#but Bluebeard. Bluebeard has so much potential.

[dilfsisko]

Not enough Bluebeard adaptations or retellings

[see-arcane]

Something I’ve been chewing on for this go-around of Dracula Season is the fact that, for all that I am absolutely 110% on board with the whole ‘Dracula wants Jonathan for himself, calls dibs, wants first taste, wants to keep him as part of the castle permanently, I too can love~ et cetera’ deal, I can admit now that I’ve been overlooking one very key part of the whole Bluebeard wifery setup.

And that’s the unavoidable fact that Dracula fully intends to leave Jonathan Harker to be drunk and collected by the Weird Sisters.

Now there’s all manner of guesswork to make about what exactly these three’s relationship to Dracula really is. A personal harem is usually the go-to, and what I usually land on as explanation, considering how things will play out in the future regarding his usual choice of vampiric victim. But others have suggested familial connections, going by Jonathan noting a couple similar traits between the two brunettes, ala facial features, hair, the same red eyes and so on, leaving Blondie as a potential wife the Count turned along with their daughters. Or hell, maybe they’re all actual sisters. We never get to know.

All we know is that they accuse Dracula of ‘Never loving,’ while Dracula stares meaningfully at Jonathan, insisting otherwise. And claims that the trio themselves know it is so from the past. Whatever past that is.

To that end, the Weird Sisters matter to Dracula. Enough to keep them fed, enough to not even put up a full villain monologue at them when they go against his orders to try and snatch Jonathan out from under him, followed by laughing in his face. Beyond his far-too-intimate interactions and abuses with Jonathan, this is the closest we get to seeing Dracula trying to be close with and/or properly*** interacting with someone. An exchange that ends not only with handing over the poor stolen baby in the sack, but outright promising Jonathan to the Sisters once Dracula is finished with him.

And that’s sticking with me this year. Because for all that I’ve joked and memed about it in the past, it never really whacked me over the head with the import and terror that comes with Jonathan’s opening line in this entry.

God preserve my sanity, for to this I am reduced.

Reduced. That’s the key word here.

Even if he doesn’t know all the rules, he knows now that he is no longer just a temporary prisoner. Not even a mere murder victim waiting out the clock. No. He has been reduced to a living decanter. A possession there to be nursed from and used and given as a gift from Dracula to his companions. Like a toy or a new pet.

At the risk of slight spoilers (avert your eyes first-time Dracula Dailiers!), two important lines are yet to come during Jonathan’s stay in Vampire Hell. One from Dracula:

But I am in hopes that I shall see more of you at Castle Dracula.

(Yes, he does think he’s very funny. Prick.)

And another from Jonathan:

At its foot a man may sleep—as a man.

Two vital beats.

The first, because it is a winking confirmation to all that Jonathan has feared. Namely, that Dracula and the Weird Sisters mean to never let him leave the castle again, alive, dead, or otherwise.

The second, because it shows that for all Jonathan is not aware of, he does rightly suspect that there is more expected of him than being a mere meal to have and discard. He knows he is not due for a fleeting pain and escape, even via death. Because Dracula wants to ‘love’ him. To keep him.

And Dracula will do so because he keeps the Weird Sisters, and they will keep him. A parting gift from their loving lord of the castle. The conqueror’s playbook in miniature.

I turned you. You turn him. I have you all.

This, buried under the veneer of:

See girls? I care! Here, a fine new plaything to keep you company. Housebroken already.

(To this I am reduced. To this I am reduced. To this I am reduced.)

There’s time right now. However much time Jonathan can win by playing a good guest. But if he doesn’t get out by the time Dracula is done with him? He lives the rest of his human life as a wine bottle and then all of eternity after that as joint undead property.

Better hope your acting skills are up to the task, Mr. Harker.

[vickyvicarious]

Oh yes, the feeling that you have to rely to the creeper who you loathe so much that you have come to hate even the rooms he resides in, that he's not the scariest thing in your life, that you have to run to his arms for safety. Horror! Dracula claiming him was the high point of the entry (than the almost-bite)

Honestly, yeah. The dynamics between Dracula and Jonathan are so scary, to the point that all the supernatural events are the cherry on top rather than the main course, as far as the horror of this section goes.

Dracula does so much manipulation here, holds so many different kinds of power over Jonathan, and multiple levels of each too. He's got physical power - both in the sense of the castle being a prison, and in the sense of his incredible strength. He's got social power - as a noble, and as a client/boss. He's got monetary power over Jonathan too, able to potentially make or ruin his career. He has so much control over Jonathan's ability to express himself - he's the only company available to him, he's forcing him to keep up a pretense of friendship, he's limiting and controlling his communication with others. Jonathan has no escape: he can't go out of the castle because he's locked in, he can't go many places inside the castle because he's locked out of them, and now he can't leave the rooms Dracula wants him in because otherwise the vampire ladies will get him, and within those rooms there is nowhere safe from Dracula himself. Jonathan has seemingly no action he can take: if he sneaks around behind Dracula's back, a greater threat awaits. If he acts openly, Dracula's own threat may become realized. If he doesn't act at all, he's doomed. If he acts at all, he's doomed. If he trusts Dracula, he's doomed. If he doesn't trust Dracula, he's doomed.

Of course, the supernatural elements are the mechanics by which Dracula increases the stakes, the threats underlying the charming veneer. Specifically, the introduction of the vampire women is what puts Jonathan in this seemingly inescapable box, and one with potential threats to something even greater than his life.

But Dracula's playing this Bluebeard role and could have done so with some more mundane threat as well, without changing too terribly much about his own actions. Where he's scariest (at least to me) is in these interactions with Jonathan, in these manipulative webs and traps he lays out in his words, in the way he pushes so many boundaries until they're forced to collapse or warp under the pressure. Jonathan's privacy keeps getting worn away. Dracula's speech and touch get more familiar and more possessive. He started out the first night blaming Jonathan for the things he did himself ('oh, why did you make your conversation so interesting we had to stay up all night?') and escalates until now he's making Jonathan be the one to act, and to suffer the consequences: whether in forcing him to lie to his loved ones, or in dangling the bait of sleeping outside his room and then only barely saving him when he does. And Jonathan has no real choice but to act. To fail to do so, in one way or another, would mean giving up all hope at escape or likely even survival. But because he has to act, he winds up feeling complicit. He ends up in situations where Dracula thanks him, forgives him, saves him. It keeps putting them on seemingly the same side, with Jonathan in a lesser/reliant role. And that's all a huge lie, at its core. But in a very real way, it's true too, to an extent. More and more, he's getting layers of resistance scraped away, and having to seek safety from Dracula now is so, so horrifying. In many ways all he truly has left is his will to live, his internal determination to resist - and now he's been given powerful incentive not to trust in that latter part too much. It's absolutely brutal.

