#for context I read this fantasy series when I was a kid called the sisters grimm series and basically the premise was

[extreme-technicality]

“Sure hope the magical entity that can see through every mirror in existence is enjoying the show” I say as I do some dumb shit at my reflection

[starlit-hopes-and-dreams]

Chapter 18 ~ The sweet torture of dreams

Hidden Depths

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Also on ao3

Genre: Fantasy whump

CW: ... *whispers angst* ... okay but its cute to start XD then uh, some nightmares of slicy stabby times, pretty short ones tbh, but uh, blood, blink and you'll miss it forced to watch, and a little knife to throat action

WC: 1965

In which things are going well for once! Except for... sleeping. Who needs that, though?

AN: This is the part where I confess my complete lack of knowledge in regards to lip reading aside from a very quick research session which mostly consisted of me talking to myself in the mirror 😅 So uh, keep that in mind and we'll all be good lol

With this chapter, we are up to date with where I am in my writing. While I did complete the bitch chapter (the one after this), I'm not happy with it yet, so I'm going to take a couple weeks to make sure that I am happy with it, because it's kinda pivotal to get these guys to where I want them to be. So, thank you in advance for your patience! <3

Resh

Like this? Resh asked, moving his hand through a series of motions that evidently meant something like ‘the way is clear’. Not exactly sure why he’d need to know that, but… 

Orla peered at him intently from across the table. “Two words?” she asked, a little uncertainly. “I think the first started with an ‘L’?”. 

Seated beside Orla, Carr repeated the sign for Resh, showing him which part he’d messed up while she finished chewing the chunk of bread she’d just ripped off. 

“Say it again, Resh, slower,” Carr said after she’d washed the mouthful down, grimacing at the taste of the ale. 

They were several days out from the capital now, and the towns and villages had grown few and far between. Their necessarily slow progress, due to the multiple stops they now took to preserve Carr’s sanity, meant sometimes they stayed in less than ideal accommodations, but Resh didn’t mind. 

Carr narrated the movements of his lips, coaching Orla on the sounds the letters made. “You got the la sound. Mostly, you aren’t gonna get the middle sounds, you gotta watch for the ones that make visible movements… Just the first word, now…” 

Resh obeyed, feeling a little silly. 

“See there, how his mouth made a kinda, uh, clacking motion? That’s a ka sound. So only two um, what did you call them?” 

“Consonants,” Orla chimed in. “So, a two-syllable word? Probably?” 

Carr gave his sister the side-eye at her use of the word syllable, and Resh suppressed a smile, not wanting Carr to think he was laughing at her. 

“Sure.” Carr drew out the word, eliciting a giggle from Orla. “So you have a word with two whatevers, begins with la and has a ka in the middle or at the end. Can you think of any words like that?” 

Orla hummed, stirring the thin, slightly oily soup in front of her. “Look, lick, like, lack, leak, luck, lurk–”

“Alright, alright, you know a lot, apparently.” Carr lifted her bowl, draining the rest of the broth, then wiped her mouth on her sleeve. 

“Now you gotta use some context, and like, get rid of some of those. Look has stuff in the middle that don’t fit the shapes Resh made with his mouth. And why would he be talkin ‘bout leeks? Nasty vegetable, if you ask me.” She wrinkled her nose, leveling a glare at the offending bowl. 

“Not that kind of leak!” Orla protested, and Resh started shaking with silent laughter. 

Carr passed a hand over her eyes. “Wouldn’t be talkin ‘bout that, either, fuckin shit, kid.” She had Resh repeat the words and the sign, which he did after looking longingly at his food. “He wants to know if he’s doing it right, which…” 

Resh made a small correction, smiling when Carr grinned at him. 

“Now he is. So–” 

“Like!” Orla shouted, causing the people further down the bench to swivel their heads in their direction. She hunched her shoulders. “Sorry.” 

“Yeah,” Carr said, ruffling her short curls.

Now that they were out of the capital, Orla seemed less self-conscious about the length of her hair, although that was likely inspired by Carr’s strangely appealing, self-cut hair. Resh wasn’t sure how the short, ragged lengths of red-gold resembled anything but a hack job done without using a mirror or giving a shit how it turned out (which was exactly the case), but somehow it worked for her.

They switched teaching roles now, Orla using his notebook to show her the letters that made the sounds Carr referred to, then the word like. Resh took the opportunity to eat, softening his bread in the lukewarm soup before taking a bite. 

Thankfully, no one in this town–if you could even call this place a town–had been a dick, so with any luck, Carr wouldn’t feel the need to kill anyone here. Not that he could blame her for the last incident, although before he’d learned about the serving girl, he’d been… unhappy that she’d gotten her hands dirty because he’d frozen. 

Unhappy. He almost snorted at the thought. Embarrassed, more like. But it helped his pride a bit that he could still haggle with the merchants and innkeepers. Most of the population was at least semi-literate, but on the occasions they weren’t, he had Orla translate for him, using gestures and expressions to express his intentions.    

All in all, aside from the difficulties at the start, this trip was going pretty well. 

Carr was acting more comfortable around him after their talk. She got along well with Orla. Resh dared to hope they might all be able to make a life together once they found a place to settle. 

A yawn cracked his jaw, and he reached to cover his mouth with his gloved hand. Managing to sleep more than an hour or two a night was… a problem, ensuring that he was perpetually tired these days. Carr shot him a knowing look before returning her attention to the notebook, her gaze flickering over the glove he’d put back on before they entered the inn. 

