#and do I hate characters like james usually? oh absolutely. but the man has potential to not be terrible and it’s all there in his source

[godblooded]

an unnecessary reminder i will go to bat any day of the week for james sunderland.

[luluxa]

Drifter

Something I wanted to do for ages - an illustration to one of my original worlds. And I’m using James as a character because of reasons :D

Edit: the reasons :)

An intro for an AU fic set in one of my original worlds. Written a while ago and by now I honestly don't know when (if) I'm gonna finish it, and as a standalone bit it doesn't make much sense, but I guess it can provide some context for the art.

Guide You

Summary: Jeremy and Richard are set to have an adventure in the lands they know very little about, and of course, for that they will need a guide.

So it would appear they were going in the entirely wrong direction.

Hammond glares at Jeremy, weariness and anger on his little mug underlined poignantly by a ratty beard.

“You are a bellend, Clarkson,” he says very politely due to their new company, a nice change to all the abuse that was hurled at Jeremy for the last three days.

Their – well, Jeremy doesn’t want to say ‘saviour’, since they weren’t dying or anything – their finder inclines his head at Hammond’s expressiveness. An inclined hand is all the emotion that can be read off him, since he doesn’t remove his scarf or goggles, remaining mysteriously faceless and nameless.

“You could turn around and go in whichever direction you wished,” Jeremy retorts testily. He really doesn’t fancy appearing incompetent and pathetic in front of strangers.

“And then explain to your wife and children I just left you in the desert for the wild goats to feast on your flesh?”

Jeremy huffs, gesturing at his face. “Of course, the wild goats wouldn’t do you any harm since you look so much like one they’d accept you in their ranks immediately.”

Hammons scratches at his beard. “I look like Rob Dawny Jr and you know it. Don’t be jealous of my good looks.”

Jeremy lets out a massively sarcastic snort and the mystery man sighs and switches off the engine of his Falcon.

“Would you prefer to continue with this admittedly entertaining comedy double act or shall we make a camp?”

Jeremy and Hammond both grin at the comment and agree that the camp would be great.

“I’m Ainnay,” the man introduces himself at last, as they all dismount. “You, I gather, are from Ktider.”

“We are,” Jeremy nods, “I’m Clarkson, the midget is Hammond, and we were supposed to make a documentary about the desert but he’d challenged me to a race and then we got into the sandstorm and lost all our bearings.”

“You lost our bearings!” Hammond starts again, jabbing a finger at him. “I told you were going the wrong way!”

“Oh sure, because the direction you had proposed wouldn’t have lead us to the mountains a thousand miles from where we’ve started!”

“Yeah, where there’s at least some civilisation and not endless dunes with just an occasional goat skeleton stuck in a dried bush!”

“Gentlemen, please,” Ainnay interrupts them suddenly, holding his palms up. “It’s very easy to get lost in the desert, especially for someone who’s never been here before. Experienced Freemen sometimes get lost in sandstorms. I wouldn’t fight about it on your place. Of course, going for a race in the desert is another matter entirely,” he adds smoothly.

Jeremy gapes at him for a second, exchanges a glace with Hammond, and they both smirk.

“The race was definitely not my fault,” Jeremy says easily.

“You agreed to that!”

“And you agreed to follow me around! Five years ago, in fact!”

At last, Hammond gives up. “Yeah, all right, that was my biggest mistake and I have no choice but to concede it,” he says with as much sarcasm as he can muster.

While they were arguing, Ainnay managed to start a fire and somehow task semi-distracted Hammond with erecting a canopy, so Jeremy can celebrate his victory by sitting down and taking off his incredibly annoying itchy scarf.

“Ohh, I swear, it only cumulates the sand in your hair and does nothing to protect you from it!” he groans, scratching at his head vigorously, while Hammond nods along. “This is rubbish!”

Having brought all his pots and little bags under the canopy, Ainnay sits down as well. “It’s cos you’d put it on all wrong,” he comments. “I’ll show you later how it’s done, but one of the main things is that you put your goggles on it, not under it.”

Jeremy shrugs sheepishly and then has to spend a while ignoring Hammond’s speculations about the comfort of goggles-wearing, because Ainnay takes all his head-gear off as well and appears to be immensely pleasurable to look at.

Swallowing and averting his eyes with an effort from the sinfully pretty bow of pink lips, Jeremy hopes his blush will be mistaken for a heat rash. Will he ever be past this stupid and perverse notion of finding men attractive?

“Are you a Nahan, then?” he hears Hammond ask cautiously and looks up to see a red vertical stripe on Ainnay’s forehead, revealed now when he’s flicked the curls away from his face.

“I am. Couldn’t you tell that by me name?” he asks, looking confused, his accent very slight but audible now when Jeremy thinks about it.

Jeremy glances at Hammond, both of them shrugging.

“Not really. Should we?” Jeremy scowls. “Are we being massively ignorant and rude somehow, by any chance? In which case, please excuse us, we’ve literally came over here a week ago and know close to nothing about the local customs.”

Ainnay smiles, eyes squinted and sparkly, making Jeremy’s insides quiver. “No, not so far, although I can tell already you have a potential.”

Jeremy finds it in himself to snort and Hammond grins ruefully – well, he could get away with a lot, being stupidly charming when he wants to, but Jeremy has nothing to counterbalance his bellendism. He rather hopes he won’t offend Ainnay terribly at some point, as he does, indeed, has a lot of potential – and experience – in this area.

“Nahan people have pretty distinct names,” Ainnay explains calmly, making tea. “A Nahan man will always give you just one, it’s our ‘Amma namet’, a tribe’s name, given to us by someone from the tribe we live in. Those names are Ruisk in origin and usually descriptive – mine, for example, is two words: Ain – soft and Nay – hard.” Ainnay glances up from the tea, looking very soft and lovely indeed, and although Jeremy has known him for twenty minutes, he can tell the ‘hard’ part is there as well.

He nods. “Got it. Why is it always just one name?”

Ainnay offers them cups with tea and switches to making some sort of heavily spiced sandwiches that Hammond eyes with deep distrust.

“Do you believe in any sort of higher power – gods, fate, anything at all?”

Jeremy scowls at the sudden subject swerve. “No,” he says categorically, and Hammond shrugs with indifference. The little fussy moron sips the tea and tries very hard to not make a face – Jeremy thinks the tea is perfectly fine, but then again, Hammond is known to make faces at water. “I mean, we have organised religion in Ktider but it’s no more than a collection of fairy tales and a list of ridiculously strict rules and improbable threats of post-mortem punishment to make an illiterate peasant behave.”

Ainnay frowns fleetingly at that. “How odd. Well, here people do believe in higher powers, although no one’s imposing it on them. I would guess it’s because living somewhere as unpredictable and dangerous as a desert makes you invoke anything at all to ease your struggle with the world around.”

Jeremy contemplates it and nods. “Maybe. The seamen are like that as well – every sea-going man I’ve ever known was superstitious as hell, regarding the seas to be well, almost a deity of its own.”

Ainnay nods. “Yes, so is the desert – you know these lands as Tensah, I think, but it’s really the name of the goddess that is supposedly looking over us.”

Jeremy notes that Ainnay doesn’t seem to be very religious himself, wondering, why doesn’t he conform to the beliefs of his people.

“So what does it have to do with names?” Hammond asks, ever impatient and probably annoyed with the non-promising dinner.

Ainnay doesn’t look bothered with the rudeness, remaining serenely calm and immersed in the food making. “Our tribe names are designed to hide us from the goddess who’s known to not like men very much. Women go by the first name always, as they’ve nothing to fear.”

Men fearing a goddess sounds pretty entertaining – Jeremy’s heard about ancient people worshipping Earth like the ultimate Mother, and it was proposed by some historians in those ancient times women were the rulers – he wonders, whether it was or hell, still is, true for the local desert people.

“I think we have something similar to your Amma namet thing – nicknames,” Jeremy says on an afterthought. “His is Hamster,” he points at Hammond, making the latter glare.

Ainnay hums. “Yeah, we have nicknames too, but it’s not the same thing. Amma namet is absolutely formal and ritualistic rather than amusing and affectionate. It’s for permanent use, since our first name has to be hidden. The first name can only be used one on one, and only your mother can use it, or a person to whom you give that name – usually a life partner. So, if a Nahan man ever gave you his first name he would be actually saying ‘I love you and I want to spend my life with you’.”

“I hope to never hear that one,” Hammond says immediately, and Jeremy immediately and ridiculously wonders what is Ainnay’s first name.

Bad thought, he tells himself angrily. Incredibly bad and out of order.

They receive their plates with the sandwiches and Jeremy makes a point to declare it very tasty – which it is – to counterbalance Hammond’s politely concealed but still evident disgust.

“Don’t mind him. Hammond hates everything that isn’t eggs and gin,” Jeremy explains, talking away his portion to not waste anything.

Hammond lets him with relief. “I don’t hate everything. I’m just not used to foreign food, sorry. I have some crackers on me, I’ll be fine with those.”

Ainnay shrugs. “All right. What’s gin?”

They spend another hour discussing alcoholic beverages and food, Hammond increasingly horrified with Ainnay’s descriptions of the local drinks that seem to include snake bile and scorpions, until Jeremy realises that while remaining perfectly deadpan, Ainnay is having a lot of fun making Hammond queasy, and sits back to be entertained.

“There’s no such thing as rotten shark soup!” Hammond cries eventually, riled up and red in the face. “You’re having me on!”

Ainnay looks at him with clear-eyed sincerity. “Why would I be having you on? It’s a delicacy, I’ve had some, they serve it with fried whale intestines – it’s actually delicious, as long as you don’t breath in.”

On that, Jeremy gives up, giggling and pointing helplessly at Hammond’s constipated mug. “Your stupid tiny face, all scandalised,” he manages at last. “Ainnay, you’ve got to stop or Hammond will be sick.”

Looking pleased with himself, Ainnay nods. “As you wish. Although everything I said was the truth.”  

“You’re worse than Clarkson,” Hammond says, looking hurt. “I hoped to meet someone nice on this journey.”

Ainnay’s expression remains as kindly and innocent as it was. “Tough luck.”

Jeremy dissolves in giggles again, delighted beyond words, and Hammond turns away pointedly, sulking.

“And here I thought we’ll be stuck with just the scenes of the dunes and Hammond moaning,” Jeremy says, pleased, patting his absorber under the coat. He’ll have to sort the stream soon, to not spend hours and days editing the raw material. “That would’ve made a boring show.”

Noticing Ainnay’s confusion, Jeremy produces the absorber disc from under the layers of his dusty robes. “We have them on us 24/7, basically. Bit difficult to make a comprehensive story out of the uninterrupted stream, but we resolved it by embracing a lot of the randomness. People like it, oddly enough.”

Ainnay just looks more confused. “Hold on. I did not understand a word. What is that thing?”

Hammond turns around from his sulking and his crackers to gape at Ainnay along with Jeremy. “You don’t know what it is?”

Ainnay shrugs. “Should I?”

Jeremy looks at his absorber. “Well, yeah, since it came from your part of the world. It’s black niurite, it absorbs the perception of a person connected to it.”

Still blank, Ainnay reaches for the absorber but thinks better of it. “Could you be more specific, please?”

“It absorbs your perception, things you see, or hear, or smell, or what you feel by touch – it stores it as a stream of uh, sensory experience. People then can duplicate it to their absorbers and tune in. It’s a bit like dreaming,” Jeremy tries to explain, “only it’s not your dreaming and everything is real. Well, you could tune into your own stream, which would be like remembering something, but you know, with full presence in the moment. So what Hammond and I are doing here is making a stream – after editing it’ll be his and mine streams in turn combined into one. There should be also a third-person perspective of our discmen, but since we’ve lost them right after coming here, it’ll be just our points of view, so to speak.”

Ainnay listens with his mouth open. “Whoa,” he manages at last. “That’s amazing!”

Bemused, Jeremy exchanges a glance with Hammond again. “Are you saying you have nothing like that in your lands?”

Still transfixed with the absorber, Ainnay shakes his head. “No. We don’t really know what to do with black niurite – your lot likes it enough to buy it, so we sell it to you. We just thought you use it for jewellery or something else decorative. Can you show me how it works?”

Luckily, Hammond has a spare absorber, so he gives it to Ainnay, tying his scarf around his eyes securely and explaining how to connect to it, which takes Ainnay a while but eventually, he lets out a startled yelp and waives his hands about, reacting to something Hammond has on it.

“Bloody Norah!”

Filing away the unfamiliar curse, Jeremy watches Ainnay go from flaily amazement to the stillness of intent concentration – he always loves to watch kids do it, but a grown man discovering streaming is especially endearing.

[itsclydebitches]

RWBY Recaps: The Greatest Kingdom

Hello, glorious RWBY fandom! It’s that time of the year again. No, not the holidays. Rather, it’s the roughly twelve weeks where my Saturdays are lost to the void of churning out 4,000+ words of typo-laden analysis for our favorite web-series. Does that sound like a good time? If so, stick around and keep reading.

