#also no worries about novel spoilers here the mind reading ability is new to the series

[feychild1225]

curious too.

Curious what everyone thinks

Please no novel spoilers thank you love you

[booksandchainmail]

Pale Arc 10

So I gather that Pale has finished. In a way, this takes some timing pressure off of me: while I have not been liveblogging at a particularly speedy rate, I've been aware that more Pale kept being added faster than I was catching up. Now any time I read a chapter I'm actually catching up, as opposed to losing ground! I would love to say that I'll be picking up the pace from here on, but I said that last time and it was blatantly false, and also I think work will be busy for the next few weeks.

I've also been going back and archiving my liveblogs locally, just in case, which has reminded me how different my format was for the first arcs: I switched from end of chapter recaps to live reactions in early arc 4. No wonder I was going through chapters so quickly back then!

And I have a favor to ask if anyone wouldn't mind: I know there are stats floating around about Pale's length, but I'm worried about running into spoilers. Could someone let me know a) how many arcs there are b) what the total word count is and c) what the word count is as of where I am?

Housekeeping aside, thoughts on the arc:

Interesting structure, reminds me a bit of Worm's Sentinel arc

Really effective at building my knowledge of and engagement in the various new Kennet Others

Lots of reveals: Toadswallow's interlude blew my mind from a worldbuilding perspective, and Edith's unwrapped another layer of the mystery

Snowdrop and Avery! No thoughts, just feelings.

So now we know that Edith was for sure involved in the murder (which at this point was obvious, and has been pretty clear since the beginning). But then there's the immediate twist that she's not running it, or even seemingly part of the main group of this scheme. I do like this structure, where there's an obvious suspect from the beginning, it turns out to have been her, and it feels like a bit of a letdown, only for there to be another twist. I think a lot of mystery novels/tv shows do this probably? But on the scale of a single book/episode, not something as sprawling as Pale.

Actually, going back to those early arcs where I was doing a lot of theorizing, one of my guesses on how someone could arrange the Carmine Beast's death without having to reveal or lie about it was "There is an obvious killer, but they’re a fall guy acting on someone else’s behalf". Which it looks like it is! Edith is suspicious from the beginning, has no way around hiding her involvement while being honest and open, and the plan was probably for her to get caught from the start (I mean, maybe the real mastermind(s) didn't think the girls would get this far, but it does feel like Edith was expendable).

But now we're back to trying to figure out members of this conspiracy, knowing that Maricica is involved. There are three basic options for conspirators: 1) original Kennet Others 2) new Kennet Others (hid their involvement from the start and used recruitment to come in) and 3) people outside of Kennet.

I can't think of anyone outside of Kennet we've met who makes sense for that, so that idea might come down to "new character", which seems unsatisfying, so I'm going to skip theorizing about it.

Characters I don't think are involved: Tashlit, John, Alpeana, Toadswallow, Nibble and Chloe, Crooked Rook, Miss, Guilherme. We've seen inside almost all their heads, Edith and Maricica seem opposed to them in private conversation. Putting a caveat on Guilherme because Faerie.

Matthew could go either way, he's been involved with Edith's hostility but clearly doesn't know everything.

Charles is suspicious to me based on vibes and ability to lie, Bluntmunch seems to not be trusted by Toadswallow, Cig is working with Edith but it seems like a recent arrangement, Montague is very convenient to the conspirators but seems friendly, no idea about Lis, Ken, Jabber, or the new goblins.

[isekai-crow]

Cherry Magic / 30-sai made Doutei dato Mahoutsukai ni nareru rashii Episode 2

< Ep 1 | >

This episode is once again, one of the most self-aware BL anime/mangas I've seen in a while, and it makes me so happy.

It's playing with so many BL/Yaoi tropes, and you think you know where it's going, but then it goes in the more realistic direction of what would actually happen!

We get a new character introduction, Adachi's childhood friend Masato, who is voiced by a SUPER BIG NAME VOICE ACTOR - Furukawa, Makoto - Saitama from OPM, Benimaru!!! from Tensura, Taijuu from Dr. Stone, and best of all Mah Boy Woo Jin Chul from Solo Leveling!! He's also Shirogane from Kaguya-sama, Hatsuharu Souma from Fruits basket, and fricken Zacherroni from Magus Bride 2. I could go on. Big Name yo.

Screenshots & Spoilers Below the Cut!

First off... I'm so happy that Adachi's best friend isn't actually in love with him. The ending of Episode 1 super implied that that was the turn this was going to take, but no, Masato is just his friend who happens to be a romance novel and DOES in fact know Adachi best! But not in a sleazy or creepy or yandere way.

Masato might have pointed all of these out, but at least he also commented on those being the reasons why Kurosawa probably likes him.

I'm Surprised by the fact that I'm Surprised lmfao A virgin talking to a virgin for advice - lol, but the advice is decent at least.

It sets Adachi on the right road to actually thinking about himself and his own feelings, because he's already worried about trying not to hurt Kurosawa by trying to figure out how to act. I love how focused Adachi is on making sure not to hurt Kurosawa's feelings. He's such a cutie.

I LOVE THAT NONE OF THIS SEEMS ODD. MASATO IS NOT SURPRISED HIS FRIEND MIGHT BE A BISEXUAL DISASTER. NO FORBIDDEN ROMANCE HERE!!! There's touches, especially later in the episode where they draw straws and are forced to kiss for their coworker's entertainment, of mentioning that it might be awkward for a(n assumed) straight man to be kissed by another man. But whether homosexuality is accepted or not in this world, that's true. Whether its between a man and a woman, being put on the spot to suddenly be kissed is awkward. And they treat this situation equally, and it's so refreshing.

Kurosawa doesn't need to be able to read Adachi's mind to know that he's freaked out, and I assume that KUROSAWA assumes it's because Adachi is about to be kissed by a man. And he doesn't force it! Yay! Almost consensual!! Which is a lot to ask for sometimes with your standard BL.

But also, LMFAO at the translation of STUD.

We then get a whole scene that plays out like your standard BL, and could have gone that route...

How is Adachi getting away with these subtle touches lolol But also this poor boy (Kurosawa).

Part of me wonders how this could possibly have played out if Adachi didn't have mind reading abilities, but that's the whole point of this entire story, so this story COULDN'T HAPPEN without that aspect.

I KNEW this wasn't actually going to go anywhere but I sure was on the edge of my seat waiting to see how this would play out!

In some ways Adachi's ability to read minds almost comes off as a kind of an unfair advantage because it gives him extra information which he COULD then use to manipulate the situation, but if you bring in the idea of Power Imbalance between two people in a relationship, it's actually a big part of leveling the playing field between them, especially when you have Kurosawa in the position of the "aggressor" even though he hasn't really been all that aggressive until this scene, and Adachi in the more passive receiving position, being inexperienced and unaware of his possible interest in men.

Also, it's hard to figure out how just Unreliable of a Narrator Adachi is, because we're constantly in his head, while we also get bits and pieces of the people around him, but it's always then filtered through Adachi's reaction to those thoughts.

Final thoughts by jumping backwards! Cake Scene! Adachi to the rescue!! The whole reason for the drinking party!

ADACHI. WHERE ARE YOU TOUCHING. WHY THERE.

This man is so happy to have his fucking cake. Fucking tsunderes man lmao

As shitty as it would be to be able to constantly listen in to the thoughts of everyone around you (intrusive thoughts anyone?), I'm so glad Adachi was happy with finally having a good use of his ability.

This whole story continues to put a smile on my face, and I'm enjoying every episode. I think the only thing that throws me off every once in a while is the art and animation style, but I'm don't know jack about shit with that except the eyes keep making me thinking I'm watching Initial D, and there are some weird angle choices that give characters giant yaoi necks/hands/body parts lol.

Overall rating so far: 8/10! I might go buy the manga for this!

[talesofthefrontier]

INTERVIEW: Jamie Ryder Might Be Dead By Dusk

Getting your work out there isn't always easy as a writer, so it's always useful to be part of communities that can help to give signal boosts.

The horror community is extremely welcoming and it was through this connection I was interviewed by Ginger Nuts Of Horror, a UK-based horror website that promotes authors in the genre.

In this interview I discuss horror influences, writing AT THE DEAD OF DUSK and philosophy. You can also check out the interview here.

Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself? I’m a fiction writer based in Manchester in the UK and grew up reading from a young age, which laid the groundwork for wanting to become a writer in as many different avenues as possible. When not writing horror and fantasy fiction, I enjoy indulging my inner pop culture geek with comics and other interests, which include Japanese culture, Stoicism and rum. I’ve mashed all these interests together in a portfolio of websites, which include The Comic Vault, Yamato Magazine and The Rum Ration. Which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life? Good question. I’m going to say it’d be Agnus Cartwright, a powerful witch from The Tales Of The Frontier series. She’s terrifying and her ruthlessness would make me think twice about crossing her! Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing? The fantasy genre has had a big influence on my writing style and reading habits, particularly authors such as Sebastien De Castell, Andrzej Sapokowski and Neil Gaiman. I’ve always been in awe of writers who have the ability to create a completely new world from nothing and make you believe in the mechanics, concepts and characters within the world. Comics are another major influence, in the sense that having larger than life characters can be grounded in a realistic setting such as the DC Universe and that there are shades of grey when it comes to anti-heroes like Red Hood, Punisher etc. A recent concept that’s also resonated with my writing style is the philosophy of Stoicism and how it can be applied to the practice of writing. It’s about understanding the things you can control e.g. how much you want to write per day, and the things you can’t e.g. how people are going to react to your work. The term horror, especially when applied to fiction always carries such heavy connotations. What’s your feeling on the term “horror” and what do you think we can do to break past these assumptions? For me, the greatest kind of horror is found in human action. The lengths someone will go to for carrying out a goal. The justifications we tell ourselves when we think we’re doing something ‘good’ that can be seen as ‘bad’ from someone else’s perspective. Everyone has the capacity to be a monster and it brings to mind that famous Nietzsche quote of “beware that when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.” It’s in these kinds of everyday, human drama kind of stories that I think there’s still plenty of room to break past what it seen as traditional horror. A lot of good horror movements have arisen as a direct result of the socio/political climate, considering the current state of the world where do you see horror going in the next few years? I think there will be an increase of horror being seen through the lens of more diverse groups such as the LGBT and BAME communities. There’s limitless potential in redefining tropes within these two categories and showcasing stories that are special, spooky and resonant. Given the dark, violent and at times grotesque nature of the horror genre why do you think so many people enjoy reading it? Coming from my own perspective, I enjoy watching and reading horror stories out of a subconscious desire for facing the unknown. The fear of the unknown is actually my biggest fear and if you think about anything outside of your comfort zone too much it can paralyse you worse than any monster, ghost or serial killer. I think that being exposed to horror has the potential to build up your resilience to real-life scenarios. What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice off? A couple of authors come to mind. V Castro has been doing some amazing work with redefining Latin horror through stories like Queen Of The Cicadas and Goddess Of Filth. There’s also Eric LaRocca and Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is a tremendous piece of transgressive horror. While Donald Robertson isn’t a new author, he’s new to the horror and comic genres and I’m looking

forward to seeing the release of the graphic novel Verissimus, which tells the life of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius. What aspects of writing to do you find the most difficult? The editing process is the most difficult by far. There’s the old writer cliché of having to kill your darlings and it’s true that they do feel like your darlings sometimes! But once you move past that initial feeling, you do come away with a much stronger manuscript. Is there one subject you would never write about as an author? I’ve always said to myself that I’ll never write about any subject that I can’t capture realistically on the page, make it believable or do it justice. It’s only after I’m well-informed enough to know what I’m talking about that I’d even attempt to start writing something. Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years? By constantly writing. That’s the most effective way I’ve continued to develop. Short stories. Articles. Blogs. Poems. Scripts. Exposing myself to different mediums has forced me to think about writing differently and become more fluid in how I approach things. What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing? Don’t worry about whether the first draft is good or bad. Just finish it and then start editing. Which of your characters is your favourite? My favourite character is Clay McNab, the protagonist of At The Dead Of Dusk. He’s an asshole who doesn’t pretend to be anything but what he is and there’s a refreshing amount of honesty when inhabiting the headspace of a character like that. Yet there’s a lot more beneath the surface and it’s so much fun to write an anti-heroic character who’s self-aware enough to see his own flaws and try to do what he thinks to be right from his own perspective. Which of your books best represents you? At The Dead Of Dusk is my first standalone novella, so I’d say that represents me the best (So far!) Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us? There’s quite a few lines from At The Dead Of Dusk that I loved writing. While I’m not going to give away any spoilers, I will say there’s a scene with Clay delivering a monologue kind of speech in a highly charged emotional situation that got me right in the feels when I was writing it. Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next? The next story I’m working on is a cyberpunk novel set in a futuristic version of my home city of Manchester. It’s about two brothers who come together to try and unlock the riddles of their father’s death and has a mixture of noir, crime, and sci-fi themes. If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice? That jump scares are the only way to tell a good horror movie. What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you? The last great book that resonated with me was How To Think Like A Roman Emperor by Donald Robertson. In terms of disappointing books, nothing comes to mind as I think there’s something good to be taken away from whatever you read if you’re in the mindset to look for it.

[minaminokyoko]

Peace Talks Reactions

Hey, Dresden Fandom. You guys may or may not be knee deep in Peace Talks, but if you are, I welcome you to the below reactions, in handy dandy bullet form. I would love to discuss the book if you’re interested, whether you reblog with comments or shoot me a chat. I just finished the book, so all spoilers are below the Read More tag. 

Woof. Well, at least it was something after six fucking years of waiting.

·         So before Butcher’s giant hiatus, we had this first chapter of Peace Talks already and I have to say I still feel like I felt six years ago: I don’t really know where he’s going with Thomas becoming a father. In terms of what that will do for him as a character. For Harry, it’s different. Harry keeps it close to the chest with his decisions, willing to die for the greater good in an instant, and becoming a father made him have to be more careful and thoughtful in his actions to be sure he can be there for his baby girl. I’m not sure where Butcher is going with this for Thomas, but I guess we’ll see.

·         I was pleased to find out Harry decided to stick with the protected apartment and is trying his best on Dad duty. Me gusta.

·         Right, let’s get to the first big elephant in the room: Ebenezar. Oh my fucking God. I want to punch his fucking lights out. My friend and I have argued about his reaction to seeing Thomas at the apartment already. I know Eb has Harry by a thousand years or more in experience, but it pisses me off that Eb can’t be bothered to learn more about Thomas. Nope. Just skip straight to irrational anger.  It was also disappointing to find out that Eb is not a part of Harry’s life as much as I thought he was in the past, so clearly he doesn’t understand how important Thomas is to him. I’m a bit miffed that Harry didn’t explain Thomas is his half-grandson to help him understand, but at the same time, Harry might be worried about what that revelation will do. Either way, it displays a massive lack of trust in Harry. To think Harry—who has survived all this fucking shit from the supernatural world so far—is just a pawn and he doesn’t know how incredibly dangerous the White Court is. Eb is downright disrespectful and insulting to his own grandson. I’m sorry, but I think he’s being an asshat in huge proportions by just thinking Harry is too stupid to know better and by not asking him why he feels loyal to Thomas.