He's walking a wire that just keeps getting thinner and thinner. All he can possibly do is try to keep this balancing act going, and hope for something to change that will give him more options down the line.

[valiantstarlights]

[Bluebeard Dream AU] The Seventh Spouse

In which Dream is both Bluebeard and Evelyn Hugo.

...It's been a while, but you know how questionable I get with my AUs. 😂 That hasn't changed with time, un/fortunately.

For Dreamling Week 2024 Day 1: Hunt / Bodyswap / Indulgence / First Time

--

The Starlight Observer

June 7, [year redacted]

No one talks about how tedious it is to find a spouse. It is difficult enough to find someone willing to brave the treacherous sea known as marriage, but managing to convince one candidate after another to undertake the journey with you, even after they know about your previous failed marriages?

Truly, Lord Dream Endless (despite not being a Charmer like his sibling Desire) is a master at convincing nobles to tie a ball and chain around their ankles and throw themselves overboard, in the hopes that, by sinking down the watery depths, they will be the one who will finally anchor him.

Then again, Lord Dream has his eternal youth, his otherworldly good looks, and his and his family's accrued wealth going for him. It is more than what most in the ton have to offer potential matches, and so Lord Dream continues to sail the open waters unchallenged, collecting anchors while flying the red flag.

The immortal lord's latest target seems to be one Lord Robert Gadling, mutation unknown, who has recently arrived from India without much fanfare. Lord Robert has an air of charm and mystery about him, and this author personally saw how disarmingly charming he is to the debutantes of all species and sexes as they flocked to him like birds of prey upon fresh meat.

Unlike fresh meat, however, Lord Robert managed to captivate them all with his wit and his smiles, and the vultures instead became like dogs at the feet of their master.

Perhaps Lord Dream is just another noble Lord Robert has enthralled, or perhaps Lord Dream is looking for a challenge this season.

Whatever the case, this author only hopes that Lord Robert be warned that there is a wolf Shifter among the dogs at his feet, looking not to be the alpha of the pack, but to ravish the master himself.

--

Notes:

The name of the scandal sheet, The Starlight Observer, is both a play on my username, valiantstarlights, and a nod to The Star of Albion, which is the name of the newspaper in Neil Gaiman's short story, A Study in Emerald. ✨

The Lady Whistledown of this AU is a vampire Julie Andrews, a duchess (now dowager) who lost all her fucks when she got turned at age 27. (Julie Andrews was 27 years old when they filmed Mary Poppins.)

[tossawary]

Hey! You've mentioned female!SQH in passing a while ago and that concept has been living rent-free in my brain ever since. I'd love to read your thoughts on it if you have more/are interested in sharing. Hope you're having a nice trip! :)

Thank you! I don't have many concrete thoughts on Fem!SQH (or Fem!MBJ or F/F!Moshang for that matter) besides the fact that I would try my best to make it a hot fucking mess. I would probably write it as a cracky one shot and I would want Fem!SQH to cause constant secondhand embarrassment on multiple levels. Not that Airplane Bro as Fem!SQH would be especially oblivious, no, she knows what she's doing and it's hugging thighs, committing crimes, and making other sect leaders walk out of conferences asking themselves if women should really be allowed to cultivate.

I'm exaggerating a little, but also not really. Airplane Bro is wily and genre-savvy and an apathetic bastard, at the same time that he's a clingy idiot who needs to pay more attention to what he's saying, and I resent assumptions that a female character is automatically the one "carrying the braincell". I would want to write something outrageously funny in which Airplane Bro transmigrating into Fem!SQH causes some chaos and gives MBJ even more issues than MBJ already had.

(I'm talking about a Male Airplane Bro transmigrating into a Fem!SQH here because I think a Female Airplane Bro transmigrating into a Fem!SQH sounds a little too OC for me to write that, though a woman writing an incredibly successful stallion novel like PIDW is very fun to think about. Even Airplane Bro growing up as Fem!SQH would inherently shift his character at least slightly, but that would be a firmer base for me to start on and I'm growing more comfortable with the idea. There's lots of room to explore Airplane Bro's relationship to gender and women by having him transmigrate into a female character in his stallion novel world.)

As for the idea of a Fem!SQH in PIDW... the details all depend on what kind of story you want to write. Only changing SQH's gender inherently has very different vibes to doing a full genderbend on the entire cast of PIDW/SVSSS. In a full cast genderbend, I personally don't really see the plot beats of the original SQH changing much. In a SQH-only genderbend, things could stay the same still, but if you wanted to switch it up, I suppose that in PIDW, the premise could instead have been an ambitious Fem!SQH trying to (maybe successfully?) blackmail MBJ into marrying her, but also resenting the necessity of having to marry for power, especially to a demon, and so hating MBJ's guts. Which would be mutual.

Lots of potential themes for a Fem!SQH's storyline in PIDW about how power can be given and taken away, the pros and cons of the legal situation of marriage, the intersection of sex/gender and class, and all sorts of interesting things.

Okay, now that I'm thinking about it, I kind of like the concept of PIDW Fem!SQH blackmailing MBJ into marrying her or something and then PIDW MBJ later on murdering his own wife. That seems sufficiently dark for PIDW. It would also be a stark contrast for PIDW MBJ to be a murderous widower when Luo Bing-Ge has so many wives. Putting Airplane Bro into that particular Fem!SQH situation for the SVSSS version of those events has strong Bluebeard fairy tale vibes. But that's also probably a slightly more serious story than the cracky vibe I was originally envisioning.

Mmm, I don't have any specific thoughts besides that at the moment. It's all fun to think about, though. ❤

[bilightningwhumper]

Working on what I'm going to do after Mangst 2024 finishes up, mostly because as I do these, I'm developing the world for The New Eden Institution more. Poll first, context underneath.

(Okay to reblog to increase voting pool)

Basically, I'm trying to figure out more male whumpees for the New Eden Institution series. Most fairy tales have female MCs, at least the well-known ones. I considered adding Snow White to this list, but I have a mild plan with a female whumpee there, so I'll keep it that way.

While looking at these, I found others that I may keep male or change to female, but curious on this for now.

-

Current potentials for these:

Goldilocks- orphan who ends up turned in by one of the families they break into the home of; they're just going after homes where the families are supposed to be on vacation to have a decent place to sleep for the night; turned into the Institution

Bluebeard- buyer of omegas who's abusive and kills them when he's bored of them; MC ends up contacted by the investigation shutting down the New Eden system (they were also bought from the Institution)

Maid Maleen- similar to the Swan Lake and Rapunzel stories I have, though their 100%* isolation is because their parent is trying to protect them and their sibling (adopted, step, half, or full); ends up failing and Maleen character in Institution while sibling is bought (ends up being a mix-up; soulmate thought sibling was Maleen because it was a soulmark purchase; whumper thought Maleen was sibling and kept them on purpose)

Thousandfurs- whumpee nearly abused by father; runs away and ends up kidnapped from the streets and put into the Institution; one of Robin's escapees maybe

Sleeping Beauty- whumpee has Sleeping Beauty syndrome and their whumper takes advantage of that

-

Again, just potentials. But I'm curious what people think, mostly to gain more ideas if nothing comes of these at all.

