#and few characters have no grey at all. i also consider james morally grey but a lighter shade than sirius haha

[seriousbrat]

Do you think Sirius could be a morally grey character?

he is a morally grey character. he almost murdered someone while he was at school

[belle-keys]

The People versus Grace Blackthorn (Meta)

So this is Part 3 of my little breakdown of the characters in The Last Hours, and here we have one of my favorite characters. I invite you to listen to Meg Myers as you read. Here we have Grace Blackthorn, who I would argue is one of Cassie's most complex and sympathetic female characters and antagonists across all series.

Preface: I will reference sexual abuse and grooming a few times in this (not in detail though), so just keep that in mind. Also please note that I absolutely recognize from the get-go what Grace did to James, Charles, Matthew, and others was indeed sexual assault (or at the very least, is akin to it) and that the bracelet was the magical equivalent of a roofie. I'm not particularly interested in breaking down Grace's actions or their obvious, undebatable moral depravity as much as I'm interested in her intentions, her childhood, her emotions, her complexity, and her character's treatment in the story. And moreover, I wanted to write this just because people in this fandom generally have no appreciation for nuance in a woman when men are somehow always forgiven, even for making indefensible choices.

This is not so much a defense of Grace Blackthorn as it is a deep dive into the awful treatment of her character by other characters in the context of the story and also by the narrative. A heads-up: While this isn't really about my personal feelings, I didn't particularly like what the story did with and did to Grace Blackthorn. If you absolutely hate Grace or characters that are like Grace, characters who have done unspeakably awful things and yet remain not merely the sum of their acts, then just skip this, because I have more favorable things to say about her character than about the way the story handled said character in Chain of Thorns.

Grace's Bitter Ending

It's quite strange how Cassie chose to wrap up Grace's arc in Chain of Thorns, because there was definitely a shift in the treatment of her character. Grace's character arc felt incomplete at best, which is really the only way I can think to describe her character's journey in ChoT despite the story having humanized her for the entirety of Chain of Iron. Grace Blackthorn wasn't villainized by the narrative, let's get that straight, Grace did actions to villainize herself, but the other characters in Chain of Thorns have even less of a nuanced perspective on Grace Blackthorn's background and story than the readers do, which is saying a lot.

Grace's arc ends on an acrid note: She has no friends, her relationship with Jesse has been permanently tainted, the one person in the main ensemble who was willing to defend her is quite dead, and she has retreated to the fringes of society. No, I'm not implying that she needs to be forgiven by James or any character for what she did - that's not even something I'm factoring into this discussion, and her forgiveability and forgiveness by the good guys is neither here nor there. But the path was paved for Grace to have a redemption arc, and you could also argue that she did what she needed to do to have said redemption in the context of the narrative, even if she didn't get redeemed in the eyes of the characters. But she got neither, which makes for a hollow conclusion to a stunning morally grey character. I was not expecting sympathy from the other characters towards Grace inasmuch as I was expecting a ChoI-esque sympathy from the narrative, especially considering that we're that she willingly went to the Silent Brothers, confessed to Cordelia about the gracelet, finished developing fire messages, and also helped the gang save London without expecting forgiveness in return for her actions. If we were to separate our personal morals from the equation, we would see that Grace's lack of a solid conclusion in ChoT, despite the story's obvious success in humanizing her and explaining her actions prior, makes an unflattering point: that redemption is simply unavailable to some, despite all the precedence in the world.

Chain of Thorns failed to reconcile the sympathetic, humanizing elements of Grace that we were given in Chain of Iron with the overall plot, the characters' perceptions of her, and with the narrative. It's incongruous, and it’s incredibly black-and-white storytelling that has only pushed for the demonization of Grace's character.

Burning the Witch

Most of the fandom's hatred for Grace started in Chain of Gold, and I have a hard time believing it's just because Grace was immediately characterized as this apathetic, gothic ice princess. The reality is that most readers already hated Grace before they even realized she was involved in shady demon bracelet shenanigans. And it's because she was getting in the way of their ship, that is, Jordelia, which, in some sick and ironic twist of fate, is part of the reason half the fandom also hates Matthew. Yes, I ship Herondaisy as much as any of you, but that's beyond the point. What I'm saying is that it seems so many people hate Grace and have been calling for her death or for her Marks to be stripped because their vitriol comes from a place of... shipping wars, and not offended morals. But it also comes from a place of internalized misogyny (which is very easy to apply to Grace, as she's not just a female antagonist, but also a very soft and feminine female character). After all, Grace's own femininity and Tatiana's own internalized misogyny were the factors that facilitated Grace's seemingly inherent capacity as a villainess in the trilogy. Let me say that again: Grace was forced to be the villain by virtue of her womanhood. Such a progressive trope! Some of Grace’s hate also comes from the fact that Grace (and Alastair) are perhaps the most relatable characters of the The Last Hours gang. The global readership is in no way as wealthy or as privileged as James or Lucie or Cordelia. The readership of The Last Hours, however, can keenly relate to Grace's isolation and loneliness because we all spent almost two fricking years trapped in our dorms and houses because of quarantine and social distancing. And frankly, on a purely statistical basis, most people's parents are likely to display qualities more akin to Tatiana’s than Tessa’s. I cannot think of a fourteen-year-old in the world who would not listen to the orders of the one person on whom they're entirely dependent, especially when it's an abusive caregiver who's involved lest they face death, abuse, or exile. Grace is a lonely, isolated girl who's been repeatedly sexualized in the story, who has no friends, and who struggles with her own actions and feelings, and that is incredibly relatable to a 21st-century adolescent female audience which definitely can explain, in part, the pitchforks. It's not an easy experience to see a piece of yourself in the villain.

The Venn Diagram of Victims and Perpetrators

Let’s bring some facts into the discussion, and a lot of what I have to say here are things that this post by @thousand-winters and the anon in the post reminded me about (so thank you). Grace was repeatedly hit by Tatiana and she was forcibly pimped out in Paris by Tatiana to seduce grown men when she was twelve. She was dependent on Tatiana and the threat that she would be cast out into the world or hurt if she did not obey. She was brainwashed by Tatiana to think the Herondales and Lightwoods were her enemy, was forced to put the bracelet on James when she was fourteen, and likewise, it was made quite clear that Grace took no pleasure in serving Tatiana. Grace was also prohibited from being a Shadowhunter, or at least, from training as one. She was interrogated by the Silent Brothers repeatedly (even in jail she wasn’t safe), and was prohibited from having any friends or companions, save her dead brother (who she was also commanded to seduce). It is correct that Grace was a perpetrator by the very definition of the word, but why is it always that this negates readers’ recognition that she was also a victim of her own circumstances, a victim of unspeakable trauma herself? And despite all of that, she was not even given the honor or closure of finally killing Tatiana.

And what’s worse is that the other characters who experienced trauma in their own stories, like James and Cordelia, got extremely favorable endings and closure to their individual traumas, as it was recognized that they indeed faced trauma. Grace’s own childhood trauma, none of which she was responsible for, was never addressed by other characters nor by the narrative as something from which she rightfully deserved healing. Despite the intense suffering she has undergone and the hand she’s dealt in life, it seems that what she has faced as punishment is still not enough the appease the readership’s bloodlust. The clash between her nature and her nurture was not even weakly echoed in the story’s conclusion. It was never recognized by the characters or by the narrative that Grace could indeed be the biggest perpetrator as much as the biggest victim of abuse, of grooming, of isolation, or of helplessness. Chain of Thorns, most of the main ensemble, and even the fandom have refused to acknowledge that multiple things can be true at once, thereby stripping Grace, à la lack of media literacy, of her complexity of feeling and of the harsh multiplicity of her character. Chain of Thorns, by virtue of Grace’s bitter ending (see first subsection), has ordered for Grace the sentence of Hell when a contemplation of Limbo is far more appropriate. How is it that we can sympathize with Sebastian Morgenstern by virtue of five poetic last words and yet refuse to acknowledge the complexity of Grace’s character after three whole books of backstory and explanation? Grace cannot and will not be absolved by the fandom, because the parts of her that warrant any absolution have been erased and neglected.

Kit Lightwood, Attorney at Law

As you can tell, I've been having some fun with my titles and subtitles. Anyway, as far as I'm concerned, Christopher was supposed to be that voice in the narrative that saw the nuance and acknowledged the shades of grey that comprise Grace Blackthorn (quite literally - her literal color palette is grey and silver, which is neat; it speaks to flecks of dust and the glint of blades). He was the only person in Chapter 24 who spoke in favor of Grace, in that he did not excuse her actions but pleaded for a degree sympathy towards her. This was perhaps my favorite thing that Christopher Lightwood has ever done, but then he immediately died. Grace Blackthorn was left to the jury without counsel after that. That scene was difficult for me to read, and not because anything James and the gang said was untrue (nothing they said was untrue about her). But rather it seemed like that entire conversation was designed, in tone and metatextual treatment if not in content, to remind us who were the good guys, the heroes, the victims. And yet again, the scene failed to acknowledge in any way, save Christopher, that Grace's own actions of perpetration were directly a result of her own victimhood. I don't believe she's owed forgiveness or sympathy, and I don't think there's any ethical argument you can make to say that she should be forgiven either (that doesn't factor in at all). But again, there was a failure to acknowledge that she was also a groomed child and that she was Tatiana's ward and pawn, someone simultaneously volitional yet powerful. I was especially surprised at Jesse's own lack of awareness of the fact that Grace had little to no choice in her actions. There was no recognition of the reality that Grace was severely mistreated and hurt by Tatiana because she was a girl (note that Jesse was loved by Taiana by virtue of him being male and the Blackthorn heir), because she was not Tatiana's blood (something Tatiana reminded her about), and because she was given the power of ensorcellment against her own will because she was a pretty girl. At best, Jesse was incredibly blind to what Grace suffered, and at worse, he was so protected by his male privilege in Tatiana's household that he failed to acknowledge the part that Grace's own evil powers played in bringing him back to life. Moreover, he has clearly been bestowed in Chain of Thorns a personality and unshakeable moral code that was designed to immediately ingratiate him to the Thieves and their own sense of, uh, impenetrable and sanctimonious honor. His own instantaneous condemnation of Grace reveals an obliviousness at best and unbelievable apathy at worst, and Jesse Blackthorn is the last character for whom this response made sense.

Conclusion: Estella can’t come to the phone right now because she’s dead

By way of conclusion, I'd like to say that I thought Grace was a promising retelling of Dickens' Estella at the start. And Cassie has explicitly stated that the idea behind Grace was to explain such a character rather than to make her sympathetic, which, Cassie has somewhat succeeded in. Nonetheless, Grace's character did absolutely nothing new with Estella and nor did it allow for a fair deconstruction of the femme fatale trope. We know little of who Grace Blackthorn is, despite having a very clear picture of her motivations, her background, and her emotions. And it's weird because we do have brilliant, complex, nuanced characters like Alastair and Matthew in The Last Hours. Grace Blackthorn has been stunted by her abuse, her upbringing, by her powers, by the gracelet, but also by her place in the story from a metatextual perspective, facilitating a slow and deliberate fandom crucifixion across all platforms. And all I'm left with is... why?

[thebindingofpillo]

Lilith

Some of you are about to get real mad at me.

While Lilith is traditionally considered Adam’s first wife, that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, her status as mother of all demons is also false because Lilith is not a demon at all, she’s a monster. Or at least she was, before making a deal with Satan, we will explain everything in due time. I wanted to make a separate post about the differences between demons and monsters, but there’s not much to say about them, so I’ll condense everything here.

Monster = mortal, weaker than demons (but still stronger than a human though), their magic is more specialised and requires physical things like blood ad flesh (usually human blood and flesh) to work. Unlike demons, who are naturally evil, monsters can be more morally grey, and while there’s a lot of them who eat and kill humans for whatever reason, friendly monsters do exist.They are born, not created, and are native to Earth. Monsters were incredibly common on Earth in the ancient times, but were progressively driven out of their habitats by humans, which brought most of them to extinction. Nowadays monsters are very few, tend to stick to their own communities or blend into human society and fly under the radar. This is what Lilith does, she’s a preschool teacher and lives a quiet life with her Incubus. Demon = immortal, have access to more magical powers (and brimstone!) and are born in hell, which is on a different plane of existence. They can still visit Earth, but it takes time and energy. And also they’re all evil. Sorry.

Lilith is a Hebrew word, that might derive from the Akkadian Lilitu, which might derive from the Sumerian Ki-sikil-lil-la-ke (or just lil). All of these words describe a type of female monster that lives at night and preys on men (If you’re a nerd like me, here’s the handy video that started this whole thing lmao). The noun (yes, noun) “lilith” is used exactly once in the Bible (Isaiah 34:14) and is translated as “lamia” in the Greek version of Symmachus (dated around 200 c.e.) and the Latin Vulgata, which is another type of female monster that feeds on children and kills men after seducing them. Everything fits. King James’ bible translates lilith as “screeching owl” so I decided to co-opt that for her design, and give her some feathers.

And now for the actual lore, the preamble is done I swear.

Note: I’m gonna use “lamia” when talking about the creature, and “Lilith” when talking about the character What are lamias (in my AU) Lamias are a type of female monster whose powers revolve around illusions and transformation. Their normal state is usually of half-bird women with pronounced snake features (like Lilith in her normal form), but they can turn into full snake ladies if they need to (usually to protect their territory, or fight off other lamias). Doing so requires a lot of energy, and is a difficult form to maintain, even for the oldest, most powerful ones. Lamias can also turn into beautiful women to better attract men, their main source of food. They are also known to feed on human children, who are usually kidnapped from their homes and eaten whole. Lamias can feed on women and cattle too, but this is quite uncommon and usually only done in dire situations, like after a war. They are all females. Male lamias do not exist. This is another reason why they need men: they cannot reproduce by themselves.

Lamias usually live in family groups, composed by a matriarch and her (often many) daughters and her granddaughters. Once the matriarch dies, the eldest daughter takes her place, and so on and so forth. These groups can get quite large! So much so that sometimes, the oldest daughters might leave their mother to create their own pack somewhere else (usually due to lack of food and resources).While lamias prefer forest terrain and hotter climates, any place with a lot of hiding spots and a decent dry season is enough for them. It’s not uncommon to find them chilling amongst abandoned buildings, or in the mountains, in caves etc. they’re very adaptable, and while their wings might seem small, they’re still able to travel long distances to find a perfect place for them. Note: their wings are usually only accessible in full snake form.

