#a tale of the twenty second century

[artemisyates]

Edric Montagu from The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century by Jane Webb (later Jane C. Loudon)

The novel is from 1827, so he's another one of those 19th century funky little literary mad scientists trying to resurrect the dead and it's great!

This is my design for him because I've been looking and, at the time of writing this, there are basically no posts on here about this book, at all.

So A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century fans, if you exist, here is some fan art. ♥

[see-arcane]

Lucy Undying came out a few days ago and

"It's a feminist retelling, giving Lucy the agency she so lacked in Dracula."

I am putting feminist retellings on the top shelf unit we all consider if sometimes lack of agency of a character in a story was the point

In fairness, I get the 'why' behind stuff like this.

Lucy's story is painful. It is scary and tragic and ends cruelly for her, just like so many tales of female victims before and after her. Though her death(s) have a real narrative and an emotional point, whereas your average damsel is nothing but an extra pound of meat for the grinder to help add more woe to Hero Man's story. It hurts more with her.

She stands apart from the common fridged woman by being someone we know, someone loved, someone killed and remade into a bloodstained caricature of herself to be her attacker's eternal slave. Ending her existence in that second iteration is mercy, practicality, and the setting of the stakes for Mina when Dracula targets her. If the monster doesn't kill you, the heroes will put you down for becoming a monster too. Which itself ripples out into new moral conundrums when we see how staunchly Jonathan refuses to risk destroying Mina in any form; making us question in turn whether there really was hope for Lucy the Bloofer Lady--who had killed no one yet!--if only Van Helsing and the Suitor Squad had tried another angle. It makes you chew on the implications.

So, I get it. We all want to save the character we love and who got crushed underfoot by the plot.

The problem comes in when to do that literary rescue, you completely obliterate everything about that character which makes them themselves and not Generic Strong Spunky Female #1897. And the book's summary doesn't give me much hope for this not being the case.

Her name was written in the pages of someone else’s story: Lucy Westenra was one of Dracula’s first victims. But her death was only the beginning. Lucy rose from the grave a vampire and has spent her immortal life trying to escape from Dracula’s clutches—and trying to discover who she really is and what she truly wants. Her undead life takes an unexpected turn in twenty-first-century London, when she meets another woman, Iris, who is also yearning to break free from her past. Iris’s family has built a health empire based on a sinister secret, and they’ll do anything to stay in power. Lucy has long believed she would never love again. Yet she finds herself compelled by the charming Iris while Iris is equally mesmerized by the confident and glamorous Lucy. But their intense connection and blossoming love is threatened by outside forces. Iris’s mother won’t let go of her without a fight, and Lucy’s past still has fangs: Dracula is on the prowl once more. Lucy Westenra has been a tragically murdered teen, a lonesome adventurer, and a fearsome hunter, but happiness has always eluded her. Can she find the strength to destroy Dracula once and for all, or will her heart once again be her undoing?

Now, if the name here was different? If this was, I don't know, 'Lorelei Wilder' thwarting her monstrous master 'Count Lord Duke Dracattackula,' that'd be fine. But the fact that it's trying to convince me that the central character is Lucy Westenra, the girl we know through others' words and her own as a human, and through the lens of others' witness accounts as an apparently merrily content monster as the distorted Bloofer Lady, makes me fear the worst: That our girl's been girlbossed out of recognition.

I won't pass immediate judgment. Maybe it's a hidden gem. Maybe a century's worth of character development has altered Bloofer Lucy into this form believably and the author hasn't just retroactively taken an eraser to everything she was pre and post-vampirism in order to make Standard Rebellious Hero Girl (now with public domain name!). I'll cross my fingers for it.

But I won't hold my breath.

[tawus]

African/African-American/Black

Do The Right Thing (1989) On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone's hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence.

Goodbye Solo (2008) This film is touching and humorous. It is the story of an unlikely friendship between a struggling but happy cab driver from Senegal, and a tormented southern man with secrets.

Lincoln (2012) As the Civil War continues to rage, President struggles with continued fighting on the battlefield during the civil war but he also fights with many inside his own cabinet with his decision to emancipate the slaves.

Malcom X (1992) Biographical epic of the controversial and influential Black Nationalist leader, from his early life and career as a small-time gangster to his ministry as a member of the Nation of Islam.

Straight Outta Compton (2015) The group NWA emerges from the mean streets of Compton in Los Angeles, California, in the mid-1980s and revolutionizes Hip Hop culture with their music and tales about life in the hood.

The Color of Friendship (2000) Mahree Bok is a white South African teenager and a product of the Apartheid system raised to view dark-skinned people as second-class citizens. Piper Dellums is the daughter of an African-American U.S. Congressman living in Washington D.C. When Mahree is chosen to spend her time as an exchange student at the Dellums's house, she is shocked on her arrival to discover that the Dellums are black, and the Dellums are just as surprised when they realize that Mahree is a white South African.

The Color Purple (1985) Based on Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Color Purple is a richly-textured, powerful film set in America's rural south. It is a brilliant drama about a black woman's struggles to take control of her life in a small Southern town in the early 20th century.

The Help (2011) This academy award winning movie takes place during the civil rights movements of the 1960’s, when an aspiring writer decides to write a book about the African-American maids' point of view on the white families they work for and the hardships they experience on a daily basis.

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Cambodian/Chinese/Vietnamese

Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) A senior chef lives with his three grown daughters; the middle one finds her future plans affected by unexpected events and the life changes of the other household members.

Holly (2006) In Cambodia, Holly, a 12-year-old Vietnamese girl, encounters Patrick, an American stolen artifacts dealer. The story follows their strong connection and her unrelenting efforts to escape her fate.

Last Train Home (2009) A couple embarks on a journey home for Chinese new year along with 130 million other migrant workers, to reunite with their children and struggle for a future. Their unseen story plays out as China soars towards being a world superpower.

Lost in Paradise (2011) Khoi, naive twenty-year-old travels to Ho Chi Minh City from the countryside to begin a new life. It's his first time in the big city and he's looking for a place to live.

Raise the Red Lantern (1991) A young woman becomes the fourth wife of a wealthy lord and must learn to live with the strict rules and tensions within the household.

Sentenced Home (2007) This documentary follows three Cambodian-American men, brought to the U.S. as children by their refugee families. They were raised in the grim public housing of Seattle, among gangs and other realities of that life. Bad choices as teens altered their lives forever, when immigration laws after 9/11 provided no second changes for such children. Though they were raised in the U.S., speak to one another in English, even think in English, each is sentenced to return to Cambodia - separated from family here, possibly forever.

The Joy Luck Club (1993) The story of four Chinese women who immigrated to the U.S. and their first-generation daughters. When one of the women dies, her daughter plays Mahjong with the older women and begins to really learn what her mother endured in China and of her sisters who were left behind. Daughter from Danang (2002) Separated at the end of the Vietnam war, an "Americanized" woman and her Vietnamese mother are reunited after 22 years.

The Last Emperor (1987) The story of the final Emperor of China.

The Quiet American (2002) An older British reporter vies with a young U.S. doctor for the affections of a beautiful Vietnamese woman.

The Vertical Ray of the Sun (2000) The plot centres around three sisters, two of whom are happily married (or so it appears).

Three Seasons (1999) An American in Ho Chi Minh City looks for a daughter he fathered during the war. He meets Woody, a child who's a street vendor, and when Woody's case of wares disappears, he thinks the soldier took it. Woody hunts for him.

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South Asian/Indian

Bhaji on the Beach (1998) Hashida, an 18-year old Asian woman, lives with her family in Birmingham. Her father wants her to become a doctor and next month her medical school is going to start. Secretly, she has a black boyfriend – which is an absolute faux pas in some Asian cultures – and has now discovered that she is pregnant. She joins a small South Asian women's group on a trip to Blackpool, a trip that holds life-changing experiences for all.

Bend It Like Beckham (2002) Teen-aged Londoner Jesminder Bhamra chases her dream of being a professional soccer player while dealing with the objections of her traditional Sikh family.

Gandhi (1982) A biography of Mohandas K. Gandhi, the lawyer who became the famed leader of the Indian revolts against the British rule through his philosophy of non-violent protest.

Slum Dog Millionaire (2008) A teen in Mumbai, India who grew up in the slums, becomes a contestant on the Indian version of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" When he is suspected of cheating, he is arrested. During his police interrogation, events from his life history are shown which explain why he knows the answers.

The Namesake (2006) A tale of a first-generation son of traditional, Indian immigrant parents. As he tries to make a place for himself, not always able to straddle two worlds gracefully, he is surprised by what he learns about his family and himself.

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Disease/Mental Illness/Disability

My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown (1989) Christy Brown, born with cerebral palsy, learns to paint and write with his only controllable limb - his left foot.

The Theory of Everything (2014) A look at the relationship between the famous physicist Stephen Hawking and his wife.

Ray (2004) The story of the life and career of the legendary rhythm and blues musician Ray Charles, from his humble beginnings in the South, where he went blind at age seven, to his meteoric rise to stardom during the 1950s and 1960s.

Silver Linings Playbook (2012) After a stint in a mental institution, former teacher Pat Solitano moves back in with his parents and tries to reconcile with his ex-wife. Things get more challenging when Pat meets Tiffany, a mysterious girl with problems of her own.

