#and of course: homoerotic werewolf ladies

[spacebugarts]

Watching Trick 'r Treat with dad again and I am once more reminded how much I love Rhonda my beloved <3

[theabominableblogger]

Rewatching “Fright Night” (the 1985 version)

No I ain’t watching the remake with David Tennant.  ‘Cause I said so.

*does Borat impression while loading the movie on Amazon Prime*

“Sit here beside me on the veranda.”  Is this the... TV show scene?  The show with Roddy McDowall?

SCARE CHOOORD!

“So... luminescent.”  *laughs*

Those were some... horrible kissing noises

I like the out of context implication that as soon as the woman asks the dude to lay on her chest, Peter Vincent’s like “NONE IN THIS HOUSE!”

“IF SHE BREATHES...”

What idiot puts their smelly ass soccer cleats on their headboard?

“We’ve been going together almost a year, and all I ever hear is ‘Charley, stop it.’“  Well then maybe that’s a you problem

Also what the hell is that map thing next to Amy?

“Let’s get into bed.”  *bug eyes*

Amy, that is not the look of someone who is ready to have sex.

“It says right here that the divorce rate is 76% higher among couples who don’t argue before marriage.”  Shut up, Mom.

“Thank you [Amy] for helping Charley with his homework.”  ...I was gonna make a sex joke here but nah.

Oh I hate Charley’s friend in his movie.

Charley’s car, while super nice, looks like a sunburnt cow

“My luck.  He’s [the neighbor] probably gay.”  AAAAAHHH THEY EVEN SAID IT!

I really Charley to slap Teach [Ed] at some point but I know it’s never gonna happen.

For a moment, I thought that the carpenter dude partner was gonna be like Kenny from “The War at Home” but nah.  He probably just uses his teeth a lot.

*silently jamming to the background synth music*

*Charley spots a woman removes her bra in the window*  What was this rated again?

AN:  It’s rated R

*yells when Jerry looks over to see Charley through the window*

*Shot of Jerry’s hand pulling down the window blind*  That... is a lady hand.

AN:  They were actually extensions that Chris wore and he helped apply them himself so that he could just rip them off after a day of shooting

*Charley’s mom ruins Charley’s cover*  DAMN IT MOM

This movie is basically “Who Cried Wolf” but with vampires?

“I’m his roommate Billy Cole.”  Can you believe just that the fact that this movie was made in the mid 80s when the AIDS crisis in the US was getting ready to happen and director Tom Holland and the screenwriter went “YES they’re gonna be GAY and THAT’S FINAL”

“You actually saw the body, Charley?”  Uh doesn’t that tone raise any suspicion from the detective STANDING NEXT TO HIM?

*snorts in hilarity when Billy jokingly does the sign of the cross*

Charley, I would not trust anything Teach tries to tell you.

AND OF COURSE CHARLEY’S MOM INVITED JERRY OVER

OMINOUS SYNTH CHORD

My God, Chris Sarandon...

What’s with the celery?

Charley’s mom is the most oblivious character in this whole movie, I swear

FISH EYE LENS

I forget, do we ever see Jerry in vampire bat form or do we just see him as Chris Sarandon with fangs the entire movie?

Why yes, Charley, use your tiny crucifix.

Doesn’t the whole “enter with permission” count with bedrooms too or just the house in general?  If it counted with bedrooms, couldn’t Charley just put up a sign on his door that said “NO ADMISSION WITHOUT PERMISSION” and that would keep Jerry out?

Jerry is the most casual vampire I’ve seen so far.  Someone would just throw a chair at him and he’ll just No-Sell it like “Listen... I was just saying...”

There’s got to be a logical way to explain this Christmas thing.

We just need a vampire that’s like Catherine O’Hara from “Schitt’s Creek”

I love how Charley’s like 80% out the window and yet he can still reach for an entire mug of pencils

NO WAIT WE SEE HIS [Jerry’s] VAMPIRE FACE NEVERMIND

Valium?!?

Christopher Lee!

THAT FRAMING [of Billy kneeling directly in front of Jerry’s legs] ISN’T OBVIOUS AT ALL TOM HOLLAND

The logic for this movie is something else.  Charley sees someone on TV perform a vampire killing ON A TV SHOW and thinks “YES I’m going to ask him to help me with this vampire situation!” 

This is like asking Drew Carey if he can assist in a vampire hunting

*imitates Peter Vincent shooing Charley away*

*snorts at Teach and Amy walking in on Charley setting holy stuff ALL OVER HIS HOUSE*

Also I absolutely forgot about the weird side plot with Amy being an incarnation of a past love.  What is it with this and Bram Stoker’s Dracula going this route?

Man, Roddy McDowall is just a masterclass in classical acting.  You can tell the different style between him and the other actors.

There’s a bust of Klaus Kinski’s Nosferatu in the glass box!

AN:  *in best Janet from ‘The Good Place’ impression*  Fun fact, Klaus Kinski was actually an asshole

I like the red and black plaid night coat

God, all those clocks going off at once reminds me of the scene in Pinocchio.  That would give me so much anxiety in real life.

WHO TOSSED JERRY THE APPLE?!?

OH AND THEY [Jerry and Billy] WALK OFF TOGETHER OF COURSE

*imitates Peter Vincent saying “Good evening good evening”*

*going through AO3′s Fright Night 1985 tag as Peter explains what he’s doing*  Wow there’s four pages.  I might have to bookmark some of these.

Ohhhh kay, nevermind on half of these.  Not into that.  Nope nope nope.

I forget, is Billy also a vampire?  Or is he like some ghoul?  Werewolf?

...Interspecies romance?

For a fact, I know that if CinemaSins covers this movie, they would award Jerry the “eating an apple because he’s an asshole” sin and I would laugh

Oh he’s [Jerry] gonna go for the hand kiss, isn’t he? 

OH GOD DAMMIT

*has to still register it*

Wait, did Jerry hold the bottle up in front of the fire in case there was actually holy water?  Would heating it up counteract the holy water inside?

WAIT DOESN’T PETER CATCH JERRY’S LACK OF REFLECTION IN THE MIRROR AS THEY LEAVE?