Lamia culture is usually passed down orally from mother to daughter. They worship the Earth as the First Mother, from which every creature came, and to which every creature will return after death. Their rituals usually revolve around fertility, love, abundance of preys etc. I still don’t know if they believe in the afterlife, but they probably believe that once dead, they return to the womb of the First Mother, where they can rest in eternal bliss and be loved forever. With deforestation, poaching and human being less afraid of monsters in general, lamia population has greatly decreased, and with them being mortal, there could be a very concrete possibility that Lilith is the last lamia alive.

Lilith time for real this time Lilith is a sweetheart. A big softie and a hopeless romantic, perfectly content in her quiet life of preschool teacher. She likes cheesy romcoms, long walks and hot chocolate, but it wasn’t always that way for her. Born a little after the birth of the Roman Empire (around… 40/45 AD, she’s the youngest of the immortals), Lilith used to live in a secluded forest with her mother and sisters (and her daughters too, even if she didn’t have that many yet), occasionally luring men in, eating human flesh and generally having a good time. Think… Libia. Around there. I don’t know. Somewhere with both trees and Roman occupation, I’m not gonna pour more hours into this character PLEASE I’m doing all of this for free. Anyway, life was good for her and her family, until one day Cain passed through that forest, looking for a new place to live after he was exiled for the umpteenth time. Lilith immediately noticed the man and tried to entice him, but Cain (who had at least a couple of millennia more of experience) was not having it. He just wanted to leave the forest behind and find a new home, he didn’t have time to entertain a lamia, so he booked it out of there as soon as he could. Unfortunately, Lilith took that as a challenge and started chasing after him, hoping to tire him out enough to pounce him and put an end to his existence. The chase lasted two whole weeks by the way, but at that point Lilith was too stubborn to let it go. Cain was smart enough to always stop in densely populated areas as to lose his scent and get some extra protection (lamias and monster in general were already close to extinction at the time, and usually steered clear of human cities) but even with the best precautions, Lilith managed to corner him and finally get to him, but she was also exhausted after two weeks of constant chase, and could only knock him down and give him a couple of nasty bites. Cain still has the scars to this day. Sadly, Lilith was not aware of the other, worse part of Cain’s curse, so when she hurt him, her destiny took a turn for the worst. The man managed to wiggle free of her grasp, and while Lilith would have gladly chased after him some more, she realised she had been away from home for way too long, so turned back, only to find her beloved forest and family gone forever. In the weeks she was away, a Roman troop had levelled the forest, cutting down all the trees, killing her mother and sisters and selling her youngest daughters into slavery. She was desperate, and vowed to take revenge on the whole humankind, and that’s when things got even worse! Hearing her cries and pleads for revenge, Satan himself, king of hell, decided to pay her a visit. He offered her eternal life, a chance at taking back what was hers, and in return she would become his, in body and soul, and help him grow his army even further (which is a very fancy way of saying Lilith would become his wife, give him children, and he could also do whatever he wanted to her). Now, Lilith would have never accepted such a rotten deal, but she was incredibly desperate and in a very vulnerable position, and Satan knew that. He played her and used her trauma as an excuse to grow closer to her, promising her he would help her take revenge on the people who wronged her, and would even help her save some of her family, if there was anything to be saved.

Anyway, Lilith accepted the deal, and thus became immortal. Her new home was in Hell, ruling at Satan’s side… only he didn’t really want her ruling anything at all. He was a terrible husband, let me tell you. Once he secured the deal, Lilith was just another unfortunate soul to exploit, so he relegated her somewhere in Hell, and only came to visit once in a while, to check in on her and maybe send her on some errands. Pretty soon, Lilith became restless, and started pushing for her husband to hold up his end of the deal, only Satan wasn’t really planning to. In a fit of rage, he gouged out her eyes, and left her helpless and without sight. Luckily Lilith was immortal now, and losing her eyes didn’t kill her. She could even put them back in again, if Satan let her, but he usually kept her eyes hidden on him all the time, in a little satchel around his neck, only letting her have her sight back if he needed Lilith to run some errands for him. Satan kept her blind to control her better. After enough time, Lilith decided that a life of servitude to a man she didn’t even love wasn’t cutting it, so she walked out of Hell. She was strong, she could handle being blind, and even managed to snatch one of Satan’s little minions on the way out, her trusted Incubus. It was a meagre victory, but at least now she was free, and the Incubus useful enough. Sadly, there wasn’t much she could do about her revenge now. The Roman Empire had fallen while she was in hell, and the men who killed her family were already long dead and forgotten. She managed to meet Cain again after a while, in a different place, as different people, and the two actually became friends. This friendship would only grow stronger over the centuries, Lilith being one of the very few people Cain could be fully open, and while Cain could be considered the source of Lilith’s misery, she was quite understanding of the nature of his curse, and while it took some time, she came to understand that it wasn’t his fault.

Where is Lilith now. As said before, Lilith is now enjoying a quiet life. She works as a preschool teacher (children have always been her passion). She lives in the same city as the majority of the rest of the cast (her and Maggy are coworkers too!) and maintains a close friendship with Cain. Her magic has greatly diminished over the millennia because she firmly refuses to consume human flesh. She doesn’t really see the point in it anymore, since her whole family is gone and monsters are incredibly few. What little of her magic remains, she uses to keep a human form during the day, so she can work and run errands without much trouble. She could theoretically return to her full powers (and even transform fully into a lamia) with some generous blood donations, but it’s not really something she has any desire to do. Over the years she’s ha many relationships, some even quite serious, but tried her best not to have children. She doesn’t know if her immortality would be transferred to her daughters and doesn’t want to run the risk of seeing her children die. Incubus is still with her after all these years, and while she can’t exactly take him out like a normal pet, he can still follow her everywhere by hiding in her poofy hair. He loves it.

Other stuff that I couldn’t fit anywhere else

Lilith is not her real name! That’s just another name for her species, like calling someone “human”. Her real name is unpronounceable by a human mouth, and with lamias being basically extinct, she’s made her peace with the fact nobody will ever call her that again. While “Lilith” is not an ideal name (she prefers going by “Lily”) it’s still okay.

Can sustain herself with human food too! Just prefers her meat extra rare. This is how she maintains that little magic she needs to turn human.

Incubus is sentient, but to a lesser degree. He’s like a very intelligent animal (his ref is coming eventually I didn’t have time for it UGH)

I hope you enjoy her! I did not proofread anything of this, just take it.

[mermaidsirennikita]

The Scoundrels Of St James would be a better tv show, I agree on that, the storylines are great and they have more dept to them including the male characters don't go that far to be considered bad for a tv audience

St Vincent is not even a morally grey character, he is an asshole and I wouldn't have him in any other way bc I love him like that lol

I will say, I do think St. Vincent is way softer than a lot of my favorites (every Mila Finelli hero except for Giacomo and Alessio, both of whom could still murder St. Vincent in 30 seconds but are very emotionally sweet, LOTHAIRE) but I don't think like... soft bad makes him gray? He gets redeemed, but redemption does not a sweetie pie make lol. Matthew Swift is a sweetie pie. St. Vincent is like... so a dick lol. Which is why even though I love his cameos in the Ravenels they're still very jarring to me because it's like--yeah, I guess it's believable that decades of marriage and five kids would mellow him out even post-redemption but like. This is a LEAP lol.

Scoundrels is honestly very cinematic as a series, and I think that's another thing about Lorraine's books that actually make them more "ready for TV" than a lot of other historicals, imo. Lorraine's books have amazing character development and super deep characters, but they also have a good bit of external plot and this rich web of supporting players who interconnect with each other. Like, the lawyer guy who's all "I'm sorry Jack Dodger but you've inherited a kid and I can't tell you why"? Is in so many other Lorraine books lmao. I'm actually pretty sure he tells the Marquess of Marsden that he inherited the Hellions of Havisham. Dr. Graves is a hero but he's also the bestest doctor who runs around and saves literally everyone who's dying in any Lorraine book ever.

I meeeeean Charles Dickens cameos in Scoundrels and he's like "I shall write a book about y'all, especially Jack Dodger because he's the coolest dude I've ever met ever in my life" and I was like wow so true Charles Dickens.

I also find it interesting that Lorraine's approach to heroes is really a lot... softer in a lot of ways than many other authors of her era, but they never feel like golden retrievers. Very few Lorraine heroes that I've read are ever truly aggressive to the heroines. Even if they don't *like* her, they're not physically *threatening* towards her. However, they are very competent, often pretty dangerous, and frequently quite dark because of a tragic backstory, self-loathing, etc. But a Lorraine hero will easily, easily hurt himself before he would ever hurt his heroine, even before he's in love. I think that's something mainstream audiences really want to see from romance heroes today--there's space for other stuff in less mainstream projects (again 365 comes to mind) but for mass appeal romance, I just feel like the hero has to have a very clear respect for women's boundaries.

[elvendorx]

Hi! I really like your blog! I was just wondering, how do you manage to find canon-based marauders content? I’m pretty new to Tumblr and while I follow the main tags, I’m tired of the short and shallow Siriuses, activist Jameses, and naive Lupins that don’t seem anything like the marauders I fell in love with. And the hatred for Snape and the condescension towards his fans makes me super scared to interact with blogs since I have posted Snape content on my main blog and I feel like I’d be eaten alive. I’m so overwhelmed! Do you use filters to help you? Or is it just finding and following the right people? Thanks for any and all advice!

hello and thank you! <3

a lot of it honestly is just finding and following the right people. the exact balance of that is personal that it will take a while to feel like you're consistently seeing things on your own specific wavelength but it's definitely doable. i think once you find one blog you really align with, see who they interact with regularly, check out those blogs, then check out who those blogs follow, etc etc. i used to systematically go through likes and reblogs on posts i liked, but once you find a few blogs you really enjoy, you'll end up finding more like-minded people quite naturally. and honestly, anyone who expects you to have the exact same tolerances for different characters as they do is probably not going to be much fun to interact with anyway.

i use filters for things i absolutely never want to see but not everything gets tagged/not everything that is tagged is the thing you don't want to see (so much sirius solo art/gen marauder stuff is tagged wolfstar) but it works and i would recommend it for absolute no-gos.

the main tags unfortunately are not safe spaces anymore and tbh if there's anything worth seeing in there, someone else will reblog it so it ends up on your dash anyway. sometimes i look in the prongsfoot tag but if anything look at anti (ship)/anti (character) tags lol and sometimes finding people who dislike the same things as you is also a good way to find like-minded people - hating can work, kids.

specifically for mwpp stuff, in my broad experience, snape fans are often more comfortable with the morally grey thing so they have solid views on snape AND sirius, james and remus, tho obviously you get the ultra protective stans too. but def follow snape fans if you are even slighty interested in snape, it's a great way of seeing how other pockets of hp fandom function. also, you could have identical views on a character as someone but you love them and they hate them, for the same reasons, and i feel like the joy is in finding the same interpretation, it's very fun and just in life it's good to see different perspectives. i got unfollowed a while back for a snape post i can't even remember but it was like 5 people and honestly the right people will probably be cooler than you think about it :)

so really my advice boils down to:

know what you do and don't want to see

know what you can and can't tolerate seeing (things that annoy you or more serious triggers)

find connections through sources you trust

try finding a mix of people who like the same things as you do/people who dislike the same things you do/people who you might not always agree with in judgement but whose analyses and approaches are objective

and eventually you'll have a great balanced lil circle <3

anyway a few recommendations of people i follow who i think offer great hp ideas:

@remus-poopin @narcissa-black-supermacy @ashesandhackles @urupotter @act-more-like-a-dog-sirius

but also consider anyone i follow/interact with a lot an endorsement! hope u have fun exploring :)

[that-there-is-a-wierd0]

---oof ctrl enter automatically reblogs. let's try this again Just adding on my thoughts here, no hate intended but i'd like to add on to the reblog because signalis brainrot

I have a hard time comprehending longer texts, please let me know or add on if I get something wrong. This essay...is extremely heavy for a fairly straightforward topic. The first few paragraphs clarify the blunt references both made in Signalis and making up Signalis. Simply put, this game is very obvious with its imagery, warping its story based of its influences. Honestly, as most creative work is derivative, then who is to say that Signalis is any different, if more blunt with its inspiration?

Images have meanings, defined in part by their contexts, and if Signalis wishes to lift imagery from Silent Hill 2 and other works, then it, by necessity, carries the meanings with them, whether it intends to or not.

Here the previous paragraph implied that Signalis mishandles its borrowed imagery by comparing it to the mishandling of Pyramid Head and his meaning in subsequent cameos compared to his original purpose and meaning. However, examples of that imagery are not explicitly given. Therefore there is no frame of reference to what exactly is being mishandled in the first place. The claim is that Signalis is carrying imagery from Silent Hill 2, misusing it, but it's not defined how.

[Signalis] wisely avoids including an overtly masculine sexually threatening figure like the Red Pyramid in its cast but there remain traces of that impulse dancing around the edges in figures like the Storch enemy and Adler, who is both the only male character in the game and also the closest thing it has to a malevolent antagonist. And yet, it's impossible to shake the feeling for me that there does seem something odd about borrowing all this in a game largely uninterested in masculinity, of placing these same rhythms of violence against twisted representations of the female form - some explicitly sexualized - in the hands of someone who does not have the kind of commentary James Sunderland brought to the act.

Again, what explicitly is Signalis borrowing? There can be an argument that the replikas of Signalis are sexualized, in that all of them are pale skinned, skinny, and conventionally pretty. That would be a fair argument, even considering Mynah's body shape and Falke's body and image made explicitly based of the "Great Revolutionary and her daughter".

Also, how do Storches/Adler carry "traces" of overt masculinity or sexual threat? If I can recall, Storches are brutish and Adler is just a man, but neither of those things make them inherently 'masculine' nor does it imply they are a sexual threat to the other units and gestalts. ((i have a bit of a hard time with my own gender presentation, so please correct me if this sounds off)).

With Adler, whom I sympathize with, he is not completely malevolent as he is morally grey. Ariane's timeloops add, changes, and removes things; both Adler and Elster are the only ones aware of this. As stated in his error file about his unit, Adler is attached to Falke to a fault, something hardwired into him. I bring this up because theory suggests he simply does not want Falke to change with the timeloop; he is parallel to Elster in that he "loves" Falke, thereby his motivation is to stop Elster and the timeloop from progressing. Protecting Falke may also be the reason he was hunting down Isa as well. In addition, the corrupted units and Falke serve as much more intimidating antagonists.