Now, those of you who joined us last year will recall that I took issue with numerous aspects of Volume Six. Many of you are capable of summarizing these aspects in great detail considering that the conversation never stopped on my blog between January 26th and, well, today. But for those of you who don’t otherwise suffer my metas or who might be joining us for the first time, here’s a very short guide to the stuff we’ve been chatting about the last few months:

Holy shit they really went all in on dragging Ozpin, huh?

Is the group part of a collective consciousness now? What happened to diverse thinking?

Should un-licensed teenagers steal military property and start grimm-drawing battles with national allies? No or double no?

We hate adults? Is that really a thing?

When will Oscar’s on-screen development come back from the war?

There are numerous, numerous other connected topics, from Rooster Teeth’s handling of physical assault all the way to theories regarding the relic’s potential influence and Jinn’s motives, but that’s the basic gist. Oh, and we now have a subset of the fandom who got big mad over fans headcanoning trans!Nora based on her new color scheme. ... So that’s where we’re starting this volume off.

Just so we’re all on the same page:

👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

Anyhoo, with that bare-bones context out of the way, let’s dive in.

We begin, as usual, with a shot of the shattered moon. Except this is the first volume where we know precisely what happened to it and all it may mean for humanity. It lends a certain amount of gravitas to our start. Now, rather than the more generic, “Ah. Right. That motif. Still a mystery, huh?” shots of the moon function as a quick reminder of the group’s new stakes. 99% of the time the focus is on Salem and our heroes’ attempts to keep this genocidal dictator from destroying and/or enslaving the entire world, but “The Lost Fable” set up that the true, end-game antagonists have always been the gods. Even if Salem is destroyed, they still exist as a continued threat to humanity. If they wish to use the gods to help them in their quest against Salem, they likewise risk their judgment. Having introduced them, that’s a tricky problem the show is going to have to solve before its end.

For now though we pan down to the Atlas military, numerous ships and lots of chatter over the radio setting up precisely how massive, organized, and deadly this army is. I would like to remind everyone that this is what the group deliberately decided to piss off by not merely stealing an airship, but unnecessarily attacking the head special operative of the Argus base. The fact that the military has grown more “aggressive” in Weiss’ absence has no bearing on her original knowledge that stealing/attacking this group would be a horrendous idea. She knew it. Qrow knew it. Everyone ignored that in favor of Jaune’s idiotic plan. I bring this up not to rub more salt in a long open wound, but to re-establish how the group is, thus far, unable to think ahead and accurately weigh the consequences of their actions. More on that later.

Their ship, Manta 5-1, is welcomed home and instructed to land so that a security team can debrief them. Whoops. Jaune, again in his infinite wisdom, reminds everyone that they achieved their goal of getting to Atlas. So now they just need to find some answers, yeah? Not quite. Weiss immediately points out that landing with a stolen ship means that security won’t let them anywhere near Ironwood… which, again, is something that holds true regardless of whether the military got more aggressive and their leader more dictator-y. This is not new information. Oddly enough, a group of teenagers with only one licensed huntsmen among them (considering that Maria is presumably still keeping a low profile) flying a stolen airship doesn’t exactly breed the sort of confidence that lets anyone---paranoid or not---approach a leader. These were all issues from the start that the group didn’t bother to consider in their haste to finish this mission.

“They might even take me back to my father,” Weiss says. Another concern that they’re only realizing now, yet one that the fandom latched onto immediately. Though mostly in the wrong way. It’s because Jacques is a threat that they should have found a more covert way into Atlas, or waited to hear from Ironwood, or just send Weiss herself with Cordovin’s blessing… Yes, much of the fandom got quite defensive at that suggestion, claiming that sending Weiss “alone” (she never would have been alone. Bird uncle. Fits into a suitcase grandma) was tantamount to handing her to Jacques wrapped up in a bow. Except, as is made perfectly clear here, it’s their illegal activity that endangers them. Which is more likely to get you sent off to daddy? Acting like a child by stealing military property and then getting caught? Or entering Atlas as a huntress with a special operative’s blessing, carrying instructions that you are to meet with Ironwood as soon as possible? To say the team dropped the ball on this one is an understatement.

Those, however, are all past options now far out of reach. Weiss decides then that she’ll simply call Winter and I absolutely adore Kara’s voice acting here. She managed to imbue so much into a single name, conveying Weiss’ realization, hope, and love for her sister in just two quick syllables. I feel like I got more insight into Weiss through that moment alone then the entirety of Volume Six. Only problem? Blake notices another feed where a recording of Winter emphasizes that anyone found breaking Atlas law will face punishment---something our group will be quite familiar with by the end of the episode---and Qrow decides that they probably shouldn’t go charging into Winter and Ironwood’s hands until they know more about the situation.

Which is the smartest decision we’ve seen in a while, considering that Ironwood’s own feed leaves little to the imagination. He continues to sport that beard, giving him more of a disheveled appearance compared to Volumes 1-3. His voice is as authoritative as ever and he literally towers high above all the people he’s supposedly protecting, keeping his distance from both the city and the airships that ‘govern’ it. A few moments earlier we got to see the startling contrast between the military life and the civilians’. Warm reds and browns give (in this case a literal) down-to-Earth feel and the neon signs are easy markers of a low-class neighborhood. You know the stereotyped kind: cheap food and cheaper entertainment. Compared to the whites and blues of the Atlas clouds, paralleling their elite (and thereby expensive) technology, the city below feels like a slum in comparison, reinforced by the dirty, drunk, and at times violent background characters that populate it. 

As Maria says later, “A home in the clouds is as bright as it gets,” to which Nora responds, “Unless you’re the one having to look up at it,” something she’d be very familiar with as a child stealing bread in the otherwise plentiful looking Kuroyuri. There are contrasts in coloring, dialogue, as well as framing here. Compare Ironwood’s sky-high observation to Pietro’s existence as a black man, in a wheelchair, doing volunteer work in what’s established as a dump. He’s as “low” as he can possibly be and acknowledges that he prefers to actually be among the people, not standing literally or figuratively above them. Just in case the audience misses these cues, we get some rather ominous music on top of all that and fearful looks between Ruby and Yang.

Ironwood’s recording says that some people may view these as “uncertain times,” likewise contrasting Glynda’s recording in the very first episode, announcing that they live in an “extraordinary time of peace.” Whether there’s uncertainty or not, Ironwood promises that Atlas will remain “safe and strong,” even if the other Kingdoms have begun to falter. The speech has a very ‘Us vs. Them’ quality about it.

“He looks tired,” Ruby comments and I just need to chuck another fandom into the mix real quick because:

Under these circumstances, “tired” doesn’t just require the John Mulaney advice of, “Get some rest, tall child!” It’s a clear dig at the leader’s capabilities and even their mental faculties. “James… what have you been doing?” Qrow asks, thereby re-framing “tired” as the nice euphemism for “gone off the deep end.” It remains to be seen though precisely how much of Ironwood’s paranoia is literal paranoia in the sense that it’s illogical and undeserved, and how much of these changes are highly undesirable, but potentially justifiable decisions. After all, we as the audience know precisely how dangerous Salem and her crew are. We know why Beacon fell. We’re privy to the stakes in a way that the average, angry Atlas citizen is not. All Ironwood can do in the face of such odds is try to prepare for every eventuality… it just looks like he’s reached a point where those preparations have started infringing on basic human rights. It’s a very sad setup. A classic case of the wrong things done for the right reasons.

There’s a check-in from the radio tower, whoever’s in charge wondering why Manta 1-5 hasn’t gone towards their landing pad yet. Maria comments that the lady should take a hint and starts finding a different place to land. Which in hindsight is kind of funny because they obviously did take a hint… and then sent out a special team to deal with the implications of that hint.

As the group starts exploring we get a lovely shot demonstrating how much they stand out in this new environment.

Though there’s some color in the neon signs, the otherwise overwhelming brown/beige/black/red makes elements like Nora’s pink skirt and Weiss’ white hair stick out like sore thumbs. As we’ll see in a minute, there are obviously in-world difficulties with them passing as average citizens, but it’s also a signal to the audience that, for now at least, they’re really out of their depth. This is the “greatest kingdom” referenced in our title. 

Maria is leading them to a friend of hers when a bot takes an interest in these obvious outsiders. It approaches Yang at the back of the group, takes an unexpected picture, and she responds by kicking it into the street where it sparks with damage before getting hit by a truck.

(Flashback to Ruby and Penny, anyone?)

Now, I’m honestly on the fence about this moment. You could make the case that they’re all traumatized fighters and responding to that flash was a logical, instinctual response. You can even argue that, just hours after taking her first faunus life, Yang is more than a little on edge—even though the premier doesn’t reference this incredibly significant event at all, outside of Blake’s quick realization that her blade is still broken. Both are valid and easily supported readings. However, I’m still hyper aware that this is Yang. The character who, for two volumes now, has been characterized very strongly by her, “attack first, ask questions later” attitude. Out of all the characters we could have seen instinctively attacking something that hadn’t actually done her any harm, choosing Yang holds the most weight. The story also lightly acknowledges that this was an extreme response, what with the group staring at her and Yang’s sheepish expression.

Whether it’s specifically in the context of trauma over the fight with Adam, or more broadly acknowledging Yang’s tendency to both assume and act on the worst in people, I hope this volume helps her manage these instincts. One talk with Tai about not punching through problems isn’t going to cut it. Especially when her forceful attitude has caused much of the internal conflict recently. 

It’s after this that the group is accosted by a drunk man, functioning largely as exposition to explain what’s been going on in Atlas and why the people are so scared and angry about it. Pissed enough to get literally pissed, of the inebriated variety. Here then, we return to the “this group of teenagers is really bad at thinking ahead” issue that I mentioned earlier. Ruby is all ready to start a fight---referencing her newfound willingness to escalate situations that don’t necessitate escalation---and it’s Blake who holds her back, reminding Ruby that they can’t afford to cause a scene. Which is fantastic. Except they end up causing a scene anyway when the drunk calls Blake a “stupid faunus” and Weiss uses a glyph to chuck him into the trash.

Is seeing a racist asshole get his just desserts extremely satisfying? Absolutely and from a representation perspective I’m thrilled to see Rooster Teeth taking a hard stance in their story. From an in-world perspective though, that was an incredibly bad decision. We’ve been establishing since minute one of this premier that the group needs to be cautious. Blake herself, the victim here, just told Ruby not to endanger the whole group by defending her honor… and then Weiss swoops in to do it anyway. There are two priorities here, to your friends and to your mission, and the issue is that Team RWBY has a tendency to consistently prioritize the former, something that wouldn’t be an issue if this was still a low-key story about a group of students and not would-be, formal huntresses trying to save the world. The choice to attack rather than walking away---paralleling last volume’s final battle---speaks to their inability to think ahead and weigh their priorities. “It was worth it,” Weiss says, but is it? Now that you’ve caused the scene that you couldn’t afford? Now that this guy recognized your glyphs and you’ve blown your cover? I realize I’ll probably get heat for this, but there’s a difference between calling out micro-aggressions in everyday life and calling them out when you’re fugitives trying to keep an invaluable relic safe. It would have said more about the group’s maturity if Blake had succeeded in avoiding a scene and they expressed anger/sympathy among themselves that she had to put up with that shit. Throwing guys into dumpsters is satisfying as hell, but it’s not the action of a level-headed adult conducting a job.

Provided that the story actually acknowledges how young they are and that it’s expected they make such mistakes, we’re golden. As it is though, these issues are usually brushed aside. Later Maria says that Pietro “likes to keep a low profile. Something I’m coming to realize you know nothing about,” but it’s said in a joking, fond manner. This isn’t treated as an actual flaw and is therefore not set up as something for the team to work on. And that, right there, is the heart of the conflict between RWBYJNR and Ozpin. He’s a fine scalpel. They’re a sledgehammer. RWBY continually introduces threats that require a delicate touch---whether it’s the possibility of spies in your midst that force you to carefully monitor who has what information, or needing to move through a city without drawing attention to yourself---these battles require a certain level of strategy and without fail our heroes are characterized as people who can only solve their problems through direct, immediate violence. You don’t walk away from a fight. Ever. Be it Cordovin or a racist drunk. The more I see of their behavior, no matter the good intentions behind it, the more it makes sense to me that Ozpin lied and kept his secrets. Our heroes simply don’t have the patient, level-headed, forward-thinking personalities required to fight this kind of delicate war. Their talent lies in the hack-’em slash-’em situations. 

Anyway, I’m getting off topic. The group runs from the guards that show up after the drunk guy incident and they manage to make it to Pietro’s place. After some fun dialogue about whether he remembers Maria and the state of his shop, we get a potential explanation for Maria’s strange behavior on the train. Everyone remember this?