Resh scrunched his nose. He was working on the whole covering-up thing. It just didn’t seem worth it to invite questions in a place they wouldn’t be staying at for more than a night.  

~~~

The breeze the small window admitted to their room was barely enough to stir the stuffy, too-warm air inside. Cloud cover blocked the light of the stars and most of the moon’s silver glow. 

Resh stared into the darkness, hugging the thin blanket from his pallet on the floor to his chest. 

One of the girls mumbled in their sleep before settling back into the soft rhythms of sleep. 

He was so tired. But they were sharing a room. If he had a nightmare, he might wake someone; Carr most likely, as she was a light sleeper. Resh didn’t especially want her to see him like that again. 

Running travel scenarios and possible destinations through his mind didn’t much help distract from the occasional creak in the hall that made his heart jump or keep the shifting shadows from looking like ominous versions of… he yawned, his eyes drifting closed against his will. 

A knee dug sharply into his stomach, driving all the air from his lungs while abusing bruised muscle and mutilated skin. His fingers clenched around the chains stretching his arms out while Marcus took his sweet time carving another searing line into his flesh.  It hurt, but it was still better than other options. Resh clenched his jaw, trying not to give the bastard the satisfaction of hearing his pain.  The prince moved, which at least allowed Resh to breathe again. But the dagger moved too, dragging across his chest, his abdomen, crossing some of Marcus’ previous handiwork, leaving trails of blood and burning lines of pain that burst into bright sparks, shooting throughout his body.  He whimpered, squeezing his eyes shut against the tears as Marcus’ fingers replaced the bite of the blade, digging cruelly into lacerated flesh, trailing in such a familiar manner over Resh’s body that he wanted to claw what was left of his own skin off.  

Resh’s eyes snapped back open, and he drew in a sharp breath, curling his legs up to his chest. Not there not there not there. 

He wanted to get up, wanted to leave the room, go for a walk, do anything but lie there, but his body felt frozen. If he moved, that shadow over there would see him, would stop him, would… no, no it wouldn’t. That shadow was just a shadow. It couldn’t hurt him. He took another shuddering breath. 

Happy memories, maybe? If he thought about his childhood, maybe his dreams would reflect those memories instead. Resh pictured his father returning from a trade route, going over the ledgers with him while baby Orla crawled around, his mother cooking something that smelled fantastic in the other room. 

His heart stopped thumping so hard at least, no longer trying to leap from his chest. His eyes drifted closed again while he built a block tower for toddler Orla, listening to her tinkling laugh when he pretended to be a monster, knocking the blocks down with a clatter…

Marcus’ laughter was one of pure joy, layering over the small, whimpering cries of the person struggling beneath his blade. Resh tried to move, to stop him, only to find his arms chained to the wall, stretching his shoulders painfully as the links clattered, taunting him.  The prince finished slicing off the person’s clothes, leaving angry lines of red splitting pale flesh. A step to the side allowed Resh to see who was with him, and he lunged against the chains, over and over, when Carr’s tear-filled eyes met his own.  He cried out with her when Marcus set the tip of his blade against her side, slowly pushing it in–

Resh bolted upright, a scream lodged in his useless throat, his heart thrumming desperately as his eyes tried to penetrate the darkness. Where was she, where was he, where… 

A sharp intake of air cut through the oppressive silence, releasing on a soft, strangled sob, and he jerked his head to the side, barely making out a bed against the wall. 

Carr. 

Barely able to breathe through the tightness squeezing his chest, he scrambled for the bed, his hands encountering a soft, warm body shifting restlessly under the sheets. 

A soft, warm body that yelped, moving with blinding speed to pin him to the floor, the sharp edge of a blade nicking his throat.   

“Gimme one good reason I shouldn’t slit your fuckin throat,” Carr hissed. 

Resh didn’t dare move, and couldn’t give a reason, not out loud, anyway. His breaths sawed in and out, too loud in the quiet room. 

“Oh gods,” Carr gasped, finally recognizing him and withdrawing her dagger. “What the fuck, Resh? Coulda killed you.” 

She didn’t seem to notice the tear tracks glistening on her cheeks. Looked like he wasn’t the only one with nightmares, then. But where the fuck had that dagger come from? 

He sat up slowly, raising his hands palm up in front of his chest in a gesture he hoped she interpreted as an apology. The bagginess of her sleep clothes formed an odd silhouette, but as far as he could tell, they were free of blood. His breathing settled a bit, and he pressed his hand to the stinging cut under his jaw. 

“Too dark t’ fuckin talk to you,” Carr muttered, sounding irritated. “You have a nightmare?” 

At his nod, she raised a hand to her cheek, found the wetness lingering there. “Fuck,” she said, scrubbing her face. “You okay?” 

Resh couldn’t care less about himself right now. He pointed to her, tilting his head. 

“‘M fine,” she said, too quickly. 

Of course she was. He was starting to think she was just as fine as he was. 

Which was not fine at all, was it. 

“You wanna go back t’ sleep?” she asked. 

Fuck no. He shook his head, leaning against the wall under the window with a sigh. Carr moved to join him, her shoulder lightly brushing against his. He waited for her to pull away, but she didn’t. 

If anything, she moved closer, her warmth searing through the thin cloth of his nightshirt. 

“Your sister sleeps like a rock, huh,” she said, wrapping her arms around her knees. 

Resh snorted, the release of air loud enough to acknowledge her words. Orla could sleep through anything. A good thing, considering the current situation, he supposed. The band around his chest slowly loosened as they sat there, Carr’s presence at his side a continuous reassurance. 

It wasn’t the first time he’d dreamed she had been caught too.

Next

Image Description

[ID: The banner is a blue-green background, with tree branches arching over a set of blue-green eyes, forming an approximation of a face. The words Hidden Depths are written in white above the eyes. Any other images are purely decorative lines. end ID]

[thenightling]

The Sandman: A Game of you (A summary of the plot from someone who actually read the thing...)

I have seen a lot of misconceptions floating around Tumblr about the plot of The Sandman: A Game of You, mostly thanks to an old Mary Sue article that seemed to deliberately take the plot out of context to make it look transphobic.   Some people on Tumblr have even said “I love Sandman but I won’t read A Game of you because I heard about what’s in it.”   Neil Gaiman, himself, even received an ask here on Tumblr about the story’s “problematic” content because the person who wrote the ask legitimately thought the story said trans women cannot use magick in The Sandman universe.   I have even seen transphobes claim Neil Gaiman is on their side for this reason.

According to Neil Gaiman he wrote A Game of you while being consulted by trans friends, one in particular, who heavily became the basis for the character Wanda. 

The first version of The Dreaming (Sandman spin-off comics) and The House of Mystery Volume 2 (Also a Sandman spin-off) were written by Caitlin R. Kiernan. (a transwoman).  That’s right.  Neil Gaiman left The Sandman franchise in the care of a transwoman.  

  Now, let’s begin...

______________________________ 

The Sandman: A game of you (summary)

First we need to go backward into The Sandman. The main character of The Sandman is Morpheus AKA Dream of The Endless. The Endless are a family of anthropomorphic personifications.  That means they are living embodiments of certain concepts.  For example Morpheus, also known as Dream has an older sister who is Death.  She’s essentially the Grim Reaper.  

Note: Death is older than Dream (Morpheus) but looks younger by at least a decade. The family consists of Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and little Delirium (She used to be Delight but she went mad).   Most of Sandman is the story of Morpheus and what happens to him.   The place to begin is Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes.    

The first story to feature Hazel and Foxglove (though Foxglove’s other name, Donna, is given much earlier in the series) is The Sandman: A Game of You.   Donna AKA Foxglove had been in an abusive relationship with a girl named Judy.  After their breakup Judy had been murdered (issue 6 of The Sandman, within Preludes and Nocturnes, the issue is called 24 Hour Diner).  

Donna took the name Foxglove as a stage name as she wants to be a rock musician. She falls in love with Hazel.    The two are housemates with Wanda (a transwoman who ran away from a very transphobic hillbilly family), Barbie (a pretty and slightly eccentric makeup artist and dreamer trying to rebuild her life after a failed romantic relationship with a man named… I kid you not, Ken), and Larissa, also known as Thessaly, a nerdy looking and stand-offish woman who turns out to be a powerful and slightly-homicidal witch from ancient Greece.   There’s also an old man named George who turns out to actually be a Nightmare spy for a creature called the Cuckoo (more on that later.)

I’ll give the plot of The Sandman: A game of you first and then tell you the full plot of Death: Time of your Life.   The two connect.

In The Sandman: A game of you we learn that Barbie had a Labyrinth-esue fantasy world (Think of Jim Henson’s The Labyrinth) that she would escape to and lucid dream of all through her childhood and early adulthood but she had not been there in a long time.  We (readers) met Barbie earlier in The Sandman: The doll’s house when she had been dating Ken and in that story we see the first glimpse of Barbie’s fantasy world.  

Now her childhood anthropomorphic animal friends miss her and worry about her and were terrified of the activities of The Cuckoo (The main “bad guy” of her fantasy world).   One of the creatures (who greatly resembles Ludo from Labyrinth but is articulate) enters the real world where he is unfortunately killed.  He tried to warn Barbie of the bad things happening in her fantasy land.

Things start to get weirder.  That night everyone has anxiety based nightmares.  It turns out Hazel is pregnant from a one night stand that she regretted and didn’t know how to tell Foxglove so this is the basis for her nightmare.  Foxglove has nightmares about her abusive and deceased ex, Judy.  Wanda is having nightmares about transphobia.  She has not medically transitioned and she worries that others feel she does not count as a woman unless she has the surgery.  She’s actually terrified of surgery and affirms herself in the dream that even without the surgery she IS a woman.

After everyone has terrible anxiety dreams and most confront their nightmares they wake up to find things are strange in their home.   First Hazel confesses her indiscretion to Foxglove. Foxglove forgives her and they decide to raise the baby together.

Larissa finds George, realizing he was the cause of the nightmares, and kills him. She uses his remains to find out what is really going on.

Barbie, however, will not wake up.   She has been sucked back into her Labyrinth-esque fantasy.

The friends, finding out that Larissa is really an ancient and powerful witch known as Thessaly, decide to go on a rescue mission into the realm of dreams (known as The Dreaming) to save Barbie.

Thessaly gets revealed as being a TERF (this was written in the 90s so the term didn’t exist yet), claiming her magick will not work for Wanda since she’s not a “real woman” and besides, someone needs to stay behind to protect Barbie’s body.

Thessaly opens a way by the moon’s magick to get herself, Hazel, and Foxglove into Barbie’s fantasy world.

While that’s going on a storm is unleashed by Thessaly’s use of magick.  The storm causes heavy winds and trees to uproot.  Wanda sees a homeless old woman in trouble.  It’s a woman who had previously been nasty to her.   Wanda saves her life but dies in the process.

In Barbie’s dream the heroes find a magical gemstone called the Porpentine (actually a rose quartz dreamstone, a magical stone that Dream AKA Morpheus uses as a conduit for his power. His main one, for a long time, was a ruby.  Think of it like a magick wand).   They destroy the porpentine, which is actually what the cuckoo wanted.

The Cuckoo had accidentally gotten trapped in Barbie’s dream many years before and though they feed on imagination she wanted her freedom.   The destruction of the dreamstone alerts Morpheus (Dream) who comes to see that the skerry (The island that was Baribe’s fantasy world) is no longer needed.

The island had actually been created many centuries before for a former lover of Morpheus’ known as Alianora.  Alianora could not return to her old life but wanted a place of her own when they broke up so Morpheus had given her the island. The dreamstone powered its magick.  The island would exist so long as the dreamstone did.   For many centuries after Alianora passed away the island had been the plaything of many young woman dreamers.  

Morpheus absorbs the island and all its characters back into himself.  And has a brief private conversation with Alianora’s ghost, comforting her by assuring her that her island had been home to many dreamers after her.

Morpheus allows the Cuckoo to fly away (which is all she really wanted), but Thessaly had wanted to kill her for all the trouble she had caused them.  Morpheus prevents this.  

