#OH ALSO THE FRAMING NARRATIVE AT THE BEGINNING AND END!?! FUCKING BRILLIANT!!!!!!!

[stevethehairington]

first book of 2024 = finished woooohoooo!!!!

[nommedeploom]

i have to put this somewhere so i guess i’ll just put it HERE, but i have some thoughts on the whole “are they gonna bring the boy back” Situation:

before i say anything though i wanna make my perspective clear, which is: i do not trust showrunners/developers/etc as a general rule. this isn’t an insult! i would 100% believe that ST writers had plans to bring him back but would keep him dead out of spite, because of People Figuring Out The Twist, or something. because that’s media and that’s the culture we live in. BUT THAT ASIDE i have thoughts so these are those.

also here’s a tiny little guy as an apology for putting my ranting in tags

i think it’s fairly well-accepted that the creators of ST are like... holding that he is Dead For Good. as folks have pointed out, his death has similarities with plenty of ACTUAL deaths in the show (seeing a body is probably the biggest one; characters who have come back in the past have never left a body behind). the scene with wayne and dustin speaks to a sad finality, and his narrative parallels to billy hargrove make it fairly easy to slot them into the same category, in terms of plot armor. (i.e. that they have none.) he was given a heroic death that speaks to character development, and maybe that’s all he was put in the show to do.

on the other hand, the kas the betrayer theory is a pretty damn good one, and it does make the alternative feel like a wasted opportunity. eddie is the first character to die in the upside-down, and it’s reasonable to assume that may effect the outcome. this also is, at the end of the day, a tense TV show; no one is going to tell the truth about what happens to him until people see it with their eyeballs in season 5, they’re just not. no amount of scenes of friends grieving, talking about him, moving on, showrunners/actors commenting, means much of anything when you’re discussing a media property that relies on twists and turns and wants to surprise you.

what i’m getting at is... it could go either way! duh. but something that hasn’t let me alone since ST4 is how it doesn’t feel like they’re finished with him yet, despite narrative evidence pointing to the contrary.

i keep coming back to how eddie is framed throughout the entire season -- as the center of the satanic panic in hawkins and as a fugitive, absolutely. but we, the audience, know from the very beginning that he’s innocent. they put the scenes in such an order that there is never a question in anyone’s mind about it. “did eddie REALLY do it” is never something we’re asked to consider, because we see chrissy’s death, and we the viewer already have more information than he does. we know that this is a thriller show about a monster dimension where fucked up shit happens; eddie munson has no idea.

i’ve been chewing on this for a while. what’s the point? bob newby, mayherestinpeace, is a good example to me of the opposite of this. he’s introduced, and other characters make it abundantly clear to the viewer that... this guy is kind of a square. they don’t trust him. he doesn’t Get It. we are waiting and waiting and waiting for him to abandon joyce, just like she’s waiting for him to abandon her, and hopper is waiting for him to abandon her.

but he doesn’t. bob newby’s death to me was one of the first real gut-punch twists of the show, i think it was brilliant. what a way to establish a character as... not evil, but also not one of them, and what a way to make it matter so much.

so... why, if eddie is deaddie (heh) did they frame him so differently? there is no twist for the audience, except for a cheap emotional grab from dustin. one of the pillars of ST4 was “kill the freak,” and then they... killed the freak. hawkins still sees him as a satanic cult leader, there is no oh moment of folks having their perspectives changed, either onscreen or off. dustin & wayne’s interaction is arguably sort of this, but... not really. they’re the two people in the whole show who knew from minute one that eddie was innocent, and trusted him implicitly. and maybe the tragedy of that was the point, but... it seems like an unfinished point, or even a red herring.

of course, i can begrudgingly accept some accidental reasons for this: changing writers, filming during covid, etc etc. but assuming for the moment that this was a deliberate writing choice, i think it speaks to further plans for him down the road, and with more than just his... uh. corpse. imo ST’s writing is, on the whole, pretty competent with moments of being Very Good. i see it as like a really high-budget, at times shockingly brilliant, chain of B movies.

so idk what they’re gonna do obviously, neither does anyone. but i feel like i haven’t seen this particular thread discussed before and i had to get it out so HERE IT IS. okay byeeee

[tailoredjade]

books recs <3

Literary fiction

Giovanni's Room

the kind of book that’s best if you go in blind. just know that baldwin remains a classic for a reason. his writing makes me want to gnaw on my own wrist (affectionate). his use of motifs makes me want to pull out a cork-board and pin up snippets of pages just to connect them with bits of red thread. devastating, raw, heart wrenching, tragic, other adjectives of the sort

Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

gilda is a deeply mentally-ill atheist lesbian who’s ends up getting hired as a receptionist in a catholic church when in search for free therapy. subsequent shenanigans ensue and by shenanigans i mean she’s just … spirals. this novel is sharp, funny, deeply relatable (isn’t that reveling), and at it’s core utterly human

Fantasy

A Marvelous Light

ok hear me out: for fans of our flag means death, i found the perfect edwardian fantasy romance for you. god this book is such a delight. robin gets the thrust into magical society after he mistakenly gets declared a liaison. obviously he falls in love with his magical counterpart, who’s prickly and obsessed with libraries. it’s quite possible that i am a tad in love with him. super interesting magic system + lush setting (also the author is a host of an absolute banging podcast called ‘be the serpent’)

The Poppy War (and subsequent installments)

where do i ever begin. the world building is brilliant and rooted within chinese history. it’s gritty and dark and so bloody smart. rin is the epitome of the post that’s like ‘i’m a girlboss, i’m a war criminal, i’m the next virgin mary, i will defeat god’ (paraphrased clearly). i simultaneously love her and want to shake her vigorously by the shoulders. she is my little meow meow. oh right plot. to clarify, rin is poor orphan who manages to gets into sinegard, an  prestigious military school, and there she discovers her connection to shamanism. discusses the harsh realities of war and explores the depth of relationship formed because of it

The Midnight Lie

YA fantasy that has surprisingly complex conversations about class, compulsive heterosexuality, exploitation, and toxic relationships. still tbh the relationship is what kept me reading. every interaction between nirrim and sid had me giggling, twirling my hair, looking way abashedly, the works. the lines “Nirrim, I can’t be good to you. / Then be bad.” make me want to scream into a pillow like an early 2000s disney movie. i’m so tired of love interests in romcoms being describe as swoon-worthy when they’re just some guy. sid on the other hand; she’s this delightful butch who kisses girls’ palms and compares them to indigo flowers and — jfc moving on.

Non-Fiction

In the Dream House

memoir recounting an abusive relationship framed through vignettes of narrative tropes/literary devices. so fucking devastating and haunting. dream house as: queer villain, ambiguity, choose your own adventure, and death wish; all really suck with me. really think everyone should get this a read if you’re in the right place for it

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches

brilliant collection abt racism, sexism, class, homophobia, and the ways they overlap “Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action. If it leads to change then it can be useful, since it is then no longer guilt but the beginning of knowledge. Yet all too often, guilt is just another name for impotence, for defensiveness destructive of communication; it becomes a device to protect ignorance and the continuation of things the way they are, the ultimate protection for changelessness.“

Poetry

Crush

if you haven’t yet read a richard siken quote yet while scrolling through this hell-site i commend you because how. is there really anything else to say. wishbone is a particular favorite of mine but every single word in this collection makes me feral

Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver

the only time i will ever be willing to frolic is after reading an oliver poem. i come out of the experience feeling rejuvenated? compassionate? with the understanding that yes rocks do, in fact, have feelings, why wouldn’t they?

If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho

big fan of this specific translation. should be considered the lesbian master doc. that’s probably problematic. well anyways. the bit when she describes very literally fainting after hearing a woman’s laugh from across the room. slay! she’s just like me fr

[nat-20s]

i woke up at 4:30 in the morning with this messy meta about the comparative horror styles of welcome to nightvale vs the magnus archives and how i like them both very much this is not a one is better than the other post because they’re DIFFERENT but also why, personally, nightvale has freaked me out more than TMA  (the magnus archives- im gonna use the abbreviation from now on and in scientific papers u gotta ESTABLISH the acronym and it’s actually kind of annoying bc they’ll establish it ONCE in the abstract and then never say what XJFEFJDOSM or whatever stands for again so if ur like wait WHAT was that again u gotta scroll all the way back up and it’s a whole thing but I digress)   and it has to do with WORLDBUILDING and FRAMING DEVICES and USE OF SECOND PERSON and only a little bit how if a character unironically says “innit” i automatically can’t take them seriously. Anyway it’s stuck in my head so you know I had to make it your problem. Also I’m putting this under a read more bc fjsdjlks holy shit this is gonna get LONG and RAMBLY and D E E P L Y nerdy 

WORLDBUILDING, FRAMING DEVICES, AND (THE USE OF) YOU IN MANGUS AND NIGHTVALE

Part A: whose universe is it anyway? Welcome to horror where the lore is made up and the logic doesnt matter

so I am not the first or last to compare (/maybe wanna crossover a little) the worlds of

wtnv (welcome to nightvale) and TMA and like for good reason bc in many ways they feel very similar but in TMA it’s like What the FUCK is going on with all of these horrors and nightmarish scenarios I am FREAKED out where as WTNV treats it’s horrors as typically mundane which

A: plays into why when WTNV is like “remember how we’re a horror :)” it’s like OH SHIT bc if Jon Archivist is scared you’re like well yeah it’s scary out there but if CECIL PALMER, general attitude of a peppy cheerleader when facing terrors beyond imagination, is scared, you KNOW shit is FUCKED

B: isn’t entirely accurate, because I don’t actually feel like they are set in the same world. here’s where things get sticky when it comes to realities and whatnot but I do wanna stress that yes I know WTNV and TMA are both works of fictions BUT I would personally say that

TMA is set in a parallel universe:  a reality that’s similar to our own but also distinctly separate from anything that we, the audience, can witness but never participate in

WTNV is set in a hidden universe: it is set in our (the listeners) own reality, and is done in such a way that it feels like if you looked hard enough for it or if you just had a bout of bad luck or if you happen to drive down a certain road in a long stretch of US desert (side note: if there’s any real life place nightvale would be set in it’s definitely new mexico have you ever been in new mexico it’s called land of ENCHANTMENT for a reason if I drove into new mexico and drove back out a few days later and like THIRTY YEARS had passed I’d be like yeah that tracks) that you could end up in the reality of nightvale. Who’s to say there’s not a faceless old woman secretly living in your house? Are you sure there’s nothing odd in your mirror? Who can ever be sure time is working correctly?