Obviously the camera focusing on Maria helps us, the audience, realize that she’s a character who will eventually become important to the story, but it’s also a bit coincidental that she’s hanging out near Team RWBY’s room. Especially when she inexplicably ends up on the back half of the train when everyone else was evacuated. It was clear at the time that she’d deliberately stayed back, but to what purpose no one was sure. Here, Maria gives a general answer about how she thought this group might have needed her guidance while fighting all those manticores… which is still an odd explanation to my mind. Because up until her confession leaving the farmhouse, Maria wants to keep that low-profile. She’s done with being the Grimm Reaper, so why get involved now? Especially when, with hired huntsmen to protect the train and a large group of teens with their own weapons, she probably would have assumed they were all in good hands? Even if it was just a fighter’s natural instinct to help, what would that guidance have looked like? Pretending to be a normal, formal huntress lending a hand where she can? Admitting she’s the Grimm Reaper? Is she still able to fight? There’s still the highly coincidental nature that Maria, the greatest huntress of a generation, just happened to be traveling the same route as and randomly became interested in the group involved with Salem, gods, and the relics.

To be clear, I’m not really arguing that there’s some big conspiracy surrounding Maria. Coincidences are common in all fiction because if things happened based on real-life probability, it would all be pretty boring. Rather, I’m simply pointing out that between losing her eyes as a young adult and coincidentally getting involved with Team RWBY now, we pretty much have no idea what Maria has been up to for most of her life. If the story wanted to establish some sort of betrayal/trickery/what-have-you, there’s room for it.

That would make me super sad though. I quite like Maria.

We learn more about Ironwood’s increasing paranoia, a hint that not everyone on the council is happy with his changes---that mysterious woman we keep seeing on the posters, perhaps?---and the acknowledgement that whoever helped bring down Atlas’ tech at Beacon has to be “Either a genius, or one of our own.” Probably both. Enter Watts, seen typing at a computer in our opening.

With all this info bearing down on them, a few characters like Jaune and Oscar start asking whether they can just leave and yes, please tackle that, because it’s a very important question. Right now the show has stalled the, “Will the group continue the fight against Salem and what’s their reasoning for doing so when they all think it’s pointless?” question by throwing up another roadblock with the relic. They got it to Atlas, but they’re not sure they can hand it off to Ironwood yet, which just leaves them twiddling their thumbs. That portion of the quest isn’t technically complete yet, putting off an answer as to whether and why they’ll go onto the next portion. We need to tackle the group’s new motivations though. Soon. I sincerely hope that when Ironwood announces he has a way of defeating Salem, we finally get the group challenging their own assertions that such attempts are fundamentally useless. We had a whole volume of, “Oh no. Oh god. Salem is immortal and all our work is for naught.” We need at least a little attention paid to the development of a new perspective to counteract that.

Before things can get too bleak though, Pietro recognizes Weiss as a Schnee. Yang, in a lovely moment of support, desperately tries to re-direct the conversation back to the council. Pietro then recognizes her arm, puts it all together to get Team RWBY, and drops the loaded comment, “My daughter has told me so much about you.”

Many fans saw it coming. Even more hoped for it. Honestly? I think that’s great. Too many shows nowadays rely on “twists” that don’t actually make sense, or even undermine the original setup. Those are frustrating beyond belief and feel like the authors are selling out good story for cheap, undesired shock value. The fandom saw Penny’s resurrection coming a mile away? Great! That just means Rooster Teeth did a good job of setting up that possibility and then following through on it.

I’ll talk more about Penny’s introduction in a moment, but first I just want to throw out that I legitimately enjoyed the fight scene. Good action and creative teamwork at times. I particularly liked Weiss and Ren working together to take down four grimm in as many seconds. Oscar likewise takes a grimm out with a very impressive strike… more impressive than I was expecting from him, honestly. Right now I suppose I’m just inclined to shrug that off with, “He and Ozpin are slowly merging, so he picks up stuff way faster than everyone else,” most notably Jaune. Also, I’ll be blunt. I wouldn’t touch canon-based rosegarden with a ten-foot pole. You know, because of all the issues like a massive age difference, two minor characters involved, questions of consent, the fact that Ruby was Ozpin’s student---pesky ethical concerns like that. AUs though? I think the ship is adorable. Provided that Oscar is fully his own person and there’s consent on both sides appropriate for whatever ages they currently are in your fic or fanart? Very nice. So, it’s for those fans that I point out an entirely coincidental parallel: Ruby saves Oscar from a grimm with a bullet in nearly the exact same manner that Blake saves Yang from a grimm with a bullet. Make of that what you will.

Back to Penny though. Overall, am I thrilled that she’s back? Absolutely. I actually spoke about this recently while answering an ask, expressing how much I’d enjoy this very scenario: having her consciousness saved and thus allowing for her resurrection. Do I think her new look is adorable? Yes, yes I do. “And yet,” you say, “It sounds like there’s a ‘but’ somewhere in there, Clyde.” Yeah. Sadly there is. Because although I’m happy to have Penny, I wasn’t particularly taken with how they re-introduced her.

Simply put, there was far too much humor for what should have been a touching, emotional scene. With the exception of one moment where Ruby tries to voice the word “killed,” everyone treats Penny’s resurrection as a surprising, but not terribly notable event. Yang, Weiss, and Blake express a sort of long-suffering fondness as they comment on how wholesome this is. Pietro laughs at any shock over her “death” and shrugs about how yeah, it technically was. Whatever. Qrow takes the time to nonchalantly say that things are going better than he expected. Ruby is holding it all together with barely a blink. Penny herself is nothing but exuberance and funny dialogue. Maria cracks a joke about how she has no idea who this child is. Jaune goes, “Well, that was unexpected” as if Penny had showed up in Atlas when they all thought she was in Vacuo. That sort of surprise. The whole thing is treated flippantly with, “Never a dull moment.” Summarized, all this really isn’t the appropriate reaction to realizing a friend is no longer dead.

Yes, Ruby was the closest to Penny by far---we can’t expect everyone to get misty-eyed---but does everyone remember what her death was like? It was the turning point of the entire series, not just for the audience, but the characters as well. Penny was the first casualty of the Fall of Beacon and her death was appropriately gut wrenching. It was then shown across every TV turned to the Vytal Festival, the moment where the whole world watched their golden girl, Pyrrha, unintentionally murder a newcomer who turned out to be a robot. Moments later grimm start attacking and the safest place on Remnant is destroyed. Penny’s death heralded all that. The one time we see Ruby tackling the trauma of it all is when she speaks with Oscar and, notably, crumbles a bit when she instinctively uses Penny’s catch phrase.

What I had hoped for was the group grappling with the sudden, completely unexpected shock of getting one of two losses back; working through the knowledge that their lives have been defined by two friends’ death and now one of those has been retroactively erased. Perhaps we’ll see that in future episodes, but right now it feels like a disservice to the impact Penny’s death had on the characters and the story to treat this as such a comic, light-hearted moment. Let Penny tackle-hug Ruby and then let Ruby give her a much more sincere embrace. Let her cry. Have Yang put a hand on Ruby’s shoulder, giving her a look that expresses how she understands what this means to her. Have Jaune looking away, devastated that Ruby miraculously got her friend back, but such an event is impossible for Pyrrha. Let him or Oscar or Ren or anyone seriously acknowledge that, holy shit, this is a joyous occasion we never expected to experience. We’ve spent months dealing with trauma and pessimism, now here’s Penny, reminding us that there’s still so much good in the world. Have someone acknowledge that sometimes the impossible happens (cough-defeatingSalem-cough). You can allow the moment to function as the momentous occasion it is and then lighten the mood by having Maria announce that she has no idea what’s going on.

This isn’t the first time Rooster Teeth has implemented comedy when they were better off sticking with drama. See: the choice to animate punching Ozpin last volume in an absurd, cartoon style. So yeah. Happy to have Penny back, but that first moment felt underwhelming, to say the least.

We then have an admittedly very cool shot—

— (semblance? Just awesome drama?) right before the group is taken out in seconds by Atlas’ elite. They’re… I don’t know how to spell their name yet. Is it something like Ace-Ops for elite special operations? Or Aesop like Aesop’s fables? Potentially both? Idk. The fandom will figure that out in the next day or so, if they haven’t already. What’s important though is that this group charges our team with stealing an airship, illegally entering the city with it, and starting an unauthorized fight in the streets. If I could just take one second to…

Ahem. I’m good. Seriously though, if I’m at all optimistic for Volume Seven it’s because the story is finally acknowledging that the group made some pretty massive mistakes last volume. Not that it looks like there will be much punishment attached to that. Between them meeting with Ironwood in the trailer and the Blah-Blah-Ops’ clear status as heroes this volume (they’re in the opening a bunch and seem to be working with RWBYJNR), I’m not yet convinced that this arrest will lead to anything other than getting precisely what they want: seeing Ironwood. To be clear, it’s not like I want the group languishing in jail for twelve episodes. That would be one hell of a boring volume. But rather, I’m interested in whether the story will continue to imply that Atlas is in the right for arresting them, or whether Episode Two will quickly turn that on its head and forcefully announce, as they did in Volume Six, that these actions are an egregious insult because we’re the protagonists. How dare you not let us do whatever we want?

Because the group was in the wrong here. It can be easy to miss considering that the rules they’re refusing to obey are tied up in a dictator-like society---aren’t we the heroes for ignoring and circumventing evil Ironwood’s laws?---but what they actually choose to do has far more of an impact on innocent civilians than it does on The Man. Like endangering all of Argus with your needless battle. Or, to a much smaller extent here, jumping into a fight when you’re not authorized to do that. Now, I actually don’t blame RWBYJNR for that one. They are huntsmen and it’s their job to protect the people. Going out to defeat grimm is 100% their thing. Rather, I’m talking about stuff like their commentary on Atlas’ defenses. When the fight starts we get, “I guess the city’s defenses aren’t doing much” and “Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.” It’s more of that, “Us huntsmen are the only true defenders of the world. Your attempts with robots would be funny if it weren’t so dangerous” attitude. It’s a certain level of arrogance. As we see just a minute later though, Ironwood’s setup works. Because the civilians all know to get indoors. Because he has Penny. The robots hold off the grimm until she arrives, defeating the rest with a speed and an ease that frankly doesn’t compare to what we saw the group accomplishing. She does from above what it took nine of them to manage, often (as we saw with Oscar and Yang) with great danger to them in the process. When they’re bound and accused of unauthorized fighting, it’s clear that they were, in fact, shouldering their way into a situation where they weren’t needed---and potentially causing trouble in the process. Rules exist for a reason. Are they always perfect? Far from it, but in the characterization folding over from Volume Six, the group has forgotten that most of the time rules are there for others’ safety. They have been thought out. This particular situation is easily defendable (of course they’re going to go fight grimm) and there were no consequences to the group jumping in when they weren’t allowed (like property damage or injured civilians), but this moment does function as a good representation of the overall problem. Just because there weren’t consequences for saying, “Screw your laws” this time doesn’t mean there won’t be in the future. Or that there hasn’t been in the past.

It likewise stands out to me that Qrow consistently tires to use his “I’m a licensed huntsmen” as a justification. He flashes it at the two goons on the train to get them to back off. He tires to use it to get past Cordovin. He now tells his captors that he has every right to fight and protect the people because of this card he carries. Qrow is well aware of how important the status of a huntsmen is in this world… yet he’s running around with eight fighters who don’t have that legal backing. I don’t think the show would ever go for my suggestion of another school arc so they could finish their training, but at the very least we should provide some sort of loop-hole for these characters. Have Ironwood provide special licenses based on their heroics at the Fall of Beacon and their work since. Because right now we have a world that’s continually emphasizing being a huntsmen as a job, something you earn the right to call yourself, yet 95% of our group doesn’t have that right in the eyes of their society. We know they’ve done great, secret work to protect the people. But the people only know that these are a bunch of teens with one year of formal training. So you really can’t blame any officials for going, “Sorry. We’re not in the habit of letting random people with weapons cross our borders. Or fight in our streets.” It’s like if a bunch of 14-18yos arrived at a crime scene with guns and demanded that they be let in on a case. No, we never graduated from an academy, but you should adhere to our demands anyway. The good intentions are there, but you need to iron out the formalities first. 

Really, RWBY should just fix the whole license thing with a throw-away plot point if they’re not going to tackle it seriously, just so this isn’t an ethical issue anymore. I’d rather smooth it over soon since the story doesn’t seem interested in tackling whether a group with one year of formal training should be allowed that status. So just give it to them and let’s move on. They might still run into issues with Atlas, but at least the rest of the world won’t be expected to trust them purely on faith. Not everyone belongs to a small town terrorized by a geist, with four random teens as your only option for safety.

Which finally, as the doors close on our group with heavy heads, brings us to the opening. Some things to pay attention to:

1. We get a glimpse of that mysterious woman shown in numerous posters across the city. 

(I’m likewise interested in the very long shot we got on this “show your teeth” graffiti.) 

2. Watts and Tyrian are presented as primary antagonists. Interesting that Neo and Cinder aren’t there (not that I caught anyway), especially since we know they were heading to Atlas last volume as well. It makes me think that they’ll be the true threat at the end of the volume. Keeping things quiet, even in the intro, so we have no chance of guessing their plan.

3. The main conflict seems to be between Weiss and Winter, as opposed to Weiss and Jacques as many originally assumed. Those expressions don’t bode well.

4. We still see an image of Ironwood briefly flickering to Jacques though as an angry citizen throws a rock at it. Implying Jacques is secretly pulling the strings? James has simply become too much like him? We’ll have to see.