Morpheus tells Foxglove, Hazel, and Thessaly that they should not have physically entered The Dreaming.  That this is against nature.   Barbie may wakeup but the rest are trapped.   However, he does owe Barbie a boon for destroying the dreamstone- giving the power back to him that had long since been stored away in the jewel.  This is a bit of a con on Morpheus’ part, because he got her to ask that her friends be returned to the waking world as her boon.  This was Morphesus’ sneaky way of getting out of being in debt to her.

One by one they are returned to the waking world.   And Morpheus and Thessaly become lovers (but she later dumps him, saying he cares too much about mortals, which surprises him because he used to be a very cold, and aloof bastard and he doesn’t like facing that he’s changed.)

Barbie attends Wanda’s funeral but unfortunately it’s hosted by Wanda’s redneck family who keep misgendering her.  Cut off Wanda’s hair, put her in a suit, and deadname her on her headstone.  Barbie writes Wanda’s real name on the headstone in lipstick.  

Barbie also has a very strange dream where she sees Wanda with the delicate, feminine, features she had always wanted but was too scared to get the surgery to have (bone structure related), and another girl she doesn’t recognize. This is Death.  

Death waves to Barbie, thus assuring her that Wanda is happy and safe where she is going and that yes, Wanda was ALWAYS a woman. This was written in 1992 so this was a big deal.  A lot of people here on Tumblr mistake the story as transphobic and legitimately believe it was saying magick won’t work for a transwoman.  No.  This scene was to prove Thessaly and Wanda’s parents wrong about that and to show cis het readers that trans women ARE women right down in their soul.

_______________________________  

Death:  The High cost of Living.

In Death The High cost of living we learn that every so often Death takes human form as a means of self-humbling.  She used to be very cold and mean until one day a soul she was collecting asked her how she would feel about it.  So to remind herself of why she should show compassion she turns herself mortal for one day and lives as a human woman.  

I won’t give the full plot of this story here but know that she attends a Foxglove concert and proclaims herself a fan.

__________________________________  

Death: Time of your life.

Hazel had the baby and they named him Alvin.  This was meant to be in honor of Wanda even though that was Wanda’s deadname and she had hated the name.  They couldn’t figure out how to make a male equivalent of Wanda’s name so they just used her deadname.  I don’t think this is a great idea, personally, but at least they tried to honor her memory.

By now Foxglove is a bit of a celebrity But she is stuck in the closet. It’s the mid-90s and her manager is worried that if she comes out as a lesbian it could ruin her career.

Foxglove thinks she’s falling out of love with Hazel because while on tour, she (Foxglove), has been sleeping around while on tour and knows she hasn’t been spending enough time with Hazel.  She’s also getting burnt out.  Being a celebrity is not all it’s cracked up to be and she misses being obscure.

It turns out baby Alvie (Alvin) had an accident and Hazel offered up herself within a year if Death would not take Alvin.  Death apparently listened but she warned her, she had to take someone when the time comes.    

When Foxglove learns what has happened she rushes home and then to The Sunless lands (the land of The Dead) to save Hazel.  Her handler comes with her.  When she learns the deal Hazel made with Death she’s ready to offer herself to save her, realizing she DOES still love Hazel after all.  The handler, however, offers himself instead.  

It’s HEAVILY implied that Death was actually going to take him all along and the rest was just a rouse to save Hazel and Foxglove’s relationship because she liked them, and wanted them to realize what was important.  It also assured the handler a chance to die a hero, doing something noble and good, which he secretly wanted anyway.

Foxglove goes back to her pre-music career name of Donna and settles into a private life where she is openly with Hazel and their son.   And they live happily Ever After.

I figured it was important someone who actually read the comics summarize it since so many people here on Tumblr mistake The Sandman: A Game of you as transphobic and some have even called Hazel and Foxglove AKA Donna homophobic simply because they both have had affairs and forgave each other for it and Donna’s previous relationship had been abusive.  There was an article from The Mary Sue a few years ago that deliberately took things out of context to make the story of A Game of You seem problematic and too many people trusted that as being accurate.  

Also I had been wanting to write out the summary for some time since there are Sandman fans now who out-right refuse to read the arc because they were told it has problematic content, and some that badly misunderstood what it was trying to say. i.e. legitimately thinking feminine magick wouldn’t work for poor Wanda when in reality the whole point of Wanda’s arc was to tell the reader that transwomen ARE women.

[barbariccia]

Do you have a few minutes to talk, one-on-one?

ash’s been facetiming with her sisters at home, wherever home is for her family right now. we get the chance to overhear her sister saying that she saw kaidan in a news vid and that he’s cute, to which we get to raise our eyebrows... unless you’re playing a maleshep, in which case her sister says that you’re the one who’s cute. (naturally, this is the starter for the ashley romance for a mshep.)

ash herself doesn’t think kaidan’s cute - or at the very least, she’s not sweet on him, so we take the chance to ask about her family instead.

Shepard: Did your father serve with the fleet?

Ashley: Yeah. Took any crap posting he could get that offered space time. He worked his ass off trying to get recognised. But he never got above Serviceman Third Class. He was real proud when I made Chief. First thing he did was salute.

Shepard: What about your mother? You haven’t mentioned her.

Ashley: You must know what military wives are like. Strong because they have to be. Able to raise kids while Dad’s away on a six-month cruise. She has a degree in planetary geology. She and Dad both wanted to see new worlds. She gave up her career to raise us, though.

innocuous enough, but it stands out to me that ash’s family is all still hale and healthy. maybe that’s just a byproduct of the final fantasy franchise, where i’ve gotten used to a 99.99% rate of at least one parental death for characters within the series (as an aside, if you can tell me one character who has both parents alive other than zack fair, i’ll publicly endorse you for whatever role you want to lead), but also within the normandy so far. the rest of our crew has either committed patricide, is estranged from one parental unit, or just straight up hasn’t mentioned one or both of them, so a full family unit isn’t exactly something to be sniffed at.

on its own, i don’t need to highlight the parentification that ashley’s been party to for her whole life - she mentions she’s the eldest of four sisters, with the youngest still being in high school. and ash is only 25! she’s had to have worked her absolute ass off to attain that kind of position and be relied on by her parents to help with the other kids, and i just... i respect ashley so much. let’s not forget that first contact only occurred the year before she was born. there’s been a lot of change in her life, both as quick as the digital age upon us in the last decade or two, and slow over her years of growing up.

we get to ask about her sisters in more depth; she says her relationship with the youngest, sarah, was rocky for a while up until the point where sarah got a boyfriend that wanted to go further than she did. her other sisters worried as well, and ashley was posted in the same galaxy, but too far away to make it back quickly if something happened.

Shepard: If he really liked her, he wouldn’t be pushy.

i really like her dialogue here, honestly. it’s a real human response of her! ash definitely feels like the most real of the characters aboard the ship, to me - her responses to things are flawed and shitty, but she’s self aware of it to a degree, and she’s not the kind of person that acts black and white, either end of the morality scale. who among us can really say that they’re the pinnacle of human morals? even the best of us have thought things like this before, in varying contexts - even if we don’t verbalise them. doesn’t make us bad people... just human.

sarah’s boyfriend thought he’d try and persuade her into having sex, and sarah herself threw him into a tree and left him then and there. the williams parents had all their daughters learn some kind of self-defense - ash herself was taught hand-to-hand, sarah learned aikido, the second eldest got pistol training, and the third picked up the sword, which is just. utterly hilarious on a galactic scale considering the setting. i think i love the williams family.

Shepard: Didn’t you call the police?

Ashley: [Sarah] said it wouldn’t solve the real problem. And she and Mike would both become household names. It was a small colony. I said it was her call to make. That we should let her do it her way. Mom was pretty pissed about that.

ash took leave to walk her sister to school and back, and on the last day of her leave, the boy in question was waiting after school.

so this SURE IS A STORY,

and that’s the end of the talk about her sisters. it makes me feel fuzzy that these girls - no matter how not real they are - have the presence of mind to deal with an abuser so calmly, but at the same time... leaves me feeling tired. not that i expect humans to ever really change, especially not in only a hundred odd years, but for this setting to be so expansive, for there to be bigger problems and more people around than anyone could ever have dreamed... and yet entitlement and abuse still runs rampant.

this is its own problem within the universe, that despite everything, a female shepard doesn’t quite have the same footing as a male shepard does in certain situations, but i’ll get to those when i get to it. besides... i suppose there are bigger things happening now in the real world than anyone could ever have dreamed of seeing, and petty problems still win out in terms of importance. doesn’t matter how small your problem is if it’s personal.

we’re not done quite yet, though.

Ashley: Dad always wanted to serve in space. But he wanted us to have real ground under our feet. He’d say, “Space is beautiful, but you can’t raise a family there.”

Ashley: “I cannot rest from travel: I will drink life to the lees. All times I have enjoy’d greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those that loved me, and alone. For always roaming with a hungry heart. Much have I seen and known. Cities of men, and manners, climates, councils, governments...”

Ashley: “Ulysses” was Dad’s favourite poem. Every time he shipped out, he recorded me reading it. He had a dozen versions when he retired.

Shepard: Does he still like it?

Ashley: I sure hope so. I read it to his grave every time I go home.

Lord Alfred Tennyson was a well known (and still popularised) British poet, best known for his poems The Charge of the Light Brigade, which i studied at school, and Ulysses. his work is still felt today with phrases that became commonplace from his work, like the lines “tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all”.

the lines ash quotes specifically are about the restlessness of wanderlust and wanting to live life utterly to the fullest, feeling nostalgic for the times when the subject was doing just that, and the full poem continues and ends with the assertion that the speaker’s goal is to continue living life wholeheartedly until the end, and even beyond.

speaking of the beyond-

Ashley: That’s not a problem with you, is it? That I believe in God?

and we reach out to take the hand of yet another utterly fascinating facet of ashley. we’ve seen religion briefly within the game so far - the preaching hanar on the citadel comes immediately to mind - but there’s always been a feeling within sci-fi that because the universe can now be explored that god isn’t real and that things like faith are tossed to the wayside in favour of scientific exploration and discovery, even though in the grand scheme of things people tend... not to behave like that, on the whole. i vastly, enormously appreciate ashley for keeping her faith, and for it to be really not a huge part of her character. at no point is she reduced to any stereotype of character, whether that be “gun-toting god-fearing soldier babe”, or “i am religious therefore i must preach” - it, like other parts of her personality, are only parts that make up a whole and do not define her.

i love ashley. she’s such a good character.

[bubbebruja]

On the Death of Sirius Black and Literary Gay Bashing in Harry Potter

In 2003, I was ten, straight, and positively obsessed with Hermione Granger.

If those last two things sound a little contradictory, it’s because they were. I do not mean I was “obsessed” in the sense that I wanted to dress up like her for Halloween, I mean “obsessed” in the sense that I literally blushed anytime my mom read her name aloud to my sister and I.

Queer. I was queer. I just didn’t know it yet.

Thus, I didn’t notice the Sirius/Remus romantic subtext as a child, drinking hot chocolate propped against my sister’s knees and listening enraptured as my mom read to us from the most recently released Harry Potter book. When Order of the Phoenix came out, I was far more interested in Angsty Harry™ and the evils of Delores Umbridge, and when Sirius died, I was not even all that upset. I didn’t really like him all that much, knew even at that age that he embodied too many of the stereotypically “masculine�� traits I had already grown to hate with his pride and brooding and emotional immaturity. I didn’t much care, much less recognize that JK Rowling had done something rather unforgiveable.

