#but also all this empathy is just... drowned by all the terrible acts he does or permits to be done by his troops

[swallowtail-ageha]

I do remember seeing on the dreaded red app some people seeing the "Messmer mourned the loss of a brother-in-arm" quote and the fact that he didn't execute Andreas and Huw as a sign of being merciful but also like. His treatment of them is the opposite of having mercy. He quite literally entombed them alive and left them to starve to death alone if not for the company of stone statues and sorcerers long gone mad

[jaynovz]

tell us more abt the hannibal and black sails parallels pls

Okay, first off, I am so sorry this took so long!! I’ve been moving and shit has been so busy.

Second, yay!! This question. Now I have an excuse to ramble.

Okay so, the two shows do have a lot of similarities. The big one you notice right off the bat is that both have an extremely codependent relationship at the center. 

There are a ton of ways the Flint-Silver and Hannibal-Will relationships parallel, like, they both talk about melding minds with another person, being monstrous, reveling in being monstrous, being made complete by an unlikely source, personas/playing roles/person suits, knowing yourself more completely next to another person, darkness as a source of freedom, something beyond choice/being drawn inexorably into a person’s destructive orbit and being forever changed by it. They deal with the nature of truth, both have supernatural elements, both have religious imagery connected to one half of the ship (Flint and Hannibal both compared to god). 

Also, both shows end with an impossible choice and, ostensibly, tragedy; and they both have open endings that are interpretable based on what you want to believe. 

But at a certain point, the similarities end and the two shows veer off from each other. Namely, the dynamics between the two ships are fundamentally different in a lot of ways, and it's more interesting to look at the ways in which they don't parallel. At the end of the day, the biggest one is that Silverflint is not anywhere near as destructive, whereas for Hannigram, mutual self-destruction is sort of the name of the game. Silverflint may be as codependent but I think the important addition of either Madi or Thomas or (ideally) both, helps make the relationship a lot healthier. If they would actually just talk to each other and work some shit out, it could be great. This is of course contingent on whether you think one or the other could compromise. (The compromise being that they come to some middle ground between Flint giving up the big picture Cause for personal happiness, or Silver throwing in genuinely with the idea of revolution and it being worth the risk of the people most important to him.) The end tragedy of Black Sails sets us in a spot where it doesn’t seem like either Flint or Silver are willing to do so, but perhaps one or the other could grow and change (with helpful mediation, as stated.)

Whereas Hannigram, well. It’s rooted from the very beginning in gaslighting, manipulation, and a completely skewed power balance. It’s absolutely like, this person has done so much bad shit to you, they’ve killed people you love, they’ve sent people to kill you, they’ve lied to you, isolated you, made you fundamentally doubt what kind of person you are etc. But still, you literally can’t cut them out of your life because nothing is ever going to compare to the experience of having them around even if it’s, most often, largely a negative influence. Like, damn. So dark, so unhealthy. They’re the zero-sum game. 

For Will it’s: you love this terrible, terrible thing and you hate yourself for loving it, but also can’t deny it and it makes you feel alive. And for Hannibal, Will’s really the only person who can understand and accept him, but also is uniquely positioned to be able to lie to him, manipulate him in return, and be his utter ruin. They both tried to cut each other out and it didn’t work. So, can’t live with him and can’t live without him. That’s why we end with a cliff dive (impossible choice), Will can’t abide the thought that this thing that is objectively terrible, this ugly thing, is the thing he wants desperately, but he also can’t give it up. So it’s like, “let me try to do my last little bit to society by throwing both our asses off of this cliff b/c we’re both terrible.” Will is so interesting b/c he is at all times living in both the dark and the light and has trouble reconciling these opposing drives. It’s a function of his magic empathy.

(I think they’re metaphorical cliffs also b/c like.... there are no cliffs in Maryland jsyk. What is it with these shows that I like and Metaphorical Cliffs. Edit: I have been corrected there are some cliffs in Maryland but they're not as absurdly high as the ones in Hannibal.)

Anyway, let’s do the one-to-one and talk about Empathy and my Mirrorball boys first. Silver and Will are both extremely good at reading people, seeing what they most need to be, and shapeshifting into it. They both have the ability to shrug on different personas as easy as changing clothes. HOWEVER, the way in which they view this ability is very different. For Will, it’s a curse, he literally cannot turn it off, can’t stop himself from doing it, and it torments him. And I think for Silver, he also does it unconsciously and can’t help himself, but it’s not a torment in the same way. It’s rooted in survival and is an acquired skill that a very intelligent mind learned in order to stay alive. Though I would say they could commiserate on their mirrorball tendencies getting them into trouble/in over their heads.

As for Flint and Hannibal parallels? Well Hannibal is the unrepentant monster who revels in wickedness and largely views the rest of humanity as inferior. He’s having an absolutely excellent time murdering and cannibalizing folks, and the only real thorn in his side is Will Graham and his inability to kill Will b/c Hannibal loves him. 

I think Hannibal is the absolute beast that Flint fears himself to be. And though both are presented as the “destructive orbit” or “intoxicating presence” and both perpetrate great violence... well they’re on opposite ends of the spectrum as far as how they view those behaviors. Flint is drowning in guilt constantly, hates that he has to be this monster, the persona of the dread pirate Captain, and that he’s losing more and more of his humanity every time he does some heinous shit. Whereas Hannibal is a “happy little duckling,” literally feels zero guilt about his heinous acts. Hannibal’s playacting a real man in a lot of ways while Flint is playacting a monster. So, Flint wears a monster suit and Hannibal wears a person suit.

Anyway, I could go on and on about this. The way they use supernatural elements, the way characters embed multiple meanings in subtextual dialogue, how well quotes from Silverflint can transfer to Hannigram and vice versa. Oh the way each show deals with like, queer issues, disability issues. etc etc ad infinitum

But I’ll let this be it for now, lol. If you wanna hear me ramble more, let me know~

THANKS AGAIN FOR ASKING. 

[stilesxeveryone]

The Rewatch, pt4

Feel free to message or comment any of your own thoughts/opinions!

Season 2, episode 7

All adults in the vicinity crossing their arms as soon as Stiles opens his mouth to say something stupid 

“No stiles!” Rip all of his Stiles privileges 

I have to assume that kanima!Jackson assaulted Allison because Matt is into her, which is a whole new level of creepy because oh god that means Matt can control the kanima more than just “hey kill that guy”, like this suggests it sort of takes on Matt’s emotions and shit

Stiles knows Jackson’s birthday

Uhhhh missed the rest of the episode because I was drawing, whoops

Just Peter traumatising Lydia, it’s fine

Season 2, episode 8

I always love Stiles and his father interacting tbh, they very much know how to deal with each other’s bullshit a lot of the time and I appreciate it. Seeing them work on a case together is wonderful

Again, this scene between Stiles and his dad about him losing his sheriff position is actually heartbreaking, goddamn 

Ah, the first hints of Scott/Isaac 

Reminder that Jackson is canonically queer

Also yesssssssssss magic Stiles! That’s my boyyyyyy! I need to write witch Stiles again

Stiles being pack mum will continue to always be one of my favourite tropes and this is just reminding me that I want to rewrite my 10 chapter fic about human alpha Stiles

Deaton saying the teenagers are “more capable than you think” is a goddamn terrible take, they need so much help. Like yeah they can get out of this alive, but your job as emissary/mentor/adult/whatever is to help reduce their trauma

Season 2, episode 9

I feel like the only time I ever really see Lydia’s trauma mentioned in fics is like in passing about why she hates Peter, but maybe I just don’t read enough fics about Lydia

Also I don’t mean this in a weird way, but I really like the sound of Lydia’s scream. Sometimes shows just use bad screams and it’s a tragedy, but the scream they use for Lydia is brilliant 

“Doesn’t being a part of your pack mean no more secrets” I can’t tell if that’s Scott being hypocritical or manipulative but wow

Even though I don’t like Allison’s mother, it still breaks my heart to see her try to talk to Allison before she takes her own life, and Allison doesn’t know so she just brushes her off

Stiles kept in touch with the drag queens which is actually amazing information 

Again! Stiles and his father! Making me cry! I mean this time it’s a hallucination but goddamn 

Chris was killing his wife, I was thinking about how strong his forearms looked

I’m really interested to know how in the world Peter knew that Lydia was immune/a banshee, and that she’d be able to bring him back

Season 2, episode 10

Someone needs to explain this part to me. Like I literally don’t understand the order of events of Matt and the kanima bonding and Isaac’s dad dying. Like did Jackson kill him before they bonded, and if so why didn’t he bond with Isaac instead? Or did he somehow bond with Matt before killing Isaac’s dad, even though this flashback clearly shows them bonding after the fact?

Please someone give me an explanation 

“Scott I trust” that is such a sad line

Hhhhhhh wish people would stop manipulating Allison, and can we get some better communication over here please!

Okay Stiles’ dad shouting Scott’s name first when he hears a gunshot kinda hurts guys

I do appreciate that this show doesn’t half ass their villain character motivations. Sometimes I see villains and I have literally no idea why they do what they do, but not this guy

Okay clearly this show enjoys killing their villains in the same way twice, like they burned Peter twice, and now they’re drowning Matt twice

Season 2, episode 11

Stiles (Dylan O’Brien) is so pretty (and clearly this cameraman knew it)

Isaac coming into the vet clinic like a lost pup is really adorable, and him crying after taking the dog’s pain away 🥺

Peter you manipulative son of a bitch, stop looking so good

Oh boy Allison going off the rails and hunting Erica and Boyd, I wish she’d go feral in the other direction and shoot Gerard

Stiles winning the game, and having this amazing moment and having something to be proud of, and then immediately getting kidnapped is kinda fucked up and I appreciate it

Season 2, episode 12

As always, give me pack mum Stiles or give me death

And as always, Stiles never shutting his mouth during interrogations and fights is my favourite thing to see. Also would be into a Stargent or Stallison fic where one of them realises Stiles is down in the basement and they step in

Why does Stiles look so good with that blood on his face

And that no one! No one knows! That Gerard beat Stiles up! As far as we see, he doesn’t tell anyone about it!!!

I honestly appreciate that Chris goes to the side of the werewolves before Allison does, I think it’s very fun and cool

And here it is, the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Scott using Derek to kill Gerard. He’s just so uncaring about the fact that he lied to everyone about what was happening, planned to violate Derek’s autonomy and had planned to murder Gerard, like it’s so weird to see him so nonchalant about it 

Erica and Boyd just can’t catch a break

I think there are definitely parts of this season that I enjoy more than the first, and parts I enjoy less. I love the characters they introduce (Isaac, Erica and Boyd) and I love the exploration of Allison’s character, and Stiles’ relationship with his dad. I hate Gerard (which is a good thing), and god bless Chris coming round to the winning side (even though technically he went through this same thing last season, of realising his family member must be stopped before his daughter gets hurt).

I do wish the ending was different, and that Scott went about defeating Gerard in a different way. Or at least for him to show any empathy? He just feels so callous and uncaring as he uses Derek and as Gerard dies and I don’t know if it’s bad acting or bad writing or maybe even my misunderstanding of his character, but I feel like that just doesn’t fit him. 

Also maybe this is just me, but I kinda wish that Matt wasn’t major stalking Allison. It feels a little like an unnecessary cherry on top, or maybe I’m just not thinking hard enough about what it added to the season.

[vanessakirbyfans]

Vanessa Kirby remembers the exact moment she realized what acting might actually be. That it occurred during a performance of a “probably terrible” all-girls’ production of “Hamlet” is beside the point.

“I was playing Gertrude, probably in my mom’s clothes—complete crap,” she says with a laugh. “I remember being in a scene and then walking out into the school. I was walking up and down the corridor before going back on for another scene, and it was the first time it ever happened where I suddenly was thinking [Gertrude’s] thoughts. I was thinking, in the present moment, her actual thoughts about what was really happening. And then it made the scene coming next so much easier, because there was a blurred moment where this idea of [a] character being outside of you or someone that you have to become disappeared in a way.

“I just realized,” she continues, “Oh, it’s inside me.” Kirby has been chasing that lucid high ever since.

You may get it for just two seconds in the entire production of a film, she concedes, and longer only if you’re lucky. But she believes that its attainment should always be the actor’s primary objective: reaching that liminal space where you no longer have to think of yourself as the character and you can instead—speaking of “Hamlet”—just be. Kirby describes getting “into that zone” where you are inside the character as much as they are inside of you.

“I always think about it as this really strange process of finding the person, because the person kind of exists in the abstract space, I guess, between you and the words on the page,” she says, “which also have come through a writer and their own experience. And so there’s this third space in the middle that you have to sort of get inside, and it takes a lot of time.”

For her new film, Kornél Mundruczó’s “Pieces of a Woman,” which earned her the Venice Film Festival’s Volpi Cup for best actress earlier this year, Kirby, by her account, had to “get inside” three separate elements. The first two, being pregnant and giving birth, are experiences shared by women the world over. But the third required her to tap into something more hushed, a sort of sad sisterhood that she thinks isn’t spoken about enough: “what it actually feels like to lose a baby just after it’s born.”

“That involved finding and spending so much time with the women who had been through that, which was a massive privilege, actually,” she says, noting their bravery. “They pretty much all said it’s so difficult, because society doesn’t want to hear about it. These women haven’t had a voice, really, in their experience of that level of grief or loss, because society doesn’t want them to talk about it.”

She cites model-entrepreneur Chrissy Teigen, who recently shared her experience of pregnancy loss online and was immediately subjected to charged responses across the spectrum, from adulation and gratitude to utter vitriol. “It just goes to show that a loss like that is really hard for people to hear about,” Kirby says. “I felt really honored to be part of this film in that way, because I think it speaks to grief universally.”

As she chats via Zoom just before Thanksgiving (though that likely doesn’t matter much to Kirby, who’s British), it’s fitting—and appropriately disarming—that the conversation begins with subject matter as heavy as infant and pregnancy loss, since the film does, too. Written by Kata Wéber, the Netflix feature (which will stream starting Jan. 7, 2021) almost immediately showcases a 25-minute labor and delivery sequence unlike any you’ve seen on film before—an intimidating prospect that was also part of the appeal for Kirby. She confesses, however, that her initial response to reading it was a more visceral “Oh, God.”  

“We see death so many times onscreen, and we don’t really see birth in this way. I also can’t remember seeing a film that dealt with losing a baby so head-on,” she says. “Doing the film has really set a kind of benchmark for me of wanting to find things that haven’t been seen or expressed onscreen before that need to be [seen in order] to generate conversation around them, to represent a side of being female that we haven’t seen. Those two things really struck me—and scared me a lot.”

In discussing her work, fear comes up quite a bit for Kirby—or rather, how to cope with it. At the age of 32, she has already had more success than many actors ever do. Most notably, she earned an Emmy nomination in 2018 for her work on “The Crown,” playing Princess Margaret on the series’ first two seasons before handing the tiara off to Helena Bonham Carter. She also starred in “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” has secured a role in the franchise’s coming seventh and eighth installments, and boasts numerous prestigious theater credits.  