·         In that same vein, Eb’s whole thing about wanting Harry to leave Maggie somewhere can kiss my ass. I’m with Harry on this one. It’s not that I don’t trust the foster care system and I think anything negative about adoption, either. Maggie is a target because she’s a Dresden. That’s it. There is nothing she can ever do about it. She is the daughter of Harry Dresden, Captain fuckin’ Disaster of the supernatural world. There is no place she can go where she will be safe and Harry is honestly her best shot at being watched over and protected, but not only that, if she’s gonna be in danger her whole life, she might as well be loved and cared for by her father too. Harry brings up such a good point about feeling abandoned and rejected and how Eb’s “protection” jag didn’t work for Margaret either. I know he wants what’s best for her, but I agree that Maggie has a better chance of surviving at Harry’s side than somewhere else. Hell’s bells, that’s how this whole fucking thing started anyway. Susan’s bitch ass hid the kid and it didn’t work. Sheesh.

·         And now the other elephant in the room: Murphy. I think part of me forgot how severe her injuries were. I had assumed months of PT and such would allow her to be mobile again, but then I read Chapter 5 and now I’m just angry and hurt. You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone. You just don’t. I can’t help it. Murphy is my favorite, goddamn it. I’ve reread the books where she’s helping Harry the most because their dynamic is so phenomenal. They’re my OTP. She is one of the best written female characters I’ve ever known, so ripping her ability to be at Harry’s side away is so��2020. It’s just a nasty, horrible thing and it’s shot my excitement for this novel right in the foot. I didn’t realize how important it was to me that Murphy is Harry’s badass ace in the hole until I was told she’ll be lucky to walk again. I know things have to get worse for characters in order for them to grow, but fuck this so much. I am praying she gets a magical contract or healing or a wish or something so she’s back in action or I’m done.

·         With that same elephant, fuck Jim Butcher for skipping over the foreplay at the end of Chapter 5. Yes, I said it. Fuck him. I know he thinks it’s funny to frustrate us, but this is an act of betrayal of the highest order. Why? Because I’ve waited TWENTY FUCKING YEARS for Harry and Murphy to go canon, and what does he do the first time we, the audience, get to see them in a relationship? Cut to curtains fluttering. Fuck you. We deserved that foreplay scene. No, I will NOT use my fucking imagination, pun intended. I just paid you $15 to use YOUR imagination, Jim. You spent fifteen books building up the trust, love, loyalty, and sexual tension of these two characters. That’s countless words and countless pages. And now that they’re FINALLY together, nope, skip it. Skip what should have been something intimate and powerfully emotional. Ha-ha-fucking-ha. I hope you step on a Lego barefoot. I will try to have faith that Butcher will give us what we want—a canon version of Chapter 14 of Skin Game—but if he doesn’t, I’m gonna lose my fucking mind.

·         The thought of Mab and Lara Raith working together is utterly terrifying. No. Just no. Ugh, there are bad times ahead. I also thought it was kind of contrived that Lara is owed favors, which forces Harry to not be able to say no, and I think it’s a bit lazy on Jim’s part for this convenient block to be there and he can’t refuse the favors. It just felt like he didn’t want to put the energy into painting Harry into a corner this time, so here, a convenient favor. That being said, I cackled when Mab called him a bowl of porridge. That was legitimately hilarious. What a bitch.

·         Mm, Harry just called Murphy his girlfriend. I’ve waited twenty years for that alone. *happy sigh*

·         Oh, great. Someone sent Thomas to assassinate someone. I’m betting blackmail, whether he admits to it or not.

·         LOL @ Harry’s cursing policy with Maggie.

·         Harry. Don’t. Make. Promises. EVER.

·         I would not be the least bit surprised if this assassination attempt is Mab’s idea to cut off all of Harry’s allies but her so he will have no choice but to use her protection more often. Mab is a cold fuckin’ piece. Pun intended.

·         Harry, for real, do not square up with Ebenezar. You are a wolf, for sure, but that man is a werewolf by comparison.

·         I’m getting real tired of Ebenezar’s anti-vampire schtick. I get it. They’re bad. Now shut up.

·         This is so unfortunate: I’ve been missing Lara Raith just because she’s a hoot but with this whole favor thing and Harry and Murphy being fitted for chastity belts, I’m more tired than anything else.

·         Oh, neat, one of Gard’s sisters!

·         Of course Lara knows about Thomas being Ebenezar’s grandson. It’s Lara.

·         Oh, good, I’m sure whatever deal Harry just made with Molly isn’t stupid or reckless.

·         Yes, Sanya is a VERY weird man. That is an understatement, Butters.

·         Aha. I had a hunch it was River Shoulders and not the Genoskwa.

·         And oh good, the Genoskwa’s not dead. Yay. I hate you, Butcher.

·         Now there is a good tidbit of story for the series: that the reason everything is accelerating into bad news is we’re about to hit that 666 year mark that people are talking about, where the even worse shit hits. We’ve had small clues about Harry being starborn and this helps provide context for the shit that happens to him. I hope it’s not a Chosen One scenario, but it does explain why he’s been in so many scrapes and why he’s made it out of them so far. However, I tend to dislike destiny in most stories. It can get tedious. We’ll see what’s in store.

·         Ugh, and there it is, but I already knew Lara was gonna make poor Harry break Thomas out from the book trailer anyhow. Sigh.

·         Murphy calling the White Council useless is a fuckin’ mood and a half. I swear, they ain’t nothing but useless since these books first started. Harry hit the nail on the head earlier with Carlos and the Wardens, that they spend a lot of time talking at Harry but not listening. That’s been their entire M.O. from the start. They don’t listen to anything he has to say; they just insist they know better and that he should fall in line, not caring about what he has on said line, which is very often innocent lives. I love the hypocrisy of them preaching to him about making cold, rational decisions when it’s not their asses who have to deal with the consequences. Yes, there is fallout from what Harry does, but the opposition is always there and it doesn’t act solely based on what Harry Dresden does. I really fucking hate the Council at this point.

·         So we get a second of tender kissing in the tub and an “I love you” and then Butcher cuts away again. I am so over it. I don’t have enough energy to put towards how angry he’s making me right now and he doesn’t deserve it anyway. I cannot believe he spent all this time building this relationship up and then makes it canon and won’t touch it. Fuck you.

·         Murphy immediately spotting all three of Harry’s tails is life. God, I love my bad bitch.

·         I do like that Harry has been practicing his Veils. That’s smart. It also shows character development and wisdom that he’s recognizing how much more useful stealth is and that even though it’s hard for him, it’s worth the effort to learn. Good book boyfriend.

·         It’s still Murphy, bitch. Injured or not. My queen is a queen. Try her if you want, Freydis.

·         PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT MURPHY YOU POOR CATHOLIC DARLING COME HERE. That pass was hilariously unexpected in a book that hasn’t been all that funny so far. Thanks, Jim. That got a whole bunch of cackling out of me.

·         “I like your brother.” I just clapped and squealed. I mean, duh, of course Murphy likes Thomas, but this pleases me greatly to hear her say it aloud. Murph is tough and doesn’t like to say stuff like that out loud usually. I’m delighted.

·         For all my complaints, I appreciate Butcher bringing Murphy in to help Harry plan everything. She’s hella smart and experienced in matters where you need to get someone out without being all guns a-blazing. And it is an apology for her being benched halfway thru Skin Game, imo.

·         Oh, shit. Harry doesn’t know Molly’s the one who attacked Carlos. Ugh. I bet this is gonna explode in someone’s face.

·         And Harry just fucked up the rest of his friendship with Carlos, not know Molly already did the same thing. Greeeeeeeeeeeeeeat.

·         “You just went from a three to a six.” Jesus Christ, immortals are so savage, I swear. I laughed, tho. That was mean as hell.

·         I’m dying that Freydis wants a threesome with Harry and Murphy. I mean, who can blame her? Fuck, I want a threesome with Harry and Murphy, if I’m being totally honest here. The thirst is so fucking real.

·         Finally, someone made a joke about Harry and Murphy getting together.

·         Ah, this IS what I missed about Lara, though—she loves to fuck with Harry for the lolz and nothing other than the lolz. I mean, he’s such a peach. I would do the same thing.

·         Also, Jim, for God’s sake, make up your mind about vampires getting burned! I don’t get it. Thomas can touch Harry, and Harry is and always has been loved, so when do vampires get burned and when do they not? We’ve seen Harry touch Lara even when Susan was still alive and remember the kiss in White Night? MAKE UP YOUR GODDAMN MIND. I had a debate about this with another fan because it’s so goddamn inconsistent! If anyone being loved by anyone else burns them, then that would mean the entire world would be in the know about White Court vampires because they’d get burnt left and right touching people who are loved. I thought it only happens if they try to feed, not just touching each other. I think Jim needs to pay better attention to his own lore or finally spit out an explanation. We’ll see if he does later with that whole kiss thing from the book trailer, I guess. Argh! *Yosemite Sam curses*

·         I’m really starting to hate Harry’s condition and the fact that he didn’t stop to ask Eb what it is or how to stop it. Ugh.

·         Oh, good, and now everyone will think Harry and Lara are a couple. Convenient. Like they don’t already have constant trust issues. I’m sure Eb won’t block a gasket or anything.

·         Oh, yay, a Malcolm Dresden flashback! This is a delightful surprise. Like a lot of the fanbase, we’ve always wanted to know more about him. He seemed like a good man.

·         Yay! Vadderung to the rescue!

·         Okay, I do NOT like Murphy being alone with a starving Thomas and Lara. Not one little bit.

·         Ah, so the goddess Ethniu gets introduced in this book. That’s why Peace Talks got split and then Battle Ground popped out as the next book.

·         “You’re out of the White Council if you do this.” FUCK YOU, EBENEZAR. Jesus Christ, fuck you. All the Council has EVER done is use and abuse Harry Dresden. They have constantly blamed him for everything or forced him to fight their goddamn battles. You can shove it right up your old crusty ass for all I care. I am sick to death of this belief that they are just so righteous and trustworthy and good when they’re self-important douchebags who think that people are ants and can’t be bothered to protect them unless it directly benefits the Council.

·         I think I’m angriest because up until this point, Ebenezar has been mostly reasonable and it feels inorganic that Jim pushed him this hard. It’s just kind of exhausting because it feels like the plot needs Eb to lose his shit instead of it being something natural. I won’t be shocked if we find out he’s been compromised somehow, but I guess I’ll have to find out myself.

·         Murphy is right on the money. We thought we knew Eb, but we REALLY don’t. And that sucks. A lot. Especially since Harry has barely any family at all.

·         I can honestly tell why this book took Jim six years to write. It’s awful stagnant. It’s the exact same reason that the first draft of Of Fury and Fangs kicked my ass. I wrote the story in the first draft incorrectly, in a way, because all the characters were passive for the most part, and the other half of the problem was that I got halfway through this book and thought up an idea for a better book, but in order for the better book to happen, there were too many things I couldn’t ignore in this one, so I still had to finish it and make it good. Peace Talks, to me, feels like it’s obligatory to set up the next book, and maybe that’s why it feels lackluster to me. It’s a transitional book, which isn’t a bad thing, but it’s definitely in the bottom five of the entire series. Transitional books aren’t bad, but they aren’t good either. Most authors know that this tends to happen if you write a trilogy. All the really big, important shit tends to happen in the first and third book if you’re not careful. In this case, yeah, there’s stuff happening, but it’s largely passive. It’s kind of like why back in 2010 people were so hard on Iron Man 2—it spent all this time setting up shit for the MCU, which in the long run is a good thing, but that makes it weak when it tries to stand on its own. 

As it stands, Peace Talks is mediocre. Jim took way too many shortcuts. It felt rushed, ironically enough, because he was so busy moving pieces around to set up for Battle Ground that Peace Talks doesn’t really stand out as interesting or likable like the other books. I really understand why he got stuck and couldn’t write on it for six years. My two biggest beefs here are him pushing Ebenezar into the antagonist role and him completely fucking bailing on the Harry/Murphy relationship after sixteen books of waiting. I mean, yeah, fine, because everything in this book is just set up for Battle Ground, maybe then we’ll get more acknowledgment of the romance and the importance of the relationship, but as it stands, I’m dissatisfied with both aspects. This is part of why we didn’t want a hiatus. If you make us wait this long, inevitably, the result is not going to be up to par. There are VERY few things we as people have waited forever for that ended up living up to our expectations. I almost feel like all the fan theories and fanfiction was a better, more creative result than what actually happened in Peace Talks. That’s harsh, I know, but I’ve been reading the fan generated stuff for six years and that’s just how I feel. 

This is a mediocre novel that’s placing a LOT of weight on what’s to come, which is dangerous from a quality standpoint. It could be a lot worse. I was expecting a disaster. Instead, I got a disappointment. I can live with it, but only if Battle Ground makes up for it. If it doesn’t, then we’re all in a world of hurt.

I’ll take maybe a week or so and then consider if I want to do an actual review or not. We’ll see how I feel once I digest everything and talk it out with friends.

Overall Grade: 3 out of 5 stars

[mercuriallycooperative]

Doom flags at her heels, Katarina really has a lot going on

(slight arc one spoilers, slight arc later spoilers, lotta long rambling thoughts)

So I’ve been keeping up with the manga for quite awhile and then remembered the light novels exist and then discovered the anime is existing and then realized “oh this is popular enough people are writing fic for it!” and then read a good fic and then I realized that this was a chance to articulate a thought that’s always in the back of my mind whenever I reread the manga and now that I’m watching like four let’s-watch youtubers as the anime goes on but like-

It has always struck me that like- as much as Katarina has a lot of sparkling happy fluffy moments and people she cares for a lot in this life, people that certainly I think she does love perhaps more deeply than even she realizes, and the audience is reminded so often "ha ha she still thinks she's doomed, she doesn't realize literally everyone has fallen in love with her and she's become crucial in their lives and hearts"- there’s also the other side of that-

That is that all the preparing she's been doing since she woke up with her past life memories at 8 years old- she's spent all that time running from a looming shadow at her back.

She's spent 7 years with a lot of excellent friends, capturing hearts and being a bright light in the world, but she's also spent all that time living with the fear that some of her friends might kill her, someday, or that she'll be made to leave them, or be discarded, and have to start a new life in a strange place for a third time- this time, alone. And she's been running from that all this time. Even for a slightly one-track mind with a bit of a blind spot for things too close to her, how much fear and worry do you have to be carrying, to be still as Concerned as we see her when she's 15, to keep up preparing for such a doom for 7 years?

And there are moments like when she’s visiting Sophia and is reminded of Acchan, that we see she does still have some wistfulness for her life-that-was. Heck, even when she’s fighting her way out of her magical coma thing. Wistfulness for the world that was. And she doesn’t seem to have spoken to anyone about any of this past-life stuff. Even if this is her world now- she lost a lot, when she died the first time.

Even if she’s usually more focused on either things right in front of her, or her looming doom (hardly an enviable distraction), that has to be a lot to bear and never breathe a word of. A lot to miss, and people she will likely never see again.

And of course she's considered very simple and direct and incapable of guile or scheming by even her dear beloved friends- and often times she is- but there is also is the fact that in 7 years she hasn't let on about the secret of her memories, or what she's preparing for, or what she's afraid of. She hasn't ever let on those fears of getting killed or exiled by people close to her, or the fact that all this preparing is just in case she has to leave them all forever. Just in case they make her have to leave them all forever. She does a lot of off-the-wall things, but nobody has ever gotten a real hint of what they're for. The most anyone has really gotten is a refrain of “just in case!”