How did they do that?  Did they just... comp Chris Sarandon out or did they have him tuck out of frame but still say his lines?

AN:  Tom Holland originally goofed up the shot I guess but they ran with it

JERRY IS BI HEADCANON CONFIRMED

WAIT HE FOUND THE MIRROR SHARDS

The overhead tracking shot following Ed in the alleyway is actually pretty good.  And the way it slides to a normal shot is great.

Oh they do the creepy Dracula fog!

Wait, this movie came out the same year as Nightmare on Elm Street 2.  Dang.

And that movie also had a weird homoerotic tone to it.

You know what, the way Jerry offers Ed salvation only to attack him was actually pretty solid.  Just good acting from both of them.  I was sold.

WAIT IT’S THE CLUB SCENE!

*Peter presses a cross to Ed’s forehead*  Great prosthetic too, holy crap!

*jams out to the song playing at the club*

Why do Jerry’s dance clothes look like either my pajamas or really lame exercise clothes?

God, it’s [Jerry pacing back and forth watching Amy] like a cat stalking a bird holy crap

NOOOO I DON’T NEED TO WATCH THIS SHE’S LIKE SIXTEEEEENNNN

*jaw drops when Jerry runs his hand up Amy’s leg*  NOOOOOO

Not gonna lie, this song almost sounded like a remix of the Nightmare on Elm Street theme

NOOOOOOOO STOOOOOPPPP CEASE DESIST

Amy’s hair just gets wilder and wilder during this dance sequence

STOOOOOOPPPP

Quick, Charley, start a fight!  Just... punch someone!  Commotion!

*just yells when Jerry steals a kiss from Amy*

*Amy wakes up in a white dress in Jerry’s house*  NOPE

God and he [Jerry] took off his shirt too just *hides face in hands*

*covers mouth with hand in attempt not to say anything*

*Jerry’s dragging finger scrapes off wood on the banister*  Oh that’s just mean

*Jerry drapes his arms over the back of Billy’s shoulders*  HMM

They would be that duo who would pick up a phone and take turns to go “...surprise, Sidney...”

*A wolf walks out of Mrs. Brewster’s room*  WHAAAAATTT?!?

Dang they really just tossed a plushie wolf off the stairs

WAIT the guy that did the VFX for this movie also did “Ghostbusters” if I remember correctly

AN:  Yes

They are just... really dragging out Ed’s death scene

That kinda exasperated look Peter gives the smoking house is great

Wait is Billy a vampire too?  Zombie?  What is he?

I really just want Charley to reach out and just slightly poke dying Billy in the chest so that he crumbles backwards.  That would have been hilarious.

How long is Amy’s hair?

HE [Jerry] DOES TURN INTO A BAT!

Real plot twist would be that the bat bite also starts turning Charley into a vampire so Peter would have to kill three birds with one stone (heal Charley and Amy and kill Jerry)

Boss move:  Peter closing the coffin in front of Jerry

And it ends with the same shot as the opening!

“Oh, you’re so cool, Brewster.”  So is Ed alive?

[postmodernmulticoloredcloak]

15x11. A game of cosmic moves, heroes, and queer subtext

This was a very interesting episode that is about a game. The game being played by two cosmic forces: God and Death. The gamblers from the title refer to both the players in the pool hall, but also to the big game that is being played by Billie, who previously mentioned taking “a calculated risk” with breaking her rules. She’s playing a game and we wonder whether Chuck is realizing that.

But it’s also an episode about people handling phallic objects and playing with balls the entire time, which has a long history on the show of being associated to Dean (and men). Plus there are swords (the phallic object for excellence) and hearts, specifically hearts ripped out, which have a long history on the show of being associated to love and sex (2x17 Heart and multiple other werewolf episodes, 11x13 Love Hurts...), and it’s no coincidence Dean mentions suffering from “heartburn”: while it’s about the digestive system, the word itself evokes the heart. Of course it’s also about Sam, who’s texting Eileen at the beginning. But it’s also about Cas, who faces another soul-sucking angel, and much has been written about that kind of mirror back in the time of 10x20 Angel Heart.

So, Fortuna. And, interestingly, her son who is called Pax, which is Latin for peace, and thus drops the concept of peace/paradise in the episode. The pool hall is run by Pax, and it works a bit like heaven, especially the old way heaven was run, when the Grigori literally fed off humans’ souls. If you replace ‘luck’ with ‘soul’ you really realize what this episode is about and what it parallels to.

In fact, I think that the episode purposely blurs together callbacks to angels and demons: the pool hall Grigori torture scene is reminiscent of Alastair, for instance, there are callbacks to Crowley, to Abaddon*, to soul-selling deals (the cowboy mentions having gotten a year of extra life, the amount of time Dean got when he made his demon deal...), but also to Michael (who literally trapped Dean inside a bar, like Evie was forced to work at the bar of the pool hall) and heaven.

*In 9x17 Mother’s Little Helper, which also features Dean playing pool (and Misha’s unsubtle directing choices), demons stole souls to make an army for Abaddon quickly, and Sam released them. The episode also featured the concept of addiction - Dean and the First Blade, Crowley and human blood, the title of the episode itself refers to drugs - and now the pool players are unable to stop playing until their luck runs out, although the game is rigged.

Now, Fortuna is a clear parallel to Chuck; she keeps people trapped in her joint to play for her amusement or whatever, just like Chuck does with his narrative. But I mentioned before replacing ‘luck’ with ‘soul’, right? That makes Fortuna the goddess of ‘soul’. Who’s the cosmic lady that rules over souls and is also making someone play the moves of her own game? Yep, Fortuna is both a parallel to Chuck and Billie. Who are indeed the players of the cosmic game that is being played.

Fortuna “reads” the players like they were stories, just like Chuck writes people like characters, but also like Billie reads the destiny of people from the books in her office. Now, Fortuna calls Dean a “beach read” and laughs when he calls himself a Tolstoy, which is a clever bit because what really is a beach read is Chuck’s pulp novels, it’s Chuck’s narrative for them, while the real Dean (et alii) are much more complex and interesting than what Chuck’s story would reduce them to. Her dismissal of Dean and interest in Sam also mirrors Chuck in a way, and we wonder whether there’s some reason for that: Dean is better at pool than Sam, as Dean states and Sam doesn’t contradict him. Pool becomes the way they challenge the deity that is pulling the strings, and Sam loses. Is it a coincidence that the thing they were supposed to trap Chuck with in the last episode was shaped like a smooth ball...?