There are elements of complexity you can read into their relationship - the argument that Ariane putting the burden of her suicide onto Elster is an extraordinary act of abuse, or the fact that as per the game's world, Elster is not Ariane's equal and is in fact closer to her slave, a piece of property that she owns - but overwhelmingly this is not the reading I have seen made of their relationship. Even the latter is seemingly a major part of the appeal to their relationship to at least one fan I spoke to, a depiction of gentle BDSM or pet-play dynamics that they found affecting. People care about Elster and Ariane in a way they just don't for James and Mary.

This is what got me to writing this dissection out, but I will not ignore your previous point. There is an element of power dynamics involved with Ariane and Elster's relationship. The burden of killing your loved one can be unimaginably horrific, but that's the thing about the promise; most people do not harp on this element of the game too much because it's implied to be mutually consenting. Ariane comes to terms that she will die one way or another (as per the 3000 cycles message from the nation) and she wants to be with Elster as she dies. Elster is at the very least willing to carry Ariane's wishes, going through the whole game and successfully killing Ariane in the promise ending. We can even see in the cut-scene after that Elster is devastated by her loss as she perished next to Ariane in the cyro chamber. Elster does love Ariane, and we do see her struggle in the game as she carries out her promise, and both Ariane and Elster know that Ariane needs to die due to her suffering and (presumably) unchecked bioresonant abilities.

People also love Ariane and Elster for how they treat each other in canon. I will not be going into people's fetishes, good for them, but it is very clear how much Ariane treats Elster as an equal. First, replikas are considered property of the nation, under AEON. It is up to AEON when they are built, what they are built for, and when they are decommissioned. Many replikas only serve a linear purpose. Elster is no different, on the Penrose 512 she is meant as a maintenance unit to help Ariane with her assignment. She does not belong to Ariane. And despite being a replika, Ariane still falls in love with Elster. She hugs Elster, kisses her, dances with her, cuddles with her, doing things that absolutely contribute to Elster's persona degradation later down the line. Ariane genuinely cares for Elster, to the extent of allowing Elster kill her. And Elster reciprocates, not fighting back or retreating in anyway. Arguably, replikas do not argue with gestalts, but they also do not argue with their leaders, Falke/Kholibri or the Nation. Yet Elster defies them, the nation, her assignment because she loves Ariane and will tear S-23 Sierpinski to shreds to fufill her promise. Arguably horrifying, Signalis can be framed as a love story where indeed all parties suffer, not only Ariane.

If the world of the game is the product of the inner world of Ariane, brought to life by her reality-warping powers, and filled with both her memories and the art and music she was obsessed with, would it too not be filled with her influences? Would we be able to escape the symbols that have made us in a world made of ourselves? Or would they haunt us, creep into every thought, tainting every dream, screaming that we are nothing but them?

This is where the full extent of bioresosance becomes vague, in my opinion. By definition it is a matter of manipulating both mind and matter, and to what extent is left mostly undefined besides the Great Revolutionaty, Kholibri, Falke (i think), and Ariane. Point being, what reality is and isn't is very much left to interpretation. The problem is indeed reality is becoming "corrupted", as verbatim from the game according to Adler's notes (i forgot which one, again it has been a while since i played lol). The world is very much being filled with Ariane's influence, but not in a way that is neat or symbolically orderly. Ariane is destroying and corrupting reality in my opnion. Much of the imagery in game can be a way for players to interpret and understand the cosmic mechanisms of Signalis and what it means for the characters. As a result those symbols may not be related to Ariane herself.

Overall I did not see much parallel to Silent Hill 2 nor how its imagery was borrowed and mishandled. Author's interpretation of various elements of the game, such as Ariane's bioresonance existing in an inner world, is very interesting!

Anyways video games are so cool you guys

Signalis is Trapped in a Prison of Itself

"We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges." - The Book of the New Sun

Full spoilers for Signalis and Silent Hill 2 are as follows. CW: Spousal death, abuse, suicide, self-harm.

Last year's surprise horror darling Signalis is a game that begs to be read through the lens of its influences. It is difficult to find a piece on the game that does not, in some way, position its narrative on the game around the fact that it does not so much wear its influences on its sleeve, so much as its outfit is covered entirely by pins and badges of all things it holds dear.

While other works may invite argument on the degree of a respective influence, Signalis leaves no room for debate. It eases us into it at first, beginning with survival horror key-hunting gameplay that evokes Resident Evil, but these mechanics have become diffused, diluted, and become Norms, where specific evocation becomes difficult to detect. It's only at the end of its tutorial that Signalis makes itself clear: if you know the things it knows, if you love the things it loves, then there will be no escape from them.

You climb through the hole from Silent Hill 4: The Room into a room that evokes Henry Townshend's bedroom from that same game, whereupon the desk awaits Robert W. Chambers' The King in Yellow. Examining the book takes you into a cutscene that distantly evokes the sharp editing of Neon Genesis Evangelion, itself influenced strongly by works such as Gerry Anderson's UFO. And then, when you re-emerge from the cutscene, you find yourself staring at a mirror, unable to escape the weight of Silent Hill 2's opening shot bearing down upon you, as the segment of Chopin's Raindrop - Prelude that played in the memorable Halo 3 "Believe" trailer fades out.

That last one may sound tongue in cheek or a misapprehension, and it very well could be, but the trick Signalis plays by not so much as evoking its influences but replicating them so constantly that barely a minute can pass without a direct reference to another work is that when there's something you can't quite place the direct line to, your mind draws the strings themselves. Signalis is already into so many of the things I am into. We both like Eva and Silent Hill. We both had a Lovecraft phase, evidently. Is it possible that it first heard Raindrop in an advertisement for Halo 3? By this question, all things within Signalis become supplicant to the question of influence, trapped within it. It is perhaps for this reason that so much writing on the game becomes about detangling and identifying these influences.

Even the basic language of interaction is steeped in influence and in one overriding influence in particular. While I referred to Resident Evil above as providing the foundation for the key-lock survival horror gameplay of Signalis, it is truly Silent Hill 2 that provides the framework to build atop that foundation. Like that game, it is broken up into smaller segments rather than the interconnected game-encompassing levels of Resident Evil, filled with doors to nowhere with broken locks that will never open. The combat might best be described as simply being Silent Hill 2, translated into an overhead angle, with near-identical audio design and enemies that very frequently feel like they walked straight over from that mist-covered town, most notably with the Mandarin and Nurse enemies. Despite the sci-fi setting, narratively we're still playing in Silent Hill 2's haunted wheelhouse: a message from a lost love calling to our character, a promise unkept, for now. Like James, Signalis' Elster is always descending through labyrinths both euclidean and otherwise, encountering her own Angela and Maria. This culminates in what might be the strangest decision of the game: to set the majority of its middle third inside a level from the original Silent Hill, namely, Nowhere.

It's here I began to struggle with Signalis. Its eagerness to reference was difficult for me to deal with at the beginning of the game, but only as a kind of annoyance, something that pushed me out of the game's wonderfully crafted atmosphere. I groaned when the first keycode of the game was "0451", I sighed when I saw the carpet from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining appear again and again. It feels frustrating, but ultimately it's something I could live with. The Silent Hill evocation, though? That I found difficult to swallow.

Silent Hill 2 is a special game, a kind of special that often makes it difficult to address or speak to. Its qualities are pored over relentlessly and sung with such enthusiasm as to become grating, and yet the countless eulogies to Silent Hill 2's self-evident beauty rarely reach the truth of it. It is, after all, the clear and direct inspiration for an entire series of unsatisfying horror games, namely the "Silent Hill" games, published by Konami and developed by a cadre of different developers from Europe and America. It's hardly controversial to call those games failures, and like Silent Hill 2, their failures are astonishingly well-documented. Every Silent Hill work after the original - including Cristophe Gans' not-entirely-irredeemable film - chases the shadow of Silent Hill 2 to its detriment, replicating wholesale ideas, images, and beats from that game, stripping them bare and rendering them devoid of meaning.

You've heard it a hundred times before: Pyramid Head is a representation of James Sunderland's thoughts of and capacity for psychosexual violence. And by bringing him back without James, these latter Silent Hill works stripped Pyramid Head of meaning, rendering him an aestheticized object of straightforward fannish devotion, replicated from a place of sincerity but without understanding. From his appearance in Silent Hill: Homecoming to becoming a playable character in Dead By Daylight, Pyramid Head has become an icon of Konami's persistent misunderstanding and mishandling of Silent Hill as a concept.

All of this is to say that much of Signalis feels very much the same.

That's a provocative statement, and I recognize that. To compare Signalis so directly to the western-developed Silent Hill sequels, some of the most popularly loathed horror games of the past two decades, is a move maybe destined to raise eyebrows. To be clear, Signalis is a better, more accomplished work in my estimation than Silent Hill Homecoming. But at the same time, Signalis begs to be read through its influences. If it did not wish this to be so, it would not make these influences so apparent, so impossible to ignore. Signalis is not a game that attempts to mask and blend its influences, it is a game that excoriates them and confronts you with them at every turn. It is a pastiche. To try to look past it would feel to me like an attempt to move past the intentions of the work, rather than fully engage with them. Images have meanings, defined in part by their contexts, and if Signalis wishes to lift imagery from Silent Hill 2 and other works, then it, by necessity, carries the meanings with them, whether it intends to or not.

Hewing so close to the imagery and ideas of a game about the psychosexual violent impulses of a man who killed his wife - however you wish to interpret James' motivations, the fact is that he did kill Mary - produces some odd effects, particularly in a game about lesbian robots. It wisely avoids including an overtly masculine sexually threatening figure like the Red Pyramid in its cast but there remain traces of that impulse dancing around the edges in figures like the Storch enemy and Adler, who is both the only male character in the game and also the closest thing it has to a malevolent antagonist. And yet, it's impossible to shake the feeling for me that there does seem something odd about borrowing all this in a game largely uninterested in masculinity, of placing these same rhythms of violence against twisted representations of the female form - some explicitly sexualized - in the hands of someone who does not have the kind of commentary James Sunderland brought to the act.

Which is not that they're a completely terrible fit in and of themselves. Signalis is, in the end, at least partially, a game about killing your wife.

I say "killing" rather than "murdering", which is how I would describe James Sunderland's act, because crucially, unlike Mary, Ariane (player character Elster's partner) is outright and openly suicidal. Mary's feelings on her illness and her impending death in Silent Hill 2 are complicated, often contradictory, in an intensely human way, but there's never a suggestion that Mary wanted James to kill her, and in one ending, she's actively furious that he did so. In Signalis, this ambiguity is strip-mined out of the act: Ariane wants to die and asks Elster to kill her. In fact, the final act reveals that the entire game is likely an endless loop of Elster making her way through Ariane's nightmares, given flesh and form by reality-bending powers, down to the bottom of the labyrinth to try to kill her, over and over again, sometimes making it, sometimes not. While I'd hardly claim that the suicidal impulse is ever a simple one, and certainly there's a lot to read into the substance of Ariane's nightmares, Elster's goal is not mired in the same ambiguity, the same torrent of mixed emotions, that James' act is. She is motivated single-mindedly by her love for Ariane, and her desire to fulfill the last wish of the woman she loves.

This sits...uncomfortably with the tattered remains of Silent Hill 2's sexual violence that dangle off Signalis' skin grafts. Framing the killing of Ariane in such terms colors the sublimated act of wife-killing you spend the entire game doing, using it to underscore Elster's undying determination and love rather than the difficult and upsetting inner world of James that his monsters demonstrated. There are elements of complexity you can read into their relationship - the argument that Ariane putting the burden of her suicide onto Elster is an extraordinary act of abuse, or the fact that as per the game's world, Elster is not Ariane's equal and is in fact closer to her slave, a piece of property that she owns - but overwhelmingly this is not the reading I have seen made of their relationship. Even the latter is seemingly a major part of the appeal to their relationship to at least one fan I spoke to, a depiction of gentle BDSM or pet-play dynamics that they found affecting. People care about Elster and Ariane in a way they just don't for James and Mary.

This is perhaps best demonstrated in how the game goes about its goal to replicate the multiple endings of Silent Hill 2, but with significantly less impact. The two endings you get based on your performance through the game feel like echoes of the ending you're most likely to get, where Elster gets close to her goal but ultimately either fails or turns away. They are defined, in large part, by the "primary" ending. Again, like Silent Hill 2, there is another secret ending that you can get on New Game+, where you can perform a ritual that evokes the calling of the player character's wife back from death. Neither Silent Hill 2 nor Signalis explicitly depicts this - in Silent Hill 2 it is framed as a doomed, fool's errand, the ultimate failure of James' inability to accept what happened, while Signalis shows the ritual and then a short scene of Elster and Ariane dancing together in the wreckage of the ship that was their home.

When I watched this ending, I read it much the same way that I read the corresponding Rebirth ending in Silent Hill 2: this was a deeply sad, futile attempt by Elster to reclaim something she can never really get back, a deep dive into esoterica out of a futile desperation that feels so concretely hollow. I was surprised, then, to find that so many people online did not feel this way about the scene. In most of what I read about it, I found that people read it as the closest thing to a happy ending the game has to offer, a moment of the two together. Similarly, most fan art of the game that I've seen depicts Elster and Ariane as a happy couple, holding hands, reading together, railing each other...it speaks to the earnestness by which the game depicts Elster's love that people invest in it wholeheartedly, in a way I've never really seen with James and Maria, a relationship too difficult and complicated and fraught to easily romanticize.

I don't know if it's a reading I can easily see for myself. Part of this is personal hangups - I have never sat well with works that romanticize literal owner/property romantic relationships, it's just a personal trigger point - but I can't deny that part of it is that I am also trapped in the same cage of influence that Signalis has entombed itself in. My knowledge of, affection for, and reading of Silent Hill 2 in the context of Signalis' constant evocation of it and other influences is as a fog that comes down around me, that renders me incapable of seeing through these influences. Even my reading of Silent Hill 2 is just that - a reading, one that prevents me from seeing it in terms of one who might disagree strongly with the things I have asserted about it. Can I break free, or will I never be able to hear Chopin's Raindrop without thinking of the Master Chief?

At the bottom of the spiral, this is when the game finally clicked for me. If the world of the game is the product of the inner world of Ariane, brought to life by her reality-warping powers, and filled with both her memories and the art and music she was obsessed with, would it too not be filled with her influences? Would we be able to escape the symbols that have made us in a world made of ourselves? Or would they haunt us, creep into every thought, tainting every dream, screaming that we are nothing but them?

