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fulokis · 4 years ago

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Thoughts on Wandavision

Spoilers duh.

I started this out as a boredom watch as in eh why not. I was not really invested until Evan Peters showed up. Evan Peters aka the guy who played quicksilver in the X-men fox universe. With DoFP being my favorite partially because of quicksilver. So naturally I became way more invested in the show, not only that but I became hyper-fixated on X-men as a result.

So marvel brings in this actor and all the fans of the X-men are like yeah duh that makes sense, especially considering Wanda is heavily involved with MoM, the movie about the freakin multiverse. So fans of X-men and doctor strange (of which I am both) become exited for the possibilities that this opens up. Excitement builds and as a result people end up watching more content on Disney+ whether it be the movies shows ect.

And then they go and say nope it’s not. And even if they do retcon it it’s still a really crappy thing to have done. And what do I mean, this is part of marvel trying to surprise fans through subverting expectations. And yes sometimes it’s nice, but other times you end up with a mess that leaves more questions than answers.

Take Endgame and Infinity war. Now I knew that Thanos was going to win in infinity war. It was a matter of how he would win. But part of my issue with infinity war is that it felt like it barely spent time exploring how the different characters would interact with each other because there were too many and it would have blocked the narrative from moving forward. Endgame had a similar issue but on top of that they were so focused on keeping everything locked up that it didn’t exactly feel like a cohesive movie. And as a result the character interactions and relationships fell quite short. Not only that but some of them made no sense, but taking a look at endgames flaws has happened enough.

So taking a look at wandavision I’m not upset that my therory is incorrect. I’m upset that one they literally did this to subvert expectations because they hate when their shows are predictable, and two people are rubbing it in our faces that we were wrong and we shouldn’t be upset because it was a theory. And what’s more is that they had an example of fans being correct and it was still surprising.

My mouth still dropped at the reveal that it was Agatha. I still was surprised even though I knew it was coming. I know a lot of people were. And I can say it was because of the fact that we got it right that we knew where it was going and it was executed in a way that still made it feel like a big reveal. So why then are they trying to surprise the fans with well it was Ralph duh haha got you.

Because for some reason marvel hates when people can predict something. Which makes me wonder why they went with the infinity war storyline and are seemingly going with the Skrull storyline if they don’t want fans to predict what’s happening? Why are they going with well known storylines from the comics if they don’t want anyone to guess what is happening? Especially if the fans know the storylines and end up becoming disappointed if you don’t include this one specific moment.

And this is an issue because it sets up fans to know how something will play out, then turning around to subvert expectations ending up with something that doesn’t quite make sense with the narrative they had set up and teased and the characters. It doesn’t work to take pre established stories and adapt them to the screen while trying to subvert expectations. You need to pick one or the other, you simply can not do both.

There’s a reason that people are so finicky when adaptations of books are brought to the screen. It’s because they enjoy those stories and they want to see it as close up on the screen as possible. They want to see how they imagine it. And yes it’s tricky because people imagine it many different ways, but with comics honestly you have a story board right there. And yes you will need to change certain things especially to fit in the budget and physics of real life. Not to mention erase some of the problematic social injustices found in the earlier comics.

And yes wandavision isn’t based on one comic story line. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be predictable. Take a look at some other examples that I can think of that either were predictable and good or subverted expectations in a positive way that didn’t confuse people.

Mandalorian: Luke Skywalker being brought in was a surprise. We knew that a Jedi might come, in fact it seemed quite likely that a Jedi would come to train Grogu. But the thing was we didn’t know who, we didn’t know if it would be Luke or another Jedi. Potentially it could have been one we hadn’t met, but we knew that one was coming and that still didn’t stop us from being surprised. And if it wasn’t Luke people wouldn’t have been mad because they left it ambiguous who the Jedi was until he was onscreen (unlike deliberately casting an actor that is known for a role then saying nope not him).

Mandalorian: This one is short but it’s a way to do both predictability and subverting expectations. The first episode of the second season was legitimately the plot from the 2003 game Knights of the Old Republic or Kotor for short. Fans of the game knew exactly how it would turn out, or at least how they would attempt to kill the dragon. They did do that, but unlike expected it didn’t work. So they tried a different tactic that paid off. As a kotor fan I expected this, I also expected the pearl at the end of the episode, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying it, and honestly I rather enjoyed it and it was fun. And I think most kotor fans would agree.

A series of Unfortunate Events: The Netflix show not the movie. In the books Olaf’s bench people get killed off, in the show they made it so that these people survive. I didn’t expect that, and it was good. The writers were still able to make something that fans of the book knew exactly what was going to happen and the general way that things were going to happen. But they adjusted things so that there were some surprises to viewers who read the books. And none of the changes were done specifically to subvert expectations they were done to enhance the story in certain ways. And they do even if they weren’t completely expected. And it still allows me to enjoy the show.

Kotor: yes I’m talking about the game and yes I’m still obsessed with it despite it being so old but also spoilers for it follow so skip if you don’t wish to know.

Kotor follows the story of a human being, they discover slowly that they were once feared across the galaxy known as the Sith Lord Darth Revan. Now can you figure out the twist through context clues absolutely. But it was not only revolutionary for the time but also knowing it still doesn’t take away the surprise feeling for a lot of players (I’m still surprised pikachu face no matter how many times I play or rewatch the cut scene).

There are many more examples but these are the ones off the top of my head.

I’m not angry at the fact that they were trying to make it surprising. I’m angry at the fact that marvel knowingly did this, and there’s no resolution at all. It’s a throwaway scene for a throwaway character played by a known actor who is known for his role as quicksilver. If it was someone else and they did this it would not be as upsetting. But the fact that marvel did this and knew exactly who they were casting to just mislead the fans is inexcusable. And maybe this isn’t the end of the storyline, but right now it is. 12 hours after the finale it absolutely seems like the end of the storyline. And that’s why people are upset because it was such a clear this is what is happening, then they develop it into just this dude. They led on it was quicksilver and we don’t even get to see the rest of the conversation that Monica has with him. We get no resolution whatsoever. And that’s what hurts the most, if they had explained hey Agatha did this and managed to somehow do X Y or Z to have this random person have powers and these memories. Now it would be cheep and people would still be upset but not as much with the incomplete explanation and the throwing it in there because they had to.

If they really wanted to subvert expectations they one shouldn’t have brought Evan Peters in to play a quicksilver (I hate saying this because I was so exited). Two shouldn’t have gone with anything to do with Agatha or even Mephisto. And a lot of people would probably wonder who they could have gone with and Tbh I don’t remember who I saw said it but Mojo would make sense. Or hell they could have brought in Evan Peters and an alternate version of Wanda who is causing this to happen and stir the pot. Either way the way they executed it was extremely poorly done and that’s why people are upset.

So please consider that for people this would have made a huge statement for. X-men fans are drawn to the X-men for many reasons. And I would say that some of those reasons are that they belong to a minority group and feel represented in the X-men. Me I’m LGBT+ and despite having grown up in a very progressive area, there are people I interact with where I don’t feel like I can be myself or even feel comfortable coming out to. And that’s why I personally am attached to the X-men. And I’ve seen other people say similar things.

For people the X-men and mutants aren’t just characters. They’re characters that marginalized groups can relate to. They’re characters that they can see themselves in. This goes much more deep than my fan theory wasn’t correct. It’s a combination of crappy writing and Marvel attempting to be surprising and the fact that they had the perfect opportunity to introduce a cast of characters that represent struggles of marginalized communities and recognize that yes the world isn’t just filled with hero’s that are cis straight abled men and women. And even if it was people from another universe it still was a step in the right direction.

So please if you’re fine with this and took the time to read this don’t make fun of the people who are quite upset with the developments of the episode. A lot of us are upset for a deeper reason and seeing people go “haha you’re wrong you idiots.” Makes this feel that much more upsetting.

#wandavision spoilers #wandavision #peter maximoff #peitro maximoff #X-men #multiverse #Kotor #Mandalorian #asoue #a series of unfortunate events #wanda maximoff #marvel

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the-headbop-wraith · 4 years ago

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1 _ 22 Truss and Silhouette

Waiting and patience where two hard traits to master. Arthur was well versed in the methods of both, he was careful by nature and he had nothing he really looked forward to when waiting. These attributes where challenging for Vivi, who always found a way to pass the time if they were on the road headed in some direction. But patience for a specific time to come, and hurrying to do nothing for the duration until that specific time; that was another matter. Vivi could become too excited, especially when there was no matter to toil over for the here and not soon enough to be.

The temperature continued to drop at an increasing rate, until it was so cold Vivi could hardly stand it herself. She didn’t know how Arthur could manage it, him being sleeveless and stubborn on the subject of a good coat. She could sympathize with his reluctance of sleeves, but it seemed like the excuse of covering up his prosthetic for the few cold months would outweigh the negatives. Arthur couldn’t hide from her the discomfort he felt when people stared too long at his arm, but there was a multitude of reasoning and rational rattling around in his mind that she would never begin to comprehend. She couldn’t trample that.

She moved back to the driver side seat and curled up, staring out the window and into the contrast of tangling tree branches jutting across the pale sidewalk that encircled the park. There was wifi and she had splurged on that for a short time, until the laptops battery gave out. She didn’t keep track of how many ways she enhanced and fooled around with that one picture she took earlier that day. She had done other things, such as probed into other rumors but none had been as firm, had the same feeling as that little restaurant they had eaten at earlier. There was only one chance, it was very slim, but it was still there. A chance.

“I wonder where he goes sometimes,” Vivi murmured. No answer, but for the halt of metal twittering and clicking in the back. “I don’t really worry, I should probably, but I don’t feel like I have to. You and Galaham the same way.” The clatter and delicate work renews, and she can see the pale shadow on the ceiling of the van just above the seats back.

“I kind of forget to worry about Galahad,” Arthur admits. “It’s terrible, because I should. I trust my uncle with him and everything, but anything can happen to a lil dude if you’re not around.” He pondered over it as Vivi shifted again, this time perching her legs over the head rest of the driver seat. “Capable. That’s what I’ll say. I know Galaham’s capable of taking care of himself, you know Mystery’s the same. Worrying about them doesn’t fit into that.”

Vivi made a sound as she lay in the seat, her head pressed back into the curve of the steering wheel. “But anything can happen.”

“Anything always happens, and will happen. Trying to fight it is pointless.” Arthur set down his tools and studied the portions of the incomplete arm, still insect like with long bundles of wire hanging from the elbow. “The things I lack control seem pointless to worry over, when I don’t seem to have an immediate influence.” He looked up and was startled to see Vivi’s glasses gleaming in the light, from the bright glow of the lamp seated beside him while he worked. She watched him over the seats back with that odd, unreadable expression.

“You’re deep, Art,” Vivi said. “Did you realize that?”

A moment passed as Arthur tried to register what she had muttered, then he chortled. “I… had a lot of time to think.” He fixed his sight back on the prosthetic and did some unnecessary work. There was progress made but it didn’t feel like progress, it felt empty and only looked interesting. He gave up and collected the metal and motors, set them back in their box and opened up the compartment in the carpeted floor. Inside sat stacks of old books, maybe forgotten by Vivi but she had never wanted to part with them in the first place. He set his supplies and tools among the clutter and shut the door down.

“One day we should put a camera on Mystery’s collar, and just see where he goes,” Vivi suggests. Arthur brought a blanket with him as he slipped down into the passenger seat. “It’s still too early.” Arthur sighed and bundled up tighter. Vivi began to speak, but Arthur cut in saying:

I don’t need a coat, I am fine.”

Vivi huffed and spun around in her seat. She didn’t mind the cold. “Fine. But I was going to ask, what kind of fruit you would be if you could choose.”

Arthur hiccupped and sat up in his tight coil of blankets. “What?”

“I already know I’d be a blueberry,” Vivi stated. Soft scratching mingled at the metal door, and Vivi unlocked the latch and opened the door for Mystery. “But what would you be? A banana?” She scooted aside and gave the dog room to leap up onto the driver seat with her. “Mystery would be a coconut.”

“A coconut is not a type of fruit,” Arthur grumbled. “It’s a nut. Wait… I think? It’s kind of big.”

Mystery cocked his head at Arthur, then looked at Vivi. He left them for an hour, and this is what he came back to? Vivi smoothed Mystery’s ruffled hair back. He looked at her and lapped at the few stray strands of hair poking out from under Vivi’s hairband. I don’t understand.

“I’d be a horned melon,” Arthur announced. “Those things are cool.”

“Horned melon?” Vivi questioned. “I’ve never seen one.”

“If we ever go into a none haunted grocery store, I’ll show you,” he said. “Maybe.” Arthur watched Mystery crawl closer to him and lay over the side of his blanket. “I hear they taste like banana, anyway.”

“As long as its banana themed,” Vivi replied. She unfolded from her curled position on the seat and twisted the key in the ignition. She made sure to turn the heater vents on Arthur and turn the heat up full blast, despite his disapproving glares. She didn’t care. Whenever she could directly interfere with his self-appointed misery with little protest, she would do so if only to annoy him.

The hour was getting late, it would be midnight in less than forty-five minutes. She turned to the outdated box monitor and scrolled through the long list of orders, most paid over card, some on credit, and the rest in cash. She added that to the iPad on the desk, and made a second note on the hard paper notebook on the counter. She checked the time on the iPad again and sighed. Outside, a car or two would whoosh by the window every other minute, solidifying perception of the late hour.

“You almost ready?” the voice called. She leaned back off the counter and looked to the tall teen as he came from the door to the back room, blue stained to his white apron and a white towel draped over his thin shoulder. “I just finished cleaning the stoves, and the inventories logged for tomorrow.” He crossed behind the pastry cases and looked into the glassed interior with the many cakes and cookies in their dark rows.

“Almost,” she said. “Half a page more. Could you replace the disk in the camera?” She plucked her purse off the counter and handed it over.

He folded his towel and set it on the counter beside his mom, then took her purse and plucked out the keys that were just inside. He wanted to tell her about the hits he’d gotten already on the video segment he uploaded, but his mom would just think it was ridiculous that people had actually clicked it. He gave a little skip as he crossed to the pantry cabinet beside the back door, and opened the tall case where the closed circuit camera was hidden on a shelf. The purse hung loose over his lower arm, while he stopped and ejected the disk. In the purse was a disk case, with the new disk to be exchanged for the new one.