Still Alice (2014) A linguistics professor and her family find their bonds tested when she is diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease.

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LGBTQ+

A Single Man (2009) The story of an English professor, who one year after the sudden death of his boyfriend, is unable to cope with his typical days in 1960s Los Angeles. It is a powerful story of his grief and pain for the loss of someone he truly deeply loved.

Boys Don’t Cry(1999) This film is about the true life story of Brandon Teena, a young woman who is going through a sexual identity crisis. She cuts her hair and dresses like a man to see if she can pass as one. She lived life in a male identity until it was discovered he was born biologically female.

Brokeback Mountain (2005) This film tells the story of a forbidden and secretive relationship between two same-sex cowboys and their lives over the years.

Milk (2008) This film tells the story of American gay activist, Harvey Milk, and his struggles as he fights for gay rights and becomes California's first openly gay elected official.

Philadelphia (1993) In this movie, a lawyer, working for a conservative law firm, is diagnosed with AIDS. His employer fires him because of his condition. He tries to find someone to take his case but all refuse except one willing small time lawyer who advocates for a wrongful dismissal suit in spite of his own fears and homophobia.

The Danish Girl (2015) A fictitious love story loosely inspired by the lives of Danish artists Lili Elbe and Gerda Wegener. Lili and Gerda's marriage and work evolve as they navigate Lili's groundbreaking journey as a transgender pioneer.

Transamerica (2005) A pre-operative male-to-female transgender takes an unexpected journey when she learns that she fathered a son, now a teenage runaway hustling on the streets of New York.

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Hispanic/Latino(a)/Mexican

A Day Without a Mexican (2004) One-third of the population of California is Latinos, Hispanics, Mexicans. How would it change life for the state's other residents if this portion of the populous suddenly vanished? The film is a "mockumentary" designed to show the valuable contributions made every day by Latinos.

Babel (2006) Tragedy strikes a married couple on vacation in the Moroccan desert, touching off an interlocking story involving four different families.

El Norte (1983) The Guatemalan army discovers Mayan Indian peasants who have begun to organize, hoping to rise above their label of "brazos fuertes" or "strong arms" (manual laborers). The army massacres their families and destroys their village to give the new recruits no choice but to follow and obey. However, two teenage siblings survive and are determined to escape to the U.S. or El Norte. They make their way to L.A. - uneducated, illegal immigrants, alone.

Mi Familia (My Family) (1995) This epic film traces over three generations an immigrant family's trials, tribulations, tragedies, and triumphs. Jose and Maria, the first generation, come to Los Angeles, meet, marry, face deportation all in the 1930s. They establish their family in East L.A., and their children Chucho, Paco, Memo, Irene, Toni, and Jimmy deal with youth culture and the L.A. police in the 1950s. As the second generation become adults in the 1960s, the focus shifts to Jimmy, his marriage to Isabel (a Salvadorian refugee), their son, and Jimmy's journey to becoming a responsible parent.

Sin Nombre (2009) A Honduran young girl and a Mexican gangster are united in a journey across the American border.

Under the Same Moon (2007) Heartwarming story about a mother who leaves Mexico to make a home for herself and her son (Adrian Alonso). When the boy's grandmother dies, leaving him alone, he sets off on his own to find his mother.

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Immigrants/Undocumented

Crossing Arizona (2006) With Americans on all sides of the issue up in arms and Congress in a policy battle over how to move forward, Crossing Arizona tells the story of how we got to where we are today. Heightened security in California and Texas has pushed illegal border-crossers into the Arizona desert in unprecedented numbers (estimated 4,500 a day). Most are Mexican men in search of work, but increasingly the border-crossers are women and children wanting to join their husbands and fathers. This influx of migrants crossing through Arizona and the attendant rising death toll has elicited complicated feelings about human rights, culture, class, labor, and national security.

Dancer in the Dark (2000) An east European girl goes to America with her young son, expecting it to be like a Hollywood film.

El Norte (1983) The Guatemalan army discovers Mayan Indian peasants who have begun to organize, hoping to rise above their label of "brazos fuertes" or "strong arms" (manual laborers). The army massacres their families and destroys their village to give the new recruits no choice but to follow and obey. However, two teenage siblings survive and are determined to escape to the U.S. or El Norte. They make their way to L.A. - uneducated, illegal immigrants, alone.

In America (2002) A family of Irish immigrants adjusts to life on the mean streets of Hell's Kitchen while also grieving the death of a child.

The Terminal (2004) When an Eastern European immigrant comes to American to fulfill a promise to his father he finds himself stranded inside JFK airport, making it his temporary residence when he cannot enter the USA nor return home.

The Visitor (2007) A lonely economics professor in Connecticut life is changed forever - and for the better - when he finds a couple of illegals, who happen to be living in his New York apartment.

Green Card (1990) A French man wanting to stay in the US enters into a “short-term” marriage to an American woman so he can get his green card. Complications result when he gets caught lying.

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Indigenous

Avatar (2009) A paraplegic marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (2007) A chronicle of how American Indians were displaced as the U.S. expanded west. Based on the book by Dee Brown.

Once Were Warriors (1994) A family descended from Maori warriors is bedeviled by a violent father and the societal problems of being treated as outcasts.

Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) In 1931 Australia, government policy includes taking half-caste children from their Aboriginal mothers and sending them a thousand miles away "to save them from themselves." Molly, Daisy, and Grace (two sisters and a cousin who are 14, 10, and 8) arrive at their “school” and promptly escape, under Molly's lead. For days they walk north, following a fence that keeps rabbits from settlements, eluding a native tracker and the regional constabulary. Their pursuers take orders from the government's "chief protector of Aborigines," A.O. Neville, blinded by Anglo-Christian certainty, evolutionary worldview and conventional wisdom.

Smoke Signals (1998) Young Indian man Thomas is a nerd in his reservation, wearing oversize glasses and telling everyone stories no-one wants to hear. His parents died in a fire in 1976, and Thomas was saved by Arnold. Arnold soon left his family (and his tough son Victor), and Victor hasn't seen his father for 10 years. When Victor hears Arnold has died, Thomas offers him funding for the trip to get Arnold's remains, but only if Thomas will also go with him. Thomas and Victor hit the road.

The Spirit of Crazy Horse (1990) One hundred years after the massacre at Wounded Knee, Milo Yellow Hair recounts the story of his people-from the lost battles for their land against the invading whites-to the bitter internal divisions and radicalization of the 1970's-to the present-day revival of Sioux cultural pride, which has become a unifying force as the Sioux try to define themselves and their future.

Whale Rider (2002) On the east coast of New Zealand, the Whangara people believe their History dates back a thousand years to a single ancestor, Paikea, who escaped death when his canoe capsized by riding to shore on the back of a whale. Whangara chiefs have been considered Paikea's direct descendants. Pai, an 11-year-old girl in a patriarchal New Zealand culture, believes she is destined to be the new chief. But her grandfather Koro is bound by tradition to pick a male leader. Pai must fight a thousand years of tradition to fulfill her destiny.

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Middle Eastern

Baran (2001) In a building site in present-day Tehran, Lateef, a 17-year-old Turkish worker is irresistibly drawn to Rahmat, a young Afghan worker. The revelation of Rahmat's secret changes both their lives.

Incendies (2010) Twins journey to the Middle East to discover their family history, and fulfill their mother's last wishes.

Schindler's List (1993) In German-occupied Poland during World War II, Oskar Schindler gradually becomes concerned for his Jewish workforce after witnessing their persecution by the Nazi Germans.

The Band’s Visit (2007) A band comprised of members of the Egyptian police force head to Israel to play at the inaugural ceremony of an Arab arts center, only to find themselves lost in the wrong town.

Turtles Can Fly (2004) Near the Iraqi-Turkish border on the eve of an American invasion, refugee children like 13-year-old Kak (Ebrahim), gauge and await their fate.

Wadjda (2012) An enterprising Saudi girl signs on for her school's Koran recitation competition as a way to raise the remaining funds she needs in order to buy the green bicycle that has captured her interest.

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Pacific Islander/Polynesian

Balangiga: The Howling Wilderness (2017) 1901, Balangiga. Eight-year-old Kulas flees town with his grandfather and their carabao to escape General Smith's Kill and Burn order. He finds a toddler amid a sea of corpses and together, the two boys struggle to survive the American occupation.

Moana (2016) In Ancient Polynesia, when a terrible curse incurred by the Demigod Maui reaches an impetuous Chieftain's daughter's island, she answers the Ocean's call to seek out the Demigod to set things right.

Once Were Warriors (1994) A family descended from Maori warriors is bedeviled by a violent father and the societal problems of being treated as outcasts.

Princess Kaiulani (2009) The story of a Hawaiian princess' attempts to maintain the independence of the island against the threat of American colonization.

Whale Rider (2002) On the east coast of New Zealand, the Whangara people believe their History dates back a thousand years to a single ancestor, Paikea, who escaped death when his canoe capsized by riding to shore on the back of a whale. Whangara chiefs have been considered Paikea's direct descendants. Pai, an 11-year-old girl in a patriarchal New Zealand culture, believes she is destined to be the new chief. But her grandfather Koro is bound by tradition to pick a male leader. Pai must fight a thousand years of tradition to fulfill her destiny.