5. We get a shot of Oscar and Ironwood… training? Fighting? I’m inclined to say fighting based on his and Ozpin’s past difficulties, but that’s also up in the air.

6. The image of our staff…

…and 7. an absolutely massive cast this volume. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m concerned with RWBY’s insistence on continually introducing so many new characters, particularly characters who are important enough to warrant decent development. There simply isn’t time for them all.

(Although, is Maria in that shot? Wonder if she’ll leave the group now that she’s done her duty of helping Ruby out with her eyes.) 

Which brings us to the end of the premier! Finally, I’d like to end with a personal note. As is quite obvious, I’m still watching and recapping RWBY, but I feel like I should be upfront about my overall lack of investment in the series right now. Chock it up to getting burned last volume, fading interest in a long-running show, just growing up and changing… I don’t claim to know precisely why I’m no longer jazzed about a new volume like I once was. But, if I perhaps appear overly critical of what I generally thought was a good—and honestly better than expected—premier? That’s probably why. The details just don’t cut it for me anymore. All caps, screaming excitement over Penny’s return or Qrow’s new outfit just doesn’t resonate much, which leaves me with a more critical perspective on the show overall. So if that’s something you’re interested in, stick around because, baring unforeseen circumstances, there will be more metas over the next three or so months. More invested in a flailing celebration of RWBY as a whole? You’re better off hitting up another blog.  

Basically, you know that shot in Pietro’s?

Note the “Days since our last nonsense” sign combined with the defeated expressions. That’s what RWBY feels like to me these days. A lot of nonsense and limited enjoyment. Ah well. Maybe Volume Seven will prove me wrong and I’ll be re-invigorated by the end of the season!

Until then, ❤️️

Minor Things of Note

Maria refers to the group as “kids” in the airship and Penny as a “child.” Acknowledging last year’s debate, I stand by the argument that just because many (but not all) of the group have reached the age of maturity in our world doesn’t mean they’re on par with the adults they were so recently rejecting. There’s a reason why the very old Maria naturally uses “kid” and “child” and it doesn’t come off as weird.

I really like the design of Pietro’s chair. Giving him something that walks on four legs is both different and a nice nod to nature among all the tech. Also, kudos to the Pinocchio reference on his bookshelf in the form of a whale.

Nora remains as adorable as ever. I particularly liked her energy in Pietro’s and her high-key annoyance at Ren getting a jump on the fight. I’m interested in what we’ll be learning about her this volume. 

Not sure I’m a fan of Rooster Teeth using these squeaky toy noises whenever the group is comically surprised by something. Comedy is great, we need it in this story, but sound effects like that are remnants (ha) of a tone we haven’t really seen since Volume 1. I think the show can still get away with exaggerated facial expressions---Nora in her excitement, Ruby laughing at Jaune’s Pumpkin Pete’s sweatshirt---but this feels a bit out of place now.

“Maybe Atlas isn’t as safe as we thought” and yet, astoundingly, no one is inclined to ask Ozpin to weigh in on this. Even now that they know he’s listening. I think I’ll start a tally. See how many episodes it takes to actually acknowledge, let alone act on, the primary conflict of Volume 6.

Image Credit

Personal screenshots from RWBY 

Transflag: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Transgender_Pride_flag.svg

Doctor Who GIF: https://tenor.com/view/doctor-who-tired-harriet-jones-gif-5627138

How I Met Your Mother GIF: https://giphy.com/gifs/celebrate-2o5Ypf4fP6ahq

[randomthingsthatilike1]

You know, sometimes the things I see on this website about Lena just make me go ???????? (and here is going to be some constructive criticism. Key word here! This is not bashing or hate but genuinely thoughtful and sincere critique about a character I love and often seen wobified by fandom)

Because Lena isn’t her family and she’s not responsible for their actions, but at the same time Lena is a billionaire. With a B. I am reminded a bit about what I’ve seen people say why they don’t like the modern day royal family, the Queen especially—sure they didn’t quite play a role in some of the atrocities their family committed and are innocent of those acts, but because of those acts they are still benefiting—and Lena is still benefitting from plenty of pretty damning things that her family did.

It would be one thing if like. Lillian and Lex and Lionel were just straight up murderers and she was suffering by guilty by association, and therefore didn’t actually derive anything from that, but she benefits from the profits made by their anti-alien technology—she’s not a self-made person suffering from mere stigma. She wants to be better than her family, and I genuinely do think she is better! But this is about how she can grow!

Lena is a billionaire and that has implications, but I think I’ve only ever read one fic that really explored that? Because if she is a billionaire, and knows that the former head of security is a xenophobic murderer, and she has in her possession several devices that can be used as weapons against humans and aliens alike, as we see with the anti-xray glass, with Kryptonite, with the device she made at the gala, with the Lexo suit, and god possibly the most dangerous and most innocuous looking one of all, the alien detection device (a device that outs you to any business or place of employment or residence or friend that requires you to take it, while also selling something meant to conceal your identity as an alien as well? Not great moral optics there). The actions of her family are not her fault, but the subsequent actions she takes are her responsibility.  

Now, someone was going to take over LuthorCorp, and I do agree that it is better Lena, who does genuinely care about being a good person, than one of Lillian or Lex’s cronies. Bad shit could have happened. You can’t just get rid of a multibillion corporation overnight either without very bad consequences—jobs lost, stock market in tatters, etc etc. But, Lena’s still a billionaire. Funding this out of her own pocket if she absolutely had to—and she probably wouldn’t, since bad security looks really bad to the public and clients and the board would not want to have inventions and prototypes stolen.

Lena’s a billionaire. Let’s explore that.

This is a corporation. A corporation is, despite Citizens United (fuck that ruling), not a person. The first security breach wouldn’t be her fault, or even maybe the second, but consider that Metallo was able to steal Kryptonite, Lillian’s goons were able to throw her off the balcony in their attempts to get the information they wanted, and now this with Mercy—a pattern is being established.

Yeah, Lena, you may not use it against Supergirl but that is irrelevant if your security is so bad that the xenophobic people who would use it against Supergirl can easily enough break in and steal weapons. If it can’t be kept safe from the people who would use them to cause egregious harm, then it shouldn’t exist!

(this is one of the main arguments for gun control. If you can’t keep a gun securely in your house where other irresponsible people can find it and use it accidentally or on purpose that shouldn’t, then it should not be in your house.) Sure, that may seem unrealistic, and you may be then bringing up examples in your head of people and companies and organizations that don’t do this, but then ask yourself—are they good people? And if your argument is why Lena as the CEO of LCorp can’t do this without risking profits, then again, this ties back into Lena being a billionaire has interesting moral ramifications and they should be explored.

And yes, I am including the DEO in this answer. So many times I see oh what Lena does vs what the DEO does, especially regarding Kryptonite but they can both be wrong.

Sure, you may be saying she can’t guarantee that—well if that’s the case then do not make any life ending weapons. Lena is not a starving scientist type with a gun to her head; Lena Luthor has billions of dollars. She can completely afford to redo her security, and as long as others will be harmed if she does not then she has an obligation to do so.

The DEO is also her employer and a government agency who’s also tortured her aunt—they don’t have any obligation to listen to Kara, and she probably thinks she’ll be ignored. Lena is her friend, who’s life she’s saved several times—persuading your friend vs. persuading the US government? Yeah, I would go with trying to change the mind of the friend.

The DEO is a black ops government program started about 14 years ago originally headed by a very xenophobic man who hunted down not just Fort Rozz aliens but also J’onn and probably countless other innocents and is the reason why Alex grew up without a father. The only reason why J’onn took over is because he had to, and even still had to play the part of Hank Henshaw, a known xenophobe. Also, for a government organization, 14 years isn’t all that long to be working there—there are definitely people who have been a part of the DEO since the beginning still working for that organization, especially since it is nationwide, possibly even worldwide considering Alex in the first ep was on her way to Geneva. Shit happened at the DEO. (To quote James from season 1, the DEO is “a secret Guantanamo, and it’s not just for aliens anymore.” They torture aliens, hold them without parole, without trial, without a lawyer, definitely not complying with Geneva standards for holding and for bringing them in. What part of the DEO is not Guantanamo?)

And these are the people who recruited Kara’s sister and shot her out of the sky and are trained to take her down and tortured her aunt in front of her as Kara begged them for mercy. I wonder why she didn’t protest too much oh yeah IT’S BECAUSE KARA HAS VERY LITTLE INFLUENCE WITH ACTUAL DEO POLICY BEYOND WHAT SHE CAN CONVINCE J’ONN AND ALEX OF. AND GENERAL LANE CAN AND HAS TAKEN OVER WHEN HE WANTS.

The DEO has always been bad. It’s just been less bad with J’onn and Alex at the helm. But anyway. Back to the main point

Do you know how many times I’ve seen on this website “eat the rich”—and I am not at all saying you can’t like Lena because she is a billionaire. This is a fictional show. It is not real life. But it should be talked about.

With CatCo, they had one security breach, and it turned out to be an internal one. The consequences of that were on the shoulders of Cat Grant alone, and she was fully willing to pay the consequences herself and the only reason why she didn’t step down from CatCo is the last-minute save from Kara and friends. CatCo is a media empire built from the ground up by Cat herself, who’s talked about the consequences of her actions shaping her future direction—she thinks about the actress with the abusive husband every day, knowing that it wasn’t her fault but it was her responsibility as a reporter to say what she saw—and she didn’t. Inaction in itself has consequences.

They’re both willing to face the consequences of their actions–but Cat is the one who is a well known Democrat, who left her multi million dollar company to pursue public service, the whole: “ that’s why we do what we do. That’s why we’re driven to tell the truth. Not only because we want to be good journalists, but because we also want to be good people” and yes with Kara’s help, trying to elevate the conversation, valuing loyalty and integrity beyond just what it could potentially bring to CatCo (that video of Supergirl letting that Fort Rozz escapee go could have brought so much traffic to CatCo, but that wasn’t the point. Compare with the alien IDer. And. Well. We’re getting to the pretty damn grey area).

Cat is willing to do things that are for the benefit of National City and potentially the world at the expense of her company. That isn’t the case with Lena. Lena wants to be a good person! She does! But her motivations for being a good scientist haven’t, even as a kid, been “I am doing this directly because I want to be a good person”—we have seen time and time again that Lena’s main priority is LCorp, and doing what is in the best interest of her company. I am not going to stop harping on the alien identification device because it is horrific and this is something Lena, not her family but Lena, has done in an attempt to increase LCorp’s bottom line.

I am not at all saying Cat is perfect and without flaws and Lena is not, since I just finished detailing one of Cat’s past mistakes (and I’m not going on to detail Cat’s flaws and mistakes, which I have done in the past, because this is about Lena and I’ve counted this now--it’s a total of 2.1k and I’m tired) but when shit happens at CatCo it’s usually something that only affects Cat and her employees, or something unexpected—like really, having one of your employees spontaneously develop superpowers? Unexpected. You really can’t get security for that shit—and there are very few cyber security breaches (Winn is brilliant, but he’s also just one person. There are plenty of people L Corp could hire to deal with cyber security issue, and they have one if they were able to be hacked from the Cloud—and that hacking was human, predictable, and preventable.

I really did appreciate the single Lena/Kara scene past episode, because I keep seeing as well “oh but the DEO has Kryptonite and that’s fine”—clearly, as we saw this past episode, it is very much not fine that the DEO had Kryptonite since Kara almost d i e d. Lena very well have been asking herself this question—and we see this episode that for Kara it is equally bad. This is not a witch hunt because her last name is Luthor but as we see this episode there are very bad things that can happen when people can steal Kryptonite. Kara is the only one who suffers. Katie’s acting choices were great—she was genuinely shaken and concerned as she sees the scenario that Supergirl was most afraid of happening concerning Kryptonite happen—and happen only to her. Everyone else was fine—but Kara lay seizing in the hospital bed from the device that she created (although let me be clear—this one is completely on the DEO. They were the ones who were supposed to be guarding the device, they were the ones with the stolen Kryptonite that was entered into the atmosphere, it was their agent and their security breach that caused this, they were the ones who took responsibility for the device—and dropped the ball).

Lena sees Supergirl on a hospital bed, and hell if she didn’t realize Supergirl was Kara before Lena almost definitely did, staring as she watched the person she loved more than anyone else in the world fade away before her eyes and this is what she was talking about before. This is what she was worried about—it’s an understandable fear. They took the Kryptonite from the DEO, but if they didn’t get a mole, would they have turned to L Corp? Would they try to break in, and succeed?

Would this be because of her? She wouldn’t have deployed the weapon the used herself but she would have created everything they used to do it. Kryptonite isn’t used for anything except as a weapon. This isn’t about Lena “going evil,” or becoming like her family. This is about how just because Lena is willing to be the one who pays the price for her actions and the risks that she takes doesn’t mean that someone else wont.

Tl;dr the 2.1k word monstrosity: Lena is not her family and she isnt evil but oh my god shes the CEO of a multibillion dollar company that makes weapons and still benefits from the actions of her family, and who's main priority has always been her company. Shes not just a perfect ideal who can do no wrong or cant improve--shes done a lot of good but just look at the alien detection device--shes done a lot of wrong too.