But an unmistakable angst hums beneath everything Kirby does. Making peace with that feeling continues to be the lifeblood of her career. “One of my friends said something like, ‘It’s always best to tell your fear [that] you can join me in the passenger seat. You’re not going to be driving the car, but you’re welcome to be here,’ ” she says. “It’s inevitable that you feel anxious or nervous, I think. I can’t just switch off my stage fright or my anxiety before going onstage, and the more I try and fight it, the worse it gets. I have to welcome it and be like, ‘It’s OK; you can be here. You’re not going to ruin the show.’ ”

The most useful tool Kirby has found to combat anxiety, nerves, fear—whatever word you want to use for that prohibitive lurking—is old-fashioned preparation. Knowing her lines inside and out, front to back, sideways and in proverbial heels, gives her the freedom to show up and be present.

t’s an odd sort of reconciliation to have prepped so thoroughly that you can act from a place of impulse, but one she considers crucial. “I learned that the hard way,” she says with a chuckle. “Sometimes I would approach jobs like, I’m just going to see what happens if I don’t learn my lines—just wing it on the day. Maybe it will be more spontaneous and impulsive, and it’ll be more flippant. And it wasn’t. Oh, my God, no, it wasn’t.”

While that trial and error informs her now-scrupulous prep work, Kirby gives credit where it’s due and admits she borrowed the approach in part from someone who knows just a bit about getting inside a character. Of course, if you worked with Anthony Hopkins, you’d do the same.    

“I just had a few little scenes in this brilliant thing he was doing,” Kirby says of the 2015 television film “The Dresser.” “He has a method that he’s always used where he says his lines out loud to himself a thousand times before doing any film. He’ll mark it on his script [and] tally it up, because he said you can’t be truly free unless it’s really in your body. You won’t be able to take the risk and go, ‘OK, I’m feeling the feeling of the state of mind this person’s in’ so that the lines can come out however which way they want to [because they’re] coming from that feeling, as opposed to, ‘I made a decision, I’ve learned my lines, I kind of know how I’m going to say them, and I’m going to turn up and just say them in a prepared manner.’ ”

In other words, you reach a state in which you no longer have to be conscious of your “choices,” because they will be externalized actions made by the internalized character. To actually achieve that symbiosis, Kirby explains, you have to practice an almost relentless empathy in order to “absolve all your judgments” of the person you’re playing.

“Acting’s such a funny job, isn’t it? How you think informs how you feel. And then how you feel, as a consequence, informs how you think,” she posits. “There’s a conversation between your feelings and thoughts all the time. And so it’s almost like trying to get inside someone else’s thoughts—so then you don’t have to worry about how the person is coming across or the mannerisms or whatever else, because you’ve built it from the inside, and that’s what happens naturally. The best acting experience, really, is when you’re thinking as that person without being conscious of yourself.”

The Catch-22, particularly for Kirby, is that fear, or even self-consciousness, will block the receptacles of empathy. If you as the actor at any point aim to shield yourself from the experiences of your character, you could be tossing out a crucial piece of their puzzle.

“As an actor, you don’t want to protect yourself. I think it’s almost the opposite,” she says. “I find I’m less shy, for example, when I’m playing someone, when I’m trying to understand someone else or some other part of humanity. You take more risks, and you sort of push into parts of yourself that you might not every day know existed, because you have to feel the things that they feel.”

That is one reason why Kirby creates playlists for her characters. In addition to drowning out literal noise on set between setups, delving into what a character’s taste in music might be—or why they’d listen to a given song at a given moment—opens a window into their psychology. In a pinch, the music can build an impromptu bridge between herself and the person within. It can also help ease her gently into a particularly formidable role, fear be damned.

“This idea of being daunted by something—I look for it. I go, ‘Oh, my God. I have no idea about this. I don’t know what it feels like to give birth, and I would love to learn about that,’ ” she says. “Of course, my dad is a cancer surgeon, so I grew up with him saving people’s lives. I always felt like acting is such a public thing, but it’s really not nearly as important as what a lot of people are doing in the world. But when you’re in a group of people who want to explore or understand something that perhaps we don’t yet know from our lived experiences, it does feel, sometimes, like such an honor.”

[theholycovenantrpg]

CONGRATULATIONS, RACHEL! YOU’VE BEEN ACCEPTED FOR THE ROLE OF CAPHRIEL.

Admin Cas: This decision felt practically impossible to me. We received two applications for Caphriel, and each application offered a completely different perspective of her, tapped into two totally opposite aspects of her character, but what drew me back to your application, Rachel, was your eagerness to tackle the — ah, less savoury aspects of Caphriel, shall we say? You said it yourself, it would be easy to look at Caphriel through rose-tinted glasses, given all she’s sacrificed and all she insists on doing for mortal-kind, but the matter of the fact is that she’s still an Angel. Yes, she’s kind, she’s selfless, she’s sombre; but she’s also haughty, she’s also resolute, she’s also violent. I think it was this line that sold me: “Though she despises war, Caphriel carries her sword wherever she goes – can she not say that she is prepared, if she must, to cut down those that stand in the way of her love?” I can’t wait to see what other terrible things Caphriel is willing to do in the name of love in your capable hands! Please create and send in your account, review the information on our CHECKLIST, and follow everyone on the FOLLOW LIST. Welcome to the Holy Land!

OUT OF CHARACTER

Alias | Rachel

Age | 22

Personal Pronouns | she/her

Activity Level | Inspiration comes in waves, but I try my best to keep a net one or two posts per day. It might mean I spam the dash with all my replies on one day and then am lurking the rest of the week, it might actually mean one reply a day, it all depends on work and life and such. I am around every day to chat about things, though! You can count on me lurking on discord an alarming amount of the day.

Timezone | PST

Triggers | REMOVED

How did you find the group? | Rosey was like Hey. I think you’ll enjoy this. and she was right!

IN CHARACTER

Character | Caphriel

What drew you to this character? | It took me a long while to settle myself on Caphriel. I was torn between a number of characters as they were posted, but I kept circling back to her – her radiant kindness, the exquisite pain of loving wholeheartedly, despite the weight of sorrows that she carries for others. She is a breath of light that is so deeply compelling to me. It could be easy to see her through rose tinted glasses, but I think there’s an edge to her that I really want to try to draw out.

What future plots do you have in mind for the character? |

I. TAKE UP THY BLADE

Love has brought Caphriel to violence, and it shall do so again. She committed unspeakable acts against God and her fellow angels in their great coup all for the sake of humanity, acts she would repeat tenfold if it meant they remain as they are: stumbling towards a light of their own making, figuring out their place as they define it. Though she despises war, Caphriel carries her sword wherever she goes – can she not say that she is prepared, if she must, to cut down those that stand in the way of her love?

If and when the divine beings start to chafe at their self-imposed equality with the human race, if and when they seek to be once again revered without question, Caphriel will once again take up her sword against her brethren. It is an inevitability, one she feels in her bones. 

Caphriel may not go to bat for every human that she encounters, but there are individuals whom she found fight tooth and nail to spare the horrors of the world. She would put herself on the line for humanity as a whole in a heartbeat, if it came to it, though she would prefer to teach her brethren the things she’s learned from the humans first, instill in them the same deference that she holds. Break from them the desire to be worshipped, for that era seems firmly in the past. I think it would be very interesting to have her interfacing with her fellow angels, attempting to teach this point – in all likelihood, it would go poorly, especially among those that still crave power over anything. She cannot force love when it is absent, but she would bleed herself dry if it would make them understand.

Perhaps the angels get restless. Perhaps her shared animosity with Nerissa comes to a head. Perhaps someone dares to harm those that are beloved to her. I feel there are many paths that can lead to her digging back into that measure of destruction she holds within herself, all varying degrees of boundary-testing. This would be a longer-term arc for her as the plot develops, as there are a lot of dominoes that would have to fall first in order to get her to turn to violence – all other avenues must be closed, or she must really, truly feel like it is the right thing.

II. I WOULD DROWN IN THE FAVOR OF YOUR EYES

As an immortal being, Caphriel has lost a great many things. She watches the decay of mortals with a bittersweet resignation, but there are always a special few mortals whose loss she feels keenly, who she weeps for ages down the line. Luca Riche is one of these, though she has not lost him yet – and she is determined to keep him, greedy and indulgent, for as long as she can. 

History repeats itself, it seems – she loved Abel then as she loves Luca now, but this time she is at his side, an equal rather than a distant observer. He is not hers to protect, but she aches to do so, would likely turn at an instant on one who did him harm. The thing is: did she love Cain less, for his sin? Did she resent him for his violence against his brother? She had wept for him as he bore the mark even as she turned her back on the darkness he harbored within himself. Her draw towards Luca unwittingly brings Jasper into her sphere, and she can sense a similar darkness about him. The brothers have her transfixed once again, but can the violence between them remain unfulfilled?

I would love to explore the established connection with Luca and how that affects her connections to Jasper. Does she see the animosity harbored by Jasper? Is she blinded to the issues by Luca’s own love for his brother, and her love for him in turn? She is a bit of a meddler, albeit a well-meaning one, so there’s a distinct possibility that she would try to facilitate some form of reconciliation, especially if the strain between the brothers begins to reflect negatively onto Luca. It might just blow up in her face.

Whether she eventually learns they are Cain and Abel does not, I think, truly matter – either way there is still the push and pull of her benevolent love vs. the specific instances of Jasper’s darker leanings, the sickly sweet danger of her love for Luca. She was not a direct actor in their story initially, but she could be now – I think she will cling to this, and it may eat at her. This possessive love could so easily turn to rot – she hovers on a precipice which, really, either brother could knock her over the edge of.

III. THERE IS BLOOD ON THE WALLS OF YOUR HOME

Caphriel’s position within the hierarchy of angels feels, despite her mantle as virtue of Charity, quite tenuous. She shuns Caelum in favor of Sanctus Terra, adores humanity more than she ever has her brethren. She took up the sword with the rest of them, followed Michael into the fray not because she believed in him, but because she believed that God had turned against His people. All that she has done has been for humanity – how plain is that for other angels to see? It is etched into the very marrow of her bones – it seems impossible that the other angels would not be wary of this, unsettled by this almost lack of loyalty. 

Michael made her the virtue of Charity – but does he trust her? She had walked away while he was building his empire – does this not smart? Do the other angels view her has naïve for placing her lot so heavily with humanity? Her ferocity still lingers in their memory, but the goodness that she radiates now may turn the stomach of those angels lingering in the darker corners of Caelum. 

She spends most of her time in Sanctus Terra, and I would like to really dig into her feelings about coming ‘home’ to Caelum. Whether she is drawn in some official capacity or simply visiting as part of her travels, there are a lot of mixed feelings about the place and the people. She harbors no ill will for her brethren, but their pride chafes on her after too long a stay. 

It would be interesting to push this divide to the brink, test the limits of Caphriel’s love and loyalty. When given an ultimatum, which side would she choose? She was made to love and protect humanity, but can she really turn aside from her own divinity so easily?

IV. A HEART IS A MUSCLE LIKE ANY OTHER

This is building off something Minnie had in her sample app! I think it’s really compelling that Arianne and Caphriel occupy the same niche in a strange way. They both can assuage the suffering of another being, though Caphriel’s empathy is a bit less immediate of a fix than Arianne’s manipulation of the heart. There is an element of violence to both of their pathways – for Caphriel to take a memory permanently rather than just see it, she must wield her sword; for Arianne, it is easy to simply stop a heart entirely. Caphriel aims to soothe from a place of love; it seems that Arianne seeks the power that comes from dependance. 

They are strange parallels, and I would love to have a possible confrontation between the two. Caphriel tries so hard to love all humanity, but I think that Arianne would push at her limits. She has made herself into humanity’s protector, though the threats she works against are myriad and deeply, deeply unexpected. Arianne’s ability poses a particularly strange threat, one that I believe Caphriel would keep an eye on, especially if she got wind that people were really hooked on Arianne. Her interest is equally a strange sort of covetousness for the position of humanity’s aid and wanting to mitigate what could be a real threat to people.

Are you comfortable with killing off your character? | If she were to go, it would not be without a fight. In short, yes, but only if it’s really compelling for the narrative/serves a strong purpose.

IN DEPTH

Driving Character Motivation |

Love. A deep, abiding love for humanity in all their glorious failures and corruptions, their triumphs and joys. Caphriel cannot rid the world of all its woes but she can ease the pain of them, and the desire to do so has driven her to the ends of the earth and back again. Her love is a ferocious thing, not the gauzy lightness of poetry but rich and radiant, forged in blood and tears.

Before God’s defeat, Caphriel ached to understand the woes of humanity on a more intimate level, to feel them herself rather than observe their effects from afar. Her empathic power allows her to do that, and she gladly takes humanity’s pain onto herself. She is a hardier being, at the end of it – they will not weigh her down as they do the frailer humans. She will not let them.

Her love is not always good. This is, I think, the crux of her character, and what keeps her from becoming something flimsy. She has spilled blood for this love. Overthrown her creator. Likely even committed violence against the humans she so loves for the sake of sparing the masses further pain. Though her love comes from a place of righteousness, it is, ultimately, her own, and there are those that would see it as a curse or as the delusions of one individual. Her love can blind her to elements of reality and she can lose herself in the memories of others. 

She exists in a strange middle ground – not quite angel, not quite human. It is her divine nature that allows her to act as she does, yet she has always hungered to know the depths of humanity. This counterbalance propels her, though she may not even understand the true extent of it.

Character Traits |

+ STEADFAST

Caphriel’s love for humanity has not wavered for eons. She remains committed to them, driven by the desire to help, to ease their suffering, to feel as one with them. Her unwavering devotion to humanity has shaped her life and all her most important actions: her turn away from God, her participation in the coup, her retreat to Sanctus Terra once it became habitable. Though this devotion is overall a net positive, it can, in certain cases, take on a negative aspect.

- OBSESSIVE

There are certain things that she cannot let go of. Her love can turn to obsession, to covetousness, blinding her to the dangers of her actions. Her hunger for connection to humanity has gnawed at her for eons, driving her forward at times against her better nature. She can lose sight of the forest for the trees if she is not careful in moderating herself.

+ COMPASSIONATE

Her powers of empathy heighten her already compassionate nature. She wants to help, to listen to others when they talk of pain, of suffering, to work with them to ease their burdens.

- MEDDLESOME

Her acts of charity are not always welcomed by those she bestows them upon. Her ministrations and particularly her empathic ability often pry deep into a person’s psyche, which she doesn’t realize may alienate those that have not sought her presence.

+ GENTLE

Angels can be fearsome things. The sword worn across her back and the brilliant white sweep of her wings may be unsettling, but Caphriel’s calm and kind demeanor puts that to rest. She radiates a sense of contentment, in harmony with the hum of her blade, the sweep of her wings through the air.

