#and jame is Tempted. probably at some point tori even asks if it would be so bad--on the knife's edge of breaking the poison

[words-writ-in-starlight]

Anyway Lotus Eater prison AUs, where a character is trapped in a dream of their heart's desire, are my favorite shit, and I like to come up with them for any story that might conceivably enable that sort of magical prison (extra bonus points for Love Interest/Beloved Relative/Friend going in to get Main Character out) and

I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet, but:

“Tori!”  Jame had never seen the great hall of Gothregor so crowded, so bright--every table was full and well-set, and hands clapped her on the back as she tried to slip through the people.  Kendar, all, or so nearly that it was impossible to see any slight, short Highborn between them.  Some strangers, most known to her.  All wore the Knorth crest, but some--that could only be Tig, who had eaten his own toes in search of meat in the Haunted Lands, and that, there, Lon, who she had seen burned before her exile, and these, in their Southern Host’s uniforms, she had seen falling in the vanguard at Urakarn.  

All were hale and healthy, their scars well-healed, well-fed and clothes in good repair.  They didn’t seem to know Jame, but they welcomed her with voices raised and a cup of mulled wine pressed into her gloved hand, as if this were a place where strangers could be assured of a good meal and a safe rest.

“Please,” Jame said, pressing the wine back into the hands of a woman she recognized as Rue’s cousin, older and often featured in Rue’s more obscure stories of childhood troublemaking.  “I need to see the Highlord.”

“Sure,” the woman said, gesturing easily toward the front of the hall, where a fire roared cheerfully in the great fireplace, casting warm golden light over the stones.  “But eat!  Drink!  We have enough to spare, my friend, and you look hungry!”

Jame was quite sure she did look hungry, even this dream-image of herself in her ivory-white lordan’s coat.  Losing half one’s soul into a prison of his own dreams did have an effect on one’s appetite, and she had felt stretched strangely thin, as if someone--or something--had been draining her strength, ever since Tori fell to the assassin’s poison.  Not enough to kill a Highborn Shanir, one of the Tyr-ridan, but enough to drag him into the dreamscape, enough to imprison him in the poison’s honeyed grip where its victim would normally have died in peace.

Not her brother.  Tori was too strong.  Jame would not allow it.

“I’m sorry, Maranth,” Jame said, mustering her best attempt at a smile.  “But I really do need to see the Highlord.  I’ll eat after I speak with him.”

“Sit with us,” Maranth said, offering the wine again.  “We have space--”

Jame gave up--Maranth was only an imagined version of herself, at most a shadow of a dream, and would not be reasoned with.  She dodged around the woman and wove through the crowd.  As she drew closer to the head table, the faces grew more familiar.  Winter, with her steel-shot hair loose around her shoulders as she chuckled.  Rose Ironthorn with her daughter, Brier copper-dark where her mother was fair and windburned, but unmistakable in their resemblance.  As Jame forced her way through the thickening crowd to the farthest end of the high table, she saw Marc, sitting beside Rowan and her husband, cheerfully directing servers bearing dishes that Jame knew he must have designed himself.  Rowan was smiling, really smiling, as if the scarring to her face had never touched the nerves.  Mullen, unmarked by his suicide, and even Kindrie, in Jaran robes stitched with the Knorth crest, shy but gamely upholding a conversation with the Knorth Kendar.

But then, where was Burr?  He must be here, he was her brother’s dearest friend, his most trusted servant.  And Rue, she had seen Brier, her own right hand, but not Rue, who her brother knew well enough to dream up her family.  

A bright, ringing laugh drew Jame’s attention, the packed hall turning toward the sound like flowers to sunlight.  It was familiar, a woman’s voice, rich and husky, pleasant to the ear--

“Mother?” Jame asked, bemused, and fought her way past the last of the servers, to find the high-backed chairs in the center of the table, before the fire.  The woman laughing sat in one, her head thrown back to bare her throat, black hair loose over the shoulders of a dress coat in black and silver, with a stylized rathorn crest stitched in magnificent detail, sprawling across the left breast and shoulder like a living thing.  For a moment, at a loss, Jame didn’t know her.

And then the laughing woman lowered her head, and turned a crooked smile on Tori, Tori who looked at her with warmth in his shining silver eyes, Tori who wore a plainer but undeniably matched dress coat, Tori who took her ungloved hand in his scarred one and raised it to his lips with a smile of his own.

He was beautiful, smiling.