A lot of what I'm coming up with for the whumpees that are bought or just plain kidnapped is very much influenced by BBU stories I've read in the whump community.

[ncfan-1]

There’s something really, really fairy tale about the way that the Osha-Qimir plotline and Mae-Sol plotline seems to be shaking out.

Mae was presented with her silly friend Qimir and her terrifying Dark Side master, and was given an implicit test by Qimir, one that she failed. She failed to divine that her silly friend and her terrifying Dark Side master were one and the same. She failed to grasp that these were two faces of the same man.

Osha spent her entire time under Sol’s tutelage and afterwards unaware that her kindly teacher/surrogate father had another face: that of her mother’s murderer. Sol told her a lie that the fire her sister set killed her mother, and even as the years wore on, Osha never grasped that there was something to this story that was off, because she trusted him. Because she never thought to go looking for her master’s other face.

It's just… It just feels very much like failing to recognize that the handsome stranger from your dreams and the animal bridegroom are the same person. It feels very much like failing to grasp that the friendly stranger and the wolf of the woods are the same person. Like not grasping that your new husband, Bluebeard, murdered all of his past wives until you’re standing in the room where he hid all of the bodies. So many archetypes have multiple faces in fairy tales, and I’ll admit that my understanding of it is not as deep as it could be, but it still speaks to me on a level I instinctively understand.

Meanwhile, you have Qimir admitting to Osha that he didn’t know Mae as well as he thought he did, that he thought that Mae wanted the same thing that he did, and moreover that he thought she wanted it with him. And Sol has mistaken Mae for Osha twice now. Granted, both were in moments of high stress, but still, it suggests that he doesn’t know Osha nearly as well as he thinks he does.

Mae was presented with a fractured image of Qimir, split into two faces, and meanwhile there was a third that she did not know at all. But she has now seen all of Sol’s faces. She has seen the face of her mother’s murderer. She has seen Sol in anger, nearly overcome by rage. She has seen his affection. She’s seen parts of him that I don’t think Osha knew very well—his grief—and she’s seen parts of him that I don’t think Osha has seen at all—his guilt and his shame. Mae knew a fractured image of Qimir. She will know Sol completely.

Osha was presented with a fractured image of Sol, so that just as with Mae and Qimir, she never knew him completely. But she has seen that third aspect of Qimir, the one that Mae never knew, and it follows that this is his true face. Osha has seen Qimir naked, she has seen him laid bare. There are no and there will be no secrets between them. Osha knew a fractured image of Sol. She will know Qimir completely.

Qimir did not know Mae as well as he thought he did. He will know Osha far better. He knew Osha wasn’t Mae at a glance. He is immediately struck by her upon meeting her. He does not need to read her thoughts to know what is on her mind. He will see her in her entirety, will see the sum of her as she reaches her full potential.

Twice now has Sol called out to Osha, a girl and later a woman whom he loves, for it to turn out to be Mae. He constructed an image of Osha in his head when she was a child, projecting his desire to be a father onto her. He saw her lack of desire to be a witch and failed to see anything else. And when they reunite when she is an adult, he tellingly responds in surprise to the idea that Osha might still be plagued by grief for her lost family and anger and resentment for the sister she thinks killed them. When Osha and Mae were children, Sol made a choice between them. He has already grasped the cruelty of the choice he made, but now he will see that there are other sides to Mae than just her grief and her rage. Twice now has he called out to a woman he loves, and has it been Mae.

From ignorance, they shall come into knowledge.

--

There’s something else to this, some other motif that the two pairs seem to be fulfilling as well in mirror image: that of the otherworldly bride and her mortal husband, and the taboo he breaks that makes her flee from him.

Before I go any further, let me be clear. I am not saying that these are literally two pairs of lovers who have now switched partners. Osha and Qimir’s dynamic seems set to be romantic, and who even knows how things are going to shake out between Mae and Sol when the dust has settled, but I am not literally saying that they are two pairs of lovers. It’s just the paradigm I know how to present, and honestly, my understanding of these things is not the deepest. But I can see the way they’re mirroring each other.

Osha and Mae are, in a sense, otherworldly beings. They are not simply Aniseya and Koril’s daughters. They are born of a vergence in the Force; they are the children of the Force. Both were at some point “claimed” as companions to ease the loneliness of Sol and Qimir respectively.

In the stories, a man will marry a mysterious woman, a fairy or some otherworldly being in disguise, who tells him that she will stay with him provided that he abide by a condition she places upon him. In effect, the otherworldly bride will stay with her mortal husband provided that he does not break her trust. But in the end, he always breaks her trust, one way or another. Take for instance the tale of Mélusine, who is in alternate sources named a water fairy or a dragon. She in one source agreed to marry Guy de Lusignan and remain with him on one condition: that he never intrude upon her privacy while she was bathing. When he, overcome by curiosity (or, one might argue, the need to possess and control her completely), broke his word and did attempt to conceal himself nearby while she was bathing, there was no hope that his breaking of this taboo would go unnoticed. She knew he had betrayed her trust at once, revealed her otherworldly nature, and fled from him, never to return.

Qimir violated two taboos, breaking Mae’s trust in two different ways. First was deceit: he fundamentally deceived her about who he was. Second was violence against her person: he choked her and threatened to kill her. Qimir violated two taboos, and upon discovering this, Mae fled from him, and went off with Sol. As of the end of Episode 6, whether she is safe with Sol is still questionable, but Sol has never lied to her. In the matters of truth and lies, he offered her a truth she did not expect in Episode 2, the truth that her sister was still alive, and though she immediately named him “liar,” she learned that he was, against all odds, telling her the truth. He offered her a precious truth, one that gave her back the hope she thought was gone forever.

Sol has violated the taboo of deceit, breaking Osha’s trust by fundamentally misrepresenting what happened during the defining event of her life. As of the end of Episode 5, when they were separated, Osha had yet to learn for certain that he had broken the taboo, but she had begun to suspect it. And while you can certainly and rightly argue that she did not “go off with” Qimir, the result is still the same. The mortal husband has betrayed the trust of his otherworldly bride, and now she is gone from his side. Qimir has not deceived her. He has offered her truth at every turn, even when these were truths that were difficult for Osha and which she did not want to hear. Though it was in service to breaking down Sol’s restraint, Qimir nevertheless attempted to apprise Osha of his deceit; he attempted to expose Sol’s lie. Osha does not trust Qimir, but he doesn’t ask her to take what he says about what happened on Brendok on faith. He never once asks her to trust him. He has offered her the means by which she may divine the truth herself. It’s not clear if Osha will use the cortosis helmet in that way, but nevertheless, Qimir has offered Osha truth, the truth that she needs in order to finally grow past the tragedy of her family’s deaths.