(I went back to check- she's mentioned "In case I'm exiled," in some material. She has not mentioned "In case you exile me." There's something of a difference.)

Also like. I know she’s really memetically, uh, got a bit of a blind spot about how people feel about her (I’m pretty sure she just doesn’t care about the whole rules of society thing except when they make immediate trouble for her, which she’s in a position to mostly ignore- that’s less her lack of sense, I think, and more her contemporary sensibilities and a certain amount of unselfconsciousness coming just as much from not caring for some of the more implicit rules as it does not noticing them) (not that she doesn’t also have the sense of a single turnip sometimes, but like. still.).

But like, in the first episode’s worth of events, she has like three different head injuries, two of which result in unconsciousness, one of which results in getting a load of past life memories dumped into her head. It’s not unlikely that this happens, not frequently, but more than just the times we’ve seen, over the years. That can’t be good for her- especially because if she’s visibly fine there wouldn’t necessarily be any reason to apply any handy-but-rare healing light magic that could mitigate any medical repercussions of head injuries. Certainly, I would not be surprised if this affects her attention span or ability to put together some things, just a little.

Take that, along with the fact that given what we see at least about her parents in this life, pretty sure some of the obliviousness is genetic- and also the whole ‘preparing for her doom for seven years’ thing... When we’re afraid of stuff, our limbic system, our fight-or-flight-etc, goes all “yeet” in our brains and it does actually affect our ability to think things through. Like. We had a seminar at work about it and stuff. And constant stress, even constant low-level-mostly-in-the-background stress, is known to cause issues with both memory formation and retrieval. Which can’t be helping anything else happening here.

What I’m saying is, Katarina has a lot of actual potential physical reasons to have some of the really increasing amounts of obliviousness that sorta seem to show later in the light novels.

(Also, in fairness, some people just aren’t great with the subtext of the goings on around them, even if they can read the pattern fine in words on a page. I’m like that myself. Uh, not nearly as much as Katarina, given, as far as I know. But that’s a way that one can be, too, and it’s not mutually exclusive with the rest of this or anything.)

Aside from those- from what we get about her reflection on her life in the last world, it doesn’t seem like all of this is totally new to her character; I definitely feel like she was Like This last lifetime too. (Actually, yeah, went back to check, and in the light novel, in Acchan's chapter, Katarina was indeed Like This last time too.) But I think it’s possible that aside from new circumstances in this life accentuating these characteristics, that they’re the sort of thing that produces more, uh, pronounced reactions to situations, the bigger the situation is. Last life, she was a normal schoolgirl who didn’t expect anything life-threatening. This life, she’s been living in the shadow of her doom for 7 years, and she’s in the upper strata of Very Important People, With Harem Hijinks.

I think some of Katarina’s determination just really has this flavor of- “Well it just can’t be helped! I just gotta do the thing!” A sort of.... taking all the weight of the things that really are chasing her, and also some of the subtext-laden everything in a lot of her close relationships, and a little willfully going “well this is kind of a lot. you know what was also kind of a lot? preparing for my doom for 7 years! you know how I dealt with that? just getting on with it as best i can, blithely moving past all the things i wasn’t really equipped for, with twice as much energy as life threw at me!” Not consciously, necessarily, but there’s certainly an energy of eliding past the whole mass of situations down to the brass tacks of an action plan. Gonna get murderlyzed? Learn to fight back against being murderlyzed, with a sword! Lonely brother set to fall in love because of healing loneliness? Guess he’s not gonna be lonely anymore! I stole some relationship flags from people? Well they’re great folks, I’m sure they’ll be fine!

There’s a certain resilience to this particular response to the whole state of affairs that keeps the story of Katarina’s life in this world from being dragged down into the implications of all the little bits and troubles that come with both her getting isekai’d into doom flags, and also all her friends’ troubles in their youths. It’s part of what makes her so interesting, I think, that she’s able to just go along being herself, doing her rather erratic best, genuine, honest, loud and enthusiastic and kind, and producing very direct responses to the happenings around her. And people respond to that genuineness and directness and kindness.

Whether we’re reading it on the page or the characters are seeing it in person, I think there’s something very charming about that. Taking ‘wow this is a lot. life is... a lot.’ and getting down to ‘but being nice is simple, and being enthused is simple, and scowling at mean people is simple, and now it’s not as a lot anymore!’

The origins of Katarina’s directness and charm aside, in this life she has very much been rewarded for Being Like This. Here, I’m speaking a little more in response to how I’ve seen people getting exasperated at the increasingly pronounced amount of Bakarina-ness that I’ve seen so far in at least the translation of the later light novels that I got a chance to read; she’s... still quite oblivious.

But her life and the narrative has always rewarded that. Her good-natured kindness to people with sorrows has made her happy friends; her determination to go the direct and simple path through things has always cut to the heart of matters (even if she’s sometimes missed how she’s now rather at the heart of a lot of people now); her blithe disregard for a number of proprieties has been protected by both her noble parents who love her, rather a lot of overprotective friends, and her royal betrothed. Worry has only ever gotten her to an action plan and a drive to proceed with it; after she’s got those to work with (e.g. her “train in swords and magic to not be murderlyzed, keep Keith from being lonely, make a field to train in magic, make a romance novel friend” plans), she’s always had to learn to take her actions and then live her life pushing that worry out of the way.

If she’d drowned in worry about her doom instead of letting it propel her to action and then disregarding it in favor of living in the moments produced by her choices, then I don’t think her life since waking up with her old memories would have been as happy as it was.

(Actually, I have this theory that the ‘original’/no-memory Katarina was running in a similar way as our Katarina, only she responded to the worry with sharp eyes and teeth, instead of brushing it aside with a determined smile. But that’s an analysis for another time, possibly after more of the Verge of Destruction spinoff is out and I’ve reread it a bit more.)

So, all that being the case- why should she be less blithe about things? Why would she be more cautious? Why would she start worrying any more about things beyond her newly-lifted worries about her doom? Her determination to charge facefirst through situations with a good nature, direct problem-solving, and some slightly-suspect assumptions that have always been close enough to the heart of things before- that’s always seen her through.

(Also, like. After everything, when she’s finally, finally able to stop worrying about her doom flags- enjoying all the people and things she loves without digging into the bits and troublesome bobs of it all, getting in a sense a second new lease on life- she can be forgiven for wanting things to be as simple as she’s always tried to make her one most looming problem in the past.)

(Also also, she did have to go through the stages between “you’re all adorable but you’re all 8 and I’m like 16 and I literally cannot be attracted to you, that’s weird” and “well I guess you’re all the same age as me-in-this-life but a large part of me is still 16, so it’s still weird” and “I haven’t changed much over the years because living through the same years twice isn’t really growing up so much as it is being 16 for an extra year or four and then being 12 again and then 13 again and then 14 again and then 15 again and only then finally getting a chance to grow older than 16- and in the meanwhile wait shit now you’re all the same age as me for real. now you’re not just breathtakingly cute or beautiful like a freaking artwork, now you’re making my heart skip a beat, uhhhhhh”.

It’s not particularly surprising that after years of thinking “yeah but I’m older than you, you’re like 8″ that it’s going to take being blindsided multiple times for Katarina to get into the swing of “wait, you’re my age or older and now, suddenly you’re able to be hot. wtf.”)

I don’t really have a conclusion to all this, exactly.

Just that- Katarina may have the sense of a single turnip sometimes, albeit a very good-natured turnip, but while some of it is absolutely just How She Is Even At Peace, some of it’s most likely a response to quite a few environmental factors over the years. And her life has rewarded her for the type of resiliency that she’s used to face her doom flags- the doom flags she’s been politely carrying and deflecting the stress of for seven years.

Direct and simple and kind and uncomplicated in nature she may be- and a bit slow on the subtext sometimes- but Katarina Claes should not be mistaken for lacking in willful resolve where it counts, nor mistaken for lacking fears, nor mistaken for lacking in ability to plan and analyze. I’m pretty sure she just... concludes that kindness is best, people are good, and that this life and the people in it are worth it.

She’s got more to her than just “oblivious harem protag is oblivious and really nice”. And honestly, I think if you look at her closely, she’s a lot more reasonable than people make her out to be.

[hihoneyimdead]

a dissection of anime nathaniel hawthorne in relation to the scarlet letter

In Which I’m Bored and Want to Talk About Anime Nathaniel Hawthorne and Why He’s More Interesting Than the Fandom Wants to Admit, and Also About Arthur Dimmesdale And Shit

This is going to be long. Fuck. 

(spoilers through the manga, which i have not read all the way through, so take everything i say with a grain of salt. same goes for the scarlet letter, which i haven’t read in nearly four years. ripperoni bro)

Above is the topic of today’s procrastination, Anime Nathaniel Hawthorne from Bungo Stray Dogs. He is a member of an American organization called the Guild, he’s a preacher, and he has a superpower/ability called The Scarlet Letter that allows him to manipulate his own blood into scripture that can either harm or defend via spears and shit and then shields and shit. 

He’s also a simp for Anime Margaret Mitchell, but I’ll be getting into that in a moment. 

Anyway, here’s a better picture of our lovely reverend, this time with his ability:

Funny, right? But that’s what I’m gonna talk about today simply because I’m bored and I should be writing but I’m currently not and I really have a soft spot for this bitch of a preacher. Hawthorne here has a lot more to his character than a lot of people give him credit for, which makes sense because he is a relatively-minor character and all he’s been doing recently is getting cucked by Anime Fyodor Dostoevsky, and while he may currently be Comrade Assassin, he’s still a complex character if you look past what our favorite Russian pimp has been up to. 

So a bit more about Hawthorne before I crack open my copy of his most famous book:

He is a preacher, not a priest, as shown by his choice in clothing. Priests don’t wear that, take it from a former Catholic. His clothes resemble the robes worn by classic Puritan preachers (such as the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, but we’ll get to him in a minute.) Whether that was on purpose or not I don’t know, but I’m aiming for a yes because Margaret Mitchell, his partner, wears a Southern belle-style outfit that Scarlett O’Hara (the main character of Mitchell’s most famous work, Gone With the Wind) wears, and John Steinbeck wears clothes reminiscent of Tom Joad (the main character of Steinbeck’s most famous work, The Grapes of Wrath.) It’s kind of a thing with the Guild. Edgar Allan Poe wears clothes that a goth around the time of Poe’s life would’ve worn. Same goes for Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, and H. P. Lovecraft. Meanwhile characters such as Lucy Maud Montgomery, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Herman Melville wear clothes that their characters (Anne from Anne of Green Gables, Jay Gatsby from The Great Gatsby, and whoever the fuck was in Moby Dick, respectively.) Hawthorne fits in with that last set of characters, which is funny considering the real life Hawthorne’s works.

In reality, Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American author in the early-to-mid-1800s who wrote many short stories, novels, and poems and shit, usually Romantic in nature. He started off, though, as a big member of the Transcendentalist movement. Transcendentalism, if you don’t know, is kind of like the 1800s equivalent of hippies. They were pretty anti-government and anti-religion, usually specifically anti-Christianity. These institutions corrupted the basis of mankind. Hawthorne himself helped form a utopian commune up in New England (it didn’t last long, don’t worry.) As he grew older, he grew out of that kind of writing and lifestyle and into the works we know him for today, such as his most famous novel, The Scarlet Letter. It, like many of his other works, contains allusions to religion and exists as a sort of criticism on it. 

The Scarlet Letter is set in the middle of the 1600s in Puritan New England. The Puritans were known for being Super Christian. They did not pass the vibe check. The main character is Hester Prynne, a young woman convicted of adultery with an unknown father. After being “released” from prison after the birth of her daughter, Pearl, Hester is allowed to move around outside of prison. But to signify her “evilness”, she must have a red letter ‘A’ on the front of her dress at all times (the eponymous and extremely metaphoric scarlet letter.) Besides Hester and Peal, main characters include Roger Chillingsworth, a doctor and Hester’s ex-husband from England who has vowed to track down the father and have him punished as well, and the Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, who is sick All of the Time For No Apparent reason. By the end of the novel it’s revealed that Dimmesdale’s illness is actually a manifestation of his guilt because he was Pearl’s father despite him being a reverend and all and Hester being an unmarried woman. He ends up dying in the end after professing his guilt and showing the town the red letter ‘A’ that God supposedly engraved upon the skin on his chest. 

So let’s start here with a brief summary of Dimmesdale’s actions in the book as recalled by someone who hasn’t read it in four years but who is looking at the Wikipedia article right now. 

We first meet him when he and another minister, John Wilson, question Hester as to who the father of her child was. She doesn’t answer. The next time we see him in person is when Hester goes to the governor to ask if she can keep Pearl. She pleads with Dimmesdale and Wilson (who is there too for some reason), and he manages to persuade the governor to let her keep her child. At some point soon after, his health really begins to decline, and Chillingsworth moves in as a physician. Chillingsworth discovers a weird symbol of guilt on Dimmesdale’s chest while the poor guy sleeps after suspecting that the preacher’s illness is a manifestation of an unknown guilt. Dimmesdale, filled with guilt, goes to the town square in the middle of the night one day and screams his guilt to the heavens, but he can’t make himself do it during the day. Hester, shocked by the poor guy’s whole deal, decides to break her vow of silence. She calls Dimmesdale outside of town and tells him that they’re going to move to Europe together and start a new life with Pearl. He agrees and seems reinvigorated. They go back to town, and all’s fine until he gives a really good sermon on Election Day. After that, he professes his guilt and dies in Hester’s arms. People there claim to see a “stigma” in the shape of a letter ‘A’ on his chest, though others say there’s nothing there. 

Dimmesdale is a man consumed by his guilt. He physically and mentally declines because of his guilt and his unwillingness to expose himself for the sinner he really is, though, through it all, he supports Hester and Pearl as best he can considering his station as the town minister. He’s supposed to be the beacon of mortality, the person everyone should look up to and respect and learn from. And here he is, an adulterer, and a liar. And when he finally grows past his guilt and decides to let it out in favor of leaving and starting life anew, he dies, consumed, supposedly, by the wrath of God. He “falls” as a sinner, struck down by the very flames of Hell themselves. Or, more likely, a regular heart attack. He died of shock, poor guy. 

Compare that to Anime Nathaniel Hawthorne. He starts out as a member of a secret association who, according to its leader, Fitzgerald, doesn’t do good, but does what needs to be done. That’s probably why Hawthorne joined it in the first place. While his main goal has always been eradicating sinners from the face of the Earth, he probably started out as a regular old minister. Eradicating doesn’t always mean killing, and this is shown as he only attacks those who threaten his work, his partner (wink), and himself. This changes after the woman he loves throws herself in the way of an attack and nearly gets herself killed saving him. In canon, she’s still in a coma. In canon, he gave himself completely into sin because of his guilt and love for her. And that’s where the similarities between Hawthorne and Dimmesdale really start.