Burr was smiling at his lord’s elbow as he caught Rowan’s eye over the heads of the servers, and Rue snatched the black kidskin gloves from under her lady’s elbow before they could be crushed under a new dish, and Jame fought for breath around the choking lump rising in her throat.  This--she could not bear this.  Even if her brother’s dream had been a red-ribboned bed, or her absence, she thought she might have borne it, but this?

A hall, full of good food and warmth, enough to share?  A people who didn’t fear their lord’s absence or madness, who welcomed strangers without worrying over their place?  A Kencyrath where a wanderer wasn’t a threat, and twin chairs, and Jame herself in pride of place?  Her fingers in her brother’s hand, and a hall full of people who smiled when she laughed, Tori who smiled when she laughed--

She wanted to walk to the high-backed chair, and take her dream-self’s place, and wear the Knorth crest as Tori watched her with that weight of attention, as if she was the only thing he wanted to look at, as if she were what made this perfection a paradise.

Jame took a slow, shaking breath, and forced her hands out of their fists, sheathed her claws before they could pierce the skin of her palms, and squared her shoulders under the ivory embroidery of her coat.  It was only a few steps to reach Tori, to rest a hand on the table and watch him see her.

His smile flickered and faded, and he was himself again, serious, eyes sharp and wary, unsure.  Jame tried not to let it sting.

“Tori,” Jame said.  "Do you know who I am?”

[ryanmeft]

The Favourite Movie Review

If you happen to suffer from Anglophilia, The Favourite may very well cure you of it. America’s obsession with everything British owes a lot to the fact that movies and TV have painted our overseas cousins as being upstanding, intelligent, and just a little above it all. If Brexit hasn’t killed off that impression for you, take a look at this movie: the court is petty, the most common language is insults, the royal helpers fight like bloodthirsty schoolgirls, and the Queen is mad. How delicious.

It’s the early 18th century, and there are a few issues surrounding the rule of Queen Anne (Olivia Colman); namely, that she’s battier than a thousand-year-old attic. Among her many lovable antics: telling off the servants for things she told them to do, being pushed around in a completely unnecessary wheelchair which she likes being rolled very fast in, falling on the floor and screaming, demanding royal courtesy be paid to an army of rabbits, deliberately making herself sick on sweets, and generally being so out to lunch she frequently forgets there’s a war on with France. In fairness to her, this is England, so remembering when there is and is not a war with France is a full-time job. My only serious regret about all of this is that, while having wheelchair races with herself, she at no point shouts “Vroom vroom”.

These days, we might have sympathy for such an unfortunate soul, but Queens then and now are not so much persons as objects of political desire. The Tory party, here identified only as the opposition, wants to end War With France Number 76b quickly, because the taxes needed for it are taking money out of the pockets of wealthy landowners and, as Tory leader Robert Harley (Nicholas Hoult) sneeringly informs us, putting it in the hands of those darned merchants; one is reminded of the airline shareholders who griped that the employees were getting paid before they did. Anne’s primary confidant is Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz, and yes, she’s his ancestor), the Duchess of Marlborough. She wants the war, in which her husband (Mark Gatiss) is a leader, to be funded and fully supported. Just as you think she is the one of the two with the more honorable intentions, the movie corrects you: her support for her husband has more to do with the benefits of being married to a war hero than with any real affection. She is, in fact, shtupping the queen, something left in absolutely no doubt. This is a movie far more frank about sexuality and especially lesbianism than even most indie films dare to be. In that regard, it is incredibly forward thinking; at one point Anne is quite explicit about tongues and her preferred use for them. In other regards the movie’s attitude toward sex is less progressive but no less frank, as it is frequently used to attain power.

This fine arrangement is threatened by the arrival of Sarah’s cousin Abigail (Emma Stone) who has fallen on hard times after her father, from what I could gather, burned down both their house and himself. She initially becomes trusted by the Queen entirely by accident, in fact through the only unadulterated show of good Samaritanism in the entire movie. She will soon learn that in this place, no good deed goes unpunished. She evolves, if you can call it that, until she fits right in with the nearly murderous intrigues of royal life. Sarah pushes: she threatens her life, has her beaten, and attempts to humiliate, ruin and tear her down. Eventually, Abigail will become the better fighter, even engineering a scenario that leaves Sarah rotting in a brothel while she moves to solidify her own position. Nor are Sarah and the Queen the only ones to be used or abused by her. The film goes as far as to subtly suggest she, unlike Sarah, is not even that into sex, as she pursues marriage to a randy nobleman (Joe Alwyn), then loses interest once she has him, and the royal benefits the marriage provides.