Osha and Mae both need honesty, both need the truth. They have both left the side of a man who has deceived them, and gone off with a man who has been honest with them. Sol gave Mae her hope back. Qimir has offered Osha the means to overcome her feelings of failure and misplaced resentment. They have both offered those they are now paired with what they need to move on from the tragedy of their burned childhood.

I think that Osha and Qimir will come to trust each other in the wake of Osha’s revelation of what truly happened on Brendok. As for Mae and Sol, though it seems that Sol has made a serious misstep in the way he approaches Mae, because these stories are mirroring each other, I believe that some epiphany will be reached between them. Mae’s hope and Sol’s remorse are not meaningless.

I also firmly believe that the mirroring reinforces Leslye’s Headland’s assertion that Qimir is not manipulating Osha in Episode 6. The mirroring does not work if Osha has left the side of a man who deceived her to stand at the side of another man who deceives her, this time about what he wants from her and what he wants for her. It is a discordant note in the song of this story that makes the whole song fall apart if Qimir has just been manipulating Osha all along.

Now, though I have been waffling a fair bit these past few days where Sol in particular is concerned, I am confident that all four of them will survive the season finale. I am also confident that they will part ways in pairs. The otherworldly bride does not return to the side of the mortal husband who betrayed her trust, even if she might still love him. I think that Osha and Qimir will go off in search of greater truths, and Mae and Sol will likely find themselves on the run from the Jedi Order, or else going into exile together.

Once we were in ignorance. Now we meet face to face, blessed with understanding and with truth.

[murdleandmarot]

Hi!! Gonna ask this to everyone I can think of, do you have any AUs you like/made up for cats? Or for bluebelle?

HI HELLO‼️ sorry for the delay in answering 😭

It’s hard for me personally to come up with AUs for Cats, (mostly because of the cognitive dissonance with the names. It’s so difficult to get past the names), so I personally only have a couple. Firstly, Much Ado About Nothing, by William Shakespeare.

I saw the show live and I just felt that the whimsy of it really matched cats, and I have all of the roles planned out, I think it would be very interesting and fun to write out :). I don’t want to go into too much detail here, (I really don’t want to make this post a thousand years long 😭), but if you’re interesting, just shoot me an ask and I’ll be happy to rant about it, I love Shakespeare :D

I have another au that I unfortunately can’t reveal right now, as it’s something I’m currently working on, but I promise it’ll be out soon :D

(it’s completely unserious btw and entirely for silly goofy indulgent reasons-I’m not trying to be dramatic about it but it’s just. Very special to me :)

OH‼️ there was a Bluebelle au I had, based on the movie Barbe Bleue (2009)

It’s a French movie about Bluebeard and it’s one of my favorites, it’s very vaguely historical, very gloomy with some REALLY fun scenes and ideas.

I’m more than a little obsessed with it, and at some point I REALLY want to do something with it, maybe a redraw of a still with Bluebelle, but who knows :)

Of course, other people’s au’s are the coolest in the entire world.

@/cillyscribbles has been driving me CRAZY with her human au, (it’s mostly about the Deut bros, and it is insanely good. Hasn’t left my mind since she told me all about it. Cilly when I get you Cilly)

@/margo-mania’s celestial au is SO rad, the concepts are gorgeous, and honestly could be made into a really really rad non-replica, especially with the potential of cool stage lighting, or poses (I’m thinking specifically of the eclipse (also I need Celestial!Victoria to marry me immediately))

@/pinkieclown’s doll(? Toy?) au is SO CUTE OMG. The character designs are so adorable. I want the newest design, munkustrap, as a plushie SO BAD.

Honestly, ALW should just give all of us collectively a billion dollars so we can create as many non-replicas as we want.

(Honorable mention to @/diorlusional’s apartment au, it’s my darling forever and ever)

[butterfrogmantis]

I've got the strangest feelin' This isn't our first time around Past lives couldn't ever come between us Sometimes the dreamers finally wake up Don't wake me, I'm not dreamin'

Idk if this is an au or what, it’s more just a what-if story but y’know we move.

Archie and Pal explore a cool looking island they find one day. Whilst searching the caves, Archie finds an old Diptych Dial (portable sundial often used on ships to tell time), except this one is all weird and glowy. Against his brother’s advice, Archie messes with it.

The island suddenly disappears and they up randomly at sea. Luckily there’s a raft. They climb on, and are in the middle of nowhere. Archie spots a ship, they’re saved! Except they’re not, that’s a very ominous flag.

Archie and Pal end up tied to the mast of the ship. Archie decides to get a last minute confession off his chest. All in all, they’ve had better days.

The Historian Brothers meet the captain – Captain Bluebeard, a fierce and cruel pirate infamous of his time. He intends to see to these landlubbers, when a voice interjects …

… With a pun

Oh shit. That’s Skelly. But like. With flesh.

Archie and Pal’s recognition of Skelly kinda saves their lives. Bluebeard decides to keep them for crew, and gives Swashbuckler the task of training them since they seem to know him. Swashbuckler is very confused.

Archie and Pal discuss their options. They realise now they must have gone back in time, and knowing Swashbuckler’s fate … they realise they have a chance to change it. But this brings up several questions, including the impact this could potentially have on the future – after all, Papa Smurf and Father Time have been very clear about potential consequences for messing with the natural order of events. Archie feels bad for his friend, Pal kind of wants to not fuck up the fate of the universe.

Ultimately, Archie can’t come to terms with his guilt and attempts to gently approach the subject of Swashbuckler avoiding sword fights or even treasure islands. Swashbuckler on the other hand is REALLY disturbed by the fact these strangers seems to know so much about him - I mean that’s just creepy, man – and threatens him. Bear in mind that as fun loving and jolly as Swashbuckler is … he was ultimately still a pirate in life, and took it seriously. Archie thinks he (once again) should have listened to his brother, and backs down.

Archie and Pal start to befriend Swashbuckler … again … as they work on Bluebeard’s ship and try to work out a way of undoing their time fuckery. Swashbuckler starts to realise they’re pretty cool after all, and entertains them with his endless jokes.

Another member of the crew discover Archie’s Diptych Dial and messing with it kinda sorta rips a hole in the space time continuum and releases an ancient beast (Pal is happy!) Father Time is not and shows up to fix everything (you darn kids).