But others did.

Seventeen years later, I get it.

By 2003, many older, wiser readers had long since clocked the queer subtext between Sirius and Remus. And, when I picked up the books earlier this year to re-read them for the first time since they were read to me as a child, I saw it too. (Notably, this was prior to JKR’s most recent round of blazing transphobia, after which I stopped reading.) And, okay, yes, I am the type of queer who reads queerness into many things. But y’all, I really didn’t have to try all that hard this time. If I were reading these books for the first time in the context of 2020, I would assume Remus and Sirius were canonically a couple, and JKR just wasn’t bashing us over the head with clear evidence of it. She doesn’t do that most of the time anyway. By Order of the Phoenix, in my opinion, the evidence (as movie Dumbledore says so awkwardly) is incontrovertible. The living together? The joint Christmas present? The “Sirius, sit down” scene early in the book? The confirmed HIV/AIDS metaphor, IN THE 90S?? THEY’RE FUCKING GAY TOGETHER.

And here’s the thing, (and I have no proof of this, so you’re just going to have to roll with it): I think it’s pretty clear that JKR became more conservative as time progressed. Money tends to do that to people, conveniently. What started as a series about the power young people hold to defeat evil and fight injustice eventually devolved into a flaccid epilogue where heterosexual nuclear families abounded and there were (still) no visibly queer characters in sight.

By the time the final book came out, I was a full-fledged teenager, and I, too, had abandoned fantasies of fighting evil and injustice for fantasies of settling down with “my perfect man” (L. O. L.) So, I get it. I get that priorities change for young people. But for adults, especially those recently drunk on the power of infinite amounts of money and fame? Nah. JKR knew what she was doing. JKR laid all the groundwork for a possible relationship between Remus and Sirius and then changed her mind. Or was told to change her mind. Or was forced to change her mind.

I have A Lot Of Feelings™ about Tonks and Remus’s relationship (most of which are about the way their canonical relationship plays into a lot of really awful tropes about disabled people which, no matter how you read him, Remus is). And I have a lot of feelings about Sirius Black as a character. I have a lot of feelings about Dumbledore, some related to his posthumous outing and some not. And, like most of us now, I have a lot of feelings about the entire franchise as a whole. But here’s what I know: It doesn’t actually matter, because JKR didn’t just change the explicit relationship dynamics between Sirius and Remus, she quite literally killed any chances of queer romance.

And she didn’t just kill Sirius. She killed Remus, too. And Tonks (who is a genderqueer butch and I will die on that hill). And Dumbledore. And the cute, squeaky house elf with a love for clothes and an obsession with Harry. And the young Gryffindor boy who followed Harry around, constantly asking for photos and autographs. And – you know what? Fuck it. – the person who lived INSIDE ANOTHER MAN’S BODY before returning to his bodily form, during which time he relied heavily on his male servant who cut off a literal body part to restore his master.

Am I reading too much queer subtext into each of these characters? Maybe. But, as this lovely article states, “close reading is queer culture, always has been.” And I can’t help but notice that the vast majority of the characters JKR didn’t kill off are, well, pretty fucking straight. (Drarry shippers, feel free to come at me. I’m sure there’s plenty of queer subtext there, too). They’re, for the most part, characters with a clear canonical history of heterosexual romance, as if only those with a possible future of a heterosexual, nuclear family are worthy of survival.

And I just don’t think this was an accident. I think it was the intentional plan of someone who started to feel like the world of inclusion she’d created was being read as far too inclusive.

To call this “literary gay bashing” is a pretty serious accusation with a pretty serious use of a very loaded term. But the thing is, I think we too often let people like JKR off the hook without recognizing what her words – both literary and non-literary – have done and can do. We too often dismiss it with statements like, “she’s entitled to her opinion”. Gay bashing is the intentional abuse or assault of someone perceived to be a member of the LGBTQIA2+ community, physically or verbally, that often results in lasting harm or death. And I use this term to describe JKR’s work particularly because it is sensationalizing, because it calls violence what it is: violence. Because, sure, she’s as entitled to her opinion as anyone else. But the second you create a world where anyone, especially children, are going to see themselves, going to feel safe, your “opinion” better do as little violence as possible.

When I saw the first Harry Potter movie, back in 2001, I refused to discuss it for months. I was furious. At the time, I couldn’t quite pinpoint why, but I now realize that I was heartbroken that Hermione Granger didn’t look like me. When JKR described a girl with wild, brown curly hair, I saw me. I saw my hair. And so, as children tend to do, I saw the rest of me, too. I saw tanned skin and dark brown eyes and full lips and high cheekbones (the ones people always told me made me look “Indian”, which I only partially am). I saw the quiet confidence that develops when you’re the brownest kid in your school, ready to strike but only when provoked. The pale, arrogant, racially unambiguous Hermione Granger I saw on the screen made me feel dirty, cast off, unworthy of representation. The self-hatred I felt when White Hermione Granger entered the film alongside White Harry Potter and White Ron Weasley and White Everyone Else was a kind of violence.

And when JKR killed off all of her queer-read characters, she took that violence to another level. Because they were there, we saw them, we did not imagine the romantic undertones between Remus and Sirius, or the way that a shape-shifting young woman with short, spiky hair reads an awful lot like a person uninterested in traditional gender. We saw ourselves in the most beloved franchise of all time. And then, she took away those possibilities, and she took away those characters.

And you know what? People die because they can’t see themselves in media. People die because that’s what they’ve watched everyone like them do on screen and in books. It’s not harmless, and it’s not victimless, and it’s violent.

There’s only one solution to literary gay bashing: To Bash Back. We can and do write ourselves into the stories, into the world, and refuse to settle for explanations that gaslight us into thinking we imagined things that were never there, or ask us to settle for tiny crumbs of useless representation.

I intended to finish my most recent story, “Come Healing”, with an ambiguous ending that left the possibility of Sirius’s death open to reader interpretation. But then, JKR kept going, and talking, and kept creating violence, and I got mad. And so, like so many queers before me, I rewrote the story and changed the ending, and created love and security and peace and life where the canonical author had created hopelessness and death. And in the world we live in right now, that is radical. It is bashing back.

It’s tiny, but it’s something. Every time we write a happy ending for a queer character, we create the possibilities of happy endings for queer people everywhere. And no one – no matter how hard she may try – can take that away.

[neriad13]

Favorite Media of 2020!

There was a large swathe of this year during which I was unable to concentrate on reading (as there probably was for a lot of other typically-frequent readers), so, as a result, I ended up listening to way more podcasts and watching way more TV shows. Not a bad thing, but boy did I read way less books than usual. 

However, for the first time in a while, the amount of fiction I read was about equal with the amount of nonfiction I read. Last year’s reading resolution was to read more fiction, so...success??

I did read a lot of phenomenal fiction when I had the energy to do so this year.

Books - Fiction

The Martian - Andy Weir

This book is the hardest of the hard sci fi I think I’ve ever read. Every single aspect of it is minutely researched and calculated. The author literally wrote equations to write this book. The science is insanely impressive and yet...it never loses its sense of humor or humanity in the mix. In fact, they’re the thing that drives the entire story.

Warlock Holmes - G. S. Denning

Way early in the year I was strolling down the fantasy aisle at the library, when this cover caught my eye. I took one look at it, went “oh, this looks silly” and...proceeded to devour the entire series in a matter of weeks. 

It is very silly. Especially when it’s pointing out something that was silly in the original. There’s something so satisfying about Watson immediately answering Holmes with the correct number of steps in their flat when he’s trying to make his point about how most people don’t pay attention to things like that.

World War Z - Max Brooks

Every single scenario in here could easily support an entire book. A park ranger whose job it is to contain the yearly zombie spring thaw? HECK YES. I’d read tens of thousands of words about that. A Chinese admiral who defaults, steals the government���s premier submarine, loads it up with the families of his underlings and takes to the sea for years to live in the maritime economy that has sprung up in a world where everyone is trying to escape the shore? That could be an entire movie on its own. 

Every chapter was more creative than the last and as a huge worldbuilding fan, this book was so, so fun.

An Unkindness of Ghosts - Rivers Solomon

In which a queer, neurodivergent protagonist solves a mystery on a spaceship which is a microcosm of antebellum era politics! This had a beautiful, mysterious, wonder-inducing writing style and it was a joy to peer into the wildly differing minds of every single character.

Books - Nonfiction

Underland - Robert MacFarlane

In every chapter, the author visits a different hole. Basically.

It’s an exploration of caves, catacombs, mines, nuclear waste facilities and the hidden underbelly of every forest. It was fascinating. And fundamentally changed how I look at time.

Rejected Princesses - Jason Porath

After years of having enjoyed the web entries, I finally got my hands on the first book and was not disappointed. 

There are the more entertaining entries, of course and the art is as charming as always, but what struck me the most were the more difficult stories. The deeper you go into this book, the more horrific it gets. The author does not hold back on the indignities suffered by the historical figures he writes about. It’s terrible...but also very, very illuminating.

The Gift of Fear - Gavin De Becker

This book - while maintaining all the essential information in it - could be pared down to one sentence in a sea of blank pages and that sentence would be: trust your instincts. End of story.

But in a world where instincts are either customarily suppressed or going haywire, it’s not quite that easy, which is why I’m glad there is more to the book.

I picked it up thinking “ha ha, betcha can’t help a person with anxiety who fears all the time already” and...what it actually ended up doing was giving me the tools to differentiate between real fear and unfounded fear. And did help with the anxiety quite a bit.

Fanfiction

Watch Over Me - cakeisatruth

A Bioshock fic from the point of view of a little sister who is learning how to trust and be an ordinary child again. Dark and sweet. An excellent combo.

All That is Visible - Ultima_Thule

An exploration of a minor character in a well researched historical context? That’s my jam! How did they know?? A Tron fic about what it’s like to be a female programmer in the 70s.

Graphic Novels

The Adventure Zone - McElroys + Carey Pietsch

Yesssssssss! It was a running-to-the-library type event whenever my library got a new volume in. The jokes are so good, the art is so lively and the ways in which they added the details that the podcast couldn’t necessarily get across is *mwah*

Trail of Blood - Shuuzou Oshimi

Hoooooooly shit, the art style of this one!! It’s beautifully detailed and expressive, sure, but the real draw for me was how it changes with the emotional state of the main character. There’s this sequence in which he’s consumed with anxiety at school and all of his classmates become blurry and unfocused, until they can’t be recognized as humans at all, that particularly sticks with me.

It’s a horror story about a kid who witnesses his loving mother push his cousin off a cliff for seemingly no reason and is then obligated by her to keep the secret, which is eating him from the inside out. It’s so good, guys, please read it.

Level Up - Gene Lien Yang/Thien Pham

A story about a kid who is haunted by his late father’s desire for him to become a gastroenterologist. It’s funny and touching and the ending gave me what I can only describe as a feeling of exhilaration. Y’know that feeling when something unexpected but not out of left field, perfectly in tune with the narrative arc and gut bustingly funny happens, all in the same panel? That one.

Film

Searching

This is a fairly standard thriller about a dad trying to find out what happened to his missing daughter. It’s also found footage...but not in the usual way, which was what made it so compelling to me. It’s told through the dad’s phone calls, google searches, social media interactions, news footage, security cameras and webcams. It was such a cool way to tell a story.