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Women

Āfsāīd = Offside (2006) Struggle of Women in a country that excludes them from entering the stadiums.

The Help (2011) This academy award winning movie takes place during the civil rights movements of the 1960’s when an aspiring writer decides to write a book about the African-American maids' point of view on the white families they work for and the hardships they experience on a daily basis.

Suffragette (2015) The foot soldiers of the early feminist movement, women who were forced underground to pursue a dangerous game of cat and mouse with an increasingly brutal State.

Water (2005) The film examines the plight of a group of widows forced into poverty at a temple in the holy city of Varanasi. It focuses on a relationship between one of the widows, who wants to escape the social restrictions imposed on widows, and a man who is from the highest caste and a follower of Mahatma Gandhi.

Whale Rider (2002) On the east coast of New Zealand, the Whangara people believe their History dates back a thousand years to a single ancestor, Paikea, who escaped death when his canoe capsized by riding to shore on the back of a whale. Whangara chiefs have been considered Paikea's direct descendants. Pai, an 11-year-old girl in a patriarchal New Zealand culture, believes she is destined to be the new chief. But her grandfather Koro is bound by tradition to pick a male leader. Pai must fight a thousand years of tradition to fulfill her destiny.

Ooh amazing, thank you for this! ❤️

I've watched Slumdog Millionaire, Brokeback Mountain, and Schindler's List. And read a Penguin Classics abridged version of Rabbit-Proof Fence as part of my English learning back in my teenage years. Some of the others I'm familiar with tho have yet to watch; and others are completely new to me

[blackswaneuroparedux]

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There is no beauty in Music itself, the beauty is within the listener.

- Igor Stravinsky

“The idea of The Rite of Spring came to me while I was still composing Firebird,” Igor Stravinsky recalled, 45 years after the ballet’s first performance in 1913, in his book Conversations. “I had dreamed of a scene of pagan ritual in which a chosen sacrificial virgin danced herself to death.” If Stravinsky is to be believed, this dream marked the beginning of a process that culminated in the premiere of one of the 20th century’s most important musical works.

Stravinsky’s music was meant to capture the spirit of the scenario, which he had outlined with the help of painter and ethnographer Nikolai Roerich and dancer and choreographer Mikhail Fokine during the spring and summer of 1910. Roerich had filled Stravinsky’s head with tales about all sorts of rituals from ancient Russia – divinations, sacrifices, dances, and so on – involving a variety of characters. The ballet that resulted revolves around the return of spring and the renewal of the earth through the sacrifice of a virgin. In his handwritten version of the story, Stravinsky described The Rite as “a musical choreographic work. It represents pagan Russia and is unified by a single idea: the mystery and the great surge of the creative power of spring….”

Stravinsky completed the score on 29 March 1913, and exactly two months later, the ballet premiered in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where it caused the famous scandal that ushered in modern music. Nijinsky’s choreography and the wild, unchecked power of Stravinsky’s score were something wholly new. Stravinsky wrote for one of his largest orchestras ever in The Rite of Spring, and he used it with an assurance and confidence one would hardly expect from a composer just out of his twenties and with only two big successes - The Firebird and Petrushka - behind him.

But those two scores, for all of their individuality and accomplishment, did not seem like they were leading to The Rite of Spring. What Stravinsky did was totally unexpected.

The stage action during the ballet’s second half, leading up to the sacrifice, was enough to capture the attention of even that raucous audience at the first performance. Finally quiet, they could hear Stravinsky’s score and watch as Maria Piltz, the dancer who played the sacrificial victim, stood motionless as the ritual unfolded around her, gradually coming to life to perform her dance, with its angular contortions and tortured motions.

What actually happened on that scandalous night will always be a mystery to some degree, because the reports contradict each other. Was it the choreography that annoyed people, or the music? Were the police really called? Was it true that missiles were thrown, and challenges to a duel offered? Were the creators booed at the end, or cheered?

The dancer Dame Marie Rambert remembered that right at the beginning ‘a shout went up in the gallery: “Un docteur!" (Call a doctor!). Somebody else shouted louder, “Un dentiste!" (a dentist!)’. The aristocrat Harry Kessler said that people started to whisper and joke almost immediately. Stravinsky himself was so angry that he stormed out and went backstage to help the dancers keep time.

What is certain is that the audience was shocked - and with good reason. Stravinsky’s score for The Rite of Spring contradicted every rule about what music should be. The sounds are often deliberately harsh, right from opening Lithuanian folk melody, which is played by the bassoon in its highest, most uncomfortable range. The music was cacophonously loud, assaulting the ears with thunderous percussion and shrieking brass. Rhythmically it was complex in a completely unprecedented way. In the ‘Ritual of the Rival Tribes’ the music unfolds in two speeds at once, in a ratio of 3:2. And it makes lavish use of dissonance, i.e. combinations of notes which don’t make normal harmonic sense. ‘The music always goes to the note next to the one you expect,’ wrote one exasperated critic.

Then there was the dance, choreographed by Nijinsky. According to some observers this was what really caused the scandal at the first night. When the curtain rose the audience saw a row of ‘knock-kneed and long-braided Lolitas jumping up and down’ as Stravinsky called them, who seemed to jerk rather than dance. Classical dance aspired upwards, in defiance of gravity, whereas Nijinsky’s dancers seemed pulled down to the earth. Their strange, stamping movements and awkward poses defied every canon of gracefulness.

Both the music and the dance of The Rite of Spring seemed to deny the possibility of human feelings, which for most people is what gives art its meaning. As Stravinsky put it, ‘there are simply no regions for soul-searching in The Rite of Spring’. This is what separates it so decisively from Stravinsky’s hit of 1911, Petrushka. There we’re immersed in a human world, which exudes the very specific cultural ambience of Russia. It’s true that the main characters are puppets, rather than rounded human beings. But they have characters, even if they’re somewhat rudimentary, and at the end there’s even a suggestion that Petrushka might have a soul.

* Pina Bausch's interpretation of Stravinksy's Rite. A masterpiece of modern dance.

[livgr3]

Roundtable: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) dir. Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise

Description on Disney+: Quasi leaves his tower on Notre Dame to help a kind and beautiful gypsy.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a true hidden gem of Disney's animated filmography, and a movie I've found so fascinating, shocking, and genuinely terrifying since I was a kid. The film was produced and released by Disney in a period retroactively referred to as the "Disney Renaissance," in which the company released several cutting edge animated musicals within a few years of one another, almost all of which were based on literature, history, or cultural mythology as opposed to classic fairy tales. While many of these films were relatively progressive and boundary pushing, Hunchback remains one of Disney’s most daring ventures with its criticism of religious hypocrisy and dark themes of xenophobia, lust, and morality.

Based on Victor Hugo’s 1831 Gothic novel of the same name, The Hunchback of Notre Dame occurs in Paris in the late 15th Century and highlights tensions between Catholic officials and Romani migrants. The film tells the story of Quasimodo, a deformed man who rings the bells of the Notre Dame Cathedral and must remain in the bell tower under the orders of Judge Claude Frollo, a corrupt minister who took a baby Quasimodo from Romani people attempting to flee twenty years prior. Frollo has made it his lifelong mission as the “Minister of Justice” to rid Paris of its Romani population, and hires Captain Phoebus to find the Romani’s safe haven hidden in the city. Frollo’s efforts are complicated by Esmerelda, a defiant gypsy woman whom he lusts after. Esmerelda befriends Quasimodo and the two help one another escape their situations of imprisonment. Meanwhile, Frollo begins to burn down the city of Paris until he finds Esmerelda, adamant that if he can’t “have” her, he’d like to kill her. The film is partially narrated by Clopin, a Romani jester-type figure who also plays a role within the story in the second-act. Other secondary characters are Quasimodi’s three talking gargoyle friends (one of whom is voiced by Jason Alexander/George Costanza).

Scoring and Narrative Context

Hunchback’s music is very crucial to distinguishing and defining the cultural identities of its characters, and its distinct musical styles are often associated with the space and physical location in which a musical number is performed. Given that the narrative centers on cultural differences between religious and ethnic groups, the film’s music takes influence from both Romani folk music and Catholic hymns. The uses of these two musical styles are differentiated by who is singing each number and where the number occurs. Romani folk music, for instance, makes up the introductory song “The Bells of Notre Dame” and the festival number “Topsy Turvy” which are both performed by Romani people and peasants on the streets of Paris. These numbers are fast paced, colorful, and lively, with percussion instruments and discordant chants by the crowds. Lyric and dialogue are indistinguishable from one another as these songs blend seamlessly into the diegetic space of the film and move the narrative forward.

The film uses Catholic music to underscore its scenes in the Cathedral, with deep bells and choral singing creating a contrast to the lively folk music signifying the world outside. It’s with this haunting music that the film’s critique of religious hypocrisy, characterized through Frollo, takes form. The sound of bells often linger as characters wander throughout the cathedral, a precarious space with guards at every turn despite being promoted as a “Sanctuary” for Romani people.