Which brings me to

Part B: You(yes, you!)’ve Been Framed!

Listen. I fucking love a good framing device. Every time a podcast is like “here’s why the events of the story are recorded in the world of the story” I go bonkers in yonkers that shit SLAPS. TMA and WTNV both do this, but (at least up to ep 176 of TMA, this whole fuckin essay could still be blown out the water) TMA’s framing device doesn’t account for an audience, where as WTNV’s the audience is a core component

the framing device of TMA is that these spooky stories are being recorded by an archivist in order to have an audio version of written statements. Cool! It tells the audience why these recordings exist, and why they’re episodic. Later in the story, the tapes begin to spontaneously show up because of Spooky Reasons that have yet to be Fully Revealed, but it still isn’t for an audience. When Jon Archivist records these tapes, they’re basically being recorded for a Void. Yes, the tapes are originally for a potential researcher to listen to, but that ain’t you chief. You are not part of the narrative (so far at least! Again, maybe the audience will be brought into the story when it’s revealed What’s Up with the spontaneous tapes, but so far nah), there’s no in universe explanation for why you personally are listening to these stories. You aren’t present in the story, in the framing device, so you are not a part of that world.

The framing device of WTNV is that you are tuning into the community radio of a small desert town, Nightvale, that you are a part of. After all, if you are tuning into something local, you’re strongly implied to be local. Thus, we have a framing device that explains both why it’s recorded AND why you’re listening. The audience is absolutely involved in the narrative rather than a simple spectator. Cecil Palmer is not recording into a Void, he’s talking to listeners of which you are a part of. (side note: this makes nightvale liveshows SUPER fun if u get an opportunity to go to one I HIGHLY recommend it bc while there’s not ‘audience participation’ in the classic sense of like magic or comedy acts the narrative IS constructed in a way that you feel less like a witness of a story and more of a participant like the one I went to most of us pulled our legs onto out chair bc oh SHIT maybe there IS an escaped librarian under your chair making a grab for your feet SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF IS FUN AS HELL YALL)

These framing devices are enforced and enhanced upon by who the “you” in a narrative is.

In TMA, when there’s a “you” being referred to, when there’s a listener, it’s usually an in universe character. When there’s lines like “i’m sorry, that’s not what you came here to listen to” it’s not referring to you personally, it’s talking to Jon Archivist or Gertrude Archivist or Insert Archival Assistant. When TMA does use a more general “you”, it’s still in universe rather than the external listening to audience. You can include yourself as part of that general you, but it’s not inherently built into the narrative. If you want to distance yourself, you can also do that. You are not automatically in this world, even if much of it feels repeatable and/or similar

WTNV sometimes uses you to refer to an in universe character, because conversations do happen, but in the episodes where it’s like LMAO THIS IS A HORROR, the “you” and general second person is actively both discussing a known character and the listener personally. One of the most recent episodes, ep 171 “Go to the Mirror?” is a BRILLIANT example of this, where Cecil is simultaneously discussing himself and his experiences AND you as well. There’s something he can only see in the mirror, something with such sharp claws, on his shoulders, but it’s also something you personally can only see in the mirror, something on your shoulder.  You are not exempt from the story, you can’t be exempt from the story, because you’ve always been a part of it. (Also side note go to the mirror is SO fuckign good it made my heart fuckin POUND the amount of times that despite knowing it was fiction I looked over my shoulder so many times. I know a shit ton of people listened to WTNV in like 2012/13 and dropped off and felt guilty and never caught up again but like. Catch up on nightvale it’s good for body and soul and also Cecilos just keep winning)

WAY too long; didn’t read: to me personally while I LOVE both TMA and WTNV, WTNV is scarier to be because TMA feels like a story that you’re bearing witness to (also thank god british people aren’t real and were made up for the Peppa Pig Cinematic Universe), WTNV feels not just like a story that you could be in but actively already are and that makes things SPOOKY

Also this isn’t related to the essay but shout out to whoever first decided that horror narrators should have nice even voices we really all be soothed by some grisly ass stories the amount of people that fall asleep to WTNV/TMA is WILD

[innuendostudios]

Thoughts on The Witness

[no spoilers... this game would be nearly impossible to spoil in text]

Where do I even start?

I guess one thing to know about The Witness is that you can watch the famous 9-minute tracking shot from Nostalghia - where Oleg Yankovsky tries to walk a candle from one end of a drained pool to the other without extinguishing it - in its entirety. (I think it’s the entirety, I left before the clip was over; yeah, Jon, I get it.)

How do we interpret this? I haven’t watched Nostalghia, but I know that scene. Every film major knows that scene. Tony Zhou cited it in discussing lateral tracking shots, how they emphasize environment and create emotional distance from humans in the frame, and how Tarkovsky uses this to make the sequence lonely and arduous. Kyle Kallgren cited it in discussing how YouTube makes critique of certain types of art difficult, and Content ID essentially decides for us what film as a medium is even for.

Jon Blow plays the clip in full with no commentary - or, rather, the game itself is the commentary. There’s a sequence in Indie Game: The Movie where Jon Blow expresses some pain about how his game Braid was received, how he felt no one who played it ever really understood everything he was trying to say with it. That feeling might be ameliorated if he weren’t such a constituionally obtuse motherfucker.

Perhaps the scene is meant to draw parallels between Yankovsky’s dedication to a task that is simple yet difficult and the game’s puzzles, built, as they are, around complexity-through-simplicity. Except, Yankovsky’s Andrei has a personal investment carrying this candle, one Tarkovsky has spent the entire film setting up. I was about five hours into The Witness when I found this clip - more than twice the duration of Nostalghia - and I still didn’t know why I was solving the game’s puzzles or what they were trying to communicate.

Perhaps the scene is meant to draw parallels between the patience it encourages in its audience and the calm, meditative mode all The Witness’ allusions to Buddhism are seemingly on about, to give yourself over to the time investment the game demands of you. Except, Nostalghia asks you to spend nine minutes thinking about one thing; zen Buddhism encourages you to think of nothing; The Witness asks you to spend between fifteen and forty hours thinking about a zillion things. It is not a game about clearing your mind, it’s about filling your mind up. There is little continuity between the thoughtless peace of meditation or Yankovsky’s emotional collapse and the game’s intended “aha” moments.

But the ambiguity, the contextlessness of the scene’s inclusion, means you can’t be sure whether it’s contradictory. If we assume it’s about dedication, and we find a flaw in that worldview, maybe the problem is that we didn’t assume it was about meditation. And vice versa. If it fails to communicate, maybe the problem is us.

The only thing this scene communicates for sure is that Jon Blow wants me to know he watches Tarkovsky.

Jon Blow wants you to trust he knows what he’s doing. That the game is saying something. He also never, ever wants to tell you what it is. (If he could just tell you, he wouldn’t have spent eight years making it into a game, I suppose.) But this operates on completely opposite rules to the puzzles. Puzzles in The Witness are maze-drawing panels with increasing numbers of rules, all conveying their rules nonverbally, through gameplay. You see a symbol you don’t recognize, or a shape you don’t know how to draw, and you try things out, you make assumptions, you fail repeatedly, and then something works, the panel lights up, and you know you got it right. Now you understand what the symbol means.

The theming doesn’t work that way. Whatever theory you have as to what the game’s about, there will be no moment of clarification. Blow has an incredible talent, in fact, for constructing imagery that is hilariously blunt yet still ambiguous. As with Braid, where he crammed a straightforward narrative about memory and regret with allusions to quantum physics and the atomic bomb, The Witness references Einstein, the Buddha, Richard Feynman, romantic poetry, tech culture, game design, and - most of all - itself.

I realize I’m dancing around the subject here, because what the gameplay is (or isn’t) in service of is far easier to talk about than the gameplay itself. The Witness is a big island full of touch screens where you draw lines on grids. That’s it. The island is dense with structures and biomes, impossibly having a desert, a swamp, and three different kinds of forest which appear to be in four different seasons. What it doesn’t have is any reason why you’re there or a justification for solving ~600 line-drawing puzzles other than because Jon Blow wants you to. I was wrong in my video from 2015 to call The Witness narrative-based; the game contains narrative but it is not a narrative game. The island is very pretty, meticulously crafted, and not trying in the slightest to look like a real place. It is Myst minus everything people like about Myst.

Absent a reason for my character - if I’m even playing a “character” - to solve the puzzles, why am I, the player, solving them? The short answer is, “Because they’re there. You knew what you were buying. You solve the puzzles because it’s a puzzle game, do I gotta draw you a diagram?” (No, you need me to draw 600 diagrams.) That is unsatisfactory because the island is clearly more than an elaborate menu system.

Do I solve them because they’re interesting? I mean, they’re not bad, if you’re into Sudoku or, like... cereal boxes. In and of themselves, they’re not my cuppa. People told me about a repeated sense of epiphany the game provoked for them, but that’s not the way I experienced it. Every puzzle is so carefully tutorialized that I never felt I was making an intuitive leap. There is no lateral thinking in The Witness, it is strictly longitudinal. You get a row of puzzle panels, and you take them one by one (you are, in fact, prevented from jumping ahead), each one building on what it taught you. And they get hard, certainly, but each is the logical progression of the one before. And each is a marvel of nonverbal communication, but that’s more Jon being clever than it is me. This is not to judge people who did get a feeling of discovery; one person’s “aha” moment is another’s “yeah, Jon, I get it.”