A muffled song came from the purse, and he reached in to pluck out the small phone his mother insisted was practical and therefore perfect. “Hello?” he answered, as he locked up the cabinet. “Sorry, I wanted to go ahead and scrub under the stoves….” He stopped and listened to the voice. “I will. Mm-hm. Love ya.” He stuffed the phone and disk away, then tossed the purse onto the counter beside the heavy set woman. “Dad says he’s been waiting for ‘dramatic emphasis’ an hour. Also, he wants one of those ‘Aztec Éclairs’ if they’re still any.”

“Ooh,” she cooed, and shut down the large box monitor. “Lucky him, there is one left. But we’re going to share that little delight.” She folded the iPad up and stuffed it into her purse, and slung the strap over her shoulder.

He took off his apron and folded it up. “Y’know Bridget was lying. She can’t cook, much less an éclair.” He took a wax bag from the box on top of the glass counter and folded it over his hand. On the glass counter was a large glass dome, typical of most pastry shops, this featured a small note card with the ‘special’ of the day. His mother approached with a white paper bag, and he folded up the little chocolate stained pastry and set it inside.

“We’ll just let her have this victory for now,” his mother said. “There’s no reason to spoil her fun. Ready?” He nods, and tucks his apron under his arm. “Back door locked?”

“And the outside gate,” he assured.

They exit the little space behind the pastry counter and cross to the far side of the restaurant. His mother unlocks the glass door and steps out into the night, while he reaches out to the light switch—

And paused.

A faint, ambiguous creak emitted somewhere in the room. He turns and stares back across the shaded tables and chairs, and struggles to see into the dim corners where dark shades tangle. He watched one of the mirrors on the wall as its glossy surface trembles, but there is nothing in the reflective surface but a section of the restaurant and the wall behind the counter. He shrugs as the cold breeze from outside tickles his neck, and he flips off the light and leaves the empty restaurant to join his family.

The minutes tick by, taking ownership in small clusters as the absence of vigor settled in. Then an hour came by with a steady click or crack of the immovable walls, and swallowed up the collection of time in second strokes. It was almost appealing to sit and wait and reflect on the pieces that had lost meaning, on the cracks that marred a perfect picture. Sometimes it felt good to recall the lost shards of what must have been a distant past, but in the same flurry of emotion he felt the resentment for loosing such precious moments. All things taken for granted, mourned only now when they were no longer his.

He smashed his fist back onto the wall at his back, and felt the solid structure and imposing stature. He wanted to burn it, drag it out of the world that had left him. Make it understand. But a wall was as immovable in nature as it was in physical structure, and anything building on his own personal regret would not make a wall sympathize with him.

It struck Lewis how reminiscing could drag out old want and desires, but it didn’t strike him as odd. That should have been a first note of warning for him but he didn’t have the sharpness to care, not when his thoughts returned to his mansion, his sanctuary. It was not often he longed for it, but when he did he felt the hollowness burn into his core and essence, as though a crucial piece to his existence had been abolished. In these times he felt a bitter resentment, though he knew this wasn’t fair. He couldn’t shake the feelings though, they were branded deep into whatever passed for his ethereal essence.

He shouldn’t be here. He should have left a long time ago. But it was difficult to roam and move without a strong sense of destination locked in his thoughts. He didn’t want to get lost again.

Not much was said between them while they waited. The hours ticked by, even when Vivi was certain she had seen the truck of the owners drive off. She parked the van down the street from the soup and bakery. Beside her leg was Mystery, keeping warm as she stroked the soft mane on his back, even though the cold didn’t bother Vivi as much as it did Arthur. Occasionally she would murmur something to the dog, and Mystery would perk a ear or lift his eye brow at her curiously. Vivi was anxious to move but she knew it was too soon.

It would have been nice if Arthur could have lit the lamp in the back, but he settled for the dull haze of the yellow lamp from the street side, shading through the windshield with its meager orangey hue. The light catches over the clean side of the metal of his thumb, and the silver clashes over the tarnished surface of the locket. He remembered the morning following when Lewis failed to reappear, Vivi was in the bathroom while he gathered his cloths. The bundle popped out with one of his shirts and at the sight of the rich color of the satin cloth, it had made his knees go weak and he had fallen hard to the floor.

What was his game? If Arthur was meant to hand the locket over to Vivi, as he had originally intended, why didn’t Lewis just do it himself? Or was there another motive at work? The ghost might have fallen into some kind of trouble, but Arthur knew without a doubt if that were the case Lewis would have gone straight to Vivi. But Vivi wasn’t meant to have the locket, or was she? Since the mansion – like a far off nightmare – Lewis hadn’t made the attempt to hand her the locket since. It was Lewis’ anchor, that’s as far as Arthur concluded about it. If he were more ambitious he might’ve tried to exorcise Lewis, but Arthur didn’t have that kind of strength mentally or spiritually. But he felt that might’ve been a rational why he wound up with the locket, and he couldn’t blame Lewis for his suspicions.

He ran his thumb along the crease in the side and. Not for the first time, he was curious to open it and see what was inside. But he couldn’t do that, he didn’t know if the locket would stay in one piece if he fiddled with it too much, he didn’t understand it. He shouldn’t even be messing with it. There was no mistake made by Lewis when he left the locket in Arthur’s bag, but Arthur didn’t understand the implications.

If Lewis was still around. That remained an inference. Arthur was skilled at debunking supernatural photography, but he refused to study the picture Vivi had taken.

“Are you ready?” Vivi asks, as she leans up to look into the back.

Arthur bundles the heirloom up carefully and stuffs it back into his pocket. He pulls the blanket tighter over his shoulders as he shuffles to the front seat, and takes Vivi by the shoulder when she pulls at the door handle.

“I should go in alone,” Arthur utters. Vivi turns in her seat to face him, Mystery tilts his head back to view Arthur. “I’ll talk to him, if I can. This whole mess is my fault anyway.”

“No, it’s not,” Vivi states. “You’re not going in there on your own and that’s final.”

Arthur averts his eyes. “Vi, we haven’t really been on our own together,” he murmurs. “Since the mansion. Never. Until, that bogus case.”

It hits Mystery first, though he had been keenly observant of their unconscious habits, he had not been aware of the oblivious tendencies of his companions. He whined at Vivi as she set her hand over his snout, and he nuzzled her palm.

“It was my mistake,” Vivi pressed. “I should have been paying attention – I got caught up in.. everything – the euphoria, the excitement. Us, together as a group like old times.” She stopped there and chewed on her bottom lip, peeling off the miniscule scab there. Mystery crossed his paws over her lap and leaned up, trying to convey some kind of sound without whimpers. “I’m sorry for a lot of things, Art, and it’s not fair that you should be the one to go in.” If they stopped for a break Arthur would go off to browse the shelves, but never made a purchase. He volunteered to run the errands or buried himself in the work on his new prosthetic. She swung her arm over the driver seat’s headrest and faced Arthur. “I wouldn’t go in without you or Mystery, it’s the same. We’re doing this together.”

“It’s not.” Arthur folded his arms over the middle seat and rested his chin over his cold arms. “Sometimes I think about those crazy jobs we had, even the none paranormal ones.” He sighed and watched the empty street stretching ahead, the cold glisten of light layered over the thin traces of fresh rain. “A lot of times I thought, ‘This is it. I’ve done it now. I can’t get out of this,’ and I was scared. Some loon in a mask, a low kilter spirit, someplace I wasn’t meant to stumble into – I was really bad at that. Most times I flat out gave up, I’m not ashamed of it. I couldn’t figure how I could get out of the deep shit I had gotten into.” Arthur rubbed his face on the loose sleeve of his shirt and glanced at Vivi. Her face was focused but vacant, as if trying to chase memories that had been lifted out of her grasp. “But more times than I can remember there was Lewis, at the right moment to get in the way, or drop a sack of beans.” He gurgled a low chuckle in his throat. “He had this innate way of catching up when it all… it all seemed hopeless.” He shut his eyes and tried not to envision that person standing there, and that clear unaltered voice that came with it:

“Arthur, I swear. How do you manage this?”

He reached down with his metal arm and gave Mystery’s ear a gentle scratch. “I should save him for once, even if it’s from himself. I owe him.”

Vivi hesitates, but nods. “We won’t follow.” Mystery pulls his head from Arthur’s hand and sets his head down on his paws and sighs.

“I’ll try not to be gone long.” Arthur drags his way into the back of the van, dropping his blankets as he moves across the floor, but stops when he reaches the back doors. He grabs his provision bag and knows Vivi must’ve heard his movement, but she doesn’t comment. He shuts the doors gently behind him and dashes up the street, toward the darkened windows of the small soup shop.

Vivi feels a small bud of panic in her chest but tries to stay calm. Arthur fades into the shadows, and it feels as if she’s already lost him too. There is no way to gauge what sort of condition Lewis will be in, even if it was only a short amount time that he was separated from them. It was a fear that had persisted in her since the mansion, she couldn’t find it in her to pair the two up when they went off on investigations. She did have a longing desire for restoring and reacquainting herself to someone that she had loved… was it deeply? Passionately? But there was that underlining fear was always there, always lingering in the back of her memories. It wasn’t fair.

“Mystery,” she mumbled, as she curled up into her seat and pinned her chin to her knees. “Why didn’t I do things different? What can I do?”

The dog whines and sits up to press his shoulder into Vivi’s and leans on her. You’re doing everything you can, they’re just being idiots. He rests his neck over her shoulder and snuggles close to her.

There was a back door into the restaurant, right off from the parking lot that was situated between the two buildings – an office complex and the restaurant. Arthur saw it earlier that day, and he expected the gate that entered into the small compound to be locked. He didn’t bother with the lock in the gate, it would be easier to just climb the tall fence, especially when there was no barbed wire at the top.

He dropped onto the top of the plastic dumpster lid and from there leapt down into the grease stained payment, the off scent of spoiled vegetables and bad dairy assaulted his nose. Arthur slung his backpack off over one arm and opened the zipper a bit, enough to get his good hand in. He didn’t need light to fish around, but the steady gleam of an overhead lamp gave him enough visibility to view his surroundings. Everything was done professionally, as he sought the gloves and packet from his backpack, he ran in his mind over all the information Vivi had given him. They did these sort of jobs… a little too often.

A pair of tight fitting gloves went over both his hands. His prosthetic left no finger prints, but a diligent detective could always distinguish irregularities between fingerprints. He slung his bag over his shoulders and went along the hard slate wall, until he found the white door. It had two locks, a deadbolt and hand knob. No problem. He leaned his shoulder into the door and fumbled with the small packet, his lock pick kit. The deadbolts were always easier for Arthur to treble, but the sappy hand knobs always gave him trouble. This didn’t make since, but if he was ever desperate enough he could always just snap the doorknob off.

The interior was dark and cloudy, the hall narrow and smelled thickly of cleaning fluids and rust. Arthur didn’t bother with the light, he pulled the door shut behind him and crept through the small room, the basic layout carved by the vague edges of shadows remained fresh in his mind. A low hum filled the janitorial room, some kind of machine or generator, he wasn’t sure. He put his good arm out and felt the surface of a wall, then the frame of the door. He had a little more trouble finding the handle in the door, only because it was lower than he expected and he kept missing it.

He sniffed at the air that washed over his face and pushed the door a little more as he entered into the kitchen. The lingering traces of vegetables and other foods remained, such as crackers and meat, beside the warm aroma of pastries and sweets. He stood for a moment in the doorway gazing at the glittering silver from a distant light, or maybe a memory.

”Arthur! Hello kiddo. You keeping Lewis out of trouble?”

There were stoves along one wall, countertops in the center. His feet sounded hollow on the floor, their echo reverberated for years over the walls. The metal felt icy through his gloves, he pressed his fingers into the surface and raised his other hand to his forehead and tried to ease out the ache in his mind. “I- I’m sorry. How many ways can I say it?”

”I know you’re not into spicy things, hon. So I made you this. It has a tangy aftertaste, but its sweet, pleasant, and not hot at all. Give it a try.”

He shivered and dropped to his knees. He hadn’t realized how cold it was. It had gotten so cold too fast. Arthur brought his metal hand to his chest and held it there as his heart pulsed, his mind tripped and clawed within his skull. “I couldn’t stop… I tried, I swear.” Arthur choked on his words and bowed his head down, cowering from the haunting voices in his mind. “It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. It wasn’t—”

“Take care of our son.”

He never went back.

It didn’t benefit him to go into just any shop, or place. Lewis didn’t fully understand but he had a gist of it, what it meant. He did get hopelessly lost when he wandered, the same way he did when he first awoke. Wandering. Is that why spirits became so lost and confused, something about corporal sense, the binding Vivi always spoke about. He reached his hand up reflexively to touch the heart there, but then recalled that he had given it up and the notion brought about a deep sense of despair, though he wasn’t sure what pained him more. Which decisions he feared, or which ones he regretted most.

The call had frightened him, and he had fled that place, those memories, what was left behind. Odd, how he thought he could run away, or venture to a specific destination that in all spiritual theory did not exist. But it wasn’t what he sought that compelled him, it was the thing he couldn’t release. He didn’t try to overthink these things, even at his most active. To him it felt wrong, maybe it was, probably wasn’t, but to him it felt wrong. Like he betrayed some bitter serenity he had found.

He again looked to the mirror on the wall. The suit, his ribs, ribs that should not be exposed, a vacant neck collar, and a skull. Lewis stepped back as the mirror cracked, jagged webs of magenta flared through the gleaming surface and the glass scatters beneath his suspended feet. Oops. He raised his fist to melt the frame as well, but a sharp bolt in his kinematic range caught his attention. He drew his fist back and spins himself to the door that led into the back room. He recognized that jagged sense of distortion anywhere and Lewis debated on pursuing it or keep his distance.

“C’mon Lew, don’t let me just wander around and talk to myself,” Arthur muffled voice raised, echoing, beyond those doors.

Lewis glides to the door that opened into the back room and was about to push it open, but he decides to simply slip through. He moves along the nearest wall lined with tall cabinets, his attention set on Arthur at the opposite end of the room. One of Arthur’s hands was gripped to the side of a cold stove set into the wall, his other hand was pressed to his brow.