Quasimodo’s songs take elements from both musical styles while also embodying Disney’s more traditional “hero” songs, as he is confined to the cathedral yet yearns for the world of folk music and “freedom” on the streets of Paris.

Familiar Musical Framing

In her essay on the Western musical lens of Disney’s Moana entitled “Time to Face the Music,” Armstrong writes “This musical containment of unfamiliar sounds by familiar ones limits the audience’s access to the unfamiliar, controlling the representation of the otherness of Polynesian music” (113). This idea is quite relevant in reading Hunchback’s selective uses of Romani music and culture, specifically in regards to the character of Esmerelda (who is voiced by white actress Demi Moore).

As Quasimodo and Esmerelda become friends, Quasi remarks that Esmerelda is “not like other gypsies.” Though Esmerelda immediately refutes this claim and encourages Quasi to unlearn the discriminatory ideas which Frollo has taught him, I find that the film itself upholds Quasi’s sentiment through its formal elements. It is particularly through music that Esmerelda becomes more associated with Western culture than with the Romani culture to which she actually identifies. Her solo “I Want” song, “God Help the Outcasts,” is sung in the Cathedral and fuses elements of an archetypical Disney princess song with a Catholic prayer/hymn. It is through this Western visual and sonic environment that we are expected to most sympathize with Esmerelda.

Additionally, this number emphasizes the extent to which Esmerelda is chiefly an object of the male gaze. This is already apparent at a surface level, with her sexualized outfit, constant references to her appearance (see Disney+ description above), and the way her sexual allure brings about Frollo’s most villainous inclinations. Even further, there are only a few scenes in the whole film where Esmerelda is not being looked at by one of the three principal male characters.

For instance: (play last 30 seconds)

Even in what seems to be a private moment of prayer, Esmerelda is being watched by Quasimodo and the gaze of the camera for nearly the whole song. Her positioning within the way of light from the stained glass window at the end of the song makes her seem angelic, contrasting Frollo’s depiction of her as a seductive demon (coming up below). I argue that this over-positive representation of her is still dehumanizing, as she is represented as a conceptual figure of goodness rather than a whole person. The angelic way that Quasi views her also contributes to the film’s penultimate act of white saviorism in its climax:

Character Performance

As I began to touch on before, the musical direction of the film intrinsically links Frollo with the church, and even further associates his “religious” motives of justice and morality with evil and monstrosity. Frollo is displayed as corrupt and irredeemable from the first minutes of the film, with the chords of his song “Hellfire” played around his acts of evil several scenes before he performs the song. The film thus toys with the idea of “authenticity” by attaching Catholic-inspired music to one of Disney’s most evil characters to date. I don’t exactly think that the film is making a statement against Catholicism as a religion, but is rather pointing out the sense of evil that lies within those who believe themselves to be the most morally sound.

This brief moment from “The Bells of Notre Dame” and the iconic song “Hellfire” should speak for themselves:

(0:25-0:55)

(0:20-1:45)

Still, in making the unmistakable point that Frollo’s objectification of Esmerelda is very bad, all other acts of objectification towards her (and Romani people in the film more broadly) seem “good” in sheer comparison. The heightened attention to her beauty and sexuality also not only sexualizes Romani women, but echoes wider cultural notions of who is deemed “worthy” of saving.

[thewardenofwinter]

Writeblr Introduction | Morana Warrin

I have finally created a Tumblr for my writing. I haven't been on here since I just got internet access (around 2013 so you can probably guess the things I saw) but I need a place to throw all my ideas at a wall and watch as they trickle down into a puddle of lost nights of sleep and aesthetic pinterest boards.

▸ About

▸My name is Morana, I would prefer they/them pronouns but, to be frank, I do not care what you refer to me as. I have been writing for a long time (too long if you ask some people) but in the past three years, I have been taking the profession much more seriously in hopes of starting a career. Besides being a writer and a threat to modern society, I also dabble in drawing/graphic design and character design.

▸I adore 19th-century Russian literature (Mikhail Bulgakov is my personal favourite) and absurdist texts. There isn't a moment of my day when I'm not listening to some sort of music, I do not discriminate genres in the slightest but I am partial to rock and its many subgenres. I love any 90s and early 2000s movies, early Hollywood horror flicks, and Soviet films from the 80s.

▸ Current Projects

(I am horrible at summaries so please take pity on me. also check TWs)

The Resurrectioners

You only live twice.

(TW: Mentions of s*icide)

After the deaths of her two sisters in a car crash, twenty-seven-year-old Samara Dombroski decides that her life is no longer worth living and makes a successful attempt at her own life. Only there's one problem:

She doesn’t stay dead for very long.

An indeterminate amount of time later, Samara wakes up in a strange, vast estate plagued by visions of the past that she can’t control. She learns that this place is run by a man known only as The Resurrectionist, a necromancer armed with a group of assassins possessing strange abilities called Resurrectioners, an eclectic group of individuals who all share her story: people who found death by their own hand or by some other tragic means.

Now a resurrectioner herself, Samara must repay the debt of her second chance at life to The Resurrectionist by disposing of cadavers for him: violent, ghoulish beings that result from misused necromancy who feast on flesh and bone. Once she has killed enough to satisfy The Resurrectionist, she will be released from the estate she is trapped in and free to live the rest of her life.

genre: dark fantasy, thriller

What We Undertake

Some things are better left undead.

Guillermo Del Toro's Crimson Peak meets Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow in this paranormal mystery and gothic romance set in the late 19th century.

Our tale follows one Dolores Clive, resident medium and the daughter of the late Warren Clive, Boston's most beloved undertaker. After her father's death and subsequent take over of the family business, Dolores has become a recluse haunted by ghosts of her past and near future which all comes to head when her step-sister arrives in town with her newly acquired fiancé and his rather strange but beautiful brother in tow following a string of murders.

Genre: horror/supernatural fiction, gothic fiction

The Stray Girls

It's not drugs that are killing these teens.

(TW: Mentions of drugs and alcohol)

Set in the fictional city of Maynard, The Stray Girls is a retelling of The Lost Boys centred around a cast of troubled teen girls set 10 years later in 1997'.

After once again deciding to move across the country with her daughters, Magdelena's mother decides that cheap rent is worth more than her daughter's lives when she moves to Maynard, Washington— which currently boasts the largest missing girl population in the country. While settling into their new home, Magda notices her elder sister Roxanne is beginning to act strange: leaving the house in the middle of the night, wearing sunglasses indoors, and sleeping all day. First suspecting it to be drugs, Magda thinks nothing of it, but as time goes on and her sister's personality makes a sudden shift in the wrong direction, she can no longer pretend like everything is alright. Meeting the group of troubled girls that her sister now calls 'friends' slowly leads her down a path of crime, thrill and peer pressure. But it's not booze that these girls are drinking: it's blood.

Genre: Teen Adventure/Horror

▸ LINKS

pinterest // spotify // instagram

Though my aesthetic and writing style may scream morbid academic pretentiousness, I assure you my online presence and writing greatly contrast with my personality (and looks for that matter) so please do not be alarmed by my frequent buffoonery, general bastardness, and bombastic vulgarity.

Thank you for reading! (or skipping to the end)

— M. Warrin

[jinxedwood]

List your nine most favourite books

Tagged by @arenee1999

Listen, there are books I think are good, and books I like, and sometimes that list doesn't overlap. This was a tough list to compile and I reserve the right to disavow it at a later date!

All Systems Red by Martha Wells. This is a novella and the first of the Murderbot series. It’s an action story about a sentient robot that has broken free of its programming and has developed free will. This is a recent read and I loved every moment of it and it was so awesome to find a series and go ’wait…there are four more books already published? Its my Birthday!’

A Player of Games by Iain M Banks.This was the first of the Contact books I read, and while there are more sophisticated books from this series, this book deftly introduces the Culture  and its universe and ethics while still giving you a gut punch to the stomach. It also gives you a surprisingly modern take on gender and identity considering it was written over thirty years ago. 

Orlando, by Virginia Woolf. A story about a nobleman born in England during the reign of Elizabeth I, who  wakes up a woman one morning and then goes on to live for another 300 hundred years - although others are too polite to mention this. I fell in love with this book as a teenager and that hasn’t changed. 

Witches Abroad, by Terry Pratchett. This is the 12th Discworld book and the 3rd of the Witches books, but it also happened to be my first introduction to Granny Weatherwax and I will love her always and forever. 

The Robber Bride, by Margaret Atwood. Listen, I know the Handmaid’s Tale is awesome, but she has written a whole ton of other books in a ton of different genres that are also awesome. This book is about friendship and betrayal (and that one crazy fucker who meandered around your friendship circle when you were in your twenties and left carnage in their wake)

The Assassin's Apprentice (First of the Farseer Trilogy) by Robin Hobb  Epic Quest Fantasy, except the primary character is not who you’d think he’d be. Loved this series from the beginning to the end.

The Rivers of London, By Ben Aaronovitch. First of an Urban Fantasy series in which Peter Grant is a beat cop with the London Met, who has an encounter with the supernatural and suddenly gets seconded to the in ‘The Folly’, the officially unofficial branch of the London police that deals with the freaky side of things. Also, he’s now a Sorcerer's apprentice.