Let’s start with the obvious guilt complex. This goes along with what I believe Dostoevsky’s ability, Crime and Punishment, does. I believe it feeds off of an individual’s guilt, manipulating it and their mind in the process. We see this with Karma, a young man Dostoevsky kills. Karma, in his last moments, goes through all he went wrong with in his life (you know, or as much as a manga page or two can have) and dies knowing that he’ll never achieve his dream. That’s a more extreme example, I think, and not one I should really be using as evidence for anything considering it’s the only example of this really happening. Every other person that Dostoevsky kills with his ability just drops dead without the audience seeing into their thoughts. He’s got an insta-kill ability, but my theory builds off the idea that he can control living or dying. Hawthorne came to Dostoevsky to work for Dostoevsky’s organization, the Rats in the House of the Dead, in exchange for Mitchell getting “revived”. He might look cool on the outside, but he left the Guild, his friends, because Mitchell got hurt. He loves her, and he says as much in the manga (the anime didn’t say so, but left it unsaid and obvious to those looking.) The next time we see Hawthorne, he’s a mindless assassin who really only remembers Mitchell from his past, and the assassin who nearly killed her. His guilt twisted him into someone completely different from how he was before, even looking physically leaner and as different a brief appearance in a manga and anime can make someone look. He’s even lost his glasses, and any normal look in his eye. It’s kinda like the main character of Crime and Punishment from what I can tell, but I also haven’t read that book so take what I say on that with a gain of salt.) He’s consumed by his guilt (thanks, Fyodor.) Guilt is a big part of his character (as much of a character as he has currently, anyway.) The same can be said for Dimmesdale, who, as I’ve said before was consumed by his own guilt and sin until his death. 

I hope that Hawthorne doesn’t end up as dead as Dimmesdale did when he reunites with his supposed love interest (love interests aren’t really a thing in this series, which makes Hawthorne and Mitchell even more interesting to me.) I hope he gets a happy ending, but... that probably won’t happen unless Dostoevsky dies, which seems like an end-game thing to me. He’s a bad dude with slight plot armor. 

Anyway, past the guilt, their relationship with the respective women in their lives is another important and interesting parallel. Dimmesdale, even through Hester’s punishment, more or less treats her as he would’ve before Pearl. I believe that he did truly love her in his own pitiful way, though not as much as he loved his relationship with God, as seen by his continued guilt and shit. But it’s important to note that he seemed to admit his own love for Hester by agreeing to run away to Europe with her, and he did so in little ways throughout the story by helping her keep Pearl and by really just giving her a lighter sentence than a lot of women would’ve gotten. Puritan ministers were up there with government officials in the law (look at the witch trials, for example), so he would’ve definitely had input on her punishment. Most women would’ve been stoned or banished from the town or colony. Hester, notably, was let off relatively easy with just the emblem and the vague banishment to living in a house outside of town alone with her daughter. Hawthorne’s partner was Margaret Mitchell, and from the very beginning until the assassin skewered them, the two of them argued. Honestly, they bickered a lot like an old married couple. It was kinda cute in a weird way. Neither of them would obviously admit their feelings for each other. Both are proud people, Mitchell coming from a disgraced rich family and Hawthorne being a man of God. But his concern for her becomes evident the moment she gets stabbed clean through and impaled a dozen feet above the ground. That’s when he really gets on the offensive, and when she’s destroyed (image below), he calls her by her first name for the first, and only, time, looking completely destroyed (image also below.) He nearly manages to kill the assassin. And when he wakes up and sees that she isn’t going to wake up, he leaves those he cares about to fix his mistake of letting her get this hurt.

When we see Hawthorne next, he is willing to do anything to redeem himself for his mistake. When we meet him as an assassin for the first time, in the manga he says something along the lines of “I, for the revival of the one I love, will fulfill the contract of death”. Which is... not normal, I’ll admit. Poor guy. In the anime, he says something different that I don’t remember, but that was similar if not slightly different (again, the anime isn’t as explicit with their relationship as the manga.) Meanwhile she’s in a coma and is likely not to be revived by those Hawthorne pledged his allegiance to, but those he left behind. 

The two ministers here follow generally the same path of sin. They start out as the badass ministers they really are, men of God. Then, one way or another, they fall deeper and deeper into sin as they go. For Dimmesdale, that was boning Hester Prynne and hiding it from the town and corrupting himself with his guilt. For Hawthorne, that was ‘allowing’ his partner to ‘die’ and surrendering himself to a higher power to try and get her back, losing himself in the process. In the end, both men are shells of their former selves. Dimmesdale dies sick. Hawthorne is a brainwashed assassin. Dimmesdale’s higher power, God, is ultimately what killed him, and his devotion is what really did him in. Hawthorne is probably gonna die or get otherwise written out, I have a feeling (several villains in this show have, just look at Pushkin and Mark Twain and even Mitchell herself.) If he is, it’ll be Dostoevsky or one of his weird Russian friends doing him in or taking him out of the picture. He’ll likely never see Mitchell again and he will die due to his newfound devotion to a “god” who is willing to punish him for going to far. 

And guys, Hawthorne’s ability is literally the titular scarlet letter. What else can I say?

Honestly, I’m not sure what this post was, only that I killed a good three hours writing it and that it gave me yet again a newfound appreciation for something I used to hate. It was Anime Hawthorne, but before that it was IRL Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter. Thank you American public school system. 

[2heartgirl]

If I wanted to get into playchoices how would I do it?

Getting into the Playchoices fandom is very easy! Playchoices as a tag refers to the Choices: Stories You Play app by Pixelberry Studios. It’s an app that hosts original visual novel stories with a big emphasis on romance options and branching paths. While I’m sure it’s not the first app of its kind it is what helped the big boom in popularity of apps similar to it like Storyscape (R.I.P.) and Episode which you may or may not remember used to make those really weird clickbait ads on tumblr:

I’ve been a fan of Pixelberry since their previous simulation app games High School Story and Hollywood U and have been playing Choices since the first month it came out. The only thing you have to do to get into it is find stories you like and read/play through them! Outside of a few exceptions like direct sequels or the ability to recognize reused assets to save some money nearly every single story is self-contained so you don’t have to worry about finishing them all at once. They’ve built up a lot of content since the initial release and now if you start up a profile they’ll have a quiz at the beginning to point you in the right direction of what you want to read but down below are some of my recs. If you find you don’t enjoy a book don’t be afraid to stop playing and try something else!

Horror 

It Live: Absolute favourite!!! The It Lives series in my opinion is the most dramatic books they’ve put out and the best written when it comes to the consequences of your choices. Each is an anthology series with a different cast that focuses on a monster living in the local area. Since it’s horror there are mentions of gore/people getting hurt and the big draw is that if you don’t make the right choices everyone in your friend groups can abandoned you or die. The series does come with trigger warnings at really big parts though. Also PB please give us It Lives 3 soon : (

The Haunting of Braidwood Manor: Very, very short but I still remember it fondly! The first horror story by PB you decide to spend the night in the infamous Braidwood Manor as a last ditch effort to recover from a car crash that’s haunted you for years.

Mystery

Veil of Secrets: Only one book long but I really liked it! Your best friend goes missing minutes before walking down the aisle at her wedding and everything points to sabotage. Go around the seaside trying to unravel what happened as you try and rescue her and discover the dark secrets of the town (also this story has like the first major flash animation sequence at the reveal of [redacted] and everyone in the fandom lost their minds that day it was awesome) 

Endless Summer: Basically the Homestuck of Choices if it was also Lost. You and your college friends arrive to the tropical island you were suppose to enjoy a vacation on but soon realize that something is very, very wrong. You go around solving the mysteries of what happened while trying to find a way home. I can’t even describe most of the plot because of how many spoilers there are but it’s a wild ride.

Fantasy:

The Elementalists: Love this one! One day at college you accidentally see a girl in your mirror and fall into a magical portal to a fantasy world. You are pushed to enroll at the local knock-off Hogwarts and discover with your new friends that something out there is trying to use you for its own purposes. I love the magic system and lore and the bonus scenes! One of the few stories where I went it knowing I would save diamonds to buy extra content.

The Crown & the Flame: Actually one of the first three books PB ever put out and even if its been years I still remember enjoying it a lot. Has a different flavour compared to most of the later stories in the app as you play as predetermined characters princess Kenna and her best friend Dominic who have just witnessed the fall of Kenna’s kingdom and work on opposite sides to build Kenna the army she needs to take her home back. Very ambitious with a lot of worldbuilding but a major con is that if you want the best outcomes you do have to spend a bit of diamonds to get them.

Romance: 

(As a disclaimer like nearly every single book has romance elements in it if not all of them so if you’re playing to kiss some cute PNG art you’ll have no trouble finding it lmao)

The Royal Romance: So popular PB gave in and wrote us the Royal Heir sequels. You’re a waitress in New York who accidentally encounters the prince of a faraway country having one last big party before getting married. The next day his friend sponsors you to become a potential suitor and are taken to his home to battle it out in court with princesses to win the prince’s hand. Obviously romance trope heavy it’s a really fun read and if you don’t want to marry a prince don’t worry, you got options here.

Rules of Engagement: Very old but I played this one religiously when it came out. You play as yourself and your three siblings on a summer cruise as you try and fulfil the requirements of your late grandmother’s will for her fortune. It can be very silly at times but the game seems aware of it and I named all of my characters something weird and got this amazing reaction image out of it.

Those are just my recs but you can start nearly anywhere if you find something that interests you! As well keep in mind while every book can be completed for free the in-game currency of diamonds can be used to to purchase bonus scenes (usually one of your friends/love interests asking if you want to hang out for some alone time), better outfits/hair (usually it’s just for cosmetic purposes but better outfits for special occasions will net you more approval) and sometimes whole characters (The Heist: Monaco and Perfect Match both do this). I’m sure they give you some for free starting out but you can also earn up to five a day by watching ads. (Also before they increased the time refresh I saved up biggggg by doing them everyday during my work breaks and I’m posting a pic of my hoard just because I want to show off)

That should be enough info for you to start out with so have fun playing!

[tartutation]

Venus de Milo (TMNT AU Profile)

A/N: English is not my native language. Therefore, any advice on any grammatical errors is very welcome! Thank you and enjoy your reading <3

Warnings: None

The TMNT AU summary: This is an alternate universe of teenage mutant ninja turtles (mostly inspired by the 2003 series and Bayverse movies) that was inspired by the structure of a "coming-of-age" novel. After losing their beloved father and incomparable master and defeating Shreder, the enemy they have been chasing since the age of 15, Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo must learn to accept the grief and move on with their lives. None of it will be easy, now that the transition from adolescence to adulthood will be strongly impacted by an unexpected reunion with two women from their past and the new friends who have joined them.

Introducing Venus de Milo

You can see Venus aparence HERE

In this universe the boys met Venus because she spent 9 months being trained by Mestre Splinter when they were only 10 years old. It is a consensus among them that they share the same mutation, but all the genetic tests that Donatello made were inconclusive (yes, that does strasses him out).

During this period when Venus spent 9 months in New York studying the old history and secrets of the biggest and most famous ninja clans with Mestre Splinter (Hamato Yoshi's only living heir) her relationship with the turtle brothers was somewhat troubled. At the time, they were all children and the tension of having a girl in the group made it very difficult for them to interact normally. Raphael and Michelangelo used to exclude her from the games and playdates with the excuse that it was "for boys only!" and Leonardo felt very jealous of his master (and father), who seemed to pay special attention to this lost konuichi. Of all of them, however, the one who made the most hell of Venus's life was (who knew!) Donatello. Even with his gentle and pacifist spirit, Donnie did not like this new guest who claimed to be (ABSURD!) high priestest of a lost lineage of magical Konuichi. They were doomed to disagreement: after all, a little prodigy of science and a child with magical powers are two existences that contradict each other. But as soon as she came, Venus left, after finishing her intensive course with "Master Hamato" (which is how she referred to Splinter) she returned to Japan and spent the next 11 years training extensively every day to be able to become the best guardian of the Secret of Kunoichi Magic that had ever existed. Without the distraction of other brothers or  any friends close by, Venus became the most dangerous and disciplined warrior who had ever set foot on this Earth.

Now a young woman, Venus reencounters her former hashi colleagues. What does the future await?

Name: Venus de Milo

Age: 21

Species: Mutant Tortoise

Favorite color: Blue

Moral alingment: Lawfull Good

Sign: Libra

Sexual orientation: Demisexual

Characteristics:

Because of her disciplined and restricted upbringing, Venus has a very difficult time socializing with other people (or mutants!) her age. She doesn't know what a "meme" is, how twitter works, what's the fun of a 6-second video with a cat sppining to the sound of "sweet dreams are made of this". Having grown up in a temple and spent her entire life studying, she has a different concept of what "fun" is.

Her favorite hobbies include reading, meditating, studying ancient history documents, doing push-ups, kneading healing herbs, studying new types of incense and their calming propreities, etc ... All things that she also does as part of her daily work as the Keeper of the Kunochi Secret, so... The boundaries between fun and work are very thin.

She is an excellent reader and can read fluently in three languages: English, Japanese and Cantonese. She loves to read, it's her favorite activity, especially out loud, as she considers herself an excellent announcer.

She can defeat any of the Hamato brothers in combat (including Leonardo). Although neither bigger nor stronger, Venus uses the weight of the enemy's and their strength against them. In addition, her physical speed and strategic ability together makes her literally unbeatable.

Despite her advanced combat skills, Venus is extremely shy and anything makes her blush. Especially conversations that involve sexual pleasure and explicit language. Unfortunately for her, Michelangelo will discover this very quickly and will be able to defeat her in a fight whispering "What's up, hot stuff?" during combat. None of the other brothers will understand how he did it and he will never tell.

Despite being aware that her appearance isn't considered neither normal nor attractive to humans, Venus has no problems with self-esteem. She is very proud of her origins and to be the heir to a lineage of magical warriors is enough to make her one of the most beautiful people in the world in her mind.

Despite having a limited social skill, she is a very valuable friend and after she becomes attached to you, she will do everything to guarantee your safety and comfort.

She is very elegant and graceful. She was taught during her upbringing that each movement must be calculated and rehearsed strictly, what makes some of her very commom and daily actions, such as putting on a shoe or pouring tea look like choreography of a soft dance.

Venus believes deeply in soul mates. So she never worried much about learning the art of seduction or how to flirt with other people, since she always knew that one day the right person would cross her path and she wouldn't have to change who she is to win their heart (spoiler: she was right!)

It might not look like it, but she is very easily irritated. The fact is that she can disguise her stress and impatience just as easily. Never loses her temper.

Even with all these characteristics, she is not the leader of the group. This role was given to Mona Lisa (you will be able to read about Mona Lisa from this alternative universe very soon) through an election between the four friends (description of the twins May and June coming soon!). Venus has no grudge against her friend, as she knows that despite her physical abilities, herself lacks the charisma that a leader needs.

She is not very good at comforting others, nor is she a big fan of physical contact.

She was educated to never feel hatred towards anything but despite this she cannot control her contempt for lies. Trust is the most important thing in the world.

Summary of relationship with each of the turtles:

Leonardo: Venus and Leo are kindred spirits. They have, all jokes aside, everything in common. Therefore, when they met each other for the second time, they developed a friendship that made them absolutely inseparable. She likes how he doesn't underestimate her and how he respects her discipline and life doctrine and he likes having a partner to meditate and train. Their union allowed Leonardo to finally have someone with the same dedication (and obsession, honestly) as he, someone with whom he could complain about the neglect of his brothers and someone to train his japanese with, which also guaranteed them a certain privacy and intimacy that Leonardo had not yet experienced with anyone.