“I can see why you came here,” Arthur says. He pushes away from the stove and weaves among the countertop islands, straining to peer through the shadows, his metal hand rests on the corner of a counter and he uses its stability to guide his shaky steps. He jumps a bit to a subtle tap, what sounds like the pots or dishes hanging on the racks at the wall clatter softly. He listens, but there’s no other sound aside from the dull hum of the machine. He spins around and stumbles back, but there is nothing in the open air. “Jeez.” He raises his hands and presses the cold gloved palms into his eyelids. “I just want to talk. Just give me a sign if you’re listening or not, I don’t care.” The dull rumble of the machine mocked him, and Arthur sighed.

“Hate me all you want, Lew. I can’t fault you for that. I know….” He paused, and thought over his words. “I didn’t want to. You know I couldn’t help it! I tried, god I tried. I knew I couldn’t stop, I don’t know what I was thinking, but it wasn’t – It wasn’t me, Lew! Why won’t you understand that? Maybe you can’t, I know… I know I don’t.” Arthur drew in a deep breath and brought one hand down, his flesh arm, to the countertop and kept his knees from buckling under his weight. His head ached, that harsh rasping in his thoughts. “It’s not just for Viv-vi, but I want to talk again. I swear… if we just talked, I know it’s not gonna fix what broke between us but – We… drifted apart.” He shook his head, and lowers his voice. “I pushed you… away. Don’t let me do it again. I can’t take this.”

Arthur ran a hand over his face and tugged at his goatee at his chin. He gave the room a brief scan, gathering in the calm gloom, the engine hummed obnoxiously. He groaned, despair leaking into his lungs. “I promised Viv I’d come back with you.” Promises in their group didn’t really work out, Arthur couldn’t figure out why they kept making that same mistake over and over. “What am I saying?” No sound answered, his voice echoed

He slipped the backpack off his shoulders and opened it up. He checked the surface of the countertop before he pulled out a candlestick. The lighter he bought was still in his, overlooked by Vivi. Arthur didn’t care, he lit the short wick of the candlestick and let the wax melt at the tip, so he could fix the candle to a spot on the countertop with the warm wax. He took a piece of graphite and pondered a moment, debating on a script that would work, he couldn’t hope to use the stronger runes but maybe it didn’t need to be compelling. He didn’t think it would work anyway.

He scrawled into the surface of a plastic cutting board, its top crisscrossed and stained by extensive use. It seemed to fit Lewis. Circles and sharp angles decorated the board, Arthur set the black polished graphite aside and reached into his pocket, he brought out the satin cloth and the locket contained. He unwrapped the cloth and studies the bronze coloration under the pale candlelight, the harsh contrast of the metal conflicts with the old gloves he wore. He set the locket in one of the circles and gave the room a last glimpse with his eyes, while the flame burned bright.

“I call out for Lewis Pepper,” Arthur spoke, voice unsteady. He didn’t feel like he was doing it right, he didn’t feel like he was allowed to do this. It had to violate something, but he didn’t want to overthink it. “I beseech you to reveal yourself, Lewis Pepper. I know this is really underhanded, but damnit, you leave me no choice.” He placed his hand over the locket and raised his eyes. “We’re not losing you again! I call upon you with all my heart and soul, Lewis Pepper. Show—”

“Boo.”

After the first five minutes Vivi lost track of time, but she kept resolute to Arthur’s wishes. She was nervous but didn’t want to admit it. Had Arthur made contact? Was he all right? She worried and fidgeted, and Mystery had placed his paws upon her hands and made soft dog sounds until she calmed down. He was a strange friend, but he continued to reassure her, despite his shared concerns. Alternately, she or he would check the driver side window, see no one, and settle back.

The night waned onward, until Vivi could no longer keep her eyes open. She curled up into the seat, and Mystery had brought to the front with them one of the blankets from the back and piled it over Vivi. Mystery coiled himself over Vivi’s side, and Vivi tried not to sleep. She wasn’t sure if she had or not, she thought she saw memories of when they were younger – she, Mystery, Lewis, and Arthur. Going down to the spooky creek, picking flowers (something Lewis liked to do, and Vivi enjoyed it), hanging out with Arthur at his uncle’s shop. She thought there was a raven once tapping at her window, as she sat in her room reading. It became irritating when the bird wouldn’t leave, and whenever she chased it off it came back

Vivi jarred from her dry rest and raised her head, her face collided with she sharp cold air that hovered in the van as the sleep clung to her eyes. She gazed at the driver side window and saw a bird with glossy black wings and a white face tapping at the glass.

“Is she asleep?” That was Arthur’s voice, muffled through metal and glass. She recognized the way it carried through the door. The sounds slip away, she wanted to stay with them but it was hard to see past the dark mirror in her memories.

“Just let her sleep,” Lewis said. He stood aside as Arthur fumbled with his pockets, and finally produced that boo charm keyring. “I’ll talk to her in the morning when the suns out.” He hesitates as Arthur unlocks the door and pulls the latch. “And there are witnesses.” Arthur chortles softly to himself and steps aside, the dull orange glaze of the streetlamp glistened over Arthur’s metal arm in his short walk to the back doors of the van. Lewis watched Arthur’s progress until the other ducked out of sight, the clatter of keys raised at the back doors of the van and the more audible thud of Arthur’s prosthetic. A soft whimper came from Vivi at the intrusion of sound, though Arthur was doing his best to be quiet, Lewis was sure. He glanced to Vivi buried down under a dark blue blanket. “I’m sorry, mi arandano.” Lewis leaned forward and brushed some of the soft blue hair out of her face, and set his palm onto her forehead. “I’m not your burden.”

Vivi stirs and mumbled some incoherent sound, Lewis was almost certain it was a Latin phrase. It isn’t long before Vivi settled down and Lewis is able to slip her away from Mystery, out off the driver side seat. “Lew’s?” she murmurs, eyes opening blearily at the suspended skull.

Lewis bundles the blanket around her tighter and moves along the van to the back doors. “Close your eyes,” he hums. “And I’ll be there.”

The van creaks as Arthur plops down in the front seat and maneuvers to draw the open driver side door shut, without a sound. Mystery gives a small grunt when Arthur bumps his nose while thumping around in the front seat. Aside from that mild interruption, the dog doesn’t stir to greet the return of his friends. Mystery gives a sly glare Arthur’s way, before twisting over onto his side.

“Did you mean to get caught in the camera?” Arthur questions, without looking up. He debated driving the van somewhere else, back to the park, but he could barely see straight let alone coordinate his prosthetic adequately.

Lewis set Vivi on the floor of the van and leans back, pondering. “Camera,” he echoes. “Camera. When was there a camera?” Arthur looked into the vans back and found the skulls ember eyes, confused and uncertain, despite how the sharp edges of black contrasted over the bleached white. It didn’t sit well with Arthur.

“Vi swears by the camera,” Arthur mentions, instead. “Long story short, that’s how we found you.”

Lewis mulled it over as he swung the back doors shut. The creak of those doors compressing on the dry atmosphere of the van was subdued and irritating, it didn’t suit his desires. He wanted to feel as if the doors were secure and they would hold off any shape of intruder, the curious or the dangerous. “I just needed some distance,” the spirit says, voice crackling. “Time to… think.” Lewis raised his hand to the front of his coat where the gentle thrum of his locket pulsed. Its return was indescribable, even if he had left it of his own will. Or was it involuntary? He might’ve been compelled too, by a force stronger than his passion and desire. He didn’t want to rationalize that. The mental contradiction was almost a physical pang.

“I meant what I said,” Lewis began. He spun himself and looked at Vivi curled deep within her blanket. Carefully, he reached down to her face for the small lensed glasses and slipped them off. He gave the colorful spectacles a brief study, before folding them up and placing them within reach at the side of the vans wall.

“So did I,” Arthur muttered. He pressed his lips into the bench seat and focused on Lewis, on the ribs, the bright contrast and hues of his ethereal outline, melting into the black space of his surroundings as the looming figure rotates in place. “I wasn’t selling short,” he insists, voice low and rough. “Honest. In the mansion, I was ready.” He shut his eyes when Lewis tilts his skull. “And you were gonna do it too, you just…. Maybe we should drop it.”

A soft crackle emitted from Lewis, as he lowered down more onto the vans floor. Some crumpled box in plastic caught his lost interest, and he plucked it up. “We can always talk,” Lewis offered.

“Oh,” was Arthur’s toneless response. “Right. But… it’s hard to translate the stuff in my head. Always has been.” He hadn’t lain back on the seat yet. The blanket he had dragged with him was tangled around his legs and waist while his good arm prodded the latch behind his metal arm. Droplets of rain misted over the windshield of the van, causing the light to distort into jagged shapes and oblong, glittery jelly beans. He watched a few drops grow larger and wider before they connected and rolled down the glass in a crystalline thread. “One of these days.” He pulled the switch and tensed. The cold air made it worse, it seemed to amplify the sharp prick that traveled up his spine. Arthur jerked the immobilized arm free and slung it up onto the dashboard, a mild hope that the morning sun would warm it before he was driven to reattach it.

Lewis wanted to say something more, but whatever way he phrased it the words resounded in his thoughts, accusing. Arthur’s head slunk down out of sight, and Lewis judged he would be left to his own mediations for the brief/infinite span of the night.

There were decisions but they had no choices. A choice was a possession but a decision was an action, both were powerful tools if given the right sort of labels.

“I’m more afraid of the emptiness that’s left in your absence.”

That’s how Arthur put it. It would be hard to go onward and find their routine, their semblance of normality. Arthur knew why he came back – the sort of personal business Lewis had not made amends with, what lines he had left purposefully blank. Vivi had gotten in the way.

No, that wasn’t true. She could never be in the way. She brought clarity, focus, and guidance. All things Lewis was lost without and hadn’t known he’d been missing. It was amazing what you miss when you didn’t realize it’s been lost. That was why this was hardest on Vivi and Lewis was mortified that he had distanced himself in this way. But, he knew she’d give him what was coming when she awoke.

He was not looking forward to that.

Lewis could enjoy the hours that she was tranquil. He knelt closer beside Vivi and pulled the edges of the blanket up around her shoulders. Vivi shifts and made a sound that might’ve been pickles, or tickles. Lewis wanted to feel the smile on his face, but maybe later when he had settled down. Much-much later.

The random patter of rain danced over the roof of the van, raising in acoustic ferocity and then tapering off into a faint hiss. Lewis studied the roof and the windshield, coated with a thin layer of moisture. He raised himself from the floor and half stepped, mostly glides as he moved to take his post behind the bench seat, where he usually lost himself while the others rested. He pulled up short when the end of his coat tail was snagged.

“Lew?” Vivi uttered, voice heavy and groggy. Lewis spun his skull to view Vivi. She sat on her knees, one fist rubbed at her eye while the other pulled at his coat. “You’re back?” She shouldn’t be awake, but Lewis really shouldn’t be surprised either. “Are you hurt?”

“No?” Lewis lowered more into her eye level and dipped his skull to his suit collar. “It’s almost morning,” he whispered, the sound of his voice twittered. “You should go back to sleep and rest while you can.”

Vivi withdrew her hand and rubbed at her shoulders under the thick sweater - cold or discomfited, Lewis couldn’t judge. “You left.”

“I’m back now,” he assured. Lewis reached his hands out to her but stopped himself. “I’ll be here when you wake up.” He didn’t want to say Promise.

There came the contemplative pause, and Vivi nurtured it where she sat without comment. The rain gently chattered over the vans roof, a cage to bar out the unwise, the wicked, those that were desperate enough to be out in the harsh veil of frigid water. Vivi brought her hands up to her face. She would have done this even if she were wearing her glasses, and pressed her fingertips into her eyelids. Lewis waited, feeling bitterness toward himself. “It’s really cold,” she murmured. “Could you just rest with me, for a change?” Lewis didn’t move. Vivi slides her hands down her face and looks up into his eye sockets. “I don’t want to wake up and you’re not there.”

That other side of him was scared. The fragments of him that remembered Vivi, and let her cool waves crash over his fever driven fire. Maybe in time, if Lewis just gave himself a little more time, the indecision and doubt would clear away. It wouldn’t confuse him, and he would begin to find this balance in this niche among friends, where once he had been forgotten. But he didn’t need to concern himself over those bits and pieces that scattered in his grasp, he only needed to know he was wanted and needed.

“I’ll be here,” Lewis’ voice crackled. He couldn’t promise, but he knew he would be. He lowers down beside Vivi and put his arms around her, and she leans onto his chest as he lies down.

She mumbles some incomprehensible words, and Lewis rattles with confusion. “I said,” she whispered, “don’t think I’m just letting you off easy.”

It takes a moment for the words to register in Lewis’ thoughts, and the embers dim in his eye sockets as he settles his skull over Vivi’s bright hair. He coils his arms around her and soothed out his thoughts, distancing each reflection from his solidified state of presiding existence. “Have mercy on anyone that tries to tear me away,” Lewis crooned into her hair.

Vivi sniggers, and buries her face in his chest. “I missed you,” she said, her fingers tightening on his suit collar.

“I don’t know if I deserve you,” Lewis hummed. But Vivi was already beyond the point of no return, her arms loose against his coat lapels and her breathing so subtle Lewis could scarcely detect it. “Please.” He coiled himself around Vivi’s smaller frame, shielding her from the cold air and the dark shadows that pricked at his coat edges – impenetrable, steady, and wholly present. “Forgive me.” He let the mild purr of his voice carry into something more human, and harmonized it into tender hymns. The gentle trill never faltered as the hours crawled by, calculated in obscure notion by the passive thrum of Vivi’s heart. Though he could make himself appear almost human, almost alive, the heavy rhythm within his chest was something he could not artifice. But for this meager span of time in the present, Lewis could be content to hold Vivi close to him and feel her heart beat through his soul.