Train to Busan

There’s a lot that’s already been said about this movie and I don’t think there’s much more I can meaningfully add to that. Suffice to say that ya gotta take care of each other if you’re going to survive a zombie apocalypse!!

TV Series

My Brother’s Husband

As close to a perfect adaptation as a person can get (barring the entire conversation in English which was...oof). I was so happy when they took it a step further and showed Kana and Yaichi actually getting to meet Mike’s family.

Zumbo’s Just Desserts

I watched a lot of baking shows this year. Like...a lot. They were my much-needed comfort viewing for the year and this one was my favorite, even over The Great British Baking Show (which I LOVE). Why? Because the pastry chef for whom it’s named makes such bizarre and wonderful desserts and fosters an environment in which the competitors do the same. I’ve never seen anything like a lot of the desserts that make an appearance on this show. Every single episode was an awesome surprise and so help me, this show had better get a third season.

She-ra and the Princesses of Power

There’s also a lot that’s been said about this one, so I won’t say much more. Suffice to say: DAMN. That’s how you do an 80s toy tie-in cartoon remake.

Infinity Train

This show’s premise is probably the most unique I’ve seen in recent years. Its balance of comedy, horror and existential dread is also *mwah* I also love how much it trusts the viewer to figure things out on their own.

Primal

A late entry sliding in before the year ends! I finally got to watch the second half of the first season last weekend and it was EXCELLENT. The pacing, the brutal fight scenes, the adorable dinosaur antics, the animation, the quiet moments - *mwah-mwah-mwah-mwah-mwah*

The most emotional moment for me was the part in which the protagonists watch, with sorrow, as the rabid dinosaur who’s been trying to kill them all night dies an excruciating death.

Also it sets up a fascinating new plotline right before ending in a cliffhanger!! Another one for the ‘had better get a next season’ list.

Games

Night in the Woods

This is one that’s been on my to play list for a few years and I was so glad I finally got my hands on it. It’s like...The Millennial Experience (TM), the game. I felt so seen, playing it. The character writing was fantastic.

Prey

I don’t know why I put off finishing this for so long. I guess I wasn’t in the right alien killing headspace for a while?? Anyway, the setting is gorgeous, the alien biology is weird and cool, the ethics are delightfully murky and the interconnectedness of the station was really cool, especially in the OH SHIT moments at the end. 

Podcasts

The Adventure Zone

I tried to narrow this down to one favorite arc, but found that I couldn’t do it. I love Balance for its comedy and creative energy. I love Amnesty for its drama and acting. I am loving Graduation for the depth of its world and the way in which the real story behind everything that’s happened is slowly unfurling. It’s a good podcast all around.  

The Magnus Archives

Who obsessively listened to every single season while playing Minecraft in about a month? Surely not me, nooooo. Of course not.

There’s also been a lot said on this one, so I’ll keep it brief. I’ve seen things in here that I haven’t really seen elsewhere in horror. My particular favorites were the creepy psychiatric hospital in which the horror comes not from the patients, but from the denial of the doctor to believe them about their mental illnesses and every single thing related to the Anthropocene. The one with the Amazonian village made out of trash - CHILLS.

[danetobelieve]

The More You Know || Orion and Winston

Winston wasn’t sure how to take Orion right now. They were sure that they were being lied to about a good number of things but Winston was trying their hardest not to judge them because they knew that they were in a very difficult situation. Instead, they were trying to keep them occupied and busy. Ricky was out currently, and Winston had decided that it was time to introduce Orion to the pleasures of having pretty much every sort of gaming available that you could possibly once. “So, you gamed much before? Are you like a hardcore gamer? Do you hate games and everything about them? Give me some context here dude.”

Things were still a bit awkward around the house. Not from lack of trying on Winston or Ricky’s part. They had practically bent over backwards trying to make the place as accommodating and welcoming as they could to Orion. Made him food, cleared out a bedroom for him, offered to help move his things. They were even planning a whole day around an ikea trip to get him some necessities. And yet.... well Rio was an awkward person. Around everyone. So it was hard to settle into this new environment that he was supposed to be calling home. Plus, it didn’t help that he still had to lie about so much. “Gaming? Oh yeah. I game a lot.” He smiled, blinking away from his train of thoughts to focus on Winston speaking. “I played handheld games more when I was a kid. I never had a console. But now I game a lot on the PC.” He scratches at the back of his head nervously.  “I’ve been super into like RPG’s. Trying to work my way through the Final Fantasy series. What about you? What do you like to play?”

Winston got it. This must have been awkward enough for them as it was and they were sure that being nice to them didn’t make it any better. But they had to try and get them to settle in as best they could. “Fuck yes dude,” Winston replied with a bright smile, “so we’ve got the PS4 for like entertaining and just hanging out, if we need to relax and get out of our bedrooms and all that good shit. It’s got like Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, it’s also got a VPN app I wrote on it that lets you change regions but keep that on the downlow because it isn’t technically legal and I work for the police.” Winston kept going as they made their way to the kitchen looking for snacks. “I play a shit tonne of PC games, mostly League and Overwatch, but I’ve been playing a bit more WoW recently because that is always a good time. I’m down for RPGs, me and Ricky have been playing Monster Hunter and obviously the classics like Skyrim and Witcher 3. We’ll have to get your PC set up and hardwired in when we bring it over.” 

Orion laughed, “That’s an impressive set up, but don’t worry your secret's safe with me.” They really did have like the ideal set up going on in this house. It was basically an all inclusive bachelor pad. All it was missing was a bunch of gratuitous sports paraphernalia hanging around the place. Orion wasn’t sure that either of them seemed to like the type to be into sports but Orion wasn’t sure. Orion was perched on the living room couch and turned to continue listening to Winston as they were talking about the games they played. “Nice. I am not great at any shooting games, but I’m sure they’re super fun. Especially if you have someone else to play them with. He eventually pushed himself off the couch and made his way into the kitchen also, grabbing a cup to fill up a glass of water. “What are you up to play right now?”

Rummaging through the shelves and cupboards of their kitchen, Winston found a few snacks that they could give to Rio. Chips, doughnuts, some cookies and then a bunch of fruit that they bought because Ricky didn’t really eat anything that was not full to brim with meat or fish. “Hey, when you’re playing a video game you should just enjoy whatever you’re playing,” Winston gamed to relax, not for any other reason. “Uh, I don’t really mind, we can play whatever you like or I can try and find something that’s just good fun if you want to kill time.” Winston grabbed the snacks and made their way over to the lounge, placing everything on a coffee table. “Uh, there’s snacks if you want something, I don’t think I can be bothered to actually make real food unless you’re dying from hunger, but help yourself. Me casa su casa right?” 

Winston gathered a collection of snacks together to take over to the living room area, which Orion appreciated. “Yeah, definitely. I tend to enjoy more strategy or puzzle games but I think I could enjoy most games.” Maybe he had never really enjoyed shooting games because he had been playing them alone. Any game was probably more fun while playing with friends. “Oh no worries. I love snack foods.” Most days, they were his entire meal if he was at the Scribe Headquarters. He had weighed the pros and cons of going home for food or just eating whatever he had stashed at the abandoned building. The junk food usually won out. “I’m cool with whatever. Or I can just watch you play something, that’s cool too. I’ve never really had friends that were also into gaming.” Orion shrugged, trying to be as honest as possible. Considering all the other lies, he at least owed that to Winston, right? They had gathered a pretty good collection of snacks at the coffee table, so Rio didn’t really need to worry about grabbing his own, opting instead to take a drink of his water and grabbing a cookie from the platter on the counter. He took a bite of it, noticing the semi familiar taste. Curiously, he noticed a note tucked slightly under the tray, and peaked down to get a better look at it. Once he glanced at the sender of the note, the cookie immediately caught on his throat and he began coughing, spitting the cookie out in the process. His coughing fit continued for at least a minute before he finally swallowed the entire glass of water and cleared his throat. “Where’d these cookies come from?” He yelled over to Winston, trying to make the question sound more calmly curious rather than frantic.

Everything was going well, Winston was about to suggest that they give something like Crash Team Racing a go, a nice middle of the road game for them to bond over. But then Orion was biting into a cookie and shouting at them. “Uh, someone that I’m …” Winston wanted to say seeing but they weren’t sure that was entirely true just yet, “Uh I don’t know, a friend I guess was hanging out with me earlier in the week and she left them here and you know I had them left over and Ricky doesn’t really eat cookies,” Winston was sweating slightly now. Was Orion deathly allergic to something that had been in the cookies? “Are you allergic to something in the cookies, I don’t have an epi pen or anything but if you’re allergic then you’ve got to have one right? Rio do I need to get your epipen or do I need to take you to the hospital?” Winston couldn’t understand how they hadn’t thought of this, of course they were trying to poison their new roommate in the first few days of him actually being there. 

“No, no I’m not allergic to anything.Just got caught in my throat.” Orion answered once he was finished chugging his glass of water. It was just any other cookie, but for whatever reason it tasted almost acidic in his mouth now. That was all just in his head clearly. A trick of the mind making the food taste worse than it was just because the person who baked it left a bad taste in his mouth. Though Rio wouldn’t have been especially surprised if she had made poisonous cookies, but she wouldn’t do that to Winston. He was a human, harmless. If she was testing him, she wouldn’t have left it at the door with a note. She’d want to see it for herself. Plus, it wasn’t easy to lace cookies with silver. “I-uh” he didn’t know how to approach this. He reached for the note, swiping it from the counter and reading it fully this time, eventually holding it out towards Winston. Not that they could read it from that far away most likely, but he wanted to get the message across. “Did uh- is this the note that came with the cookies?” He asked. His anxiety was practically having a field day in his brain right now, but besides a crack or two in his voice, he was remaining relatively calm. Faking a relationship with his sister had become one of his specialties after all. “That was nice of her… so you’re friends with Athena? Athena Quinn?” Rio questioned, emphasizing the last name and laughing nervously. “I didn’t know you knew my sister.”

Winston winced at the note, they weren’t exactly eager for Orion to find out about Athena in that way. They hadn’t even really told Ricky that much about her and for a good reason. “Uh, yeah, the note came with the cookies…” Winston was very aware about it saying something about enjoying the last night and they were really not a huge fan of the way that Orion was looking at them. Swallowing, their entire reality slowly began crashing down around Winston. “Athena … as in … she’s your … oh fuck … I knew she was a hunter but I didn’t realise that you two were related …” shaking their head, Winston looked up at Orion awkwardly. Looked at the scab on his lip that was mostly healed now. They’d known Orion was a hunter because of Skye, but that had never been an issue for Winston. Just because you were born a hunter didn’t mean that you were a bad person. But … had Athena done that to her own brother. “Orion I swear I didn’t actually know that you two were related, we never exactly exchanged last names and it isn’t like we’ve really … did she do that to your lip and your parents are her parents?” She knew where Winston lived. “It’s fine, I can … I uh … uh….” they were sweating now, unsure of what exactly they were meant to say or do here. “I didn’t know…”