But I also think that this could be foreshadowing of Dean & co. also putting their foot down with Billie, because it’s pretty clear that whatever plan she has for Jack, they won’t accept to play it like she wants to. The Ma’lak box plan has already been labeled a bad idea by the narrative, and I’m sure that the story will frame Billie’s plan also not as the good thing to do, but they’ll find a third way between Chuck’s story and her plan.

Fortuna differs from Chuck in a fundamental way: she understands what makes a hero. Eventually she rewards them despite their loss -- it’s not about winning, it’s about trying despite zero chances of success. They went against the goddess of luck in her own joint, they were doomed from the start, yet they tried anyway, because they care. Reminds you of something? Death made a deal with Dean, his brother’s soul in exchange of being able to being Death for a full day. Dean lost, and yet Death rewarded him anyway, because Dean was never going to be able to succeed, but he showed something in his attempt.

Fortuna’s power outdoes Chuck’s “damage” (they indeed have an “average” luck: not because they are “normal” now but because they have wins and losses, they lost Jack and now they get him back, and so on...) because she acknowledges them as “heroes” -- not because they defeated her, but because they tried anyway. It’s not being exceptional, not being stronger or whatever, but it’s about being... very human. Trying against unsurmountable odds. People against something bigger than them. That’s why they are heroes -- because they’re human.

They’re human and they care about others, even if they’re strangers. Fortuna and her pool hall are a strong parallel (even in visuals, and, well, in the inevitable homoerotic subtext layer) to Lee’s bar. Lee's bar was based on the sacrifice of innocent victims so that he could prosper; Fortuna steals luck off the people in the pool hall, until they’re sucked dry, except of luck instead of blood. Lee, in fact, was killed with a pool stick, and the meta about the homoerotic subtext writes itself. Here, the homoeroticism is maybe less ridiculously blatant than in the episode with Lee, but, hey. Dean first plays a light match with a woman, then an intense match with a rugged man with a cowboy hat; Sam only plays with a woman. Yeah. *stares at the camera*

Last week, the episode with Garth was a manual of queer subtext, now the focus is more on other aspects, but it’s still an episode about pool, i.e. sticks and balls and shooting things inside openings. I think I don’t have to explain here. You have the history of pool in the show -- Dean and Ash, Dean and Crowley, Dean and Lee... but there’s also something that is not strictly about sexuality but in general about existing as a societal “other”, an outcast, a “freak” in the Dean side of the meaning since forever in the show.

Sam states that he learned to win at pool from his brother, and acknowledges that they had to hustle all their life to eat (a little reminder that they didn’t always rely on magical credit cards to pay for living expenses...), but Sam’s history with pool wasn’t an easy one. At the beginning of the story, he was against using that kind of things to get money. From 1x08 Bugs:

Dean: So what are you saying? That Dad was disappointed in you? Sam: Was? Is. Always has been. Dean: Why would you think that? Sam: Because I didn’t wanna bowhunt or hustle pool -- because I wanted to go to school and live my life, which, to our whacked-out family, made me the freak.

Abnormality versus normality, big theme of the show and particularly clear in season 1. Sam rejects the hunting life, the life he led with Dean and John, to seek a “normal” life. But he was always trapped in a mental trap made of the concept of “freak”, because of the life he’d led growing up and the sense of being unable to fit in with normal people. On the other hand, Dean armored himself with the claim of being “abnormal”, or not fitting with normal people; but that was a mechanism of defense because he was troubled by being different. Except that the story explored how Sam’s “difference” was tied to the supernatural (his tie to Azazel, the demon blood) while Dean’s “difference” was always framed as something fundamentally human, fundamentally tied to his relationships with people. You know what the subtext was always about.

So hustling pool was always a metonymy for a wider picture, the life the Winchesters led in the margins of society, in an underclass environment Sam rejected and took a long time to accept, and Dean embraced because he felt like he couldn’t belong anywhere but there. (“I’m a freak among normal people because I’ve been raised in an abnormal environment” versus “I’m a freak so I belong in an abnormal environment”, in substance.)

So, hustling pool doesn’t equate queerness per se. In Sam’s case it definitely doesn’t, but Sam embracing it equates him embracing being different in a class sense and in a general hunting-life sense. But in Dean’s case, his “being different” was always connected to a different set of subtextual meanings. Sam was “wrong” because of the demon blood and all that jazz, Dean was “wrong” in a sense of societal expectations.

So pool is connected to queer subtext in a stricter sense but also in a larger sense, the semantic area of otherness, of outcast, of freak, of being in the margins. And they play for the ability of going against God -- a God that, in Fortuna’s speech, is framed in opposition to other deities (non-christian deities, female deities, non-white deities) and that represents societal order.

Now about the game. In 5x07, whom this episode is obviously a big parallel to, the high-stake game was poker. Another obvious parallel is to the Ingmar Bergman movie The Seventh Seal, where a man plays a game of chess against Death.

In 5x07, Sam won, now he loses. It’s a fundamental difference that brings us back to what the current narrative is telling us about what makes a hero. All the stuff about luck and whatnot is irrelevant -- Chuck wants us weak, Dean says, and he’s probably right, Chuck is doing this to undermine their confidence, but it’s not a matter of strength/weakness or even confidence. They’re heroes because they’re human, because they’re not special. Against someone stronger than them, like a deity, they lose. But the point is that they play. That’s what matters. They’ve always faced adversaries more powerful than them, situations where they couldn’t win. But they fought anyway. And now, Fortuna is right in saying that they need to fight Chuck by their own rules, not the rules of his game: Chuck will win his own game, because he’s God and they’re just human. But if they play their own game, it will become irrelevant that they’re just human and he’s all-powerful. And, of course, their game means more players, just like Garth attacked the big vampire from behind.

The point is that Dean and Sam aren’t particularly strong or special in any way. They’re going to win because they are not alone.