#msa #mystery skulls fanfic #mystery skulls animated #msa fanfic #mystery skulls fanfiction #msa fanfiction #msa lewis #msa arthur #msa vivi #msa mystery #mystery skulls ghost

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spearfeld · 4 years ago

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So I just finished Love, Creekwood

Some spoiler-filled thoughts under the cut!

tl;dr 4/5, it was super cute but I was confused about some things and didn’t think everything worked

Overall, I liked it. It was cute as fuck, and it was nice getting to see the squad again. I have some good to say about it, some bad, and then just some...questions. Let’s start with the good:

Becky’s writing style is as cute and as charming as ever. There were multiple parts of the book that had me laughing out loud, even if maybe not as strongly as I did while reading Simon, Leah, and watching Love Simon and Victor. Drunk Simon makes a reappearance, and it is everything. EVERYTHING. I love that boy so much and he only gets more adorable when he drinks lol.

I love the whole theming of “save states” and wanting to keep moments forever and go back to them, and the idea of holding onto the past. That’s a really unique way of tackling an interesting topic, and I love it quite a bit.

And this isn’t really a bad thing, sort of just an observation, but when Plot Things started happening, it really shocked me, because I forgot that books are supposed to have a plot lmfao. Maybe it is a bit of a criticism, but the reason that surprised me so much is because up until conflict started arising, it really was feeling just like supplemental material, just some cute fluff, the kind of stuff I would go on ao3 to read fanfic about. That’s not necessarily a bad thing--it is very cute and very fluffy and very fun to read--but books do need conflict, even short 100-page novellas told entirely through e-mails.

That being said, the conflict is definitely an interesting one. Long-distance relationship stories are nothing new, of course, but this kind of conflict was teased at the end of Leah on the Offbeat, and I think it’s handled mostly well, narratively. I especially like the contrast between Simon and Bram’s relationship trying to manage long-distance, and Leah and Abby’s who are literally living together and could not be closer if they tried (except Abby does, lol, by suggesting they push their beds together, which, cute).

I’m not entirely sure the e-mail format entirely works for this story. It’s serviceable enough--Becky does a really good job at filling in blanks without spelling everything out for us, with a few exceptions that we’ll get to later--but the e-mails don’t lend themselves to enough character insight, and I found myself getting kind of lost through some of it.

For example, the main “plot” of Love, Creekwood is that Simon and Bram are struggling in their long-distance relationship (did Becky read The Whole Story, should I be pursuing legal action? /s), and that much is apparent through Simon’s e-mails with Bram, but when Simon e-mails Abby and Leah, it seems like he’s worked things out. But then Leah and Abby have their own correspondence where they’re like, “I’m worried about Simon.” And I was like...why? Oh I guess he was trying to make things seem better than they were? Okay, that didn’t super come across in the e-mail. So it was hard to tell what was actually going through the characters’ heads during the story at times.

But trying to change the story from an e-mail format to a prose format with e-mails like the first Simon book would have taken more time and effort, and I know that Becky probably didn’t want to spend more effort than necessary on a project like this--she’s said on multiple occasions that Leah was the last book in the Simonverse and that she didn’t want to write any more books featuring Simon. I definitely think she was excited about writing this book and getting to spend time with these characters again, but I think digging them up for a full-length novel just wasn’t something she was interested in doing. I can’t blame her for this, either. She spent years in the Simonverse. Simon was her debut, and her next two books were directly related to it in some way--one being a sidestory featuring characters from Simon, and the other being a direct sequel. It’s easy to get burnt out on a world when you spend so much time involved in it, and I think Becky wanted to work on different things. So, for what it’s worth, I think this is probably the best form of this book that we could have gotten.

Also, very tiny nitpick but it was hard to see who was writing who sometimes, since all of the e-mail addresses tended to blur together sometimes, particularly in the group messages, and I think that if Becky wasn’t so dead-set on “e-mails are the thing it has to be e-mails!!” then she could have gotten away with making that an actual group chat/text and it would have read a lot cleaner.

Those are the only real negatives I can say about it, unless you count these questions I have as negatives, which, I kind of count them as half-negatives because they’re not inherently bad things, and I think ambiguity was the intent here, but it left me feeling a bit unsatisfied. Maybe this will change the more I think about the book, but regardles:

What actually happened between Simon and Bram? What’s going on with them? We spend a lot of their e-mails talking about how much they miss each other, and then there’s the whole weird Birthday/Marriage Proposal thing. And we never actually get a concrete answer as to what happened with them on the Ferris wheel. Apparently Simon said two words to Bram that “destroyed” him. And I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what those words are supposed to be.

He doesn’t seem to be upset by them, judging by how he wants to “keep that one,” so it has to be a good “destroyed.” But their emails seem to become a lot more strained after that point, and Simon has been neglecting messaging his friends, leaving Leah worried he’s spiraling. What could Simon have said to Bram that night that would change their relationship like that, and cause Simon to retreat the way he did? “Marry me?” “It’s you?” “Fuck Martin?” “Hello, lover?” Like I seriously don’t get what exactly he said there, but I get the impression that I was supposed to have inferred something, that there was something I should have picked up on to lead me to a conclusion, an answer to that question.

Did Simon ask Bram to marry him and he say no? That can’t be, because when Simon finally responds to Leah, he says that, while he does believe Bram is the one, he knows he’s not ready for it to happen right now, so I can’t imagine he would have gone through with proposing. Did he say, “It’s you,” in a callback to when their identities were first revealed? Maybe it’s supposed to be a callback to something from Simon vs that I just don’t remember, because it’s been a while since I’ve reread it.

Going back and rereading that section, it really seems like it’s a one-sided Simon thing at first, that he’s just figuring stuff out. So, if he said “it’s you” what else is there to figure out? Like, they’re still together, they’re spending their breaks together, Simon spends a whole two weeks and then some in New York with Bram, and then they hit that “This isn’t working” point. And so I’m wondering, did something happen when Simon was in New York? It’s never really said, though Abby and Leah do point out Washington Square Park and...I’m not entirely sure why?

Okay, and finally, the ending: I’m still really confused by it. Not Simon transferring to New York, that makes sense, but Bram’s reply to it doesn’t. I mean, it’s in-character and makes sense as his reaction, but I don’t understand it’s significance. What is he calling Simon about? Just, that he’s happy they’re going to be going to school together? To talk about his transfer? I don’t know, something about it just felt incomplete to me.

All of this being said, I did still enjoy this book. It was super cute and exactly the follow-up to this series that I didn’t know I needed haha. Don’t take any of my criticisms of the book as hate or anything. I love Becky, I love her writing style, and I love her characters. This book could have been fifty pages of Simon e-mailing Bram his interpretation of the themes to the Bee Movie and I’d have loved the living hell out of it. It just didn’t click all the right boxes for me, in ways I can’t entirely place my fingers on.

#mine #love simon #simon vs #simon vs the homo sapiens agenda #svthsa #simon spier #love creekwood #becky albertalli #book review #fair warning there's some negative stuff in here but i did like the book overall

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bakechochin · 7 years ago

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The Book Ramblings of February

In place of book reviews, I will be writing these ‘book ramblings’. A lot of the texts I’ve been reading (or plan to read) in recent times are well-known classics, meaning I can’t really write book reviews as I’m used to. I’m reading books that either have already been read by everyone else (and so any attempt to give novel or insightful criticisms would be a tad pointless), or are so convoluted and odd that they defy being analysed as I would do a simpler text. These ramblings are pretty unorganised and hardly anything revolutionary, but I felt the need to write something review-related this year. I’ll upload a rambling compiling all my read books on a monthly basis.

Gogol - The Collected Tales (as published by Granta) It took me a while to find a Gogol collection with all the stories that I wanted; this is still not it, but it’s as close as I could get without buying the Everyman’s Library edition with the shite cover. I’d describe Gogol as a nice writer; his narration is always warm and inviting (even when adopting different voices for the frame narratives of the individual stories), his tales are often engaging, funny, and easy to follow, and there’s no shortage of amazing weirdness. The book is separated into his Ukranian tales, which remind me a lot of Russian fairy tales (and I guess by extension Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale), and his St Petersburg tales, which are more like what I’ve known Gogol to be from my readings of his work in the past. I haven’t the foggiest idea what to call his works, which is just as well since critics can’t figure this shit out either; it’s like magical realism but with subdued magic and a loose grasp on realism, where weird and unrecognisable events happen in a weird but recognisable world. I love both of these varieties of stories for different reasons, but I reckon I prefer the St Petersburg stories; fairy tales can get a wee bit repetitive (especially if you read them one after the other), but the St Petersburg stories are just inherently interesting, if only because of how bloody difficult they are to describe. Gogol manages to create some bloody great characters, distinctive and memorable, out of just a few sentences of description, and yet his descriptions are worded so nicely as to find the good in everyone and never outwardly antagonise any position in society (with the noteworthy exceptions of dissolute drunkards and the devil - Gogol really hates those guys). This does mean, however, that the really minor characters get a maximum of one sentence dedicated to establishment, and when there’s a shit load of minor characters being introduced as soon as they appear, it can be a tad confusing and not a little frustrating when it comes to trying to figure out if I’ve missed something. Also, not to seem thick, but I found remembering all of the million Russian names, and being able to match everyone to their names, a bit of a challenge (especially since, in some stories, the spelling of said names changes every now and then). There are some much-appreciated fiddlings with the storytelling format in Gogol’s tales that usually make for interesting reading; some of such additions to the stories, such as the establishment of some definitive narrators to form a frame narrative to the tale in question, or how unreliable narrators mess with the reality of the story, work quite well, but there are some that are a tad frustrating by how unnecessary they seem. For example, 'The Terrible Vengeance' does not reveal the framing explanation for the story’s events until right at the end, making everything prior to the explanation confusing and subsequently tedious, and 'Ivan Fyodorovich Shponka and His Aunt' is deliberately written to not have an actual ending - I get enough of incomplete stories from writers who unintentionally don’t finish their works, without Gogol pulling a deliberate fast one on me because he cannot be fucked to resolve one of his stories. I will, however, admit to being a tad hypocritical in this complaint; consider for a second ‘The Nose’, how it is deliberately written to be obscure or to have no clear explanation for the story’s bizarre events, cuts away from every encounter without revealing why anything happened as it did, is questioned even by the author, and yet is probably my favourite Gogol story (to some extent because of this stupid structure). The titles of the story’s bely how interesting they actually are; in the St Petersburg stories, the titles are short and succinct and can convey mystery through ambiguity in just a few words, but the titles for the Ukrainian tales were often needlessly verbose and consequently established the stories as perhaps being a tad boring (kind of like the titles of the short stories in Lem’s anthology Mortal Engines).

Voltaire - Candide This is some quality satire right here. This is a ridiculously fast-paced rollercoaster of a novel, a wild world-spanning picaresque narrative of stupid proportions. Harking back to Oliver Twist, another novel that uses satire to examine the world, I wrote that I found its highlighting of social issues to leave a sour taste in my mouth, as I didn’t believe the reasons for foregrounding these issues to be noble; society doesn’t dramatically change its flaws just because some dickhead wrote about them, and so I reckon that writing with the intentions of ‘improving the world’ is folly and what’s more total bollocks. However, this book is not trying to change anything. It is a big fuck-off harangue in novella form, less concerned with changing anything as it is with taking the piss. It expertly highlights exactly how the optimistic philosophies spouted by its idealistic cast are total bullshit, by writing this whole book to completely and utterly fuck these characters up. Reading these characters stumble from one horrendous catastrophe to the next is bloody hilarious; you’re prompted to keep on reading just to see what shit these lads would end up in next, and how their circumstances could possibly get any worse. Obviously a book that emphasises the very worst acts and disasters that the world has to offer might come across as a bit sad and fucked up, but this book avoids such labels by a) making the pace so fucking fast that you don’t have any time to have a contemplative pause about the atrocities being written about before you move on to the NEXT horror, and b) our protagonist Candide is so unwaveringly happy and genial, emphasised excellently with the reductive language of the characters and narrator. The story is absolutely ridiculous, spanning half the bloody world and satirising every city Voltaire could get away with writing about (although I will say I wasn’t a fan of how England was not a major part of Candide’s adventure), and yet characters still fortuitously stumble across one another (usually in significantly shittier circumstances than when we last saw them). If I was feeling cynical I would say that the constant returns of characters previously thought to be lost was due to the fact that there really aren’t many memorable characters in this story, and so Voltaire needs to get the most out of the few interesting characters that he has; of course all of the characters are funny because of their status as reductive character archetypes (and because of their laughably hyperbolic downfalls), but aside from Pangloss and Martin there aren’t many characters in this story who will stick in your memory. However, I am well disposed to this convoluted and stupid story, not only because such serendipity is justified within the framework of the picaresque narrative, but because the circumstances behind characters’ impromptu returns to the text are often fucking hilarious (especially Pangloss). The story is just the right length; it’s fast pace ensures that it gets more than enough out of its ninety-something pages, and if it was any longer than it would probably outstay its welcome and lose some of its novelty trying to come up with new problems for its protagonists to be fucked over by. I’ll freely admit to knowing absolutely fuck all about the setting that this book takes place in, but for the most part, thinking about that was hardly forefront in my mind as I was reading; the setting changes so rapidly that you hardly have a chance to focus on any one setting, and since the story is entirely defined by a long stream of grim and miserable events, it’s hardly as though you need to know all the relevant historical context to understand what’s going on. This does, however, make the constant namedropping of place names and historical details seem a tad incongruous with the breakneck pace, as I’ve got to keep flicking to the annotations at the back to understand them. (Yes, I really ought not to bother, as not knowing all this shit isn’t essential to understanding what is going on, but I still feel like I’m missing something in my reading if I’m not understanding everything). I feel that the story takes quite a long time to get to the moral; as much as I love the great amount of shit that is dealt to the characters, the book really keeps dealing out the shit right to the very end, to the point where when the ending moral does finally come along, it seems very much out of the blue and wasn’t really given enough build-up.