(Aside: I did get a proper “aha” moment when I came to a panel that could be solved two ways. It controlled a moving platform; draw one line, the platform moves right, draw the other and it moves left. And I thought, “Huh, I guess I get it, but those shapes seem kind of arbitrary.” But then, while it was moving, I realized the platform itself mirrored what I had drawn; the two designs were what shape the platform would take when connected with each endpoint! And I went “oh fuck, oh fuck, that’s clever, that‘s really clever.” My first epiphany. It was the most Myst-like the game got, it was clearly not the kind of experience Jon Blow was interested in recreating much, and it took place 7 hours in.)

Do I solve them because I’m compelled? In the first play sessions, I asked myself several times, “Do I even like this?” The game is often tedious and frustrating and I regularly muttered “fuck off, Jon.” But I kept playing. I got annoyed when people interrupted me. I got a hideous case of Tetris effect. They’re not the kind of puzzles you can spend the day thinking through, like you would with Myst or Riven; they’re too abstract to visualize without them right in front of you. And the world is pretty but it’s not a place I wish I could visit, like I would with, again, Myst or Riven. But I kept going back. I solved puzzles less because I found pleasure in finishing them than I found displeasure in them being unfinished. Jon Blow has given talks on how game design focused on being “addictive” is basically evil - his word, not mine. And yet... it felt more like I was playing his game because I was hooked than because I was enjoying myself.

Do I solve them because I trust Jon Blow? Because I believe this will all amount to something? Jon certainly expects me to trust him. The game blares PROFUNDITY AHEAD constantly. (I remind you it quotes the Buddha.) But, in the years since Braid, I have grown less impressed with Jon Blow’s “art game genius” shtick. One fun bit about playing The Witness so late is finally reading all the discourse, and, well before finishing the game, I had read the thoughts of Andrew Plotkin, and Liz Ryerson, and Andi McClure - all of whom are brilliant - so I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into. What’s surprised me is, having gotten to the first ending - not the secret ending - what the game is up to still isn’t clear. There are enough allusions to heady ideas that you can infer some stuff, but the default ending - while pretty enough - adds nothing and reveals nothing. And getting the True Ending means completing the In the Hall of the Mountain King section, something many will never find and precious few will ever complete. (Debating whether I’m going to even try.) If Jon Blow wants you to trust that he’s going somewhere with this, he makes you wait a long time before finding out if it’s worth it. [EDIT: turns out the secret ending comes after a different set of obscure puzzles than Hall of the Mountain King.]

Which leads me back to my original conclusion: I am solving the puzzles because Jon Blow told me to.

I suspect the arc Jon wants is for me to begin solving puzzles because I want to know what they’re in service of, what point Jon is trying to make, and then spend so long on them that I forget about the destination and just wrap myself up in the work, and, after dozens of hours on the hardest of the hard puzzles, Jon will finally reveal that the point he was making was about the labor I have just done. That he couldn’t tell me what it was for until I’d already done it. That the labor was its own reward. And how much you like The Witness is going to depend on whether or not you feel ripped off.

The overall impression The Witness left me with was less of meditation than discipline. (I have joked that playing The Witness feels like being in a D/s relationship with Jon Blow and not knowing the safe word.) Jon presents a simple concept and then expects you to solve every. single. permutation. of that concept. You do the work to find out what it’s about, and then what it’s about is the work. That game is about itself. The subject of The Witness is solving The Witness. It’s about purity of design, about simplicity, about slowly mastering a set of skills. (That these skills are neither inherently pleasurable to perform nor applicable in any other context seems not to matter; the point is, you learned them.) It’s hard not to read a game fixated on the beauty of its own design as all kinds of smug.

I allowed myself to be spoiled on the True Ending, and it seems, in the eleventh hour, if you draw lines til your fingers bleed, the game makes room for self-critique, questioning whether all this dedication to design actually is, in any way, meaningful or useful to us. Which, just a little bit, smacks of an artist spending two years making a sculpture of himself, chiseled to make him look a perfect Olympian beauty, only to label it “EGOISM.” Ooo. Make you think.

I suspect, in the end, I played it to (partial) completion because I was curious. I didn’t necessarily buy Jon Blow’s hype, but his hype is intriguing. As a portrait of a certain mindset, a monomaniacal obsession with design for design’s sake, the folk-religion of salvation through technology, and the critique of same, it is fascinating. I know people - smart people - who genuinely love this game, and, if the above is any indication, I clearly love talking about it. I have no regrets.

But, word of advice: if you don’t a) love the puzzles, or b) love the discourse, just walk away. Everything will be fine.

[arabian-bloodstream]

Oh, my precious babies! So endgame!

OK, I have a feeling that some people may be worried a tad bit about the Arya/Gendry scene in the latest episode of Game of Thrones. Me personally? I loved it. SO VERY HARD. I thought that it was beautiful and that scene as well as EVERYTHING with them in this episode totally re-confirmed to me that Gendrya are absolutely endgame and indeed are the ship that was promised.

When Gendry told Arya that he loved her, she looked so scared. And when he said that he wanted her to be with him, to be the Lady of Storm's End, my poor baby girl looked terrified. And that made perfect sense. Think of how the episode began. There she was laying fire down on a funeral pyre for a man who had sacrificed himself to save her life. A man that she had once placed on her kill list... and he died horribly, brutally to ensure that she lived. And she felt the pain of that. After being numb for so long, she's only recently begun to allow herself to begin to feel again, to be human again, to feel the pain of loss, of, well, pain. She doesn't want that feeling again. And she doesn't want Gendry getting hurt or dying because of her or at all. She never wants to feel that pain. So she's going back to the numb persona she'd adopted before she went back home to Winterfell, before she saw Gendry again. She is going to go to King's Landing; she's going to finish her list, kill Cersei Lannister and she doesn't expect to survive regicide.

And so she kissed him sweetly and softly and she told him that he would be a wonderful lord and any lady would be lucky to have him because she wants him to be happy, and, yes, because she does love him. You could see that written all over her. She loves him so much, it was shining all over her face, radiating from her very being. However, Gendry Baratheon (not Rivers--seriously, where the fuck did Rivers come from?!) is life and Arya is once again choosing death. She has to make the choice to choose life. And she will. She will choose life. She will choose Gendry. She's just not there yet.

Maisie Williams mentioned in her pre-season press tour that Arya would be torn and that is something that we haven't seen yet. This, I believe, is what she was talking about. Arya will be torn between choosing death or life. Which brings me to another couple of key scenes that led me to my Gendrya=The Ship That Was Promised affirmation status: the first and last scene with the Hound.

In the first scene, Gendry and the Hound were at the feast celebrating the North's victory over the undead--Arya's victory. And, of course, Arya was nowhere to be found.

Gendry: Have you seen Arya? The Hound: You can still smell the burning bodies and that's where your head is at? Gendry: I just want to thank her-- The Hound: I'm sure you do. Gendry: Look, it's not about that. The Hound: Of course it's about that, you twat. Why shouldn't it be? The dead are dead. You're not.

The Hound made it pretty clear he was well aware that Gendry wanted to *be* with Arya and when Gendry tried to deny it, the Hound called him on it and, surprisingly, pointed out that it was exactly what he should be doing. Now, let's make this clear. Gendry wanted to celebrate LIFE with *Arya* and the Hound flat-out told him that such was exactly the thing he should be doing.

Contrast this with the final conversation the Hound has in the episode.

Arya: You're heading to King’s Landing. The Hound: I have some unfinished business. Arya: Me too. The Hound: I don't plan on coming back. Arya: Neither do I.

So we have the show using The Hound to illustrate that *Gendry* is life as Gendry wanted to celebrate life with Arya--who you remember was "celebrating" by shooting arrows at a target--and on the opposite spectrum, that Arya has indeed once more chosen a life of death. Now, at the end of that discussion, he also asked that if he needs her to kill him, will she just leave him to not die again and she said probably... which means, that they probably will wind up in a situation like that, but this time she will give him mercy. However, before she does, he’ll tell her to choose life. Something like: Go get that blacksmith cunt that’s always mooning over you and have lots of black-haired babies with him. Don’t be like me. Don’t chase death your whole life. Live.

Gah, this was such brilliant framing in the writing and set-up. So, so good. Well-done, D.B. Weiss and David Benioff.

OK, moving on. The three most foreshadowed couples in George R.R. Martin's series A Song of Ice and Fire are Arya and Gendry, Jaime and Brienne and Jon and Daenerys. In this episode, we saw all three highlighted in a romantic scenario one right after the other and it was quite interesting how each was presented. I've already broken down the Arya and Gendry scene, let me touch briefly on the other two couples before jumping back to Gendrya.

Jaime and Brienne shared some banter, a passionate kiss, and then a cut with an implication of lovemaking to Jon and Dany. These two, again, some discussion, a passionate kiss that ended before continued discussion that did not end well. My point in bringing this up is that by the end of the episode...

Arya and Gendry got not one, not two, but three sweet, romantic kisses. Gendry kissed her. Arya kissed him. And then they shared a third mutual kiss. All three were so sweetly, beautifully romantic.

Jaime and Brienne and Jon and Daenerys both shared one passionate kiss neither shared a romantic one.

Jaime and Brienne effectively began and ended their relationship very sadly and in tears in this one episode. Yes, it could continue and be repaired, but Jaime is going back to the only woman he's ever loved besides Brienne, and she's a woman that he's loved desperately, hopelessly for his entire life. It does not look promising.

Jon and Dany did not end their scene on a happy note, and every bit of discussion about their future relationship all but screamed: It ain't happening because everyone's gonna know they're aunt and nephew, and that ain't happening.

Gendry loves Arya. Arya loves Gendry. From a narrative point of view, a show does not spend three episodes showing a character begin to recapture their humanity only to have her throw it all away and choose death when she's got life and love waiting for her. If that was going to happen... it would have been Gendry she burned on the funeral pyre.