Raphael: If asked, Raph will say that he thinks Venus "is ok". Deep down, meeting her for a second time left a bitter taste in his mouth. He is very jealous of his brother and wonders if Venus would not be the true sister that Leo always wanted - besides (of course) the fact that her discipline and posture are literally the combination of all the things he doesn't like in Leonardo multiplied by 10. Despite all this, the thing that he hates the most is her absence of anger: there are few things in the world that Raphael likes more than stressing his perfect big brother and watching him lose his temper, but it seems IMPOSSIBLE to get the same reaction with Venus . No matter how much he teases her, ridicules her or bullies her ... she never breaks! And THAT is unforgivable. (As they will get to know each other better, Raphael will be able to see Venus for what she is: not the incarnation of perfection on Earth, but a very shy young woman with very basics communication skills )

Donatello: Donnie, now a 21-year-old man, is ashamed to face the ghosts of his childhood that Venus brings with her. He remembers very well how he treated her when they were young and is very ashamed of how bad he was to her. Age made him realize that despite not sharing the same beliefs he didn't had the right to mistreat her. Because of this, upon their reunion, Donatello can't even look her in the eye... The situation gets so much worse when he realizes that she is kind, peaceful and strategic and that the obsession and discipline she exercises in her spiritual rituals are equivalent to those himself repets with his inventions, experiments and research. In silence, he starts to admire her more and more, and the more he admires her the more shame he feels for how he treated her. For a long time, he fantasies with the day when he will be forgiven and accepted, who knows, maybe she will admire him in the same way ... Poor Donnie, he doesn't even imagine that Venus does not hold a single drop of resentment and that she ends up interpreting him distancing himself of her as a form of showing contempt. (Agsnt is my fucking life)

Michelangelo: Mikey finds Venus so.fucking.intimidating. He remmembered her as a very small and shy crybaby, but now? Now she is the greatest warrior he have ever seen. If Leonardo tries to be the authority figure and ends up rejected by his younger brother, Venus does not have the same intention, but ends up winning the respect and trust of the youngest of the group. She ends up being the only figure that Michelangelo really respects and obeys blindly after Master Splinter. He adores her  just as a troubled student adores the patient and empathetic vice director. Their friendship ends up becoming so sincere and pure that he starts playing video games on mute just to hear the stories she reads aloud.

_________________________________________________________

Well.. That’s it for Venus BIO! Please tell me what do you think! Every comment and opinion is welcome. My ask box is also open for any questions about this AU! Thank you so much for reading till the end. 

[michams]

VIXX “Scentist” analysis based on “Perfume”, by P. Suskind PART I  - The MV (1/2)

“Scentist” is definitely one of my favorite songs/ music videos/ concepts in kpop so last year, when I got to know it was based on a book, I went after and read it. Since then I’ve been wanting to share an analysis focused on more direct references to Suskind’s story.

In “PART I” I’ll be giving my thoughts on how the Music Video is related to the book. Since it turned out quite long, there will be two posts.

Some considerations i. This analysis does not really explain the story in the MV itself, since it has a lot more factors involving stuff (apparently) specifically made for Vixx. There are many interesting theories posted by other Starlights though.

ii. I didn’t originally read the book in English, so I’m using my own translations – which can differ from other editions.

iii. This is somewhat a personal interpretation; one could read the same book and have different opinions. Feel free to tell me your thoughts about it  :^)

iv. As referred before, English is not my first language. Feel free to let me know about any mistakes.

v. Mind that this analysis contains SPOILERS of the book.

vi. This post makes reference to sensitive subjects (such as violence), like the book itself.

The structure of the analysis I decided to follow the plot of the book rather than the sequence shown in the music video and I divided the whole analysis in parts.

The book “In the XVIII century France, Jean-Baptist Grenouille is a young man with a sublime gift – an absolute ability to perceive odors. He doesn’t have any smell himself. Obsessed with capturing scents, one day he smells an fragrance that will take him into a disturbing search for the world’s most powerful perfume – one capable of dominating people’s hearts.”

The novel is divided into four parts: in the first post (1/2) I will talk about the 1st and 2nd, and in the second (2/2) about 3rd and 4th.

                                                          * * * FIRST PART In the first part of the novel, we get to follow Grenouille’s birth and youth. When he was born, he almost died, however he was found out and taken care of by different people before being sent away to a sort of orphanage. As a kid, he went through many illnesses and accidents, which left many scars – but he was very resistant.

The boy had a late and slow development process. By this time he was conscious of his outstanding ability for smelling and began to build his inner aromas library, combining them to create new ones. He mostly shut himself from the world and avoided interaction.

[Image 01 - 0:56 sec]  This can be a representation of the young Grenouille, lost in his thoughts and imagination regarding what he smells.

[Image 01.2 - 1:36 min] The lenses some members use are the color in which the boy’s eyes are described: a tone between grey and opal-blue.

When he was 8 years old and the convent ceases from sending money, he was exchanged at a tannery. He was supposed to do the heavy work and quietly subordinates himself to his boss’ orders.

[Image 02 - 0:39 sec]  I associate this to the unique way Grenouille had to view the outside world, always on the look for the finest, undetectable smells.

“He is very greedy and takes in any sort of smell; he wished to posses all kinds the world had to offer.”

In a night of celebration, during a firework show, he felt a really soft aroma – one he had never sensed before and superior to anything he had ever known. He felt an urge in his heart to posses that scent. He is confused when he’s led to a girl, since he didn’t think a human could smell to anything good. He ends up killing her, only worrying about not missing the scent.

[Image 03 - 1:41 min]  I like to associate this scene to the night he first feels that special scent. Leo is seen with his eyes closed, which relates to both Grenouille conducting himself in the dark and being pulled by the scent, allured by that sensation.

“This is when he understands his fate is to be the greatest perfumer of all times.”

When delivering suede, he meets an old traditionalist Italian perfumer – who had  great knowledge, but not much natural talent – and tells him he wishes to be his apprentice. He proves his ability by making a perfume. At first, the man was horrified by his non-methodical ways but is suddenly dumbstruck by the smell. Grenouille frenetically created many scents everyday. This is when he learns appropriate methods to work, how to use formulas and the first techniques for isolating essences.

[Image 04 - 0:51 sec] This would represent Grenouille making perfumes by measuring the ingredients, noting and starting to view them as formulas.

[Image 05 - 0:52 sec] [Image 06 - 0:32 sec]  The images showing flowers in a sort of liquid makes reference to the process of extracting their essences.

[Image 07 - 0:55 sec] [Image 08 - 0:27 sec]  Here, Hongbin watches and waits as the drops of essence (usually oils) get collected.

[Image 09 - 0:34 sec]  I associate this scene to the fragrances Grenouille creates combining mentally the smells he knows; Hongbin and Hyuk would be the representation of his work in a kind of “inner laboratory”.

He began tracing a scheme on how he would use that knowledge in the near future plans. He starts experimenting. However, when failing to obtain essences from objects and other unusual materials, he stopped and fell deadly ill. Only after being told there are other methods, he recovers. They get to an agreement so that he would be permitted to go. With his title of auxiliary and new skills, he begins a new journey.

[Image 10 - 1:13 min]  Although I was confused by the car, I generally associate it with Grenouille’s journey and travelling (which will keep on in the future, as we will see); at this point, it would represent him leaving the city.

                                                          * * * SECOND PART This is the period when Grenouille’s seclusion takes place. The farther he walked from Paris the better he felt and his nose became more sensible the more he got used to nature. It became unbearable to have any kind of human smell around him, it was disgusting. He began walking only at night. He goes to the most isolated place in the kingdom, the peak of a 2000 meters mountain. He finds a faint stream of water, small animals and plants to feed himself with, as well as a cave; at its bottom, there were a tight place he felt had never been touched by a living being – he laid there and only left for basic needs. He would get lost for days in his inner empire, filled with the smells in his memory.

[Image 11 - 0:05 sec] [Image 12 - 1:38 min]  This would be the moment Grenouille finds and enters the cave.

[Image 13 - 0:04 sec]  I associate this with Grenouille reaching the bottom of the cave and feeling at ease by setting in that place.

He fell into a deep sleep (almost as if hibernating), and created whole settings making use of smells of the things he wanted to be a part of his perfect kingdom, where he reigned supreme. He felt home in his purple castle.

[Image 14 - 0:25 sec] [Image 15 - 0:46 sec] [Image 16 - 0:46 sec]  This represents Jean-Baptist during his sleep inside the cave, dreaming of his kingdom and palace.

[Image 17 - 2:30 min]  Here, the boy representing Grenouille appears again, this time wearing his crown, as he rules his inner kingdom built of smells.

In his purple salon, resting on a sofa, he asks imaginary servers to bring him volumes from his scents library and bottles of the finest smells to drink. As he did so, he was delighted by pleasure and peace. He drinks the girl’s aroma for last. Drunk, he falls asleep.

[Image 18 - 1:21 min]  Serving as a background throughout the MV, Ken stands in front of the scents storage, which Grenouille savors as drinks by bringing them back from his memory.

[Image 19 - 1:18 min] [Image 20 - 2:09 min]  The representation of the aroma drinks being served.

[Image 21 - 2:25 min]  N, as Grenouille, appreciating one of the memories (possibly the girl’s scent, judging by his reaction).

The outer world was completely hostile to him. He stayed like this for 7 years. However, one day a catastrophe happened in his fantasy. While sleeping in the salon, slowly, a cloud of smell began to take over the place. It was his own smell, but the boy gets desperate finding out he couldn’t feel a thing.

[Image 22 - 1:38 min]  This could a be representation of Grenouille observing and reflecting over the mist taking over his fantasy.

He screamed terribly, destroying the walls of his kingdom. Even scared by the uncertainty of not being able to smell something, when he is sure there’s no odor, he puts his clothes rags on and leaves.

[Image 23 - 0:52 sec]  The crashing glass could represent the destruction of the palace when Grenouille is taken by the fear of not smelling himself. (Note: I also considered whether this scene was related to Grenouille’s frustration when he fails to obtain the essences, during his period working for the perfurmer, specially taking to account the sequence it’s shown along in the MV).

[Image 24 - 2:46 min]  I associate this to Grenouille once again considering going out of the cave into the outside world, as Hyuk is seen bathed by exterior light.

Grenouille looked terrible; he tells people he had been robbed and kidnapped, being kept captive for 7 years in a cave. He is then taken to to a Marquis who dedicated his life to science and led a study on the relation between the proximity to earth and vital energy. He is invited to the Marquis’ castle and showed off to the academic community in Montpellier. Grenouille was fed and groomed. It was the first time he was addressed as monsieur and the first time he saw himself in a mirror.

[Image 25 - 1:26 min]  Grenouille sees himself in the mirror. We can associate this to the impression he causes in himself; somehow a boy looking at a man, with many hidden goals deep inside. He describes the image as a “(…) figure disguised as a person (...)” - he thinks all that was because of the clothes and makeup (rather than the Marquis curing him or a change of character).

Making use of some excuses, he gets to use the laboratory of a local perfumery and makes a fragrance to spray himself with and smell “like a human”. Walking around to test its effectiveness, for the first time, people finally noticed his presence (in a very natural way).

“He understood he could overcome what he just did and create a perfume able to make people love him, fall on their knees for him without knowing the reason why. He wanted to dominate their hearts. The omnipotent God of aroma.”

References used:  - Book: Perfume, the story of a murderer; by P. Suskind (2007 ed., Editora Record). - 빅스(VIXX) - '향 (Scentist)' Official M/V (YouTube). - Film:  Perfume, the story of a murderer (2006).

To be continued...here!

[wanderingspacedragon]

Snoke & Mirrors

Back again with a third meta/speculation this time about this tall pale raisin.

I know what some are probable going to think. 

*SPOILERS FOR THE LAST JEDI & LOTS OF SPECULATION FOR EP IX*

But he’s dead! Why do a meta about this guy now?

Well I think there’s more to this guy then what we’ve seen and the Sequel Trilogy has been trying to clue us in on that. Maybe too much so when it came to the Force Awakens. There was/is a lot of backlash from the killing off this character before we got answers leaving many to go, huh? Others have taken to the idea that we don’t need any answers cause, hey, Kylo Ren/General Hux are the big bads now so who needs Snoke. I believe Lucasfilm would like the audience to be lulled into this idea cause coming in Episode IX when those answers are revealed they will have more of a ‘punch.’ Problem with the backlash now is I think many were expecting this reveal in The Last Jedi and that expectation is bit of The Empire Strikes Back fault.

In ESB, we got the huge reveal that Darth Vader was Luke’s father. (Sorry if I spoiled that, but seriously who hasn’t seen that movie and is currently reading this) This left the audience reeling and they didn’t get a resolution to this until The Return of The Jedi. Thing was there was nothing on that same or greater emotional impact like that scene with Luke and Vader at Cloud City in RTJ. Don’t get me wrong. I loved RTJ, but just doesn’t have the same weight as ESB and I think it suffers a little from that. The last movie of the Original Trilogy is mostly resolution so the beginning part feels a lot of waiting around until we get the pieces into play to get to that resolution. I’m talking about the Jabba’s palace and rescuing Han. I think Lucasfilm realized this issue and is saving the big reveals for Episode IX so they finish the Skywalker saga with a BANG! Gotta have that weight for the last movie.

So who is Snoke? Well I don’t think we’ll get a final answer until the next movie, but here’s what we do know. Star Wars Sith/Dark force users have on-the-nose kind of names. You have the title of Darth (which George Lucas has said to mean Dark), there is Darth Plagueis (Dark Plague), Darth Maul ( Dark To Wound by Tearing/Scratching...to maul), Darth Tyranus (Dark Tyrant), Darth Sidious (….I mean come on!) and then even Darth Vader (Dark Father, The Dutch word for father is Vader). So back to Snoke….what’s the first thing his name reminds you of....SMOKE.

When we see him in The Force Awakens we see this ghostly hologram form.

Now this is striking to me cause it reminds me of an old illusion to create ghost effects.

So in the 1700′s there was an illusion trick were it would look like an entity floating in midair using a hidden projector, a mirror to bounce the image off and smoke to cast the reflected image on.

These is example I found. There is also an effect called Pepper’s Ghost Technique which is what the Snoke scene above reminded me of. This technique is similar except it uses glass to cast the reflected projection on.

They use this effect in Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion

(Here’s a video describing the Pepper’s Ghost Technique in detail https://youtu.be/TcqyoYfHIFM)

So what’s the meaning of all this. Well the term “smoke and mirrors” which meant an obvious illusion came from this very trick. Snoke is just smoke. That isn’t his true form, but an illusion. This isn’t the only clue that what we see of Snoke is not his true self. Recently Rian Johnson responded to this on his Twitter. 

Link to original post. Source for images are from @mydeardetective

I’m adding this cause come on!

(Big ol’ evil Oz floating head)

Which begs the question...Who’s behind the curtain? 