Orion had remained calm up until now. He didn’t want to make it seem like a big deal. In some ways, it wasn’t a big deal, he supposed. It wasn’t Rio’s business who Athena or Winston slept with. Or dated. Or whatever was happening. But still… it was, well most people didn’t know Athena like he did. She was scary good at the facade that she put on, and most people fell for it hook, line and sinker. “Wait.. What?” The calm demeanor lost all traction when Winston mentioned hunter. “You knew she was a hunter?” Oh no. That meant he knew that Rio was a hunter. Or- he wasn’t a hunter but he was technically one. Winston needed to know that. “It’s not- I’m not.” He sighed. This was impossible. If Ricky knew… and before they even had the conversation about Rio knowing that Ricky wasn’t entirely human… this wasn’t good. “It’s- it’s not a big deal.” He forced himself to calm down, to take a deep breath and remain nonchalant about the situation, “I don’t control who my sister sees. That would be creepy.” He laughed, scratching at the back of his head nervously. Talking about his family always made his arms itch. He crossed his arms over his chest and gently scratched at them through his hoodie sleeves. “It was training. I wasn’t lying about that. I just lost focus and she got a good swing in.” Which was true. How did Rio get Winston to realize that his sister was crazy insane without actually disclosing just how crazy insane she was? “Like I said. She’s intense. If you know- well if you like know know. Then you know that too.”

Raising an eyebrow gently, Winston shrugged. “We met fighting vampires Rio, it was pretty obvious that she wasn’t just your run of the mill regular human, besides, no offence but Skylar and I talked about you before I offered you a spot, I’ve known you’re a hunter too for a while. But I don’t get this shit that everyone complains about, it isn’t about who you are or what you are, it is about what YOU do. You obviously aren’t going around killing anyone but biologically if she is it makes sense…” Winston would rather talk about Orion then Athena. How could she have hurt her own sibling like that? Had Winston misjudged her? They weren’t sure. “Ricky doesn’t know, unless Skylar told him, but I don’t think they exactly talk a lot for reasons I can’t really explain but I didn’t think it was my place to tell him your secret…” they swallowed gently thinking about their own secret. “I won’t have her here, if you … you know, if you don’t want her to know the truth about where you are … is she not cool with you coming out too?” Winston knew it was kind of wrong to test that story now, but they wanted the whole truth before they talked to Athena. “I know she’s intense and she obviously is actively out there … well at least killing vampires, she said she only hurts things that hurt other people but that is remarkably arbitrary but at the same time I’m not sure it is my place to judge and now I’m rambling about your sister which I’m sure you don’t want to hear and I know you don’t control her or what she does but I just want you to know that your safety comes first here, Athena’s really nice but your place here comes first…” they fell silent and grabbed a cookie, using the food to silence themselves as they tried to think about what they were going to ask next.

Orion stayed silent the whole time that Winston talked, and blinked surprisingly once the rant was over. “Uh” he began, trying to get everything in order before figuring out how to respond. Winston’s ability to incoherently babble definitely rivaled Rio’s. It was actually pretty heartwarming, know that Rio wasn’t the only one that did it. Plus, he liked having more in common with Winston, he liked them a lot. “Hold on let me think.” There was a lot to unpack in Winston’s monologue. Winston knew about Rio being a hunter. Had for a while, and yet he wasn’t afraid of him? Winston was a human, so Rio supposed he wouldn’t have that fear of death. Also, Skylar and Ricky knew each other, but weren’t talking much anymore. Could this have anything to do with the Selkie thing? Rio knew about Skylar, but had only theorized about Ricky. He hadn’t exactly proven anything or approached Ricky about it. He had learned his lesson from Skylar. Invasion of privacy, not so cool. “I’m not a killer.” Was the first thing that he wanted to make clear, “And Ricky can’t know about it. I’m not even a hunter. I mean I am technically. I was born with the abilities. But I would never hurt anyone.” But what did that make Athena? Until a couple of days ago, Rio had accepted that his sister was just like his parents. A lost cause. But he saw something the other day. A hesitation. She wasn’t a good person, Rio knew that. But maybe she was still a victim after all. “She can’t know where I am. It’s- She wouldn’t hurt me, okay? Not like that at least. But she would tell my parents. And they cannot know.” This was a mistake. Maybe he should leave. The Scribe Headquarters would work for now. Maybe Alain would let him sleep in one of the cars at the garage. Was that unfeasible? He couldn’t believe that Athena had told Winston about what she did. She must actually… like them? Rio wasn’t sure she was capable of that, but Winston was here as proof. And despite the fear and anxiety that came with the fact that Athena had crept her way into one of Rio’s friendships, he hated that twinge of jealousy that he felt in his gut. It wasn’t his place to feel jealous about their relationship. It wasn’t even his business to know about it. “I don’t- I’m not telling you to not hang out with her. I wouldn’t do that. I’m just-” What was he? What did he want to say? This was a disaster. “She doesn’t know. About the coming out part. I mean I think she knows. There was this guy that I used to have a crush on. I never told anyone but Athena just.. Knew. She would always tease me about him, talk about him whenever she hung out with him.” Rio felt gross just thinking about it. She had mostly meant it harmlessly, like the rest of the harassment he supposed. “I’m just surprised I guess. I didn’t expect you two to know each other. She must have really grown from her high school bullying days.”

Head still completely whizzing, Winston tried to calm down and think clearly. Orion’s request for a respite was a welcome break and Winston was pleased that they could their own thoughts coherent. They needed to talk to Athena and find out what was going on, because they didn’t feel like they had the whole story here. But now wasn’t the time to work out that part. Now was the time to be there for Rio. Suddenly Winston wanted to know everything. Most of all they wanted to know why both Rio and Athena seemed to have such different perspectives about their parents. She hadn’t seemed nearly as affected by them as he was. “Of course not, I never even imagined that you would be one,” Winston paused and tried to think of the best way to say it, “no offence but you don’t really strike me as the type to go looking for a fight.” They frowned gently at the insistence that Ricky couldn’t no. “No offense dude, but Ricky gets it, he will work it out eventually and then he’ll feel betrayed you didn’t tell him, you don’t have to do anything and considering that this is your secret to tell I would never dream of telling him, but he deserves to know…” they sighed gently, how had they gotten themselves into such a mess. The number one rule with roommates is that you didn’t sleep with SOs, relatives or friends. So of course Winston had already done that. The worst part was that Winston didn’t exactly get a lot of opportunity to sleep around and yet here they were fucking it up the first time they tried it. But it didn’t really change the way about how they felt with Athena. “I won’t tell her that you’re here,” Winston replied, “I won’t lie to her but I won’t tell her anything either and if she does try and come round well then Dee can get very grumpy with trespasers and she’s remarkably good at missing by a few inches with that shotgun…” Winston was sure that it wouldn’t come to that. Athena wasn’t as terrible as Rio seemed to think that she was. Winston didn’t need to hear them say it to see the anxiety and apprehension in his voice. “Look, me and Athena need to talk, about well this. I won’t make you any promises about anything, because first of all don’t make promises because fae and second of all … wait bullying?” Winston frowned at the last part of the sentence that Orion had just said. “She’s not a bully, at least she hasn’t seemed like she is a bully…?”

This wasn’t going well. The last thing that Orion wanted to do was get in the way of any of Winston’s relationships. At the same time.. He also cared about Winston. A lot, actually. He didn’t want them making a mistake. Dating Athena was a mistake. Even if by some miracle, Orion was wrong about Athena and she did actually care for Winston, Athena was too into her duty. Orion was sure that his parents would settle for no less than building a hunter family of their own. They wouldn’t support someone like Winston, not when people like Adam existed. And Athena wouldn’t disobey their parents. It was a doomed relationship from the start. Orion just needed to remind himself that that wasn’t his business to get in between. Right? This was too complicated. Rio detoured for a minute. “I can’t tell Ricky! Not when-” Right, Winston probably knew what Ricky was. But Winston didn’t know that Rio thought he knew too. And Ricky didn’t know that Rio knew. This was too complicated. How did he explain that Rio’s specialty was supposedly killing shapeshifters just like Ricky? That if the situation were flipped, Rio couldn’t trust any hunter. Not after the evils he had seen. “He’ll think I’m a monster.” Maybe he was a monster. Whether or not he had killed anyone, he knew people that had been killed. Had watched it. And had never been able to stop any of them. He sighed a breath of relief. The last thing he needed was Athena to show up, so at least that part was cleared up. “Thank you. And I understand. You have to figure things out for yourself.” He knew about Fae. He wondered if that was information that Athena had passed along to him? She held a special disdain for Fae, and had already yelled at Rio multiple times for making promises. “Huh? Oh it’s probably not a big deal. I’m sure she’s grown out of it. It’s just…” He paused, trying to find the right way to phrase it. “Back in high school, she had some uh… well she liked to mess with people. Me, obviously but that’s more sibling stuff. Her main target was this girl in our class, the valedictorian. I didn’t talk to her much in high school, but Athena loved making her life miserable. I ran into Blanche and drove her home one night a couple months ago and she told me about it.” So much for not getting involved.

“What exactly do you think Ricky is?” Winston asked curiously, they weren’t interested in playing the game of cloak and daggers that being supernaturally inclined sometimes required you to play. “Ricky isn’t the type to judge someone because of what they are or who they are, they judge people for their actions. That’s always how they have treated me and you’ve given no one any reason to think you’re a monster. Have you ever actually hurt anything? I had to kill some vampires last month, I am probably more of a monster then you are…” not to mention the whole part of being a spellcaster that Winston was kind of holding out on Orion with… they swallowed another mouthful of cookie. Somehow they didn’t taste quite as good now that they were starting to find out more about Athena. But the next words that Rio would say would send fury and anger through Winston. Blanche had become a very close and important friend, confident and honestly so much more. Nell and Blanche and Winston had all come together and were supporting each other through this. Blanche had mentioned high school, they had mentioned the video and suddenly Winston found themselves shaking with fury. They set their cookie down which had been jiggiling about as their hand shook. “Athena was the one who made Blanche’s life hell?” Winston had clearly misjudged her, they had clearly not known better. Part of them wondered if they had been naive and innocent but another part of them wondered if maybe Athena had changed. “Thank you for telling me Rio, like, I know you don’t want to fuck with your sisters life and relationships but I didn’t know any of this, I honestly just met Athena and I didn’t know that she was like … well this.” 

“I- I don’t know exactly. I don’t care what he is.” Orion sighed. He wasn’t lying. Despite what the Quinn family groupmind always tried to tell him, Rio thought of most supernatural creatures as still human in a lot of cases. Vampires and werewolves were human. Just because they died or because they could change into werewolves didn’t change that. Sure, Selkie’s were a little different. Just like Fae, their true form wasn’t human. But they still had thoughts and feelings and people they cared for. Sure, Rio was pretty sure he knew what Ricky was, but at the end of the day it really didn’t matter. “I just-” Winston had killed a vampire? Rio had to wonder what kind of vampire. Had Athena been there? Had she encouraged him to do it? The mere thought made Rio’s stomach turn. “I’ve been there. When something has gotten hurt. And I wasn’t able to help and I-” He stopped himself before he went too deep. If he didn’t, Winston would be trying to stop him from sobbing uncontrollably on the floor. The last thing he wanted right now was a panic attack. “You’re not a monster. Whatever happened- I’m sure you had a reason. You’re like the nicest person I’ve ever met.” Orion answered honestly. Maybe this honesty thing wasn’t so bad. But if that was the case, why were his arms still tingling? “She wasn’t the only one. I mean… Blanche had it rough in high school. A lot of people were mean to her until she started fighting back.” He could feel the shift in the room. As Winston flipped to anger. That was the emotion that people should feel for Athena. But it still felt wrong, being involved. “I’m sorry. It’s- well it's honestly not my business what either of you do. And I shouldn’t get involved in that.”