This is such a beautifully crafted world and the characters are perfectly rendered. If you haven’t read this series, you’re missing out. 

And two old faves that probably wouldn’t pass the smell test nowadays.

The Many Coloured Land (form the Saga of the Exiles Series), by Julian May.

 Listen, the 21st century is a rough place for a lot of humans. First the Aliens came, and then all those super powered humans came out of the woodwork and your average Joe just wanted to go back to a simpler world - so that handy time gate back to the Pliocene Era will come in dead handy, am I right? A new virgin world that's just a younger version of the present, and it will be all theirs and only theirs.

Except for the Fae, who already live there and are in charge, and all of you would-be frontiersmen are now their serfs and slaves. Good times.

I don't know what this writer was smoking when she dreamed up this series but it must have been some serious shit (and I still love these crazy books) 

The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham. You know this writer, you really do. This is the Guy who wrote Day of the Triffids and the Midwich Cuckoos. Like most British Sci Fi writers from this era, he leans more into the eerie and creepy rather than epic and operatic. I came across this book in my School Library (back in the OLDEN TIMES) It’s a post apocalyptic future that we assume happens after a nuclear winter.

This was written in the 1950s but gives a good stab at describing what this kind of world would look like, warts and all and it's one of those stories that kind of stuck with me through the years so I thought it might deserve a spot on this list. 

And because it's Wyndham, there are telepaths.  

Tagging in a non compulsory sort of way: @cbk1000, @hellsbellschime, @yamimana-ramblings, @pers-books, @lilbreck @randomkiwibirds @galvanizedfriend @garglyswoof @manicpixiesdreamdragon

[thefandomwarriorlexy]

Descendants Headcanons/Wickedverse Guide

Some of these aren't so much "headcanons" as things I'm using in my post-canon universe, named the Wickedverse. Me and my sister share this universe, so she has a lot of influence with some of these. Will get updated as I add/change ideas.

Lore

Centuries before Auradon was formed, there was a great war between the kingdoms. After years of fighting, they made an agreement on territory and everyone closed their borders. This lead to kingdoms/cities to develop at different rates, due to different resources. Many years later, all the fairytales/stories happen over the course of seven years or so. Then, Auradon is formed.

The formation of Auradon (and the Isle) created the Age of Goodness (AOG). Upon it's creation, was year 1.

Since Descendants takes place twenty years after the AOG, it is year twenty

The first Isle book takes place in the July before Descendants. Descendants occurs in September-October (as Ben's birthday is in October), and Wicked World happens in November. The second and third Isle books take place in January of year 21. Since D2 takes place six months after D1 it occurs in March of 21. The fourth Isle book takes place in May of 22. D3, taking place after the older have graduated, occurs in June of year 22.

Some other Disney properties are included that aren't specifically mention in canon: Frozen, Frozen II, Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure (TV series), Encanto, Big Hero 6, Raya, and definitely more.

Mal and Ben's wedding is on the 13th of April, almost a year after D3.

Sometime after D3, the Isle of the Lost is renamed the Isle of the Found.

Family

Uma and Freddie are twin sisters, having been separated after Dr. Facilier and Ursula broke up. Freddie and Uma were unaware of this, and found out in the events of Never Knew I Lost You (coming soon).

In addition, Celia has a different mother, an OC named Lauren.

This is also why Facilier seemed to dislike Freddie (though, her abuse portrayed in the Wickedverse is probably worse than it is in canon), as he dislikes her mother. Whereas he favored Celia, since he likes her mother. Also why Ursula didn't care much about Uma, having become despondent after losing her partner and daughter.

King Philip has three sisters, Brigitte, Bianca, and Marya, taken from the book A Twisted Tale: Once Upon a Dream by Liz Braswell. Bianca is Ariana's mother and Marya has a daughter named Naomi.

Lumiere is married to Fairy Godmother, and is Jane's father.

Evie and Dizzy have the same father, Hans, making them half-sisters.

Doug's mother, named Clarita in this universe, is from Encanto. Agustin is her maternal uncle, making him Doug's great uncle.

Jay's mother was a woman from Agrabah named Lulu. She dealt in some shady business, thus why she was sent to the Isle. She died from an illness when Jay was five.

The sea witches mentioned in the first Isle book are Morgana's daughter, and Uma's cousins, instead of sisters.

Hadie's mother is an OC named Lian Teng. She is the sister of one of the Huns that survived the avalanche. He was all she had, so she followed him to the Isle. She worked in Hades's Souvlaki and her and Hades had a brief relationship a while after his break up with Maleficent. Hadie is three years younger than Mal.

Harriet, Harry, and CJ's mother is a woman named Red Jessica from Jake and the Neverland Pirates TV series. However, she is only the same character; her role and relationship with Hook is different in the Wickedverse than the cartoon.

Carlos's father is Bruno Madrigal from Encanto (inspired by @silverloreley 's headcanon and discussions). Bruno had a bad vision about Cruella and went to warn her about it. They had an unexpected connection, and one thing led to another.

Melody (from the Little Mermaid sequel) and Zephyr (from the Hunchback of Notre Dame sequel) are married and have a (currently unamed) child.

Friendships

Prior to the events of Wicked World, and possibly D1, Jordan and Ally become best friends after Jordan helps Ally out of a bad relationship.

Jane and Freddie become best friends during the events of Wicked World.

Likewise, Uma and Audrey become best friends sometime after the events of Descendants 3.

Because of the discovery of Uma and Freddie being twins, they start spending time together. To not leave Jane and Audrey out, the four of them hang out together often, forming a friend group similar to the Core Four.

A few months before the Bal wedding, Lonnie and CJ meet and become best friends.

Characters

As a reason for why Carlos was not at Mal and Ben's wedding (and why the rest of the Core Four were sad about it), he develops COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and goes into a coma a couple weeks before the wedding. He wakes up a few weeks afterwards.

Some last name headcanons:

Dwarf last names are from gems and the Seven Dwarves' last name is Lazuli, from lapis lazuli. This makes Doug's full name Doug Lazuli.

Maleficent and Mal's last name is Dragonheart, making Mal's full name Maleficent "Mal" Bertha Dragonheart.

Ben's last name is Leroi, meaning "the king" in French (taken from @hitchell-mope)

Evie's last name is Grimhilde, mostly taken from the fandom.

Jane's last name is Faery, and Fairy Godmother's real name is Joan.

Audrey gives up her birthright to rule Auroria, deciding that isn't the path for her. Naomi will rule Auroria instead. (Which was also what they were planning to do when they thought Audrey would be queen of Auradon).

Uma becomes leader of the Isle after D3, with Harry, Gil, and her crew acting as her advisors/council/soldiers.

OCs

Varian and Cassandra (from the Tangles series) are married and have two kids, Caelan and Valeria.

Anna and Kristoff are married and two sons, Alaric and Kade.

Raya has a son named River.

Maleficent has a younger brother named Kaveh, who comes to Auradon a few years after D3 to help stop a new threat. He previously lived in the Moorlands, the ancestral home of dark fairies and Maleficent's homeland.

Ally has a (currently unnamed) older brother.

Snow White and Prince Florian have a (currently unnamed) child.

Scar (who was turned into a human before being put on the Isle) has a daughter named Safiya.

Mirabel is married to a man named Rico and they have two kids, Anabel and Matteo. Others from Encanto also have kids, but most are currently unnamed.

Ships

Ben X Mal -- also known as Bal

Doug X Evie -- also known as Devie

Jane X Carlos -- also known as Jarlos

Jay X Lonnie -- also known as Jonnie

Harry X Uma -- also known as Huma

Chad X Freddie -- also known as Chaddie

Gil X Ally -- also known as Gilly

Hadie X Audrey -- also known as Hadrey

Zevon X CJ -- also known as Zelista

Maleficent X Hades (after Maleficent's redemption) also known as Mades

Some other ships that aren't as focused on:

Anthony X Harriet (Anthoniet)

Jade X Diego (Jadiego)

Li'l Shang, Celia, and Dizzy are shipped with OCs:

Li'l Shang is shipped with Safiya

Dizzy is shipped with Alaric

Celia is shipped with Caelan

We also refer to (some) best friend pairs with combined names:

Jordan and Ally are Jolly

Mal and Evie are Mevie

Jane and Freddie are Jaddie

Uma and Audrey are Umdrey

Lonnie CJ are Lonista

Not a name combination, but Uma and Freddie are Shell Sisters

[fandomsandflyingstingrays]

The potential for Will and Nico being Star Wars fans in The Sun and the Star has my brain going crazy, so please enjoy the tale of how I think Will got Nico into it

Will lasts exactly three days into his friendship with Nico before making a Star Wars reference

It’s on Nico’s last day in the infirmary. Will, in trying to impress on Nico the benefits of adequate rest, tries to explain how much better he looks by saying he could pull the ears off a gundark

Nico just stares at him blankly before half-jokingly offering to take his temperature

And Will remembers, oh yeah, he grew up in the forties and spent most of his time in the twenty-first century among the dead

And Will is ecstatic

Because no one gets to experience Star Wars with no spoilers. No one

Needless to say Nico leaves the infirmary under strict orders to join Will in the Big House for one Star Wars movie every weekend until he’s seen them all

If you asked Nico what the plot of The Phantom Menace is, he’d never be able to tell you

Will, anticipating his confusion, explained everything to the best of his ability (no, it was not nervous babbling. It was explaining), but it was still a lot to take in. Also, Nico was mostly focused on the sound of Will’s voice and how close he was sitting

Attack of the Clones went similarly, although watching Anakin’s attempts to seduce Padmé did make Nico feel better about his own romantic crisis

He genuinely did get invested during Revenge of the Sith, mostly because Order 66 felt like familiar territory

(“You get so offended when I call you Death Boy, but this is what gets you interested?”) (“Listen. It’s more realistic now”)

As he gets more comfortable around Will and more invested in the story, he’s actually able to pay attention during A New Hope and his genuine interest in the saga begins

And then comes the moment Will has been waiting for

He literally cannot sit still for the entirety of The Empire Strikes Back

But honestly? It’s kind of a letdown

They get to the “Luke, I am your father” bit and Nico just goes, “huh”

“Huh? HUH?! Obi-Wan was lying the whole time! Luke’s father is alive! And he’s the galaxy’s second-most-evil-guy!”