Signalis is a game about its influences, or rather, what it means to be influenced by them. It's about what it means to have an image, a note, a word stuck in your head so deep that you cannot pull it out, a painting that colors everything you see in those same tones, a book that consumes your thoughts entirely and demands you read its words in every book that you see after it, about the limitations and boundaries our influences place upon us. About the prison that we make for ourselves out of them, in our own hearts our own minds, preventing us from seeing anything apart from their terms, doomed to the same looping events, over and over, unable to imagine anything new. The horror of things becoming norms that wrap around us and pull us tight. No moving on, no breaking free. Just this, just us. Forever, and ever, and ever.

I don't love Signalis, and I don't feel able to use this reading to absolve it of its failings. Regardless of how intentional it might be, I still find its eagerness to aestheticize its imagery immature and unsatisfying, creating some moments that I found either embarrassing - the conflation of Russian, East German, and Chinese iconography into a tuneless morass of red scare imagery is more than a little eye-rolling - or outright offensive - the game's shallow use of explicit self-harm imagery. I think the technical competence on display is nothing short of remarkable, and I think this team has a great game in them. I just don't think this is it.

And yet, I can't deny that I find it affecting. I can't deny that it worked on me. I can't deny that I saw myself in it.

Because I too, am trapped in a prison of myself.

Aren't we all?

[sophsicle]

Honestly I understand why you wrote James with the way he reacted to Regulus’s involvement. I love that you chose to address Mary’s assault and her rightful rage. My ask is : As the writer ,what made you add Regulus to Mary’s plotline? Was it only to create conflict with James?James would have dumped Regulus no matter what because of the dark mark. Snape was also capable and more likely to do the memory charm. Was it to add a shade of grey to Reg for saving his mates?

Hello lovely! Okay, I've tried to write out this answer a few times but I keep struggling with my wording so we'll see how this goes. I think there's this thing that happens in fanfics or fandom or honestly in the HP books (where Snape is concerned) of having characters who are Death Eaters who never do anything wrong except becoming a Death Eater (does that make sense?) Like they're portrayed as joining the club but never participating in any of the group activities and therefore we're allowed to like them. And I think that's a problem, because it sets up this narrative that you can be, y'know, a Nazi, or a white supremacist, or whatever real life group you wanna use in this metaphor, and still be a fundamentally moral person and I disagree with that. If you are in anyway supporting and standing with this group you are morally compromised. And so I wanted to make clear that Regulus is not someone who does the right thing all the time (or who even knows what the right thing is) or who holds the right views or a healthy outlook on life. Because if those things are true than this story goes very differently. Then he never becomes a Death Eater, then he is essentially Sirius. It was also a way of holding the audience accountable, like we're out here rooting for this kid (and I think there are lots of reasons to root for Regulus I really do) but this kid becomes a Death Eater and you don't get to act like that doesn't mean something. This fic was meant to flesh Regulus out, to give him depth, but part of that includes him being a character you cannot love unproblematically. I really wanted to avoid skipping over the Death Eater thing which, again, I think happens a lot in this fandom. I love a morally grey character. I love an arc. I love that Regulus switches sides at the end. But that doesn't mean there isn't still ugly stuff and that ugly stuff is not going to be forgivable to some people and that ugly stuff should make you feel uncomfortable. Even if ultimately I would like people to root for Regulus, it should be difficult. Because being a Death Eater is not insignificant and it should never be considered so, and you cannot become one and not have that effect the decisions that you make and the way you treat people. It would have been too easy to have Regulus handle that situation perfectly and be like "look, he might be a Death Eater but he's a good Death Eater" like there's no such thing. And when you start to act like there is you are romanticizing bigotry, which is something I think Jegulus gets accused of a lot and something that I wanted to confront head on and not shy away from. Ok, I hope that makes sense. I also don't know that I actually managed to do any of the things I wanted to by approaching the story this way, but this is what I was trying for anyway!

[nexyra]

James Ironwood, for character ask? 👀

Aaaa thank you so much for the ask ♡ More rambling incoming !! Sorry for the wait btw, I've been both pretty busy and tired ;;

If you hate James Ironwood and don't wanna hear one good thing about him tap out now please ღ

My fav ship(s) for the character

I am not a super big shipper when it comes to James, but there are still some I like more than others soo here goes :

I think Ironwitch is a pretty good one. It's not necessarily a ship I'd search content for but I think these two would work well together ! Glynda is stern and honest and a no-nonsense kind of woman. She has the strenght to stand up to James when he slips or gets too stubborn when faced with the high stakes. At the same time, we've been shown that she cares for him and she knows he's only trying to do what's best for people. She has faith in him but also the ability to stand at his side as an equal. She seems to be the more steadfast of Ozpin's circle : loyal, you know you can trust her, and she will not crumble. This is the kind of personnality that I think James both admire and feel safe with. And the other way around, I think James is a good match for Glynda too. On a day to day basis, he's serious enough to not annoy here, but he's also a softie in some aspects and that's a nice combination to smooth out Glynda's edges.

Ironqrow is a completely different dynamic. The "we're annoying each other" dynamic is not one I'm particularly interested in usually xD But these two certainly had strong & interesting moments so it's a pretty valid ship !! Despite how they might butt heads because of the difference in their upbringing they (prior to V8) clearly trusted each other with their life. Even if Qrow jokes about shooting himself if he had to be one of James' man, when everything goes to shit there is no doubt in his mind that James wasn't responsible. Similarly, while James talks of shooting Qrow for his misbehaviour, when push comes to shove and we meet a tired Ironwood, run ragged by the pressure he's under... the only thing he does is hug him and reiterates how glad he is to see him. So again, they clearly have a lot of faith and trust in the other, and that's solid ground for a relationship.

My least favorite ship(s) for the character

Same spiel as always, shipping kids and adults is a big no from me; so any ships between Ironwood and RWBYJNOR can qualify here. That said, among the less uncomfortable ones, here are those I don't really like

This one is again because I love their relationship but platonically only, I'm talking of Winter Soldier. The reading I like best is not that Ironwood is Winter's Jacques 2.0, nor that he groomed her; but that he was an important father figure in her life. Protective and caring, who tried to help her escape with what he knew. I don't see James recruiting Winter as a way to gain a strong ally. But rather that Winter wanted to detach herself from her family name, and make something worthwhile of herself all on her own. And that the military is what Ironwood knows and understand, so naturally it's a career he'd see as a good path. Just like Winter then proposed it to Weiss. I like to think they care about each other a LOT and they're their own tight family in between the lines, even if professionalism might throw a wrench into it. For short I love them together but not romantically please =)

I don't know if there's a ship name for this, but Salem x James Ironwood would be a big nope from me too... In general, let's just assume I ship Salem with nobody because abuse.

My fav & least fav platonic relationship(s) for the character

Fav platonic relationship would be (have been because we dont talk about V8?) with Winter. Fooor the reasons I've explained above I suppose x) I (again) love the trust they had in one another and the quiet support.

There was also his relationship with Oscar that I really liked during V7, although it has been soured a bit by the (valid) reading from some people that Ironwood sought out Ozpin a lot through Oscar, and given his identity issues it is not ground for a greatly healthy relationship. Their interactions were still very intersting though ♡ I consider Oscar to be the kid who went at trying to appease James' fear or make him reconsider his decisions the best way. There was true understanding and hope for a working relationship here. I do feel that Oscar put in more work than James however (emotionally) and I wish there had been pay-back instead of a gunshot.

For my least fav relationship ? Probably Robyn or Watts ? Robyn was always very antagonistic toward Ironwood since their priorities are so different. And I overall just don't really like her after V7 so there are very few relationships with her I'm interested in (the exception is her ship with Fiona I think it's cute). Meanwhile, Watts is just a petty asshole hell bent on ruining Ironwood because he didn't pick his project. I'm not very interested in hate relationships, and since theirs wasn't deeply explored anyway, it's even more the case here. Their fight was great though, one of my favorite RWBY fights !

My favorite thing about the character

Well this was completely proven wrong by V8 buuut as of V7 I liked that he was a deconstruction of the military general (dictator) trope. Sooo you can guess how i feel about V8 X) In general among RWBY, several of my fav are fav BECAUSE they look like one trope but also have key differences that from the get go make the character stray away from said trope. For example I'm not a fan of the princess tsundere archetype at all, but I loooved Weiss in V1 BECAUSE she was extra-willing to listen and change her mind, and you could very easily tell that it was her upbringing speaking more than herself in most occasions.

Similarly, I wasn't a big fan of Ironwood before V7. I didn't hate him you know and he wasn't lower than most characters in my Tier list but I also didn't particularly care. But you know what ? I've aaaalways had a really soft spot for the "angsty angry traumatized teen". And RWBY made the mistake of extending that soft spot to "tired adults trying their best" (only to repeatedly beat them up/make them villains after making me care about them but what can you do uh)

Soo in general, I loved that Ironwood was trying so hard. I loved that he was tired and in over his head but learning and listening and trying to do good and be better despite his fears. I liked that he told his entourage about Salem and was loyal. I liked that he cared about helping the people above his own image and the way people perceived him. I liked that you could tell this was a terrible situation all around, and his decisions WERE questionnable but we could SEE that he meant WELL and was genuinely trying so hard despite how scared and tired he was.

My biggest criticism for the character

Well this won't be a surprise but in general I just wished he had stayed a morally grey character we were allowed to feel for instead of a cartoon black villain. I didn't need James to be THE Hero or anything like this despite some accusations levelled at those who like him. Him becoming one of RWBY's antagonist is honestly fine by me ! It is interesting. But I'd have preferred they kept him ambiguous and trying in his own way. (And smart because V8 Ironwood was dumb af)

I can be a tad overprotective of his character since he's just... so despised, so I think that I have inadvertently distanced myself from any of his flaws... somehow like "people are already yelling all of them so I don't need to add to this shit show" you know ? skjfkd But I KNOW he has them and it would still have been good to develop his flaws, just... not like that

But yea I'd have liked it if V8 Ironwood DID diverge from RWBYJNORQ and became an antagonist but not an iredeemable villain. LIKE,, we redeemed Hazel and Emerald and IRONWOOD is where the writers draw the line by saying "nope this one is rotten" ?? What ?

When was their writing at the peak according to me (ex : best season)

V7 definitely ! Ironwood carried V7 so hard haha. His character was fleshed out and given nuance and made to struggle and evolve and I loved him in that volume.

A song I think fits them & why

Hunger • Monsters & Men Human • Rag'n'Bone Man Way down we go • Kaleo Beekeeper • Keaton Henson Thistle and weeds • Mumford and Sons Castle of Glass • Linkin Park It's all so incredibly loud • Glass Animals

A headcanon to make up about them

His metal parts impact his metabolism so Ironwood is terrible at holding his alcohool and very little manages to knock him out. He's a workaholic. His low tolerence for alcohool is a great tool whn friends need to put him to sleep.

His joints crack and hurt in the cold, his metal parts as well and they are an hassle in the sand. James like to keep his room temperature warmer than the average atlasian because of this, otherwise he has to spend 30 min every morning simply unwiding muscles to move around efficiently.

He's not a good singer but has a nice low voice for telling stories. If he had kids, he'd probably avoid lullabies but compensate with bedtimes stories.

What I would change about them if I was making a re-write

As always, I'm kind of reflecting along the way as I write this, and one thing I'm thinking right now is... Doesn't it take away from the atlas arc message ITSELF to just pile up so many "standard bad guy" stuff on Ironwood ? Like, I wanna ask... why do we hate him ? Is he an antagonist because he lets fear get the best of him ? Because he's a classist who doesn't care about Mantle like some fans argue ? Because he's too stubborn and wants to be THE hero ? Because he doesn't listen to others ? Because he abandonned Mantle ? Because he kills peopke left and right ? Because he wanted to bomb a city ? I think you might see where I'm going with this : his status as villain is kind of messy. V8 just kept piling-up flaws and villainous actions onto Ironwood with no concern for whether this was a lenght he would go to (using the certainty that he would go to any lenghts to enact his plans), ,or whether these were one of the initial flaws/failings that led to his "fall" as an antagonist. What lesson is Ironwood supposed to learn ? Personally the very first time I yelled at my screen "No ! Why would the writers choose that ?" is when Ironwood shot Oscar. When answering criticism against medias, many people tend to look at it only through the lense of "well it makes sense in universe" or as if there were no other ways for the story to devolve. But at the end of the way, everything in a story is a choice from the writer even if it is influenced by the characters' personnalities. If I took the scene where Ironwood shoots Oscar, someone might tell me "he's crippled by his PTSD, he COULD do this." Maybe, that's a reading I can somewhat understand at least. But the writers have the power to NOT put his character in such a position. When I saw the wreck that was V7 finale, I ranted to my bestfriend about it and at no point did i say "why did Ironwood do that", I said "why did the writers make him shoot Oscar, the only point narratively would be to make irredeemable" Aaaand that's what they went for and I obviously didn't care for it. So if I had to rewrite it; I would have kept Ironwood's "mistakes" more focused. If he's wrong because he wants to abandon Mantle, because he's (understandably) scared and doesn't want to take risks; then stay focused on that. It's what makes RWBY leave, and out of all his V8 actions that's really the only thing RWBY needed to tell the whole world he wasn't an ally anymore apparently. - Don't make him shoot Oscar point blank, instead Oscar can simply fall because he flinches away from Ironwood's outburst; and a distraught/guilty Ironwood can decide that he doesn't have the time or capacity to help because of the tense situation. (Killing and not saving someone don't hold the same moral weight at all). - Don't make him kill people left and right or bomb cities, maintain the flaw of Ironwood struggling with his PTSD and his fear and not being able to take risks. - Don't paint him as a black villain, and eventually write V8 in such a way that RWBYJNORQ show taking risks might lead to a bigger victory, which was the volume's theme anyway. For example, following Oscar's destruction of the whale, a growth can occur that would bring back together the two anti-Salem factions : Oscar's risk put Atlas out of harm's way, which leads to Ironwood seeing that maybe there WAS a way to save Mantle as well as Atlas despite Salem's presence and he might have jumped the gun too quickly because of his fears. I'm not sure, I haven't thought about this extensively honestly but I hope you see what I mean. I think it would have been more focused & more in-character to focus Ironwood's failings on his fear; and the fact that he cares for the people and the greater good sometimes at the cost of the individuals. The idea that by sacrificing individuals too much you forget the people you're fighting for in the first place, could have been interesting to dig deeper into. Keep to the idea that Ironwood is somewhat disensitized to the individuals suffering for the sake of the greater good, instead of making him just

callous & uncaring.