“Maybe you should care what he is,” Winston replied with a shrug, “and I don’t mean in a bad way, but Ricky is proud of himself and of his heritage and he’d probably like to share that with someone who is going to stay with us, at least for a little bit. You two should talk.” Winston wasn’t going to push the matter too much more, but they weren’t going to let Orion just leave this alone either. Ricky was a selkie and Orion was a hunter and that needed to be cleared before things could really get normal. Plus, Winston didn’t tell Ricky about Orion’s … heritage and they would like for Ricky to not find out about that later because it might reflect badly on both of them. They paused and glanced at their shoes. “Dude I could say the exact same thing about you, you’re like being really hard on yourself. You didn’t choose this, you didn’t choose your family or your siblings. You can only do what you think is right and you can only act in a way that you think is appropriate.” They tried not to think about it. Winston was the oldest of a lot of the people in college that they had met through the supernatural and they hadn’t had it easy in high school, but at least Nell had had their back. They just wished that there had been someone there for their friend. “I wish I had known about this before I …” they didn’t say have sex with Athena but they wished that all the same. This was messy and suddenly they felt the need to apologise to their best friend, even though they hadn’t really done anything wrong. “Anyway, look, you’re still safe to stay, you should definitely talk to Ricky about … well you two should just talk and be honest. It’ll be better.” They paused for a moment. “Whilst we’re tearing off bandages, I know you already said something about paying rent, but you literally won’t be able to. Ricky owns the house and I spent my first few months living here trying to get him to take my money and you just can’t do it. So take my advice and buy him some really fucking expensive gifts at Christmas and his birthday and accept that your budget is going to go further then you thought.”

“Yeah. You’re right. Obviously.” At least Orion confirmed that he was right about Ricky. Or at least semi right. He still hadn’t confirmed the Selkie heritage, but the Ricky and Skylar connection was another big connecting dot. Of course Winston was right, it was just… hard to figure out how he was going to do it. How did you tell a friend that your parents actively wanted them dead? “I’ll figure it out. How to talk about it. I just… don't know how I’m going to do it yet. I don’t really have a great track record with this stuff.” Winston knew about Skylar too right? Probably better to not mention it just in case. Keeping track of this stuff was too much, he needed a white board or something. “Maybe, yeah. But it’s whatever. I’m here now. And I want to help people. That’s my goal.” He shuffled over to the couch again, suddenly realizing that he had been awkwardly standing the entire conversation. His mouth still felt dry, but he ignored it. “Right. Well, thanks again. For being so welcoming and all.” Of course Ricky wasn’t going to let them pay rent. He was so annoyingly nice. Rio could still find ways to help around the house though, right? Buy groceries, maybe help with utilities? He knew Ricky didn’t mind the cold, he wondered how much he could get away with turning the place down temperature wise. The long sleeves and pants kept Rio pretty warm. Plus the electricity bill in this place must be out the roof with how much technology all three of them seemed to use. “He’s so annoying. But fine. I can find other ways to help out I guess. Maybe. Once I figure out what I can do to help.”

“Weird, I don’t think anyone ever says that I’m right, you’re going to have to stay with us for a very long time because I like being told that I’m right and you’re literally the only person that does it.” Winston smirked gently and finished their cookie. “Just be yourself, be honest and try and be patient, this is not going to be easy for either of you and you know if you want me there even as moral support, I’m here for you both.” Winston smiled, they liked Orion’s goal. “Well, you’ve come to the right place, we’re all about helping people who need help, that’s why we asked you to come here, plus we genuinely think you’re gonna be a great roomie, that wasn’t a lie.” Winston watched Orion take a seat and pushed some snacks towards them. “You don’t need to say thanks my dude, we’re your friends and this is exactly what friends are for. But yes, Ricky is the most annoying dude ever. All I want to do is try and pay my way in this world, I don’t want to owe anyone and I don’t want to deal with someone else paying for me to just exist, but he literally won’t take money off of you, if he does he’ll just use it to buy you groceries or put gas in your tank or he’ll put the money in his bank account and transfer it back to yours. It’s beyond frustrating.”

“I find that hard to believe. Because you’re the coolest” Orion shrugged, stating it matter-of-factly. Winston was the coolest, and had helped Rio on multiple occasions now. They were exactly the type of person that Rio wanted to help with the Scribes. But more so, they were the type of person that Rio wanted to be friends with. “I thought you were just taking pity on me for calling you frantically in the middle of the night?” Rio asked, laughing and reaching for the pile of snacks. Despite the stress, he was starting to feel a bit more relaxed. It did make Rio feel a bit better, knowing that they had talked about it. That the offer hadn’t just been a one time offer at the Scribe Headquarters that they felt too awkward to take back. “Well that’s… very nice of him I guess. But also, the worst.” Rio had no idea how much money Ricky had, but it didn’t really matter much, he should still accept some money. Rio sighed, stuffing a handful of chips into his mouth, “Okay. Let’s fire up a game and try to think about something a bit more positive.”

“Again, very weird because no one else thinks that, are you sure you didn’t hit your head or something?” Winston winked playfully and smiled at their friend despite everything. “I mean, I guess we kind of took pity on you,” Winston laughed and shook their head, “Nah I’m joking, it wasn’t anything like that, we saw someone who was in need and we’re in a position to help with that and so we wanted to, you’re a nice guy and we like you around.  It all just works really well.” Winston considered the situation that Ricky put them in, whilst it was comfortable it made Winston feel as if they were taking a lot from their friend sometimes. Swallowing they shrugged in agreement. “You’re preaching to the choir bro, I hate it, I want to help out with the bills around here and feel like an adult, like I’m not complaining about my rent free existence, but at the same time I wish that I was actually pulling my weight. But yeah, you’re right, we should definitely try and enjoy ourselves.” At least before Winston had to get in contact with Athena directly to discuss this. 

[courage-a-word-of-justice]

Misfit of Demon King Academy 1 | Healin’ Good PreCure 13 - 14 | Lapis Re:Lights 1 | God of High School 1 | Muhyo and Roji’s BSI s2 1

Misfit of Demon King Academy 1

This originally had the ecchi tag on its anime entry on AniList…or, at least, that’s how it was in my memory…but now that I see it doesn’t have that, it’s just another reincarnation isekai-type series. Let’s dig into it!

I…think this guy is meant to be portrayed as “hot” because he has the piercing eyes and he’s tall (against the girls in what will presumedly be his harem), but he kind of looks like your standard Potato-kun in a white outfit…so, uh…*shrugs*

Uh…is that guy meant to be Indian? You can’t get more obvious than the “Indu” family. Update: You see his brother later and Leorg has fairer skin, so maybe not.

LOL, “Flame of Darkness” makes someone nothing but a chuunibyou.

Uh…this is called The Misfit of Demon King Academy, y’know? Anos (Anoth?) is gonna get in, you bet your butts.

The owl is cute.

…guy, that 3 second rule thing was actually funny, but the more you think about the joke, the less funny it gets. Show: 1. Me: Infinity -1

Just from appearances, I wanna guess Misha is an ice or light magic user, or whatever equivalent the show has.

Is this what Assassin’s Pride could have been…?

How did the mother (Anoth’s) think her kid maturing that fast wasn’t weird?

Mushroom gratin? Is that an actual dish?...Yep, seems so. Sounds nice. I like mushrooms.

What’s up with young mothers in anime these days? Then again, the only other point of reference I have is Masamune-kun’s Revenge…

I thought it was the other Indu guy we saw earlier. This guy’s…not that bad-looking, though (LOL, my preferences ring out loud and clear…)…welp, spoke too soon. There he is. Update: Leorg kinda looks like Hakuto Kunai from Demon Lord, Retry!, come to think of it.

If Zepes died several times over the course of this episode…would one more death actually matter? (Not really, to be honest. Zepes is a scumbag.)

Come to think of it, this anime got postponed due to COVID, yeah? Was that why there was a sakuga spot earlier…?

Was that Sasha (Misha’s sister)? I found her name while checking if the anime was postponed.

I like the colour choices in this show, at least.

I don’t think this show has the best sense of comedic timing. Let your jokes breathe, dammit! That’s what comedic beats are for!

In a season with more offerings, I might get rid of this or pause it, but the season’s fairly sparse as it stands (darn virus!) so it stays.

Update: I didn’t notice, but an Anime News Network staff member wrote that Anoth’s surname is familiar…if you read Harry Potter.

Healin’ Good PreCure 13

Gotta start in the middle for this and work our way back. Note I did watch the 1st 2 eps without subs earlier this year when they were on the official PreCure YouTube, so I’m ahead of most people.

(From wandering the wiki and the news) I’ve seen nothing but pink/blue/yellow Cures these days, so I kind miss the more adventurous colours like green and orange…but then again, I never really liked green. It’s the colour of envy and…as petty as it sounds, I think I developed that bias because green is stereotypically the colour of rot, vomit (aside from anime’s rainbow vomit) and stinky things.

I didn’t notice this, but there’s a faint highlight on the Cures’ eyes (red for Grace, purple for Fontaine and blue for Sparkle).

It’s a drone! In PreCure! Yay! (It finally hit me exactly how much of a distant dream it’s been – from watching Suite and episodes of most of the other PreCure ‘til now – watching PreCure legally as a simulcast is! It’s crazy and it only took, what…5 years between Suite and this? 16 if you count from Futari wa to Healin’ Good.)

Is it that drone?

Hah? This is almost like the electricity-themed PreCure I came up with on the fan wiki. It’s not like I could sue Toei for it, though…they own that stuff, I only own what came out of my own imagination.

The subs say “Rate”, but “rate” has a meaning in English. No wonder the initial wiki translations say “Latte”, especially because the queen is “Teatine” to match.

Okay, so Mei is the sis and Yota is the brother. Got it.

Hey! What if there was a PreCure where the villains had devastated another world before? That would really raise the stakes.

“[T]hunders” (sic)? Thunder is the sound, lightning is the flash. Which one is it?

I see. As soon as they identified it as the Element of Lightning, I sort of guessed they could add it to their repertoire later, and I was right.

Its’s nice to see they put a woman in the moving company as well. Proves that girls can do anything they set their minds to, even what are supposedly “men’s jobs”.

I guess from the face I should’ve expected the element to talk, like the Fairy Tones from Suite, but I didn’t really figure that out until I saw it talk,

I feel like Hinata should’ve gone to see how Mei made her juice. That way, the two might be able to make similar-tasting juice…but that’s just an idea.

Healin’ Good PreCure 14

I feel like Byogens were responsible for Nodoka’s sickness, much like they are for Latte.

“Energy Source” seems to refer to a place where energy appears…I know that sounds a bit dumb if you don’t realise genki hakken means something like “appearance of energy (for a person)”, but…yeah, the PreCure series is like this. Unfortunately, that’s what you have to deal with.

I feel like this “teamwork overcomes all hardships” message is important in this time of COVID-19.

Guaiwaru = “condition is bad”, or ill health (guai ga warui).

Is that the element of air? I thought the PreCure would’ve used their element of lightning to fix the steamer, but hey, teamwork works too.

I’m a weeny bit peevy they translate minna to “girls”. It’s correct in context when it’s been translated that way, but minna means “everybody”.

I imagined Hinata saying “Watashi no smartphone ga!” instead of “Atarashii sumaho ga hoshii!”

Lapis Re:Lights 1

Eh…COVID-19 means I gotta sample things I’m not so crazy about.

Why is one of the first lines in this show “My behind hurts!”?

Bristol? Is this England?...Nope, it’s a place called “Mamkestell”.

I was thinking this girl…I think the reviews said her name was Tiara…was going to sing to the flower to make it perk up again, but nup, she whistled to it. That seems a bit irrelevant, to be honest. (I would prefer an all or nothing approach to a wish-washy approach like this…as in, if this is an idol show, then either go all in with the singing and dancing, or do something else that’ll catch my attention.)

Tiara’s face looks hella generic.

For some reason, I get this ominous feeling when the word “witch” is mentioned…must be the instinct from Madoka popping up again.

Lemme guess. Lynette is the bookworm?...*sigh* Just another method of showing a character is a bookworm without actually showing their reading a book, which I think is counterintuitive.

Get some protective gear, girls!

Rosetta keeps saying “Yes” (in English).

Lemme guess…people ship the dumb one and the smart one? They’re like a gender-flipped Dice and Gentaro, only the smart one is more uppity and the stupid one is more sporty.