“You’re talking to the guy who found out three years ago that his dad is the lord of the dead”

“…Huh”

Nico’s actually pretty sad when they finish Return of the Jedi, but this bittersweet feeling does not last long

One: because Will asks Nico out, so Nico gets to see him way more often outside of movie night

And two: at least a third of their dates are the two of them cuddled up making their way through every episode of the TV series

I’m gonna say one of the sequel trilogy movies comes out before ToA and they definitely sneak out to see it

(Will has Opinions)

Will probably bribes Nico to go with him as Han and Leia for Halloween 

(You get to decide who’s who)

Will also definitely gives Nico the sand speech at some point and Nico gives him these flipflops for Christmas

Will laughs his head off and wears them every day in the infirmary

He probably wears them to Tartarus tbh

[wolfsbane-archive]

Book Reviews with Elvira!

This book has been waiting for me to read it for many, many months now, and I picked it up while waiting for my next volume of Journal d'une Sorcière to arrive. It was written by Jihei about twenty years ago, when he was living in France with Lyla Pearson, a member of the Ravissants. He told me that he started working on it long before he left Japan, but ever felt like he was using the right words. He wrote it in both Japanese and English, and published the two books at the same time. He still feels as if there is something missing from the works, but he told me that it is likely the spirit of his teacher that is missing, something that the book will never have.

見えない黄昏 / The Invisible Twilight

The only book which Jihei has ever written or published, The Invisible Twilight is a chronicle of the life of his master, Goto Taisei, a Japanese vampire who disappeared in 1854 and is presumed dead. It is almost like a very long poem. Even when writing, Jihei is a painter, and these tales (some of which Jihei says are slightly fictionalized, if not outright false) are beautiful works of art. I actually may have reread this book several times before writing this, ha ha!

Invisible Twilight is split into three sections based on the nature of the stories it contains. The first section is, of course, stories about his childhood and early life as a vampire. The second contains stories which Jihei himself experienced, stories about his relationship with his master, who he calls Goto-sensei even now, a little over half a century after his disappearance. The third section is stories about things Goto did in his later life, between the 12th century or so, up to his disappearance. Some of the stories are funny, others are serious, and a few are very sad.

My rating for this book is in no way biased at 10 out of 10 teeth. I very much enjoyed reading (and re-reading!) it, and speaking with Jihei about some of the decisions he made while writing it. He showed me some watercolors he later decided not to include in the book. Maybe I can convince him to share them with you all in a letter some time. He does like to share these stories, no matter how poorly he thinks he tells them. Clement and I, of course, think otherwise, but Jihei is adamant that he must stick to his painting, though rebukes Clement when he says he must stick to his writing. He thinks that Clement is an excellent painter (and maybe he can be convinced to share some of his art, too).

I've gotten a little distracted with this review, ha ha. I have been quite distractable lately, due to Clement and Jihei acting oddly. There's something they're not telling me, but maybe that is a good thing. I think it has to do with the Vanderwolvens. I do not care to hear anything from them.

What books have you all been reading? Do you have any recommendations for me? I will get back to reviewing my Chausson books now that I have volumes four through ten!

Hugs,

Elvira

[starsmaligned]

GET TO KNOW THE MUN !!

TAGGED BY: @aggwaseon

TAGGING: uhhhhhhhhhh @absque-nocte @honorxlies I CANT REMEMBER URLS

𝐃𝐀𝐒𝐇 𝐆𝐀𝐌𝐄.

★  ⸻   WHAT'S YOUR PHONE WALLPAPER?: I cycle between these four because of that feature on iphone. the concert photos were taken by yours truly

★  ⸻   LAST SONG YOU LISTENED TO?: Stay Away by Loopdy - although it switched right over to Johnny Hunter's Try As You May as I typed this

★  ⸻   CURRENTLY READING?: To be honest all I read really is academic articles for my degree, so it's Fairy Tales Transformed? : Twenty-First-Century Adaptations and the Politics of Wonder by Cristina Bacchilega

★  ⸻   LAST MOVIE?: I haven't watched a movie in a really long time - I think maybe Spirited Away on Netflix?

★  ⸻   LAST SHOW?: Bob's Burgers on D+. It's a comfort show

★  ⸻   WHAT ARE YOU WEARING RIGHT NOW?: Bat and black cat printed pyjama pants, and a black hoodie with a line drawing of my dog embroidered in the top left corner

★  ⸻   HOW TALL ARE YOU? 169cm - ALLEGEDLY. I DON'T KNOW ANYMORE

★  ⸻   PIERCINGS / TATTOOS? I have my firsts in both lobes , I used to have my seconds and double helix on both sides but they never healed properly. As for tattoos, I have Junji Ito's Tomie on my left forearm, as well as a knife with a rose, and a weird human-thing with antlers. On my right arm I have Little My in a teapot from Moominvalley, and a disgruntled + damaged juice box named Graham on my outer right wrist ( friendship tattoo ). On my left calf, on the outer left side, I have Ponyo holding a light with a bowl of ramen. On the back of my left calf I have Haku and Chihiro from Spirited Away with cherry blossoms ( my left leg is getting worked into a Ghibli leg ). I am in talks with my tattoo artist to get prayer hands holding a razorblade rosary for MCR and also Ducky from Land Before Time as a cousins tattoo. IF YOU WANNA SEE PICTURES, ASK! I LOVE SHARING MY TATTOOS

★  ⸻   GLASSES / CONTACTS?: Glasses, but only when I have to do my art or read

★  ⸻   LAST THING YOU ATE?: Lamb chop!

★  ⸻   FAVORITE COLOR(S)?: Black and almost all shades of purple

★  ⸻   CURRENT OBSESSION?: oooooo um vernon from svt dancing to poppy by stayc aaaaaaand my always obsession is going to concerts ( I go to 7-8 a year )

★  ⸻   DO YOU HAVE A CRUSH RIGHT NOW?: I have someone haha

★  ⸻   FAVORITE FICTIONAL CHARACTER?: Hatsuharu from Fruits Basket

★  ⸻   LAST PLACE YOU VISITED?: Sydney!

[graygiantess]

Thank you for In Hell Together After All, it absolutely crushed me (in a good, painful way). ❤️ It made me wonder what is your history with IWTV/The Vampire Chronicles: how did you become a fan, what caught your attention and what made you want to "stay"?

And also, you probably write a lot of your headcanons into your stories, but do you have any specific headcanons of any of the characters/relationships in the series?

Hey Nonny!

Sorry for the late reply. Covid broke my brain and I can only focus on reading/writing for very short stretches of time.

(I love getting these asks, though, so please no one feel deterred by this, lol!)

I'm so glad you enjoyed In Hell Together After All! And thank you for your ask. 😊

Putting my answer under the break again so as not to clog up people's dash with my novel-length ramblings.

Luce and TVC

I first got into TVC when I was 14, which is almost 21 years ago. My 13yo foster sister and I were completely obsessed with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

I was aware that there was a vampire movie with Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt and wanted to see it. I have a much older half-sister and the three of us ended up having a movie night at her house. We watched Interview With the Vampire and The Blair Witch Project.

We were all very 👁👁 throughout the entire movie. Then I bought a boxset of the first four books, foster sister and inhaled the first three books, watched the QotD movie and got very pissed off by how terrible it was. 😂

We were like, "Guess we'll always have the books 🤷‍♀️". I ordered TVA, because QotD had left me completely Armand-obsessed, and started reading Tale of the Body Thief.

I don't remember quite what it was, but Lestat says something at the start of TotBT that my 14yo self just thought was so stupidly retconny that I went, "Yeah, fuck that". I think it was something about how he only ate bad guys and that that was somehow in service of Jesus? Whatever it was, I wasn’t having it, so I put it down and never picked it back up. 😂

Then in my late teens/early twenties I followed Anne Rice on Facebook for a while, but I got kinda creeped out when she started addressing everyone with 'dearest People of the Page'. I distinctly remember thinking, "Lady, I'm here for gay vampire reasons, not to be in a cult". 😅 So I unfollowed her and spent about a decade not thinking about TVC very much at all.