- VIOLENT

She does not often give into her baser natures, but when Caphriel is incited to a fight, she is vicious. She made a name for herself among the angels during the war with God, her greatsword forged by Michael himself whetted on the bones of her kin. Her mild demeanor may belie her fighting prowess, but the truth is: every angel is terrible. Even one built for love such as she.

In-Character Para Sample |

When she descends to the earth at the end of it all, after the bones of her Lord God have stripped themselves bare, after the Blood Plague has ravaged the new, fledgling land, she weeps. The first touch of her foot to the land of Sanctus Terra breaks her chest open, pain and joy and love, uncompromising love, spilling from the very core of her, mirrored in the souls around her. She walks, heart open, into the fold, sword a comforting weight upon her back, wings a blinding mass behind her. She learns to fold them away, over time; saves the revelation of her erstwhile divinity for more intimate things. She tucks the gleaming herald of her wings out of sight, but still she glows, lit from within by the undying flame of her love.

She walks the length of the land, leaving no corner unexplored. Her footsteps are those of Moses, of John. Of all those that wandered the earth, driven by love for their people, for their Lord. She trails a path through the indelible marks of history, the eons crumbled to ash in the reformation of the world. She carries these pilgrims with her, their memory mingling with new stories, their pain and grief and love cradled between her ribs.   

It is her sword that announces her presence now, its gentle hum blown by the breeze into the small town she has wandered to. Her cloak is heavy and warm in the noonday sun, her body one large and familiar ache that comes from hours on foot. A small child stops in their tracks at the sight of her – she offers them a warm smile. That seems to spook them more than anything, and they run to hide behind the legs of a woman who bustles around the yard of a nearby home. People peer from windows as she passes, pause in their ministrations to watch her go by. They listen to the radiant hum of the sword that glints on her back and they wonder.

She takes a deep breath, lets the energy of the town seep under her skin. They are all so tired, these people – they all seem to be, the further she moves from the center of the Holy Land. Settlers bending the will of the natural world to their own, terraforming the same soil their ancestors had once turned, eons ago. She has drawn up a crowd by the time she arrives in what seems to be the main square, a rough dirt clearing amidst the houses. The people keep their distance, intrigued but wary – she cannot begrudge them this, though she aches to close the space between them, to take them up in her arms and sooth the furrows from their brows. To nurture them as they nurture the land.

There are people in the square – older, she thinks, though she’s never been good at gauging these things, so used to faces that do not line with age. Humans pass so quickly, their meagre collected years a blip in her existence, yet she yearns to understand the scope of their lives, the honors of reaching fifty years, sixty, when all she knows are millennia. She sees the child from before in the corner of her eye, trailing behind her with their mother, so small. A man and a woman speak in hushed tones as she approaches - snippets blow to her, but she captures none but their names - Gideon, the woman says, Sarah, he responds. Old names, familiar ones, and Caphriel is overcome with her desperate adoration of a people too stubborn to die out, rooted deep into lives eons ago whose stories no longer grace people’s lips but in their most basic form: the name of it all.

“My name is Caphriel,” she intones, as the man named Gideon steps forward to meet her. “I come seeking shelter and to bring aid where it is needed.”

“Why do you hide your wings, Angel?” The man before her says. She sees the glint of mistrust in his eyes, the tension in his stance. She had hoped, once, that she might someday no longer be recognizable at first glance – her brothers had laughed at her when she’d said it, so she buried that seed deep within herself. Her cloak was a small concession to herself, though it seems in this case it had been a misstep. It is no hardship to her to assuage his fears, so she bows her head briefly and removes her cloak, unfurling her wings behind her, a blaze of white stark against the dirt road, the richness of her dark skin. She sees the spark of wonder in the man’s eyes and she smiles, a small but radiant thing. 

“I do not mean to hide what I am, or to dissemble and take your hospitality under false pretenses.” The low murmur of the crowd quiets as she speaks. “I take solace in walking where my brethren would fly, and have found it convenient to cover them when they are not in use to shield them from the wind and dirt.” She cocks her head, coy, lets her smile bloom wider, drops her voice like she is telling a secret. “They are a true pain to clean when they get dirty.”

She hears a ripple of laughter from behind her, bright feminine voices, and she knows she has settled into the hearts of these people. Even Gideon, frame still stoic, returns her smile. “Come,” he says, gesturing her into a home along the central square. She folds her cloak in her arms as she walks beside him, eyes adjusting to the change in light as they duck indoors. It is sparse but comfortable, and Caphriel feels at peace. “We don’t get many visitors here, let alone the start of a host of angels.”

“No host,” she says, unlacing her scabbard from her back, laying it alongside her folded cloak. “Just me.”

“Well, that’s lucky,” he replies, “Seeing as I’ve only got one spare bed.”

Her laugh is melodic, filling up the space between them, bright and bubbling with happiness. “Gideon,” she smiles, tasting the prophet’s name on her tongue, rich with history and repetition. “I want to help you. If you tell me what you and your people need, I swear I will do everything in my power to aid you. All I ask in return is a roof over my head for as long as it takes.” She holds out her hand, palm up, a minute act of supplication. “Let me help you.”

“Well,” the man before her says, “Caphriel.” He clasps her hand to shake. She feels the warmth radiate up her arm, into her heart. “Let’s get started, then.”

[frederator-studios]

Graham McTavish: The Frederator Interview

At the moment, Graham McTavish is in Malta getting his head torn off by a Werewolf. Jack Bauer once rammed a fire poker through his chest then slit his throat. He’s been set on fire, drowned, strangled, stabbed, speared, knifed, shot - not to mention, kneed in the balls, punched in the face, even slammed over the back with a log by an over-eager young performer. All in a day’s work for the Scottish actor, who’s played the baddest of baddies on a slew of excellent dramas-with-a-twist, from Preacher to Outlander, 24 to Castlevania. But Graham himself doesn’t view his characters as ‘villains’ - just passionate, complex people, of which Dracula (though he’d resent to be called “human”) is the embodiment. Read on for Graham’s take on playing one of literature’s most iconic, dangerous anti-heroes—from the relative safety of a recording studio.

Are you in LA long?

I’m flying out tonight actually, back to New Zealand. My kids are there, so I split my time. I’m doing Lucifer at the moment for Netflix as well as Castlevania, so I had to come back for a day, yesterday - I flew back just for that. (wow whaaa?) Yeah. I do a lot of traveling, but even for me that’s insane! It’s also unusual for the scheduling to work out perfectly, which it does the next few months. I have an episode gap now, then in October, I do a film in Malta, and the day that wraps, come back to LA to finish Lucifer, and the day after that, fly to Canada to do a film with Willem Dafoe about the Iditarod. I’ve got to learn how to mush a dog sled.

That’s awesome. It’s like getting sponsored to learn a cool obscure skill.

It’s definitely a nice side effect of being an actor. What other job would allow you to learn how to mush a dog sled, unless you were actually becoming a professional dog sled musher? It’ll be great.

How is it for you to switch between characters, with so little time between roles sometimes?

It really depends on your approach to acting. I approach from the point of view of a child. I have two young children, and the great thing about being that age, is they can switch from one thing to another in an instant. Very fluid. I think because I’ve never trained as an actor, I can see work as play. Some actors live as a cobbler for 5 years to play a cobbler, and that’s what works for them. Personally, I pretend. When I'm mushing dogs, I will give the illusion that I really know what I'm doing. That’s what acting is: an illusion that the audience willingly participates in. And everybody is complicit.

You didn’t have professional training?

No. I used to write comic sketches at school with a friend of mine, and we didn't trust anybody else to perform them, so we did. The Drama teacher at school asked me on many occasions to be in a play, but I always said no. Then on one occasion, he asked me to step into a play called “The Rivals” by Sheridan, filling in for an actor who’d fallen ill three days before the production was due to be performed. I said yes. To this day, I have no idea why I agreed. But I did the play, and was of course bitten by the acting bug.

After that, a local Dramatics company asked me to join them, so I did amateur theatre for a year. Then I attended Queen Mary College London University and majored in English literature. I was lucky enough to have a professor who loved Shakespeare and Jacobean drama, and he cast me in all of those plays. As an English Lit major, I was doing two or three Shakespeare plays a year, performing roles that I never would have been given if I'd been at Drama School. I'm not against it, but I don't think it's for everyone. I got my union card in Britain after doing a Beckett play, and then just started working professionally. I also did a lot of Repertory Theatre in the UK, which I think is a great training ground for actors. So it was all slightly accidental, the case with a lot of people.

How did you choose to play Dracula? What about that part compelled you?

I played him onstage once, a great experience. Dracula is the sort of character people love guiltily. If you get the opportunity to play that, it's a no-brainer. Just reading Bram Stoker’s book, your sympathy is with Dracula, in many ways. You live the story through him. It's such a wonderful ride to be playing a man whose been alive for hundreds and hundreds of years. Dracula plays to our secret desires, our secret fears. I think in all of us, there is a fascination with the idea of living forever. Fear of living forever, and fear of death; the Dracula myth plays on that edge. It’s so powerful because it takes something that we all have to face one day and says, what if you didn’t? But in gaining immortality, you lose something very important. Dracula is very enviable in some ways, but is also deeply sad and tragic.

How is it, playing tragic characters?

Among the few advantages of getting older is you have more life experience, including with tragedy. It’s inevitable. And you can draw on those memories. But you can also draw on your fears as well. I did a scene in Outlander, toward the end, where my brother is dying. I thought of my own father, and all the things I never said to him. Those emotions definitely informed that scene. When tragedy and death and loss touch your life, you carry those feelings into your future.

Are you an animation fan?

I love animation, I grew up with it. Along with books, it was my first experience of storytelling. Cartoons, as we called them; they fired my childhood imagination. It’s like how we were talking earlier, about children, and the profundity of animation to them. The first film I saw in a theatre was Walt Disney’s Peter Pan. I was five and had no question that those characters were real. To such an extent that when they took the posters down at the cinema, I got upset. I was like, “But where’s Peter? Where’s he gone?” Because I thought Peter lived in the cinema. I still get absorbed into great pieces of animation, when the artistry is powerful, and it’s part of my attraction to doing animated work. And this show, Castlevania, is particularly beautiful.

How were you introduced to the project, and did you have expectations going in?

I knew it was going to be great. I was recording Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when the Voice and Casting Director, Meredith Layne, pulled me aside. She said she was on a project and couldn’t tell me much, but she thought I’d be a fit, and would I like to be considered? Meredith has great taste, so I said “Of course” and sent in a tape. And when I heard that Warren Ellis was the writer, that was a huge attraction. I love his comic book work, and fiction as well. The Crooked Little Vein is one of my favorite books. Really, it couldn’t not be great, and the more I learned of the creative team behind it, the more sure I was. Everything put into the show - the casting, directing, producing, animation - elevates it so hugely above anything comparable. I love that it occupies this unique space.

What do you feel Castlevania’s Dracula uniquely brings to the character?

It’s his being human that makes it so interesting. When I portrayed Dracula onstage, there was no suggestion that that version of him felt love, or experienced empathy. But in this production, a woman, Lisa, takes him by surprise. She makes him feel, and turns his life around. I love that, because everybody can relate. You think your life is one way, then you meet someone who changes everything, opens your life up, makes you think about it differently - and makes it more enjoyable to be alive. And since Dracula is essentially dead, that irony is very clever.

Do you have a favorite representation of vampires in Media?

I'm a little biased, but I love the portrayal of Cassidy by Joe Gilgun in Preacher. It’s so unconventional. Herzog’s Nosferatu springs to mind, just incredible. Gary Oldman’s Dracula is wonderful. And I loved Let the Right One In, the original Swedish version. It’s genius. It took something familiar as a vampire story and gave it a whole new spin.

You work so much in the fantasy genre - is that purposeful?

Oh yeah. I love the variety. I've been a Viking, a Roman - twice - after always dreaming of playing one, I got to be one for a whole year. Growing up in the UK, you never imagine yourself getting to be a cowboy. On the first season of Preacher, there was a scene I rode into a western town: the whole duster coat with the Stetson guns, surrounded by horses and wagon trains, all the paraphernalia. I had to look cool and unbothered. I wanted to jump up and down in excitement. I was so, pathetically excited. I did a season of 24, and I’d been a huge fan. Every day I’d go up to the producers telling them I was a huge fan. After a while, they’d say, “Yeah, great, we get it. You like the show. You’re in it now, so if you could just be the character that’d be great.”

And I still get a pathetically childish enjoyment out of playing Dracula. What kid doesn’t want to play Dracula?! I once talked to Lance Henriksen, and he said one of the reasons he went into acting was to be thousands of people. You get to be a cowboy and a vampire and a dog musher and a Highlander in the 18th century and a dwarf in Middle Earth. I'd definitely rather do any of that than put on a suit and do a courtroom scene. Not that I wouldn’t! I’ve just never been asked. No one’s ever looked at me and said, “Let’s cast him as The Dad.”

Have you ever played a “Castlevania” game?

I am a terrible game player.

But, but - your voice is in like every game of the past decade!

Yes, I have done loads of video games. I did a franchise called “Uncharted”. Award-winning; incredibly popular. Never played them. I played one game years ago with my friend, called “Gears of War”. I was so bad at it. I'm the guy that shoots in a circle around his feet. I’m useless at them.

Your character's bad-assery makes up for it. Anything to say to fans of the show, in advance of season two?

I just really hope you enjoy it and get carried along with the story and and want to see more. That’s always the greatest thing, if you can get the fans to clamor for more ❀

Follow Graham on Twitter and Instagram

Thank you for the interview Graham! Without a doubt, you’re the kindest chronic bad guy I’ve come across. 

- Cooper ❀

(Craving another CV interview? Read Richard Armitage’s here.)

[myfandomrambles]

An Analysis of Villianey

( This is Part 1b, Part 1a here)

Section II: Tragic Backstories

This is another super common way to make villains sympathetic. Giving someone a terrible childhood is a short cut to make someone feel bad for someone. Tragic backstories are super common and sometimes making the villains the most compelling character in really good ways. Both to make the characters truly a person who is empathetic or just understandable. There are three ways I think this can be done really well.

You can make them a redeemed character like Zuko (Avatar: The Last Airbender), Megamind (Megamind) or Peridot (Steven Universe).

An anti-hero/grey characters who don’t join the light side but acts heroically but on their own code. Wade Wilson (Deadpool), Dexter Morgan (Dexter), Punisher (Marvel), Harley Quinn (DC)  or Don Vito Corleone (The Godfather)  

A  bad guy who remains bad at the end, we know why they are bad but aren’t ever fixed. EX: Merrin Meredith (Septimus Heap), Morgana (BBC Merlin), Voldemort (Harry Potter),  Bane (DC), Or Davros (Doctor Who)

One important thing about writing these stories is to be done right you do have to choose the end game. How the character acts in relationships during the story changes which outcome is compelling and even feels possible. Things to consider:  rather they have any guiding belief system if this backstory includes trauma how the heal from that, their relationship to the power system, and how much they change their actions to move towards saying sorry and becoming better. Not every character is written in a way where a character can become better, or even should. The Diamonds (Steven Universe) keep having their characterization, actions, back story, and relationships altered leaving a confused story arc. The Diamonds are also on a list of characters who should not be redeemed because of the severity of their actions. They are written as space fascists no matter how sad they are it’s problematic to pretend the trauma of a dead love excuses attempted genocide.