[qqueenofhades]

The Punisher as Medieval Romance: Tropes, Themes, and Characters

So a few days ago, an anon asked about more mythologies/inspirations for Kastle, apart from Hades/Persephone, and I mentioned that Frank’s character and his overall story arc have substantial (and fascinating) parallels with medieval romances. I was just answering quickly, but I then started to think about it in more depth, and realized that in fact, damn near all of The Punisher can be read as a modern-day medieval romance, sometimes subverting long-established tropes and sometimes playing them almost straight. This extends into Daredevil canon as well, as the characters around Frank also fit into recognizable mythic-medieval roles, and… yes. I resisted writing a long and research-heavy meta, clearly what I needed to do on the last week of term, for oh, forty-eight hours. Then, well, we know how that goes.

A note that I work specifically on medieval history, rather than medieval literature, so if I say anything clangingly bad, I hope my brethren and sistren medievalists can forgive me for it. Also, I don’t know if any of this is intentional on the part of the writers, so it’s not like I am identifying anything they’re specifically doing (or if they are, I don’t know about it), but this is just me, as a nerd, wandering into the candy store and being like “OH HEY GUYS LOOK AT THIS.” Of course, not all the examples fit in every aspect between medieval romance and modern Marvel canon, but there are still enough of them in a number of ways to make this interpretation plausible. And indeed, considering how Marvel stories have become ubiquitously embedded in our popular lexicon almost exactly in the way Arthurian legends and stories did for their medieval equivalent, it’s a noteworthy comparison.

(As you may be able to guess, this will be long.)

Let’s start with the source material. The medieval Arthurian romances are part of what is known as the Matter of Britain: the vast corpus of texts, written and rewritten across several centuries and by countless authors (usually French or English) that deals with some aspect of this mythology. Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin, the Knights of the Round Table, and other characters appear in various guises and playing different roles in each of these texts. They are still “themselves” on each appearance, but the interpretation and the storyline is largely up to each individual author. One may remark that this bears some similarities with the Marvel comic universe. The characters have been written and re-written in a vast array of formats from their first creation to their present modern iteration (and likewise, Hollywood is still making a King Arthur movie every other year). They have been interpreted by many authors and given different plots and re-imaginings, and are part of our collective pop-culture reference in the way that Arthurian romance and chivalric literature was in the medieval era. If Twitter had existed back then, we would have fans begging for Arthur Pendragon to be saved from Camlann the way we now have fans begging NASA to save Tony Stark. It’s a kind of cultural entertainment that you’re probably at least aware of, even if you’ve never participated in, and thus has reached similar levels of saturation. The Arthurian romances inspired endless knock-offs. We likewise have an omnipresent superhero genre. It reinvents and redefines the hero’s journey for its particular day and age on a massive scale. In some sense, we don’t even need to explain these characters or tropes, because everyone already knows who and what they are.

So… onto Frank. At first glance, he is a considerably unlikely medieval romantic hero, right? He’s rough around the edges, has (to say the least) grey morality, and is generally regarded as an outcast and a loner in his community, rather than some idealized, flawless Sir Galahad type who has never done anything wrong in his life and nobly avoids all temptation. But he’s actually a hero in the middle of his trials and tribulations and the corresponding loss (and eventual reaffirmation) of heroic identity. The broad strokes of Frank’s character arc, as seen in Daredevil season 2 and Punisher season 1, are these:

Separation from home and family;

Exile from society and the implied loss of chivalric (military) virtue;

Test of honor/contests against other knights, good and bad (Matt Murdock, Wilson Fisk, Lewis Wilson, etc);

Search for the Grail (life, restoration to honor, vengeance for his family, completion of the chivalric quest);

Partnership with worthy knights on the search (David Lieberman, Curtis Hoyle);

Resisting temptation from a knight’s wife (Sarah Lieberman);

Saving a fair maiden and having to be worthy of her love, while bound by a code of secrecy (Karen Page);

Confrontation of betrayal by an intimate/revelation of the dark side of chivalric honor (Billy Russo);

Menaced by a quasi-mythical and possibly demonic figure who must be defeated, who fights him in a parallel battle at the beginning/end of the story (Agent Orange/Rawlins);

Attempt to re-enter society and re-establish identity (end of s1, though that will be once more disrupted and complicated by s2);

All of this is, basically, the overall character arc for a medieval hero. Pretty much beat by beat. Also, while we’ve gotten used to think of ‘chivalry’ as implying a certain kind of idealized and virtuous behavior around ladies (holding doors, gentlemanly actions, whatever) that was only a small part of the overall code of chivalry – which, at its core, was an ethos about fighting, military prowess, and the display of valor through acts of war. Frank says that he loves being a soldier, and this would be a sentiment familiar to a medieval knight. Chrétien de Troyes has a line about how, essentially, only morally suspect half-men prefer peace. The soldier’s proper right, duty, and true joy in life is the practice of war, and he earns chivalry – martial renown – by doing it. It is not merely a pretty or romantic veneer on courtly behavior (though that is often how it is presented), but about war, the military, the destruction of opponents, and the very nature of being a constant soldier. To say the least, this fits Frank’s character extremely well. He is the consummate soldier who in fact needs a constant war to fight, and who has built an honorable legacy for himself (decorated Marine, Navy Cross, etc) prior to his forcible separation from society. This darker, grittier underside of chivalry, when the violence, bloodshed, and distortion of self was a constant concern, also fits very well with the tone of The Punisher.

That separation is often the keystone for a medieval hero’s journey, and functions to drive him out from the context in which he has until now been respected and earned his living. Sometimes we have an outright reason for that action, sometimes the hero just leaves Camelot and sets out on a quest, but Frank’s separation from society bears some similarity to Bisclavret, a twelfth-century werewolf romance written by a woman (Marie de France), and interesting for various reasons. (Some literature is available via Google Books.) In this case, the hero (the eponymous Bisclavret) is driven from society by the treachery of his wife, who hides his clothes so he can’t turn back from a wolf into a human and is forced to spend seven years in the forest as a beast. Of course Frank loses his wife, rather than being betrayed by her, but there’s still the connection between loss of wife – loss of home – loss of self, resulting in exile to the margins of society and transformation into a “monster.” Bisclavret never gives up his principles and identity even while forced to remain a wolf, and Frank gains a reputation as the “Punisher,” but likewise adheres to his own code of honor. He remains a knight, even if a knight-errant.