Now one thing I think is not the case. I don’t think it was a force projection in the throne room of TLJ. Reason why I don’t think this is the case is cause one we see the body afterwards and two we actually see him physically cut in two. We see the effect the lightsaber had on his form. With Luke Skywalker we see Kylo Ren stick his saber into his chest and see it had no effect. I know my husband likes this theory, but I don’t cause I feel it undermines the sacrifice and weight of what Luke achieved by this feat. No, I think this Dark Side user had something else up his sleeve.

Here’s what else we know about Snoke. We know he’s not a Sith, but is of the Dark side of the Force. Andy Serkis said himself in an interview that "He’s definitely not a Sith, but he’s certainly at the darker end of the Force. Without giving too much away, that begins to unfold a little in this one. (referring to The Last Jedi Movie)” This seems to me that there is more we are going to find out about Snoke later on. Now mind you this interview was right BEFORE The Last Jedi came out so he could be just trying to not give away what would happen in the film. But I don’t think so... 

We know Snoke views compassion and attachments as weakness as stated in the Force Awakens Novelization. He considers Darth Vader’s sentimentality towards his own son was his failure and weakness that Snoke believed not only brought Vader down, but the whole Empire. We know he’s from the unknown region and that he is both a new character to the audience (at least Lucasfilm keeps saying that) and is very old. Hence he watched the rise and fall of the Empire. He’s also very into collecting dark side artifacts. Like the ring with the stone from Vader’s Castle with the glyphs from the Four Sages of Dwartii enscribed on it. The four Dwartii were seen in statue form in Palpatine’s room in Revenge of The Sith.

This is interesting cause Mustafar is a locus (focal point) for the Dark Side of the Force. So a rock from Vader’s castle (which by the way Vader went to in order to help him bled his kyber crystal) must have some dark side significance. We really don’t know much about the these sages of Dwartii other than they were a group of contentious philosophers and lawgivers from the early days of the Galactic Republic, who had great influence on its early constitution. Emperor Palpatine was fond of the Sistros staute which he had in his office and later moved it to the Imperial Palace, (the former Jedi Order’s temple). But so far they’ve only been associated with Palpatine and Snoke, so we really don’t know who the Four Sages of Dwartii truly are yet. 

My husband really likes the idea that he’s Darth Plagueis, a sith lord brought up by Palpatine in ROTS. 

The Sith legend says that Darth Plagueis The Wise was once so powerful that he could use the Force to influence the midi-chlorians to create life and could even save others from dying. He became so powerful all he worried about was losing his power and then, in his sleep, was killed by his apprentice Darth Sidious. Now I don’t think Snoke is Plagueis... well maybe he is but this idea has been shot down by Lucasfilm several times. So I’m not sure. There is also the fact that Snoke does not consider himself a Sith. I think he may have taught Plagueis this ‘power’, or Plagueis was just one of Snoke’s many shells he used. You see, I think the reason we’ll see more of Snoke in Episode IX is cause we’ll see his dark force ghost or at least the dark side version of force spirits.

Let me explain force ghosts a bit. The force ghosts we’ve seen so far have been Obi Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Anakin (at the end of ROTJ), and Qui-Gon Jinn (Clone Wars show). The knowledge to become one so far have only been those on the Light Side. This ability was first partially taught to Qui-Gon though he never completed his training so he could only manifest his voice. He showed Yoda where he could learn this from. The Five priestesses of the Wellspring of Life taught Yoda how to manifest himself after death. Yoda after mastering this ability then past it on to Obi Wan. We don’t really know how Anakin learns this ability except maybe post-mortem? (If it was explained somewhere I would love to see the source!) Force spirits are beings that have become one with the Force and are now part of it and its will. So when Obi Wan had said to Vader, “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” This is what he meant. So we haven’t seen dark side force spirits. Not really. We did get to see a bit an illusion of them on Moraband, aka Korriban, when Yoda went there to complete his training to learn this ability at the homeworld of the Sith. There were several “specters” that try to stop Yoda when he arrives, claiming there is nothing after death. These I believe are just part of his test and to explain why the Sith focused on power so much.

They thought after ones death there was nothing hence they focus on trying to obtain as much power as they could and keep it as long as possible. George Lucas has stated that the light side was selflessness and the dark was selfishness. The Dark wants to control and keep that control. Their interest in staying alive or preserving oneself would logically be on their agenda. Heck Palpatine was always dabbling in that and trying to find a way to maintain his rule to be forever lasting.

So Dark side force ‘ghosts’ could be something else. A perversion of the Force. Bending it and stealing it from others in order to retain for oneself. They may need to be tied to a physical place like the illusion of Darth Bane and his tomb. Or The Presence, the voice inside the Sith Holocron in Star Wars Rebels. Perhaps just to obtain this dark side ability requires extreme measures. I could have swore I read some where that Snoke was twisted and deformed, used very dark side abilities to maintain/heal himself. (I can’t find where this is from so if anyone remembers could you please send me a link so I could source it?) 

We also got this concept art teased in The Art of The Last Jedi book.

(Thank you @inwildspace for this!)

From The Art of The Last Jedi:

“We’ve seen dead Jedi come back as blue ghosts. Maybe Sith can come back. And maybe there’s some all powerful Sith that’s controlling whatever the dark side is. We did talk a lot about how the final battle frontier for Jedi might be in the spirit realm. So you have to have a bad-guy ghost.” - Alzmann 

That sure does look like Snoke….doesn’t it?

The other thing is I think neither of these two are the “big bad.”

This is cause they just don’t ramp the stakes up enough for me. I’ve said before I’m pretty sure we are getting a Bendemption (redemption of Ben Solo) in some form. You don’t leave the big villain at the end of Act 2 looking regretful and kneeling on the floor looking like he’s about to cry, staring down at his father’s fading dice. You also honestly don’t have Leia say “I know my son is truly gone.” and then have Luke say to her “No one’s ever really gone.” I can go into more depth of how Lucasfilm has been repeatedly hinting at Kylo Ren getting redeemed, but that’s a meta/speculation post for another time. (This is already ridiculously long). He’s also doesn’t seem care about the First Order’s cause and is really after is own agenda. 

Then there’s Hux. I love his scheming and gloating little smug mug and goodness it would be fun to see him go full emperor, however it has been stated that he doesn’t have any use for Force abilities or powers. He’s more reliant on technological power. Hence in TLJ novelization he wants to make a second Starkiller and rely on massive fleet capabilities. And I’m pretty sure everyone is tired of is another Death Star as the thing to blow up. No more Death Stars/Starkillers. It’s been done. Please Lucasfilm, not another one.

So what could ramp up the stakes even more in the next film? Well I think it’s going to be Force related and something that could effect the whole galaxy. Think Darth Nihilus level of power. Consuming life through the force to gain power. 

We’ve seen this ability hinted at a bit in canon in Clone Wars with Mother Talzin using an orb to absorb the life force of living beings in the episodes The Disappeared, part 1 & 2. Just on a waaaaaaay bigger scale. 

Sooooooo yeah...that’s my crazy speculation for Ep IX regarding Snoke. Sorry for the length, but I like to explain where I’m coming from with these. Remember this is all speculation and I’m most likely wrong on this, but woah what a rabbit whole I went down!

[anythingstephenking]

Firestarter for a New Generation

The Institute is a big hug of King Classics (tm) in the best way possible. Kids with special psychic abilities? Check. Nefarious government organizations? Check. Battle of good vs. evil? Check.

It’s been 8 years since I last visited Firestarter, but my mind kept drifting to the themes of Charlie McGee’s adventures as I plowed through The Institute. Our hero, Luke Ellis is a 12-year-old boy swept away into some massively secret government organization. Unlike Charlie, he’s forced to navigate without his parents, but that’s ok cause he’s like, really smart.

Let’s back up a bit. On the surface (or summary from the book’s dust jacket) we’re stepping into The Institute - a secluded building in rural Maine (duh) where kids with special powers are experimented on for unknown reasons. An interesting premise for sure, but not one that King hasn’t explored before.

(Side Note: with all the references to rural Maine, I feel like I really understand the TR system for naming unincorporated townships and wonder how many exciting things can happen in the middle of nowhere??)

We don’t start at The Institute tho, we start with Tim Jamieson, a rugged a lost man wandering the southern United States before settling in small town SC. Tim’s not even kinda sorta close to Maine, how dare he?? We spend a hundred or so pages getting on Tim’s side as he settles his nomadic self, and we’re cozy and not really even thinking about kids with telekinesis. 

Boom, we leave Tim without so much as a farewell, and the story jumps us to Minnesota. ALSO NOT MAINE! What is happening? Here we meet Luke, who at 12 is ready to double enroll in Emerson and MIT. These colleges are in Boston. Getting warmer but still not there quite yet.

Luke’s got a big brain, and can also sometimes move things with his mind. It’s pretty inconsequential to Luke, he’s more worried about being like wicked smaht. But The Institute cares that he can push shit around without his hands, so he’s kidnapped in the middle of the night and flown to, finally… Maine.

Like any story with kids being abused (this sure does happen a lot with King) we love the kids of this story. Tiny little peanut people being slapped and tased by adults? Fuck right off adults, y’all suck. The Institute kids are endearing and delightful and unless you’re a total monster, you root for them. 

I was worried The Institute would turn into a “been there, done that”; having read 69 King novels thus far, none of the themes of this book seemed remotely new. But the story manages to remain a fresh page turner, cheering on Luke’s crew of rag-tag kiddos, waiting for Tim to return and whooping with excitement when you realize how the two storylines will merge. 

Spoiler alert: good mostly wins, with some heartbreaking losses. King Classic (tm) through and through.

It’s super weird to be in relative real-time after so many years in the past. Cultural references to Trump and American partisan politics pepper the story and I have to remind myself I am reading a book that was released in the third year of Trumps term. I only have 5 novels left.

8/10

First Line: Half an hour after Time Jamieson’s Delta flight was scheduled to leave Tampa for the bright lights and tall buildings of New York, it was still parked at the gate.

Last Line: Better to save some for later.

Adaptations:

 David E. Kelley and Jack Bender announced mini-series plans in 2019 but it’s still in development. Not sure if that’s Hollywood code for “dead”.

[aion-rsa]

James Wan Horror Movies Ranked

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James Wan has a new horror movie out this weekend, and it’s been far too long since we’ve been able to write that. As one of the singular genre filmmakers of his generation, Wan managed to launch three successful and pop culture defining horror franchises in less than a decade between Saw (2004), Insidious (2010), and The Conjuring (2013). And yet, the Australian director hasn’t stepped foot in a spooky house since 2016’s The Conjuring 2. Moving on to bigger and (maybe?) better things in Furious 7 and Aquaman, Wan’s new status as a blockbuster director caused many fans to wonder if his days in dark shadows were done. 

Which is why this weekend’s Malignant is such an inviting proposition. Five years after walking away from personally helming Ed and Lorraine Warren’s on-screen adventures, Wan’s returned to his roots with an original horror movie that’s not part of any franchise. What a novel concept. To celebrate this change of fortune, the editors at Den of Geek have put their heads together and voted, coming up with a definitive ranking of Wan’s horror movies. You can trust us.

7. Malignant

Sometimes it takes a while to get back into the swing of things. While Wan deserves credit for championing an original idea in the modern world of sequels, prequels, and spinoffs—he even turned down helming The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It for this!—daring gambles don’t always payoff for everyone. Which might be a polite way of saying that for some of us (although not all), Malignant is a disappointment.

Built entirely around a plot twist we’re not going to spoil here, Wan’s Malignant takes the familiar concept of a protagonist (Annabelle Wallis) being wrongfully accused for supernatural crimes, and turns it on its head. The actual twist however has left folks divided. Some applaud how bold it is while others of us found it fairly underwhelming, and lacking a satisfying subtext or cohesiveness to make it worthwhile. We’re all in agreement though, it’s a stylish bit of eye candy… and that Wan’s done better before. – David Crow

6. Insidious: Chapter 2

As the second installment of Wan and frequent collaborator Leigh Whannell’s Insidious franchise, there was a lot of anticipation over how this horror sequel would follow-up on the cliffhanger ending to the first film. If you don’t recall—and here there be spoilers, by the by—that movie ended on the shocking revelation that Patrick Wilson’s repressed and mild mannered father, Josh, had become possessed by a ghost which has been chasing him since childhood. Worse, this spirit caused him to kill Lin Shaye’s delightfully kooky Elise! (Don’t worry, her soul gets better.) What will happen next to the poor Lambert family?

Read more

Movies

13 Best Blumhouse Horror Movies Ranked

By David Crow and 3 others

Movies

Insidious: Is The Further Real?

By Tony Sokol

Something a lot more rote, as it turns out. This is not to say that Insidious: Chapter 2 is a bad movie; it’s simply a much lesser one than what came before. From the film doubling down on a monster not nearly as intriguing as the Lipstick Demon from the first film to the picture failing to expand on the strange astral plane of the Further in a meaningful way, Chapter 2 is just a tad underwhelming—a horror follow-up going through the motions. Still, it allows Wilson to play secretly evil, so that’s fun! – DC

5. Dead Silence

Dead Silence was DOA in theaters and critically panned when it debuted in 2007, yet after the movie became available as a home release it scraped together a small audience that was mostly composed of very specific genre fans: those who are just plain shit scared of ventriloquist dummies! Directed and written by the horror dream team of Wan and Whannell, Dead Silence stars True Blood’s Ryan Kwanten as Jamie Ashen, a young widower who slumps back to his hometown looking for answers following his wife’s ‘death by dummy.’ Dogging him on his quest is New Kid Donnie Wahlberg in a wild, scene-stealing performance as a detective who seemingly can’t stop preening his facial hair.

The mythical boogeywoman of the piece is Mary Shaw, a ventriloquist who was once lynched in the town after a performance went awry and a child later died by mysterious circumstances. Jamie’s family were an essential part of her lynching, and now Mary is on the warpath from beyond the grave.

Dead Silence is incredibly silly, but an important step in Wan’s directing career. Throughout the film he plays with the kind of masterful sound design and jump scares that he eventually refined down to a sublime craft. Just like one of Mary Shaw’s dolls, all the parts are there but the movie is only possessed by a little soul that doesn’t do too much damage to your nerves. – Kirsten Howard

4. Saw

The movie that made Wan a household name (at least among movie nerds and horror hounds), Saw became the biggest horror franchise of the 2000s and launched a grim new subgenre of exploitation that’s been derisively (if fairly) dubbed “torture porn” ever since. It’s therefore easy to forget Wan’s original Saw really isn’t one of those movies. Oh, people are tortured on-screen in this gnarly nightmare. And it is very horrific, to be sure.

Yet unlike the many subsequent Saw sequels that came later, plus copycats like the Hostel franchise, Saw doesn’t take perverse pleasure in its characters’ suffering or imagine the villain as some kind of antihero. Jigsaw was originally a chilling serial killer in the David Fincher mold, and his original film had a surprisingly minimal amount of gore. Most of the picture is really about the dreadful suspense of anticipation as we wait for something horrible to happen when two men wake up inside a dilapidated industrial bathroom and are told they need to saw off their own feet to survive.