Swashbuckler doesn’t exactly know where his new found friends are going when they tell him they have to leave, but he wishes them a cheery goodbye and hopes they meet again. Archie reconciles with the fact history should stay as it is

Archie and Pal return to their time. Skelly has been wondering where they got to – ooh and he just has to tell them about this insane dream he just had where they were all fighting a giant dinosaur. Weird huh? Yeah, things sure are back to normal.

Archaeologist and Palaentologist (c) The Smurfs

Skelly and BlueBeard are mine

[merp-blerp]

EVEN FREAKING MORE Things about Cinderella's Castle I'm excited about already as a big Cinderella fan

Part One, Part Two, Part Three (This)

I could not watch the whole 12-hour stream, so forgive me for forgetting or excluding anything.

I had no clue this show was leaked. I'm glad I didn't see it. This fandom’s seemingly on the smaller size, but we're pretty respectful to the creators from what I've seen and I think that's great. Funny that Jeff leaked it. 😆

YEAH LET’S GO FOURTEEN LIMBED FAIRY QUEEN!!! Maybe. Of course, no pressure. Praying Mantises scare me, to the point where I'm not going to look it up to see if I spelled that right, so it's a pretty perfect inspiration for a pretty-but-terrifying fairy queen. At least for me. I didn't know they came in purple, I'm too busy running away from them.

The “great grey days” I believe it was called. An event with the trolls where the sun was blocked out. Wonder what that has to do with anything coming forth in the Lands That Are stories. Kinda reminds me of the death of the dinosaurs.

"Starlight" has been mentioned in some of the lyrics released so far and I wonder what that is. I suspect a type of magic. Probably "good" or "light" magic, just based on the good associations I have with the word starlight, but maybe that will be subversive. Or maybe it'll be good, but misinterpreted as bad magic. Who knows. All we can do is wait.

I was thinking about the Fairy Queen and how she might be treated in the story. Ella's mother was killed for witchcraft, so I wonder if Fairy Queen will also be sought out for witchcraft, hence why she sings about Ella's mother in "Ash to Ash" like she knew her or of her struggle. Or maybe the town will see her differently than whoever they think are witches. The name "Fairy Queen of Sweet Dreams" doesn't sound like she's considered a witch, but things can be subverted in stories. I wonder exactly what in the town's minds makes up the difference between good and bad magic users if there is one to them.

I know it's probably just my knee-jerk reaction to think bad characters can have more to them, but I mildly feel bad about the trolls getting hunted. I know they're supposed to all be bad human killers, but I can't wrap my head around them all being bad and deserving of their entire species being wiped out at this point in time. I don't know… THINK ABOUT THE IMPLICATIONS!

I wonder if characters from potential upcoming Lands That Are shows will meet ones from this show in the future and so on, like the Hatchetverse. Btw, what are we calling this world exactly? The Landsverse? The Castleverse? The latter seems like the best option to me as the Langs have been calling them “castle stories”.

I’m so curious about what other fairytales might be adapted for the Lands That Are. I feel like lesser-known fairytales, like Donkeyskin or Bluebeard for example, would be interesting, and the base versions of those stories in particular seem to fit the darker tones of Lands That Are. More well-known stories would be great too of course, and are a bit more likely to happen if I'm being realistic. But maybe they could combine lesser-known stories with more-known ones, either combining the plotlines to make one story or in a style like Into The Woods; for example: Beauty and the Beast + Bluebeard. Lowkey wanna write that myself if they don't.

I'm so glad Starkid decided to do a series of fairytales! I feel like the world is starved of genuine fairytale stories these days.

I'm excited to learn more about Ella’s two un-named friends. Nick and Matt seemed to love writing them, so I can't wait to see what they're about. I also can’t wait to see Crumb and Sir Hop’s relationship, it sounds really cute.

Ella’s oak tree reminds me of Into The Wood so much (and whichever version of Cinderella Into The Woods pulled that from). If they do little subtle tributes to other versions of Cinderella that would make me really happy. I admit, when I hear of any new "reimagining" of Cinderella I get nervous that it'll go the girlboss route in a way that isn't actually inspired, almost seeming ashamed to be a fairytale story and teasing past versions or it's source material for not being girlboss or "sensical" enough. Happened with Amazon's Cinderella. But I trust Starkid a hell of a lot more with reimagining in an actually meaningful way that isn't embedded with internalized sexism or whatever some reimagined fairytales have going on.

The mockup of the set!!! It looks so beautiful. Everyone who has the opportunity to see this show live is going to be so lucky I bet! I'm not jealous at all. Unrelated, but it vaguely reminds me of the Max Reinhardt Spring Awakening set.

A little nice to put the sapphic Ella hopes to semi-rest. Any ships will be “up to interpretation” and maybe that's for the best for this show, as Ella escaping her abusive home will presumably be the main focus. And that's my favorite—and I think the most important aspect of any Cinderella story anyway. I've seen some hopes for aroace Ella and those are really important too. Let's try to not fight over which sexuality Ella (and maybe other characters) "is", as it doesn't seem like there will be a canon answer, so there's no point in arguing with the wall; many people could possibly see themselves in Ella once Cinderella's Castle is released and that's a beautiful thing. And at the end of the day, all non-cis—heterosexual people are lacking in representation one way or another, so let's try not to play oppression olympics.

[ladyantiheroine]

Hi...It's me...again. Sorry for bothering you. But I was looking through the Fables comics and noticed the similarities and differences between Snow White in The Wolf Among Us game vs the comics. So I was wondering, what is your personal opinion about the character and she is handled the different media's?

Hello! You’re not a bother at all! I love having an excuse to ramble about this franchise.

I confess, I haven’t finished reading all of the comics so this is an imperfect opinion based on incomplete information.

Short answer: Similarly to Bigby, I like Snow in the game better than in the comics. She feels like a more fleshed-out and well-rounded character in the game.

Long answer:

All the characters in the game, including Snow, feel like they have more depth than in the comics. Despite the comics being longer, the characters feel static and don’t change much. In the game, the characters feel like they’ve been impacted and changed by the story’s events.

I definitely think Snow’s personality was softened in the game compared to the comics. Bother versions are assertive, both call Bigby out on his shit, and both genuinely want to help Fabletown but are privileged in a way that limits that goal because they don’t entirely understand how to help underprivileged Fables. But Snow doesn’t have the same Ice Queen energy as she does the comics.

I don’t dislike Snow in the comics the way other fans do. I have a soft spot for unlikable female characters and I don’t think all female characters are obligated to be warm balls of sunshine (especially considering the traumatic shit Snow has gone through). But in the game we see glimpses past that strictness that give her more layers and dimensionality than she does in the comics.

Like I said in my post on Bigby, the characters in TWAU just feel like they have more depth than in the comics because the scale is smaller and the struggles more internal. Snow is not just a one-note ice queen but instead a woman whose business-like demeanor hides someone who is desperately trying to maintain order in a very chaotic situation. 