[fae-fucker]

Review: The Murder Complex

by Lindsay Cummings

An action-packed, blood-soaked, futuristic debut thriller set in a world where the murder rate is higher than the birthrate. For fans of Moira Young’s Dust Lands series, La Femme Nikita, and the movie Hanna.

Meadow Woodson, a fifteen-year-old girl who has been trained by her father to fight, to kill, and to survive in any situation, lives with her family on a houseboat in Florida. The state is controlled by The Murder Complex, an organization that tracks the population with precision.

The plot starts to thicken when Meadow meets Zephyr James, who is—although he doesn’t know it—one of the MC’s programmed assassins. Is their meeting a coincidence? Destiny? Or part of a terrifying strategy? And will Zephyr keep Meadow from discovering the haunting truth about her family?

Action-packed, blood-soaked, and chilling, this is a dark and compelling debut novel by Lindsay Cummings.

There’s a video on YouTube where Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings try to promote Zenith and their favorite books by speculating about what sort of books Andi would enjoy reading.

Lindsay, being the humble creature that she is, says that Andi would enjoy this book. Why? Because Andi would recognize Meadow’s methods as similar to her own? Because Andi would enjoy reading an edgy “thriller” because she too is edgy? Or even because both Andi and Meadow are beautiful waifish white girls with silver hair who don’t particularly mind killing people?

Actually, no, you absolute fool. Sasha speculates on why Andi would enjoy this book (because of the title and how both Meadow and Andi have … uh … something … in common) and tries and fails to give Lindsay a way out. Lindsay admits to not listening, occupied with her book, which she lovingly strokes while staring into the camera.

I think this says a lot about Lindsay herself, Andi’s personality (or rather, lack thereof), and most importantly, the content of this here book.

This review contains spoilers and discussions of potentially triggering topics.

The Writing

I don’t have much to say here. Zenith was far, far worse when you just compare the prose. It’s simple, bare-bones, and straight to the point. Perfectly mediocre and not memorable at all. It flows well enough, and if it weren’t for uuuh everything else in this book, I’d say it’s a quick and easy read.

It does get very melodramatic and edgy at times, but that is to be expected, and since the melodrama mostly avoids getting too purple or lasting too long, I will officially give Cummings the “I could read your book mostly without cringing at the words” award.

The story is told from Meadow and Zephyr’s POVs, and I’d have to disagree with other reviewers who said that their narration was too similar. I mean, it wasn’t spectacular and they definitely had some overlap in expressions, but I could tell that Cummings was making a conscious effort to make them distinct and for me, it worked (mostly past the first half of the book where both of them just mope around and sound very similar), so I commend that.

The Characters

Now, while Andi OH SHIT FUCK I DIDN’T MEAN TO DO THAT THAT WASN’T A BIT I LITERALLY JUST TYPED ANDI INSTEAD OF MEADOW

Now, while Meadow and Zephyr are distinct, that doesn’t really mean they’re good characters, yea? Honestly, they’re pretty much the only ones who get any type of development and the only ones who can, paradoxically, turn off their edge and just be normal people every now and then.

Meadow is supposedly this Strong Femail Charactor who does Bad Things for Good Reasons. And … I mean, yeah? Like, I don’t remember ever feeling like she obsessed over a man, and her motivations were always either keeping her little sister safe or surviving or figuring out the mystery around their society and how it ties into her own family. As far as YA heroines go, Meadow isn’t terrible. But she’s not exactly interesting, either. She’s always collected and rarely loses her cool, she displays few emotions outside of anger, and is generally cold and downplayed to the point of having barely any personality traits. I guess it’s sort of on purpose? But there are ways of making a character subtle and still interesting, and Meadow just feels like somebody packaged a Strong Femail Charactor right out of the factory without slapping some paint on her first. Idk, I guess if this is what Lindsay was going for then she did a good job, but personally I prefer my protags to be a bit more … more.

I will apologize to Meadow for calling her Andi, though. Andi is a lot more smug and obnoxious and has fewer reasons to be.

Zephyr is a harder to define because I’m pretty sure he’s intended to be more colorful than Meadow, but he comes off as even more generic than her. He’s a convincing enough teenage boy at times, because he lusts after Meadow like a puppy and thinks in super dramatic and poetic prose about how perfect and beautiful she is. But outside of that, he just sort of exists and the plot happens to him? He has no consistent personality traits and no flaws that he has control over. He’s partially brainwashed to murder on command and he’s like, sad about it, for a second, but accepts it pretty quickly and swears to help Meadow out for … reasons? Idk I guess he’s in love with her or whatever. The blurb implies he wants to keep her from discovering the truth but he pretty much helps her from the start.

He’s perfectly non-threatening — a boy next door type if next door was a war zone. Most of the time I wonder how many hands he needs to count all his braincells. One? Or mayhaps two? Whatever happens he just sort of rolls with after a chapter or two of angst and he ends up feeling like he’s a crutch for Meadow, a non-character there to fill the role of the snarky sidekick whose personal conflict is a minor subplot, which is admittedly fairly unusual in YA, but for a co-protagonist isn’t ideal, as one might imagine.

Koi is Meadow’s overprotective older brother who wants to beat up Zephyr for reasons and refuses to chill. And yes, that’s his name.

Periwinkle/Peri is Meadow’s younger sister and Meadow’s Moality Pet. And yes, that’s her name.

Meadow’s dad is an abusive asshole dad who is Too Hard On His Children but whose lessons Turn Out To Be Helpful in the end. No, it’s not his name but I can’t remember what it is and can’t be assed to look it up because he’s just Meadow’s dad. Oh and he likes torture? While Meadow acknowledges her dad is fucked up he’s still treated as this wise authority figure who gives good advice and is only a result of his environment. Society is evil, so that’s why he treats his children like shit and teaches them how to murder good. It’s to protect them, see?

Talan is Zephyr’s best friend and teenage sex worker who lost her child and now is vaguely suicidal but it’s supposed to be charming and quirky??? Talan is the only major character to die brutally for shock value and she seems to welcome it. Tbh she was the only interesting character in the whole book so I actually felt bad when she was killed off like that.

And then there’s a bunch of other characters but what’s the point of me telling you about them since they’re all generic as hell and only exist to spout exposition at Meadow and her boy toy.

There was another character I liked well enough, but only because she was the only PoC and her name was Sketch, which is a pretty neat name, but she didn’t have much of a personality except “snarky hardass” and was basically a Deluxe Edition of an existing “snarky hardass” character. She appears only in the late chapters of the book and is there to get brutalized for the sake of our two white protags. She didn’t die though, so there’s that?

The Plot

Alright, alright, I guess I have to write something.

I honestly have no fucking idea what the plot was. The blurb pretty much tells it all: Meadow meets Zephyr, they fall in love (?), Zephyr goes all Terminator on her ass and she’s like ??? and then uh … turns out Meadow’s family/dead mom are involved in the Murder Complex, which is the thing that’s making Zephyr and other random people kill others when remotely “activated” and so now they gotta find out what the heckity heck is going on, I guess?

It’s a clear enough plot but the motivations are a little weak, especially on Zephyr’s side. One would think he’d like to get rid of the whole “murder on command” thing in his brain but he seems to be able to fight it off easily once he meets Meadow and he’s more focused on helping her for reasons.

Yeah, I’m … I’ve already forgotten large chunks of the story so that should tell you something.

The “Worldbuilding”

O SHIT HERE COMES THE JUICY PART OF THE REVIEW.

*clears throat* Here we go:

The Shallows, Night Siren, the Initiative, Catalogue Number, Commandments of the Shallows, Creds, the Perimeter, the Silent Hour, Before, Rations Department, Pirates, the Dark Time, the Pulse, the Pin, the Red train, the Blue train, Wards, the Leeches, the Graveyard, the Survivors, Rations Hall, Initiative Headquarters, Wards of the State, the Gravers, NoteScreen, Evaluator, the Catalogue Dome, the Pit, Cred Orb, the Furnace Room, the Library, Sellout, the Hospital, the Believers …

Holy shit I don’t think I’ve gotten all of the Important Names yet and I’m already tired.

Y’all. This is the worst case of worldbuilding laziness I’ve seen in a while, and I’m someone who absolutely hates worldbuilding and will let authors get away with minimal effort. This? This is awful. And the thing is? I get it. I might’ve forgiven this because coming up with names is HARD and we humans usually go for the obvious anyway so this makes some amount of sense.

The problem is the fact that there are some words and concepts that are PERFECTLY REGULAR (i.e. the Hospital is literally just a fucking hospital) but still capitalized for no goddamn reason other than it being an attempt at sounding all sci-fi and dystopian without any actual effort. Everything blends together and the concepts are so generic and so MANY that it just becomes noise and you’re forced to simply roll with it and stop trying to actually imagine what anything looks like or where it’s located or how it works.

*takes deeep breath*

Speaking of how it works, let me tell you about the main premise. Basically, there was a war, a big war that tore the US apart like Lisa tears apart Johnny. Those who survived the war were infected with a plague, creatively named the Plague, that threatened to wipe out the population. One 20-year-old scientist cured the Plague, along with literally everything else, including death. Thanks to “nanites”, humans can no longer die of natural causes. This leads to overpopulation, and to stop this, the person who invented this all-cure comes up with another absolutely brilliant idea: let’s make MORE humans, but these humans have brains that are programmed to kill on command. Who gets murdered is chosen at random each and every night in a lottery, and survivors have to clean up dozens of new corpses every morning. (Meadow mentions the death rate is now 300 people per month.)

Yeah. I know. The same brilliant scientist who CURED DEATH not only fails to reverse the effects of their own invention, but decides that factory printing brainwashed humans who are then released into the world to also consume resources along with their victims is the best course of action?

Also, there are old people in this book. How are they still aging? How do you cure death but keep the aging? Why do you kill random people for shits and giggles instead of offing the semi-sentient sacks of flesh that the old people are bound to become as their bodies grow and decline but refuse to die? Surely you need young people to work in your factories? If resources are scarce, why keep old people alive past the point where they can contribute to society? If you have the technology to make remote controlled brains, why can’t you yank those bad boys out and just put them into robot bodies?

Why did nobody consider sterilization? I know this is a dangerous and sensitive topic that a white author probably shouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, but if you’re ok with writing indiscriminate murder and pretend that shit wouldn’t become very racist very fast, then you could do the same with sterilization. You can’t tell me that the nanites are so good they could grow you a new uterus. Evidently they’re not good enough to heal bullet wounds or stab wounds or else your little “murder complex” wouldn’t fucking work, would it?

I’m not saying these are “better” options than murder lottery, because these are all terrible things, but I am saying that they’re definitely more logical and profitable if you’re an evil government. Compared to making new people from scratch to kill your already existing people, anyway.

There are also implications of this all being a lie to control the population so that the “Initiative” can remain in control, along with the usual shitty YA dystopia thing where it’s implied that Earth is fucked and we’re out of resources.

This whole thing is a mess of half-assed concepts that are never explored but just sort of jammed together into an incoherent mess. There’s a big war, there’s a big plague, there’s senseless murder, there’s an evil government, there’s child soldiers, there’s brainwashing, there’s a rebel Resistance, there’s climate change … There’s even an Aptitude Test or whatever that never comes back despite being very angsted and exposited about in the opening chapters. It’s like Lindsay read all the YA dystopias that came before and couldn’t pick a gimmick and just went for all of them.

Oh I haven’t even mentioned the funniest part of all this: the swearing. As with Zenith, Lindsay has no problem describing gory murder and calling female characters “sluts”, but actual human curse words like shit and fuck? Don’t be silly. This is CHILD AND PUBLISHER FRIENDLY. Shit is now “skitz”, “fuck” is now “flux”. Can you imagine reading this fluxing bullskitz? WE NEVER EVEN FIND OUT WHAT THESE WORDS MEAN OR WHY THEY WERE REPLACED, SINCE THIS TAKES PLACE RECENT ENOUGH THAT MEADOW REMEMBERS GOING TO BASEBALL GAMES.

Oh and there’s also ChumHead, which, you guessed it, is never explained.

I guess now we know who to blame for “fike” and “starshined”. Oh and there are swears related to the stars in this book as well. I think Lindsay needs to get off that SJM juice.

The Edgy

Allow me to feed quotes into your gaping brain mouths. Not a lot of them because most of my notes are just me going WHAT at the concepts and the names more than the phrasing.

Every night, I stay awake for as long as I can to keep my nightmares at bay.

Scars are trophies in the Shallows. They show we know how to cheat death.

In a paragraph before this one, Meadow mentions that nanites heal everything but leave scars behind for reasons, and it happens to everyone. So why would they be a status symbol?

It’s the moon. The moon that reminds me of the moonlit girl.

My moonlit girl. She’s the cure to my nightmares, the one thing that helps me feel safe when I can’t even trust my own dreams to harbor me.

Spoken like a real teenage boy, Zeph. Would you like some tissues with that spunk?