Bulgakov - The Master and Margarita This is among the more interesting texts that I have had to analyse, due in part to the fact that the narrative is split into two storylines, one of which is incredibly compelling and fun to read and the other is really rather dull and boring (especially by comparison). I suppose it’s lucky that the Pontius Pilate storyline (i.e the really boring one) is overshadowed by this book’s vast quantity of good shit. I’ve been trying to take a more professional look at the books that I ramble on - these are classics, after all - but I must admit that I struggle to think about this book in a professional way, because it’s very reminiscent of the usual low-brow fantasy nonsense that I pass the time with. Anything ‘proper' I can think of to talk about this book pales in comparison to the nonsense and hilarity of its content. Supposedly it is a satire, and I’ve held the view that all messages in satire are painfully obvious once you know that the text in question is meant to be satirical, but I struggled finding the message of this book. The gist of the book is that the Devil comes to Moscow to bring havoc and disarray to society, but the trouble with this is that I’m no expert on how the seemingly very complex and convoluted Russian society is supposed to run, and so any disarray catalysed by the Devil and his entourage is somewhat lost on me when I could have just as well attributed it to the overall madness and chaos of this sensationalised depiction of normal Russian society. Even before the Devil comes along, there are aspects of society that are told by the narrator as though they are attributable to otherworldly or otherwise fantastical sources, but because I often wasn’t fully sure as to what such fantastical stuff was actually satirising, I didn’t really get the full impact. Some elements of the satire are basic comments on universal human nature, with the Devil making fools of people who are vain or gluttonous or whatever, but oftentimes the satire is indeed dependent on knowing the ins and outs of 1930s Moscow; some of it I could surmise, some of it I couldn’t. The story follows a series of different characters whose lives are negatively altered by the influence of the Devil’s entourage, with things going wrong in any number of ways, and it is amazing fun to read; it’s very disorderly, but that’s the whole point. What did pose a challenge to me is how, with all these characters popping in and out of the story, with minimal descriptions and often not as much characterisation as I would have liked, I often got confused between them all - because, of course, we’ve got an abundance of three-part Russian names with ten bloody syllables in them (honestly whoever thought up the idea of patronymic surnames can bugger off). Obviously this isn’t a deal breaker, and anyone who reads this book will get the hang of it, but this book’s abundance of minor characters posed a bigger challenge than usual. (Oh and also the character names differ in different translations of the text, which is ever so fun to have to figure out). The characters are all alright, especially the Devil and his retinue, who are an absolutely delight (though they are admittedly best when they don’t have to carry stories on their own). I did however feel that the eponymous Master and Margarita didn’t really seem like main characters; the Master isn’t introduced until a good ways into the book and even then could easily be mistaken for another of the minor characters who appear and disappear in that part of the book, and though Margarita has a good few chapters to herself that really establishes her as quite a good character, by the end of the book she is subsumed pretty much entirely by her relationship with the Master. Also their connection to the ever-so-boring Pontius Pilate storyline can get a tad vexing, having to keep on returning to read about Pilate for a bit before the actual storyline can continue. I was wondering how a book with such a basic premise as this would have ended, since I didn’t really think this book could have ended in a way more interesting than ‘the Devil went home again and things returned roughly to normal’, but this book cleverly subverted my expectations by making the ending more Pontius Pilate bollocks.

Burgess - A Clockwork Orange I get the feeling that a lot of modern classics that are heralded as ‘the book that will change your life’ are going to be like this one, in that the actual story will by far and away be the most forgettable aspect of the book. Most of the things I love about this book are attributable to the narration. As someone who loves colloquialisms, Nadsat is an absolutely incredible language and it colours the book so brilliantly. Not only does it make the book incredibly fun to read, but it’s incredibly versatile, being able to diminish the horror and repulsion of the book’s acts with its alien descriptions and subsequently reflects Alex’s desensitisation to such matters. Alex is an incredibly interesting and compelling character, to the extent that I can forgive the book for not really having any other memorable characters. The book is really rather disturbing at points (to the extent that I don’t reckon I’ll ever be able to watch the film), but the aforementioned beautiful writing style/language and overall black comedy tone of the book carries it well. You don’t get a detailed look at the dystopian setting that the story takes place in, but what you can glean from Alex’s perspective is bloody amazing. However, the story is exactly what I expected it to be; heavy-handed satire with a few cool bits interspersed throughout, but overall the least interesting part of the book simply because it only serves to highlight the issues that it is satirising. The premise for this book is really cool, but in practice the story cannot do much other than display Alex being a bad person, or describing how his sadistic tendencies are remedied, over and over again. And in the end it hardly really mattered, because he goes back to the way he was at the beginning of the novel, and the one permanent change of his character occurs right at the end of the book in a rather anticlimactic manner. But of course you can’t feel too irritated by it, because the story, seemingly uneventful and circuitous as it is, is written so eloquently and fantastically that it is still a joy to read, and you’re willing to forgive its possible flaws.

Himes - The Heat’s On I haven’t read many books in the hardboiled genre, mainly because I felt that I didn’t need to read a lot of them to get a feel of what they are all like. This book features most everything I would expect from the genre, but perhaps a tad more sensationalised, which I like a lot. There’s a big horrible crime-ridden city, and there’s not one but TWO hard-as-nails policemen who have got to swear a lot and pistol-whip some motherfuckers for the good of society. Reading the blurb of this made me think of Sin City; the setup is generic but the characters and events within the story are absolutely ridiculous and very memorable. Characterisation is kept minimal because this is hardly the most profound of books, but none of the characters are one-dimensional. The writing is of course bloody great; it’s tight and clear, employs some excellent turns of phrase that make for surprisingly rich analysis despite how simple it is when taken at face value, and facilitates the story’s fast pace. Oh and of course, an important trope of hardboiled literature, this book included, is that the ending simply must be an anticlimactic frantic tying together of all loose ends. Since this book is essentially what I’d expected from a hardboiled text, I don’t have anything to say about it as an overall piece that couldn’t have already been surmised from me saying ‘it is a hardboiled text’; therefore, any comments that I have on this book aren’t really especially academic, but are more of just little subjective nitpicks. I do think that this book does venture at points into being a bit too silly; obviously I’m not expecting, or even hoping, for sophisticated literature here, but there needs to be consistency in its established stupidity. There’s a fine line this book walks between Machete’s level of dumbness and Machete Kills’ level of dumbness, and it often threatens to audaciously cross that line. Though I do appreciate the fast pace, because you need a fast pace in a book like this, there are times where character development occurs too quickly to be logical, and said development is often made when the plot itself has somewhat slowed down, which makes the irrational changes within people all the more noticeable. I base what I know about the hardboiled genre off of Hammett’s Red Harvest, and I reckon that although Himes is better than Hammett, Hammett did a few things better. Red Harvest took place in a fictitious city, and whilst Himes’ representation of Harlem is very sensationalised and fun, his constant name dropping of real place names can be a bit alienating when I know fuck all about anything American. Also this book isn’t really as centred on Harlem itself as I would have liked, instead continuously reaching out to other places in the world for its characters and plot progression. The lack of any molls or femme fatales was a bit saddening in some regards because that is a trope that I enjoy, but honestly the pursuit of love isn’t really forefront in the protagonists’ minds, and I’m content to substitute some romance subplot with more stupid action sequences.

Stuff I read this month that I couldn’t be arsed to ramble about: Maud: A Melodrama by Tennyson and a few miscellaneous poems from Christina Rossetti.

#book reviews #book ramblings #gogol #candide #voltaire #the master and margarita #bulgakov #a clockwork orange #burgess #the heat's on #himes

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overthinkingkdrama · 7 years ago

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Jona's Top 5 Second Male Leads Who Deserved to End Up Alone

[Disclaimer: This list is intended for entertainment purposes. It includes spoilers for the tagged shows. This is just my personal opinion, so I apologize in advance if I’m bashing your fave. I just woke up this morning and thought, “You know, I haven’t pissed anyone off in a while.”]

In the Kdrama fandom much is made of SLS, or Second Lead Syndrome, that is the condition of sympathizing with the secondary character, usually male and usually the hypotenuse of a love triangle, over and above the actual hero and wishing he would get with the female lead instead. Most of the time because the hero is an asshole and the second lead treats her like a human being. There are occasionally examples of SLS regarding the second female characters, but it is far more common with male, because unfortunately second female leads have a tendency to be stock characters or finger-steepling jealousy monsters, instead of fully fleshed out people. God knows I’ve had my share of SLS in every flavor…

But this isn’t a list about SLS, but rather the opposite of that. This is about the second leads I had no patience for. The ones who are a waste of air and screen time. The ones who annoyed me with their shitty “nice guy” attitudes or frustrated me with their passivity. The ones I immediately wanted to punch in the face. In short, the second leads who deserved to end up alone.

5. Kang Shin Woo/ You’re Beautiful

I’ve gone off several times in the past on the infuriating species infesting dramaland I’ve termed the “passive pining second lead”. I really dislike this character type, it drives me up a tree. So you knew going in one of these boys was going to end up on this list.

It didn’t have to be Kang Shin Woo. It could easily have been Ji Hoo from BoF or Kang Woo from Master’s Sun. Or any number of other second leads who fit this archetype. But it had to be one of them.

I can’t really explain to you why Shin Woo earned my particular ire. Maybe it was just teeth-grinding frustration I felt with each successive, convoluted attempt to woo Mi Nyeo. Maybe it was the weirdness of that let-me-stalk-you-via-telephone-while-you-go-on-a-solo-date thing. Or that fact that the male lead was such an unmitigated moron.

Shin Woo managed to miss his window while Mi Nyeo was still crushing on him hard. He had countless opportunities to confess his feelings and just waited and waited until she was almost obliged to fall for Tae Kyung out of sheer impatience. This is the kind of character that makes me want to tear my hair and yell at the screen “USE YOUR FRICKEN WORDS!”

Luckily, there’s an appealing “third lead” in You're Beautiful who saves it from mediocrity, and the drama is otherwise such dopey, fluffy fun that you can’t help but be endeared. Jeremy saves this from being higher on the list.

4. Lee Ji Hoon/ The Best Hit

Talk about a character who has one of the worst cases of “Nice Guy” syndrome I’ve ever seen. Lee Ji Hoon was one of those characters I was initially rooting for, since Best Hit’s ambiguous love lines appear to leave things open ended as far as the end game couple was concerned. For the first half of the drama it seemed like things could go either way, and the friends-to-lovers dynamic between Ji Hoon and Woo Seung was endearing and heartfelt.

Also Kim Min Jae is pretty. So, so pretty…

For a while I was worried he was going to fall into the “passive pining” category, remaining silent, and losing his chance. But finally he made up his mind to confess and I was ecstatic. Yes! Go for it! And that was just about when it all went wrong.

The way a male character handles rejection and disappointment is make or break in my book. It takes them farther than charisma, looks and even moral fiber. (Give me a pirate or a conman over an entitled asshole.) And for me Ji Hoon totally failed this very important test. After Woo Seung told him she didn’t return his feelings Ji Hoon continually badgered and attempted to win her over even when she asked him to stop, intentionally made her uncomfortable, and thrust a surprise kiss on her. My frustration with his character grew until the point were he told Woo Seung that he regretted meeting her first as his friend, after which point he was dead to me.

Despite the potential ickiness of timetravel paternity shenanigans, I was so relieved when Hyun Jae ended up being our male lead. The Best Hit remains one of my very favorite dramas of the year and I still highly recommend it. But if you want to come at me about SLS for poor, poor Ji Hoon, kindly get out of my house.

3. Han Tae Jin/ Another Oh Hae Young

Han Tae Jin had all the makings of a really interesting, sympathetic anti-hero. After all, he comes across like the obvious wronged party in this love triangle. Due to a case of mistaken identity, Tae Jin becomes the target of the jealous spite of our male lead, Park Do Kyung, ultimately causing the ruin of his business, the breaking of his engagement with the titular Hae Young, and getting him sent to prison! Ouch. That’s a lot of angst wrapped in an attractive Lee “Chiseled Jaw For Days” Jae Yoon.

And yet, instead of cutting a fetchingly tragic figure, Tae Jin turned out to be a vengeful, bitter, violent man incapable of letting go of a grudge even for the woman he supposedly loved. He was such an emotionally unstable, loose canon that I was frequently uncomfortable when he was onscreen. If I’m not very much mistaken he assaults Do Kyung not once, but several times, to such a degree that Hae Young ends meeting him to beg him not to hurt Do Kyung anymore. It struck me as incredibly messed up.

I really didn’t want Lee Jae Yoon on this list twice– I have nothing against the actor–which is the only reason his Cruel City character Detective Ji Hyung Min wasn’t on this list instead. I actually like Lee Jae Yoon! Just not the characters he tends to play…Luckily, Cruel City wasn’t extremely focused on the love triangle, it was focused on the pain. I chose his character in OHYA instead because, being a romance focused drama the way they handled the love polygon was more important to me. By the end of the drama they attempted to redeem him and it just didn’t work for me at all. Keep this dude the hell away from me.

2. Lee Joon Hee/ Falling for Innocence

There are a variety of strategies drama writers use to make us root for the jerk chaebol hero over and against the started-from-the-bottom second lead with treats the female lead with tenderness and respect. They give their heroes tragic backstories, slowly grow them into human beings, build UST, and give them melodramatic redemption arcs. The options are basically endless.

But why go through all of that when you can just make your second lead a secret scumbag murderer! There…all sorted.

This was honestly the most confounding bait and switch love line I’ve probably ever seen. When the reveal of who was ultimately responsible for the death of Sung Joon’s fiancé finally happened I very nearly threw my tablet across the room. They go to a lot of trouble to give Joon Hee a sympathetic long time unrequited love backstory as well as motivation for his sometimes morally dubious corporate ladder climbing. They also give him frequent shippy scenes with Sung Joon where he takes care of her and worries about her or vice versa. While in contrast Min Ho is absolutely horrible to her for a good portion of the show, the only thing that redeems him being a literal personality transplant.

They go out of their way to present this like it’s a legitimate love triangle, when given all of the facts it’s nothing of the kind. It makes me wonder why they even bothered trying to get me invested in the character since it turns out he’s actually evil.

Upon rewatch (started this one again rather recently) I had a lot more fun with this drama. Since I already knew what I was getting into I had the resounding pleasure of yelling at the screen every time Joon Hee and Sung Joon get a cutsy or romantic scene, which is very satisfying. The real reason to watch this show, Min Ho’s horrid behavior in the first episodes notwithstanding, is because Jung Kyung Ho is absolutely hysterical. For me it’s still kind of a garbage show with a garbage plot, but, hey, I love garbage.