One of the most important scenes in Arya and Gendry's story was when he chose to stay with the Brotherhood without Banners. He did so because he'd never had a family and he chose them for that chance to have one. Arya told him then that he could be her family. We know because Maisie Williams told us that she was directed to say that line like "I love you," and that was the take that was used. Gendry's response was that she wouldn't be his family, she would be "milady." Bluntly put, Arya offered herself to Gendry and he turned her down. This scene in this episode was a reverse of *that* scene. In other words, it's putting them on equal standing IN EVERY FUCKING WAY.

Instead of saying "I love you" in so many words with "I can be your family," as Arya did to Gendry, Gendry actually said the words. He told her, "I love you." He said: "Be my wife." He offered himself to her, and she turned him down. Because she doesn't want to be his "lady." That's not her. "I'm not a lady, I never have been." She said, and lordy, kill me now, but the way that Maisie said those two lines, oh my goodness! The inflection was so very similar to the way that Joe Dempsie said the lines, "You wouldn't be my family, you'd be milady." 

But you guys, see, it doesn’t mean that she doesn't want him. Just like all those years ago, it didn't mean that Gendry didn't want to stay with Arya, he just knew that if he stayed with her, he couldn't be with her because she was highborn and he was lowborn. Now, Arya is saying she can't be with him because she's not ready. Yes, she said it's because she's not a lady, but I do think that's just her fallback because, as I said, it's all about choosing death over life.

I seriously don't think it’s about her not being a lady. Because that doesn’t matter. Think of Arya’s scene with Ned back in season 01. She told him that she wanted to run a holdfast and Ned basically told her ‘Nah,’ that she would marry a lord and her children would be lords and princes. And *that* is when she said “no, that’s not me.” See, SHE wanted to be the one who ran the castle. And essentially that is what Gendry is asking her to do because he sure as shit can’t. He doesn’t know how to do it.

No, Arya doesn't want to be a proper lady, but that’s OK, because Gendry doesn’t give a fuck about that. He wants Arya as she is. He doesn’t want her to be a lady. He wants her to be HIS lady. That's the difference. So it’s not about her being a lady. It’s about choosing life versus death.

She needs to choose life again, and life is Gendry. And she will because she loves Gendry, and he loves her. Arya and Gendry are the purest, truest love on this show. They truly are the ship that is promised.

Ah, this episode was so, so, sooo good and the Gendrya was just a bump in the road. I truly, truly believe!

[sieben9]

“the miller’s daughter” impressions

First order of business: remember how to breathe.

Nope.

Nope again.

Nope, still not working

...OK, where did I put that defibrillator.

Thoughts under the cut.

So. Cora did not have a glass heart as a replacement. Missed opportunity, but who am I to judge.

...god, this episode killed me. Multiple times. There's just so much going on.

First, Cora's backstory.

Oh, look, it's Paige! Hey, Paige!

So that was her problem with Eva? Some spilled flour and a crown? ...OK, that latter one I can at least get behind, but still. I hate to say this after everything that happened, but Snow's comment about "do you think the person she was survived [ripping out her own heart]?"... well, I have to say, that person probably wasn't that great to begin with. Oh, she was ambitious, brilliant, and daring, but...

 "I want to make them bow. I want their kneecaps…to crack and freeze on the stones. I want their necks to break from bending."

...yeah, there may have been the odd character flaw or eight in there. Also, that was a fantastic delivery.

So, I recently re-read the original fairy tale of Rumpelstilzchen, and yes, I cackled with glee when I realised what was happening in the flashback. Also, is it ever explained where she got that dress? Because currently, I'm imagining her doing the "she's about my size"-thing with some unlucky lady who's now lying in the gardens in her underwear.

So. That's how Cora met Rumplestiltskin, then.

God, but these two were just so bad for one another, but mesmerising in their awfulness, too. Because as terrible as they were for each other, they were also quite clearly in love.  Or at least something close enough.

Also hot. I'm not going to pretend that I didn't notice

And I was right on the "catastrophic breakup" front. I mean, I had absolutely no idea how catastrophic, but still. I got that one. And you just know it's been haunting him for all these years. "Did you ever love me?" could very well have been the last thing he asked on his deathbed. Also, Rumple, I could have told you that one for free. ...then again, he's got well-documented problems in that area, so I probably shouldn't snark. Too much.

And then...

::long sigh:: Rumple, under the circumstances, I can't really blame you, but also what the fuck.

So. That answers my question about Snow, I guess. Gotta say. I wasn't expecting Cora to die quite this early in the season. I mean, I expected her to, and was not-all-that-quietly looking forward to it (because while I loved to hate her, there was definitely a good amount of "hate" in there), but.... well, there are still six episodes left, so why did this feel like the first half (or maybe third) of the season finale?

And poor Regina. No, she should never have trusted Cora. She should never have worked with her. She knew that nothing good would come of it, and she still did it, but at the same time... "You would have been enough" and her smile just before she collapsed! Just... gaaah. A depressing number of potentially good things in Regina's life only ever seem to come to  "could have been", "almost", and "maybe." It's a damn tragedy.

And that is the face of someone who just took a running jump off the redemption-wagon. ...can't really blame her, either

Congratulations, Snow, you did to Regina what Cora did to you. Feeling heroic, yet? To be fair, though, the narrative absolutely frames it as a terrible thing, and she knows it almost the second she gives Regina that heart. Seeing her that cold and calculating as she was in the vault, though...? Damn, she'd have made a terrifying villain, is all I'm going to say.

OK. The phone call. Dear god, that phone call.

aka "this is why I have to write this post from beyond the grave"

This just wasn’t fair. I forgot how to breathe. I mean, where do I even start? I mean, the text itself was... wow. Yeah. As Rumple said himself, he's full of love. And Belle very clearly knew that. She doesn't even know herself at the moment, but I don't think she has any doubts that this man loves her. More, he told her exactly who the woman he loves is, and through that, she knows herself at least a little (I'd even say "a lot") better. Just... give me a second, I'm having emotions again.

And then there's the contrast to the love story in the flashback. I know it's never stated outright, but to me it was clear that Cora and Rumple brought out the very worst in one another. They fed each other's darkness, and they both revelled in it. Compare that to "you make me want to go back to the best version of myself", and just... this adds so many shades and layers to their relationship and their love, it's amazing.

And then, of course, we had Neal's reaction.

I have this creeping suspicion that Neal might have honestly thought that his father was entirely incapable of love since taking on the curse. After all, he left him. Something his "real" father would never have done. Maybe he didn't believe it fully, but it's just the kind of thing you'd tell yourself to get over the pain of being abandoned like that. And now his father is dying, and he has to confront the fact that... well, he probably really does still love him. And his tiny little "I'm still angry" just pulled the whole scene together. Because of course he is! Of course he's still furious, he's allowed to be! Doesn't mean he loves his father any less, though.

::sigh:: Please, just let them be happy...

While we're on the family drama... all my love for this little moment all the way back at the beginning of the episode:

"You're hoping I'll bleed to death now, aren't you?"​ "You're Henry's grandfather"

Just... just that little exchange says so much about Emma as a person. No, she doesn't like him. No, she doesn't really trust him. But, if I may paraphrase Firefly for a moment "You're family. Why are we still talking about this?"

There's also a little philosophical aside I've been pondering while (or rather mostly after) watching the episode and that is how this whole conversation on "love is weakness" vs "love is strength" played out in the end. After all, we saw where Cora got the phrase, and then we saw her die by her daughter's hand (though not intent), because Regina loved her and wanted to be loved in return.

I think that when all is said and done, love was Cora's weakness -- because she made it into one. Her desperate attempts to rid herself of the emotion turned it into a blind spot. Compare that to Emma, who's always shown to be at her best when acting out of love for her family (and friends, when she didn't know what they were), and who's only ever been strengthened by that love. Hell, it's what let her do some pretty impressive magic this very episode -- it took two fully trained sorceresses to get through that first barrier, and Cora almost failed completely at the second one.

So... yeah, no neat little phrase to summarise all of that, but I thought this worth writing down.

[claudiadonovan]

Please write 70 paragraphs of meta about elizabeth and olive as characters

ok so first of all: i had multiple paragraphs of this typed up a couple days ago and then my computer crashed, so clearly the universe wants me to chill. but here i am, rewriting all the words to spite the universe, for I WILL NEVER KNOW CHILL. (disclaimer: this is largely incoherent, and the organization isn’t exactly thesis ready. tyfyt.)

anyway. let’s begin with something i’ve talked about at length before, because i do think it’s at least worth setting elizabeth’s narrative against the backdrop of the movie’s full scope—that is, elizabeth’s arc is the driving force of the movie. regardless of what the film is ostensibly about (at least in terms of marketing, for obvious reasons; it’s clear that everyone working on it knows better), what angela’s crafted is a love story. bill functions as a steady presence throughout, providing the technical framework (and the shoves that elizabeth needs in the direction of what she wants); olive certainly takes her own journey, but hers is a growth told largely in flashes; it is through elizabeth’s terror and conflict and indeed love that we see much of the movie unfold. all of those things are central to the conflicts we find and necessarily the heart of the movie’s resolution. there is a reason the film must end in the place it does, with elizabeth cracking open her heart and finding the means to build a bridge between them inside.

but i’m getting ahead of myself. (and, yes, rambling already. LISTEN, i was asked for 70 paragraphs, a lannister always pays her debts, etc. etc. you’ve been warned as to what lies beneath the cut!)

if you will let me set one final scene, before i move inside the universe of the movie: i saw professor marston for the first time at an advance screening. the theater wasn’t enormous, but it was completely packed. there were a couple moments in the opening bill/josette scene that drew a few chuckles, iirc, but the moment elizabeth spoke her first line, that entire theater came to life. and let me tell you: what a relief that that was my first experience with the movie, because clutching your leg and alternating between wheezing with laughter and delighted squealing draws a lot less attention if everyone around you is also in hysterics. the reaction both to “i know” and “i know that, too” was incomparable. it felt rare and wonderful, nevermind the fact that rebecca’s delivery remains impossible to oversell.