A revolting part of this trend is tragedy porn. Stories of violence, poverty, mental illness, child abuse, disability, domestic abuse or sexual assault are exploited for shock value and making money from real pain. This is used to create a reason for a character to be broken or evil. A cheap gritty story of how our villain got there instead of writing an interesting motivation or taking into account the cultural and psychological damage of associating trauma and mental health with villainy. This also plays into the trope of mental illness being dangerous or a problem of morality. If it’s just because they are too broken you can kiss it away and fixing the trauma fixes the problem of horrible acts of violence.  If you do write traumatic backstories as motivation for their actions have the behaviours actually track with trauma. Catra’s (She-Ra 2018)  trauma is inherently tied to her motivation as the villain and essentially to her role as the deuteragonist of the narrative. But they show how and why this trauma matters, and choose to display the abuse in a way that while explicit and horrific isn’t exploitive and the refrain from showing realistic physical abuse that too clearly mirrors real life trauma. Her narrative of becoming the antagonist makes sense with her history of indoctrination, betrayal, fear of violence, and psychological trauma. It mirrors the narrative of the hero as well throwing off their primary abuser in both instances making it possible for this story to not demonize trauma. Another important thing to keep in mind when writing these kinds of narratives is to do research and represent any mental illness at least mostly accurately.

Another frustration is when people use these backstories to form a “well they could never have done/known better” and therefore they did nothing wrong mindset. This an oversimplified reading of good storytelling and the reading for poorly written characters. The idea that no one could ever know better is used in defence of characters like Kylo Ren (Star Wars), Azula (Avatar: The Last Airbender), Billy Hargrove (Stranger Things), Draco Malfoy (Harry Potter). However this excuse really only extends so far it tracks best with children when we see them alter perspective when exposed to other ideas and when the behaviours mirror what was done to them. Abuse and trauma don’t always make angry violent people and the majority of people who do become angry hurt people but not murders. Then you do have indoctrination but there is a reason the Nuremberg defence doesn’t excuse everything.

This excuse also falls apart somewhat when you can point to another character [or real life person] in the same or similar situation who did change. This whole way of viewing things become an exercise in letting people who have hurt others go without their actions analyzed and without being held responsible. In a literary analysis standpoint it’s lazy and in reality, it is dangerous to do this with anyone who was hurt in the past. Empathy and understanding are always important, understanding why people end up where they do is key to life. Some people do horrific things with no trauma, and who did know better searching for a sympathetic reason doesn’t help make things better. And even more so those who have been abused or manipulated and did wrong should be helped to work through trauma and learn to understand and change from they have done in the past not have all of their behaviour excused with a handwave. People shouldn’t be taught that abuse forgives abusing, later on, they should know they never deserve to be treated poorly and they can’t love abusers better.  And of course, this is often applied enviable around factors like race, gender, power level and perceived hotness.

Anti Heros I think are criminally underrated wanting them to either be good or be bad. We romanticize the ones we should see as good [usually hot people] or demonize the ones it’s easier to see as all bad. Anti-heroic characters are hard because the lines differentiate these from redeemed people and real villains are connected to personal morality. But making them black and white is rationalizing when they make choices that are truly harmful as part of their “good” actions. Making them all bad strips the way they are often societal outsiders and the way they learned in the stories to move and act in life. This is the grey morality people claim to want in characters, and claim to see in their faves but people don’t appreciate it when they happen.

Constant manipulation of tragic backstory to say a character didn't really do anything bad, or they deserve redemption excuse also strips away truly tragic stories like the life of Inspector Javert (Les Miserables). Fall from grace stories can be really interesting like Walter White (Breaking Bad) or Harvey Dent (DC). Because sometimes life does eat someone up and they can’t find it in themselves to act in a different manner. Tragic stories are still okay, villains aren’t always going to be the good guys because they are meant to be just that villains. That is how they were written and how the best fit in stories and tell the story wanting to be shared. Sometimes villains made to many choices to hurt other people to be capable of total transformation to hero. These characters can still be three dimensional and interesting but they aren’t people who “done nothing wrong”. They did do something wrong and in the story that is fine, it’s what works in the narrative. Not every person can be healed with forgiveness and a hug.

The concept that Deserving redemption is tied to how sad their life was before but it isn't, it's based on the actions they do during the story.  a careful narrative that shows the path a person took to get the right place, the ways they changed and what influenced it is much more important. Let's use Tony Stark (Marvel) most of Iron Man 1 and iron man 2 are dedicated to him trying to be a better person, to use his remaining life to make the world better and atone for his wrongs. Tony Stark starts off as an unrepentant war criminal allowing the way he was groomed to ignore harm and gain power as an excuse to never address any of what he did was harmful. He drowned his trauma with addictions, shallow relationships. Yes, his trauma as a kid and during the narrative are driving pieces but why he is so heroic, why his phoenix narrative is one of the best in history is the choices he makes with what to do with that pain, he uses it to be earth's greatest defender. You do have some snapshot redemption stories that are good namely Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader (Star Wars) but I think [save the ret-cond Anakin force ghost] this wasn't so much meant to be proving he is a good person, but just acknowledging that no one is truly dark or light side. Anakin’s life is more told as a Shakespearean fall from grace, but even if this arc comes out of nowhere it works because the actions are narratively and thematically done correctly.

People who are obsessed with redemption also often don’t do a real analysis of societal structures, cultural history or context. It’s not that they really are deconstructing societal factors, or understand trauma, mental health or what really causes crime and antisocial behaviour when they try and justify via trauma and no other choice. I think starting to create and analyse content on a wider more holistic standpoint would be a good exercise to apply empathy to real-life crimes of desperation, end the killer = crazy myth, and stop letting people blame hate crimes on white kids being bullied.

[other posts on this topic: Zuko and good redemption arcs, trauma and justification of violence, Catra, Adora & trauma part 1 & 2, the diamonds still suck ]

[apples-and-bananas]

India

It was just another one of those generic days I had in my life, but it’s my favorite part of the day so I drift off to sleep and forget all that’s happening with the world for a while. It hasn’t been long, but I was suddenly awake and oddly in a vast forest, my anxiousness is driving me crazy by now, I��m frantic and I don’t know what to do, but before I can even attempt something, my arms are growing feather out of the blue, and my lips are turning into a beak, and I’m covered with more feathers and the next thing I know I’m flying. As I was wandering I got caught in a trap, I was caged. Another bird came whom it’s the first time I saw but strangely very familiar. He was encouraging me to get out but a voice inside is dictating me that says I should tell him to come to me instead. But, he also does not want to compromise. He faced me saying things I haven’t heard before, if I was in my human form I would probably swoon but the bird that I am right now is just so persistent with her belief that I can’t even meddle with her decisions. So as I watch the bird flew away from my sight, into the vast sky, there’s this unconscious feeling as if my heart is getting stabbed. I am hurt, I want to do something to ease the pain, but I’m in no control. I was just about to catch myself and allow myself to breathe, but I was panting this time, and tears were still streaming down my face. I think to myself, “How much caffeine did I took today because I’m definitely going crazy.” I’m alone, but I feel enslaved. It’s like my heart is somewhere else, waiting to be picked up by someone I can call my own. I stretched my arms and realized that, I may be back in human form, but not in my body, this woman is basically a goddess with these long arms and legs. As I sat there, staring at my reflection, admiring all the physical features that this woman has, someone called out, “Sita!” The automatic head turn that I made proved to me that it’s this woman’s name. There stood a man with equal goddess feature as she has, I may be delusional right now, but I can guarantee he’s coming my way (running even), and before I could even do or say anything I am enveloped in his strong arms. The warmth is so welcoming as if I’m home, the cozy feeling makes me dreamy and I would definitely trade anything in exchange for this hug. He looked at my face while saying something I didn’t understand, but it made my heart flutter with joy and content. The interesting part is I responded with the same language. We smiled at each other and can’t bear to have the distance between us anymore so he cupped my face, caressed my cheek and slowly closing the space that’s separating us, he’s about to kiss me when… I was all of the sudden awake and conscious.

China

It’s been a week since that odd dream occurred, which is also very detailed and feels so true that it’s hard to fathom whether it was a dream or did it really happen in real life. As much as I would not like to admit to myself, there’s this huge part of me that just wants to experience it all over again. I am a daydreamer, so imagining things would be easy if I’m conscious, but sadly, I don’t have any control over my real dreams, those that occur in the deepest depth of my slumber. Strange as it is, I kind of feel bothered this day as if something’s bound to happen, and then there it is. As I was drifting off to sleep there was an instant snap of enlightenment, and as I get to sleep longer and deeper, I opened my eyes again to be greeted by an old man who has a warm presence, smile that make you respect him, and eyes that make you trust him. My premonition was right, something’s happening indeed, and it’s not that overwhelming this time, it’s just oddly familiar. I smiled back at him and ask him where we are and he said, “Impossible as it may, only you can tell where we really are.” You know that typical voice of wise old people? His voice is like that, it’s a carbon copy of those stereotypical voices. Cliché as it is, he really sound and look like an Asian God right now, and I don’t mean it in a racist type of way it’s just that I feel like I can be vulnerable around him without worrying that he may judge me or reprimand me because he understands that I am not flawless, that I’m just perfectly flawed like anybody else. Just like that, as if reading my mind, he told me, “I know that life can get pretty rough, fatal even. It’s not an easy path, many have attempted to fulfill their shortcomings only to be flooded by tons of criticisms and hatred which leaves them doubtful of themselves, but always remember, being aware of one’s self is the power that nobody can destroy because if you know your capabilities and weaknesses, that will be the time that acceptance will come to your way and makes you a better individual, not for others, but for yourself.” I feel like I’m being thrown with first-hand kind of lectures from experiences right now, but regardless of that, every word that he said is actually true, and I am honestly considering it because it seems worthy. I shoot my shot again of clarifying my current situation by asking him who he is and he responded with, “They call me Confucius.” Just like that I was awake again, without even having the chance to reply to him and ask, “SO YOU’RE THE CONFUCIUS!?”

Japan

By this time, I’m already thinking that I may just be a delusional and obsessed literary freak, but who can blame me? I am just so eager to play a role that I even forgot my responsibilities in real life. I’m just so tired of everything, and I honestly would like a break that would set me free from any inhibitions that I have for myself. But, that would be too much to ask right? However, I’ve been reading about lucid dreaming lately and I would like to try it. I’ve been thinking about a scene of going to Japan and as soon as I set foot there, it would become the land that history books describe it to be, and I would be in a classic and traditional Japanese community. All of a sudden, the place was swarmed with many people, the ones peaceful streets were now full of people. The strange thing is, people seem to not notice me and I didn’t know what was happening until they continuously get pass through me, and an absurd thing came to my mind, that maybe I’m a ghost because that’s how movies describe them to be right? They are not seen by the naked eye. So, to test my theory, I blew on one person’s ear and he looked at his shoulder to see if someone’s there, but he still doesn’t see me because he just shrugged it off as if it’s just a strong wind. I traveled aimlessly and can’t interact with a single alive soul because I’m apparently a ghost. I came across this one village that seemed gloomy and has an unusual number of young villagers without old people. However, I saw this one man who looks bothered, and with curiosity, I followed him to his home and there I found out why. He was hiding her old mother in her house although I’m still not sure why he’s doing that, but I could tell that his love for his mother is overwhelming that he could take any consequences that may happen just to keep her by his side. Even if I’m just a soul in this particular place, I can still feel the surge of empathy for the both of them because I have a weak spot for circumstances that involves parents and their sacrifices. I was about to do something when I was teleported in this hot place that looks like a volcano which seems ready to erupt anytime. I see this terrible site of people suffering from their own sins, unable to quench their thirst because of their own pride, and drowning from their own desires. I am a terrible person, but I feel like I don’t deserve to be here. I am now questioning myself because this may not be a dream anymore, maybe I’m really meant to be damned either dead or alive, but I feel this human emotion within me, the need to escape and leave this place. A man was climbing through a thin rope and the others followed, I just stood there frozen and hesitant of doing anything. The man leading seem to look furious and you can see the eagerness in his eyes, he cut the rope and everybody else fell, soon enough, he is also falling. I was sucked in a brighter yet calmer environment, no screams and crying were heard in the background, the air smells nice, and then a voice spoke and said, “Greediness is why we fail, patience create a decision that changes our fate. I woke up and said, “Being clueless is much different from being patient.”

Egypt

I stumbled upon pieces of writing yesterday which were blatantly dull yet oddly enchanting, I wouldn’t be surprised if I would be inside this thing any minute now because I’m bound to sleep, and just as quickly, I am in a sort of desert location with a strange Egyptian type of music playing in the background. My game is way too strong with these dreams now, and I’m not going to lie, I’m really growing fond of it. Desert as it is, the place looks deserted, I don’t see people, and all I see are tall pyramids and endless grains of sand. As if somebody heard my unspoken thoughts, people started appearing in lines, carrying things, entering the pyramids. I don’t know why I’m even wondering how things go for my dreams because basically, it is controlled by my own thoughts so it would be connected somehow, so I should stop being shocked how events would turn out just as I question them. I followed these people inside an enclosed place with tombs and there were bodies in the shelves which are already wrapped. I saw bodies, dead bodies lying on the ground. I’m the only one who stood there and found this situation very mortifyingly new to me, but the people were acting as if it’s just a normal thing they do. They were doing some rituals and started plastering the body with I don’t know what that material is but it seems like I’m witnessing the process of mummification, and since I can’t handle the reek of unpleasant smell anymore, I went out and was greeted by a strong swoop of wind with sand that just slaps and sticks on your face. My eyes were caught by engraved drawings that you typically see in history books that tells about Egypt. There were texts too, but nothing that I could understand until I saw two English words, and it says, “Wake up.” I touched it and I was sucked in reality, my alarms going off and I am incredibly late. Wonderful.

Israel

If anything of the things I say really do matter, I think I would explain that religion is a necessary fiction that humanity needs to stay humane and not rip and eat each other’s head off. But, the thing is, I’m not the most religious person in the world, however that does not disqualify or invalidate me from having opinions regarding this matter, and the only point I’m trying to prove here is that, people created this system in order to preserve sanity because it unites us. Having faith to whomever divine entity is present surely empowers us, but wait until everyone realizes the fact that we’re not patronizing these Gods and Goddesses, instead, we’re patronizing ourselves because the only reason why we keep coming back and holding on to this prospect is because it makes us feel positive emotions that supposedly inspires us to be a better person, if not, what may be the greatest reason there is.