My guess for their MBTI/Enneagram

I think pre-V8 Ironwood was an unconventionnal ENFJ. Aka, the type of character no one would type ENFJ because they go by stereotypes and Fe stereotypes are just enneagram 2 everywhere (aka nice, kind, helpful) whereas Ironwood has an enneagram tritype very common among xxTJs so that's what he looks/behaves like, but the way he thinks (what's best for the people, ethical values derived from an Atlasian upbringing) align more with Fe cognitively I think I'm going with ENFJ 6w5 1w2 3w4

Starting from V8 though, Ironwood veered clearly into ENTJ territory (types aren't supposed to change but I wouldn't say RWBY is the most consistent media when it comes to characters' personnalities)

One aspect that I think would be nice to delve deeper into ?

I understand why they didn't care to, but it'd have been interesting to get a few backstory hints for Ironwood. How did he lose half his body ? How did Oz recruit him ? Or some pieces about his upbringing ?

[legobiwan]

Okay, so I finished Catalyst.

On the whole...not...much...happened in this book? It was pretty slow-going, overall, and quite frankly, I could have done without about 70% of the scenes on Vallt.

Maybe it’s just me, but both Lyra and Galen come off of as very morally complicated people. This isn’t a bad thing, at all, but their relationship was somewhat uncomfortable for me to witness. Lyra gives up her career for Galen, Galen feels tied down by familial responsibility, and Jyn is a mostly cardboard-cutout kid (who, thankfully, James Luceno gave very little dialogue. One of my major complaints about the most recent Thrawn novel was the dependence on the child characters that just didn’t work for me.) I just feel Lyra and Galen are constantly martyring themselves for one another for an unfulfilling situation and while, yes, of course Krennic was being an absolute manipulative dick during the whole thing, the Lyra/Galen partnership just felt very...off to me.

Krennic, however. Ho boi, now there’s a fascinating character. First of all he demands a promotion from Mas Amedda not once but twice. The audacity of that, alone. But what really struck me throughout the book (aside Krennic’s naked, hilarious ambition) is his preoccupation with Galen, his self-made “feud” with Lyra over Galen’s attentions. Look, I am not a person to say things like this lightly, as it falls very much outside my wheelhouse, but I am wholly convinced in this novel that Krennic is actually, in some perverse way, in love with Galen. Even as he uses Galen as a stepping stone for his own career. 

It was actually kind of fun to watch Tarkin get slapped around by Mas Amedda a bit. Take down that man a few notches for once in his wretched life.

While I appreciated they included Saw in this, there wasn’t a whole lot of development of his character beyond, “Yes, I fought on Onderon and lost a lot.” I get how he and the Ersos eventually linked up but he still felt like a one-dimensional character. 

Honestly, my favorite bits of this book came when Lyra and Galen were debating the Jedi and their legacy. Galen’s point of view is not wholly inaccurate, in that the Jedi kept secrets and possibly withheld research for one reason or another. I also agree with Galen that the Jedi did not necessarily have the last line of what “the truth” was. I very much enjoyed his internal discussions regarding the Jedi’s philosophical views of kyber and the Force and Galen’s more scientific method. That is the kind of discussion I want to see in Star Wars.

Lyra is totally a Jedi acolyte, which is interesting and kind of strange. She presents as a little proselytize-y when it comes to her “faith” in the Force and to be honest, it kind of rubbed me the wrong way on a lot of occasions.

Again, I feel like Star Wars authors are being hamstrung by the Mouse in this nu-canon situation (I don’t know how Claudia Grey got away with what she did in Master and Apprentice, but thank the gods we got at least that much.) There were so many interesting themes that could have been explored more in-depth in Catalyst (and I think Luceno did a pretty good job of addressing propaganda, political ambition, and the blinders of science and research, considering) and that some of this was discarded for a “hopeful,” complete ending. Like, leave us hanging a bit, Disney. It’s okay, not everything needs a wholesome red bow at the end. 

No but seriously, Krennic and Galen is a fascinating dynamic that - and hear me out here for a minute - has shades of Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham to it. Shades, just to be clear, but there’s a sense of corruption of a soul not entirely pure going on there. 

Overall, a decent book, but the Mouse has got to Mouse. 7/10.

[stray-tori]

TPN S02E08 - Initial Thoughts (anime-only)

Reaction Vid: Google Drive

I’m here, finally! Let me just say, I’m glad to see some more positivity around ahh- Not that anyone isn’t allowed to feel negatively about it, I do have my problems too of course! But it’s just nice when things are epic and liked by people :)

.

I don’t think I can really separate it into topics this time so I’ll just kind of... go through it by chronological order this time! With “.” paragraphs separating thoughts :)

.

Norman figuring out that there’s at least one other person taking tests because he’s left-handed and the code scan thing is placed on the right when he put it down left is such a nice, unspoken execution!

.

also. Zaziee :(

.

also, what do we think is happening in this room? are those just... dead subjects that they feed to demons or...? experimenting with how certain manipulated humans will affect demons eating them? 

(also they just flipped Norman’s walk here, so his curl is on the wrong side. not blaming them or anything, I just noticed. I hope the staff is doing okay :<)

.

also, idk if my brain is melting but when Norman was like "I just need a detonator" and then he focuses on that king chess piece before the explosion, is the implication that the king piece was the detonator? :D

I do like the few subtle hints we do get just from the scenes (like the left hand/right hand thing and the cube communication) but I feel like I'm missing some connecting pieces here, even with knowing Smee was there and supporting him. It’s weird because I feel like the left-hand thing was really nicely done and digestible and the fork thing is presumably checking out how many cameras there are (even if still a little obvious) - but the explosion? Maybe I’m just stupid haha- it had to be Smee helping, right? I just would have liked more hints (but maybe I’m too small brain rn).

.

I'm a little confused because Peter said "the era of James as the gatekeeper has ended" (paraphrased), so he’s the gatekeeper right? And Norman was so concerned about the gatekeeper last episode, to the point that I felt like it was a point largely against the "using the gate in GF" plan (aside from uncertainty about the gates and the human world, of course) - but it's literally just a human then? I thought it was gonna be some epic demon or magic concept or something, but it's just that dude pff- whats the dude gonna do against the murder squad? :D Ig he has the farm/demon forces behind him but those would exist either way (and Norman must have considered that), so why is he in particular such a big deal/threat? Is he that ultra big brain? Not big brain enough to have prevented Norman’s escape anyway.

Or maybe he’s just 6 moves ahead and waiting for Norman to lead him back to the hideout that was referenced a few episodes ago where Norman brings all the stolen kids -- but I feel like that’s such a... roundabout way of capturing the GF kids. Plus, that should be Isabella’s doing, if anything. So yeah. Confused about that a bit.

.

I love the parallel how in ep1 Ray running from the pursuers and Emma collapsing was the whole thing about like, not taking it all upon yourself -- and now Emma (who mirrored Ray’s exact run through the forest) got help with Ray jumping in and also later Sonju, conveniently timed as usual haha.

(negativity) It’s a nice parallel, though i would have preferred if Ray had run again and Emma had gotten the shot - it’d still carry around the same message (”then vs now”) but please I beg you give Emma one (1) cool bow shot  - or I’ll steal your animation and do it myself >:”(

(ik she got the hunting shot which was slow and cool but idk)

.

The animation was so pretty. I loved Norman on the cliff and the wind animation, and the MUSIC when the town raid happened and how everything was framed and the goddamn MUSIC???? DID I MENTION THE MUSIC.

Also Norman’s expression and that shot where he realizes Vyrk has the blood condition and sweeps in for a stab.

It was pretty brutal and I appreciate that they showed it. It’s just... really pretty overall and- yes. thank you. love goes out to the staff. god knows they need some. and money. please give them more money.

.

I also like how with how the episode set up the whole, "are you god?" - "I'll be a god or devil" thing, and then when Vyrk asks "are you a human?", my friend joked he'd answer "no, i'm god" and then we joked a bit about his silence. But in hindsight, I really appreciate those jokes, because it made me realize: for a different kind of character, that WOULD have been the perfect setup to have a badass response but that silence was probably on purpose and I can’t really explain it but I just like how that makes the through-line in the episode even stronger and also kind of connects with his wavering?? I can’t explain but I LIKE IT.

.

(slightly negative) It's a little bit funny that the parallel didn't occur to him until it was thrown in his face, but I think that's what dissociation and just being observed in one's plan does.

Plus I do get what they're going for, and it was pretty dang emotional. A little on the nose maybe but- yee.

It works well as an eye opener to tear down the mental wall between the two groups. He's also never really been in contact with demons equally before afaik so, I shall accept it. Not that currently killing them all makes him equal in power dynamic right now, but I mean like, in a way where he truly, in real life, got to see that they’re similar -- he made comparisons to humans last episode, so clearly he wasn’t completely unaware. He’s smart, he knew what he was doing would make him seem like a devil to the demons. He probably just numbed himself to it until something that could break those walls down happened, ie the Emma thing.

I feel like it could have worked too if her name wasn’t Emma, but he probably wouldn’t have paused for as long and the voiced lines couldn’t have been given the time needed to make them hit as strongly - but I do think just a line that sounds really similar to what they talked about in GF could have been enough too - but again, that would have potentially taken too long down the exchange between the two.

It also doesn’t seem completely random since the old guy also reacted to Emma’s name before and everything so. Overall, I’m willing to suspend my disbelief - even if it IS funny that the family naming went from Vyrk to... Emma :D (though demons do get old so I suppose that makes sense haha)

.

I also wonder how this will impact Norman going forward. Even if he decides for the GF plan now (likely, we don’t have much time), he still did that and even if they return all the degenerated demons with Mujika’s, Sonju’s and Vyrk’s help... I doubt those who were already eaten and killed, can be saved. So that blood is on his hands forever now, likely hurting even more now that he feels personally impacted by it and not just... knows he’s doing something bad.

The anime definitely doesn’t have the time to delve into that sadly but that’s,,, very good angst.

.

week 3 of asking where is Isabella- (I mean I am GLAD that she didn’t show up at the temple- yET - because that’d just make them leaving them there worse but fudshjsd- Is she actually just waiting for them to come for the gate what’s happening ahahaha-)

I also don’t know if I mentioned this in my last episode thoughts or not, but I do still believe the gate stuff could have been revealed more incrementally? Like have James include that tidbit of info, please. If we know gates exist, then at least now it isn’t such an extreme change of information to know: “there are gates. yes where you were sent WAS a gate, but they’ve been destroyed. oh and another gate is in GF!” like HOLD UP-

.

I wonder if we’ll ever see the hideout that Cislo or Vincent referenced... I’m sure that’d be lots of random children designs so probably not but,, I am really curious how and if they’ll take all those kids. Norman did say he wants freedom for all cattle children. but with no large scale plan anymore, I’m not sure if that’s gonna work. If any human stays behind, as I’ve often talked about before, the cycle just starts anew and I’m really curious if TPN will go for a morally grey ending like that.

Unless the whole “evil-blood” religion works out this time when the high class is gone. but even Sonju is already in part a counter-example so... we’ll see I suppose.

.

I really loved this episode though! If the anime continues this trend to the finish line, it’ll stay a wonky 7 for me :) (quality wise, you guys know my tpn brainrot won’t make me truly hate it pff- tpn love too big-)

[danwhobrowses]

20 AEW Dark and Elevation Regulars that AEW should sign

Now I know, AEW has a very stacked roster, in fact I've considered writing an essay on the risk of AEW's growing roster being top-heavy

I mean we've barely scraped the potential of Brian Cage, Scorpio Sky, Wardlow, Sammy Guevara, TH2, Sonny Kiss, Matt Sydal, Proud and Powerful, Nick Comoroto, Will Hobbs, Serena Deeb (who I know is injured atm), and many more. But with Rampage oncoming maybe there is room for them.

But, we'll stick a pin in that for now, because tonight is AEW's 100th Episode of Dark. A big deal still considering it's one of AEW's 2 weekly youtube wrestling shows, and one of AEW's many Youtube weekly shows if you include vlogs such as BTE, SammysVlogs, Ethan Page's vlog and the AEW-promotional Countdown to and Outside the Ring with Lexy Nair segments and the Unrestricted Podcast. In the pandemic era, Dark became a home to several indie talents in need for work, some got signed but not all, so I'm gonna list 10 men's and 10 women's wrestlers who were regulars on Dark and Elevation who AEW can and should still sign

Note: I will not be including wrestlers who look set for regularity, so Wheeler Yuta, Jora Johl, Fuego and the Wingmen won't be on the list, as will any AEW Women's tournament entrants (Maki Itoh, Madi Wrenkowski, Nicole Savoy etc.). Danny Limelight and Konosuke Takeshita are also signed to MLW and DDT Pro just fyi

10 Men AEW should sign

The men's division is already stacked, and it has a lot of up and comers too, but there are still a few areas where AEW's Dark stalwarts have proven they can fill a void for.

Honorable mentions for: JDX, El Australiano, M'Badu, Jake St. Patrick, Brick Aldridge, Megabyte Ronnie, Suge 'Pineapple Pete' D and Vary Morales. Also Kidd Bandit, but he hasn't wrestled on Dark or Elevation so I couldn't add him in.

10. Marty Casaus Better known as Marty 'the Moth' Martinez from Lucha Underground, Marty trained with AEW after some time out with injury and made some appearances on Dark. As the Moth, Marty demonstrated his character work as a gross heel, but his size was also an asset to his disturbed and near-psychotic persona.

9. Dean Alexander An alumnus of the Nightmare Factory, Alexander has frequented on Dark and Elevation usually in tag action where he hasn't been able to get his dickhead persona across. He is your traditional cocky heel which in the Nightmare Factory showcases has led to his hilarious downfalls, even losing to Negative One in his multiple failures to win in the Main Event of these showcases. Frankly, this is what Baron Corbin should be like if you're gonna mock him, he's also very impressive in the ring.

8. Dillon McQueen Another Nightmare Factory alum, Dillon McQueen has also only been used for jobbing, but his character is actually great. The King of Queens, Dillon brims charisma that would be a winner for crowds, but he has a babyface fire to him as well, easily could be a rising talent with the right training.

7. Dan Barry To be honest, I like his Hawaiian Shirts. He has a lot of experience in the indies and can work in a similar way Colt Cabana works balancing serious and comedy wrestling, would just be pretty cool to see him more.

6. & 5. TNT (Terrence and Terrell Hughes) Sons of D-Von Dudley, TNT have had less appearances on AEW as of recent, which is a shame, because they can definitely be developed as some of the next gen tag teams the Acclaimed and Blonds have been. AEW haven't shied from legacy wrestlers in the past, and the duo definitely have potential.