all of which is kind of beside the point, except that i will say i appreciate the in-universe acknowledgement that elizabeth is genuinely hilarious? BECAUSE SHE’S HILARIOUS. the fact is that angela, as she designed her (and rebecca, as she played her), allowed elizabeth to be SO MANY THINGS. there are a million ways that this could have (would have, lbr) gone wrong in literally anyone else’s hands, but one of those many ways is elizabeth herself. like, i think there’s a particular character cut-out for the combination of attributes that include controlling/ferocious/brisk/kind of a stubborn asshole, especially if you’re angling for the arc to conclude with a display of vulnerability. that sets off the WEE OOOH WEEE OOOH DO NOT TRUST WEE OOH alarms in my brain. but elizabeth is a million things, among them also funny, charming, pragmatic, and so utterly full of life. (i sort of figured “totally brilliant” went without saying.) she is never limited to one or two of these at a time, as they shift along some linear arc; there are moments that showcase particular aspects, but she is always the sum of all of her parts.

one of my very favorite moments, particularly in the way that it establishes both elizabeth/bill and, i think, to some degree the way that elizabeth interacts with the world, is the lie detector epiphany scene. one of the things about them is that they are able to shift very fluidly from “heated debate” to whatever the opposite of an argument looks like. which – i realize in that scene the lie detector was a Huge Deal, but there’s no sense of bill and elizabeth ever stagnating in their arguments; more often, they delight in them. they sharpen their wits and their knowledge against each other – it’s (a huge) part of what makes them work, and it’s also part of what makes them so damn extra. (olive’s utterly baffled face as she watches them that transforms slowly into an amused/fond/still-puzzled smile says all i want to say here.) the point is: they don’t require things like apologies from each other, particularly as a result of their exchanges. like, their arguments are more likely to lead to proposals than to pleas for forgiveness.

basically, i don’t think elizabeth has huge reserves of patience for other kinds of interactions; she spends much of her time with a person who always meets her halfway. anyone who can’t inevitably falls underfoot. she also thinks dropping things like “oh, and if you fuck my husband, i’ll kill you” into conversation during a first meeting with a student they’ve just brought on as an assistant is absolutely fine, especially since she doesn’t initially view them as on the same ~~~level. (not that she doesn’t mean to be hostile—and condescending—because obviously she has some self-awareness, but her casual, wry delivery of it is so very, very elizabeth. she gets a kick out of herself.) my other favorite thing is how much i do think she believes she’s offering some genuinely useful clarification as she carries on through that atrocious explanation of olive’s beauty—she gets it, it’s not olive’s fault, like any of those are reasonable things to say to another person. elizabeth’s answer to dealing with the emotions she was kind of pretending she didn’t have when she told bill it was fine to fuck olive? be a patronizing asshole! works every time!

but olive isn’t bill, and she’s not just gonna spring back from whatever that was, because literally what the fuck is wrong with this woman (i know, olive. i know). and it’s not like elizabeth doesn’t have the capacity for guilt; that’s the whole reason bill telling her she made olive cry finds them in the middle of the apology that unfolds. (let me side note here that bill gently leading elizabeth back onto the edge of some moral pathway with signs like “maybe be less of an asshole?” is one of my favorite things in the entire world.) which elizabeth begins delivering so perfectly awkwardly and vaguely sardonically that it’s hard to imagine anyone could even take it seriously? the way she ends the “i didn’t mean to insult you” with a smile that could physically not be less real—great, look, i did the apology, bye—really sums it up. and the exchange that follows—i’ve done nothing / no, i know, you’re right—is so peak elizabeth, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, like she’s sitting there like, yes, i know, all i said was don’t fuck my husband, i didn’t say you already had. anyway, didn’t i say it wasn’t your fault? why do i even bother talking???? elizabeth, who manages to jump into apologies without any real willingness to make overt concessions about any wrongdoing. (an apology that leads them to a speakeasy is much more suited to her, really.)

as mentioned before, elizabeth really is a million things all at once, and she’s a mess of contradictions on top of that—see: completely fearless and deeply terrified, a woman who answers her husband’s admission of her own brilliance with “i know” but cannot accept that olive thinks she’s amazing. a lot of that, imo, stems from the fact that every time she walks into a room, she has to prove herself. so she brandishes her intelligence like a blade, for it is only with a sword to their throats that the men inside her circles (and outside, presumably) are willing to acknowledge her beyond her gender. and even then, no doubt there are many who dismiss the weapon for a toy, or suggest she cannot even hold it properly, so unprepared are they to change a lifetime of bullshit ideas that they craft their own false reality. and bill has known her his whole life; presumably, elizabeth was central to the foundation of his own ideas surrounding gender. he has had access to her brilliance at every turn.

olive is an anomaly. olive catches her off guard. all elizabeth has done is upset her, and yet olive says with conviction almost virulent that it is criminal that they will not give her a degree. but elizabeth still holds the sword in her hand, and so she swings it in defense, instead, in aggressive disbelief. because, of course, elizabeth’s never met anyone like olive.

but, of course, olive’s existence forces elizabeth to reconcile much more than just that. at least, sort of, though elizabeth’s pretty stubborn about closing her eyes and putting her fingers in her ears and waiting for them to go away. (ELIZABETH YOUR HUSBAND LITERALLY FINGERBANGED YOU WHILE YOU WERE BOTH WATCHING OLIVE SPANK A GIRL BUT SURE, YEAH, VERY MYSTERIOUS FEELINGS.) that she manages to frame the conceit of them all trying this thing out more like a research project than like, hi, i like you too? is almost too elizabeth to handle. that the second there is no denying this particular combination of sexual attraction and love—what else is the lie detector good for if not invariably forcing inarguable realities at them?—elizabeth retreats into sarcasm. “open emotional dialogue” isn’t exactly her forte of fortes, is kind of the point i’m making here. (the surprising moments of truth are always interesting, though. “i was afraid i’d always be in his shadow,” for instance, is a startlingly sincere moment of vulnerability, which i think is an important nod to the shift in her relationship to olive. i mean, obviously they started flirting way back in the speakeasy, but it’s inherently a given with that line that she sees them as existing on the same playing field. elizabeth, inviting other people onto her level? a miracle!)

here’s the thing; elizabeth is a disaster, and a revolutionary, and a realist. in an effort to achieve the goals she thinks she can (forcibly! with much effort!) achieve, she has already made concessions, things like: demand her goddamn doctorate due, but surrender her name. i think elizabeth has probably, pragmatically, already had to rearrange enough of herself and her life to fit into the crawl space that might, if she bends and scrapes and pushes hard enough, win her access to the other side—the things she wants, the vision she imagines. (a world she is as stubbornly committed to as she is her Opinions About Things.) bill has not had to make the same kinds of sacrifices, and so giving this thing up—this person up, this person they both love—is inconceivable to him. but elizabeth sees their love as something that has already bent her into the wrong shape; they have lost their jobs, an essential part of elizabeth’s future. bill demands their happiness be prioritized; elizabeth’s perspective isn’t half so black and white. since when can a woman simply have the things she wants?

one of the most interesting things elizabeth says, in the way that it sort of lays bare her character, is the whole: “they are right to shun us, and perhaps they are right to beat us. not because we fuck each other, but because we’re foolish enough to think we’re better than them.” which, a) obviously we have access to the amount of shame she keeps inside her, which is a lot, but b) this idea that elizabeth has always held herself a little aloof from the rest of the world, in terms of her own superiority complex, is v. real and v. interesting. and the idea that it’s that high ground that she feels come crashing down when they get caught is fascinating. like, only when the neighbors were suddenly able to exact judgment, to ruin the lives of their children, did she realize that she’d been pretending to see them from a tower above. that nothing she’d ever done—that no proof of her own intelligence—could change that, that it was her supposed disillusionment of their own superiority that had safeguarded their relationship in her head.

in the end, of course, she finds it is a loss she cannot bear. stubborn asshole that she is, one can only imagine how very long she would have spent miserable and steadfast about the decision were it not for bill’s prognosis. but with a little hand-holding from bill along the way, it’s elizabeth who finally chooses the thing that has brought her the most happiness, and who issues a damn apology like she means it. (and rebecca delivers a performance more than worthy of oscar buzz, dammit.)