Bisclavret is rescued and brought back from the woods by an unnamed king, who sees his humanity and treats him well even as a monster (and yes, there are some definite homoerotic undertones in the fact that it’s the king’s love that restores him to himself, after his wife rejects him for his monsterhood or arguably, queerness). However, you could credibly parallel this to Frank and David Lieberman, who believes that he can help Frank and they can restore him to his former self/his good name. David of course physically helps Curtis care for Frank after his injuries in TP 1x05, and in general performs the humanizing role for the “monster.” He serves as Frank’s companion in the wilderness and believes that he is not the way the rest of society sees him (just as everyone else in Bisclavret sees him as a werewolf and has to be convinced by his good behavior that he’s really a man). Likewise, Karen recognizes early in Daredevil season 2, and never gives up in believing, that Frank still has honor. He’s (literally) not a monster to her. He has been expelled from the chivalric society in which he operated before, but he has not completely abandoned his morality.

Next, as noted, the motif of contests against other knights is essentially a central theme in all quest narratives. Frank must match his wits and skills against challengers, and be paralleled and anti-paralleled to them. One of his most obvious foils is against Matt, as they are explicitly set up as reflections and reverse images of each other. In some sense, Matt is the perfect chivalric knight, at least in DD s1/s2. His morality tends to the black and white, he always has some sense of how his faith informs or restricts his actions, and he constantly incorporates the church’s teaching into his sense of self. As Richard Kaeuper discusses in Holy Warriors: The Religious Ideology of Chivalry, this is basically exactly what the medieval church would want for a knight. Some degree of coexistence (sometimes a great deal) exists between chivalry and Christianity, but the underlying question of violence and sin always underlies it – can a man who makes his living by killing people really claim to be acting in a holy cause? Matt avoids this paradox (or tries to) by not killing anyone, but Frank almost exactly embodies the tension between these two ideologies that was ever-present in the medieval era. Clerical moralists always worried that knights were too comfortable with killing, violence, and general unethical behavior (even as they needed and co-opted that violence for their own purposes, such as the preaching and popularization of the crusades). For their part, the knights often selectively used the parts of Christianity that they liked, and fashioned it into their own ethos, just like Frank does to justify his campaign of vengeance.

In other words, Matt and Frank are perfect symbols of the struggle between church and chivalry, with Matt embodying one side (reconciliation) and Frank embodying the other (estrangement), but neither of them are completely excluded from knighthood despite their differences. They’re in fact the central tension of its existence – how violent can a knight be, and how much consideration, superficial or otherwise, does he have to pay to the church’s restriction of his ethics and behavior? There is some argument that chivalric literature was written as an attempted correction or moral instruction for real-life knights, who were supposed to take it as guidance on their own behavior and be more merciful. This isn’t always the case, since as noted, the literature exalts the very kind of violent behavior that built a chivalric reputation, but there was always that inherent wariness about how much was too much. Matt and Frank push and pull each other on this very question, end up working together at points because they are both within the system, but can’t fully reconcile.

(Also I’d like to point out: Stick, Matt, and Elektra as Merlin, Arthur, and Morgana. Stick is the mysterious, possibly immortal mentor, who teaches and mentors both of them, but also misleads and manipulates them for his own purposes. Matt becomes the ‘hero,’ son of the dead/fallen king (Uther Pendragon/Battlin’ Jack Murdock), while Elektra becomes the villainess/feared sorceress, marginalized by a society frightened of her agency and unwillingness to play nice. Also, one of Arthur’s two half-sisters, usually Morgause but sometimes Morgana, is the mother of his illegitimate son, Mordred, who is prophesied to be his destruction. So there is a dark/forbidden/taboo sexual aspect to their relationship, and just as Mordred causes the ultimate fall of Camelot, Matt and Elektra are literally caught in a falling building at the end of Defenders, which destroys their current identities. Matt enters Once and Future King stage after that and at the beginning of DDS3, where he is ‘gone’ or sleeping or suffering a crisis of faith and must summon up the wherewithal to return, and the character of Benjamin Poindexter becomes one of the many Arthur imposters. There are also some parallels for Elektra with Nimue, the ambitious young student of Merlin’s who overthrows him, ends his reign, and imprisons him in a tree.)

Anyway, back to Frank. So what are knights actually doing with all this questing? Well, various things, but they’re most often searching for the Holy Grail: symbolic of eternal life, forgiveness and atonement of sins, return to self. For this reason, few of them actually find it or are able to encounter it without being changed. It too has a deeply underlying Christian context, and Frank, the ex-Catholic, has been estranged from his belief but not separated entirely. (Likewise, if you were not worthy to look on it, you could be blinded, so… the fact that Matt himself is blind is arguably a commentary on who he actually is vs. how he imagines himself.) The Grail is also, interestingly, in the custody of a figure known as the Fisher King. He is the keeper of the castle where the Grail is hidden, and in the context of the Punisher, he’s basically Curtis.

The Fisher King, for a start, is always wounded in the legs or the thigh, and unable to stand. Some scholars have interpreted this as a metaphor for castration (since “thigh” is often a euphemism for the genitals), and that the Fisher King is passive and impotent because he is physically unable to perform warfare and thus to acquire chivalry. Either way, the Fisher King is the keeper of eternal life, but is physically disabled and needs the help of a knight to activate that power. Curtis is to some degree a subversion of this trope, because he is explicitly not helpless and functions to enable other questing knights (veterans with PTSD) to search for the Grail (health and reconciliation to society)… but in TP 1x09, he still needs Frank to save him. Frank has to encounter the Fisher King and make the correct choice/ask the right question (which wire to cut) to save him and continue his own path toward the Grail. Curtis, by running the veterans’ group, is symbolically the keeper of eternal life, where questers have to literally ask questions/talk to each other to restore themselves, and Frank, by going at the end of s1, is still trying to reach it. But true to form, with the beginning of s2, he’s not going to be able to entirely get there. There is still another obstacle/quest to overcome.