4. Chandler Hopkins Chandler Hopkins has shown up to be squashed by the big men a lot, but somehow he also manages to eke out some strong entertainment and fluid wrestling in it. His match against Brian Cage is an effective example of this. Like Fuego, Chandler is definitely someone you can use on the undercard for some enhancement, maybe even push up once more character comes across.

3. Ryzin Ryzin has stuck with AEW for quite a while now, even having skits on BTE. The Unholy Father however never got a W on AEW, which is a shame because he has character and promo skills in hand. He could easily be a fit for Chaos Project as well or teamed with Abandon in a James Mitchell kinda role.

2. Carlie Bravo One of the first class alums of the Nightmare Factory, Carlie Bravo remains charismatic and athletic in his showings, he even had a great little pairing with Shawn Dean until Dean's signing, I'd love to see them bring that back - two Navy veterans tearing up the tag scene would be pretty awesome.

1. Baron Black Few have stayed the course during the pandemic era like Baron Black. Debuting in April and still yet to get his first win, he was one of the three touted stars by Cody on Sammy's vlog who he encouraged to be booked around the world because of his workrate and skill. If anyone has earned it that isn't named Fuego del Sol (or that other name Cody mentioned), it's Baron Black.

10 Women AEW should sign In contrast to the men's division, AEW's women's roster does look like it could use some buffing, for midcard and even building more stars.

Honorable mentions are plenty in this one, so just missing out are the following: Ashley D'Amboise, Leila Grey, Renee Michelle, Jazmin Allure, Savannah Evans, Willow Nightingale, the Renegade Twins, Holidead, Kenzie Paige, Jennacide and Brooke Havok (who I would guess will be signed once her leg recovers).

10. Ashley Vox With or without her Sea Stars tag partner, Delmi Exo, Ashley Vox has proven herself a frequent flier for AEW. Talented in singles and tag competition. She also has a strong rapport with many of AEW's current roster.

9. Alex Gracia The Pink Dream has been on ROH as of recent but remains a freelancer, her last appearance being a squash from Dr. Britt Baker DMD. AEW must've been high on Gracia at one point because they gave her a title shot on Dynamite. With experience in Shimmer and Stardom, Gracia would definitely be a worthy addition.

8. Tesha Price Another woman who AEW put on Dynamite rare times, Tesha proved herself to play face and heel during her time on Dark and Elevation. As a heel she showed a lot of fire especially against KiLynn King and Ryo Mizunami, the Psycho Sweetheart definitely has something she can give to the division - who are tbf lacking in heels right now.

7. Vertvixen I am not sure what it is about Vertvixen specifically, but whenever I see her I think she has the look, not to mention the athleticism to boot. Her triple threat on MPW against Jennacide and Jazmin Allure was a definite highlight as of recent.

6. Miranda Alize A former Mae Young Classic competitor, like Jennacide and Gracia she's recently been used by ROH, but she is definitely a confident wrestler and does not shy from the intergender matches either, having fought Laredo Kid and Danny Limelight. She's worked with many impressive wrestlers too, including an Impact Knockouts Title match against Jordynne Grace and matches against Deonna, Taya and Tessa.

5. Reka Tehaka The Samoan Savage may've debuted on AEW's first ever house show, but regular Dark and Elevation appearances have been met with positive reactions. Being partly trained by the Nightmare Factory, Tehaka has done well to establish herself despite only wrestling for a year and a half, she could definitely be a prospect.

4. Veda Scott Okay, so I cheated a little by saying no competitors, but I could not leave out Veda on this list. She has in-ring talent and intergender experience - tagging with her Speedball husband - but on AEW Dark and the Deadly Draw she proved herself excellent on commentary. A female voice in the booth even for just the women's matches would go a long way for the division and Veda's the perfect voice for it.

3. Dani Jordyn The Mean Girl is definitely someone you can call a regular on Dark and Elevation. She works hard and works with a lot of main roster talent, and I don't think I've seen her put on a bad match. So it would be nice to reward her with a contract.

2. Diamante It still baffles me actually that Diamante has yet to become All Elite. Deadly Draw winner and involved in a lot of the Elevation/Dark women's feuds, Diamante has a wealth of knowledge and experience under her belt. She's still popular with fans and can easily step back into her LAX days by pairing with the Inner Circle. Few unsigned talent have won as much as her too, I would say it's when rather than if, but when is taking a long ass time.

1. KiLynn King The three names Cody praised highly were Fuego, Baron Black and KiLynn King, so I think above all else they should be given contracts. In fact, I was surprised King wasn't on the Dark 100 card, by virtue that although King has shown up on Dynamite a few times, she has been on Dark and Elevation 41 times since debuting in May 2020, it was a shock that someone so regular wasn't on the card. King showed she could work as the bully heel but also as a charismatic babyface, even having a little faction brewing with Swole and Red Velvet as RSK, but when crowds came back we seemed to drop the potential of AEW's first all-women faction. King is over with fans...so long as you don't put her against someone as over as Thunder Rosa, and she has put on some lowkey bangers during her time on AEW, especially the one against Riho. Tall and powerful, but fun in the ring and outside the ring with clips of her in the crowd chanting and even vibing to Angelico's music. King would definitely be on the top of my list of AEW Dark regulars that deserve a contract.

I'm sure I might've missed some and opinions may differ, but I think these lot would definitely be able to fit into AEW effortlessly thanks to their time on Dark and Elevation. Many of whom could be used to build or become future champions themselves, and I hope still to see more of them beyond Dark 100.

[audreyprovostya]

People have strong opinions on YA romance. Mostly negative. I fervently disagree. 

The past few years have experienced a boom in young adult fiction, from the Harry Potter series to the infamous Twilight books. Parents have watched slack-jawed as their teens devoured them. It’s no surprise that literary critics and concerned adults alike have taken to scouring these works for an answer as to why their teens seem so enthralled, and they were not impressed with what they found. Ever since then, the young adult genre has been castigated as the willful dumbing-down of an entire generation, and a stigma revolves around the works, their authors, and their readers. But this prejudice is well-rooted in ageism and sexism, and largely ignores to attempt any critical analyses on the quality of the writing in favor of panning something simply because it is not a “literary classic”.  

It is most useful to talk about young adult romance, which seems to be under fire the most, but first, it is important to define what the term “young adult” refers to precisely. Mary Ann Badavi in her article, “No, The Fault in Our Stars Is Not Young-Adult Fiction’s Savior,” argues that YA describes books written about teenagers. At the same time, Ruth Graham in her controversial article titled, “Against YA” defines it as books written for teenagers. Graham argues books for teens should not be read by adults and thus should not be considered good literature, while Badavi argues that books written about teenagers can be read by adults and have merit. The term “YA” is incredibly broad and flexible, even flimsy, and is more of a marketing term than a literary categorization. Curtis Sittenfield wrote about his book, which he intended to be for adults but was marketed as a young adult novel, “You write the book you want to write, and then publishing has its way with it.” The lines between adult and young adult are incredibly blurred, and publishers are not thinking what is appropriate for the book more than they are thinking of how best to get it into the most hands. Sometimes that means teens will buy and appreciate some books more, even if they were supposed to be for adults, or the other way around. James Patterson’s Maximum ride series, as Margo Rabb, author of Cures for Heartbreak, describes in her New York Times article, “I’m Y.A., and I’m O.K,” was first categorized as a young adult novel series until sales went down, and then was placed in an all adult section in which the sales picked back up again. The story revolves around a group of winged teenagers, and features typical young adult themes such as romance and puberty. But why are adults interested in books “for kids?” In her article, “The Adult Lessons of YA Fiction,” senior associate editor for The Atlantic Julie Beck writes, 

I read [YA Fiction] because the stories are good and meaningful to me now...What I do mean to say is that things made for teenagers are not inherently less worthy of our time, attention, and critical consideration, simply because they’re for and about teens… The process of personhood might slow with age, but it doesn’t stop.

Thusly, the argument against reading young adult literature as an adult because it is intended for “children” doesn’t hold much water. 

Some adults have accepted this, and have added young adult literature to their collection of books. However, they are often ashamed for having an interest in them as if they are juvenile, especially romance for young adults. YA romance novels are often painted as a means of wish fulfilment and escapism for boy-crazy teenage girls that is empty of any intelligent or challenging content. It would be comparable to a marshmallow; sweet, but ultimately only made of sugar and air. On the other side, some women critique from a feminist point of view; that girls should not be taught that they can only find worth in a relationship with a boy. Tara Isabella Burton wrote in her New Statesman article, “‘Ghost Stories’: The ubiquitous anti-feminism of young adult romances,” that YA romance couples lack real depth, and are thus unrealistic. “Her relationships are not predicated on the idea that two people, with all their flaws, might discover themselves operating in emotional synchronicity. Rather, Mary is loved because she is the best…” But it is not that simple. 

YA Romance Novels are especially important for their female readers as sources of inspiration and strength. In an article for the Washington Post, Alyssa Rosenberg wrote, “Romance novels are a tonic, a form of reassurance that someone is interested in ordinary women’s inner lives and is rooting for us to resolve our conflicts about work, love, and what we deserve from our relationships.” And yet some critics argue that this form of escapism is merely just that; and not truly literature. Rosenberg follows up with, “It is a poor strategy, though, to hector women to read classics without acknowledging that the canon — which provides plenty of fantasy fulfillment for men and attention to their inner lives — can be an unnerving reminder of a past that for women is not always past.” Rosenberg is not the only one with this sentiment. Blogger Chelsea Codren wrote in her blog post on “the hub,” run by the Young Adult Library Services Association 

...YA romance novels are the only places where teenage girls can get frank discussions of sex, gender, and sexuality… they are giving them a place where it is safe to have girly emotions...Teenage girls don’t need a lecture; they need every ounce of support we can give them in a world that tells them their emotions are stupid and their thoughts don’t matter.

Perhaps instead of internalizing ridiculous romantic ideals as many critics believe, girls are discovering lessons about the complexities of life. A reason why anyone reads in the first place. 

Though at the same time, Graham disagrees that escapism is good. She states in her article that, “At its heart, YA aims to be pleasurable.” But escapism is the whole point of reading and writing; the author intentionally works to immerse the reader in their world, to pull the reader into the narrative enough to believe the characters are real so that their readers are emotionally invested. Otherwise, they would get bored with the story and stop reading. The experience wouldn’t be pleasurable. Critics may mention that some literature, especially romance, works as escapism and is thus not literature. There is a difference between creating complete escapism; an alternate reality where the main character has no personality and is really a pair of shoes for the readers to walk in, and a character that has a personality but is also relatable on a human level. Rosenburg writes of Graham’s article, 

Graham might have had a more defensible case and made a more effective plea against what the film critic A.O. Scott called the “cultural devaluation of maturity,” if her piece made a comprehensive case against readers who seek out a certain kind of easy enjoyment and moral satisfaction no matter where they find it.

Reading can be pleasurable, but not in an empty way. It is pleasurable because stories offer questions, insights, and hopes that we fervently search for each time we pick up a book. This is what we look for in stories. While many teens and adults alike are willing to entertain books like Fifty Shades of Grey or Twilight as pure fun, at the end of the day, the books that stay with them the most are the ones that have the emotional depth, human experience, and connection they, like all readers, are searching for. 

So why not just turn to “the greats” like the Great Gatsby, the Picture of Dorian Gray, or The Catcher in the Rye rather than sift through the ever-expanding mountain of YA books? Critics of YA would rather teens seek out these examples of literature instead. Graham writes again, “But if they are substituting maudlin teen dramas for the complexity of great adult literature, then they are missing something.” That is completely true. There is merit in reading the classics. It’s important to broaden your horizons and take in good literature from all around you. Most of my AP Literature books went unread when I was younger, but now, every time I see the copies in the box in my cellar, I always make a note to myself to finally pick them up and read them. I want to be able to experience them at my own pace, on my own time, because I too am searching for the human experience found in reading quality works of literature, like everybody else, including teenagers.  

[presidentrhodes]

Excerpts from Chiwetel's recent GQ Hype interview:

On the pandemic

"At first I feared the new normal ... I’ve spent most of the pandemic up until now in New York and watching as at first denial hits, then comes the realisation of the severity of the situation. It was very discombobulating. But the human animal adapts, we evolve; that's the beauty of it. As time goes by one doesn’t feel quite so panicked or anxious.

"The thing that has kept me awake at night, other than the obvious worries over the illness, is the feeling of, well, if everything is changing, am I part of that change? Do I need to engage with people, friends, family in a different way? How have I been utilising my time? For many years, being a working actor, I have existed and lived in a sort of bubble already, in my own permanent state of travelling isolation. So having this moment of reflection, of realising that there are people I can reach out to, has been huge for me."

About Gina Prince-Bythewood (director) and his character, Copley

"I loved her film Beyond The Lights with Gugu Mbatha-Raw and I was excited about her taking on a project of this size, excited about her as a storyteller and a black woman making this type of film. As soon as I met with Gina and began talking about Copley, we could see we were both interested in his morality, his at best ethically ambiguous way of looking at the world. This really grounded all the fantasy and made it unlike any other graphic novel adaptation. For me, if anyone has the mentality of ‘The ends justifies the means’, as Copley does, then don’t do it. But he lives in that grey area, as do many people in real life. I felt there could be a moment of empathy for him during the film. The decisions he makes and his background made him neither an outright villain nor particularly heroic. He’s complex."

Why Hollywood needs Marvel now more than ever

"The industry will always need an engine; now more than ever, post-Covid ... If you don’t have an engine, there will be no industry at all. It’s going to need these big films, the likes of Marvel, the James Bond franchise and so on. I think that sort of rhetoric about what is considered cinema and what isn’t, being too picky and so on, is just barking up the wrong tree. The industry is in deep trouble at the moment, many jobs, theatres, venues are on the line. So let’s focus on survival, rather than this sort of finickety artistic debate."

On anti-Black racism and colonialism

"Anti-black racism has been one of the fundamental parts of modern history in the Western world. It is baked into the cake of the occidental world in a way that few other things are. It’s like the flour in the cake. And this anti-black racism is heightened by colonialism and by the slave trade. So the profitability of black and brown bodies has become essential to how the West has worked. Dismantling these systems is the work of several lifetimes – my life, yes, but also those that come after me.