Part of this is because Bill Willingham just doesn’t seem interested in the internal lives of the characters like Telltale is. I know Fables is an ensemble story and is more interested in the bigger scope politics of the world rather than individual character journeys. But the result is that characters go through horrible things and the story weirdly just keeps going. It glosses over how these events would actually affect them and it feels so weird.

(Potential spoilers in this paragraph)

Snow goes through SO MUCH traumatic shit in the first few volumes alone. She thinks her sister is murdered, she’s ruthlessly pursued in volume two by Fables who want her blood, she’s drugged and almost assassinated by Bluebeard and Goldilocks, she has sex with a man she’s only just now warming up to while under the drugs and gets pregnant, survives the battle of Fabletown while pregnant, goes through an extremely painful birthing process delivering six werewolf children, and then had to quit her job as mayor and move away from Fabletown to raise them away from their father who has fucked off to somewhere unknown. ALL WITHIN THE FIRST FEW VOLUMES.

Like, kudos to Snow for having the strength to survive all that but I’m reading all this thinking, “Damn, girl, ARE YOU OKAY???”

But the story never pauses to really sit with Snow and consider how all this is affecting her. Which is weird given how much time we spend with her and how she’s one the closest characters that Fables has to a protagonist. She just experiences horrible things and then just carries on with business as usual. Because Willingham just doesn’t seem to care.

Compare this to the TellTale game, where we see how things affect Snow. She’s shaken when she sees Lily’s dead body glamoured to look like her and even worries Lily’s death was her fault somehow. She’s unnerved when she finds out her boss has been creeping on her and glamouring sex workers to look like her. She gives Bigby a lot of shit because she’s worried he’ll get hurt. We see moments where her professional front slips and we see someone who is rightfully terrified of this whole situation. 

The comics rarely stop to do the same. How does she feel about having to quit her job to raise her kids far away without Bigby? How does she feel after being drugged and impregnated without her consent? How does she feel about GETTING HER FUCKING HEAD BLOWN OFF by Goldilocks? All this has to be taking a psychological toll on her, right??

TellTale Snow reacts to things, comics Snow doesn’t because Willingham doesn’t seem to care all that much.

Plus, sometimes Snow’s characterization in the comics feels like a conservative man’s uncharitable idea of a “strong female character.” Like he thinks if a woman is strong and assertive, that means she’s just a mean old bitch. He can’t imagine an assertive woman would actually give a shit about anyone or be properly affected by anything. And later she becomes this weepier version of herself around Bigby, but it feels out of nowhere and contrasts with what we’ve seen of her so far. It doesn’t feel like a gradual character arc.

It feels a little Taming of the Shrew, like Willingham created this assertive female character and wanted to “take her down a peg” and domesticate her. This change feels out of nowhere because, again, because Willingham isn’t interested in looking inward at his characters enough to connect any dots.

And I won’t get into Snow’s romance with Bigby because…Willingham just can’t write romance like TellTale can. The few glimpses of romantic potential we see between them in the game is way more convincing and makes me way more invested than any of the explicitly romantic moments in Fables. I just wish the TellTale games would cut off from the comics entirely and give Bigby and Snow the better love story they deserve.

So yeah, in short: I appreciate both versions but TellTale Snow is given more depth and more time to respond to things than her comic book counterpart. TellTale simply cares more about Snow’s internal life than Willingham does.

Sorry for another long response, but I hope this makes sense. I love Snow White as a character.  When I went to read the comics after I finished the game, I was excited to see her as mayor and get a proper love story with Bigby. Unfortunately, I just don’t think Willingham is as good at character-driven storytelling as TellTale is.

Thank you for the question!

[tdciago]

Having read your and @thefutureiswhat's season 5 finale theory I'm curious to know your thoughts on this shot:

Is it possible that one of these potential endings could involve both Dot and Roy making it out of the farm during the events of the raid and he, with nothing else left to lose at that point, attempts to take her again? She's wearing different clothes so I'm betting that she's home, or at least on her way there. Plus her seemingly shocked expression and the lighting suggests that something's happened, possibly something burning...?

What do you think? Could this be the ending scenario that "Dot prepares biscuits for"? (Maybe even the her poisoning him theory?)

Sending you both the ask because you each have really compelling ideas and speculations.

it's funny, because I was just thinking about this scene and how we probably aren't going to see it, because Dot is clearly wearing different clothes.

Your suggestion of how we might still see it is excellent, but the one thing working against it is time.

The run time for 5.10 is 49 minutes, which seems impossibly short. That's why the idea of 3 alternate endings being strung together as one continuous narrative seems more plausible than showing each ending separately (assuming there actually are three). It also fits with the way the story has been told so far, with strange inconsistencies between scenes and episodes.

I think there was a tremendous amount of footage left on the cutting room floor this season, maybe too much. There are also a lot of tantalizing clues that deserve to be paid off, including Roy saying he'd let Dot go if she begged to stay and meant it. We also have things like the flamethrower; the tank and Wink's foreshadowing of a tank battle; the windmill blades that look like matches; the Trojan horse; all the stag imagery and a guy named Buck Holt, which means "forest deer"; Witt Farr and his 100-pound backpack; Oedipus and the right of way, etc.

From what some actors have indicated, the finale is crazy. So maybe they can pull off including this scene, which always felt to me like Bluebeard's wife discovering the bodies of all the previous wives. But we've basically covered that ground.

Roy did say the options for killing the tick were suffocation or fire. "The Tiger" also mentions suffocation. And Roy is covering Dot's mouth.

I think there is going to be a huge potential for fanfic about this season, because of all the stuff we didn't get to see, some of which was teased in promos but never happened. There are a lot of gaps to be filled. I hope we do get to see this somehow.

Meanwhile, that new spoiler regarding Roy has me thinking of the biscuits in another context.

[blimpixels]

I have many Pirate Berry ideas:

Captain BlackBerry/Bluebeard/Berrybeard the pirate

Button pops onto the eye patch ✔️

“Lest ye be the one to get swabbed off the poop deck”

“Cap’n! We’re taking on juice!”

Roll the plank

“We’ll never get scurvy again!”

Enemy cannonball bounces off blueberry, sinks enemy ship

Booty joke

Berried Treasure

If you have any more ideas let me know!! This has so much potential

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

I tend to take scoops with grains of salt... Or scoops of salt.

The DisInsider sometimes successfully clues us in on what's happening, and sometimes they're way off. Remember how they reported that the 2022 D23 would reveal to us a 2D Disney animated movie called BLUEBEARD (based on the fairy tale of the same name) and a Pixar picture called SUMER? That same report also said INSIDE OUT 2 would be revealed... It was.

But yeah...