I hold the door open for [Talan], but she shrugs past me and opens the other one. Always independent. Never taking help from anyone.

Hi is this a Feminism?

I find two leather thigh sheathes and strap them to my legs. I slide two knives into them and stand, slinging the bow over my shoulder. […] Feeling angry. But feeling strong.

Convenient sexy makeover includes leather knife pockets and a cool but completely-impractical-due-to-the-existence-of-enemy-guns crossbow. I also want to mention that the book calls crossbow ammo “arrows”, when they’re usually referred to as bolts, but go off.

The Conclusion

The Murder Complex is a book that straddles the line between mediocre and bad. Its biggest flaw is how boring and shallow its ideas and characters are. Which basically means its biggest flaw is everything about it. I can’t say it was so bad it’s good, but I can’t exactly call it terrible because I’ve read far, far worse. It’s mediocre writing about bland characters angsting and murdering their way through a convoluted plot that’s based on worldbuilding as solid as half-eaten ham standwich found in a rainy alleyway. It’s not fun or entertaining to read and there’s nothing to get outrageously mad about.

In the end, I don’t think you should pick this up unless you’ve somehow read every other book in the world and this is the only one left. Don’t waste your time on this, not even as a joke. Don’t make my sacrifice be in vain.

[crimsonrevolt]

Congratulations Eliza you’ve been accepted to Crimson Revolt as Sirius Black

↳ please refer to our character checklist

Sirius Black is a character held very close to my heart, and let me say that when your application came through we were obsessed! You capture him so well, I found myself so drawn in with every new section. From your explanation of him as a character to your headcanons and question responses, it’s obvious to us that you love him as much as we do and will write him beautifully. We’re so excited to see you join us, welcome to the group! *Your faceclaim change to Matthew Daddario has been accepted.

OUT OF CHARACTER

Introduction: I’m Eliza, I’m 22, and my preferred pronouns are she/her.

Activity: I’m currently in my final year of uni, so aside from any sudden tsunami of work (always possible) I’m legit doing nothing except sitting on my laptop trying to figure out how to procrastinate my Commodus essay. So, uh, high.

How did you find us? through the marauders era tag, I think!

Anything else? Nothing that I can think of.

IN CHARACTER

Desired character: Sirius Orion Black – Orion for his father. Sirius is a family name; he’s technically Sirius Black the Third, but that’s not something he likes to shout about.

Birthday / star sign: Sirius was born on November 3rd 1960, which makes him a Scorpio, and if you need anymore proof that astrology is real I don’t know what to tell you.

Occupation:

Bartender. Sirius doesn’t need to work – his Uncle Alphard made sure of that – but he learned the hard way that nothing’s worse for his mental health than sitting around all day, picking at old wounds. He works at a bar just off Diagon Alley, wizarding, except for the occasional lost confused muggle. He’s good at his job; he likes to talk to customers, he enjoys small-talk, and he makes a killer martini – plus, it’s the perfect position to be in to gather information. He’s friendly with his boss, and on the second floor there’s a large room that is the perfect size for meetings of a book club. A very special book club, with no books.

Faceclaim:

I absolutely love Miles, but finding gifs for him is tough – could I use Matthew Daddario instead? (or, if you hate him, Aidan Turner or Harry Styles or Ezra Miller?)

Reason for chosen character:

This is actually the last part of the application I’m filling in – I’ve spent ages trying to figure out how to answer this question. Why did I pick Sirius? I can write him well, that’s true, I have a proper handle on his voice and how I think he’d react in most situations, but it’s more than that. I think that Sirius, in any marauders era rp, has the greatest possibility for plots; he’s extroverted, has a finger in basically every pie, and his future looks pretty bloody dreadful from a canon perspective, which is something I love. Give me all the blood and tears you can and I’m happy. Besides, I like Sirius. I think he’s a good man at heart, but his flaws are so immense that he’s fascinating to write. So I guess I picked him because I’d like to be his friend, but would hate him at the same time, and that’s all you want in a character, really.

In this section you should also describe the character and how you see them.

Inherently, Sirius is a man with many flaws that often overwhelm him. He is trying to be good, but not always succeeding. He enjoys the pain of others too much for comfort; he can switch to cruelty in an instant when threatened. He has much less of a conscience than James does – in fact, many would say that James functions as his conscience, that the two of them are two parts of one whole. When, at sixteen, he finally left the Black family for good, he cut them off in his mind as well as in practice, finding it easier to cope with the pain if he forced the world into black and white instead of shades of grey. It is only as he gets older that he is beginning to see the difficulties of choice facing his cousins – but his pride won’t let him admit such a thing. He was brought up with all the prejudices that came with the Black family name; his parents, though not Death Eaters, were violent people, viciously against muggles and muggleborns. He’s certain that his father at least is a murderer, and knows that they rejoice in the insanity of his cousin Bellatrix and all that brings with it.

The main way Sirius coped with the loss of his family was by demonising the lot of them. That isn’t, in a way, incorrect: the Blacks were and are at the forefront of the Death Eaters, and Sirius was always too compassionate to easily accept that ideology. But equally he refuses to see any good in them. Anyone who is even neutral in the war turns his stomach. He cannot understand the difficulty of choosing between your morals and your family – after all, he did it, didn’t he? He sees fighting as the only moral option, and that puts him in conflict not just with Death Eaters, but with other bystanders too.

Preferred ships // Character sexuality // Gender & Pronouns:

Bisexual | cis male | he/him

Preferred ships: I’m a sucker for wolfstar, but honestly anything with chemistry works for me. If you can come up with a horribly angsty plot, so much the better, because Sirius is not lucky in love.

Details:

Walburga and Orion had a happy marriage, but it was not one that set a good example to their son in terms of love. They never showed affection in public – Sirius never saw them so much as hold hands; when, as he was storming out of Grimmauld Place for the final time when he was sixteen, he saw his father place a hand on Walburga’s shoulder, he knew that he had truly gone too far to turn back. Their affection was based on fierce loyalty, concurrent goals and ideology, and matching intelligence that they both passed down to their eldest son, but they treated each other only with cold respect in front of their children. With no model of domestic harmony to fall back on, Sirius has never been very emotionally capable. Passionate by nature but always unsure of the affection of others, he tended at Hogwarts to fall into a pattern of obsession and then rejection that had him labelled a womaniser.

Sirius’s love for boys – it is a love for boys, he’s long since accepted that; at first he told himself it was just because he liked sex, but that theory’s been scuppered over and over again – is something that he is relatively open about. He is lucky in that his group of friends are quite accepting; even those who don’t understand the sexual revolution that has been happening in the last decade see it as another of his quirks, oh, that’s just Sirius. His self-confidence, as fuelled by the Marauders, has meant that he has rarely struggled with his sexuality – it’s another thing his family would hate him for, and therefore something else to be proud of.

CREATE ONE (OR MORE!) OF THE FOLLOWING FOR YOUR CHARACTER

Potential plots:

1. James Potter:

James and Sirius are two parts of one whole – Sirius sees him, with typical casual self-deprecation, as the sunlight to his own shadow. Sirius is hardly the sort of person to let anyone take a curse if he’s in the vicinity, but for James Sirius is pretty sure he’d do anything. Not only did James complete the transformation, already begun through his parents’ cruelty, of Sirius from Pureblood supremacist to fully-fledged blood traitor, but also makes him the best person he can be. Around James, all of Sirius’s rough edges are smoothed out; he’s at his funniest, and also at his kindest. They see each other every day, people take the absolute piss, and Sirius loves it.

2. Remus Lupin:

Ah, Remus. Sirius has been in love with a lot of people throughout his life – he can’t help it, he’s a Scorpio – but Remus, well, he lingered. Not that Sirius would say anything, and he spends half his time mocking his friend so thoroughly that no one suspects, and anyway, he’s over it, obviously, times five hundred. But there it is – Remus Lupin, lingering.

They work well together, is all. Remus looks blankly at him every time he makes a bad joke, which is excellent for Sirius’s ego; when Remus wakes up bloodied and furious with himself and the world, Sirius is there, feet up on the bottom of his bed, bottle of water in one hand and cigarette in the other. Remus knows that Sirius secretly likes to read, curled up in his kitchen with a mug of strong coffee, and Sirius knows how Remus likes his gin (strong, expensive). They might not be like James and Sirius, but they can sit in silence for hours, and a lot of the time, that’s all Sirius needs.

3. Regulus Black:

For a long time, Regulus was Sirius’s only friend – something he now says in a tone that’s supposed to be funny, but no one really laughs. A large part of Sirius, larger than he’d like to admit, knows how similar they are, how easily he could have been like Reg, had he not been the heir and subject to more pressure, had he not had James, and for a while he tried to be James to Regulus. But it was fruitless; perhaps it always would have been. Every so often they see each other, and it makes Sirius want to go and drink for five days – usually he then does.

4. Aversio

Sirius was an obvious choice for Aversio recruitment – not only is his cousin Andromeda a member, but he has often vocally and emphatically (and sometimes violently) declared his dissatisfaction with the Order. Weighed down by bureaucracy and occasionally the very prejudices they claim to fight against, Sirius sees the Order as a useless, bloated organisation, too afraid to do anything except wave placards in the air outside the Ministry. He has taken part in several Aversio attacks, but keeps his involvement entirely secret, except from other members. He is suspected, of course, and doesn’t like to openly lie, but there’s no proof; he’s still a member of the Order on the surface. He sees fighting fire with fire as a moral choice – to do anything other than the utmost is to betray the cause, and to be no better than the enemy.

Mini-headcanons:

nicknames padfoot

star sign scorpio

mbti ESFP, the Entertainer

greek mythological counterpart Poseidon, god of the sea, of earthquakes, of storms and horses, protector of seafarers, associated with drowning and madness.

season autumn

deadly sin pride

heavenly virtue liberality

element fire

flower gladiolus. Gladioli symbolise strength of character, faithfulness and honour, as well as remembrance and infatuation, with a bouquet conveying to a recipient that they pierce the giver’s heart with passion.

colour storm-grey

wand elm wood, unicorn hair, 11 inches, excellent for hexes

patronus black dog

early bird or night owl night owl

greatest fear rejection by his found family

secret superstition has a terrible habit of crossing his fingers while he sleeps to ward off bad dreams

small facts

Sirius can ice skate. He can play the piano. He can ballroom dance. He can make a wicked spaghetti bolognese. He likes to read, but can’t write to save his life; his handwriting is something close to incomprehensible. He has an average singing voice, he loves muggle music, and he wishes that he was born a Beatle. When he was fifteen years old he lost his virginity to a distant French cousin of James’s somewhere behind the Potters’ Quidditch pitch. He has been in love, at various points in his school career, with Remus Lupin, Lily Evans, Glenda Chittock, and probably Minerva McGonagall. He hates anything that tastes like nuts, won’t touch sugar quills, and changes his hairstyle every three days. You can tell that he’s unhappy because he retreats inwards, goes quiet, stormy. He likes Quidditch but prefers motorcycles, much to James’s disgust. He thinks marriage is a scam, but secretly wants children desperately. He loves cats, but they hate him. He would die for his friends.

IN CHARACTER QUESTIONNAIRE

Do you think it is more important to be feared or loved? Which would you rather be?

SIRIUS: Loved, for sure. Who’d say feared? Being feared is awful; there’s nothing more toxic. It wraps itself around your lungs like a sickness, like clove cigarette smoke, and twists you all up inside until it’s all you lust after, that look in someone’s eyes when they’re afraid of you. No, that’s not for me – I couldn’t trust myself not to want more. Love is good enough.

What is one thing you would never want said about you?

SIRIUS: That I was boring. Can you imagine? You’re sitting there, in your Hufflepuff scarf (you’re definitely a Hufflepuff in this scenario), and you’re eavesdropping on some older, way cooler students (one of them is especially dashing) and they say that they got trapped in conversation with you on Tuesday and couldn’t get away. They wanted to get away from you because you bored them to tears. I think I’d rather die than be in that position. You know what they say – all huff, no puff. Or something. Do they say that? They should.

If you were able to invent one spell, potion, or charm, what would it do, what would you use it for or how would you use it? Feel free to name it!

SIRIUS: oh, I’d absolutely invent a cure for lycanthropy. I don’t know if it’d be a charm, or a potion – probably a charm, because Lupin’s the worst at taking potions on time, and he’s the only werewolf I give a fuck about. Wait, did he not say that? Did he forget he was a werewolf? What, and I’m here, slaving over a cauldron, wasting my life away in this dingy basement (obviously I’m brewing this world-changing potion in a basement, by torchlight, also for some weird reason I’m wearing a full-length black robe?) like Nicholas fucking Flamel? I swear to God –

What kinds of decisions are the most difficult for you to make?

SIRIUS: it’s not necessarily that I find making decisions hard. I make decisions fast, and find it hard to go back on them. It’s more that – well, making the correctdecisions is difficult.

When I was sixteen – and I’m not introducing my age because I think it excuses it; it doesn’t, I’m just trying to set the damn scene – I made a mistake that could have – well, I was going to say it could have destroyed my friendships, but it was more than that. It could have made me a murderer, and Remus too. I’m only telling you this because I am assuming it will never go any further than the two of us. I don’t tell other people’s secrets.