"The thing is it is very difficult to do this. All these systems need to survive is a sort of apathy from the white community. This is why these white supremacist power systems continue to be considered the norm. The white people, whether they’re good natured or whether they’re not, will by and large let it run. They won’t get involved. They won’t care about it enough. So, yes, white people will turn and say, ‘Oh, this is a terrible thing. Systematic racism is awful, isn’t it?’ but unless those same white people actually start to get involved, then the system will stay. This is why education is so important."

I could quote the entire interview here. Honestly, he's so so so well-spoken and eloquent and his thought process makes me want to scream at how perfect he is.

(full link in the reblog)

[raptured-night]

Hi! I’m part of the lgbtq+ community and Severus is my favorite HP character and I was wondering (if you have the time and feel obliged) if you could please give me a few examples of how he’s queer? It’s been a few years since I reread the books, and def before I came out, so I’m a little in the dark here lol Thanks!!

First of all, I just wanted to apologize for how long it has taken me to properly respond to your ask. I’ve been dealing with some ongoing health issues that have turned me into something of a moody writer. I’ll get random spurts of energy and inspiration and then hit a wall of absolute writer’s block assisted by a major case of executive dysfunction every single time I try to respond to the multiple asks languishing in my inbox. Fortunately, I found myself involved in a discussion just today that addressed your ask so perfectly that I wanted to share it with you.  In the very least, that discussion has also managed to shake off my writer’s block temporarily so that I have found myself in the right head-space to finally be able to give this lovely ask the thought and attention that I feel it deserves. 

Although, in regards to the Snape discourse I linked above, I feel that I should warn you in advance that the discussion was prompted by an anti-Snape poster who made a rather ill-thought meme (I know there are many in the Snapedom who would rather just avoid seeing anti-Snape content altogether, so I try to warn when I link people to debates and discussions prompted by anti-posts) but the thoughtful responses that the anti-Snape poster unintentionally generated from members of the Snapedom (particularly by @deathdaydungeon whose critical analyses of Snape and, on occasions, other Harry Potter characters is always so wonderfully nuanced, thought-provoking, and well-considered), are truly excellent and worth reading, in my opinion. Also, as I fall more loosely under the “a” (I’m grey-ace/demisexual) of the lgbtqa+ flag and community I would prefer to start any discussions about Snape as a queer character or as a character with queer coding by highlighting the perspectives of people in the Snapedom who are actually queer before sharing any thoughts of my own.

In addition, I also wanted to share a few other posts where Snape’s queer coding has been discussed by members of the Snapedom in the past (and likely with far more eloquence than I could manage in this response of my own).

Source

Source

Source

Source

Source

Source

Source

Source

Source

Source

Along with an excellent article in Vice by Diana Tourjée, in which a case for Snape being trans is convincingly argued. 

Importantly, you’ll notice that while some of these discussions do argue the possibility of Snape being a queer or trans character others may only discuss the way that Snape’s character is queer coded. That is because there is a distinct but subtle difference between: “This character could be queer/lgbtq+” and: “This character has queer/lgbtq+ coding” one which is briefly touched on in the first discussion that I linked you to. However, I would like to elaborate a bit here just what I mean when I refer to Snape as a character with queer coding. As while Rowling has never explicitly stated that she intended to write Snape as lgbtq+ (although there is one interview given by Rowling which could be interpreted as either an unintentional result of trying to symbolically explain Snape’s draw to the dark arts or a vague nod to Snape’s possible bisexuality: "Well, that is Snape's tragedy. ... He wanted Lily and he wanted Mulciber too. He never really understood Lily's aversion; he was so blinded by his attraction to the dark side he thought she would find him impressive if he became a real Death Eater.”) regardless of her intent when she drew upon the existing body of Western literary traditions and tropes for writing antagonists and villains in order to use them as a red-herring for Snape’s character, she also embued his character with some very specific, coded subtext. This is where Death of the Author can be an invaluable tool for literary critics, particularly in branches of literary criticism like queer theory. 

Ultimately, even if Rowling did not intend to write Snape as explicitly queer/lgbtq+ the literary tradition she drew upon in order to present him as a foil for Harry Potter and have her readers question whether he was an ally or a villain has led to Snape being queer coded. Specifically, many of the characteristics of Snape’s character design do fall under the trope known as the “queering of the villain.” Particularly, as @deathdaydungeon, @professormcguire, and other members of the Snapedom have illustrated, Snape’s character not only subverts gender roles (e.g. his Patronus presents as female versus male, Snape symbolically assumes the role of “the mother” in the place of both Lily and later Narcissa when he agrees to protect Harry and Draco, his subject of choice is potions and poisons which are traditionally associated more with women and “witches,” while he seemingly rejects in his first introduction the more phallic practice of “foolish wand-waving,” and indeed Snape is characterized as a defensive-fighter versus offensive, in Arthurian mythology he fulfills the role of Lady of the Lake in the way he chooses to deliver the Sword of Gryffindor to Harry, Hermione refers to his hand-writing as “kind of girly,” his association with spiders and spinners also carries feminine symbology, etc.) but is often criticized or humiliated for his seeming lack of masculinity (e.g. Petunia mocking his shirt as looking like “a woman’s blouse,” which incidentally was also slang in the U.K. similar to “dandy” to accuse men of being effeminate, the Marauders refer to Snape as “Snivellus” which suggests Snape is either less masculine because he cries or the insult is a mockery of what could pass for a stereotypical/coded Jewish feature, his nose, Remus Lupin quite literally instructs Neville on how to “force” a Boggart!Snape, who incidentally is very literally stepping out of a closet-like wardrobe, into the clothing of an older woman and I quoted force because that is the exact phrase he uses, James and Sirius flipping Snape upside down to expose him again presents as humiliation in the form of emasculation made worse by the arrival and defense of Lily Evans, etc.). 

Overall, the “queering of the villain” is an old trope in literature (although it became more deliberate and prevalent in media during the 1950s-60s); however, in modernity, we still can find it proliferating in many of the Disney villains (e.g. Jafar, Scar, Ursula, etc.), in popular anime and children’s cartoons (e.g. HiM from Powerpuff Girls, James from Pokemon, Frieza, Zarbon, the Ginyu Force, Perfect Cell, basically a good majority of villains from DBZ, Nagato from Fushigi Yuugi, Pegasus from Yu Gi Oh, etc.), and even in modern television series and book adaptations, such as the popular BBC’s Sherlock in the character of Moriarty. Indeed, this article does an excellent job in detailing some of the problematic history of queer coded villains. Although, the most simple summary is that: “Queer-coding is a term used to say that characters were given traits/behaviors to suggest they are not heterosexual/cisgender, without the character being outright confirmed to have a queer identity” (emphasis mine). Notably, TV Tropes also identifies this trope under the classification of the “Sissy Villain” but in queer theory and among queer writers in fandom and academia “queering of the villain” is the common term. This brings me back to Snape and his own queer coding; mainly, because Rowling drew upon Western traditions for presenting a character as a suspected villain she not only wrote Snape as queer (and racially/ethnically) coded but in revealing to the reader that Snape was not, in fact, the villain Harry and the readers were encouraged to believe he was by the narrator she incorporated a long history of problematic traits/tropes into a single character and then proceeded to subvert them by subverting reader-expectation in a way that makes the character of Severus Snape truly fascinating. 

We can certainly debate the authorial intent vs. authorial impact where Snape’s character is concerned. Particularly as we could make a case that the polarizing nature of Snape may well be partly the result of many readers struggling against Rowling subverting literary tropes that are so firmly rooted in our Western storytelling traditions that they cannot entirely abandon the idea that this character who all but had the book thrown at him in terms of all the coding that went into establishing him as a likely villain (e.g. similar to Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, Snape is also coded to be associated with darkness/black colors and to represent danger and volatile/unstable moods, while his class status further characterizes him as an outsider or “foreign other,” and not unlike all those villains of our childhood Disney films which affirmed a more black-and-white philosophy of moral abolutism, such as Scar or Jafar, the ambiguity of Snape’s sexuality coupled with his repeated emasculation signals to the reader that this man should be “evil” and maybe even “predatory,” ergo all the “incel” and friendzone/MRA discourse despite nothing in canon truly supporting those arguments; it seems it may merely be Snape’s “queerness” that signals to some readers that he was predatory or even that “If Harry had been a girl” there would be some kind of danger) is not actually our villain after all. 

Indeed, the very act of having Snape die (ignoring, for the moment, any potential issues of “Bury Your Gays” in a queer analysis of his death) pleading with Harry to “look at him” as he symbolically seems to weep (the man whom Harry’s hyper-masculine father once bullied and mocked as “Snivellus”) memories for Harry to view (this time with his permission) carries some symbolic weight for any queer theory analysis. Snape, formerly portrayed as unfathomable and “secretive,” dies while pleading to be seen by the son of both his first and closest friend and his school-hood bully (a son that Snape also formerly could never see beyond his projection of James) sharing with Harry insight into who he was via his personal memories. For Harry to later go on to declare Snape “the bravest man he ever knew” carries additional weight, as a queer theory analysis makes it possible for us to interpret that as Harry finally recognizing Snape, not as the “queer coded villain” he and the reader expected but rather as the brave queer coded man who was forced to live a double-life in which “no one would ever know the best of him” and who, in his final moments at least, was finally able to be seen as the complex human-being Rowling always intended him to be. 

Rowling humanizing Snape for Harry and the reader and encouraging us to view Snape with empathy opened up the queer coding that she wrote into his character (intentionally or otherwise) in such a way that makes him both a potentially subversive and inspiring character for the lgbtq+ community. Essentially, Snape opens the door for the possibility of reclaiming a tradition of queer coding specific to villains and demonstrating the way those assumptions about queer identity can be subverted. Which is why I was not at all surprised that I was so easily able to find a body of existing discourse surrounding Snape as a queer coded or even as a potentially queer character within the Harry Potter fandom. At least within the Snapedom, there are many lgbtq+ fans of his character that already celebrate the idea of a queer, bi, gay, trans, ace/aro, or queer coded Snape (in fact, as a grey-ace I personally enjoy interpreting Snape through that lens from time-to-time). 

Thank you for your ask @pinkyhatespink and once again I apologize for the amount of time it’s taken me to reply. However, I hope that you’ll find this response answered your question and, if not, that some of the articles and posts from other pro-Snape bloggers I linked you to will be able to do so more effectively. Also, as a final note, although many of the scholarly references and books on queer coding and queering of the villain I would have liked to have sourced are typically behind paywalls, I thought I would list the names of just a few here that I personally enjoyed reading in the past and that may be of further interest should you be able to find access to them.

Fathallah, Judith. “Moriarty’s Ghost: Or the Queer Disruption of the BBC’s Sherlock.” Television & New Media, vol. 16, no. 5, 2014, p. 490-500. 

Huber, Sandra. “Villains, Ghosts, and Roses, or How to Speak With The Dead.” Open Cultural Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2019, p. 15-25.

Mailer, Norman. “The Homosexual Villain.” 1955. Mind of an Outlaw: Selected Essays, edited by Sipiora Phillip, Random House, 2013, pp. 14–20.

Solis, Nicole Eschen. "Murder Most Queer: The Homicidal Homosexual in the American Theater." Queer Studies in Media & Pop Culture, vol. 1, no. 1, 2016, p. 115+. 

Tuhkanen, Mikko. “The Essentialist Villain.” Jan. 2019,  SBN13: 978-1-4384-6966-9

[p---leia]

Ancient Writer of dreams and nightmares: I am 71 (-one month), and have been writing (making up tales) since I was three. I can still remember my Pawpaw whittling a pencil for me, and Mawmaw tearing a piece of brown grocery bag for me to write on. They weren't 'poor', but writing paper wasn't to be wasted on a 'kid' just for fun. I carefully scripted my first short story.

Of course my 'letters' looked more like ancient Hanguel, so I had to read it to my "captured" audience. I really don't remember the story, but as my grandparents had a yard full of chickens and my dog, Mutt, liked to chase them (because of this we 'both' got into trouble -- because I always joined the chase) I most probably wrote about that.

My Pawpaw was a story-teller. For several years I thought there really was a baby found in the wilds of the African jungle and raised by the great apes. I thought he was the luckiest babe, EVER!

Then I found Pawpaw's books about three years after he died. I was eleven when he died, and felt that my best friend had abandoned me. But when I found those books I realized just where Tarzan actually came from and went to. I read everyone of those books and got the complete picture. THEN..

Well, Pawpaw also told stories of Daniel Boone and Davey Crocket...before I saw them on Disney. Then, of course, I went to school and learned what I already knew. Pawpaw was an excellent story-teller and never mixed up his facts, time-lines, or characters.

Growing up under his influence had a lot to do with how I developed as a story-teller. At family gatherings when I meet cousins I haven't seen in decades, they STILL remember me and the stories that I used to tell them. My children and grandchildren have grown up with me re-telling Pawpaw's old stories, and sharing many that I made up on the spot.

But I think what I read in my early years developed my writing style.

I was just turned eight when I read my first Shakespeare, MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. He was my first favorite author. Then I was forced to read Romeo and Juliet. I was disgusted by the fact that TRAGEDY was made famous as a ROMANCE! Even at the innocent (then) age of fourteen, I was disgusted with the idea that it was considered romantic for 'anyone', let alone 'teenagers' to commit suicide over unrequited love.

My sister (now 68) and I recently discussed this play. Because she had a 'forbidden' teenage love, she said that she related to the story (even though she had never read it). GASP! It was required reading in ninth grade!

I remember our dad breaking up my sister and her boyfriend, who was really cool. He was a hard working farm boy who had saved his money to buy a motorcycle. AND his own car. But he wasn't good enough for my sister. smh

I always thought her story would make a great LifeTime movie. But I'm not touching it. She would 'skin me' for sharing with the world her broken heart. And if I added the stuff that sells today, she'd scalp me for lying. Not a win situation at all. So, I will write notes in my "Random Jottings Journal" for future decendants who might grow into writers or story-tellers.

By the way, the title "RANDOM JOTTINGS" came from a sci-fi book that I read as a kid in the fifties. I don't remember the author, although I'm pretty sure it 'might' be from a Heinlein juvenile book. But I've never found a reference to any sci-fi books using that term. SO!!! If anyone recognizes "RANDOM JOTTINGS", which was a note book that a professor/scientist/genius used to keep his 'thoughts', PLEASE share the author's name and the title of the book!!! Thank You.

In the meantime, I referenced Shakespeare. James Oliver Curwood wrote about Kazan, the Wolf Dog, and later Baree, Son of Kazan. From those two books, read when I was eleven, I searched for and found other books about Canada. Later there was Walter Farley, author of the Black Stallion, and the Island Stallion series. I think I met my FIRST friendly alien in the Island Stallion Races.