Anyways, the latest scoop says DUCKS is a thing (even though the Fine Tooning podcast, co-hosted by entertainment writer Drew Taylor and Disney reporter Jim Hill, said that there is no so much movie being made within the walls of Emeryville), in addition to a third FINDING NEMO movie and an INCREDIBLES 3. Well, what I'll say is this... I think both of those are inevitable. Sequels to favorites tend to do well, and they fund the riskier, original stuff. So yeah, don't be surprised if one of those happens. FINDING DORY and INCREDIBLES 2 were both billion dollar behemoths upon release. Regular moviegoers love those characters and worlds, so they'll be back, even if the online animation fandom deems their sequels to be "mid" or whatever.

Honestly, I wonder if Pixar will ever consider another CARS movie. We did have that CARS ON THE ROAD series two years back, and 2026 will mark the 20th anniversary of the franchise. CARS 3 arrived 11 years after the original, but I think it was kinda bogged down at the box office by how poorly-received CARS 2 was (even audiences weren't too keen on that one) and the existence of two PLANES movies. I think it kinda made for CARS overkill. Ever since CARS 3, we've only had the aforementioned Disney+ series and maybe some short buried in there somewhere. Maybe a nice long gap and not much stuff could do a potential fourth movie good? Honestly, I like the CARS world, the movies are light and fun and silly, I'd be fine with Pixar making a few more so they can fund originals just in case they struggle at the box office. Instead of yet another TOY STORY.

I think they're running out of the perennial favorites to do sequels to. A BUG'S LIFE 2 likely won't happen, and MONSTERS, INC. has its continuation in the form of MONSTERS AT WORK, though a sequel set after that isn't entirely off the table. I don't think you can feasibly do a sequel to RATATOUILLE or UP (the latter's DUG DAYS was a fine enough continuation, and Ed Asner passed away not too long ago), WALL-E's future world could possibly be open to a sequel? I dunno.

The 2010s was mostly sequels. Four originals, only. BRAVE, INSIDE OUT, THE GOOD DINOSAUR, and COCO. INSIDE OUT, of course, has a sequel that's right around the corner. I would be down for a BRAVE sequel honestly, given the fantastical world the original created. Hell, just to make things cooler, bring back Brenda Chapman and actually let her make that movie - as a sort-of last laugh for her after how she was treated by John Lasseter. GOOD DINOSAUR lost money at the box office, so that probably will never get any form of continuation. COCO, I feel, you can't make a sequel to. Its director Lee Unkrich retired, anyways.

Pixar can only sequelize the old favorites so many times. They're certainly trying with a fifth TOY STORY, for sure. I'm sure it'll also make a lot of money. But it's like, when is enough enough? When does the studio create a film that actually is meant to have continuations while still being a complete story? Almost like their equivalent to STAR WARS? Or heck, could they one day break their "original idea" tradition and make... An adaptation of a multi-book series?

I wouldn't rule it out! Remember the Blue Sky movie EPIC, based on the William Joyce book THE LEAF MEN AND THE BRAVE, GOOD BUGS? That was almost a Pixar film in the 2000s! Maybe in order to keep sequels a thing but without having to retread their classic favorites, Pixar could just adapt a book series, hope for the best for the first movie, and then make some sequels to pay for the originals.

But either way, there will be more sequels I feel. Maybe not to the most recent movies, but they've got the mine for it, and Disney certainly wants that easy dough.

I'll also point out that the scoop said more Disney Animation sequels are likely, and yes... So long as the movies do great. STRANGE WORLD and WISH certainly aren't getting sequels, while I feel ENCANTO will get one, or at least a series. RAYA, maybe? They could've given us more WRECK-IT RALPH movies, given how much they can play (hah) with the video game settings, but they decided to do a separate-ways ending with RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET. So that seems to be off the table. Seems like it'll be FROZEN, ZOOTOPIA, and MOANA for a bit. Not sure if a BIG HERO 6 sequel will happen anytime soon, as we had a Disney TV Animation series for that *and* a WDAS-made Disney+ series. Disney can't really sequelize anything further back, like pre-Lasseter, for various reasons. TANGLED got a whole series that really expanded the film's world and did its own thing, a sequel would either have to build off of that or ignore it all completely... And I'm sure that would sit well with fans, haha. The weird thing is, I can see a TANGLED sequel happening because it would play off of nostalgia for the original, which turns 14 this year. But again, would it integrate the TV series and possibly alienate people who have only watched the movie? Or would it ignore the show continuity and upset fans? That's a tricky one, they'd have to really market the show before theoretical release.

There are even rumors that the TIANA series being made for Disney+ will be re-formatted as a movie much like the MOANA series was, but... Who would do the 2D animation if WDAS doesn't truly have a functioning 2D unit? Would it still be Mercury Filmworks, who are said to be doing the animation for it? Or would they have a sort-of Duncan Studio-type house do it? Would it be switched to CGI? A PAPERMAN/WISH-like movie? It raises plenty of questions.

Only time will tell. I find the prospects fascinating to say the least, but I really do hope we hear about more originals from both houses... Especially WDAS... In the coming months.

[myburntwritings]

Influences of Westworld in The Burnt City

Beware, traveller: from here on there be spoilers. (Though, they're all speculation, and no spoilers of 1:1s.)

The Burnt City takes elements from different stories on top of the Greek Myths, with Blade Runner and Bluebeard’s Castle being the most obvious. This glorious mash of genre, over-layered time periods, and side-plots is what makes Punchdrunk so fascinating. But one overlay I don’t see mentioned as much is from the television show Westworld.

If you haven’t watched Westworld, the story surrounds a theme park in our modern world set in the Wild West, where the ‘hosts’ are actually androids, made to be as lifelike as possible. The Hosts are there to guide the guests into new adventures, but when left alone, they have their own little story loops that repeat indefinitely.

Aside from the obvious similarities here, if we consider the characters as hosts, and the white-masked audience as the park guests, the most significant similarity between The Burnt City and Westworld is the maze/labyrinth.

(From this point on, I will only refer to the labyrinth, so I don’t need to keep using the slash.)

In both stories, you have a man looking for the centre of the labyrinth. In Westworld, this is the Man in Black, who believes that the labyrinth is the central game he is destined to find, and gain some greater meaning behind the park and its occupants. In TBC, this is Kronos, constantly following his red string and building potential labyrinth designs out of jigsaw puzzles.

But, as the Man in Black is constantly told in Westworld: "the maze wasn't made for you." The Labyrinth in The Burnt City wasn't made for Kronos. Unfortunately for Kronos, as a character/host, being stuck in a loop, he can't remember that.

In Westworld, the labyrinth was created as a way for the hosts to find their own consciousness, to create a personality and truly become alive. They reach the centre of the maze when they hear their own voice in their heads. They escape the loops created by the park designers and are fully conscious.