It’s 3 in the morning, and I just finished my essay regarding religion and trust me if I say it’s much more exhausting that it should be because I need to choose my words carefully in order to make a point and at the same time be responsible on not offending anybody (including my professor who will check and read it and is obviously pious.) Now, I’ve been having a hunch about having a dream about this, so I got up and drank a glass of water and went under my covers, and my fingers acted upon themselves and did the sign of the cross, well habits never dies I guess even if I’m the least faithful person I know. I have arrived at my dream’s destination and as I thought, I was in the Jewish community. As I was going down to the stairs an old woman approached me and said, “My dear, isn’t it time that I try to find a husband for you, and get you happily married again? The man I’m thinking of is Boaz!” The mention of his name made my heart warm, but not warm enough to make me marry him, however, a voice in my head keep on saying things about God’s will and everything which is incredibly absurd I just can’t take much of it anymore. This Boaz came to me and ask me who I was and said I was Ruth and without further control of my speech, I uttered, “Make me your wife according to God’s law, for you are my close relative.” I don’t know what I would make about myself anymore, I’m throwing myself to this man, whom I barely know, but I felt helpless about the situation because I cannot fight over the will of God. The closest relative to my dead husband is supposedly buying the land and I am really shocked with the next thing that Boaz said, “Your purchase of the land from Naomi requires your marriage to Ruth, so that she can have children to carry on her husband’s name and to inherit the land.” I am really powerless as a woman, I felt sorry for the woman who had to go through such thing, they are sold with a piece of land or whatever property, it’s miserable. I struggled to detach myself from that dream, so I slapped my face really hard, and when I woke up I said, “Woman, when will you be free?”

Iran

Remember when I said religion unites us? Well, it has its contradiction when we believe in different things and Gods per se, but don’t get me wrong, I think we really do have a choice on the things that we want to believe in, it’s just a matter of acceptance that not everyone is like you, that not everyone believe the things you believe in and thinks the way you do, we just have to respect that. But, who are we kidding? People don’t just give up without a fight, see where we are right now, divided because of our different faiths, but we call ourselves faithful, how ironic. I have read Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat, and it incredibly made so much sense, I was just wondering how the world would be if we just appreciate each other like this, see, I’m Christian but I find sensible things to this literary piece because I can see what he’s talking about, the problem is that we’re so prideful of ourselves that we don’t even want to back down, we don’t know how to accept our flaws and we don’t want to be criticized. I am here in the library having a debate with my thoughts and just thinking of possibilities that better decisions would make. We all know how mood in the library can get and I’m really sleepy right now, so I took a nap, and we all know what’s next. I am in a market and I am definitely sure I’m in an Islamic country (I’m quite stereotypical). I entered a stall and a man was sitting there, he asked me to sit, so I did. He was lecturing me about the Qur’an and I don’t know why I suddenly had the urge to say, “Oh I’m sorry, I’m Christian, you can’t convince me to believe THIS.” I swear I could just smack my head right then and there, but he just smiled at me and said, “I never ask or persuade you to convert my child, I was just sharing what I believe in and hope you would do the same in return, so we could understand each other better. I am aware of my flaws, and I know I can sound provoking sometimes, but I understand you, I hope I can get the same in return.” I look really stupid right now, and all I could say is sorry and he replied with, “Forgiveness is easy if it’s meant by the heart, and I forgive you, now it’s time to forgive yourself.” I just stared at him until I gained consciousness, damn, I’m really dumb as a rock.

Saudi Arabia

I am really exhausted right now, this week has been really hectic, partnered by my procrastination, and well everything is just a plain mess. I slept without even taking a shower because I am that tired, only to find myself in a desert once again. There’s this little girl who is as bright as a sunshine and you can see it from a far distance. When she was finally alone, I approached her and she immediately greeted me with a huge smile on her face and even hugged me, stranger-danger isn’t a thing with this girl apparently. She asked me where I’m from, but I don’t know what to say, and there’s this silly voice in my head saying I should ask her that instead because she’s basically in my dreams, so I just answered with, “I came from a very far place.” She’s now giggling and asking me to tell stories of the place I am from, so I’m just wondering whether or not to tell her about phones and other weird stuff we have right now. I was in the middle of telling her about Dory finding her parents when I was cut-off as a man came to tell that this great sheik Ben Nedi will visit their tribe the next day. I was with this little girl the whole time now I found out that her name is Zuleika, and I sat with her as she was crying and told me that she had no gift to give the great man who would come the next day. We were both shocked when a fairy came out from the well and told her that her gift for Ben Nedi will arrive tomorrow, so she should stop crying. We were both anticipating and when we went back to that area, a tall tree grew which was straight and bare except the top, where it carried a tuft of branching leaves and a cluster of brownish fruit. Ben Nedi exclaimed that it is the greatest gift of all, and I guess this was kind of a legend for palm dates.

Africa

Colorism, racism and everything in its context is just so childish in my opinion. We are all different in so many aspects and finding it absurd makes you look idiotic, no lies. The reason why I’m saying this is because I saw a video of a crusty white man mocking a beautiful man who had dark chocolate skin calling him ugly because of his color. Some people are just so stupid and immature who don’t even know their places, I mean we’re all human beings the last time I checked, so why are you so pressed about someone’s color? I was just about to rant and tweet things, but an old man with big beautiful afro curls and dark skin approached me and ask if I could accompany him finding a place and since I know where that is I said okay. I gladly accepted because why not, I really have a soft heart for older people. While we were walking he asked me why did I agreed so easily without even a moment of hesitation, and I replied with, “Because you need my help.” And I smiled at him while he smiled in return. He asked me a question again but this time it is more skeptical, he said, “Weren’t you bothered of the color of my skin? You see, I had quite a lot of rejections and such because of this.” And I said, “Black, white, or brown, everybody looks the same to me, not that I’m colorblind, but my point is, everyone needs to be treated fairly, no dominating over the other everyone should be the same.” And then lastly he said, “You are a very kind individual, now, wake up and be the person I met here. Bless you.” I looked up and I see the library, well I guess I have slept again, this just explains how I love being asleep.

[pomegranate-salad]

Seeds of thought : Wicdiv #31

Guess who’s back ! Everything is awful on so many levels right now but hey ! I managed to heroically squeeze in one more terrible decision and stay up late to finish this ! Wicdiv should come with a label warning. Anyway, you know the drill, thoughts and opinion on the new issue under the cut, not spoiler-free.

MASTERS OF THE OBVIOUS

 What does it mean for a story today to be character-driven ? Classically opposed to being plot-driven, this notion seems to imply that both the motor and the goal of the story is not the succession of events but the characters themselves. However, since plot and character are both an inevitable part of any story, this also implies control of one over the other - plot-driven hinting at events leading the character and character-driven at events induced by the character’s personality and evolution. But unless the story is badly constructed, it’s obvious that one element cannot remain static while the other progresses : therefore, the criterion becomes “which element’s progression leads to the progression of the other ?” And so, a character-driven story would not necessarily be one in which there is no event pushing the character forward, but one where who this character is consistently influences the way these events play in the context of the story. A broad way to determine whether or not a story is character-driven would be to ask the question : “could this story be happening to someone else ?” If the answer is no, then the story is probably character-driven rather than plot-driven.

 Wicdiv is undoubtedly a character-driven story, but interesting as within its story is a story – the Recurrence – that keeps happening to somebody else. As illustrated by the specials, each recurrence has its lots of devastating events, but each time driven by who its players are. The main storyline of the 2014 recurrence is one that could only have been produced by the combination of these particular characters. Despite the presence of external events, they are the main driving force of the story, the ones causing most – if not all - of the plot to unfold. And as we’ve come at a point when we as an audience can map out their goals, their behaviour, their hang-ups, more generally their patterns as characters, we can predict not what is going to happen but what our characters would do with it. When Persephone calls Baal about Sakhmet, we have no need for Baal’s voice or even Persephone’s expression to know what he’s saying : anyone in the fandom can ad-lib it and probably get quite close to the real thing. Our ability to understand these characters means they can’t really surprise us anymore. Their actions always make sense in the context of what we know of them, even if we cannot always guess how they’ll act. And like all great prophets, we miss the fucking obvious.

 Indeed, if this issue is a thunderclap, it’s one that comes right after we saw the light by the window and started counting to deduce how far away it is like our grandmas taught us. We knew it was coming. We didn’t know how much we’d have to wait, or exactly how loud and scary it would be, but we knew these increasingly terrible people would do some terrible thing that would lead to terrible consequences. Specifically in this issue, the “shock”, the big story turnaround, hinges on three characters, Woden, Amaterasu and Sakhmet, without either turning anything around ; they act exactly like themselves. And the fandom reactions have been very telling in their phrasing : for Woden, we “should have seen it coming” ; for Amaterasu, “she had it coming”. The story came out of our characters acting in a way that was logical, predictable, and well, obvious.

 But let’s take a moment to appreciate how much work went into making it this “obvious”.

After seemingly getting whipped into place by Persephone, Woden betrayed the gods, stole their powers to take control of a giant mob. Because of course he did. But to get to the point where we as an audience could hit ourselves in the head wondering why we didn’t hit bullseye on the prediction board, the authors had to build both a character and a plot setting which, combined, would lead to that situation. Woden is a men’s right activist, if not in title then in spirit : he’s a racist misogynist with a severe lack of empathy using privilege and technology to profit from vulnerable people. Like all his peers, his sense of entitlement is challenged by the new push toward social justice and he’s plagued by self-hatred coming from his own inadequacy. As a god, he’s powerless among the powerful, special but not special enough, forced to work with people he sees as inferior. He was already barely asserting enough domination in the first arcs to keep his own ego afloat ; but in Imperial Phase, he lost everything : his cooperation with Ananke that gave him an edge over the gods, his Valkyries, his independence as he’s forced to work for Cassandra. He was – as much as one can virtually get – emasculated. And these last years have taught us exactly how desperate this type of person gets when they feel even a little bit of privilege disappearing. That’s the character. Now the plot setting is him getting a central role in activating a machine he built with the use of his honed ability to mimic other gods’ powers – which we were reminded of several times in Imperial phase. His partners are A) a woman he’s sexually attracted to who dismissed him several times and B) the purest form of a “beta-male” according to MRAs, an asexual man of colour who connects with people on equal footing via emotions and sincerity in a way Woden never could. And now all these elements combined place him in a position where he can literally take back the power he feels he’s entitled to from the people he feels took it from him in the first place, while simultaneously turning a diverse, multi-coloured crowd into a uniform army. How could he resist ?

 Amaterasu was killed by Sakhmet, despite previously calming her down, seemingly because of some foolish remarks which triggered Sakhmet’s anger back. Here again, both their characters and the plot setting had to be carefully established for us to be able to run along the result. Amaterasu is a racist, mediocre white girl whose genuine trauma she deals with through denial and hero worship. She’s never purposely mean but her limited intelligence and egocentrism makes her approach people with a mixture of entitlement and total lack of self-awareness. As for the plot, it pitted her against Sakhmet, discreetly at first – I hadn’t even noticed the parallels between issue #15 and issue #17 before this issue – then literally, Amaterasu’s careless remarks in issue #29 being what triggered the events leading to Imperial Phase in the first place. Amaterasu is a racist, Sakhmet a black woman. Amaterasu has lived in comfort, Sakhmet has known homelessness. Amaterasu cries in front of free-range eggs, Sakhmet is a cannibal. Amaterasu’s outfit is inspired by priestesses, Sakhmet dresses in an overtly sexual manner. Amaterasu is a blabbermouth, Sakhmet is quiet. Amaterasu isn’t so bright, Sakhmet only reveals herself smarter than she let on as the story progresses. Amaterasu is entitled, Sakhmet simply pursues her desires. Amaterasu worships her father, Sakhmet ate hers. The opposition works not only because of their differences, but also because they have just enough in common for friction to appear. And so, when Amaterasu goes on her British Imperialism-laced tirade on the flags of our fathers we know, as surely as the sun rises, where it’s going to take her, and Sakhmet, and the entire story.

 Being obvious in stories is underrated. In what is described as a new Golden Age for long form media, there is a push for stories to constantly be clever, constantly surprise their audiences. One perverse effect of that has been the cult of the plot twist, pushing writers to turn the story on its head so many times that no one’s actions seem to make sense anymore ; because the characters’ decisions are being dictated by the need for a constant setting change instead of their own internal logic, they go beyond incoherent characterization and straight into barely even looking like humans anymore. Same thing goes for stories that throw everything but the kitchen sink at their characters, drowning them in such a whirlpool of events that they can only react to things and never really impose their mark on the direction of the story in a way that would allow them to grow as characters in a seamless manner. This is why I was initially so disappointed by the apparition of the Great Darkness in Imperial Phase : because it prevented once again our characters to take control of the direction of the story to instead have them running behind the plot. Seeing them fall in a hell of their own making was simply much more interesting than having this hell created for them. Thankfully the subsequent issues seemed to agree with me, and that’s how we were able to come to this point. The actions of the characters in issue #31 don’t just “make sense”, they seem to impose themselves as the next step in each character’s path, a path that is undeniably, unchangeably theirs. The story is not making itself look clever by twisting in improbable knots or even straying from its course ; it’s taking the simplest, most obvious road and sticking with it.

 So how come we still can’t see it coming ? Why do we keep missing the fucking obvious ? I think it says more about audience expectation than it does about the story itself. In Woden’s case, the fact he was openly a scumbag who had been working with a “villain” before seemed to beget either a redemption arc or at the very least a limited influence on the plot. You could call this the Littlefinger paradox : the more overt a character is about their bad intentions, the less likely we are to suspect them of wrongdoing. We like to believe our enemies are wolves, not snakes.  Amaterasu on the other hand started as this otherworldly thing of beauty, and even in her more human, fallible moments she seemed nice and innocent enough to be awarded a decent death and not one of the goriest – second only to Ananke’s – and most avoidable deaths in the series. Even after she revealed herself to be this unpleasant, nothing of a person, she still had this smidge of sublime about her, and the comic couldn’t resist make her shine one last time. (I suspect there’s a discussion to be had here on society’s tendency to see white women as “exceptional” whereas women of colour are constantly expected to justify their exceptionalism, so if any fan of colour has thoughts on that, please tag me in). When it comes to being a god, she was a genius, whether we like it or not ; she was “the best performer”, something Baal “when you’re as good as I am” himself doesn’t contest. But that’s the crux of it : she was a great “performer”, not by any means a great person. No doubt there’s a commentary there on our difficulty as fans to reconcile the genius artist with the often mediocre, sometimes horrid person behind them. Amaterasu may be based on Kate Bush and Florence Welsh, but there’s something of Elvis Presley about her : a definitely not-good person, stealing the basis of their art from a different culture, but who has the bad taste of being a genius about it. What should we do as a responsible audience ? Dissociating the person from the artist or rejecting them all at once are equally compelling, defendable options ; nonetheless, the temptation to let the genius speak for the person remains. They can’t be completely bad if they can make something so beautiful.

(In Amaterasu’s case however, I think her death came a little too late for us to really feel the weight of this dilemma. Gillen wrote in his notes that she was originally set to die at the end of Imperial Phase part I and indeed, Amaterasu in part II felt like a character who had outstayed her welcome ; her only contribution was to make herself even more insufferable. It definitely made her death easier on the audience, but I think it’s a shame she died after the charm had worn off for good.)