1. Goo Jung Hee/ Ms. Perfect

There are very few characters in drama land that inspire in me the kind of hatred I felt for Jung Hee throughout this series. There are villians that don’t fill me with such seething rage. There’s a lot of adjectives I could use to describe Jung Hee. Loathsome comes to mind. An incomplete list of others would include: spineless, selfish, sniveling, and “the slimiest weakling ever to crawl the earth.”

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. I hate this so called man. And yet, to my eternal confusion he is loved by and romantically involved with not one, not two, but three different women throughout the course of the show.

Actually, this entry poses a little bit of a problem regarding what we actually consider to be a “second male lead”. For the majority of the list so far I’ve been using the definition of the “second romantic lead” or, in brief, “the member of the obligatory love triangle who doesn’t get the girl” rather than “a male character with lesser narrative importance and/or subordinate billing to the male lead.”

In Kdrama the two things are usually one in the same. Usually, but not always. The reason is a) most dramas place a heavy emphasis on romance b) romantic fulfillment is usually the overt goal or the overt reward of the hero’s character arc and c) if a show ends without romantic closure (dating, marriage, babies ever after) it’s not generally seen as “satisfying”. But there are cases where the character with top billing or greater narrative importance is not meant to be our romantic lead, or even necessarily someone we root for. Jung Hee falls into this category, which made me wonder if I should even include him on this list.

Because Yoon Sang Hyun received top billing and was considered, by all reports, the lead in Ms. Perfect there was a great deal of disagreement and turbulence surrounding the intended endgame of the drama. Sung Joon’s Kang Bong Goo readily fits the mold of the romantic lead but his screen time is about half of Jung Hee’s, so I can readily understand where these concerns came from.

I’m happy to report that Jung Hee remained a subject of sometimes pity, but more often disgust, and the only thing that really disappointment me with his plot trajectory was that he didn’t end up dying in a fire at the end of the show. Missed opportunity IMO. While certainly a weird and flawed drama, Ms. Perfect remained entertaining throughout its run and I honestly would recommend it if for no other reason that Shim Jae Bok is a goodamn queen. There is the notable downside that this character has forever ruined Yoon Sang Hyun for me as an actor, as I can’t even see his face without feeling slightly ill.

I hope you enjoyed my top fave LEAST favorite male leads. This list was requested anonymously and I would be interested in producing other, similar lists in the future. If you have a subject you’d like me to cover please send me an ask or reply to this post and I’ll take it under consideration.

Jona

#top 5 #second lead syndrome #least favorite #kdramas #kdrama stuff #you're beautiful #another oh hae young #ms. perfect #perfect wife #the best hit #hit the top #falling for innocence

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westfallingforchaol · 7 years ago

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Fantasy (more specifically high fantasy) is one of those genres that I can never have enough of. Whether it’s television, the big screen, or books, fantasy is the one thing I always return to when I’m feeling uninspired or slump-y. And because I’m such a big fan of such a vast genre, I obviously have favorite tropes that I always turn towards. I’m pretty much always looking for fantasy books with these tropes, and most of my favorite books utilize them brilliantly. So, let’s get into it.

Royals living away from their homes; whether it’s because they’re hiding, in exile, or leaving voluntarily, this trope results in fantastic development & characterization.

Whether it’s because of an arranged marriage they’re trying to flee, or because their parents died in suspicious circumstances so they’re running to save themselves, royals leaving their homes and luxuries behind is one of my favorite tropes. Mainly because there are a myriad of discussions that can be had if this is the case. For one, leaders living sheltered lives behind the walls of their castles can never truly be good leaders; more often than not, the trope uses the opportunity to disguise said royal as a commoner. The royal lives amongst laypeople, makes acquaintances, begins to understand the struggles that they never would have had they stayed holed up in their previous life. This trope directly results in a well-rounded character, who – if or when they take back their home – can be a leader for the people.

A good example here is Jon Snow from A Song of Ice & Fire. Despite not being a royal, he’s still lived his entire life as the child of one of the most powerful people in the kingdom. He has a nice room in a big castle, people who listen to him; he has luxuries, teachers, trainers, a family, a home. But he has a very skewed understanding of honor, responsibility and leadership until he joins the Night’s Watch and gets to know people from all over the Seven Kingdoms. He’d thought he would be surrounded by brave men full of honor, but is instead forced to call criminals his brothers. He learns about the conditions that lead poverty-stricken people to commit crimes, like stealing food or money, and comes to understand that there are different types of bravery, different types of honor. This genuine understanding of the plight of common folk, their wants, needs, and the things he saw while living away from luxury are what give him the upper hand in becoming a good ruler. He’s developed from the first book – from a kind, generous young man who was mostly sheltered and ignorant, to a kind, generous young man who knows more, who’s understood more, who can become the leader for the people instead of a leader because of blood.

E X A M P L E S

Schools. Give me all the schools in fantasy books. I don’t care if you’re studying about how fast horses decompose- just give it to me.

I love fantasy schools, and Hogwarts is obviously the greatest school of all-time, but its existence seems to be detrimental to other fantasy series with schools. Mainly because no matter how different the school is, every new fantasy series that contains one is automatically compared to Harry Potter. Which is awful, because fantasy leaves so much room for so many different types of schools.

There could be schools that teach magic, obviously, or there could be schools that teach history. What about schools that teach etiquette? Schools that teach royals how to behave royally? Law? Politics? What about assassin schools (those are always awesome, let’s be real).

A Song of Ice & Fire has the Citadel where maesters learn several crafts to become learned; The Seven Realms series has Oden’s Ford, that teaches etiquette, magic, and several other trades. Like I said, there is infinite wiggle room when it comes to schooling in fantasy. It doesn’t have to be a traditional school setting either – it could be training, or tournaments where lessons are taught, or tutoring in history. Just give me more schools in fantasy! And for the love of God – while you’re at it – stop comparing every book with a school to Harry Potter!

E X A M P L E S

Politics and civil war. Don’t know what side to root for? That’s a great fantasy.

World-building in its materialistic form is fantastic. I love maps as much as the next person; I enjoy reading about different continents, cultures, peoples, moral values, governing systems, etcetera. Magic building is wonderful, as well, but what makes a fantasy truly great? To me, it’s politics. For a fantasy to immediately capture my attention, it has to have people on all sides that I am rooting for, even if there is a clear good and bad dynamic. I want to see people lurking in the shadows, vying for power; I want to see nobles’ deceiving their lieges because they want more political influence. Politics has made and broken our world since the dawn of time, and fantasy books without a political system in place seem incomplete.

Civil war is an extension of this political aspect; when politics plays a huge role in a fantasy series, when the players of the game are well-developed and interesting, war is inevitable. But war is never pleasant. It’s confusing, and muddled, and very rarely is it as binary as “This side is good, this side is bad.” Well written war, and well-written politics has innocent people dying on both sides. There are people you can root for and understand on both sides, which is why the situation is so tense and gripping.

The series that does this best is obviously A Song of Ice & Fire. Despite there being lines within your mind about who the good guy is, and who the bad guy is, you’re still rooting for characters on both sides of the spectrum. The political aspect of hegemony, imperialism, revolution and rebellion, of monarchy, usurping, treaties and deceits and reward and punishment? That’s what makes the series so fantastic. Politics and complicated, grey dynamics are realistic and complex, and give storytelling a layer that nothing else possibly can.

E X A M P L E S

Tournaments and Competitions. Characters showcasing their skills in a fully competitive setting? Yes, please.

Tournaments have become a cliché now, but I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t the biggest sucker for tournaments. There’s so many things a writer can do while writing tournaments, from showcasing characters’ skillsets, their personalities under stress and pressure, seeing them learn from their mistakes, and get up after they’ve been pushed down, to showcasing magic systems, the cultures and practices of other peoples if it’s a nationwide tournament. The tournaments could serve as a backdrop for politics and scheming, or they could just be plain old fun.

Perhaps the most legendary tournament for me is the Triwizard Tournament from Harry Potter, because Rowling utilized it perfectly by mixing themes of first love and coming-of-age with Harry’s first real encounter of darkness, death, war and politics. But there was a lot more to it – the world-building was expanded greatly as we got to see what was under the waters around Hogwarts, we got to encounter different species (merpeople, dragons), as well as different plants. We got to see our characters use their skills under grueling conditions, but we were also given glimpses into the properties of fame, of celebrity. The tournament tested friendships, and loyalties, and it broke relationships while it made others. For me, tournaments – apart from being a hell of a fun time – are perfect backdrops to explore world-building, politics and characterization.

E X A M P L E S

The anti-hero. They do things that are morally ambiguous, and it’s sometimes difficult to root for them, but they’re some of the best characters you’ve ever read.

Anti-heroes and anti-villains are my favorite types of characters, in any genre, period. But in fantasy, they hold a special place in my heart, simply because there’s a lot more they can experiment with and get away with in fantasy stories (using magic, honor, war, etcetera). There’s nothing quite as satisfying as reading a good anti-hero. Heroes bore me; you already know you’re supposed to root for them, no matter what they do, because they’re ultimately the good guy.

Anti-heroes make you doubt yourself, they make you doubt the author’s intentions, the story, the other characters, what’s good and what’s evil, and this quality of thought-provoking characterization is my absolute favorite thing in writing. Morally complicated characters who don’t fit neatly into boxes are the fucking best, man. They keep you on your feet, and if they ever undergo a redemption arc, you’re left amazed at how meticulously the writer built up a certain character, naturally tore them down, and built them back up – better and stronger. There’s so much literary power in anti-heroes that I will devour most every book that has one as its main character.

E X A M P L E S

That’s all for my favorite fantasy tropes! I’m thinking of making another post that talks about tropes that are less fantasy-specific, so let me know if you’d be interested in that. Also tell me – do you enjoy these tropes? What other tropes do you like? And definitely give me recommendations!

5 Fantasy Tropes I Love Fantasy (more specifically high fantasy) is one of those genres that I can never have enough of.

#books #fantasy #Tropes

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lefthanded-sans · 8 years ago

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Heya! I just wanna ask.. do you think Sans is an introvert or an extravert?

Sans is difficult, isn’t he? I believe that the best way to solve this conundrum is by invoking the idea of a gradient. The gradient is reality anyway: human beings aren’t two obvious, separate personality types that can be filed away into neat boxes. There are extremely introverted people, slightly introverted people, extremely extroverted people, slightly extroverted people, ambiverts, introverted extroverts, extroverted introverts, and this whole fun world of gradient and nuance. Personally, I think that simply saying “Is Sans one or the other” does a disservice to the complexity of his (and every other) character; he’s a lot more complicated than that, and I feel like he especially demonstrates both traits typically associated with introversion and extroversion.

The best explanation of introvert versus extrovert I like is that introverts get their mental energy and sustenance internally, whereas extroverts get their mental energy and sustenance externally. Introverts “refuel” when they are by themselves; extroverts “refuel” when they spend time in the company of others.

I’ve always liked the terms “extroverted introvert” and “introverted extrovert” because they get at the nuanced idea that some people might be pretty outgoing, but they refuel by being by themselves. Other people might be somewhat withdrawn socially, but being in social groups is still how they get relaxed and feeling better. The people who are outgoing but need “me” time to get their mental energy are extroverted introverts. The people who aren’t outgoing but need that human connection to keep their energy levels up are introverted extroverts.

The term “ambivert” is also a nice one, because it gives a nice nod to the idea of “someone in the middle.” An ambivert is someone who is neither extroverted or introverted, but has a fair number of traits from both.

I feel Sans is ambiguous in how he refuels himself, but his actions might suggest he’s somewhere in the middle of the introvert-extrovert continuum. The nice, overarching term “ambivert” might therefore be best for him. If I had to pick a “side”, I might tentatively suggest he could be an extroverted introvert.

Sans displays some introverted elements such as spending close bonding time with only a few individuals. Sans tends to get close to only a few - namely, Toriel and Papyrus. The small friendship circle is fairly characteristic of introverts. Sans does not seem to particularly wish to reach out or expand that friendship circle, either; of all the characters in Undertale, Sans is notably one of the most withdrawn and private when interacting with Frisk. Introverts are typically going to be more withdrawn in this manner. Hey, he even just locks himself in his room when Frisk goes to visit Papyrus and hang out!

Another introverted element that can be observed from Sans is some of his hobbies, work, and activity. Sans has chosen to work as a sentry, a job which consists of him chilling in a forest reading car magazines and “preparing” for humans that are not expected to arrive. While of course anyone - introvert or extrovert - could choose this job, it probably appeals more to people who want “me” time. Yes, we should also point out that Sans often skips out on this time to hang out at Grillby’s bar, but he does also spend a lot of time chilling at his station, reading, and chugging condiments like ketchup.

If you prescribe to the idea that, prior to or in addition to being a sentry, Sans was/is a physicist, then that’s also a check mark in favor of potential introversion. I myself would not be surprised if Sans received an advanced degree in the field, given as he studies things as complicated as timelines that might involve quantum mechanics. He could have spent a lot of alone time reading textbooks, doing solo work, and researching without much monster interaction. Those physics books in the house, if they are his (and I believe they are his, given as there are joke books inside) are a testament to him spending time reading - an introverted activity.

And, regardless of all this occupation speculation, we know for a fact Sans loves astronomy. The astronomy lover has no doubt spent hours by himself reading books. That’s introverted behavior. So Sans at least chooses some activities to be done on his own. If Sans is someone who spends significant time alone researching physics and/or studying the stars, then that is a testament to introversion playing out.

If you’re like me, just talking about the introversion alone doesn’t feel... convincing. It’s definitely not the full picture of Sans. And that’s because he has lots of extroverted elements to his behavior, too.

Sans shows a number of extroverted characteristics. He is almost constantly at Grillby’s. He has a wide circle of acquaintances there and is considered the life of the party. Drunk Bun wants Sans to come back because Grillby’s is more exciting when the skeleton is around; the fish at the counter apparently regularly talks to Sans, having received a prank prompt in their last conversation. Despite the fact Sans enters the restaurant all the time, the attendants stop what they’re doing and greet him cheerily. Sans thus spends a lot of time in the company of other monsters - a large group of monsters. That’s extroverted behavior.