So what about Karen? Visually and to some degree topically, she is set up as the lady whose love Frank needs to obtain and maintain, even in the wilderness of his exile. Karen is blonde-haired and blue-eyed, which was often viewed in the medieval era as the ideal/most beautiful kind of woman (because white supremacy in Europe has always existed to some degree, even if in differently constructed ways. However, the thirteenth-century Dutch romance Morien, and some other ones, feature black and mixed-race protagonists, who are just as able to achieve the predicates of the heroic quest as others). She is also, as discussed above, one of the only people to believe in Frank’s honor and to reach out to help him. However, this relationship has to be kept secret, and has the potential to destroy them both if revealed. This is a fairly close parallel to another of Marie de France’s romances: Lanval (adopted in fourteenth-century English form, by Thomas Chestre, as Sir Launfal).

In brief, Sir Lanval, after being cast out from Camelot, meets a fairy woman and they become lovers, and she promises him that he will have everything he needs, as long as he keeps her secret and never mentions her to anyone. (Marie’s original version of this is much less misogynist than Chestre’s, which adds Guinevere making sexual advances to Launfal and her jealousy being the cause of him being thrown out, so yes, Dudes Ruining Stuff has a long history.) This is not an exact analogue to Frank and Karen, but keeping the code of secrecy (Karen obviously can’t tell anyone about Frank, Frank receives what he needs from her in terms of information, emotional support, etc, but likewise can’t tell anyone about it) is paramount in both relationships. Speaking about the relationship or revealing it to the outside world will result in its destruction, and the fairy lady has to vouch for Lanval’s goodness to the court in Camelot, just as Karen stoutly defends Frank to the court of public opinion/literally everyone. In some sense, while the knight has to rescue the fair maiden, the fair maiden is also the arbitrator of his fate and his overall reputation. (Also, all of TP 1x10 is  basically Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, in which Lancelot must rescue the abducted Guinevere from Meleagant, and having to struggle with the revelation of this relationship and the fact they can’t be together and the dictates of public/proper behavior. Anyway.)

Lastly, Frank’s initial and final conflicts, and the overall shape of his quest, are dictated by his encounters with two archvillains: Billy Russo and William Rawlins, or “Agent Orange.” These are made especially painful for him by the fact that they are or were both close to him. Billy was his best friend, essentially part of his family, and as noted, there is a major theme in chivalric literature revolving around a betrayal (and subsequent murder) by those closest to you. We already discussed King Arthur being overthrown and killed by his incestuous illegitimate son, Mordred; the best-known version of that tale is of course Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, though only the seventh book, as linked above, actually tells the story of Arthur’s death. There is also Arthur’s half-sister and Mordred’s usual mother Queen Morgause; in the Morte, she is killed by her son Gaheris for committing adultery with Sir Lamorak and dishonoring her husband, King Lot. So in one sense, the knight is always doomed to face a betrayal from within his family, or from a close friend.

However, Billy Russo is also straight-up one of the demon knights of Perlesvaus, or, The High History of the Holy Grail. In Perlesvaus, Lancelot is haunted by the specter of these demon knights, who engage in a dark mockery of chivalric behavior, excesses of violence, and satanic imagery, and are otherwise the “dark side of the force” of honorable knighthood, as Richard Kaeuper puts it in Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe. Honor and chivalry are not permanent or unchangeable qualities, and in fact are very fragile. The perfect knight can and should have both of these, but he can also lose them very quickly by impious, dishonorable, murderous, or otherwise wrong actions. The demon knights are a metaphor and a commentary on the same tension we discussed in regard to Frank and Matt: when does a knight-errant become a bad knight? When does his behavior permanently transgress him and cast him beyond the reach of repentance? Billy outwardly embodies the same qualities as Frank, has been through the same wars, is part of the same order, but he isn’t a hero on a quest whose chivalric identity can eventually be reconciled to him. He has crossed too far to the wrong side of the line; now he is the embodiment of evil, a shadow parallel and a cautionary tale. He is not a knight-errant, he is merely a monster.

Then, of course, there’s Rawlins/Agent Orange. Noting the fact that his nickname is also color-coded, we can see some parallels to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In short, in this tale, a mysterious “Green Knight” challenges any man to strike him, with the condition that he will get to return the blow in a year and a day. Sir Gawain accepts and beheads him, after which the Green Knight stands up, picks up his head, and remains Gawain of his promise. Gawain has to struggle to both honorably keep his bargain and avoid dying, and is eventually struck at in return by the Green Knight, wounded, but not killed. In some interpretations, this has just been a test all along for Gawain to prove his honor, or an attempt by Morgana to deceive him and cause him to betray his chivalric ideals, and the Green Knight is just a pawn to achieve this. In others, the Green Knight is a potential embodiment of the Devil. (He also has a dual identity, as the Green Knight/Sir Bertilak, as Rawlins does.) Frank strikes at/beheads/blinds Rawlins, as seen in the flashbacks of TP 1x03, so Rawlins literally wants to do the same to him (an eye for an eye) in TP 1x12. In the story, Gawain and the Green Knight part on cordial terms, but in this case, Frank has to actually complete the death/destruction of his opponent. Like Gawain, however, he is wounded but not killed, and must find some way to survive his encounter with a possibly demonic entity determined to pay back in exact measure the physical wound/symbolic beheading inflicted earlier.

So. . . yes. Overall, both in the broad parameters of his character arc, in the obstacles he confronts, and the other people he meets and the encounters he plays out with them, Frank is actually an excellent hero for a modern-medieval romance. The essential core of the medieval romance was not about love, though that was often present, but about identity, adventure, and the challenge to self, and while in some places these tropes have been updated or nuanced or subverted, in others they’re played as recognizably or directly descended from their medieval counterparts, and the way in which we have thought about stories and enjoyed them for a very long time.

[i-sveikata]

Gabby liveblogs the new teen wolf ep

i mean technically it’s not liveblogging since I’m in australia and the delay obvs but here we go guys prepare for death:

-lololololololo the fuck they always gotta start it at the school cause they cant afford another set anymore

-whut scott is the assistant coach???!!!!!

