his "I brought my wife here and it killed her so now I have to stay here to punish myself and bury Margaret in that grave with me as well because my grief and self loathing is more important than her future" were obviously a bad look.

This is all the "bad stuff" in the episode. The rest is all right, competently done, the voice work is good (the doctor sounds awfully young, but I don't mind) but overall it doesn't compensate at all. Right now I'm not sure this is better than 1997. I think I will listen to that one once episode 3 of this one airs, and then I will be able to tell for certain.

Right now the one thing I'm looking forward to is how they manage the last part of the novel and the ending in particular, see if they will resist the train station ending, if they will change the book scene much, how much of post Milton Margaret we'll get, etc.