Sans even describes his work sitting out in the middle of the forest boring… probably why Grillby’s - with all its people inside - is more attractive. Sans remarks at the end of the game that basically everyone knows him. So we know that, while he might not have many close confidantes, he has a notably wide circle of acquaintances.

Socially, Sans is pretty chill interacting with others. He’s very cool and collected. If he doesn’t want someone to ask him a question, he’s very good at redirecting the conversation. For instance, when people find out at the end of the Pacifist Route that Sans and Alphys know one another, Alphys gets flustered... but Sans calmly jokes that everyone knows him. He can play it cool in potentially awkward or unwanted social situations. Good social interaction can arise for people who are comfortable being social often... aka, the extroverts.

Combining both extroverted and introverted elements gives us a better picture of Sans. Talking about just an introverted side might feel off. Talking about just an extroverted side might feel incomplete. I feel he’s in the middle of the road.

The reason I pick “extroverted introvert” is in part because I don’t think of him as a noticeable extrovert. Sans doesn’t seem to run around seeking out more and more interactions with anyone he comes across. He has his boundaries, his limits, his privacy. He doesn’t seem to need constant refueling by being in others’ company. But Sans also doesn’t act like an introverted extrovert who is someone who can demonstrate more withdrawn behavior while soaking in the company of others. Sans seems pretty happy and comfortable engaging with people in extroverted-like behavior. So his outward behavior in company is more extroverted, but lots of his actions about his private life feel introverted. That’s an extroverted introvert, more or less.

Sans seems to be someone who keeps secrets to himself and doesn’t give his full personality to most people he meets. While Sans hangs out with anyone at Grillby’s, that doesn’t mean he connects to all the people at Grillby’s. Even stark introverts need companionship. He gets his casual companionship and cures his boredom there. And it’s to note that Sans’ preferred companionship is only with a few individuals. Once Sans meets Toriel and starts hanging out with her, he spends less time at Grillby’s, as the patrons all notice. It seems that, if Sans has his choice, he’d prefer the select company of a few over a wider mass. That’s angling him a little more toward the introverted side of his mind.

So between Sans seeming to prefer that sort of companions, and the way Sans seems to enjoy time inside his own head for astronomy and physics, I’m going to suggest he is an extroverted introvert. He’s right near the middle of the gradient of extroversion-introversion. He gets some energy from hanging out with people, and he spends a lot of time hanging out with large crowds... but he perhaps gets a bit more mental refueling done alone or with just a few others, like Toriel and Papyrus.

#long post #Undertale analysis #UT #Undertale #Sans #my analysis #ask #ask me #awesome anonymous friend #anonymous #finally have time to plug these out!!! XD :D :D :D :D #this was really fun to write about #and I was thinking about it when you sent it to me #so I got really excited to talk about this!

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marginalgloss · 8 years ago

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sick sick sick

The Art of Cruelty is a book by Maggie Nelson which is about things that are, in the words of the author, not nice. Shouldering aside the semantic ambiguities of defining exactly what is meant by ‘cruel’, the book leans heavily on a sense of knowing it when it is seen. An instinctive feeling of revulsion, followed by a certain compulsion to investigate further. An unwillingness to break the gaze because of what the viewer feels, in spite of whatever they might believe. The works under discussion here seem intended to leave their audience feeling like the unhappy student quoted here, with reference to a controversial novel by Brian Evenson: ‘I feel like someone who has eaten something poisonous and is desperate to get rid of it.’

It is a book about the visual arts, performance, poetry and film, clearly informed by many of years of study and teaching. But it’s also a book about a writer struggling to account for her feelings of fascination/repulsion towards some of our society’s most startling artistic productions. It suffers from a certain surfeit of ambition: it struggles to pin down exactly what a ‘cruel’ work of art is, beyond a tendency towards shock or violence, either in its expression or representation. And at times it is hard to detect a thesis; sometimes the thread of the argument is lost in a blizzard of quotation. Yet it’s exactly this lack of polish, this sense of awkward self-remonstrance, that makes the book so endearing.

It takes the work of Antonin Artaud as its starting point, and specifically his term ‘The Theatre of Cruelty’. Derived from his book The Theatre and its Double, this was an approach to performance outlined in stark, boldly abstract terms: ‘Everything that acts is a cruelty…It is upon this idea of extreme action, pushed beyond all limits, that theatre must be rebuilt…’. Founded in the abolition of concepts like ‘performers’ and ‘audience’, Artaud’s actual performances were startling, violent works, and rarely executed properly in his lifetime; his work was difficult, and he suffered terribly from mental illness. Nelson’s contention is that he was an artistic failure, though his theories were highly prescient.

Some, but not all, of the other artists presented here fall into that category too; interesting to read about, but in execution alienating, dull or confused. Like Artaud they seem against theory in principle, yet were it not for theory their reputation would have vanished. I can’t muster any interest in the works for which Chris Burden became notorious, for example — filming himself crawling half-naked over broken glass, or being shot in the arm — but perhaps that says more about our current over-exposure to violence than it does the value of his actions.

The book somehow manages to be both sprawling and narrow in its interests: it covers a vast range of material, but it rarely steps outside the kind of thing which we might find in a well-stocked university library. Today there are vast swathes of Western culture that might fittingly be described as ‘cruel’, but which are barely touched upon here. Violent sports, video games, graphic novels, horror fiction, pornography, pop music and mainstream movies all seem to fall outside the book’s purview. This is fair enough, of course; though to me it seems like a decision prompted by inherent value judgements that ends up limiting the expressive range of the writing.

The films of Ryan Trecartin, for example, are praised to the skies for their remarkable expressive qualities — ‘a riotous exploration of what kinds of space, identity, physicality, language, sexuality, and consciousness might be possible once leaves the dichotomy of the virtual and the real and behind, along with a whole host of other need-not-apply boundaries’ — but this, combined with the compulsion to quote from other approving authority figures, ends up telling the reader very little about what it is like to actually experience these films.

Despite the fact that Trecartin seems to have been lauded by establishment art critics, it seems to me that most of his influences most of them have very little to do with established art. It’s as though Warhol were described only in terms of his brushwork and printmaking, with no mention of contemporary trends in media production. It’s bizarre to encounter Trecartin’s work after reading this; for me it’s shot through with the kind of hyperactive, unsophisticated viral culture that circulated in the earliest days of the internet, and it seems odd to pretend these influences don’t exist because they have everything to do with play and little to do with art.

Nelson’s approach is unashamedly highbrow, and she’s lightly scathing about the lack of value she finds in current approach to pop culture criticism:

‘I’m not saying there’s no fun or value or necessity in this work anymore; maybe there’s more than ever. I’m just saying that for me, personally, it feels like a dead end. The cultural products now seem designed to analyse themselves, and to make a spectacle of their essentially consumable perversity.’

There’s a lot to agree with in this statement — god knows what Nelson would make of Game of Thrones — but it’s also a nice illustration of the novel’s typically enjoyable one-two stylistic punch. First the brusque avowal of a position; then a light-hearted refusal of it; followed by a final, definitive statement of intent. It’s the old cliche about ‘I’m not saying / I’m just saying’ — yeah, actually you are saying exactly that thing you’re not saying. If this were an academic paper, surely only the third sentence would be permissible. This is typical of the author’s bobbing and weaving throughout here — it makes for an entertaining, conversational read, but at times it’s difficult to unpick exactly what we are supposed to take home.

The effect is a little like sitting in on a seminar with a group of funny, opinionated, well-read people who have not yet decided ‘how to feel’ about something that has affected them greatly. But perhaps the idea that we have to reach a definitive position on ‘how to feel’ about everything is itself the problem.

The book is actually at its most entertaining when it is at its most incomplete. The sequence following the quote above departs entirely from its format and switches into the author’s reaction to the billboards advertising a horror movie that suddenly appeared around Los Angeles in 2007:

‘…you call to complain, disliking the sound of your Tipper-Gore-esque voice. You hang up and start worrying about the free-speech implications of your protest, so you turn to Noam Chomsky and ponder hard questions about manufactured consent and the meaning of free speech in an everything-is-owned-or-for-sale world, then to Jurgen Habermas, to ponder the meaning of public space is an everything-is-owned-or-for-sale world…So you wonder how to tell what emanates from where, and how you might balance your visceral outrage against the Captivity emanations with your deep veneration of writers from Sade to Jean Genet to Dennis Cooper to Heather Lewis to Pat Califa to Benjamin Weissman, and ask yourself if you can keep resting on some quasi-nostalgic and most certainly elitist (but not-wholly-without-significance) between high and low art, or the value of the complex and essentially private written word versus that of the mass marketed, in-your-face media image…’

It goes on for another page or so like this. And this model of throwing up endless little questions that it doesn’t stop to answer is essentially the model pursued for the rest of the book. It models exactly the author’s own frustrations with the cul-de-sac of pop culture criticism previously expressed; but it makes no attempt to find a new model, nor does it entirely escape the same trappings. What is this if not making a spectacle of an essentially consumable perversity?

And yet this is the closest the book comes to a clear picture of the current predicament of anyone who would try to write about the most extreme examples of culture. A little learning is a dangerous thing; the weight of critical theory in this field is so considerable that it ends up stifling the original reaction which brought you to it in the first place. But that is worth preserving — and so, perhaps, is the associated confusion.

#books #maggie nelson #the art of cruelty #chris burden #ryan trecartin #antonin artaud

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blue-opossum · 7 years ago

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40 Helicopter Dreams (Part 1)

Afternoon of May 20, 2018. Sunday.

To save time and space, I include my age (for the first version of each dream) rather than a specific date. As I have only a tiny portion of my dreams online (about 5,000 presently), this list is very incomplete. Vestibular system correlation, inner ear dynamics, and the autosymbolic rendering of liminal physical body awareness in sleep are the cause of helicopter dreams (though spiritually represent the Merkaba), even for literal carryovers into the dream state (such as actually having been in a helicopter, elevator, escalator, and so on). This is a key factor of the dream state caused by the lack of viable discernment of the physical body in sleep (and the ambiguity of vestibular system function during REM sleep), and being as such, is unrelated to the myth of “interpretation” for waking life. (Dreams are autosymbolic, not symbolic in the conventional sense. They are rendered by way of the preconscious during RAS mediation, not the unconscious mind or so-called subconscious. The dream self is the subconscious personified, which in non-lucidity does not even have viable access to the unconscious mind or the conscious self identity, but does have more access to the transpersonal interconsciousness than the conscious self in waking life typically does, which is a key factor of prescience and other inexplicable experiences.) For some dreams, there is detail in this entry that was not included in the original post.

This entry lists the factors of helicopter autosymbolism and is not meant to fully explain a particular dream or combined causes of a dream.

1) The In-Store Ride (4). Combines checkout (dream exit) autosymbolism with vestibular system correlation. I am vividly aware of being upside-down in semi-darkness in a fetal position in a coin-operated (kidney-shaped) helicopter ride. (Prenatal memory influence.)

2) Hummingbird Satellite (7). In childhood fantasy and naïvety, asteroids are perceived as giant prehistoric bones. One is approached by a “helicopter” in space, which is actually a kind of spaceship (possibly unmanned) and is caught in its orbit, whereby an “umbilical cord” (cable) connects the “helicopter” and “asteroid” (influenced by a photograph from a Time Life “Birds” book that I got for Christmas at age 7). I await news of its status.

3) Hallicopters… (8). This series of dreams was heavily influenced by my father’s Hallicrafters radio and the “helicopter” sound it made on certain channels.

4) The Sacred Rock of Thought (14). A helicopter only appears in the last segment to lift the rock (shaped like a brain). I have liminal dream control and “wish it away”.

5) Rocket Science? (15). A school bus slowly flying above the horizon in the distance has helicopter rotor blades and ambiguously has an “ancient” essence. Smoke billows out from the back. This is the last scene in this dream. (My dreams often end with vestibular system correlation as the waking process.)

6) Pterodactyl (versus my Helicopter) (16). This dream is based around liminal (non-lucid) dream control and the attempt to mediate the vestibular system ambiguity of the dream state. The pterodactyl is the RAS modulation factor.

7) Helicopter Digger (26). In this dream the vestibular system correlation fails and my dream is sustained when the helicopter, flying overhead where Leonard and I are fishing, crashes onto the ground as it oddly transforms into a digging machine (as the rotor blades continue to dig into the ground, which is autosymbolism for a desire to sleep longer).

8) Not by Helicopter this Time (34). I decide to get bicycles (which I am not sure are ours) to travel with Zsuzsanna rather than taking a helicopter, which is having problems, clotheslines (at least perceived as such) caught in the rotor blades and partly melted rotor blades. This has links to other dreams, such as ones where bicycles had melted and another where only a rotor blade was tied onto parts of a clothesline. Both bicycles and helicopters are a similar form of vestibular system correlation in the dreaming and waking process.

9) Vapid Comic Strip (34). This vestibular system correlation is based more on the precursory anticipation of the waking process and remains static in the ultradian rhythm event. I am looking at unusual daily (black-and-white) comic strips but I only recall one more clearly. A woman approaches a man near an alley and asks him if he has a helicopter and he says "no". After the woman walks away, he says, "There goes my social life". This is a play on the dream self not interacting with people in the real physical world until the waking process (such as vestibular system correlation) is initiated.

10) They’re After Baby Huey (35). I am watching Baby Huey (the cartoon ducking) in an unusual (fictitious) movie. Airplanes (as well as helicopters) are bombing the area. He does not even seem affected by an atomic bomb in the distance. There is a likely play on the UH-1 Huey Helicopter.

11) Twilight UFOs and Souls (36). A small unmanned helicopter gathers data about the souls that fly thought the sky just before sunrise.

12) Haunted Fun and Budgie the Little Helicopter (36). Even though the main theme features “haunted places” and “ghosts” (though at an amusement park), Budgie the Helicopter flies around at one point, seeming life-sized and "real" (though which is a mechanical park attraction, I assume, rather than "alive").

13) White Camels (38). I fly around using a portable helicopter propeller.

14) Angel Doctor (48). Helicopters are only mentioned in this dream, as a dream character erroneously states that I am probably flying around because of a helicopter holding me up with wires. (This dream still ties in with liminal recognition of the autosymbolism of dreams.)