AND THEN in early summer of 2022 the YouTube algorithm informed me that AMC was making an IWTV show. I reread IWTV and in October thought, "Let’s give this a go."

I had my reservations because I still remembered my teenage rage at the QotD movie, and I wasn't sure how I felt about them changing the time period and casting 'some old guy' as Daniel (sorry Eric! 🙈).

BUT THEN Jacob came on all, "Dear Mr. Molloy, did you know you can orgasm just from hearing a man's voice? Wanna finish what we started half a century ago?" and my head just about exploded!

This is the second interview?! They’re revisiting it 49 years later?! OMGGG, that's the most genius storytelling move in the history of storytelling! 😱

I watched ep2 right after and then desperately needed to yell about the show with other sickos. So I joined Twitter and started reading fic again (which I'd only really done when I was 17 and obsessed with that wizard school franchise), started writing fic, joined fic-themed group chats/Discords and made a Tumblr so I could (lovingly) yell at other fic writers.

And now I've published over 150k words in fic and there's IWTV fan art all over my house. 😂

So it was really the show that made me come back to stay. It's just thee best TV show of all time to me.

And as much as this fandom can be a shit show, it's really helped me stay sane while grappling with my long covid, which has left me very incapacitated in many other areas of my life.

Luce's headcanons

Asking me for my headcanons has the same effect as asking me for my favorite movies or songs in that it immediately makes me forget any headcanons I ever had. 😂

You're right that I write a lot of them into my fics, which are mainly me exploring my headcanons and asking myself what if...? I have a couple others, though I'm not sure these are really headcanons or more actual theories, though, so I apologize if this wasn't what you were looking for.

- I've mentioned this one before, but Louis and Lestat had a grand old time during their honeymoon phase between Louis getting turned and Louis almost eating Grace's baby. I think people tend to make too big a deal out of Louis being an unreliable narrator but it's a little too convenient how quickly he skips over those 6-7 years. I think he doesn’t like to think about how much fun he had with Lestat just having all the sex, getting super rich and eating whoever the fuck he wanted.

- Daniel isn’t going to give a single fuck about the ethics of killing people in order to survive once he finally becomes a vampire. We already know he’s selfish and a hypocrite. I can just see him fully ready to view all humans as savory inferiors once he’s no longer one of them.

- If show!Daniel ever met Marius, he would punch him in the face. 🤭

- Santiago is going to be SO jealous of Louis's relationship with Armand. I don't care if Santiago and Armand end up having zero homoerotic tension between them on screen, they're fucking to me.

- I'm also a Claudeline truther. Show!Claudia doesn’t need a parental figure the way book!Claudia does but she very much yearns for romantic love, and she did say Charlie was the last boy she'd ever love, and went after the woman when Lestat asked her if she wanted the Mr. or the Mrs. in ep7.

Kudos to anyone who made it all the way to the end of this answer! Your prize is getting to choose if I share:

A) A silly anecdote about that movie night I had with my sisters.

B) A shocking fact that might get me cancelled as an Armandaniel fic writer. 👀

(Though tbh, if you pick B, I'll probably still give you A for free.)

[aquietwritingcorner]

Bloody Clothes

Title: Bloody Clothes Day: Febuwhump 2023 Day 24: Bloody Clothes Fandom: TMNT 2003 Word Count: 945   Author: aquietwritingcorner/realitybreakgirl Rating:   T Characters: April O’Neil, Casey Jones Warning: Summary: At the farmhouse, April soaks the clothes she wore when everything happened—the ones with Leo’s blood on them—and reflects.     Notes: Takes places sometime in between or during “The Shredder Strikes Back Part 2,” and “Tales of Leo” or before “The Monster Hunter.” ff.net || AO3

___________________________________

Bloody Clothes

April stared at her clothes as they floated in the metal wash tub. Casey and Don were making sure that all of the plumbing was still sound in the old farm house, but Casey had still managed to get her a tub of water to soak her clothes in.

“Ya really oughta take care of those,” he had said. “I mean… well… there’s a thrift store in town we can go to for ya, and I think one of the local churches does somethin’ but at the moment, ya ain’t got a lot of options.” He had paused awkwardly. “’M sorry, April.”

He had been right, and she knew it. All she had now was the clothes on her back, the coat and few clothes that Casey had stopped “at a place” he knew and gotten her, and her family. She didn’t even have any ID on her or a way to access her money or anything. It was all gone. Everything was gone.

And her family…

Leo…

April swallowed as she thought about Leo and stared at her clothes in the wash tub. She remembered how it felt to try to support him, his beaten and bloody form hanging off of her, still managing, somehow, to try to fight. She remembered curling around him, trying to protect him from Hun. His shallow breathing, the pained catching in it, his cold and bloody skin, the bones she could feel that were broken as they tried to move—her hands curled around the edge of the metal tub as she stared down in it.

As she stared down at her bloody clothes, clothes that she was trying to soak the blood out of.

Leo’s blood.

April closed her eyes tightly, her hand curling more around the edge. It wasn’t fair! They were just kids! Teenagers! Leo had done nothing to deserve getting beaten nearly to death! None of them had! They were only kids caught up in something much bigger than they were. She was only in her twenties, but even she deserved something like that more than they did, especially with unwittingly aiding Dr. Stockman. But what had they done? Stopped some gangsters, then gotten caught up in a decades or maybe even centuries long ninja war that they knew nothing about, and then refused to side with the Shredder? Why was that enough to keep them caught in it? Why was that enough for them to keep having to face off against the Foot? Why was that enough for Leo—

--for Leo to be beaten nearly to death.

April took in a shaky breath. She wasn’t crying, not yet, but she could tell that she was close. Leo was so injured. Even though Splinter thought he had made a change for the positive, that didn’t mean that he’d live. It didn’t mean that he’d heal. It didn’t mean that he’d be whole. April shook, her breath coming faster now, tears welling in her eyes. What if—what if he died? What if the only thing she had left of him was her clothes that were stained with his blood? What if—

“Hey, April, Donnie ‘n I think we’ve got the washin’ machine—Aw, April…”

April whipped her head over to look at Casey, glaring at him, although she was pretty sure that it was ineffectual with tears in her eyes. “What, Casey?” she bit out in a watery voice.

He didn’t rise to the bait. Instead, Casey stepped forward and gently folded her in his arms. For just a second, April stayed stiff. But he was here and offering her comfort and she couldn’t help herself. She leaned into him and cried. She cried for Leo, she cried for her boys, she cried for Splinter, she cried for her own loss, she cried for how overwhelming everything was. She shuddered and cried against Casey, and all he did was hold her gently and occasionally murmur something comforting.

When she felt she had cried herself out, she pulled back from Casey, and he let her.

“You good?” he asked her.

April glanced at her bloody clothes still floating in the tub. “No,” she said. “But I don’t think I will be for a while.”

Casey nodded. “Yeah, I get that,” he said, and there was something truly understanding in his look. “Sometimes the past clings like old bloodstains, and sometimes ya get some peroxide that’ll take ‘em out. But ya always know what was there, and it’s a part of ya for good and bad. It’s up to you if ya wanna wear ‘em again or not and keep the reminder.”

April blinked at him. “That was… oddly profound, Casey.”

He shrugged. “Ma used to say that sometimes I’d hit a good one.” He put his arm around her shoulders, and she didn’t shove it off. “Look, those have gotta soak anyway, and Don’s takin’ a break. I think Mikey said somethin’ about making somethin’ to eat, and Raph and Splinter ain’t left Leo’s side. Let’s leave yer clothes here for now and just go sit with them. Maybe later you and me can go into town. We’ll getcha some new clothes and pick up some food and getcha some peroxide.”

April glanced at her soaking, bloody clothes again, and then turned her back on them. She didn’t know if she’d want to wear those clothes again, to “keep the reminder” of what happened. But she could make that decision later. Right now, she had family to go sit with.

She nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good, Casey.”

After all, this was her family—and April would gladly bloody more clothes for their sakes.