-omg hayden left?????? why do they literally just remove all of their female characters with nonsense explanations??? hello kira???? havent seen her in a while. do females not exist in beacon hills?? apparently even being a love interest isn’t a good enough reason to keep the gals around anymore dear god.

-’you want my whistle? who gave you a whistle???’ omfg coach finstock is the best

-the fuck was that supposed to be a wolf on the field or a coyote??? or malia???? legit can’t even tell, oh nvmind scott and liam followed it into the woods found a pack of dead wolves with weird bugs that are crawling out of their eyes, naturally.

-malia heading out to paris and not wanting to help anyone with the problem is goals. but you know there are other ways to write female characters without making their only interest being climbing dick you know, we can have depth.

-liam and scott bonding, lol, they cute and feels, scotty all worried he’s losing control, making him repeat the werewolf mantra dear god this is dorky. giving it instrumental impressive music wont change that friends.

-lol, ‘i got ducktape’ this is me.

-oh goody more mental asylum stuff and weird frozen mummified rock shit, is this a throwback to pompeii or what?

-yeah touch the petrified ashy human corpse thing, that’s a great idea obvs like what is even happening right now.

-of course some dude exploded out of it, why are we even surprised people? oh that’s right we’re not. wait who the fuck is that? no wait, i can guess, it’s another mediocre white guy.

-’i like latin’ liam you dork, oh poor kid ‘this has been a really hard year for me’ ‘if you want to talk about your girlfriend guidance hours are posted’ damn girl that’s brutal.

-interesting that all the youngins are getting a senior registration and applying to colleges scenes talking about their futures at school but for the veteran characters we barely got a sentence about it.

-’you can see me right’ omg lol corey are you having some visibility issues.

-who wants to guess this new college guidance lady is probably not human- lol the music just changed and went all sinister like bruh we already got this, literally every new character we meet ends up being evil like cmon.

-who the fuck is this nolan kid- yet another mediocre white boy!!!!!- are they going for the olympics in white boys what is this shit- oh god she wants to talk about the animal attack on the field.

-lol him being like ‘that was no animal’ jesus fucking christ honestly am i in deja vu land are we just repeating tired drama from the first season now.

-liam how do you not know what a scarab is????? have you not seen the mummy what kind of kid are you??

-haha that girl screaming ‘why does this keep happening to our school’ when all the rats show up is the real shit.

-mediocre other mummy white boy appears in the classroom, stares a bit and tries to look interesting and then leaves. wow lifechanging moment.

-naturally liam and mason end up in the pipes again, because where else would teen wolf film things that happen.

-lydia making a bestiary yeah girl. Her mama isn’t being very smart saying no to that- who’s guess is it she dies almost immediately??? yeah girl leave that paperwork in mamas desk. 

-scott trying out his weird electrocution kink with his mum, i am uncomfortable, but also teaching her the ways of electrocution is vaguely sweet.

-mama mccall gonna cover all the werewolf shit when scott is gone i love it. family bonding stuff yeaaaaaahh. oh shit she electrocuted him whilst hugging. family fun times.

-’i held the button, didn’t I?’ ‘you held the buttton’ BEST

-rat king ew is that what they said. gross. lol malia making liam smell the gross dead rat.

-REROUTED. malia is determined to get on a plane to get that french dick apparently.

-how the fuck did mummy white guy end up in the sheriff station???? do the deputies no longer exist?? wheres papa stilinski???

-parrish on the creepy white dude, all is well apparently.

-liam and mason bringing mama mccall a nice dead rat. bring her dinner you sick bastards.

-the fuck??? hallways in flames, parrish meeting another possible hellhound??? what is trying to be said here, fucked if i know.

-weird white guy has some kind of blood kink, sniffing all the injured people in the hospital because of reasons.

-idiot dudes punched liam in the face and he lost his shit. some mantra kid. use the werewolf force. freaky white mummy guy looming in the hallway behind him, cue demon suspense music while he chases for liam now in a closing elevator.

-ANDDDDDD the door closes before mummy white dude can get to him. shocker. i am on the edge of my seat with surprise and  anguish obvs

-lydia showing up to get scott? i thought in the last ep stiles said hed be driving down to campus with lydia together???? does that mean she did and came back for some reason?? or stiles miraculously teleported there on his own. wow i love continuity. good thing im watching teen wolf huh.

-all the lights go out, because its lydia this is teen wolf and EVERYTHING MUST BE DARK AND HARD TO SEE AT ALL TIMES.

-phones ringing are always the most suspenseful thing to happen to me as well, love hearing that dialtone and having a wind machine suddenly blowing hair out of my face before appearing back in... wow you guessed it- the school!!!

-ohhhhhh spideyweb time. love it. gotta touched those creepy webs because otherwise what else could lydias banshee powers possibly do. lots of screaming. love that. was that gunfire? idk here this is stupid. 

-ah yes, lydia miraculously finds the perfect bit of web to touch because of unexplainable reasons.’ YOU LET IT OUT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO RIDE WITH THE HUNT FOREVER’ k thanks im hanging up the web now byeeeeeee.

-how does nobody lock the fucking school doors at this point. parrish and mummy white dude just walked straight in.

-’what are you?’ ‘you know what i am im the same as you’ lololololololololl this is gonna be some weird hellhound pissing contest.

-’something you let out, something that needs to be stopped’ oh goody something new an differernt for us. so innovative.

-ah yes, the pissing contest begins. or fire contest i guess? idk?/ and oh hey the guidance counsellor lady was not as she seemed!!! wow, i never would have seen that coming in my life. thanks

-hey guys when you take away the fire, it’s just two shirtless dudes homoerotically wrestling with each other.

-oh well time for parrish to sleep it off,

-’if the wild hunt couldn’t keep you nothing can’ this is literally sounds like the fucked up adage ‘if i cant have you no one can’ and i am uncomfortable.

-oh boy white mummy guy isn’t after liam- i could never have guess that would happen.

-’it must be stopped nothing else matters’ wow, no, because here I was thinking just let the monster run free and kill people and pile up bodies and stuff. isnt that what teen wolf is about.