In truth, if this same exact script (minus the grisly flashback sequences) was presented a one-act Off-Broadway play in 2004, it would’ve likely been hailed as edgy and boundary-pushing art. Instead we got a horror classic that spawned a memorable, if ultimately trashy, B-horror franchise after Wan and co-writer Whannell left the series following the first outing. Fair trade. – DC 

3. Insidious

Back in 2010 when Insidious was released, Blumhouse hadn’t yet become the horror behemoth it is today. So low budget but glossy horrors starring talented household names weren’t the norm. It wasn’t just these attributes that made Insidious a breakout which still holds up a decade later, however. It’s the fact that the movie is undeniably scary. It may use certain jump scare tactics at times but boy, do they work. Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne star as a couple whose son is capable of astral projection, which has taken him into the nightmarish world of the Further and caused demonic figures to haunt the family. 

The first half of the movie will have you leaping out of your seat. The second half though is more of a comedy, marked by the arrival of psychic Elise (Lin Shaye) and her sidekicks, Tucker (Angus Sampson) and Specs (Leigh Whannell, who also wrote the screenplay). Made for just $1.5 million, Insidious is good-looking and distinctive, with scenes in the Further sharing an aesthetic with Dead Silence, and a mythology that clearly had legs. To date three sequels have been made, with a fourth confirmed last year. – Rosie Fletcher

2. The Conjuring 2

As a horror sequel done right, Wan’s follow-up to the biggest horror movie of his career felt like a palate cleanser for the director. After helming the successful but tragically troubled production of Furious 7, Wan returned to his roots and delivered a fiendishly designed thrill ride. In The Conjuring 2, we again follow Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga’s fictionalized takes on Ed and Lorraine Warren, this time to London as they investigate the infamous “Enfield Poltergeist” (spoiler alert: it’s a demon).

Once again Ed and Lorraine play the good samaritans and help a young family in desperate need, and Wan still keeps it wildly entertaining and suspenseful, if not necessarily fresh. But as important as his gliding camera set-ups and ability to create new iconic images of evil out of seeming whole cloth—hello, there demon Nun!—it’s the humanity in both of Wan’s Conjuring films which elevate them above the rest of their franchise. Never mind the ghosts; the scene of Wilson crooning Elvis Presley to some beleaguered children is the stuff of movie magic. – DC

1. The Conjuring

James Wan couldn’t have picked better subjects for his paranormal investigation franchise than Ed and Lorraine Warren, the controversial demonologists who left behind countless diaries and recorded accounts of demonic possession, haunted houses, and other supernatural events they claim to have witnessed over their decades-spanning careers. They even opened a museum full of spooky artifacts in the back of their Connecticut home. This is a couple who enjoyed digging into the occult, and with The Conjuring, Wan showed just how much he loved telling stories about the Warrens. 

Read more

Movies

The Conjuring Timeline Explained: From The Nun to The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It

By Daniel Kurland

Movies

How The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It Embraces Satanic Panic

By David Crow

The first film covers one of the Warrens’ most famous cases, the Perron family haunting, with more than a few embellishments thrown in for an effective ghost story. In the real-life account and the movie, Roger and Carolyn Perron (Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor) are haunted by an antagonistic spirit that wants their newly-purchased 18th-century farmhouse in Rhode Island all to itself. That’s where the Warrens come in to investigate the strange occurrences, like the smell of rotting flesh in the basement.

The chemistry between Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga, who bring the Warrens to life, is one of the movie’s greatest strengths, establishing one of the franchise’s most important themes: that love can defeat any evil. It’s their devotion to each other, and their will to help others in need, that allows them to overcome any supernatural obstacles in these movies. (It’s why the sequels spend so much time threatening to tear them apart.) More than the creepy set pieces—like a possessed Carolyn in the crawl space *shudder*—and the “based on a true story” tagline, it’s the Warrens as characters that people keep showing up for, and the first Conjuring cleverly sells their love story to an audience just expecting jump scares and demons. – John Saavedra

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[rewolfaekilerom]

this week in reading.

//NOTE: This was originally posted on Wordpress on 04.11.2021//

I read a few things this week, and I thought I’d group them all together in this post because they’ve collectively helped me come to a realization about my reading preferences.

Let me preface this by saying that I’ve never really given much thought to the genres of books I like to read. Or, rather, I never really knew how to put into words what I like about the books I like. I can say “oh, I like mystery” or “I really enjoy some fantasy stuff,” but there wasn’t a unifying element or genre. Or so I thought.

I feel a bit like I’m confessing something, but after re-reading the first 8 books of Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries (Sookie Stackhouse, True Blood, whatever) and then reading Daphne Du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn for the first time, along with Lucy Foley’s The Guest List and the first few pages of Alix Harrow’s The Once and Future Witches, I’m ready to say that my preferred genre is gothic.

My all-time favorite novelist is Barbara Michaels. I’ve been reading her books since I was probably too young to be reading them–maybe 9 or 10? I remember reading one of her books in the backseat of the car during a family trip to Vermont, which must have been around that time. Her novels are often categorized as “romance novels,” but I think it’s actually Romance (with a capital R, as in the early 18C literary movement, not a Harlequin romance). Other sources will say they’re gothic or supernatural suspenses. I agree with that, and maybe one day I’ll write about why I love those books so much. For now, though, it’s enough to say that I love them.

So, Du Maurier is a new favorite of mine. Rebecca was one of the first books I read for fun after finishing the PhD, and it was the first book that I felt free to read without also dissecting. I loved it so much, so I’ve had her other books on my “to read” list for a while.

The thing I love the most about Rebecca–and, I guess, about all gothic novels, really–is the atmosphere. That’s something Barbara Michaels gets right, too, but the focus right now is Rebecca. This is a book that’s saturated with atmosphere. The way Du Maurier describes spaces and the bodies that move through those spaces is sensuous, rich, and complex. As you read Rebecca, you feel like you can smell the rooms the narrator meanders through–it’s like Maxim’s aftershave and Rebecca’s perfume linger and lift off the page as you read. Your body feels clammy and compressed as you read the narrator’s thoughts as she navigates the literal and figurative maze of life at Manderley.

And then, bonus, you get a really good mystery.

I’m a sucker for a mystery. So, yeah, I like gothic novels, but I especially love gothic mysteries. It took me a PhD and 30 years of life to realize this fact, but that’s fine. No judgment here.

Back to Rebecca: it’s a rich story–rich in every sense of the word. Honestly, I don’t even know if “rich” is saying enough. It’s SATURATED with atmosphere. As I read that book, I feel like I am in Monte Carlo and Manderley. I know the scenery, and the faces populating that scenery, better than I’ve known some apartments I’ve lived in or some people I spent hours with. It’s a visceral reading experience, and I love every second of it. You can reread Rebecca. That means a lot.

Another thing about this book? We are all the narrator. I don’t care who you are or how badass you are. The narrator’s insecurities and struggles and worries and anxieties are something you’ve felt at some point in your life. It’s relatable in a way that is almost disorienting and repugnant. You identify with the narrator, but you also come to hate her and her insecurities and her naiveté. I think that says more about the reader than it does about anything else, but what do I know? In any case, that’s a story where jealousy and insecurity–things that are intrinsically tied to power–are the veils around which hides a deeper narrative about how our identities form and how one’s ability to consolidate one’s own identity is itself an act of power that can be denied.

I’m constantly puzzled if I think Maxim and the narrator’s story is a romance. The Netflix adaptation says it is, and sometimes I think it is. Well, maybe not in the “in love” sense of the word “romance” but in the “loving” sense of the word. I guess it doesn’t matter, but it’s something I think about while reading. “Romance” and “love” can be a lot of different things, and that’s a book where lust looks like love, but kindness and companionship also looks like love.

All this is to say that I love Rebecca and I had high hopes for Jamaica Inn, which in a lot of ways lived up to but also didn’t live up to those expectations. It’s good, don’t get me wrong. I read it in two days and mostly enjoyed it. But what Jamaica Inn doesn’t have–and what most other gothic novels get right, for me–is a terror, an insidiousness, a series of threats to the heroine that are subtle and suggestive. This book doesn’t play with your head like you might expect a gothic novel to do; it lays its cards on the table and then slaps you in the face with danger.

Rebecca is a compelling read because you don’t really know what’s wrong at Manderley for most of the book; you just know something is wrong and you want to figure out what it is, so you keep reading. With Jamaica Inn, you know what’s wrong–you know that Mary’s uncle is a brute and violent and menacing. It doesn’t matter that he’s a smuggler or a murderer or a wrecker (spoiler: he’s all of those things) because he proves early on that he’s a monster. And by the time you get something compelling–for instance, the fact that the uncle isn’t acting alone, or rather that he’s not in charge of the smuggling operation–you’re 70% through the book.

So, yes, to correct myself: there is an unknown threat, and that’s the vicar. He’s the “true” bad guy, but honestly, they’re all bad guys in some way or another. The danger he presents is real because he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing–as his illustration not-so-subtly points out–but again, it slaps you in the face. And by the novel’s early twentieth-century, ableist approach to characterization, his physical difference–the very fact that he is albino–serves to mark his difference. We know there’s something different about him because he looks different. It’s a tale as old as time. It’s not a good tale, and it’s not a tale that we’d want to see written now, but it’s important to acknowledge that the trope of physical difference/disability standing in for some questionable moral quality (or even innate evilness) was and is common in literature across the globe. So any adept reader will know from the moment that the narrator makes the vicar’s albinism apparent that there’s something up with him. Reading the scenes with the vicar made me long for a story that would do something different. I’d hoped his albinism was a red herring–that it was simply a facet of his character that indicated nothing about his moral standing or views of the world. But alas, my hopes were dashed and Du Maurier rubbed my nose in my own optimism. Maybe I’m taking it a bit personally.

Shifting gears slightly but not too much, the romance plot is endearing, but you can see where it’s going from the second Jem steps onto the page–he’s the good brother who’s pure at heart, and we know this because he’s so much younger than Mary’s uncle, was often the victim of his elder brothers’ bullying, spent more time with his mother, and is engaged in less morally questionable illegal activity. He can be forgiven while the uncle cannot; he’s worthy of love while the uncle is not; he will come out alright while the uncle will not. We get a few pages where we question his nobleness, but that skepticism is quickly dashed from our minds as someone else steps in to be another bad guy. I like that, but it also left me feeling grounded throughout the reading experience. I had two feet on the ground and knew exactly where I was going while reading Jamaica Inn. I don’t feel that way while reading Rebecca or many other gothic novels, and I like that.

And again, the pacing is frustrating. I’m not talking about the pages and pages of describing moors or landscape. I studied 19C lit; I’m comfortable with that. I might even say I enjoy it. In fact, there’s a lot about this novel that feels like something like, say, Lillie Devereux Blake’s Fettered for Life. It’s a good book, but the interesting parts sometimes get buried in storylines that aren’t as compelling. What I’m talking about is the fact that 70% of the novel is the same threat and then the interesting threat–the stuff that might get a reader invested and destabilized–takes up the last 20-30%. The climax of the novel felt hurried, and the denouement was like downhill skiing rather than a winding, twisty ride through a not-so-lazy river. (That metaphor got away from me.) This book needed a heavy-handed editor.

Which ties in with my experience reading Foley’s The Guest List. Apparently this and The Hunting Party are essentially the same story with different locales. Or maybe a better way of putting this is that both of these books show Foley adopting the same premise with more or less successful results. The Guest List got better ratings than The Hunting Party on Goodreads, so I followed my novel-reading-and-reviewing overlords. In any case, though, it suffers from the same issue with organization, if we’re going to put it in first-year-composition terms. But where Jamaica Inn manages to keep you invested in its characters for 100% of the novel even though the stuff that is psychologically compelling (even if it wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped for) takes up maybe 30-40% of the book, The Guest List truly does contain its climax and denouement within the last 5% of the book. If the climax and denouement of Jamaica Inn felt like downhill skiing, those parts of The Guest List felt like riding a rocket straight into Earth–there was no suspense, no delayed gratification. The book spent the majority of its pages vaguely creating and then completing its unlikeable characters’ backstories before then murdering its most unlikeable character and identifying the potential suspects for the murder all in the span of, like, 10 pages.

Murder. Chapter for suspect 1. Chapter for suspect 2. Chapter for suspect 3. Chapter for suspect 4 . . . Back to murder and . . . REVEAL.

The thing about this is that it’s taking something that Agatha Christie did right and making it obnoxious and tedious. Christie and countless others have played with the same type of story structure: revealing that someone has not died but not saying who, presenting a cast of characters who all have something to hide, showing the murder but obscuring the murderer, revealing that all of the characters were connected in some former life and thus have a reason to kill, refusing to reveal the murderer until the last possible second. Together, these can be incredibly successful at building suspense and keeping the reader on their toes. But The Guest List takes those techniques for building suspense–especially jumping in time and between narrators in order to give all sides of a situation while still masterfully leaving the reader in the dark, so to speak (which is also arguably a facet of gothic lit), in order to keep the reader invested–and turns it into something that manages to make you less invested.

I’m not going to rehash the plot, so check it out on Goodreads. My novel-reading-and-reviewing overlords have done it better than I ever could. But the thing I want to emphasize is that despite (1) knowing that a murder has happened and (2) recognizing early on that nearly every character is sketchy and hiding something, I never really cared all that much to find out who was murdered or why. It just . . . didn’t concern me. I was more invested in making sure all of the female characters escape with minimal harm done to them by a gaggle of, frankly, lecherous men.

To put it bluntly, I’m tired of mystery novels that attempt to create suspense by putting their female characters in danger of sexually aggressive men. It’s lazy, and so is using self-harm to prove that a character is going through something.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s an interesting premise and the description of the scenery is gorgeous. Foley gets those things so right. I could dwell in the detailed and atmospheric descriptions of this secluded island for days. In fact, I wish there was more of that–maybe with less of the lecherous-man-lechery and self-harm. Swap those things and we’d be on our way to something that’d make me want to read again.

In case you haven’t noticed, I judge a book by how willing I am to read it again. I LOVE rereading books, so it’s a compliment when I want to do so.

So, where does this bring us in my week of reading? Jamaica Inn was good but not as good as Rebecca. The Guest List is a story about characters who are so utterly unlikeable you end up wanting the boat to abandon them on that island.

And then there’s Harris’s series. I’ve read most of them before–probably as a teenager? I thought I’d read all of them, but Wikipedia tells me there’s 13 books rather than 8. It looks like I stopped reading when I started college, which makes sense in some way. Say what you will about this series (I enjoy it), but from a technical standpoint–that is, from the standpoint of pacing and organization and world-building–this series does a lot of things right. I’ll write on it in the future, maybe, but I’ll just say that I think this is a surprising example of a series that takes gothic and supernatural tropes and wields them to their fullest potential. I like that.

So, I guess that means I have like 5 books to read now. That’s a pretty awesome surprise, if you ask me.

xoxo, you know.

[rewolfaekilerom23]

this week in reading

//NOTE: This was originally posted on Wordpress on 04.11.2021//

I read a few things this week, and I thought I’d group them all together in this post because they’ve collectively helped me come to a realization about my reading preferences.

Let me preface this by saying that I’ve never really given much thought to the genres of books I like to read. Or, rather, I never really knew how to put into words what I like about the books I like. I can say “oh, I like mystery” or “I really enjoy some fantasy stuff,” but there wasn’t a unifying element or genre. Or so I thought.