WHICH BRINGS US BACK TO OLIVE. let’s start with the descriptors the movie provides for her, first from bill: beautiful, guileless, kind, pure of heart. and then, from elizabeth: an exceptional student, a quick study with a passion for learning, strong work ethic, keen mind, an unwavering moral compass, and a deeply instilled sense of justice. (obviously, a lot of those are re: academics, given it was from a letter of recommendation – a letter of recommendation for a student she and her husband have more or less just propositioned! iconic – and “an unwavering moral compass” is still a hilarious dig, but anyway.)

so obviously olive’s “beauty” is at the center of the film’s early conversations – this idea of asset vs. albatross plays a heavy role, and what it means as a quality that olive must manage and navigate. even though elizabeth acknowledges it as a detriment, it’s also basically the foundation of their first encounter—the way olive’s beauty has already invaded the space of elizabeth’s marriage, professionally speaking or otherwise. and it’s kind of interesting that it’s more or less the assumptions surrounding olive’s appearance and impressions that basically kickstart her interest in psychology in the first place – that she is so incredibly frustrated with her interactions with people (unlike elizabeth, she doesn’t walk a blade into every room she enters).

anyway, i’ve mentioned it before but it’s still one of my favorite things, and i do think it bears noting: olive’s investment in the marston/holloway duo begins with and is showcased in its beginning stages primarily via her admiration for elizabeth. in so many ways – both within the film’s universe and in meta terms – bill is the obvious choice here. young pretty ingénue ™ falls for charming intelligent attractive (male) professor ™ who is, as it happens, very clearly into her. all of which, of course, the movie (delightfully!) paves the way for, but by the time there’s more focus there they’ve also crystallized into people not done justice by those descriptors alone, particularly in olive’s case. the point: elizabeth being as compelling to olive as she is right from the beginning i think says a great deal about olive, who is utterly charmed by a woman so brazenly, indelicately brilliant.

i mean, honestly, here’s the thing: angela did a SHIT TON of research over the course of eight years about the marstons. that’s why it’s so easy to spot which decisions she made that were very active departures from likely history, like this one. honestly, as someone who truly could not give less of a shit about the “veracity” of the movie as it applies to the movie’s quality/worthwhileness/watchability, i definitely think it’s fascinating to consider in terms of the choices angela made—olive becoming a part of the family first as bill’s mistress in real life (note: not to suggest i’m wielding total historical fact, just at least one propagated history, and one that likely would have been developed by another director) vs. an olive whose initial attraction lands at the feet of elizabeth’s radicalism. an olive who is wooed by the ferociousness of elizabeth’s intellect! i ask again: WHO BUT ANGELA WOULD HAVE EVER WRITTEN THEIR STORY THIS WAY. (in case this needs clarifying: no, i do not in any way make this claim to make an “exclusive attraction” claim, i mean to make note of the particular choices that provided the early foundations for their relationship, narratively speaking; obviously, them all being in love with each other is quite literally the entire point of the film, wonder woman be damned.) (jk diana i love you!!!)

as a whole, olive’s relationship to feminism is super interesting and absolutely a thing i would have loved them to explore more (among, like, the other nine hours of things i want more content about). it’s also another part of the whole appearance vs. reality question as it applies to olive (i thought that you were just… / what? / i don’t know. not that.) and what a world that olive, too, is allowed to be so many things: a cult sorority pledge master, kind, just, raised in a convent; the daughter and niece of radical feminists, incredibly smart, the bravest person in the whole movie, etc. etc. (also, THE ONLY FUNCTIONING ADULT. but we’ll get there.) her “guilelessness” is complicated by her history, and even as we are presented with the possibility of naivete, the “observing olive” scene sort of dismisses that cut-out figure out of hand, by way of elizabeth. olive knows exactly what she’s doing; she has lived many years having to navigate precisely the right amount of eye contact to make with a boy, precisely the tone to select. that is practice, and experience. she both finds herself apologizing every other minute and is unwilling to be anyone’s doormat—accommodating, yes, generous, yes, but even as early as the elizabeth/bill/olive apology sequence, she by no means jumps at the chance to accept this vague gesture. she wears her emotions on her sleeve and finds herself the more powerful for it.

olive is absolutely searching at the beginning of the movie – for explanations, for answers, for the kind of life she wants to lead. (for, i think it’s safe to say, elizabeth’s respect—a much more arduous ask than her husband’s.) and the truly incredible thing about olive is that as soon as she experiences the thing that she wants, she knows herself well enough not only to know with absolute certainty that it is what she wants, but also to pursue the hell out of it. after their joint first time, olive literally has no doubt left in her; this makes her happier than anything else she has. “unwavering moral compass” or not (lmao), uh, what fiancé? because the truth is that olive’s heart is her conviction, not duty. if it’s right, she will feel it. and so she does.

olive’s connection to her emotions, to her convictions, to her awareness of what she wants—like, it’s honestly a superpower. emotional intelligence and academic intelligence? honestly, chill. she’s also kind of their guiding light, whether in the moment she steps out on that platform in the pseudo-wonder-woman outfit, thereby changing the conversation entirely, or the first time she kisses elizabeth and rearranges everybody’s headspace. she always casts light on the next step of the narrative, on a place often frightening but a place everybody else will end up by the next act, anyway. (elizabeth may expect people to meet her halfway in terms of words, but olive’s the one reaching out her hand at every turn, waiting for someone to take it. and olive is the one—in many ways—with everything to lose.)

olive takes most care of the children; olive is the one most often sending them off to school with lunches in hand; olive is the most capable at wrangling something edible out of the oven; let’s be honest, olive is definitely the only who can convince their 1930’s (etc) cars into motion when they’re feeling particularly stubborn; olive likely exchanges baked goods with the neighbors and shares small talk and offers the helpful advice only possible from someone who cares enough to be a good listener. olive makes friends. so i ask you: literally, how the fuck did elizabeth and bill ever live their lives without her?

elizabeth probably spends more time making snide comments about the neighbors than making friends with them; bill spends time working on manuscript #17 (and then, you know, the obvious), although i’m sure he can be wrangled out to offer some charm every now and again.

(clearly not enough for Prying Neighbor to call his name when she walks in their damn house, though. I WILL SAY, while i’m here and because i can, the biggest moment of discontinuity in this entire movie is Prying Neighbor shouting elizabeth’s name next after olive’s. OLIVE, yes, checks out, she’s home and available and friendliest most of the time. BUT WHY ELIZABETH??? WHEN WOULD ELIZABETH EVER BE HOME ON A WORK DAY??? BILL IS THE ONLY OTHER PERSON IN THE HOUSE WHO WOULD USUALLY BE HANGING AROUND. I CANNOT MAKE THIS MAKE SENSE. i mean, i’ve since headcanoned that they’re always making fun of the fact that she literally cannot get into her brain that it’s elizabeth with the regular job and not bill, but i’m just saying.) 

anyway, returning from that tangent: i think the exchange about happiness in the final hospital scene provides an interesting echo to elizabeth’s earlier “love – it doesn’t matter” (are you happy? / does it matter?), which is fairly heart-shattering from someone who’s been certain of and willing to pursue happiness throughout the course of the whole movie. but it’s also an incredibly valid question: it’s not as if “happiness” was in the calculus when elizabeth told her to leave, either. what does happiness actually mean to them? (the brief shots of them without OLIVE are! fucking! brilliant! angela’s ability to make that tiny bed look empty without olive in it was a stroke of genius.)

and, of course, “does it matter?” is the question the movie answers resoundingly in the affirmative. in the end, it’s olive’s choice that decides how the film will end. it’s olive who gets to say “no,” who gets to dictate the terms. it’s olive with all the leverage. it’s olive who decides if she will meet elizabeth halfway. it’s olive with elizabeth’s heart in her hands. it’s olive who deserves a new goddamn stove, you assholes.

in the end, it’s olive who has the capacity to shape their future, and shape it she does. for decades to come.

[sobdasha]

i got caught up with this not because i did better but because i’ve had no time/watched some tv

War for the Oaks, Emma Bull I began reading this book at the same time as The Innkeeper's Song, listed below. I started out dragging my feet on this one and racing through TIS. But one book got progressively more amazing while the other book got progressively less impressive and my better book is this one. This was the roomie's first brush with urban fantasy, and one of her friends got her a second-hand first edition paperback, and so she talked about it a lot until I finally picked it up and she said "Uh but also I haven't read it in forever so I uh. Don't know how it holds up." (She rightly fears me because as you will have noticed I am a Very Particular Reader.) Reasons I disliked this book at first: - fashion choices that scream "1980s" and fashion choices that scream "lesbian" are incredibly similar and guess which of the two I am not getting, seeing as this was published in 1987. - Eddie is breaking up with her garbage boyfriend which is good but she has an incredible amount of chemistry with Carla which is disheartening given that I know I won't get sapphics and Eddie will end up dating some other boy with whom there is no chemistry. - This is a book about rock-n-roll bands I don't know any of these songs (okay I might know these songs but I don't know artists or titles so I may as well not know any of these songs) it's kinda wasted on me. - oh boy I'm so excited to watch her and the phouka fight like Kagome and Inuyasha or any other pair with this dynamic yaaaaay /sarcasm Reasons this came to be a Good Read: - Everyone dresses so goddamn queer in this book that you know what, everyone except that jerkass Stuart is queer. He's garbage so he can be straight or whatever. It's my reading experience I do what I want. There's no way these people aren't bi. Also it's canon because everyone takes one look at the phouka and assumes he's gay. …………………………with slurs but still. - Good supporting cast. - I both failed to give the phouka a deep voice and also to sustain a Stereotypical Gay voice (which, the dialogue will totally 100% support), but I did accidentally voice him with Tatum's dub of Tomoe from Kamisama Kiss which was completely appropriate in the "vaguely gay vaguely British unambiguously prissy" department, and also entertaining because it reminded me of the dynamics in that anime but, y'know, better. - I almost gave up when the romance hit hardcore but it turned out later that was actually a fake-out that was meant to be garbage and set us up for the endgame much later, by which point Eddie and the phouka actually had the same level of chemistry as Eddie and Carla, so I could actively enjoy the ship. A win! Anyway it was fun. It may not have aged the best in the sense that it strove to be accurate to time and place (see: homophobic slurs), but the character dynamics held up pretty dang well. I would definitely read this again and enjoy myself; in fact I plan to.