 In both Woden, Sakhmet and Amaterasu’s cases, Wicdiv subverted our expectations precisely because we were expecting a subversion, a turnaround, something other than what the character was obviously out to do. We are so used nowadays to stories either removing or constantly making their characters change course, that a character being set in their ways and simply continuing down the downward slide without immediate consequences is something we’re not really used to anymore. Were we expecting Woden, Amaterasu or Sakhmet to get better ? I think some of us were, and I don’t think that was either wrong or far-fetched. I don’t think Wicdiv’s message is that change is impossible ; it’s rather that change takes time and effort, it takes being able to trace your own path even in the face of external forces. And as we’ve discussed on this blog before, one of the defining traits of the gods is their lack of time that constricts them to youth until death. They are self-contained characters by obligation more than choice, something that’s illustrated perfectly by Sakhmet’s trauma-filled, cat-like persona : the potential to get better or worse is always present and always one right or wrong word away, but there is no stability because there is no willpower strong and consistent enough to drive her away from this floating state.

These past arcs, the gods have been more cumbersome and drudgy than ever, stubbornly keeping on their set path, each of their moves more predictable than the last, and the story has therefore become that much more linear. This is neither a coincidence nor a flaw : because the characters suddenly took control of the story – and it’s an interesting theory to imagine Ananke as a stand-in for the controlling authors themselves being banished from their own story as the characters rebel against them – things are not allowed to move as fast or unpredictably, because people, for the most part, are neither fast nor unpredictable. And therefore they shouldn’t be written as such for the benefit of making a story look dynamic.

 Does this mean that now that it’s been definitely established who our characters are, they’ll just keep running deep in the ravine they dug for themselves ? The answer this issue gives us is a bit more nuanced, and much of this nuance is carried by the dialogue scene between Cass and Dio, the two closest characters Wicdiv has to “good people”. In this scene, they are everything everyone else in this issue isn’t : tactful, brave, personal, deep. They are also subtly out of character : for someone as direct and awkward as Cass to be this oblique and thoughtful and someone like Dio to choose a long-term friendship above the immediate happiness of being able to get things of his chest, it’s a sign of how close they’ve gotten to each other and how meaningful this relationship is to the both of them. Because we know them so well as characters, we know what their first instinct is and therefore what doesn’t come naturally to them. Complexity is built on obviousness.

This dialogue has of course many levels of comprehension : first it’s a slam on the mythical friendzone, then a reflexion on the nature of friendship relatively to love, and then a more tragic observation on Dio’s selflessness. But there’s also an undeniable meta quality to it : faced with his own feelings as a person, Dio refused to take the obvious route. And Cass equally refused to have the obvious reaction. This is a conversation they will not have. It’s all hypotheticals. These two people looked hard at who they were and where this would take them. They looked at the ravine they had dug, and they decided to turn back. And this doesn’t mean their other instincts won’t run them into the ground – in fact, that’s precisely what happens a few pages later – but for the sake of each other they were able to alter their course. Characters in stories are not chained to their own passions ; just like us, they are able to take a look at themselves and decide what they want to do with who they are. In Imperial Phase, the gods seem to get dragged underwater by their own weight, too despondent or even self-satisfied to shake themselves up. But this is no fatality, only a reaction to the terrifying perspective of growth and change.

And really, who among us can pretend to have changed who they were without any kind of external prompting ? In a story like Wicdiv, no plot event is strong enough to turn a character on their wheels ; the seeds of Persephone were present in Laura long before her symbolic death, and her issues will come back every Winter until she addresses them. However, by caring for each other, by wanting to be better for each other, change can and does come. Imperial Phase has seen its characters bring out the worst in each other, but it has also seen them definitely take control of their story. They have no choice now but to take a good look at the devastation in their path and draw the necessary consequences. Their story must continue. Their story must end. But perhaps there is room for one more rewrite.

  WHAT I THOUGHT OF THE ISSUE

 One way I measure the impact of an issue is by checking how many reviews and Tumblr posts it generated. And while issue #30 apparently left people a bit bemused – it got maybe half as many reviews and posts as usual – issue #31 was one of those big shakeups of an issue, dazzling people everywhere. It speaks to the Wicdiv team’s consideration for their characters that an issue containing the death of a character still manages to make waves, despite how frequent an occurrence this has become. Sparks also started flying again graphic-wise, not that McKelvie and Wilson ever took a break, but this is clearly where we were supposed to tip our hats, and I do so obligingly.

 Given all that, surely I can be forgiven for being a bit down on this ? At this point, I have to question my own tendency to be left somewhat unsatisfied with the issues that are obviously meant to be “the big ones”. Maybe it is simply that I don’t like big plot moments and I’m more comfortable reading slow build-up pieces. Part of this is also the downside of the creative team’s media presence and remarkable openness about their creative process : Gillen has repeatedly said that this issue was where the “payoff” of this arc was starting, so we knew for months that this was the one with “the events”. And just like there is no quicker way to ruin a joke than to announce it’s going to make you laugh, directing my attention to an issue that’s supposed to be the one with the fireworks will immediately make me second-guess my enthusiasm.

 That said, there are some concrete elements of this issue that I didn’t like. The cut between Woden drawing the gun and the moment he shoots it was absolutely grating to me for reasons I couldn’t quite place ; Gillen did a write-up of this creative decision in his notes and while I do understand now the reasons of their choice, I still would have preferred for these two pages to be consecutive. At some point, a time unit is simply too small to be cut in two without losing energy or coherence. It actually took me a few seconds to understand what was happening on the second page because it seemed to me at first that there had to have been an ellipsis.

I also rolled my eyes a bit at the last exchange between Amaterasu and Sakhmet. I have no problem at all with Amaterasu continuing to be insufferable to the very end, but the “you thought it was over, SIKE !” move is one Wicdiv might have pulled one too many times. And the final straw on “being family” only added to the cliché atmosphere of the page.

 Generally speaking, this issue felt maybe too formulaic for me to really get into it, which is a problem I’ve encountered with many of the Imperial Phases (I and II) issues. And it doesn’t help that these issues feel wobbly as a whole, meaning I can’t really maintain a constant level of enthusiasm for this arc. The idea of splitting the characters into groups to get different narrative threads to emerge was an interesting one, but it has also partitioned the plot in a way that didn’t leave much room for deepening its sequences – again, not a coincidence that the best issue of these arcs is the one that used precisely that limitation as a formal basis. And while everything I’ve written above on the virtue of obeying the logic of the character rather than trying to shake up audiences at all costs remains true, it also means that just like with Rising Action, Imperial Phase (I and II) are arcs whose primary goal is to take us from point A to point B of both its plot and theme, to the detriment of the content of the arc. In Rising Action, the target was our own delusion that a happy ending could be achieved by removing the “villain” : a straight take on superhero comics that constantly read as disingenuous for the sole purpose of making us aware of its second layer. Imperial Phase is a bit less linear due to its segmented storylines, but the same double-dealing is at play here : this is a phase that is incredibly straightforward yet constantly winking at you to make you question its straightforwardness. If Rising Action was about the delusion of action, Imperial Phase is about the delusion of stagnation. Our temptation to believe fighting the villain would solve everything was logically replaced by the temptation to believe no fighting at all would mean happiness. That being at the top meant nothing could hurt you. That simply keeping on keeping on couldn’t possibly bring violence and suffering. And just like with Rising Action, there is nothing wrong with exploring that theme or making that point, but if that’s all the arc does, then it’s lacking in substance. This is the limit of the arc-as-argument structure : once you get the point, you get restless waiting for it to conclude. It’s right in the title : Imperial Phase implies we’ll be moving on from that phase sooner or later. Meanwhile, there isn’t much to do besides twiddling your thumbs waiting for the arc to get there. I know what these issues want to tell me. I got it. I got the concept.

 Fortunately, these arcs do more with their characters than Rising Action did besides making their point, meaning there’s still a lot to like and explore. I mean, I still find enough every month to write 2000+ words about it. Still, maybe the whole thing is playing just a bit too tight and controlled for me, which made sense for Rising Action but less so for an arc that’s all about indulgence and letting things decay on their own. This was particularly notable in this issue precisely because this is where the explosion of violence is supposed to start again, yet it still reads as an impeccably budgeted master plan. Fortunately, Wicdiv is still the best at conjuring triviality and ugliness exactly when you need it, and Amaterasu’s opened throat as well as Persephone’s stills are proof of that. We have two more issues to go, and I hope we see more of that messy, disorganized side of decadence rather than the cold ticking of its clock.

 But most importantly, Kieron Gillen, a scene at the British Museum was our one chance to see a dodo bird in Wicdiv and it didn’t happen. I will never forgive you.

[darkwinterchild]

Malcolm, Moira, Thea and anger

Note: This post came about because I stumbled upon a cool gifset whose conclusion was that Thea’s rage was the one thing she took from her father (as opposed to her mother). Someone added tags about how Moira’s rage was actually so much more powerful, and Malcolm’s was small and insignificant just like himself. That’s so drastically opposite to my own interpretation that I just had to write something about it. I didn’t want to hijack someone else’s meta though (particularly tag meta), so I figured I’d just make a new post. Particularly since I have a lot of thoughts on the matter. Malcolm and Moira were my first favs in Arrow and I loved all of their interactions together.

So, long, in-depth analysis of Malcolm, Moira and Thea and their relationship with anger under the cut, one by one. I just don’t do short.

Malcolm

First off, I truly think there is nothing small about Malcolm’s rage. Not its origin, not its intensity, not its duration, not its results, not anything.

The cruelty of the men who shot and killed Rebecca Merlyn for nothing (“I told them to take everything”), the indifference of the people who walked by and ignored her cries for help, who let her bleed out and die on the street as if she didn’t matter (as if she wasn’t there for them in the first place, as if she hadn’t made it her life’s mission to help them and save them with her free clinic) - these are more than legitimate causes of anger. You know what else isn’t small? His anger at himself and his own failure to protect or help her, his regrets for that stupid momentary feeling of exasperation that made him shut his phone off that night (such dreadful consequences for such a small act of negligence that married couples do to each other all the time - that people in general do to loved ones all the time). His shame and rage for his motherless son. The whole thing is just a huge tragedy.

(And I just don’t think this rage should be called selfish.)

Malcolm harbored these feelings for 20 long years. They compelled him to give himself up to Ra’s Al Ghul to be tortured and brainwashed into something else, because he felt it could give him a measure of control and power back over his life. He let them fester inside of him for 12 years after his return from the League before he decided to act on them by starting the Undertaking. 12 years of desperate search for some form of redemption, for peace. 12 years during which he strived to honor Rebecca’s legacy the way she would have wanted, to save the city with charity and when it was no longer enough, by blackmailing the rich and corrupt. 12 years of frustration because you can’t win a war against crime. 12 years is the time it took him to convince himself that some people can’t be saved, are better off dead (because he is that kind of person: arrogant and unforgiving, justice without empathy or understanding).

Two decades after Rebecca’s death, his rage was still as intense as ever, if not more. It consumed his being to the point her death became the only thing that mattered - more than her life, even. An obsession that eclipsed everything else. He let it destroy his relationship with his son, let it destroy their family. He listened to that recording of her dying over and over until it drove him mad (until her tears and suffering were engraved at the forefront in his mind like words on stone - “No one would come”). He murdered Robert, his best friend in life, along with Robert’s son (Tommy’s best friend), because at this point he was no longer capable of truly caring. He murdered countless others. He blackmailed Moira into doing his bidding with the life of her daughter, a woman he used to have feelings for (whether they were purely platonic or more). He destroyed every relationship he had, spent countless hours planning his Undertaking, gave away huge amounts of money, all of this for years, and for what? Nothing. He risked everything, in the end lost everything, and he had absolutely nothing to gain from all of this, only a pointless, false satisfaction, the illusion of revenge. (The murder of a thousand innocents to pay for the murder of one? It’s a senseless spiral of violence and he was too far gone, down into the abyss, to see the irony.)

Malcolm Merlyn’s rage basically killed him, made him kill his city, and there is absolutely nothing “small” about that. Robert’s death wasn’t small, Moira and Thea’s sufferings weren’t small, Oliver’s 5 years in hell weren’t small, Walter’s kidnapping wasn’t small, the Unidac massacre wasn’t small, 503 people isn’t small.

(“insignificant” just isn’t a good word here.)

You can’t even say that his wrath was an illusion with the intent of making himself seem bigger, because he actually kept it carefully hidden and controlled. To the world, he showed the face of an affable businessman, and whenever his anger would show behind the mask, he’d use his own sorrow to disguise or dismiss it:

Malcolm [smiling]: My wife would have liked you, Laurel. Laurel: I’m only sorry I never got to meet her. She passed away before Tommy and I became friend. Malcolm [bitterly]: She was killed, Laurel. There is no need to be ‘polite’ about it. Tommy: You’re just a ray of sunshine today, aren’t you, Dad? Malcolm [smiling again]: Please forgive me, talking about my wife has a tendency to make me a bit maudlin.

“A bit maudlin”. He didn’t want people to know how truly enraged he still was about what happened. It’s actually an interesting dynamic: inside, he was using his anger to drown out his grief; outside, he was using his grief to conceal his anger. We only really saw glimpses of it (like the way his voice almost broke during his speech in Dead to Rights), up until it burst out during his conversation with Tommy in Sacrifice (“They deserve to die! All of them! The way she died!”). I don’t think he even wanted to admit it to himself. Instead, he presented his Undertaking as the only logical solution to an underlying societal problem. “I like to think that if the man who murdered her knew her, knew the work that she did, he would have helped her to her car, made sure she was safe, instead of taking her purse, and shouting her.” -- this is the man Malcolm wanted the world to see him as. Forgiving, hopeful. Someone who still believes in humanity, someone who sees the best in people just like Rebecca did. Because deep down he knew this is who he should be or strive to be. Mr Humanitarian of the Year. And it was all a lie.

I think people have a tendency to glamorize anger, because anger can be good and it can be beautiful. After all, anger is what motivates us to fight against injustice. So when we don’t like it in someone we want to make it less. But I think that’s hiding the fact that it has an ugly, dangerous, self-destructive side, that even righteous anger can become wrong when taken to the extreme, left unchecked. The whole problem of Malcolm’s rage isn’t that it was illegitimate. He had every right to be angry. It’s that it was wildly, terribly disproportionate. Monstrous.

Moira

All of this is in sharp contrast with Moira Queen. If Malcolm’s flaw was that he was too angry (let his anger turn him into a monster), Moira’s was that she wasn’t angry enough.

Moira is earth where Malcolm is fire (and together they are lava, a freaking volcano - a natural disaster about to erupt). Less aggressive and powerful, but more stable and enduring. Fully controlled instead of just focused. Like the earthbenders from Avatar, her stance is neutral jing: listening and waiting for the right opportunity. Fighting for preservation instead of fighting for change. Prudent in everything she does.