I feel a bit like I’m confessing something, but after re-reading the first 8 books of Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries (Sookie Stackhouse, True Blood, whatever) and then reading Daphne Du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn for the first time, along with Lucy Foley’s The Guest List and the first few pages of Alix Harrow’s The Once and Future Witches, I’m ready to say that my preferred genre is gothic.

My all-time favorite novelist is Barbara Michaels. I’ve been reading her books since I was probably too young to be reading them–maybe 9 or 10? I remember reading one of her books in the backseat of the car during a family trip to Vermont, which must have been around that time. Her novels are often categorized as “romance novels,” but I think it’s actually Romance (with a capital R, as in the early 18C literary movement, not a Harlequin romance). Other sources will say they’re gothic or supernatural suspenses. I agree with that, and maybe one day I’ll write about why I love those books so much. For now, though, it’s enough to say that I love them.

So, Du Maurier is a new favorite of mine. Rebecca was one of the first books I read for fun after finishing the PhD, and it was the first book that I felt free to read without also dissecting. I loved it so much, so I’ve had her other books on my “to read” list for a while.

The thing I love the most about Rebecca–and, I guess, about all gothic novels, really–is the atmosphere. That’s something Barbara Michaels gets right, too, but the focus right now is Rebecca. This is a book that’s saturated with atmosphere. The way Du Maurier describes spaces and the bodies that move through those spaces is sensuous, rich, and complex. As you read Rebecca, you feel like you can smell the rooms the narrator meanders through–it’s like Maxim’s aftershave and Rebecca’s perfume linger and lift off the page as you read. Your body feels clammy and compressed as you read the narrator’s thoughts as she navigates the literal and figurative maze of life at Manderley.

And then, bonus, you get a really good mystery.

I’m a sucker for a mystery. So, yeah, I like gothic novels, but I especially love gothic mysteries. It took me a PhD and 30 years of life to realize this fact, but that’s fine. No judgment here.

Back to Rebecca: it’s a rich story–rich in every sense of the word. Honestly, I don’t even know if “rich” is saying enough. It’s SATURATED with atmosphere. As I read that book, I feel like I am in Monte Carlo and Manderley. I know the scenery, and the faces populating that scenery, better than I’ve known some apartments I’ve lived in or some people I spent hours with. It’s a visceral reading experience, and I love every second of it. You can reread Rebecca. That means a lot.

Another thing about this book? We are all the narrator. I don’t care who you are or how badass you are. The narrator’s insecurities and struggles and worries and anxieties are something you’ve felt at some point in your life. It’s relatable in a way that is almost disorienting and repugnant. You identify with the narrator, but you also come to hate her and her insecurities and her naiveté. I think that says more about the reader than it does about anything else, but what do I know? In any case, that’s a story where jealousy and insecurity–things that are intrinsically tied to power–are the veils around which hides a deeper narrative about how our identities form and how one’s ability to consolidate one’s own identity is itself an act of power that can be denied.

I’m constantly puzzled if I think Maxim and the narrator’s story is a romance. The Netflix adaptation says it is, and sometimes I think it is. Well, maybe not in the “in love” sense of the word “romance” but in the “loving” sense of the word. I guess it doesn’t matter, but it’s something I think about while reading. “Romance” and “love” can be a lot of different things, and that’s a book where lust looks like love, but kindness and companionship also looks like love.

All this is to say that I love Rebecca and I had high hopes for Jamaica Inn, which in a lot of ways lived up to but also didn’t live up to those expectations. It’s good, don’t get me wrong. I read it in two days and mostly enjoyed it. But what Jamaica Inn doesn’t have–and what most other gothic novels get right, for me–is a terror, an insidiousness, a series of threats to the heroine that are subtle and suggestive. This book doesn’t play with your head like you might expect a gothic novel to do; it lays its cards on the table and then slaps you in the face with danger.

Rebecca is a compelling read because you don’t really know what’s wrong at Manderley for most of the book; you just know something is wrong and you want to figure out what it is, so you keep reading. With Jamaica Inn, you know what’s wrong–you know that Mary’s uncle is a brute and violent and menacing. It doesn’t matter that he’s a smuggler or a murderer or a wrecker (spoiler: he’s all of those things) because he proves early on that he’s a monster. And by the time you get something compelling–for instance, the fact that the uncle isn’t acting alone, or rather that he’s not in charge of the smuggling operation–you’re 70% through the book.

So, yes, to correct myself: there is an unknown threat, and that’s the vicar. He’s the “true” bad guy, but honestly, they’re all bad guys in some way or another. The danger he presents is real because he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing–as his illustration not-so-subtly points out–but again, it slaps you in the face. And by the novel’s early twentieth-century, ableist approach to characterization, his physical difference–the very fact that he is albino–serves to mark his difference. We know there’s something different about him because he looks different. It’s a tale as old as time. It’s not a good tale, and it’s not a tale that we’d want to see written now, but it’s important to acknowledge that the trope of physical difference/disability standing in for some questionable moral quality (or even innate evilness) was and is common in literature across the globe. So any adept reader will know from the moment that the narrator makes the vicar’s albinism apparent that there’s something up with him. Reading the scenes with the vicar made me long for a story that would do something different. I’d hoped his albinism was a red herring–that it was simply a facet of his character that indicated nothing about his moral standing or views of the world. But alas, my hopes were dashed and Du Maurier rubbed my nose in my own optimism. Maybe I’m taking it a bit personally.

Shifting gears slightly but not too much, the romance plot is endearing, but you can see where it’s going from the second Jem steps onto the page–he’s the good brother who’s pure at heart, and we know this because he’s so much younger than Mary’s uncle, was often the victim of his elder brothers’ bullying, spent more time with his mother, and is engaged in less morally questionable illegal activity. He can be forgiven while the uncle cannot; he’s worthy of love while the uncle is not; he will come out alright while the uncle will not. We get a few pages where we question his nobleness, but that skepticism is quickly dashed from our minds as someone else steps in to be another bad guy. I like that, but it also left me feeling grounded throughout the reading experience. I had two feet on the ground and knew exactly where I was going while reading Jamaica Inn. I don’t feel that way while reading Rebecca or many other gothic novels, and I like that.

And again, the pacing is frustrating. I’m not talking about the pages and pages of describing moors or landscape. I studied 19C lit; I’m comfortable with that. I might even say I enjoy it. In fact, there’s a lot about this novel that feels like something like, say, Lillie Devereux Blake’s Fettered for Life. It’s a good book, but the interesting parts sometimes get buried in storylines that aren’t as compelling. What I’m talking about is the fact that 70% of the novel is the same threat and then the interesting threat–the stuff that might get a reader invested and destabilized–takes up the last 20-30%. The climax of the novel felt hurried, and the denouement was like downhill skiing rather than a winding, twisty ride through a not-so-lazy river. (That metaphor got away from me.) This book needed a heavy-handed editor.

Which ties in with my experience reading Foley’s The Guest List. Apparently this and The Hunting Party are essentially the same story with different locales. Or maybe a better way of putting this is that both of these books show Foley adopting the same premise with more or less successful results. The Guest List got better ratings than The Hunting Party on Goodreads, so I followed my novel-reading-and-reviewing overlords. In any case, though, it suffers from the same issue with organization, if we’re going to put it in first-year-composition terms. But where Jamaica Inn manages to keep you invested in its characters for 100% of the novel even though the stuff that is psychologically compelling (even if it wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped for) takes up maybe 30-40% of the book, The Guest List truly does contain its climax and denouement within the last 5% of the book. If the climax and denouement of Jamaica Inn felt like downhill skiing, those parts of The Guest List felt like riding a rocket straight into Earth–there was no suspense, no delayed gratification. The book spent the majority of its pages vaguely creating and then completing its unlikeable characters’ backstories before then murdering its most unlikeable character and identifying the potential suspects for the murder all in the span of, like, 10 pages.

Murder. Chapter for suspect 1. Chapter for suspect 2. Chapter for suspect 3. Chapter for suspect 4 . . . Back to murder and . . . REVEAL.

The thing about this is that it’s taking something that Agatha Christie did right and making it obnoxious and tedious. Christie and countless others have played with the same type of story structure: revealing that someone has not died but not saying who, presenting a cast of characters who all have something to hide, showing the murder but obscuring the murderer, revealing that all of the characters were connected in some former life and thus have a reason to kill, refusing to reveal the murderer until the last possible second. Together, these can be incredibly successful at building suspense and keeping the reader on their toes. But The Guest List takes those techniques for building suspense–especially jumping in time and between narrators in order to give all sides of a situation while still masterfully leaving the reader in the dark, so to speak (which is also arguably a facet of gothic lit), in order to keep the reader invested–and turns it into something that manages to make you less invested.

I’m not going to rehash the plot, so check it out on Goodreads. My novel-reading-and-reviewing overlords have done it better than I ever could. But the thing I want to emphasize is that despite (1) knowing that a murder has happened and (2) recognizing early on that nearly every character is sketchy and hiding something, I never really cared all that much to find out who was murdered or why. It just . . . didn’t concern me. I was more invested in making sure all of the female characters escape with minimal harm done to them by a gaggle of, frankly, lecherous men.

To put it bluntly, I’m tired of mystery novels that attempt to create suspense by putting their female characters in danger of sexually aggressive men. It’s lazy, and so is using self-harm to prove that a character is going through something.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s an interesting premise and the description of the scenery is gorgeous. Foley gets those things so right. I could dwell in the detailed and atmospheric descriptions of this secluded island for days. In fact, I wish there was more of that–maybe with less of the lecherous-man-lechery and self-harm. Swap those things and we’d be on our way to something that’d make me want to read again.

In case you haven’t noticed, I judge a book by how willing I am to read it again. I LOVE rereading books, so it’s a compliment when I want to do so.

So, where does this bring us in my week of reading? Jamaica Inn was good but not as good as Rebecca. The Guest List is a story about characters who are so utterly unlikeable you end up wanting the boat to abandon them on that island.

And then there’s Harris’s series. I’ve read most of them before–probably as a teenager? I thought I’d read all of them, but Wikipedia tells me there’s 13 books rather than 8. It looks like I stopped reading when I started college, which makes sense in some way. Say what you will about this series (I enjoy it), but from a technical standpoint–that is, from the standpoint of pacing and organization and world-building–this series does a lot of things right. I’ll write on it in the future, maybe, but I’ll just say that I think this is a surprising example of a series that takes gothic and supernatural tropes and wields them to their fullest potential. I like that.

So, I guess that means I have like 5 books to read now. That’s a pretty awesome surprise, if you ask me.

xoxo, you know.

[bookaddict24-7]

BOOK REVIEW: The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton

Release Date: February 6th, 2018

Age Group: 15+

Genres: Fantasy, Romance, LGBTQIA+, Mystery

Publisher: Disney-Hyperion

My Rating: 2.5/5 Stars

Add it to your TBR on Goodreads here.

Find my original review of this book on Goodreads here.

Disclaimer: 

I received an advanced reader copy of this book from Indigo Books & Music Inc. in exchange for an honest review

Trigger warning: This novel has sexual assault.

This is a long text post and it may or may not contain spoilers (which you can view on my Goodreads review). This is also a rant review, so be warned. 

The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton is an entertaining novel. A little bit like The Selection by Kiera Cass and The Jewel by Amy Ewing, Clayton's novel is definitely one of those books that you want to pick up because of the potential drama and intrigue. While it definitely offered moments of exciting entertainment, and magical situations, I found The Belles to be at times a little slow (bordering on boring), and a little confusing. 

In The Belles there is a set of islands that have people suffering from a God's curse that makes them ugly, grey, pale, and red-eyed. In this world, there is a group of beautiful women named The Belles and they are loved for their ability to make the once ugly people into beautiful citizens. Every sixteen years or so, the different important buildings throughout the kingdom get a new Belle to work with them, but the most coveted job for the young women is being the palace's Favourite. Which, to be honest, I don't fully get why it's such a huge thing. (view spoiler) There are admittedly interesting mysteries all throughout the story, which have a pretty good explanation. 

The beginning of the novel wasn't half bad. I was intrigued to see what these girls could do. I loved the diversity and I loved that there was such a place that could covet all kinds of different looks. That being said, I found it to be a bit difficult to understand what the Belles really did and the Arcana (the different kinds of magic they performed?) they used. I get the basic idea, but it almost felt like Clayton sometimes bent the rules to make Camellia, the protagonist, the special and potentially most powerful Belle of all time. This wouldn't be an absolutely horrible thing if she explained some of the ways in how Camellia could do what was once thought of as an impossibility. 

I also didn't really understand the procedure, despite it being repeated over and over again (Man, it really felt like I was there with Camellia every single time--how do they not get bored?). They paint a streak on an arm and it spreads? Or do they paint the whole body? How can they do all of that in an hour? Are they doing semi-permanent tattoos, or temporarily changing their DNA to sustain the new looks? When they're shaving off excess fat, are they literally shaving it off and it just drops off like powder, or is it like meat falling to the ground? Gross, I know, but I HAVE QUESTIONS!

Belle technique aside, the prose was definitely a slow progression. I don't fully mind when a story is a bit slower if the characters and situations are fascinating, but Camellia was one of those naive, stubborn, and surprisingly entitled characters. She is one of those characters that make you feel bad for her, but then ask yourself why when she continues to be so naive and blind. 

"But Dayla, characters grow!" You might say, while rolling your eyes. "And they have character flaws!" 

"But Reader," I'll respond, "this character doesn't truly grow! And I get that she has character flaws, but these flaws are literally just plot devices because the story would be over if Camellia weren't so stubborn and actually listened to the warnings around her."

I am not a fan of stories that only move forward based on the characters ignoring the blatantly obvious. Pretty sure that someone could have killed someone else in front of Camellia and she would have still said, "But that murderer isn't bad! What proof do you have?!" 

(view spoiler)

Camellia was a naive girl who worried a lot, but then either brushed her worries aside because "this is all she's ever wanted!", or because she refused to believe these people she barely knew would do her any harm. They literally pit these girls against each other and are not afraid to use them until they die because they only cared about themselves, yet this girl believes that--

You know what, whatever. 

Anyway, the twisting plot (despite the repetitive and sometimes dragging prose) was actually what kept me reading. There were moments where I truly wanted to know what would happen next. I wanted to know what was going on with the Belles and where they came from. There were some pretty solid mysteries in this novel and some intriguing conclusions to these mysteries. If some of the events in the novel weren't repeated over and over, and if Camellia was less naive and stubborn, then this story would have flown by. As it is, one of the other main reasons for why my rating is so low is because I kept putting this book down. So much repetition started to make me bored. 

I will admit that Clayton is really good at writing villains. I love the false sense of security and slow descend into madness that her antagonist portrayed. In a weird way, it fit the setting of Victorian (?) society very well. This character kept me hooked whenever they were in the scene because they were so incredibly cruel. 

(view spoiler)

Overall, I can see why this book could potentially be super popular. The representation in this book is off the charts. There's a little bit of everything in here. And despite everything, Clayton is really good at creating the setting. My main complaint is basically the protagonist, the pacing, and the love interest. Oh boy, that love interest. Also, Camellia's sisters. Where did they go? They just vanished after they'd served their plot purpose?

I recommend this to those who enjoyed the two books I mentioned at the beginning of the review and for anyone who likes colourful magic, interesting twists, and palace life. 

Happy reading!