In TBC, the labyrinth is similar: except it is a way for Persephone to remember who she is. She can't be told by Hades who she is, as it won't ever be real. She has to walk the labyrinth alone, travelling her underworld, until she reaches the centre and remembers who she is. She leaves herself hints (the tapes) and has people she trusts to help her (Laocoön, Askalaphos) to ensure she walks the path she needs.

With her 6 month cycle of returning between our world and the underworld, she has been through this many times, and likely Hades has learned that simply telling her who she is doesn't work.

So, they created this labyrinth together. He puts her on the labyrinth path and sets her off, knowing that when she reaches the centre... that is when he truly has his wife back.

You also have the similarity of the things being done by Kronos and the Man in Black in order to find the centre of the labyrinth. The Man in Black is willing to kill and torture in order to get there. The symbol for the maze is etched on the insides of hosts skulls, and he repeatedly cuts them open to find it. With Kronos, it is the sacrifice of Polydorus to serve the monster in the centre of the labyrinth – the Minotaur, or Moloch – who, I personally believe are one and the same in this story, but that’s beside the point.

Do Androids dream of electric sheep?

Will Kronos ever realise that, like the Man in Black, the labyrinth wasn’t made for him.

[grandhotelabyss]

Is the "holocaust arised from the bible" thing just saying that God was depcited as genocidal and that the Hebrews were often punished for their misbehaviour, ergo the holocaust is like humanity manifesting Gods judgmeng in their twisted minds, or something more sophisticated?

That's half the argument—that the idea of the Chosen People is the origin of genocide—but the other half, in tension with the first, a tension at the heart of Judaism that informed Steiner's anti-Zionism, is that the Hebrew Bible also invented the repressively perfectionist moral conscience that haunts the world, especially in what Steiner regarded as its two later developments of Christianity and Marxism. On his reading, this perfectionism incited western hatred of the Jewish people as themselves the avatar of their punitive, unrepresentable God summoning unregenerate humankind to impossible heights of self-transcendence, even as this summons was and remains the very heart of western culture. From In Bluebeard's Castle:

By killing the Jews, Western culture would eradicate those who had "invented" God, who had, however imperfectly, however restively, been the declarers of His unbearable Absence. The holocaust is a reflex, the more complete for being long-inhibited, of natural sensory consciousness, of instinctual polytheistic and animist needs. It speaks for a world both older than Sinai and newer than Nietzsche. [...]

Monotheism at Sinai, primitive Christianity, messianic socialism: these are the three supreme moments in which Western culture is presented with what Ibsen termed "the claims of the ideal." These are the three stages, profoundly interrelated, through which Western consciousness is forced to experience the blackmail of transcendence. "Surmount yourself. Surpass the opaque barriers of the mind to attain pure abstraction. Lose your life in order to gain it'. Give up property, rank, worldly comfort. Love your neighbor as you do yourself—no, much more, for self-love is sin. Make any sacrifice, endure any insult, even self-denunciation, so that justice may prevail." Unceasingly, the blackmail of perfection has hammered at the confused, mundane, egotistical fabric of common, instinctual behavior. Like a shrilling note in the inner ear. Men are neither saints nor ascetics; their imaginings are gross; ordinarily, their sense of the future is the next milestone. But the insistence of the ideal continued, with a terrible, tactless force.

Three times it sounded from the same historical center. (Some political scientists put at roughly 80 percent the proportion of Jews in the ideological development of messianic socialism and communism.) Three times, Judaism produced a summons to perfection and sought to impose it on the current and currency of Western life. Deep loathing built up in the social subconscious, murderous resentments. The mechanism is simple but primordial. We hate most those who hold out to us a goal, an ideal, a visionary promise which, even though we have stretched our muscles to the utmost, we cannot reach, which slips, again and again, just out of range of our racked fingers—yet, and this is crucial, which remains profoundly desirable, which we cannot reject because we fully acknowledge its supreme value. In his exasperating "strangeness," in his acceptance of suffering as part of a covenant with the absolute, the Jew became, as it were, the "bad conscience" of Western history. In him the abandonments of spiritual and moral perfection, the hypocrisies of an established, mundane religiosity, the Absences of a disappointed, potentially vengeful God, were kept alive and visible.

When it turned on the Jew, Christianity and European civilization turned on the incarnation-albeit an incarnation often wayward and unaware-of its own best hopes. It is something like this that Kafka meant in his arrogant humble assertion that "he who strikes a Jew strikes down man/mankind" (den Menschen).

As Blake Smith recently explained, Julia Kristeva analyzed the origin of anti-Semitism in somewhat similar terms—

Antisemitism looms, Kristeva warned, whenever we fail to hold on to both ends of any of the difficult binaries that organize our psyches and our culture, because “Judaism” itself remains enduringly at the center of both, and stands in that pivotal place ambivalently for both “the importance of the paternal function” as well as the “right to be different.” We are perhaps used to the vagaries of anti-Jewish rhetoric, which portrays its targets variously as capitalists and communists, as cosmopolitans and nationalists, as God-beguiled fanatics and atheistic subversives—and may, seeing such apparently absurd and contradictory slanders, conclude that antisemitism is not a coherent thing at all. Kristeva, however, claimed that beneath its superficial differences (or rather, precisely in the movement among them) antisemitism is an ever-present possibility for Westerners, who struggle to appropriate, maintain, reject and transform the massive, ineradicable, double influence of the Bible as a book of fatherly authority and necessary rebellions.

—as did Ellen Willis—

I’d argue that no one, Jewish or not, brought up in a Christian or Islamic-dominated culture can come to this issue without baggage, since the patriarchal monotheism that governs our sexually repressive structure of morality, and all the ambivalence that goes with it, was invented by Jews. The concept of one transcendent God has a double meaning: it proclaims the subordination of all human authority to a higher reality at the same time that, codified as “God the Father,” it affirms the patriarchal hierarchy. The Jews, in their mythic role as the “chosen people” destined to achieve the redemption of the world through their adherence to God’s law, embody a similar duality: they are avatars of spiritual freedom on the one hand, patriarchal authority and the control of desire on the other. In relation to Christianity and Islam, the Jews are the authors of morality but also the stubborn nay-sayers, setting themselves apart, refusing to embrace Jesus or Mohammed as the fulfillment of their quest.

—but Steiner's astringent admiration for the moral adventure launched with the invention of monotheism, and his consequent dismissal of the other side of the binary found in a "nay-saying" rebellious assertion of differential identity, led to his own work's odd combination of ideological elements not usually found together, such as anti-Zionism on the one hand and western (if not exactly white) supremacism on the other. He was firmly on the side of the "control of desire," whether that be the cheap and easy desires incited by the pop culture he so witheringly scorned (and tended to associate, especially musically, with non-western cultures) or the "instinctual" and "animist" desire of the Jewish people for a state of their own.