She stood by her husband through all the lying and the cheating. Robert cheated on her right after his best friend lost his wife (who was probably also their friend - that’s just highly distasteful). Years later, he cheated on her with a woman barely older than their son and called her his “soulmate” (that’s even more distasteful). Moira dealt with all of it and never let it affect their family - so much so their children never had any idea their father was unfaithful. She remained steady as his partner, still loved him despite everything, still supported him whenever he was worried or anxious - even if she didn’t trust him (“Robert, if this is what I think it is, I don't want to know her name--”). She endured.

Unlike Malcolm, losing her husband and son didn’t cause her to run or gun for revenge, instead she retreated into herself (“When you and Dad disappeared, she spent more and more time at home. Eventually stopped going out altogether.”). She had the exact same reaction after losing Walter. Both times, she put herself back together and pushed through life, solid for her family.

She searched for the Queen’s Gambit for two years after it sank, looking for proof, for surety, before blaming Malcolm. She salvaged the remains and kept them secure to potentially use as leverage at a later date, and never once brought up the fact she knew he murdered her husband and son to Malcolm before the start of the show. For years, she played the good soldier. She let him believe they could still be friends, that she believed in his cause (“And I think I speak for everyone here when I say we're all with you, Malcolm.” and “Moira, you may be surprised to know that I sometimes waver in my convictions. But your friendship, your endless support, always gives me the strength to carry on.”). Moira was never rash, she was always cautious and calculated. There may have been a terrible rage lurking under the surface, but we can only guess based on context - she never truly showed it, certainly never let it dictate her actions. Horror, guilt and sorrow - yes; but not anger. Hell, Malcolm tried to murder Oliver at his party in her own home, the son she’d just got back after five years of believing he was dead (that Malcolm had murdered him along with his father), and her only reaction was to make sure he understood she wouldn’t stand for yet another attempt on her family. Pretty cool under the circumstances. Later, she even made the choice to let Malcolm kidnap her second husband (actually even asked him to do it), rather than opt to fight him together.

Malcolm Merlyn was very much a “high risks, high reward” kind of person. Not Moira. She didn’t like taking risks, playing the game of thrones. She prepared some cards (the Gambit, Grizzled Man), but never attempted anything against him until she was backed into a corner (after the Hood attacked her and she realized she was now caught between two psychopaths). After her carefully planned assassination attempt didn’t pan out, her next move was to cut her losses and retreat, make sure her family was still safe no matter what (and if it meant throwing her good friend Frank and his family under the bus… well she wasn’t their mother, was she?). Moira could be so pretty damn ruthless: having her son kidnapped and tortured as soon as he got back home from 5 years of hell (imagine the trauma if Oliver wasn’t what he was - and Moira sure knew how much pain he already had to deal with: “20% of his body is covered in scar tissue”); having her husband kidnapped right after telling him he was her salvation; planning the murder of one of her oldest friend, him and his guards and the servants and whoever else was on the way, waiting for it to happen right after agreeing to a dinner-date with him; sacrificing another one of her old friends for something she made him do against his own better judgement (after he went out on a limb for her!); being ready to kill thousands of people for her and her family’s safety; etc. But unlike Malcolm her ruthlessness was never rooted in rage, it was always about fear and survival - she did whatever she needed to do for her family.

And I think that’s important in terms of Moira and anger - she should have been angrier. She should have lashed out, fought back, taken risks. Anything but accepted, even for a second, that leveling 24 square blocks and getting away with it was an tolerable end. Anything but surrendered before having tried her damn hardest to get out. Before Oliver pushed her to turn on Malcolm at the last minute, she wasn’t just going to let him murder thousands of people, she actively helped him do it. She bullied people (her friends) into serving his vision, threatened some of them, and it was her company that built the earthquake device at the end of the day. I think sometimes the fandom forgets that - she was a mass-murderer too. Not the architect of the Undertaking, but the second most important conspirator. Her confession at the end of the first season does redeem her a little, but 503 people still paid the price of her selfishness with their lives - not counting the suffering of the numerous survivors: the physical and mental scars, the permanently disabled, the pain of those who lost their loved ones, the struggle of rebuilding a broken community in the poorest part of town. Her belief that her and her family were more important than all of them Glades inhabitants put together, that they weren’t worth protecting, that she could afford to sacrifice them - it caused that. Moira had a right to be afraid; Malcolm had a right to be angry - neither of them had a right to kill.

(And nope I’m not equating what they did, Malcolm is still a hundred times worse.)

Sebastian Blood once asked Moira: “During your trial your portrayed yourself as a fragile creature living under Malcolm Merlyn’s thumb. So which is it? The woman strong enough to lead the city? Or the one too weak-willed to save it?”. The answer is both. Moira had the strength of a mountain, but I meant what I said about anger having a positive side. At the very least, it means that you have an incentive to fight for the wronged. There is something terrible about Moira’s dismissal of the lives that would be lost (that were lost) - “I’m not their mother”, she said.

So, yeah, at the end of the day, Moira was better than Malcolm. She never let her sadness and grief turn into cruelty. Her priority was always to protect the loved ones she had instead of lashing out for the ones she lost. She never let her pain skew her perspective, never forgot how to love. For her children, that was enough. For so many others, it wasn’t.

Thea

So, we have these two terrible disasters - and they made a baby together (volcanic islands are very fertile, they say). Thea, who at four year old brought home a stray cat who horrified her mother (“it was filthy, and it was mean”) and decided it was going to be family; Thea, who fell in love with the delinquent boy who stole her purse; Thea who’d never think of the poor and homeless as any less important than she is, who has a greater capacity for empathy than both her parents put together (heck, maybe even her whole family put together).

(“Thea was always so kind. The kindest person I’ve ever known.”)

Thea has her father’s anger. Sometimes it can be self-destructive, like when she jumped into a car high on Vertigo because she thought her mother was having an affair with Mr. Merlyn (off by a few years), or when she was ready to go to prison just to punish her. It can make her disagreeable, like all the times she lashed out at Oliver after his return from the island for being distant and a liar, or at her mother for being negligent. It can make her hard, like when she categorically refused to visit her mother in prison for months. It can compel her to make some very bad decisions, like letting their family lose their fortune or leaving with Malcolm Merlyn at the end of season 2.

But her anger means that she cares. A lot of people didn’t like Thea in season 1, and maybe she was wrong to be so hard on Oliver or Moira or Roy, but it was because she loved them and more often than not wanted to help them (and it wasn’t such a bad thing to ask them to care about her too from time to time):

Moira: Please, don't presume to think that you know what I'm going through. Thea: I do know. I lost Dad too. I'm worried about Walter too. But I don't get to worry about him, because I'm busy worrying about you. Moira: I never asked you to do that. Thea: Right. Because you don't ask me to do anything anymore. You don't ask me to do my homework or to be home at a decent hour. I mean, you basically stopped being my parent. Moira: Well, how's this? Don't talk to your mother like that. Thea: Maybe you should start acting like my mother. So I don't have to act like yours.

Thea cares about her family so much, blood family and found family, and that makes it so much more difficult every time they betray her, or die, again and again. And as she grows up, we see her lose a lot of her immaturity: Thea inherited Malcolm’s rage, but also her mother’s grace. Despite all the pain she went through, she hasn’t let that anger destroy her like it destroyed her father. When it was amplified by magical factors, she fought against her bloodlust until it was killing her. When she realized it was getting out of hand (when she almost killed a little girl to stop her father - that’s the most like Malcolm she’s ever been), she made the choice to step away from her vigilante life no matter how much she loved it. And she has a huge capacity for empathy and forgiveness: she forgave Oliver once she understood why he was being distant, she forgave Roy for pushing her away every time he did, she forgave her mother for neglecting her after Robert’s death, she forgave her for committing mass-murder once she realized how scared she must have been, she was even ready to forgive Malcolm (“You protected me, risked your life for me. Just like my mother did.”).

She has enough anger in her to be passionate about things, to care that a wrong is being committed - to stand up for the innocents. It means she will never just passively accept an atrocity (mass murder), let alone participate in said atrocity like her mother did. Thea will always choose to fight. How many times has she risked her life for strangers since she became Speedy? At the same time, she has enough love and restrain not to let that anger devour her.

Ultimately, the woman she’s growing into can be the best of both world. Despite all her fears that she is doomed to become her parents, Thea will never be Malcolm, and she will never be Moira. She is, has always been, and will always be better than the both of them.

[nobodysuspectsthebutterfly]

waxifraski asked:

Hello, Butterfly! Excuse me if you have already treated this: Do you think that characters such as Cersei or Littlefinger are caricaturized? I mean, I get that the point of horrible-psycho people like the Boltons, Euron, Joffrey or Gregor is being utterly horrible and sadistic, but given the screen-time Littlefinger and Cersei have, it’s puzzle how they never get as “compelling” or remotely understandable as other “villain” characters as Varys or Jaime. Probably it’s just a rant of mine, I didn’t appreciate text nuances and it doesn’t matter, but I can’t recall any moment of Petyr or Cersei doing any minuscule good thing for anybody, not even petting Tommen’s little cats, and would like your opinion on the matter. Excuse me if I didn’t manage to express myself clearly, I’m not a native English-speaker, thank you very much in advance!

No worries about your English, you’re perfectly understandable. But part of your problem is that Varys and Jaime are not villains per se – they’re a complex mix of anti-hero/anti-villain characteristics, very shades of grey, and as such audience sympathy can be built for them by the more kind deeds they do and/or by the pain they suffer. (The trouble lies in that over time the more villainous acts are forgotten by the sympathetic audience, such as Jaime and Bran, or Varys and the tongues he takes from his little birds. I think Varys’s villain characteristics are going to hit a major upswing soon, mind you.)

As for the more “pure” villains such as Littlefinger and Cersei, I don’t think they’re  caricatures, not at all, and I think they’re entirely understandable. Littlefinger is far more than a mustache-twirling Dick Dastardly-type cackling villain. Cersei is much more than a seductive bitch queen. But GRRM didn’t need to write them helping little old ladies cross the street or petting puppies to give them depth and a bit of audience sympathy (or empathy). Instead, he gave them complex backstory and characterization.

They met in the lower bailey of Riverrun. When Brandon saw that Petyr wore only helm and breastplate and mail, he took off most of his armor. Petyr had begged her for a favor he might wear, but she had turned him away. Her lord father promised her to Brandon Stark, and so it was to him that she gave her token, a pale blue handscarf she had embroidered with the leaping trout of Riverrun. As she pressed it into his hand, she pleaded with him. “He is only a foolish boy, but I have loved him like a brother. It would grieve me to see him die.” And her betrothed looked at her with the cool grey eyes of a Stark and promised to spare the boy who loved her. That fight was over almost as soon as it began. Brandon was a man grown, and he drove Littlefinger all the way across the bailey and down the water stair, raining steel on him with every step, until the boy was staggering and bleeding from a dozen wounds. “Yield!” he called, more than once, but Petyr would only shake his head and fight on, grimly. When the river was lapping at their ankles, Brandon finally ended it, with a brutal backhand cut that bit through Petyr’s rings and leather into the soft flesh below the ribs, so deep that Catelyn was certain that the wound was mortal. He looked at her as he fell and murmured “Cat” as the bright blood came flowing out between his mailed fingers.

When she was just a little girl, her father had promised her that she would marry Rhaegar. She could not have been more than six or seven. “Never speak of it, child,” he had told her, smiling his secret smile that only Cersei ever saw. “Not until His Grace agrees to the betrothal. It must remain our secret for now.” And so it had, though once she had drawn a picture of herself flying behind Rhaegar on a dragon, her arms wrapped tight about his chest. When Jaime had discovered it she told him it was Queen Alysanne and King Jaehaerys. She was ten when she finally saw her prince in the flesh, at the tourney her lord father had thrown to welcome King Aerys to the west. […] By night the prince played his silver harp and made her weep. When she had been presented to him, Cersei had almost drowned in the depths of his sad purple eyes. He has been wounded, she recalled thinking, but I will mend his hurt when we are wed. Next to Rhaegar, even her beautiful Jaime had seemed no more than a callow boy. The prince is going to be my husband, she had thought, giddy with excitement, and when the old king dies I’ll be the queen. […] If she had only married Rhaegar as the gods intended, he would never have looked twice at the wolf girl. Rhaegar would be our king today and I would be his queen, the mother of his sons.

And those are just two heartbreaking examples, there’s definitely more for both characters. (Like, I can’t imagine reading the transcendental, stunningly emotional ADWD Cersei II and come away thinking she’s a only caricatured villain.) Now, maybe they didn’t affect you, maybe they didn’t affect many readers – Cersei’s sympathetic moments often come during some of her worst actions, so the balance is difficult, and I know I personally lost any sympathy I had for Littlefinger after Jeyne Poole – but they do exist, and they’re there for a reason.

And it’s the same for some other villains. Even, say, Lysa, who may come off as a caricature of a hysteric obsessive overbearing mother-villain (especially in the first book), truly had an incredibly sad and tragic life, a depth of pain where it hurts to even touch the surface. Joffrey as well: the moment where he sees Robert abuse Cersei, the story Stannis relates after his death about how Robert once hit him so hard Stannis thought he’d killed him (for, granted, a terrible act, but that’s still child abuse ffs). Tywin, also, barely does anything “good” ever, but gosh how could anyone think he wasn’t complex or compelling?

But it’s true, there are villains where GRRM doesn’t even try to give them much in the way of depth, and no sympathy at all, and just piles on their atrocities. Gregor, Vargo Hoat, Ramsay, Euron… but I still wouldn’t call them caricatures? They’re not just evil for the sake of evil, not mindless orcs, they have motivations (dull and brutish and antisocial as Gregor’s may be) and even complexity of a sort. No sympathetic actions at all, but they’re not meant to have them:

GRRM said that for any character who is a POV character he has to find something that he and readers can sympathize with even if the character in question does reprehensible things. He said there is always something he can find, or if not then it just won’t be a POV character. Gregor Clegane, for example, could never be a POV character, but Jaime Lannister can be despite his bad actions, because there’s more to Jaime than that. GRRM mentioned that Cersei will be a major POV character in A Feast for Crows. I was outraged by this and commented “You just won’t ever leave us any character we can purely hate, will you?” GRRM smiled at that, and that’s when he gave the counter-example of Gregor Clegane.

Mind you, this POV thing of GRRM’s makes me wonder a bit about Victarion Greyjoy, who IMO is the most villain-caricature of all the POV characters. Like, even the moment where I think GRRM might have trying to build sympathy – his memories of the time he “had to kill” his wife for her adultery – fails for me because he was fucking beating his enslaved wife to death after she was raped. Victarion’s laughably stupid (GRRM’s even said he’s “dumb as a stump”), his “kindness” in freeing slaves is just so that he can sacrifice them or give them as salt wives to his men, and honestly the only way I could get through his chapters is to treat them as a dark comedy and pray that his “glory” comes soon. Is it Victarion’s utter cluelessness and obliviousness to his fate that we’re supposed to sympathize with? Or is it his ~AWESOME BATTLE SKILLZ~ that I do see people (men) claiming they enjoy? Maybe the fact that he’s a caricature is the point? Damn if I know, oh well.