Of course, Edgar Rice Burroughs taught me much false history about the jungles of Africa, as well as the Moon and Mars. But I loved every 'read-under-the-covers-with a-flashlight' minute! I believe he was a contemporary of Zane Grey, because he wrote a few non-jungle and non-space stories, too. Which led me to Zane Grey.

Having read both of their biographies at a young age, I learned about the hardships of being a writer. I should say 'the hardships of a struggling writer'. I have never had a problem writing. Since I write for 'fun' and not 'profit', the few short stories I've had published were by local press, and a State magazine.

No, my struggles have centered around graduating high school, and completing college, stuggling to satisfy my husband, a 'Mr. Spock in the Flesh' personality, and later raising two children without benefit of parental support or child support. But we survived in the middle of laughter and many tears. And my made up stories about children lost in the woods who were rescued by a great friendly bear, or wolf. Or dog. And sometimes by a great Black Panther - a by product of one of my Pawpaw's 'local historical tales'.

I understand that publishers detest stories that begin with "It was a dark and stormy night.." But let me tell you, some of the BEST bedtime stories occur on stormy nights when the power has gone out, and it's too hot for candles or lanterns. That shadow that stands darkest in the corner and seems to be moving towards the bed is actually grandma come to check on the kids, and stands quiet so not to disturb the kids if they're already asleep. But since they are awake, and they see her 'shadow', she becomes the old crone who lives in the castle dungeon, and has slipped her chains to visit with the 'wee folk'. But there are no fairies out on such a blustery night, so the old crone comes to visit with the 'wee bairn', who fall all over themselves to get out of bed and sit around her to hear her stories of 'long ago' and other 'dark and stormy nights'. Again -- unpublished, because publishers don't like ... LOL

Of course there's always On-Line publishing. But that involves more work than actual writing.

Back to the writrs who influenced my writing:

While I enjoy a good Western, an adventurous space trek, or time travel, I also enjoy the occasional Historical Romance. Georgette Heyer was my first! I still re-read her amazing books. Of course there's Jane Austen.

There are a myriad of modern writers that I have read over the last five decades. Heinlen, Asimov, Norton, Bradley, McCaffrey, Moon, Stirling, Krentz/Castle/Quick, and Moening, just to name a few of the ones whose books I have in my personal library.

Those older authors did affect my writing style to develope as I read their stories. The later authors helped me to move into the late 20th century. But I'm not so sure that I like the 21st century so much. It's all about being politically 'correct'. If you aren't ashamed of your gender, your race, your country, your religion, your culture, your family, your history, then you are prejudiced. That's just too much guilt to have to live with.

I'm still dealing with my mom's death from ten years ago. I was her care-giver for five years. Her doctor had given her nine months. I still worry if I did enough for her in those last years.

And though my children are grown with their own families, I worry that I wasn't a good enough parent. And I worthy as a grandmother? How was I as an older sister? I was responsible as a moral guide when our parents were at work. Was I a good neighbor? A good support in our Church? And Hollywood wants me to feel guilt about something I can't change?!!

I'm an old woman who still likes being a woman and enjoys liking men. I'm not just white. I'm also mixed with a bit of Native American, and even a drop of -- OMG!!! --- Black. snicker.

That's a serious joke, because as a kid I had a recuring nightmare that I was a black man being judged by a group of people in white hoods I was hanged amidst their fiery torches. I always thought those white hoods represented the Catholic Church, because at that young age I didn't know about the Ku Klux Klan. Even though I grew up in the South, my family was not involved with that group of out-lawrey. Thank God!

Still, I'm supposed to feel shame? For something not even my family supported.

I've always believed there's a hint of Fae in my DNA. Because I love dancing in the light of the full moon, and flying with the owls who perch outside my bedroom window and call to invite me to follow the moon's shadow. If I am part Fae, I know it came from my mother's people. They were Irish mixed with Alabama Indians who believed in the Nunnehi aka Immortal, and the Yunwi Tsunsdi, aka Little People.

ALSO, while there's no DNA proof of ancestry, I've always been a 'closet Chinese'.

In the Fifties, when WW2 was still fresh, and we were involved with the 'Korean Conflict', and at odds with China, I would sneak around the radio, turn down the volume, and tune into 'that wierd channel' that sometimes played Opera, or Chinese music. Ahhh. I would close my eyes and wander through the few visuals I'd found in books, or the occasional movie. (before color tv)

A year or two ago I was totally depressed and disgusted with American TV. Hollywood has become so political, so wierd. Their programming is no longer for entertainment, but to 'educate, enlighten, or to inform'. zzzzz

Then I found KDrama!!!!! Korean TV. Japanese Tv. squeal!!! Chinese TV.

The rom/coms are sweet and 'pure'. Okay. I'm realistic. This is not a reflection of real life on any planet. But the innocence of the early 1950s programs is there. Similar to Disney's 'Summer Magic'. I'm happy with those dramas that remind me of thati nnocence. I have found a few dramas that shared more than I cared for, and I do enjoy an occasional 'romp'. But I've always preferred the Lady and Gentleman characters.

And watching these programs have reminded me of those fairy tales and legends from my childhood that had been sprinkled with the Occasional Oriental myth, legend, and children's tale.

Then I remembered my FIRST historical legend. "The White Stag" by Kate Seredy, is the tale of Atilla the Hun!

I recently found a copy of that book and am waiting for a quiet time, when the power is out and there's nothing to do. Then I will use one of the many flashlights I bought for a huge hurricane, and relax on the sofa beneath an open window and read this legend once again. I live in Florida. The odds of this happening increases as the summer progresses. I can't wait to learn if my memory of this tale of Atilla the Hun remained true, or has been distorted in the last half of a century.

Most of the tales that I write involve space adventures, the occasioanl ghost, and encounters with fairies, the evil ones, not the romantic ideal fairy. smh

I've never been very good with romance or comedy. But thanks to the recent influence of the Asian productions, I have re-formatted one of my dark adventures and turned it into a rom/com.

I love a good joke, but very seldom get the point or see the humor. And I can NEVER remember the punch line if I try to share a joke. My family have said they will write on my tombstone --

"I don't remember the punchline ... but it was funny."

But as I write humorous lines or events I find myself laughing. Or crying at sad events. And I am all 'giggly' when I write what is supposed to be innocent romance between a young and shy couple. But I have never felt that my own reactions were a true guide to how the story might come across to a 'reader'.

As it happens, I have two sisters younger than I am. My middle sister is bored easily and immediately redirects our conversation to something about 'her'. Okay. I understand. She is lonely, needy, and maybe a bit selfish? Not judging. She's the 'middle child' and that's her excuse. ROFL..

But the youngest sister is my greatest fan who declares that I am an awesome writer. "I love you, sister, dear."

So she visited me last week and patiently listened as I read the first chapter. She listened quietly, and I wondered if I had 'read her to sleep'. sigh. Boring books are often the best sleeping pill. Then I heard her laugh.

Squeals/Dancing/hooting/flying around the room in ecstasy!!

Okay! At least one person has laughed. And she's not that easily 'tickled'.

So, I will always carry on and write. But now I feel that at least I might be following a path strewn with "Black-Eyed-Susans, honeybees, butterflies, and bunnies".

I don't know if anyone will read this, or will enjoy it. I hope so. While sharing bits of my youth, my worries, and my concern about certain ones of my 'stories', I actually had ideas for developing 'new' stories.

I am always amazed when writers say they are 'blocked'. I have only to open my eyes to see a world around me that no one else can envision. I listen to a song, and I'm in a different world, time, planet. A gift from Pawpaw, and Mother's DNA.

It is my oldest granddaughter's birthday this month, and I don't know what to give her for her birthday. But when she was younger, she always asked me to tell her a story. I think that I will pull out one of my OLD/ANCIENT tales that I wrote when her dad was her age and make it into a book for her.

p---leia aka Mamma KayeLee

7/19/2020

[dailyfeartwdgifs]

Fear The Walking Dead Season 5, Episode 1 Review: Crash And Burn 

I'm having a really hard time mustering up any sort of enthusiasm for Fear The Walking Dead, and the opening episode of Season 5 isn't helping. 

It's not that last night's episode was terrible. It even had a few good moments, and an interesting twist with the mysterious armored zombies and the documents Al found, all pointing to the same group that whisked away Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead's most recent season. 

Likewise, when Strand (Colman Domingo) discovers that the guy Al (Maggie Grace) knows who has a plane is Daniel (Ruben Blades) and looks so distressed, I had a good chuckle. Strand and Salazar are not on the best of terms. 

I even liked the ragtag group of kids that the survivors run into, as well as the new sort-of-bad-guy Logan played by Honey I Shrunk The Kids alum Matt Frewer. I don't think I've seen Frewer in anything since that 1989 film, but I recognized him instantly. I say "sort-of-bad-guy" because the dude has a point. Just because Morgan and his group moved into the Mill doesn't make it theirs necessarily. If he owned it before the apocalypse, I see no reason why he shouldn't own it now. He got them out of there without firing a shot, also, which is pretty nice for a villain, especially compared to basically every other villain in either Walking Dead show. 

But other than that, and some cool Alicia (Alycia Debnam-Carey) zombie killing moments, the episode just fell enormously flat for me. I think part of it is the premise now that the show has adopted Morgan (Lennie James) and his do-gooder philosophy. I guess now our heroes are literally heroes, out trying to help people no matter the risk. 

Crash Landing 

I mean, they somehow managed to get a plane which none of them knew how to fly, and then flew somewhere in order to help Logan (who was tricking them) with no real gameplan. I'm not sure how they were going to fit everyone in such a small plane after this theoretical rescue, but considering that they didn't even know how to land the thing and could have all died in the process, this just strikes me as enormously stupid. 

Almost as stupid as not drinking the damn ethanol when the tanker got shot up last season. My goodness, it's like watching a show about the stupidest people alive somehow managing to survive a zombie apocalypse. It's painful to behold. It would be funny if that was the actual premise (seriously, I'd watch the Idiocracy version of The Walking Dead) but alas, these are supposed to be tough, smart survivors. Not the imbeciles they've been written as. 

In any case, they crash land and Luciana (Danay Garcia) is impaled in the crash. Nobody else is severely injured. This would have been a good time to kill of Luciana who hasn't been an interesting or useful character since she became Nick's girlfriend shortly after being introduced as a badass leader, but no. Rather than mercy kill her, the character assassination will continue apace. 

Also, while I'm happy to see Daniel return (he's by far the most interesting character other than Alicia at this point) I'm not sure why Blades would want to return to this sinking ship. Maybe (hopefully) the season improves after this episode, but I'm not getting my hopes up. The fact that Al has also interviewed him is just too convenient, too much of a coincidence, on top of her having also interviewed Madison before meeting up with Morgan and John Dorie (Garret Dillahunt). Al just knows everybody, I guess. And everybody just magically shows up in the same vicinity as one another for some reason. 

Speaking of John Dorie, I really do like his character but they're just not using him for anything interesting at this point. I'm also having a hard time buying his and June's relationship. June (Jenna Elfman) is another character I just have no feelings for whatsoever. Why did they make her a nurse when she's basically a doctor? Nurses don't operate on people. They don't perform major life-saving operations like this at trauma centers or anywhere else. I could believe that she'd make an attempt in a pinch like this, but the whole notion that she's some seasoned surgeon at this point is just silly. Just make her a doctor in the first place if this is how you're going to use her character. 

I don't know exactly what it is that rubs me so wrong about June, but I guess maybe it's both Elfman's performance to some degree, as well as her character arc and how she's been written. The whole "nobody can help me" character always running away suddenly transforming into another of Morgan's Avengers just didn't land for me. And I'm not really feeling much chemistry between her and Dorie, though that may be a symptom of the writing. 

Stupid Is As Stupid Does 

In any case, Al is knocked out and captured by one of the mysteriously armored people because I guess she thought it was a good idea to go back to the crash site in the dark and rain by herself to investigate for some reason. Like everyone else on this show, and for reasons known only to the writers and producers, Al is a total idiot. 

Meanwhile, Logan pulls a fast one on Morgan by tricking them into going to a distant truck stop (we still don't know where, but I guess it was far enough that they had to fly in a plane they found somewhere but didn't know how to actually pilot, oh my god who writes this stuff???) and then peacefully taking back what was his to begin with. He even dumped a bunch of their stuff outside the fence in the process. In yet another scene of abject stupidity, when Strand and his new trucker pals, Sarah (Mo Collins) and Wendell (Daryl Mitchell) show up and see other people have occupied their base, they all get out of the truck and point guns at them, just standing there right out in the open, outnumbered, making themselves the easiest targets imaginable. If Logan had been a more ruthless foe, he would have had them all shot right then and there and wouldn't have faced a single loss. 

Who does this? Nobody, that's who. Nobody would just walk out there like that, knowing they could be easily shot and killed, with no semblance of strategy and apparently no lines of dialogue either. Also, they'd need to actually help Wendell get out of the truck and into his wheelchair, so now I'm just picturing how ungainly and awkward that must be when you're trying to have a proper standoff. Like, sorry yguys can you just not shoot at us while we get our friend out of the truck and into his wheelchair? 

Ugh. What a letdown. This show has really tanked since the new showrunners took over and since virtually the entire main cast was killed off and replaced. I was never the biggest fan of Madison, but she grew on me in Season 3 and it really was a show about her and her kids, and now Nick is dead and Madison is dead and it's like we're watching an entirely different show now. Why not just make a new show instead of cramming this new cast together? It's all so jarring. Morgan makes no sense on this show. I can't stand him and I can't believe they've actually made this show into a "let's help people" story. It was so much more interesting when Madison was playing both sides of the Otto/Native American conflict, or when we had characters like Troy around keeping us on our toes. 

It's gone from a zombie show about morally grey characters to one led Morgan Jones for goodness sakes. Morgan is a fine character, as a secondary character, as Rick's mentally disturbed friend, as a moral compass for the main group. He's not a leader or a lead. 

It's a crying shame that it's come to this. I am not particularly hopeful for this season, though they've surprised us before. Last season I actually really enjoyed the first few episodes before it went over the cliff, jumped the shark, killed off the best characters and introduced the lamest villain any zombie show has ever seen. So maybe the opposite will happen here, and the writing will improve and our heroes will stop acting so stupid all the time and we'll get a decent conflict.

Yeah, I don't think so, either, but it never hurts to have a little hope. Rebellions are built on hope.