-OMG SCOTT GOT INTO THE JEEP  AND FOUND A ‘BE GENTLE’ LETTER FROM STILES THIS IS THE HIGHLIGHT OF THE EP I SWEAR

-what the fuck lydia, popping your ass up in the middle of the headlights like some kind of ghost haunting, ‘we cantt leave’ bruh you need to chill. 

-of course they need some scene with mason giving liam a pep talk like hes the most important character in this show, yeah id totally believe that. hey heres an idea instead of making it about comforting him for losing his girlfriend, how bout you dont write his girlfriend out, there i fixed it.

-malia’s flight no longer delayed!!! haha that squeal of excitement, omg she yelled ‘Oui Oui’ i gotchu girl leave this hellhole while you can.

-opp and heres scott and lydia out to ruin her fun. ofc.

-”no, no nonononono  no, its just rats and wolves- and maybe a little bug problem’ see shes got the spirit. let her get french dick in peace. but also, how the fuck are they gonna explain her and scott hooking up in the future because idk what a fucking ride.

-goes to the window instead because her friends are trying to cockblock her- shes DETERMINED PPL U CANT STOP THE DICK.

-lol scott steps aside and then lydia moves into malias way MY GOD before scott pulls her back out, fuckin i cannot.

-two seconds of disappointed looks but cmon guys lets not pretend that malias an independent person who can make decisions outside of the group- aaaannnnnn shes back. wow. quelle surprise.

-but hey at least she hit scott in the face with her bag, get it girl.

-injured white mummy hellhound staggering through the woods then shift to lydia, malia and scott in the car ‘we opened a door to another world and something came out with us’ THIS IS LITERALLY THE PLOT FOR SEASON 3? 4? THE ONE WITH THE NOGITSUNE CMON PPL.

-of course guidance counsellor college lady is gonna kill white mummy hellhound boy. i support her.

-’what kind of price a big price?” ‘big’ wow, A+ dialogue here, someone give them an emmy for this shit.

-oh no guidance counsellor lady in trouble. bu t of course when push comes to shove, shoot white mummy hellhound boy in the head. but white guy actually died for once???? props. lets see how long hell stay dead before theres a reason that makes no sense to bring him back. cough cough theo.

-two seconds later cause apparently thats enough time for her to escape without the Gang sans stiles noticing. even though two of them have increased hearing and sense of smell?!!!??!! because it wouldnt be teen wolf otherwise.

-lydia ‘i thought you couldnt kill a hellhound’ WHEN WAS THAT EVER SAID??? I LITERALLY DO NOT REMEMBER THAT BEING STATED???

-scott, picking up the bullet casing which apparently killed an unkillable hellhound but hes just so good its not an issue. oh hey, is that a fleur de lis?

-’argent’ ooooooooohhh more suspense. dont think i can take it.

-’the sound of someone who’s never lifted a hand against a human being’ you can says shes a hunter lydia, her trunk was full of murdery shit we get it.

-also whats with teen wolfs repetitive need to make girls have an emotional distressing response to something before they go all ‘i kill you, ill kill everyone, ill kill myself idgaf’ and their expression goes all Tough Girl. like cmon. u realise girls dont all react the same way to the same things right?

-but hey props to guidance lady for not dying, though i mean she’s a girl and shes not white so lets assume her chances arent strong for future eps.

-lol all three of them sitting on scotts bed together. is it just me or should they all just make out, im just saying.

-’can we say we forgot?’ omg lydia PHRASING, u literally forgot stiles barely a few eps ago, dont crush him already.

-’we almost lost him last time’ i just love how the girls have all the emotional lines and scott just gets to sit there a nod like stiles hasnt been his best friend for years and years. but apparently connection on teen wolf means only if you want to fuck each other since scott magically forgot stiles without much effort and the entire season was about lydia getting him back even though they literally werent even dating and theyd given no indication shed even liked him when he was taken. but suddenly shes magically interested in him and the connection with scott, his best fucking friend for life somehow wasnt strong enough and I AM SALTY.

-malia- ’if this turns out to be somthing big and we don’t call him-’ ‘he would kill us’ hey look Scott got to say something accurate about his best friend, yay!

-’you guys didn’t hear his voice, he was really excited to be there’ aww scott, but seriously you asshole writers are still telling me their connection wasn’t enough for scott to bring him back? for shame.

-’lets just play the voicemail’ lol here comes the swelling emotional music.

-but seriously fuck you guys, heres stiles telling scott to leave beacon hills behind him and that its not his responsibility and not to worry about it and take stiles’ jeep (which we know he loves more than anything) and drive, and the instrumentals are getting really emotional showing stiles at the fbi and youre still trying to tell me that scott wouldnt have remembered his best friend without lydia???? fuck off.

-omg the nerd stopped at the fbi seal and straightened his tie i fucking love it.

-seriously whats with this music??? like stiles just won the damn noble peace prize or something just for showing up. its no wonder ppl think scott isnt the main when the writers give stiles all these storylines and attention, like this is not subtle ppl.

-stiles constantly interrupting the fbi dude in the middle of the presentation gives me life omg.

-’one recent manhunt had our crisis response team chasing down a bizarrely feral unsub in the wilderness of north carolina-”

-OFMG LOL ITS DEREK 

-STILES SPAT WATER EVERYWHERE THIS IS GREAT

-are they literally trying to sell that this is current??? like that is clearly season 1 footage of derek what the fuck is happening right now. why cant he just have a vacation for fun, why do the writers have to ruin everything for him but nope, mass hunting derek time ofc,

-the way stiles put his hand over his mouth as if that would cover up the fact that he literally spat water everywhere. smooth stilinski.

-omg the presenter dude look down at the list of names seeing Mieczyslaw Stilinski and legit being like ‘uh... young man’ thats awesome.

-’just got a little excited’ honestly what the fuck teen wolf. you baiting sterek fans or what?

-stiles trying to find out what they’re after him for- ‘Murder’ but what type of murder. “Mass murder’

-suspenseful music AGAIN jesus fucking c h r i s t.

-OMG now they’re just zooming in on dereks tattoo, increasing the music. dude we fucking get it, thats derek hale and you, the writers, fucking hate him. chill.