15) In Defense of the “Siren” (53). Burl Ives talks about how my wife Zsuzsanna called up the giant turtle and crashed his helicopter in a direct reference to the movie “The Bermuda Depths” (a television movie from 1978).

16) Futile Shooting at a White Gorilla in the Enchanted Forest (53). “Twelve multicolored butterflies eventually encircled the area (horizontally) so swiftly that they created a clear impression of a helicopter rotor - in fact, a subtle sound of a rotor was vaguely discernible later on during a transitional (shift in unconsciousness) period.”

17) Sensual Bliss, Enhanced Sense of Touch, Infinite Peace (53). Another family visits me and my family, arriving and leaving in a helicopter. I also telekinetically cause a stolen barbecue to fly back to its owner.

18) The Helicopter Bag (53). I try to cause a medicine bag (with marbles in it, though the contents become pillow stuffing later) to fly by use of a toy helicopter’s rotor blade and rubber bands.

19) Volcanic Events (53). In a very surreal situation, the potential of rescue by remote-controlled miniature helicopter in lifting us from a rug that is somehow floating on lava (but of which is ultimately not perceived as dangerous) is part of the scenario.

20) Helicopter and Seagulls (54). Seagulls telekinetically guide a helicopter I am flying in (in which the pilot had disappeared) back to shore. A young mischievous version of Zsuzsanna (implied to be a seagull in her “true” form) flies up (from the surface of the ocean) into the doorway to greet me.

21) Snake Afire (54). RAS modulation using the snake alert factor is sustained into a much longer dream scenario with Zsuzsanna. A man in a helicopter shows up and flies over the area checking for the presence and activity of snakes. He later walks up with a temporary map saying how they are mostly in the mountain belt at this time.

22) Pterodactyl Driver (54). The white spy from Mad Magazine’s “Spy vs. Spy” is driving a real car. His head turns into a pterodactyl’s, which then spins and becomes a helicopter rotor blade, and which then flies up and away.

23) Blocked-off Buildings (54). A helicopter crashes near a building at the end of my dream, causing glass to fly, though I (and another unfamiliar dream character) am not injured.

24) Straight-up Mining (54). In this dream, vestibular system dynamics are very skewed. Cars and trucks go straight up and down a tall mountainous structure for mining purposes. I ride in a helicopter with my wife Zsuzsanna in the first scene.

25) Dreams Define the Path of Waking From Them (55). A helicopter rotor blade is connected to the top of monkey bars (apparently with a clothesline, as the unlikely and illogical structure was supposedly being privately used to hang clothes on). Vestibular system autosymbolism and transitional associations with waking autosymbolism is combined, as the helicopter rotor blade also implies part a bridge of sorts in this case.

26) Helicopter Landing (55). A miniature remote-controlled helicopter somehow flies me back to our bed in our present home. Both it and my dream body phased through the ceiling in this curious waking transition autosymbolism.

27) Amusing Helicopter “Rescue” (55). Pierce Brosnan, as James Bond, but only about five inches high, flies a miniature helicopter to come to "rescue" me from the top of a commercial building. I oblige my dream's intent by placing a pillow-like version of myself in bed into the helicopter to wake myself.

28) Helicopter to Spaceship to Helicopter to... (55). This dream was somewhat “dull” in its level of dream self awareness until the last segment. A helicopter flies overhead but transforms into a spaceship (unknown if alien or not) and back again each time it flies over.

29) Lucid Priest Indeed (55). The last scene in my dream (though part of a false awakening) features an upside-down silhouette of a helicopter in a magazine I am looking at.

30) Being Wrong in a “Nights in White Satin” Argument (55). An additional dream state indicator (as well as the unfamiliar bedroom I am in) relates to playing and hearing the “Nights in White Satin” Moody Blues song. I get into an nonthreatening argument where I mistakenly remember the song included sounds of helicopters, actually thinking of the beach scene from “Apocalypse Now”.

31) Helicopter Not Landing Yet (56). I am in a very large room in a commercial building where at least two unknown males are looking at monitors. I am “sleeping” on blankets on the floor. This setting is ambiguously supposed to be occurring inside a helicopter that is flying over a foggy area with jagged rocks (and I feel vague movement as such), but I am never concerned about any possible danger.

32) Return Flight Oddity (56). There are different types of vestibular system autosymbolism, though both are caused by liminal anticipation of the waking process. In this case, the association is static and an image is featured that displays, in four panels, an airplane (top panel), two helicopters (each in middle panels), and a flying man in a cape (Superman, bottom panel). All are facing to the left, indicating a liminal desire (or intent) for reinduction.

33) Bizarre Tourist Trip into the Past (with Apollo 11) (56). From a helicopter falls the Apollo 11 spacecraft, its parachutes immediately opening, the craft seeming a bit larger than it should be. I expect that it will probably explode (liminal dream control) and it does. It explodes into a massive fireworks display, debris flying everywhere over a dense forest, though my dream continues from here into other typical forms of waking process autosymbolism.

34) A Beautiful Beach, Cool Water, and...Almost Kicking Someone (56). I expect to get a “ride back” by helicopter, but instead, I become more self-aware and my dream is sustained by water reinduction on a beautiful beach at night.

35) Helicopter Ride into the Beautiful Mountains (56). I ride with others to high beautiful mountains to a fictitious workplace where lamps are made from precious stones, as well as at least one transparent statue of a dolphin with human limbs.

36) The Wrong Dodo (56). I am viewing the scene as if incorporeal. A dark-haired girl (probably a young version of Zsuzsanna) is piloting a helicopter. A large dodo (bird) with a blue ribbon around its neck jumps into the helicopter from some sort of door or opening on top. (This is not logical, as the helicopter's rotor would otherwise prevent an event such as this.)

37) Fixing a Bridge (featuring Dean Norris) (56). A helicopter drops off a young version of Zsuzsanna in a bridge-fixing scenario with Dean Norris.

38) Usual Induction; Atypical "Snowmocopter" Waking Transition (56). A composite vehicle of snowmobile and helicopter occurs in this dream.

39) No Toy Soldier Rescue (57). A helicopter is apparently on a “rescue” mission to recover toy soldiers from the backyard of our present address.

40) Helicopter Vestibular Autosymbolism in Education Report (57). With the Department of Education report I am working on, I also have papers related to my own ongoing education. I see an A4 paper with my sketch of a helicopter on it and consider if the parts should be labeled.

#best dream journal #dream diary #my dreams #dream meanings #dream symbolism #helicopter dreams

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swipestream · 7 years ago

Text

The Deeper Magic of Comic Book Heroes

No, Doctor, it really isn’t.

Spring is coming.

Surveying the blasted wasteland of western culture, frozen and atrophied thanks to the long dark winter of post-modern deconstructionist thought embraced by the intellectual mediocrities that connived their way into positions of influence one might be tempted to give in to despair. The long years since the golden days of our cultural summer faded into the all too brief cool and pleasant newness of autumn long ago, and for years we have suffered the cold and dark cultural nights. But spring is coming. Cracks have formed in the ice pack and green shoots are springing up throughout the land – if one knows where to look.

Let’s look at the realm of comic books. The flailing death throes of Marvel Comics represents only the latest softening of the permafrost. The phenomenal success of Alt★Hero represents the most obvious green shoot, but the most important sign of the coming spring is the reaction of fans to both events. No longer content to turn their backs on the cold and sterile offerings, comic book fans are turning up the heat and demanding better.

With the vast array of forces aligned against the common man, it is more important than ever that fans step back and reassess the history of the medium. Pushing back against the winds of winter and preparing the ground for the coming planting season takes some thought and effort, to be sure. But the rewards are well worth the effort. To that end, let’s turn the weapon of deconstruction around and use it against those who would replace genuine virtue in comics with the empty simulacrum of Diversity Uber Alles.

The common narrative of comic books runs a little something like this: At first comics were bright and cheery and featured stories of black and white morality with clear good guys and bad guys. It was a simpler time, and the stories were far simpler and lacked nuance and context. They were written for children and so the stories only dealt with obvious situations easily understood by the audience. In the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, as the audience grew older, the stories in comic books matured as well. From the bright morality of Superman, comics segued into the their more sophisticated tales that carried undertones and layers of meaning as typified by the stories of alienation and prejudice presented in the pages of The X-Men. Eventually, comic books outgrew that phase and matured further into the much more wise and philosophical stories of the 1990s that finally presented the bleak and meaninglessness of life in which everyone is a bad guy; even the best of us is deeply flawed and the only thing that truly matters is understanding that nothing matters and living life accordingly. The Patron Saint of this style of comic book – sorry, that’s graphic novel now – is Alan Moore, who wrote classic titles such as V for Vendetta and The Watchmen, both of which reveled in moral ambiguity and nihilism. From the complete abandonment of classic virtue (pagan or Christian), it was a short hop to the power politics of the present day, in which the good guys are characterized only by the day to day feelings of whichever SJW crab is closest to the top of the comic book bucket in the Current Year.

That narrative is garbage. Every word of it.

It feels good. The official and commonly understood story presents we enlightened Current Year denizens as the smart and sophisticated audience who has only ever improved on the simplistic and childish stories of our forebears. We can pat ourselves on the back for being smarter and cleverer and more understanding of the world around us, even as we lament the crumbling civilization that surrounds us. Even as we watch the disappearance of the middle class, the withering of social bonds, and the literal crumbling of our roads and bridges and buildings.

Our pride helps us swallow the sugary lies of that narrative. To admit we have been misled is to risk admitting to faults we prefer to hide even from ourselves. The sort of introspection required to understand how the abandonment of virtue in our media has impoverished us and left us far less clever and sophisticated than we would like to believe ourselves. Worst of all, reconsidering the history of comic books might force us to admit that we were wrong, and few among us enjoy that important part of learning and growing. It’s hard, but it needs to be done. Ironically Intentionally, the very act of casting virtue out of comic books has helped to prevent us from resisting the costly mistake of that pride.

Thanks to Shakespeare we all know pride might cometh before a fall, but have you ever considered that a fall cometh before growth?

Set aside your pride for a moment and consider the old joke about how your father was an idiot when you were a teenager, but ten years later you marveled at how much the old man had learned in one short decade. It’s an amusing tongue in cheek admission that as we grow older we often learn that the wisdom we rejected in our precocious teen years wasn’t so stupid after all. We learn that our understanding of the world was incomplete and that many of the old man’s diktats were built upon a larger and deeper foundation of wisdom than we could possibly have imagined at the time. Not everyone does this – the prideful refuse to admit to their shortcomings and proceed through life with a teenager’s understanding, and they suffer the pains of approaching their problems with that understanding.

In typically succinct style, Vox Day calls the sorts of people who never admit they were wrong about the old man, despite all evidence to the contrary, “midwits”.

Don’t be a midwit.

Apply the deeper reasoning to the history of comic books.

Were the early comic books bright and did they feature relatively simplistic tales of good and evil? Perhaps. But how is that a criticism? We all face relatively simple temptations between good and evil every day. Why shouldn’t our comic books and movies and literature inspire us to choose the good every time? Tales designed to force us into the moral relativism train us to view every situation as a complex moment in time where what is right and wrong depends on so many factors, and really, who can say what truly is right? That’s a devil’s game designed to produce people who consider their twisting and turning in the winds of their own whim a sign of their grounded responsibility.

It’s nonsense.

Most of the moral quandaries we face on a regular basis are black and white. We know the difference between right and wrong. We recognize it instinctively. It takes active effort to deny the instincts built up in western men over two millennia and pressed into every fiber of our being – active effort and a constant bombardment over generations.

And over the generations that effort has borne bitter fruit. The erasure of black and white morality has left the west bereft of the wisdom that might have saved us from the grim acceptance of truck attacks and mass shootings at outdoor concerts and revelations of the sexual deviancy of entertainment executives that shocked no one. The denial of raw evil in its primal form and the denial of the existence of men who embrace and abuse power for its own sake has left us nearly defenseless against the ravages of terrorist truck drivers and whoever is ultimately responsible for the Mandalay shooting and the countless Hollywood deviants who prey on young men and women. Young men and women who might just have been able to resist the temptation to accept blood money for their silence, and thereby save others from the same fate, if only they had the example of a comic book hero who did not fear the repercussions of doing the right thing and standing up in the face of overwhelming evil.

The nights are long and the winds blow cold through our hearts. Our reserves are running low, and for too long we have been cooped up in our own little cabins, weathering the blizzard in small groups. But take heart.

Spring is coming.

Little green shoots are appearing in the wastelands. They are the harbingers of warmer days and fruitful endeavors, but they also represent a warning that long days of work lie ahead of us. Without considerable sweat and toil, there will be no feasting and no satisfaction of a job well done at the end of the day. The little green shoots must be nurtured and cared for lest a sudden late cold snap snuff them out. Ignore the cold winds or even rage against the storm – defy the forces of winter.

You already know how to care for many of these little green shoots. You are probably already doing so.

In the comic book world, keep supporting projects like Alt★Hero and the ongoing efforts of Diversity and Comics with your financial support. Talk about these projects. Spread the word that others can join in the fun. Talk them up, ask your local shop if they know about them. Plant those seeds. Though many will fall on barren ground, if you don’t drop any, then none can take root.

But also, tend to your own heart. Reject the false gospel of the history of comic books. Ignore those who tell you the golden age superheroes and their troubles are unrelatable compared to the bronze and clay age heroes. You may be told that one cannot imagine himself punching through a wall like a golden age hero, but one could imagine himself standing up for friends ostracized by a wider community as typified by the bronze age heroes. That midwittery lacks the brainpower to understand that the wall is metaphorical. Understand that the wisdom and morality of the comic books written in the generations immediately following Christendom’s great victory against the relentless attacks of her enemies can be conveyed in colorful books with easily understood morals – both in the virtuous sense of the word and in the lessons conveyed sense of the word.

The greatest truths are often the simplest. And the simple truth of comic books is that the golden age was golden because it rejected the sophisticated and complex nonsense of post-modern nihilism. It’s not too late to return to greatness.

Spring is coming.

All we have to do is choose to nurture those little green shoots.

The Deeper Magic of Comic Book Heroes published first on http://ift.tt/2zdiasi

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