What to make of the ensuing battle of wills between the deteriorating Queen, her bickering fixers, and the Parliament? I’ll tell you what not to make of it: the idea that this movie has a feminist viewpoint. It seems that way initially, with both nominal and real power in the hands of a woman. One of the founding, most cherished myths of the movement, though, is that the world would be an inherently better place if women grasped the shorthairs of power. It’s impossible to say if that would be true. What I can say is that the screenplay, written twenty years ago by historian Deborah Davis and “freshened up” more recently by Tony McNamara, practically dies laughing at the idea. It will be tempting for those who want to see Sarah and Abigail in a certain light to say they are only responding to the viciousness of the world they live in, but they voluntarily go far, far beyond any schemes cooked up by the pompous, white-wigged men of the government. The simple truth an attentive viewer might notice early on is that it really, truly would have been possible for the two women to come to some agreement. The other simple truth is that neither wanted to; both wanted to win at the expense of the other. It is not that the men are spared---they are variously pompous, corrupt, callous, or incompetent. It is that power in film is usually shown as mostly corrupting or being corrupted by men, and here women are equally as eager to get in on the game. Sarah’s complicity in this is the most tragic, as it’s clear she really does care about the Queen; yes, at no point does she actually stop trying to manipulate her. No one is spared: even the scullery maids are needlessly cruel.

The main triangle that comprises the heart of the drama is infused with three of the most gripping performances you’ll see at the movies. The irony of Rachel Weisz having her big breakthrough as the nerdy, shy girlfriend of then-more famous Brendan Fraser in The Mummy is strong; she’s since gone on to be the more dominant actor, and it isn’t close. She has one of those mannerisms that can control a room; later, when her more subtle ways of squeezing the Queen have begun to falter in the face of Abigail’s tactics, she gets more forceful, and such is Weisz’s presence that we are shocked when it doesn’t work. Stone’s big hit role in Zombieland was more hard-bitten, but she too would need meatier roles to display what she can really do, and here gets her best to date. She starts out truly just wanting a second chance after going through a hellish youth and being dumped into another bad situation. Eventually, those who would push her to be horrible learn a lesson, as she can be far more vicious than they ever intended.

Somehow, Colman’s Anne is constantly on the verge of sheer, out-in-the-yard-barking-at-the-moon lunacy, yet never devolves to the level of parody, and maintaining her insanity while also not becoming a Jack Sparrow-esque joke must have been among the more demanding things asked of an actor. Most of the water cooler talk centers around the more widely recognized Stone and Weisz, but Colman needs to be both stark raving mad and entirely sympathetic or the movie falls apart; we need to believe this is a person two intelligent, driven, vivacious women would be willing to get in the mud for, even as they manipulate her to their own ends. This is one of the few cases where we can safely impose modern ethics on the past. Anne is mentally ill, and should have been cared for, but there was no chance of that ever happening.

The world her court inhabits has been recreated by director Yorgos Lanthimos, working for the first time since before his critically acclaimed Dogtooth with someone else’s script, as a place that lacks the sumptuousness with which English finery, English dress, English buildings and English everything else are usually treated in American cinema. That’s probably because Lanthimos is Greek, and whereas Britain to us is the ideal parent---upright and mature yet far enough way that we don’t need to call that often---to him it may be just another country in Europe. The halls of St. James’s Palace (My best guess; the film never says) are not particularly ornate or beautiful, or at least they are not portrayed that way. Robbie Ryan chooses to shoot many scenes in near darkness, with candlelight, and the result is that much of the palace appears gloomy, close and not especially grand or even inviting; there is one moment in which Sarah speaks through a door whose other side is hidden by a tapestry when we could well believe the house as a setting for a ghost story. Nor are the actresses spared the visual signs of moral decay. Though the costume department drapes them in every bit of finery you expect from pompous royals, both competing women are literally drug through the mud, and Anne shows little care for her personal hygiene. We are reminded that this was a dirty world in more ways than one, and whatever glamorous ideas we might have of the past are shot out from under us. Like the highly underrated Marie Antoinette, almost the entire movie takes place within the cloistered walls of the royal residence; I doubt most of those involved in the drama ever spare a look for an actual citizen of the crown.

Lanthimos’s last film, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, inspired strong feelings in me. Specifically, it inspired the desire to beat it with a stick. I am morally opposed to films that seek to prove how much smarter they are than the audience. Similar to his more popularly received film The Lobster, The Favourite is quite intelligent in the way it approaches its themes: power, political games, and the puncturing of the myths we build for ourselves surrounding both royalty and the romance of the past. It ascends to greatness because it never once alienates the audience in order to say these things. Just leave your fantasies of ladies and gentlemen in flower at home; those guys aren’t in this movie.

Verdict: Must-See

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

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