The Innkeeper's Song, Peter S. Beagle I was very excited to read this because I was so blown away by The Last Unicorn but the more I read the more disappointed I got. Half the time I feel like that weeb who is like "hello I only like your fanfic you wrote when you were 13 and high on pixie stixs, all your stuff now sucks", and half the time I tell myself, "Maybe there is a reason I've only ever heard of The Last Unicorn and had no idea he'd actually written other books." As you have probably picked up by now, I have a knee-jerk dislike of first person PoV where it must prove itself worthy to me first, despite the fact that I like plenty of things written in first person. I also have a knee-jerk dislike of "I will change the narrator every chapter and announce loudly who it is instead of doing it subtly but unmistakably in the content of the text itself." This book had both. Despite all my harsh judgment, it would be incorrect of me to say that this writing choice is not valid. That this writing choice cannot be used to amazing effect. I do not believe that is what happened here. I did not feel it was adding much to the story to begin with (other than being the shortest and straightest path to advancing a narrative with many fronts), and I was definitely unimpressed when we got to the string of chapters, all of them less than a page and some no more than a paragraph, during the orgy scene where the 3 women have sex with 1 teen boy who's been thirsting after them, and they pay him a lot of worshipful attention in the orgy even though none of them actually like him, and also this is when we reveal one of the women is a man in disguise in the most confusing way possible so my cringe got even deeper as I waited for Beagle to fuck up a trans storyline. (It was literally just "I'm on the run so I'm magically dressing as a girl" but it took a really long time to clarify that after.) In addition to not liking the narrative structure, I just wasn't interested or invested in the actual plot. It didn't feel very urgent or important and at the end I was like "what even happened and also why did it happen." I was underwhelmed. I was definitely the wrong audience for this book. Oh also because I was not enjoying myself I started to get really irrationally annoyed by the way fantasy fauna and flora would have fantasy names and they would be italicized. In a first person PoV. Where the narrator is literally speaking the language that this word is native to. It half felt pretentious, and half highlighted what felt like a loose thread: everyone is literally narrating to someone (presumably collecting the story, after everyone has gone their separate ways) and this has all been woven together into a proper narrative, but our story collector is absent despite addresses to such a person. What purpose does this serve? Does it make it more ~authentic~ fantasy? Because I don't buy it. Now my suspension of disbelief is snapped; I'd have preferred it was either left out entirely, or made into a brilliant framing device like in The Name of the Wind.

Giant Bones, Peter S. Beagle This one was short stories "set in the same universe as The Innkeeper's Song", which basically meant some city names were reused, as well as all those italicized fantasy names and the "I am narrating my story to an audience in-story" frame. You know, all the things I didn't particularly care for. I pressed on to see if there was anything I might like, but since I can't remember, I assume there wasn't. Because this left me wanting, and the title was Giant Bones, I went to reread Conservation of Shadows by Lee instead, starting with "The Bones of Giants," which was greatly preferable, so much more my speed. That's when I did the write-up for the last round of books lol.

Nimona, Noelle Stevenson This has been on my list for Forever but I'm bad at reading new books. Anyway! Nimona was very good!! It felt, hm, very self-indulgent in the way that is amazing, where the creator gives themself whatever they want and the work turns out brilliantly because of it. I didn't think I was into friends to enemies to lovers but apparently I love it wen Stevenson handles it (see: She Ra reboot). Speaking of She Ra, I probably would have figured out where the end game was going if I'd read Nimona before looool. I know people referenced it when they talked ships but I just….didn't...pay enough attention. There was found family stuff I enjoyed, dad stuff, I'm finding that I am liking a lot of takes on monster girls, etc. Anyway it gave me a lot of feelings, it was funny, it was good, I need to get a copy.

The Dragon Pearl, Yoon Ha Lee The first time I talked about this book I mentioned something about the pacing and suspending disbelief or whatever, but I want to note that this time the pacing felt perfect and the plot didn't seem weird at all, it flowed very smoothly. I don't know if that's because it was a reread and I knew where it was going, or because I just read it awkwardly the first time. Anyway. Something that stood out to me this time is that, near the end, I realized this story is a bit animated Disney Mulan. There's even the "you broke this you broke that you impersonated a soldier but also you saved China so thanks" bit. Where The Dragon Pearl is wildly different from other Mulan-type stories that I like (see: Monstrous Regiment) is that it is entirely ungendered. (There are some mentions of gender in the book. These amount mostly to, "most foxes choose to be female because Tradition but one of my cousins decided to be male like my brother and no one mocks him for it" and "official name tags also include handy signifiers of which personal pronouns a person prefers.") What I'm trying to say is, a lot of other stuff when dealing with/trying to deconstruct gender stereotyping, ends up reinforcing it in a way. In order to illustrate why the stereotypes are wrong, they end up repeating the stereotypes a lot in order to argue against them. The Dragon Pearl, on the other hand, is genderless in a way that doesn't reinforce the gender binary. There are no gendered clothes. There are no gendered bathrooms. There are no gendered hairstyles or accessories. There are no gendered actions or emotions or stereotypes. There are no gendered bodies (the differences highlighted between Min and Jang-who-she's-shapeshifting-into are of build ie, height, center of gravity, not of private bits). No plot points revolve around the maleness of the person Min is impersonating; no plot points revolve around the femaleness of Min. And they/them? It's never explained why any person uses that pronoun. They just do so that's just how it is. I just think this is amazingly neat and I wanna applaud Lee for this finesse.

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, Mackenzi Lee I put this on my list because Queer and people were recommending it, but it was not well-advertized to me. I was expecting shallow teen romance, but dressed in historical clothes and unsubtly, unabashedly, unashamedly GAY. So I was expecting some gay. I was not expecting gay pining I actually enjoyed, I was not expecting call-outs for privilege of wealth and class and sex and color, I was not expecting the drama of the romance to not be stupidly fabricated misunderstandings but instead be driven by the need for character development and personal growth, I had forgotten I was expecting people of color, people with disabilities, badass women, I was not expecting a nuanced call-out of ableism ("I don't believe I need to be well to be happy", etc). I was not expecting a reversal of gender stereotypes that avoided saying "X gender is bad." Like, Monty is the team weakest link. Monty faints at the sight of blood. Monty is romantic and emotional and swoons at the slightest provocation. Monty uses his wiles to seduce people, that's the main skill he actually brings to the party. Monty cries. Aside from probably Monty's asshole dad who hates him for being gay, no one else nor the narrative calls these traits out as being Feminine (And Therefore Bad). Like, haha, We All Know These Are All Stereotypes Of Women At The Time, but no one says it. I find there's something really nice about no one saying it. Meanwhile, Percy and Felicity are competent and cool and I heart them. (What the hell, I heart Monty too. He really grows on you. He's so soft and in love and pathetic.) Anyway going back to the privilege thing, I love that Percy and Felicity and others constantly call Monty out on his privilege and refuse to coddle him over it. But they also care about him and they are very tender to him, not because of his privilege, but because he is a person who deserves basic person things, when he has his own issues. Your issues don't excuse your behavior, but yikes we deeply underestimated the sheer depth of your PTSD and we're gentler with you because of it. So try to stop being an ass. This book is just super wholesome and I can already tell this will be one of my new go-to's when I need a comfort book. Like Ancillary Justice etc.

The Gentleman's Guide to Getting Lucky, Mackenzi Lee This is not a fanfiction in the sense that is it written by the author and not a fan, but you need to understand, as part of me selling this to you as earnestly as I can, this is a fanfiction set after The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue which involves hijinks as Monty and Percy try and fail hilariously to have their first time having sex together, Felicity tries to wingman, there are miscommunications and nervous breakdowns and tender resolutions and it is absolutely a perfect indulgence. Because it was written by the actual author everyone is 100% in character and the narrative voice is spot-on. Kudos!

The Lady's Guide to Petticoats and Piracy, Mackenzi Lee Ace/aro Felicity???? ACE/ARO FELICITY!!! TBH I only vaguely remembered the descriptions for this one, ie "this time it's lesbians," and I was reading this going "there is a suspicious lack of lesbians but so much platonic vibes and also…..maybe…..maybe…????" and like I got both lesbians AND ace/aro Felicity????? Lee wrote this book? As a gift? For me???? I cannot believe I was blessed with "not like other girls"!Felicity as a vehicle for calling out the internalized misogyny inherent in the Not Like Other Girls mindset, and it is glorious. You can like pretty dresses and running around doing science, or you can hate dresses and only love science, or you can only like pretty dresses, or you can like whatever the heck you want in whatever combo, doesn't matter you're still a girl you're still valid and this shit isn't mutually exclusive. Much as I don't wear makeup (I've slowly learned to wear dresses again) in real life, gosh I love Johanna for being like "I love dresses and I love science and what if I was a badass adventurer but also got to be rescued a lot" because that was bitty me. Gimme a princess dress and a sword and a bow and arrows but also a tower to be rescued from and then various adventures. I want it both ways! And that's okay!! Also this is a critique I have apparently wanted since at least 3rd grade, see this proof from my daily journal prompts, I apologize for my lack of attention to spelling and forming letters: "Girls are what ever girls are. Girls like different things so I con't judge them all. Some girls like barbies. Just becaus you my not like barbies dosn't mean those girls aren't girls, it means they like more things that hove barbies. I like nintendo and I'm a girl." Apparently I was a Not Like Other Girls who thought Other Girls were still extremely valid. (that's kind of hilarious though because like, child, you had Barbies and didn't hate Barbies, you are just bad at playing with dolls and props. You're also bad at playing Nintendo.) Other stuff specifically, hm, it was refreshing to not have "I am skinny and perfect and clearly ugly" or even "I am legitimately ugly." Instead we have, "You do realize my torso is a solid rectangle, it laughs at this corset which I guess we are going to put on anyway, also my football player shoulders are going to literally pop the sleeves off that dress" and "I am built like a corgi dog, this is simply a fact of my proportions." Like, Felicity definitely has Issues with her traditional femininity and lack thereof, but I feel like it was never specifically tied to "my body shape is ugly." Also to go back to this book being written for me personally. You know they always say to write things that only you could write, that are self-indulgent, write what you want to see? It's really hard to do without a template to follow. Right before I picked up this book I realized that maybe The Thing Only I Would Write would be saying "a Skadi-and-Njord marriage is in fact a valid happy ending," but I've never seen that before and I don't know what it would look like even if I kind of understand the concept. All the media I consume, if not ending in romantic soulmates, is at least found family. If you are a loner, if you like being alone, your happy ending is to get a manic-pixie-dream-anything (girl, grandson, grandma, dog, whathaveyou) and integrate back into being social. There are no happy endings where a loner stays alone, where you get married but live separately and see each other very rarely because you love them but can't stand to live with them and you need to be alone to exist as you. And Mackenzi Lee just up and wrote it. It's valid to want to live in a house by yourself filled with bookshelves and have friends. It's valid for a girl to marry another girl who is a pirate and sails around most of the time and only comes to visit on occasion so you don't get sick of her and you keep loving her. This is an okay thing for an ace/aro to want, and it's valid to be happy with this. I can't even, y'all. I'm still marveling. I finally have seen a picture of the life I know would make me happy, and it's finally been acknowledged that I can be happy. (The amount of time I've spent, knowing I hate being social, and wondering--how many years down the line, when I'm living alone and content, will the switch suddenly flip? How many bridges will I have left behind when it turns out that I actually feel loneliness, and I'm miserable and unable to make friends and it turns out there are no manic pixie dream whatevers in real life and I fucked myself over forever because I was wrong and I should have been maintaining these social ties now and turning into someone I'm sure I'm not? What if people like me, who don't really get lonely without people, don't actually exist??) Anyway representation matters. Also Felicity being blindsided with Callum's proposal was, wow, okay I should have caught on to ace!Felicity then because that was so very accurate to my life experience minus people cutting fingers off. Look I was quoting stuff at the end to a friend and she was like "maybe that's why there's aces on the cover" and I am a very stupid ace okay. Felicity and Johanna's intense queerplatonic friendship that they keep trying to take up again in among the same sort of "you need character growth" drama that Monty needed re: Percy is also just, chef kiss, god I love this book. I need to buy this book. I haven't yet so what I did is I renewed all the books so I could immediately reread them after I finished them the first time.