I hated Severus Snape from our first day at Hogwarts. He was arrogant, and he was nasty, and he was clearly in deep with the dark arts, which I don’t hold with. Prongs hated him too, for other reasons that he’ll probably tell you considering he takes any opportunity to go on about Evans. And sixth year was shit. Again, that isn’t an excuse – but that’s what my mindset was, that autumn. My uncle Alphard had just died. I knew that I would never see my brother again, and traitor that he was, he was – is – still my brother. I came back to Hogwarts in September and it felt like a dark cloud had just broken over my head. It wouldn’t go away. I’m going to put this bluntly, because it’s how I do things best – Remus is a werewolf. That’s relevant.

In November, we all knew Snape was sniffing around. Moony had been off at the beginning of the month, and it had been a shit full moon; I wasn’t in a good enough place to control him as well as I should’ve been, and we were all roughed up the next day, Moony the worst. Prongs had a nasty black eye, as I remember; I had a cut up face, Peter was limping. Snape had been watching us. We were all on edge; he’d been close to figuring out Moony’s secret for years, and we knew that if he found proof he’d spread it all around the school. He’d want Remus out – expelled, or worse. As December grew closer, we grew worse. We were snapping at each other, we were getting close to fights every damn evening. Moony was pale and ill the entire month, there wasn’t even the usual grace period between moons. It felt like everything was bad.

The full moon was on December 2nd. That day, James and I had had a catastrophic fight about everything and nothing – we bickered like fucking lovers back then. I bumped into Snape at the bottom of the Astronomy tower, and I – I told him where to find Remus.

God, I regretted it. I regretted it immediately. But even then, even though I knew it was wrong, I hadn’t figured it all out. I’ve always been bad at seeing consequences. When I found James and told him, I was laughing. I thought we’d give Snape a scare – then he’d never bother us again. James has always been a better man than me; he knew immediately what would happen. Remus would kill Snape, or bite him – we weren’t sure which was worse. James went after him. He saved his life. Snape wasn’t grateful, the fucker, but I – well.

Remus forgave me first. He shouldn’t have; I didn’t deserve it. I couldn’t give less of a shit if Snape dies, but Remus would have been affected; I would’ve made a killer out of him. But we could never fight for long; we don’t give each other the silent treatment. I think Remus would forgive me anything. James, on the other hand, took months. Even now, he looks at me different. That’s the sort of decision I’d take back in an instant. That’s the sort of decision I find hard to make.

REACTION TO LAST EVENT DROP

Sirius would be right up there with Amelia and Dirk at the Quidditch match – he fiercely believes that Aversio has the right way forward, and especially after the Order’s apparent dismissal of Edgar Bones’s disappearance (Sirius sees everything other than intense passion as dismissal), he’s feeling even more frustrated and disenfranchised. He would absolutely be helping Marlene and James, though likely getting in the way somewhat, given his tendency to go in all guns blazing (all wands blazing?) when it comes to his family. Fuck Bellatrix is his phrase of the week…well, the month. The year?

I don’t know if Sirius would take direct part in the actual mission to rescue Edgar – it probably makes more sense rp-wise if he didn’t, maybe because the others don’t trust him (though I don’t know if James would leave him behind). Either way, Ed’s return is a positive for two reasons – one, Sirius likes the bloke, and two, he’s hoping he can use Ed’s rescue as a concrete example of Aversio doing better than the Order. Politics, mate.

WRITING SAMPLE

Sirius Black was up a tree.

He didn’t spend a lot of time up trees, as a rule. But it was the first of September, and as such he was avoiding people - and in the Potter household, the only place it was feasible to be alone was in the branches of the huge oak tree in the grounds, out by the Quidditch pitch. He’d climbed it, hands slipping on the wet bark, about an hour previously, and he was starting to shiver.

It was unseasonably cold for September. The wind whistled through the leaves of the trees and caught at his hair, tangling it into messy curls; he huffed and pushed it out of his face and let the rain sweep down in huge sheets. He imagined it washing his features away, leaving him with nothing but a blank canvas which he could paint over, inscribe new eyes, a new nose, a new mouth. Maybe he would make himself a Potter. He closed his eyes and imagined them hazel and bright instead of grey and sharp, and knew he was being fanciful. In the Black household, being fanciful was on a par with dreaming below your station, and Sirius, though naturally imaginative, couldn’t shake that last remnant of his mother’s distaste.

He opened his eyes and watched the water drip off his eyelashes in diamond flashes. He was freezing. Surely, he thought, somewhat bitterly, if this was meant to be a formative moment in his life the world would allow him a few more moments to be at least healthily warm so that he could get his musings into better shape. But it was not to be: he was starting to shake, and even he couldn’t pretend to be fine much longer.

Below him, a figure was struggling through the wind, down the sloping grass from the front door. “Sirius!” the figure howled into the combative weather, the wind tossing his voice away towards the lake. “Oi! Black! Are you completely fucking insane?! Get inside, it’s half-eight! Mum’s made bacon!”

Bacon - now that, at least, jerked Sirius out of his stupid melancholy mood. He slid gracefully down the trunk of the tree and landed with a thump and a squelch of mud in front of his friend, who glared at him through rain-speckled glasses.

“I,” he explained, with dignity, “was having life-changing thoughts.”

“Brilliant,” snapped James, in a manner that suggested it most definitely was not. “But Catchlove’s tits can wait, Black, because I’m starving.”

[nathanneedsausername]

2018 Film Retrospective

This is my retrospective of all the movies I saw in 2018. This is based on UK release dates so films such as The Favourite, Vice or Eighth Grade will not appear on this list despite technically being 2018 movies as I have not yet been able to see these yet. There are also many movies that I have missed in 2018.

I will still be updating this list throughout 2019 here: https://letterboxd.com/nathan_r_l/list/2018-from-best-to-worst-3/

If you want to see where these movies fall on this list as I see them.

So, anyway here from the worst of the year to my personal favourite are all the films I saw in 2018:

 37. The Queen and I (Dan Zeff):

I only saw this film a few days ago as of writing so it may seem a little harsh to call it the worst of the year as it hasn’t had any time to grow on me yet. Although I don’t see this getting any better with age. Sky intended this new David Walliams’s TV movie as a sort of Christmas present, but this must be one of the very few films I have ever seen that has actually made me angry. Nothing more than royalist propaganda that manages to completely miss the potential of the concept as well as missing the point of the sequence from Les Miserable that it decides to “pay homage too”.

36. Death on the Tyne (Ed Bye):

Not much to say here. Really it isn’t a surprise that UKTV made a bad comedy.

35. Fahrenheit 451 (Ramin Bahrani):

I promise that I saw more than just TV movies this year, it just so happens that most of them were really bad. All of the changes that were added to the story were stupid and when they actually tell the story it is painfully boring.

34. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (J. A. Bayona):

Let’s be real, despite ranging in quality none of the Jurassic Park sequels have warranted their own existence. That being said Fallen Kingdom might be worth watching just to see how hilariously bad these films can get. Despite having the same director as The Orphanage and A Monster Calls no amount of good tracking shots can fix a script that is this ridiculous. The script comes across like two different ideas for new Jurassic Park movies were awkwardly stitched together when the best treatment for both would have been not to make either of them. Through in an incredibly stupid and unneeded twist and the most underwhelming Jeff Goldblum cameo in cinema history.

33. Grandpa’s Great Escape (Elliot Hegarty):

Oh, look another bad TV movie. Davis Walliams consistently finds himself attached to these boring BBC productions never quite capture the heart and care of his writing. Walliams is a good children’s author, but the small screen adaptations of his work always feel rushed and unfocused.

32. Venom (Ruben Fleischer):

The biggest disappointment of 2018. Venom is corny, bland and forgettable. According to IMDB, Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer is behind this mess but judging by Tom Hardy’s performance and the incomprehensible CGI finale no-one directed this.

31. Solo: A Star Wars Story (Ron Howard):

A soulless, lifeless film that stinks of studio interference. All of the cast feel as if they are just playing the type of character they are expected to (especially  Phoebe Waller-Bridge as L3-37). There are moments in this film where it feels like there is supposed to be a joke that has awkwardly been edited or written out after Lord and Miller left the project, these moments haunt the film and make me feel like this could have been great, but alas. 

30. Death Wish (Eli Roth):

At this point it might be time to consider that Eli Roth might be making bad movies on purpose. I went into Death Wish expecting something needlessly graphic and entertainingly violent and stupid but that’s not what this is. For the most part the gun violence in this film is pretty tame and the dialogue is far to generic and boring to be funny. There is one scene in a garage that showcases what usually makes Roth’s films memorable, but it comes too late to bring this movie into guilty pleasure territory. I do believe that Roth is a good filmmaker but the more he releases these mindless, generic thrillers the harder it is to defend him.

29. The Meg (Jon Turteltaub):

Half of this movie is a self-aware special effects movie that is genuinely entertaining. The other half is a boring and cliché. It should be good but never quite manages to keep up any momentum that it builds.

28. Tomb Raider (Roar Uthaug):

Technically better than the 2001 Lara Croft film although I know which one I would rather watch. Some interesting set pieces and homages to the newer tomb Raider games mixed with bland dialogue and an uninteresting plot.

27. Deadpool 2 (David Leitch):

Not as funny as the first movie but has better action. Deadpool 2 is mixed bag, the satire falls short when the movie insists on upping the stakes and having its audience feel emotionally connected to the story. David Leitch is a good action director and I look forward to seeing what he does next, but I can’t say that I’m all to exited about the next instalments in the Deadpool franchise.

26. Tag (Jeff Tomsic):

I don’t think that this film deserves the hate it seems to have gotten. Tag is a pretty funny movie with memorable characters and good camera work. It’s a little corny and the ending gets way to soppy but it’s a good film to watch with a group of friends if not just for some good Hannibal Buress quotes.

25. Click & Collect (Ben Palmer):

Hey, a TV movie that didn’t suck! Airing on BBC 1 on Christmas Eve this is an example of cringe comedy done well, the plot doesn’t always make sense but that doesn’t stop the comedy from really working.

24. Outlaw King (David Mackenzie):

A pretty good historical drama about Robert the Bruce. That’s all this is really a serviceable movie about an interesting topic. Not bad by any means all though a little forgettable, the performances and fight choreography are great but the writing lacks any real direction.

23. Aquaman (James Wan):

A list of other movies scenes from Aquaman made me think of:

Ratatouille

Splash

Raiders of the Lost Arc

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider

Black Panther

Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace

Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

How to Train Your Dragon 2

Wonder Woman

Full review coming next

22. Ant-Man and the Wasp (Peyton Reed):

Not as funny or engaging as 2015’s Ant-Man. This is a decent blockbuster with some good special effects and funny moments. A lower tier Marvel film for sure that gets completely overshadowed by the other two movies that the studio brought out in 2018 but still a fun watch.

21. Ocean’s Eight (Gary Ross):

About as good as Ocean’s 13. All of the hallmarks of the Ocean’s trilogy are present. The last 15 minuets begin to over explain what we have already seen and the name of the movie spoils and reveal at the end of the movie. A well-directed heist movie none-the-less that should be enjoyable for any Ocean’s fan

20. Ready Player One (Steven Spielberg):

This movie is at its best when it is at its most Spielberg. There is a really great car chase and a plot that revolves around kids standing against authority. It goes on for way to long and some of the references are on the nose. It certainly needs to be cut down but it’s a movie worth seeing if you know your pop-culture.

19. Searching (Aneesh Chaganty):

By far the best example of found-footage to be released in years. Having the entire film appear from the perspective of computer screens and phone calls makes the experience feel far more real and personal as if you are right there figuring out the mystery with the character. The story itself separated from its gimmick has been seen before and the twist is a bit of a reach but with its unique style it feels completely fresh. If you hated Unfriended there is a high chance that you will love this.

18. My Dinner with Hervé (Sacha Gervasi):

A HBO movie featuring a fantastic performance from Peter Dinklage. The life story of French actor Hervé Villechaize is told through a crazy interview based on the one that the actor had with the director in the early 90’s. It’s a small film but one that has been made with a lot of passion from its director and star. Absolutely look this one out if you can.

17. Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson):

Wes Anderson is responsible for some of my favourite films of all time. While his latest may not be his best work to date it is a beautiful and insanely well-crafted film full of life and wonder. Anderson has a particular style and this movie sums up exactly what makes that style work so well with every shot working perfectly.

16. Black Mirror: Bandersnatch (David Slade):

It’s hard to tell at this point whether or not this will start a new craze for choose your own adventure movies the way that Avatar started a craze for 3D. Honestly I don’t think Charlie Brooker has left anywhere to really be explored with the this concept as he dives head first into a meta-narrative all about free-will. Certainly, an ambitious endeavour for the crew of Black Mirror that has taken over the cinematic discussion for a little while. I saw this with a group of friends trying to uncover as much of the story as we could in one sitting and I highly recommend that experience if you haven’t seen/played this yet.