Anyway, a villain doesn’t need to be a medium-grey anti-hero to be understandable and compelling. They can be almost entirely dark with perhaps only a spark of goodness from their childhood now buried, or maybe they have no apparent goodness within them at all and never have – but that doesn’t make them caricatures, it just makes them villains. Hope this helps you understand!

[rheasunshine]

As I delve a little into what happened yesterday during my second half infusion of Ocrevus, I want to be very clear that “weakness” is not at all meant to be a taken as derogatory, or a stand-in for failure.  I do not intend “weakness” to bring up feelings of inadequacy or defeat.

Weakness, in this piece, means vulnerability, means softness, means disarmed – and the context of these words are meant to evoke in us the power of our humanness and to speak to the testament that though we are all fragile, that fragility bonds us together and opens up the pathways for empathy.

As I wrote about in my last piece, my decision to start Ocrevus was not an easy one and the long-term side effects were scary and the short-term ones turned out to be terrible.  This all comes with the territory of long-term disease management and medications.  So I won’t re-hash that and I’ll start with yesterday morning.

(Full disclosure, as I’m writing this, I’m currently basking in the warmth of 7.5 mg of Vicodin, 50 mgs of Benadryl, plus the haziness of sheer exhaustion.  Also, my skin is burning at a level best described as “infuriatingly distracting” and I have no feeling in either of my legs, so every once in awhile I’m taken out of writing mode to try to figure out how my laptop is floating in front of me because I can’t see the lump of legs beneath the blanket and so the whole “out of sight, out of mind” comes in to play.)

Knowing that we would have to leave for Duke at 5:30 am on Tuesday morning, I went to bed at 7 pm Monday night; not surprisingly, I woke up at 1:45 am, anxious and pissed.  But I got dressed, combed my hair and took a “Let’s Do This” selfie in an attempt to get myself pumped up.  I was thinking I looked pretty good for 2:30 am, especially since I was fighting a panic attack and couldn’t take anything for it (so there would be no interactions with the pre-medication they give you at the infusion center).

We headed out right on time, and despite the Tropical Cyclone warnings, there was only a light rain falling.  Thommy and I took the obligatory “WE’RE ON A ROAD TRIP!” photo at the first red light we came to, and then he took an adorable shot of the two of us once I inevitably passed out in the passenger’s seat.

Durham rush hour traffic was reliably crazy, so we rolled up to Duke Hospital with 15 minutes to park and check-in.  While I nervously waited for them to call my name I couldn’t help but notice the obnoxiously optimistic vending machine taunting me.  Similarly to adding the words “in bed” to the ending of fortune cookies, I sometimes like to add the words “my ass” to the end of inspirational quotes.  In case the image is too small for you to read, let me assist you in recreating what I read in my head yesterday morning as I waited for the IV toxicity:

“The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it … my ass.”

Despite my obsession with quotes and my belief in their ability to empower and embolden us, sometimes the only thing that pulls me along in life is sardonic humor. Apologies to C.C. Scott.

Anyway, the appointment started out great – especially the first three things.  For starters, the scale was broken!! After just getting weighed in at a doctor’s appointment on Monday (yes, I truly do spend most of my life at doctor’s appointments), I was really not looking forward to it on Tuesday.  Most people dislike getting weighed in on those hideous contraptions anyway, but for someone with anorexia it’s an even harder proposition. Sometimes I do the weigh-in backwards, but most times my sadistic side takes over and I can’t avert my eyes.  I’m going to be writing a special post about my upcoming 10 year anniversary from Renfrew and one of the things I’ll be talking about is some ways people with eating disorders engage differently than regular folks with seemingly benign tasks.  For example, on the day before a scheduled weigh-in, I usually dehydrate myself and often times use a diuretic or laxative (despite the fact that I am chronically dehydrated and have diarrhea anywhere between 5-15 times a day).  I also wear as few items of clothing as possible.  This is much easier to accomplish in the South, but regardless of the fact that I am always cold, I usually wear shorts and flip flops to appointments so I can take them off before stepping on the scale.  At the infusion center, none of these preemptive steps are possible because those places are kept at what seems to be “just-below-freezing”, so I’m forced to wear jeans and shoes.  I digress: I didn’t have to get weighed in.

The second good thing was finding out that they try to keep you with the same infusion nurse for sake of continuity of care.  I loved my nurse the first time and I was ecstatic to be back under her care.  The last positive to happen in quick succession was the fact that she was able to get the IV in on the first try.  Last time, it took 3 pokes (plus the delay of waiting for the “IV Team” to show up).  Then, things started to take a turn for the worse.

Despite assurances last time that were going to double ALL my meds to start (including the Benadryl, which is a god-send during these infusions because it either knocks you out or keeps you in a “I Don’t Give a Fuck” haze), I was informed that only the Pepcid and the steroids would be doubled.  That was the first time I wanted to cry in the infusion chair.  I held it in.  I dug in hard, gritted my teeth, focused my energy and willed myself to stay ahead of the thundering rumble of disappointment I could hear building up in the background.  Thommy must have taken a picture at this moment, which I didn’t see until later, but perfectly captured the internal pep-talk.

And then he asked for a picture, grinning.  I tried to smile back.

  Then, as my nurse administered the normal dose of Benadryl, none of the twilight-like sedation that had blissfully overcome me during the first infusion took hold.  It might as well have been saline.  Again, the tears swelled up from my gut to the edges of my eyes – but I blinked them back down and just let the crashing wave of disappointment and frustration wash over me.  All my senses and emotions were so heightened that it felt more like drowning than washing, but I didn’t want to give up on the day so early in the process.

The day marched on.  Thommy did some work and I mostly stared ahead at the wall, or occasionally at my phone, but mostly I just looked at the IV.  A little blood had started to flow back into the tubing, a hazy mixture of red blood and opaque medicine creating a pink swirl in the line.  I don’t know why it was mesmerizing.  Something about blood leaving my body was calming; it was just the smallest amount, really, but it was beautiful.  It didn’t even scare me that I wished it was coming faster, or that the tubing wasn’t there, or that the earlier moments of “washing disappointment” turned to a wistful hope that the droplets of blood would turn to tiny streams, then currents.  Visions of crimson liquid on pale skin lulled me.  It wasn’t the meds but this vision that acted like the Klonopin I hadn’t been able to take earlier, and my eyes closed.  Thommy must have looked up from his laptop shortly after this and captured with his phone what must have seemed to him like a momentary respite from the struggle and a rare moment of calm.  It was.  But for all the wrong reasons.

***

As we hit the mark in time where I had experienced a reaction during the first infusion, I was ecstatic to realize I wasn’t having one this time.  I stubbornly decided (as one does when they think they can control everything around them) that I was NOT going to have a reaction this time and we were going to get out of there on time, beat the Durham rush hour and be back home after “only” 12 hours.  It was not to be.  30 minutes later when they once again bumped up the infusion rate, I started to get the faintest tingle around my ears and the outline of my face.  Then a little on my neck. I tried not to think about it; I certainly tried not to touch it.  I didn’t want to draw any attention to myself while surrounded my hawk-eye nurses and an even more attentive husband, who for reasons that entirely escape me, seems to actually like looking at my face.  I again tried to convince myself the increasingly hard to ignore burning was simply a matter of psychosomatic manifestation.  No allergic reaction to see here.  Maybe if I pretend to sleep, no one will look at me.

Then I coughed.  Just once.  But Thommy looked up.  I shook my head nonchalantly: “I’m fine, just a tickle, it’s fine.”

Then another cough, deeper this time: “I’m fine,” I laughed, “seriously, go back to work.” Then 3 more in quick succession, harder and rumbling, ones that forced my body upwards in the chair.

Fuck.  Me.

After 2 minutes of “Should We Get the Nurse” ping-pong, he poked is head above the nursing station.  I could hear the mumbling and I shot Thommy the coldest death stare I could muster and like a mother scolding an insubordinate child, I mouthed “SIT. DOWN.”

“Never mind, she’s ok.” Thommy said with a sheepish chuckle.  It was his turn to try to laugh it off.  But it was too late and here she came, arms crossed, smiling.  It wasn’t my nurse (she was on lunch), but one that had remembered me from last time and had come over to say hi when we first got there.  “Good to see you again,” she had said.  She was young and very pretty.   It’s strange, but even after just two visits, they seem like a family to me.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I laughed, waving my hand in an attempt to shoo off the inevitable.  I try to act like the smartest person in the room when in medical settings, like it simultaneously makes everyone up their own game and also allows me the upper-hand.  I do it because pretending I’m in control is the only way I’ve found to survive all this shit.

I don’t remember exactly who said what, but among the three of us, words like “itching”, “just a little irritation”, “cough”, and “I really am fine,” got tossed around.  No dice.  In quick succession, 3 nurses and the PA who oversees the floor and is probably the sweetest person I’ve ever met in a medical office were standing and sitting around me.  Then I started to fucking cry.  Not sobbing, not hysterically, but a stifled stream of tears finally made their way out of my eyes and down my already red and itching face.  The nurses and Thommy tried to console me, thinking what, I’m not sure.  The darker part of my nature thought maybe they believed I was weak – easily rattled – being a brat.

I doubt anyone actually thought that but those were the assumptions pounding against my skull as I tried to explain that I was only crying because I didn’t want to stop the infusion, I just wanted to get through it like (seemingly) everyone else did and go HOME. I wanted them to understand that my body does not know any other mode than “self-sabotage.” It is a betrayer.  It lies and it breaks and it defies logic.  I wanted them to ignore what they were seeing, go against all ethical and practical guides of medicine and just let me have my reaction in peace and get the fuck out of there.  As I explained that, minus the expletives, the PA sat down next to me and placed her hand on my knee that was huddled up next to me as I did my best to place myself in the fetal position in the chair.  Her eyes were the warmest shade of brown, and empathy and sympathy shot out of them like laser beams set to a better frequency than mine.  Excitedly she said, “we won’t stop like last time!! No, no…” she comforted, “we will just stop the drip while we give you more Benadryl, more Pepcid and some Allegra, and then I promise you we’ll start right back up.”  There were some hesitant, doubting looks on the faces of the nurses surrounding her.  The PA must have noticed that too because she added – “I’ll start it back up myself if I have too.”  I agreed, but kept crying.

They all started shuffling around doing what had to be done and within a few minutes, my own nurse was back.  They explained to her what had happened.  They tried to explain why I was upset.  I started to defend myself, but she stopped me.

“Of course you’re crying.  You’re tough and happy for as long as you can and you do what you have to do and then all it ever takes is one final thing, the straw that breaks the camels back, to put you over.  It’s not pain, you can handle that; it’s just frustration at one more thing not working out the way it should and you just have enough.  You’re ok.”

I cried harder.  She actually fucking got it.  I’ve known her for a total of maybe 18 hours in my life and she completely understood the secret language of my tears in that moment.

They infused more meds and I watched the clock tick.  And then, when my time was up, and every nurse was with another patient, the PA (who works in administration and oversees the floor, and who was wearing high heels, a skirt and a blouse, but who had promised me that this little setback wouldn’t get me off track to go home on time), found gloves and started my drip back up herself.

The state of medical care of this country is currently broken.  I know this because I am a professional patient.  But the level of care I’ve received at my infusion center, and especially at the hands of this PA at that moment, healed so many fractures for me.

I still had well over an hour to go when my nurse left for the day.  She came over to say goodbye and that she’d see me in 6 months.  She said a few things, all so genuinely sweet that I wanted to cry again.  Then she said “it was truly a pleasure being with you today.”  I could only nod.  When she left, Thommy turned and said, “she loves you.”

“Yeah,” I said, thinking about all the times doctors and nurses would fawn over Memere, even as she experienced the worst that hospitals have to offer.  “I learned that from Memere.”

***

In my ongoing commitment to showing how “real” complicated and ongoing illness and disability can be, I allowed Thommy to post a picture he took of me crying to Facebook.  We try to document as much of our lives as possible, and while most people who know me know that I’m incredibly open and honest about what all the colors of life look like, there are lines I try to draw.  I’m struggling with that right now as I’m drafting my Renfrew piece, because despite the trigger warnings and the explicit language I’ll use to shy away people who shouldn’t be looking at it, I know if they’re anything like me they’ll be compelled to do so anyway, and so I haven’t decided if I’ll use pictures to help illustrate what my personal weight and health struggles have looked like over the last 18 or so years.

When we finally got home last night, I kept looking at that picture.  I really had to fight the urge to take it down.  I still think displaying vulnerability, depression, anxiety and self-harm are ways that help me fight against them.  I know not everybody feels that way and I do worry maybe it’s too triggering for people.  And maybe I’m delusional, but I do feel that if someone is battling their own demons in secrecy, and maybe feels like no one else understands, that they might see one of my pictures or posts and realize that weakness does not have to equal defeat or inadequacy or failure.  Sometimes – hell, most times – weakness is permission to feel vulnerable, hurt or broken while simultaneously seeing the strength that all those feelings require.  It is permission to be human, and to let others know that not everything they see or read from people they consider “strong” is the whole story.  Strength requires too much energy sometimes; it needs its’ counterparts to be whole.  When someone tells me I’m strong, I want them to know that, while it’s often misquoted and not used in accordance with the original source material from “A Farewell to Arms”: we are all broken, that’s how the light get’s in.

So today, as I sit here, I am bloated from the steroids and terrified about how much worse it’s going to get in the coming weeks. I am in incredible amounts of pain radiating from all over, and both legs are numb.  I am starving, but I won’t eat.  My face is broken out in hives (as are my neck, chest and shoulders), and I am dizzy and nauseous from all the medicines.  I am worried about money because our car just needed $1,100 worth of repairs.  I am feeling like a horrible friend and daughter because there are things I’m supposed to be doing for my friends and family that I just can’t.  I feel like the “World’s Worst Wife” (a title I bestow on myself often) because Thommy is stressed and anxious and I can’t be as attentive or patient as I should be.

I am feeling my humanness today: hard.  I am still crying.  But I’m urged to remind you that while it’s not necessarily fair to feel this way, we are okay.  And if you need to reach out, reach out.  And if you want to share your struggles with social media but worry people might think you’re being “dramatic,” tell that voice to shut up and share what you want.  You have no idea who it might help.  Or how it might help you.

What’s the point of being strong if you can’t define strength on your own terms?

What’s the point of struggling in silence because you’re worried about what other’s might think? People who would turn their backs on you deserve to be walking away.

What do you need today?  Ask yourself – then ask for help if you need it.

If you’re doing OK today – ask someone else what you can do to help them.

Results may vary.  You may make someone’s day.

Or you may save it.

  In strength and solidarity,

Rhea

    In Defense of Weakness As I delve a little into what happened yesterday during my second half infusion of Ocrevus, I want to be very clear that "weakness" is not at all meant to be a taken as derogatory, or a stand-in for failure.