[thenightling]

Debunking a popular belief about Mary Shelley (not that anyone is likely to listen)

Many memes (and Google)  have credited Mary Shelley as the Inventor of Science fiction.   Though I love Frankenstein (the novel) I have to say this is actually incorrect. Though I love Frankenstein I actually have to disagree with Google and the popular idea that she invented science fiction or wrote the first science fiction novel.For starters, if you actually read Frankenstein, it doesn't actually teach the popular Frankenstein movie moral of "I shouldn't have tampered in God's domain."   Creating The Creature wasn't Victor's sin.  His mistake was abandoning him and the cruelties of the world. The Creature was benign until he was abused by everyone he met. To pretend that simply bringing The Creature to life was what Victor did wrong does a disservice to Mary Shelley and undermines the actual themes of parental responsibility and the necessity of forgiveness and the futility of revenge. Also the "Modern Prometheus" leads many people to think that Prometheus was punished for stealing fire from Gods. But Prometheus in the myth, was the creator of the human race. He just didn't want his creations to suffer.  And Mary Shelley's own husband, Percy Shelley, wrote Prometheus Unbound. Victor didn't create his creature through scientific means.  No. He found the secret of life in the works of Agrippa and Paracelsus, an alchemist and sorcerer.   Even the involvement of lightning is semi-ambiguous.  Victor saw the power of lighting when it struck a tree on his family's land years earlier but he never specifies if that's how he brought The Creature to life.  In fact he tells Captain Walton "The secret dies with me."Victor wasn't even a medical doctor in the novel.   He was a student. He was studying metaphysics and he never graduated.   There's actually very little (if any) science in Frankenstein.  It's more Gothic Fantasy but that shows how few people actually read the novel...Dungeons and Dragons' campaign "Adam's Wrath" is actually closer to Frankenstein than most Frankenstein films and in that he's called a flesh golem.Also before Frankenstein was even published Goethe portrayed time travel in Faust Part 2 and the creation of a Homonculus by Wagner (Faust's former assistant).   There's even a Frankenstein-esque scene of Wagner announcing that they are about to witness the creation of a life.  And Mephisto quips "Where are you hiding the man and woman?  Up the chimney?" And in 1827 (three years before Mary revised Frankenstein, changing certain plot elements before re-publishing it) Jane Webb published a science fiction novel called The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century. My Sources:  Faust by Wolfgang Von Goethe, Parts 1 and 2, translation to English by A. S. Kline.  Part 1 first published in 1808, part 2 published in 1832 (after Goethe’s death). The Mummy! A tale of The Twenty-Second Century by Jane Webb, published 1827. Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley, published 1818. Frankenstein revised edition by Mary Shelley, 1830.  Dungeons and Dragons: Adam’s Wrath, published 1994.  

[thepastisalreadywritten]

SAINT OF THE DAY (October 15)

On October 15, Roman Catholics celebrate the Spanish Carmelite reformer and mystic St. Teresa of Avila, whose life of prayer enriched the Church during the 16th century counter-reformation.

Teresa Sanchez Cepeda Davila y Ahumada was born in the Castilian city of Avila during the year 1515, the third child in a family descended from Jewish merchants who had converted to Christianity during the reign of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

Her father Alphonsus had become an ardent Catholic, with a collection of spiritual books of the type his daughter would later compose herself.

As a child, Teresa felt captivated by the thought of eternity and the vision of God granted to the saints in heaven.

She and her younger brother Rodrigo once attempted to run away from home for the sake of dying as martyrs in a Muslim country, though they soon ran into a relative who sent them back to their mother Beatrice.

When Teresa was 14, her mother died, causing the girl a profound grief that prompted her to embrace a deeper devotion to the Virgin Mary as her spiritual mother.

Along with this good resolution, however, she also developed immoderate interests in reading popular fiction (consisting, at that time, mostly of medieval tales of knighthood) and caring for her own appearance.

Though Teresa's spiritual directors in later life would judge these faults to be relatively minor, they still represented a noticeable loss of her childhood zeal for God.

Alphonsus decided his teenage daughter needed a change of environment and sent her to be educated in a convent of Augustinian nuns.

Teresa found their life dull at first but soon came to some understanding of its spiritual advantages.

Illness forced her to leave the convent during her second year.

But the influence of her devout uncle Peter, along with her reading of the letters of the monk and Church Father St. Jerome, convinced Teresa that the surest road to salvation lay in forsaking marriage, property, and worldly pleasures completely.

Against the will of her father, who wanted her to postpone the decision, she joined the Carmelite Order.

Teresa became a professed member of the order at age 20 but soon developed a serious illness that forced her to return home.

She experienced severe pain and physical paralysis for two years. She was expected to die when she went into a coma for four days.

But she insisted on returning to the Carmelite monastery as soon as she was able, even though she remained in a painful and debilitated state.

For the next three years, the young nun made remarkable progress in her spiritual life, developing the practice of recalling herself into the presence of God through quiet contemplation.

As her health returned, however, Teresa lapsed into a more routine prayer life.

While she remained an obedient Carmelite, she would not re-establish this close personal connection to God for almost twenty years.

When she was nearly 40, however, Teresa found herself dramatically called back to the practice of contemplative mental prayer.

She experienced profound changes within her own soul and remarkable visions that seemed to come from God.

Under the direction of her confessors, Teresa wrote about some of these experiences in an autobiography that she completed in 1565.

Teresa had always been accustomed to contemplate Christ's presence within her after receiving him in the sacrament of Holy Communion.

Now, however, she understood that the presence she received did not simply fade:

God was, in fact, with her always, and had been all along. It was simply a matter of putting herself in his presence, with love and attention – as one could do at any moment.

This revolution in her spiritual life enabled Teresa to play a significant role in the renewal of the Church that followed the Council of Trent.

She proposed a return of the Carmelites to their original rule of life, a simple and austere form of monasticism – founded on silence and solitude – that had received papal approval in the 12th century and was believed to date back to the Old Testament prophet Elijah.

Together with her close collaborator, the priest and writer later canonized as Saint John of the Cross, she founded what is known today as the Order of Discalced Carmelites – “discalced,” meaning barefoot, symbolizing the simplicity to which they chose to return the order after a period of corruption.

The reform met with fierce opposition but resulted in the founding of 30 monasteries during her life.

Teresa's health failed her for the last time while she was traveling through Salamanca in 1582.

She accepted her dramatic final illness as God's chosen means of calling her into his presence forever.

“O my Lord, and my spouse, the desired hour is now come,” she stated. “The hour is at last come, wherein I shall pass out of this exile, and my soul shall enjoy in thy company what it hath so earnestly longed for.”

St. Teresa of Avila died on 15 October 1582.

She was canonized on 22 March 1622, along with three of her greatest contemporaries: St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, and St. Philip Neri.

In 1970, Pope St. Paul VI proclaimed St. Teresa as one of the first two woman Doctors of the Church, along with 14th century Dominican St. Catherine of Siena.

[storyofthenauseouseye]

The Woman Who Made Sartre

Left and right: Hans Zatzka, Blumenreigen, 1859-1945

A broad group of people consider Jean-Paul Sartre one of, if not the number one, greatest philosophers to come out of the twentieth century. His works on ethics, existentialism, and fictional literature have been praised and carried throughout the twenty-first century. I still consider Nausea my second favorite book, only inches away from that number one spot. But Sartre's work was heavily influenced and edited before it went to the publisher.

As seems to be often the case throughout history, behind this man's genius was a woman whose credit goes rather unnoticed. So, who was Simone de Beauvoir, this feminist writer who could neither love nor leave Sartre? And how is she significant in her own regard? Let's look at her best works, both fiction and philosophy.

L'Invitee

Despite having a strange relationship with Sartre, Beauvoir started another relationship with a female student named Olga (tameri.com). This odd triangle would later prove to be toxic, and as can be seen through the letter between Sartre and Beauvoir at the time, Beauvoir would eventually turn to feel trapped by the relationship. The negative feelings toward Olga turned into the novel, L'Invitee, or She Came to Stay.

She Came to Stay is about a couple inviting a young girl into their lives to stay with them, encouraging terrible consequences. Incredibly on the nose with its inspired source material, the troubled trio becomes an ouroboros of madness, each person in the relationship driving each other crazy and pushing them deeper into madness. The affair ends only in violence, and the murder of one of them by another member of the trio is the lid that closes upon the bleak and turbulent tale.

Image from Twitter user "fuckttrevor"

The text is packed full of philosophical reflections on relationships and the meaning of how we view relationships with existence, partners, and the infinite timeline we merely glimpse upon. Stanford University has a pretty good idea of the subject matter, stating that

The issues raised in this first novel, however, the ambiguity regarding the responsibilities and limits of freedom, the legitimacy of violence, the tension between our experience of ourselves as simultaneously solitary and interwined with others, the temptations of bad faith and the examination of the existentially faithful relationship to time will pervade Beauvoir's subsequent reflections (Standford University).

Through this display of tumultuous relationships and festering madness that only results in murder, we are shown the limits people can have, even if they try their best to remove them. This balance between humans and their doomed relationships, both with and without each other, would later set Beauvoir up for her most famous work.

Simone de Beauvoir in a televised interview (1975)

The Second Sex

Taking personal writing, political beliefs, and philosophical poise into her pen, Beauvoir would write The Second Sex. This non-fiction work has remained one of the most significant examples of feminist literature.

The first argument that Beauvoir makes has been upheld for decades, and that is the idea that men create systems of inequality to keep women where they are in society. Sure, they may say that women can do what they want, and they may say that women are their equals, but they help uphold and police these societal and governmental systems of oppression against anyone who is not within the male gender. (tameri.com) From there, she goes into her second argument.

Going head-to-head with Plato, Beauvoir suggests that being different from men is okay. Where Plato said that women could be equal to men if they performed the same way as men, Beauvoir argues that the differences between men and women should not create a rift. These differences should be validated by each gender.

Differences should not lead to the absence of sameness.

Works Cited

Bergoffen, Debra. “Simone de Beauvoir (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Winter 2014 Edition).” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 17 August 2004, https://plato.stanford.edu/Archives/win2014/entries/beauvoir/#SecSexWomOth. Accessed 10 December 2023.

The Existential Primer. “Simone de Beauvoir.” Existential Primer, 2 March 2023, https://www.tameri.com/exist/people/beauvoir/. Accessed 10 December 2023.

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