15. Black Panther (Ryan Coogler): 

A Marvel movie that appears to have nudged its way into Oscar conversations, regardless of whether or not I think that it deserves that acclaim this is a great film. Black Panther has some of the smartest writing of any MCU movie and one of the best villains to ever appear in a superhero movie. This is a film that will be talked about for years because of what it means for representation, it also helps that it is a really good movie.

14. Game Night (John Francis, Jonathan M. Goldstein):

The biggest surprise of the year is that the two guys behind 2015’s awful Vacation reboot managed to make one of the funniest and well-made comedies of 2018. The camerawork in this film is brilliant, one long take in particular has to be one of my favourite scenes of the year. The plot takes some logical jumps but who cares when the film is this good.

13. A Quiet Place (John Kransinski):

Sure, it doesn’t all make sense when you analyse it but watching A Quiet Place on the big screen is one of the tensest experiences I have ever had. When the credits rolled after the first time I saw this film I noticed that for the past 90 minuets, that’s the sign of some effective tension.

12. First Man (Damien Chazelle):

Chazelle has proven himself to be one of the best directors working today. While I may not love his latest as much as his previous work on La La Land and Whiplash it has to be said that First Man is a solid base hit for a great filmmaker. The third act of this film features some of the best special effects of the year mixed with one of the most emotional sequences of the year. Gosling and Foy are both brilliant and both deserve nominations as does Chazelle.

11. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (Martin McDonagh):

Slightly twisted and very enjoyable Three Billboards is a strange film. McDonagh is able to find humour in the darkest of places but never undermines the serious nature of the subject matter.

10. Incredibles 2 (Brad Bird):

Going into the top 10 it feels important to restate that these rankings are based purely on my own personal opinions on each film. Incredibles 2 is objectively not as good as the 2004 original, but it doesn’t have to be, this is a very fun movie featuring some great animation, fantastically directed action sequences that only Brad Bird could pull off and do I even have to mention the Jack-Jack scenes? Brad Bird is one of the greatest filmmakers to ever work in animation and this feels like his victory lap, not his best film but absolutely one that showcases just how great he is.

9. The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro):

Best picture winner, The Shape of Water deserves all the acclaim that it has gotten. This “adult fairy-tale” features a wonderful score, fantastic performances, beautiful set-design and characteristically excellent direction from one of the world’s greatest directors! Everyone has already lumped praise on this film and so I am not left with too much else to say other than see this film.

8. The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling (Judd Apatow):

I hear that 2018 was a great year for documentaries, I wouldn't know because I only saw this one but if Three Identical Strangers and Won’t you be my Neighbour are better than this then I need to see them. Judd Apatow looks into the life of his friend and fellow comedian Garry Shandling only 2 years after his tragic death. His approach leaves no stone unturned as he dives head first into the late comedian’s mind using his own diaries and interviews with his closest friends and collaborators. As a stand-up comedy fan it is absolutely fascinating to get a look the real life of an often misunderstood legend like Shandling for it to be as neatly put together and wonderfully entertaining as this is a welcome bonus.

7. Avengers: Infinity War (Joe Russo, Anthony Russo):

For the technical achievement alone Infinity War deserves a place in my top 10. The Russo brothers managed to pull off a stunt that just a year ago I was ready to call impossible, bringing together 10 years worth of character arcs and plot points while still making an enjoyable film. Even though it has been 9 months I still don’t know what to say about this film and my lack of words may be the best compliment I can give it.

6. Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie):

If you asked me in June I would have said that the Mission: Impossible franchise had peaked with Brad Bird’s Ghost Protocol in 2014, I also would have been dead wrong. Fallout is not just the best film in the franchise but an absolute high point in action cinema. Seeing this on the big screen was one of the most visceral and intense movie going experiences I have ever had, every stunt is a nail-biter and the whole time I was on the edge of my seat.   

5. Thoroughbreds (Cory Finley):

This is the movie that I saw alone and have yet to properly have a conversation with someone about. This film slipped under almost everyone’s radar and then disappeared. I am telling you now find this movie it is a fantastic, quaint little film with the power to make you uncomfortable and make you laugh at the same time. Olivia Cooke and Anya Taylor Joy are both brilliant and the ending has one of my best moments of the year with a single long shot and the power of suggestion. If you missed it, which you probably did, go look it out. 

4. BlacKkKlansman (Spike Lee):

Loud, funny, unapologetic, stylish and controversial. Those are the five words that describe all of Spike Lee’s best movies and BlacKkKlansman is no exception. With multiple Oscar worthy performances, a great score and a screenplay that shows Spike at his angriest and smartest in a long time, this film will get under some peoples skin, as great cinema should. 

3. I, Toyna (Craig Gillespie):

Every now and then a movie comes along that perfectly sums up why I love this art form, I Tonya is one of those movies. Deeply impactfull on an emotional level while remaining hyper stylised, Gillespie manages to make the audience feel sympathy for characters that would be the villains in any other story by taking you on an emotional roller coaster through the life of Tonya Harding that leaves the viewer feeling just as broken as the titular character by the conclusion.

This film is so good I watched it twice in two days.

2. Lady Bird (Greta Gerwig):

I fell hard for this film. Greta Gerwig’s painfully honest look at growing up feels like watching a selection of incredibly well shot home movies from a real person. The real achievement of Gerwig’s directorial debut is how it manages to feel relatable even if you aren’t in the same situation as the protagonist. When the credits role it’s hard to feel slightly disappointed that you can’t keep watching what is going to happen to this character next and when the only criticism you have is that you didn't want it to end, the film must have been pretty good.

1. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, Rodney Rothman):

I’m just as surprised as you are.

Somehow and for whatever reason this is the movie that resonated with me the most in 2018, this is the film I see myself going back to the most. Sometimes the best film is the most entertaining one, this film had me hooked instantly and kept me in a near trance-like state during its run-time. In don’t have anything to profound to say about this film it’s just really a great film that everyone can enjoy. If this is still playing near you and you haven’t seen it yet, go check it out you won’t be disappointed.

[bookintroventure-blog]

Review: Darkest Fear

Title: Darkest Fear Author: Cate Tiernan Genre: Fiction/YA/Supernatural Series: Birthright, Book 1 Date(s) Read: 01/10/17 – 01/11/17 Rating: 3/5

Summary: Vivi has known the truth about her family—and herself—since she was thirteen. But that doesn’t mean she’s accepted it. Being Haguari isn’t something she feels she’ll ever accept. How can she feel like anything but a freak knowing that it’s in her genes to turn into a jaguar? Now eighteen, Vivi’s ready to break away from the traditions of her heritage. But all of that changes with the shocking, devastating deaths of her parents and the mysteries left behind. Vivi discovers family she never even knew she had, and a life open with possibility. New friends, new loyalties, and even romance all lay ahead—but so do dangers unlike anything Vivi ever could have imagined.

Review: Cards on the table here, folks: I have been reading Cate Tiernan’s books since I was twelve years old. Twelve. That’s fourteen-going-on-fifteen years, and more than twenty books. I’m a fan, to say the least, and unfortunately I picked up this book with the mindset of “well it’s Cate, so I’m going to like it no matter what.”

Bad! Bad E! Smack on the nose! Being blindly loyal to an author is all well-and-good, but if you’re going to operate a book review blog, you have to be objective – you have to be bluntly honest, no matter how much of an ungrateful, disloyal warthog it makes you feel like. *tiny sob* And bearing that in mind, as I sat down to write this review, I took a little while to sit down and really relive the story as a whole, and I was surprised at the end when I found I could only, in good conscious, give this three out of five stars. Okay, follow the slumping shoulders as I take you to…

The Breakdown: Vivi comes from a family of higuari – humans who can shapeshift into jaguars – but she has snubbed her legacy at every turn, much to the disappointment of her higuari-proud parents. But when her parents are brutally murdered on her eighteenth birthday – by one of her own kind, she suspects – Vivi is forced to delve deeper into her origins than she ever thought she would. Through small clues found in her parents’ belongings, she is led to New Orleans, to a cousin she never knew she had, and she suddenly finds herself living in a house full of fellow higuari. She begins to adjust to her new life (though she still does not embrace her jaguar-self), with a new job, a potential love interest, and good friends, but after a series of attacks and the realization that her aunt and uncle may have been killed the same way as her parents, Vivi realizes life may never be normal again.

Let’s start with The Cons: 1. The language. I don’t mean this as how the book is written as a whole – you don’t read someone’s entire bibliography if you hate the way they write – but only in times when Vivi transformed herself into a jaguar. The narrative became choppy and repetitive, without punctuation. And while I understand the purpose of this – Cate is demonstrating that the character is in a more primitive, less cognitive state – I feel it could have been brushed up just a bit, somehow, so that it didn’t make me feel like my head was on one of those Viking ship swing rides at an amusement park. I felt like I had to read it very fast because Vivi would have been thinking it very fast, and it just ended up giving me a headache.

2. The passage of time. Here is where I’m going to revert back to my knowledge of Cate’s bibliography – if you’ve not read any of her other books, this may not necessarily bother you as much. But she’s generally very good about taking everything step by step, letting you walk with her characters through every moment of their lives; in this novel, however, there was a lot of skipping ahead. A new chapter would begin and months would have passed, that missing time summed up in just a few paragraphs. And while I recognize that not all of her series can be fourteen books long (ah, Sweep, you are still my #1), I still felt she could have taken her time and taken us through Vivi’s day-to-day. 3. Rafael. Rafael is Vivi’s boss at her coffee shop job in New Orleans and I haaaaaaate him. This is unfamiliar territory for me, because Cate usually writes the most mmff men, but I just saw absolutely nothing good in this guy. He is described as drop dead gorgeous but standoffish, but then later (after one small act of kindness that I honestly can’t even remember) it is revealed that he has a good heart. Archetypal, but okay, I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. But he doesn’t. Do. Anything. He’s an artist and spends most of his time at the coffee shop painting a mural instead of working, he never has any meaningful conversations with Vivi that allow us to see a blossoming romance, and he’s just...blah. And then, when something does begin to happen between Vivi and Rafael, he gets very complicated and nonsensical and this isn’t resolved by the end of the book. Vivi suspects he may be higuari. I also suspect that he may be higuari, but I just can’t seem to make myself care if he is because I don’t care about him. He was not fleshed out enough, he was not given any depth, and therefore he just seems like he’s there so Vivi will have someone to...how do I put this?...use as a scratching post for her big kitty claws. 4. Oh, the body issues! I don’t care what you look like, okay? I don’t care if a character is large or small or girly or tomboyish or any of that, as long as they’re realistic and consistent and intriguing. However, as a reader, you do like to have a picture in your mind of what a character looks like, and in Vivi’s narrative she can’t seem to come to an agreement with herself over her own body type. Sometimes she seems as though she is athletic, sometimes full-figured and feminine, and sometimes she even seems to describe herself as a bigger size. And it doesn’t even seem to be in an intentional, I-have-self-image-issues way, which is a perfectly acceptable narrative, but it doesn’t seem to apply with her personality. It’s just hard to get a read on how she’s supposed to look, so it was hard for me to really immerse myself in the book, because I couldn’t picture anything in my head.

TL;DR (yes, I will use this a lot, because I am a long-winded person): Cons: The jaguar narrative is just a bit too choppy, I really want to know what’s happened in all that skipped time, man I hate Rafael so much, and I’m sorry but what does Vivi look like?

And now, The Pros: 1. It’s fluid. I know this seems contradictory, because I just talked about the choppy jaguar language, but besides that there is a good linguistic flow that makes it easy to plow through this book and pick out all the important details. 2. The secondary characters. When Vivi moves in with her cousin, Matéo, we’re introduced to a full cast of higuari that also live in his house. There’s Matéo, Aly, Coco, Tink, Suzanne, James, and Dana, and even though most of them only get a few scenes here and there, they are all vibrant, defined characters. The same goes for Hayley and Talia, Vivi’s coworkers, and Jennifer, her best friend from back home – all real people with real personalities and real issues. I’m looking forward to reading more about them in the next two books (the second should be released this July). 3. Vivi’s loss. In the beginning, when Vivi first loses her parents, it is written with real grief. It’s not “oh they died and two weeks later I’m fine.” No, it’s weeks of stumbling around in an empty house, sobbing every single day that you stop noticing when it’s happening. I appreciate that sort of raw, descriptive sorrow – I like being able to feel what the character is feeling.

TL;DR:

Pros: The narrative flows nicely and nothing is buried far beneath the surface, the secondary characters feel like real people, and you can feel the profound loss Vivi has experienced.

Of the four series Cate has written, I have to say this is only #3 on my list, and objectively only worth three of five stars. However, as a devoted fan, I am eagerly awaiting, with an open mind, the next two books. And I’m kind of hoping that Rafael isn’t a higuari, and in fact gets eaten by a higuari. Seriously. Hate that guy so much. But this is an easy read, a fresh idea, with character you can get attached to. Probably best for readers between the ages of 14 and 19.

**I picked this one up at, you guessed it, BookOutlet.com for $2.49. At the time of my posting, they have fifty in stock - you can follow this link and pick up a copy for yourself!**