[old-long-john]

(1/8)Oh my good golly gosh darn, Laura!!!! I would drown in your words if I could. That bit from your unfinished fic, I'm in awe. I am completely smitten with your interpretation of Silver. I wish I could articulate a response to your answers besides !!!!! (Also you're a saint for humoring me.) I could listen and talk to you about John Silver all day. You touched on some really good points in previous answers that I didn't acknowledge, so I'd like to address some of them now because wow.

You do such a good job unpacking the minutiae in each scene, but then I feel the need to further explicate your meta because you bring up so many brilliant points. 1.“Funny that Silver’s learnt so much shit from Flint, except that allowing yourself to be blinded to rationality and truths is a ruinous mistake.” God this ties in so well to our discussion of Silver believing his own bullshit. It’s almost as though he learned the wrong lesson from Flint and became more accomplished at lying to himself as the story goes on. Or perhaps those untruths just kept piling up. 

So very true. Honestly, I think so much of it is due to Silver letting himself get too comfortable in the little bubble he’d created for himself. And I feel so awful for him, because it was always going to have to pop in the end. He’s always been so good at reading people and at manipulating situations for his own gain, and he seemed to be incredibly honest with himself (and others) about his own failings and limitations, and those things are fine when nobody depends on you and you don’t depend on anybody else. But as soon as he developed loyalties and relationships, and with them wants and needs that he couldn’t provide for himself alone (love and friendship and respect), it suddenly wasn’t very convenient to be honest with himself about his own shortcomings or the things which the only two members of the John Silver’s People Club would value as more important than him. Because I completely believe he valued(/still values?) them more than anything else in the entire world. It’s such a horrible imbalance to face honestly and accept.

2.“Not much slips by Flint” lmao except a big cache full of gems on his own damn ship. Sorry I just had to bring that up. I feel like that was one of those leaps of faith the show expects us to take, and I just can’t. I still can’t believe Flint didn’t know the cache was on board the Walrus.

Mm, I know what you mean. Though I can make it work in my own head. Flint is such a micro-manager, but he has been far more relaxed this season in general. I mean, he went off on his little Fortress B&B break with Eleanor and trusted Silver to make everything work in his absence, with no plan given. But that’s part of the problem. Even if Silver was wrong about Flint’s investment in their friendship, and in his assertion that it was only a convenience insofar as it helped him to use Silver to have things done his way…Flint kind of still did that, a little bit. Flint loves him, I have no doubt, but he put so much faith in the idea that Silver would see his way as right and fall in line that it made him blind to the daylight that was growing between them. He was still doing it on that damn island when he was talking to Dooley. I can buy that he didn’t know the chest was on board, because he truly hadn’t made room in his head for the possibility that Silver would go against him in that way. So he let his plan fall into place, as his plans always fell into place with Silver by his side, without noticing that Silver wasn’t with him in the way he thought. Poor Flint. Like we said, speaking of masters of blinding oneself to dangerous truths…

3.“I wonder though how much he was motivated by pride in that moment, or anger, or even just vulnerability.” Honestly Laura just let me rEST. You have a Flint-like way of cutting straight to the heart of a scene or action. We (you) covered Silver’s vulnerability (god so vulnerable–remember when he left the hilltop when Flint asked about his past? He sounded SO young and broken as he went gosh. I’m pretty emotional over his emotions.) but I really want to address the others. Because I actually had some thoughts concerning his pride. He always made a point to set himself apart from the men and claim freedom from Flint’s influence (“You will account for me;” “I don’t believe in him”). I think once there was a break in their relationship (once daylight could seep between them) all Billy’s and Hands’s warnings fueled his determination perhaps to disprove them or maybe just to prove to himself that he can still hold his own with Flint and not be moved, even to the point of ignoring logic (John, why :’( ). And I’m thinking these conflicting, complex emotions feed into each other? Like maybe the anger also stems from the vulnerability, the perceived betrayal–is a reaction to being hurt. Anger is an easy emotion, and to someone who is new to emotions like Silver, I imagine it’s simpler to embrace. I mean, remember his face at the end of the episode? He’s so in love (romantic, platonic, whatever I don’t care); he’s in awe of this thing between them. This is his first (at least that we see) important relationship. The feelings are mutual, that’s what he says, and for him to feel like Flint broke his first foray into attachment, of course he’s going to be hurt. 

I suddenly have that scene from Pride and Prejudice playing in the back of my mind and it’s the worst. (”Perhaps these offences might have been overlooked had not your pride been hurt by my honesty…”, “My pride?”, “…in admitting scruples about our relationship…”, “…from the first moment I met you, your arrogance and conceit, your selfish disdain for the feelings of others made me realise that you were the last man in the world I could ever be prevailed upon to marry.” *cue sexual tension so thick you could spread it on toast*) Oh, pride. You know, come to think of it, we were told right at the beginning of the episode that pride should not be a thing that ought to come between them at this point, and I imagine that wasn’t accidental. 

I think you’re completely right about the influence of Billy and Hands’s words. However that pride is framed (either being for Silver’s own peace of mind, or to prove the point to them), having that ‘mistake’ seen by them, and commented on constantly, must have had some effect on his impulse to prove he could even the score and show just how very invulnerable he really was to Flint. I think he’s probably almost as angry with them for pointing it out and making it ‘a thing’ as he is with Flint for giving rise to it. I’ve wondered a lot, actually, just how this season would have gone without the corrupting influence of Hands. He really has been an evil little snake, whispering the things that should only ever have been thought by Silver, not said aloud. I suppose that was his purpose really. To give voice to those things that we as the audience needed to hear, but which wouldn’t normally be spoken. He’s almost been as much a narrative device to show Silver’s state of mind as those S3 dreams were for Flint. 

What you say about Silver’s complex emotions feeding into easier ones, like anger, sounds exactly right too. I’ve been kind of viewing Silver as a bit of a teenager in a lot of respects this season, and that fits in with that view. Flint was totally his first foray into attachment, yeah, and Silver does definitely love him in his way - he’s basically experiencing his first break up, and it’s a brutal, world-shattering one. He’s so inexperienced with feelings (seemingly deliberately, as one of those suddenly inconvenient lines of defence - fuck do I empathise with him there), and so like a teenager his reaction to big feelings that he doesn’t know how to quantify or cope with is to boil them down to easier ones, like anger and hurt, and to express them through spite and cruelty and self-pity. He’s a goddamn mess, but I don’t think he’d know how to stop everything from spiralling, even if he wanted to. Flint might though, if he’d only stop raging long enough to listen to him. 

(And don’t even get me started on Luke Arnold and his freakish ability to de-age himself by about 10 years in the blink of an eye. He’s looked and sounded so young several times this season, and every single time it’s broken me. I could write a whole essay just on that.)

One final thought I had regarding the narrative of Flint and Silver’s relationship is that though they frame it as the war vs Madi, as soon as Flint took the cache, the conflict became him vs Madi. And the fandom had some compelling arguments that the writers weren’t going to be that predictable, but they really were and. That’s probably the most disappointing. Like I didn’t find the episode disappointing but this season as a whole, while not bad, has not been up to parr. Anyway sorry for the incoherent jumble. But I truly love how you process Silver. 

I’ve had this thought too. All of last week I was worrying that there would be no rug-pull and that their division really would be as simple as it seemed, and I was ready to be so disappointed by that…but then episode 9 was so damn good that I kind of forgot to be annoyed. And I still can’t quite find it in me to pick holes yet. I don’t know how it will all stand up to rewatches, but I agree with you, I think. In comparison to most tv, S4 has still been something special (in my eyes), but there have definitely been things that seemed a little rushed or contrived. I suppose the writers felt that they didn’t have enough story left for two more seasons, but what they had was still too much for just one. Perhaps a final season of 12 or 15 episodes would have worked a little better, and given all the storylines and relationships a little more space to breathe. As it stands though, the thing I’ve always loved most about this show is the characters, and I think for the most part they’ve been as well written and thoughtfully developed this season as in the past three, so I’m willing to overlook a few more bumps in the storytelling than normal. And I’m just so glad that the pieces have finally fallen into place for everyone else to ‘see’ Silver again too, because it’s started to feel a little lonely in the John Silver Defence Squad lately. 

This got ENORMOUS. But I’ve had fun answering it! I am not ready to let these pirates go. :( I think they’re going to live in my head for a very, very long time. (I’m at least 40% John Silver at this point. Maybe more.) Someone carve ‘Know no shame’ on my tombstone, please.