The word appears to be noumei, but that exact word doesn’t seem to exist. Lavie seems to say the word is the opposite to something else, but I can’t tell what that is either…

Albino rabbit, eh?

…people probably ship Rosetta and Tiara too, right? *sigh*

So there’s…no singing in this fantasy/idol show. Whistling is how you invoke magic…so how is someone who can’t whistle supposed to invoke magic?!

Whose idea was it to put the OP in the middle of the episode?

It was “Neechan, daikirai!” “Forget you” is a fairly loose translation…

Little Miss Rosetta = Rosetta-chan.

I think Tiara called Rosetta “sensei” when the former wanted the latter to take care of her (i.e. take her to their dorm).

Titi = Tiara. I didn’t actually figure that out because I thought it referred to the rabbits.

Gah! These almost-real-world names (or real world names, in regards to “Bristol”) are gonna drive me NUTS!

*sigh* Boob jiggle.

*sighhhhhhhhh…* Lemme guess, there’s a potential expulsion on the horizon? Update: Yep. Dropped.

God of High School 1

First Webtoon series I’m covering here.

Oh, I checked out the first chapter of the webtoon because CR linked it to their anime page. The only difference I’ve seen from that, aside from fleshing out the backgrounds, is…that creepy skull (?) on the wall.

You can tell it’s Korean when I don’t understand what the text says. (I don’t know Korean, but I do know some Chinese and Japanese.) Update: This is Japanese-dubbed, but they left the Korean text in.

That intro is much more powerful now that the backgrounds are fleshed out.

Ooh, the colours in the OP are very nice!

Hmm? They’re starting with the grandpa, rather than starting with “I’m Mori Jin, 17 years old”? Good choice.

The expressions in this show are funny. I like them already.

Waittttttttt…I dunno how Korean names work. Is Mori Jin’s first name “Mori” or “Jin”? Update: I checked it up, and I got even more confused!

KORG Arena seems to be…from Marvel? Like BnHA references Star Wars???

*sigh* Moonbucks? Again?...and of course the girls only talk about “hotties”. We need a Bechdel test in this thing.

The comments on ch. 1 said “A new Luffy is born”, so now I agree with it…but they’re not going to show how Mori Jin was enlisted for GOH (as they seem to abbreviate it)?

There’s Japanese, English and Korean in the afro dude’s comments.

I’m amazed that tall dude with the spiky hair wasn’t more surprised about Mori Jin and the girl passing by…

Would those glasses on Mori Jin’s head be any help? Update: Turns out those aren’t “glasses”…they’re a sleeping mask.

Kamina glasses!

They put CR and Webtoon advertising over everything in this anime…geesh.

These red parts of people’s noses are gonna bug me, aren’t they…?

It should be battle royale, right? Update: Okay, so I checked and both are correct spellings.

This seems like the sort of thing that would never get funded because you need to pull off every battle scene right.

They cut the initial fight with “Blondie” out, but that actually makes things more interesting! Good choice.

Lemme guess – Mori Jin is going to have to fight this Kang Manseouk guy at full power one day? *shrugs* (Can I stop referring to people by their full names already??? I can’t stop until I know which is the first name and which is the last.) Update: So the wiki finally helped me out and Mori is the first name and Jin the last, meaning I can call him “Mori”. Got it.

*Mori suddenly pulls the prisoner’s pants down* - That was…random.

I liked it more than I thought I would! (Just for reference, the other protag dude is called Han Dae-wi and the girl is Yoo Mira.)

Muhyo and Roji’s BSI s2 1

(Update for the Tumblr fans: I finished s1 outside the seasonal format.) 

Kokkuri-san never goes well in anime…

Where does Nana work again…?

I don’t think Muhyo and Roji are legally (magically legally?) obligated to tell Nana anything about what they do.

Yay! Goryo is animted for the first time! He has such a beautiful voice~!

Notably, Roji wouldn’t have had a smartphone in 2004 (or whatever year close to that when the manga put this bit out).

Goryo (5) vs Muhyo (6). Didn’t figure this out at the time I read the manga.

I think the subbers misgendered Goryo. Goryo is a dude, as can be gathered from the name “Daranimaru”.

“Waka”? Does that stand for “young head [of the office]” or something?

Okay, whose bright idea was it to pair Now on Air (female vocalists) with Muhyo and Roji’s (a series dominated with dudes)…?

Ah, Funimation is on the production team of this anime. That would explain the dub rights.

[hope-for-olicity]

Fabulous Olicity Fanfic Friday - May 4th, 2018

(Source: https://hafuboti.com/2014/09/25/may-the-posters-be-with-you/)

Happy Friday! So this is my attempt to both thank awesome fanfic writers for their amazing work and offer my recommendations to anyone who is interested. Here are the fantastic fanfic stories I read this week! They are posted in the order I read them.

Oliver on Vacation multi-chapter complete by @tinaday3w - Olicity AU.  When Oliver Queen’s best friend, renowned psychiatrist Dr. John Diggle, encourages the stressed-out CEO to go on vacation, Oliver can’t believe Digg’s “vacation” choice is actually a psychiatric retreat nestled deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains.  Oliver simply doesn’t think he needs this kind of intensive therapy.  And he definitely doesn’t think he needs the attentions of Felicity – the frivolous, frolicking forest fairy who flits her way into his life and challenges all his assumptions.  What Oliver doesn’t know is that he’ll never be so happy to be proven wrong. https://archiveofourown.org/works/4662243/chapters/10637169

A Dance With The Devil multi-chapter WIP by @it-was-a-red-heeler - A Season Five re-write http://archiveofourown.org/works/13792770/chapters/31707645

Time for a Story multi-chapter WIP by @smkkbert - This fic shows Olicity and their life as a (married) couple with family. Although Olicity (and their kids) are the protagonists, other characters of Arrow and Flash make appearances. YOU NEED THIS STORY IN YOUR LIFE. http://archiveofourown.org/works/3912157/chapters/8757172

The Story of Tonight multi-chapter WIP by @arrow-crack - Set in the Revolutionary War. Felicity, a rich daughter of General Smoak meets a strangely charming soldier under her father's command, Oliver Queen. https://archiveofourown.org/works/14073570/chapters/32423250

Another Chance at Love multi-chapter WIP by @smkkbert - It’s been almost two years since Oliver lost his fiancée Detective McKenna Hall when she died in the line of duty. He closed his heart to love ever since, unable or unwilling to give love another chance. That changes when he meets Felicity Smoak at the annual gala of the Starling City Police Foundation. Is he ready to give love another chance, though? http://archiveofourown.org/works/13561101/chapters/31119801

Guilt Trip by HopeShannon3000 - John, Rene, Curtis and Dinah go to see Felicity after finding out Oliver was arrested, Felicity's had enough and emotions are high while she tells them exactly what she thinks https://archiveofourown.org/works/14462955

Honey, I Shrunk the Girl multi-chapter complete by @felicityollies - Felicity just wanted to help her friends with their latest scientific project. The last thing she expected was to end up only inches tall. LOVE THIS SO SO MUCH! http://felicityollies.tumblr.com/post/160670321697/honey-i-shrunk-the-it-girl

Elizabeth Grace Smoak multi-chapter WIP by @lynn8828 - What if Felicity and Oliver briefly had met before he got on the Gambit? Despite her best efforts, Felicity was unable to get in contact with the famous Oliver Queen after having a one night stand with him and getting pregnant with his child. After raising their child for five years after finding out that Oliver died on the Gambit, she finds out he is alive and knows that she needs to tell him about their daughter. But will he believe her? AMAZING STORY!! http://archiveofourown.org/works/13639371/chapters/31322715

Periods, Timelines and Exclamation Points multi-chapter WIP by Izzyface - Felicity Smoak has a PLAN for her life. At 25, she is the youngest Director of IT in the history of Queen Consolidated and on track to be the next VP of Technology for the Fortune 250 company. But that’s before everything in her life starts to go haywire. https://archiveofourown.org/works/14062422/chapters/32395548

To Sacrifice the Sun multi-chapter WIP by @emmilynestill - Oliver and Felicity are ARGUS agents working on a mission in Mexico, the two share some very important history. http://archiveofourown.org/works/7510744/chapters/22505918

Tempest multi-chapter WIP by @so-caffeinated and @dust2dust34 - Three years ago, tragedy struck Julianna Queen’s life. Now, she wears a mask and fights at her father’s side, looking for closure and justice as she tries to find a path to move forward with her life while holding on to her past. But that may a bit more complicated than she thinks… http://archiveofourown.org/works/13309731/chapters/30461850

Damn It, Why Won't the Eagle Just Land Already? multi-chapter WIP by @smewhereelse - President John Diggle would really appreciate it if everyone would stop gossiping about his security detail and his science advisor and get back to work. He’d appreciate it even more if his best friends would pull their heads out of their asses and get together already. A White House romantic comedy AU. https://archiveofourown.org/works/13132602/chapters/30040788

Not Wanted Anymore by @cruzrogue - Felicity kicks out Curtis, Rene, and Dinah as John stays behind. My take of the last few episodes. https://archiveofourown.org/works/14488920

Above All Else multi-chapter WIP by shesimperfect_butshetries - A different take on episode 6x14: Rene shoots but Oliver jumps in front of Felicity. https://archiveofourown.org/works/14101470/chapters/32490537

QC w/Smoakin Party of Two multi-chapter WIP by @cruzrogue - A party to celebrate Oliver’s one year’s anniversary of coming home bash by his mother. The Hood is busy taking out a drug ring. Felicity is asked by him to go in his place and create a cover story. Felicity isn’t haven’t a very good time since arriving at the party which has her leaving Starling City. (Not for Laurel lovers.) https://archiveofourown.org/works/11691210/chapters/26320578

Untitled by @smoaking-greenarrow - Arrow Out of Context Prompt: “Once you let the darkness inside, it never comes out.” Post 6x20 fic http://smoaking-greenarrow.tumblr.com/post/173467515524/13-if-youre-still-taking-prompts

The Missing Puzzle Piece by @tdgal1 and @green-arrows-of-karamel - Oliver Queen's search for love https://archiveofourown.org/works/14491410

Our Two Worlds (They Collide) multi-chapter complete by @bokayjunkie - When Oliver gets into a shoot out with some bank robbers, Thea calls the one person she knows who’s smart and capable enough to help them. https://archiveofourown.org/works/10932066/chapters/24319170

I'm Coming Home To You multi-chapter complete by @foreverfelicityqueen and @holysmoaksoliver - Felicity's life in New York is perfect.  Perfect job, perfect friends, perfect boyfriend.  But the life she's been living for the last seven years is a lie.  And there's only so long this lie can last... https://archiveofourown.org/works/3483224/chapters/7649618

Real Love (Is Never a Waste of Time) multi-chapter WIP by @callistawolf - Oliver and Felicity are CEOs who are more partners than they are rivals, but they still bicker whenever they meet up. Constantly pestered by their families and board members, they turn to each other for a simple solution. But marriage is never simple, especially when these two are involved. When Oliver's younger sister decides to hold her much-anticipated wedding on a tropical island and insists her brother and his wife attend, will the island paradise prove to be the tipping point in their carefully balanced relationship? https://archiveofourown.org/works/13604955/chapters/31233603

LA Devotee by @imusuallyobsessed - Inspired by  “La Devotee” by P!ATD  - LOVED THIS!! https://archiveofourown.org/works/14506083

Re-airrowing 1x16 by @lostolicityscenes - As for a 1x16 : What if Oliver witnessed Diggle training Felicity at the beginning of the episode? https://lostolicityscenes.tumblr.com/post/173497284781/swordandarrow-mentioned-you-in-a

Felicity's Party Raver Hangover Supreme Cure by @felicityollies - The story of how Felicity got her industrial piercing as told by Felicity to her very curious husband. https://archiveofourown.org/works/14515560

Given a Chance by @the-shy-and-anxious-fangirl -  When Felicity confronted Ra's Al Ghul about his plans for Oliver, intending to attempt to appeal to his humanity- she didn't expect that conversation to end with Ra's granting her the chance to tell Oliver everything that was in her heart before she lost him forever. Nor was she expecting to come out of it with a plan, more desperation than anything else, to stop the wheels Ra's Al Ghul had set in motion.             https://archiveofourown.org/works/14511372

Now and Forever multi-chapter WIP by @smoakinggun - Oliver Queen is a single dad who has a 5 year old son. He has been pretty content with how his life is going and how well he is raising his son without his son's mother. But what happens when Oliver decides to pick his son up from school instead of having his sister Thea do it and he meets Felicity Smoak? https://archiveofourown.org/works/10985181/chapters/24464178

Allergic multi-chapter WIP by @ihatethatchick - Just a little soulmate AU idea I'm putting out there as thanks to all the great Olicity authors out there. https://archiveofourown.org/works/11040660/chapters/24610440

Felicity's Sweet Revenge multi-chapter complete by @tinaday3w - Olicity AU - After six years as Oliver Queen's secretary, Felicity is finally quitting her job at Arrow Architecture. And now that she's finished being the stony architect's office slave, Felicity has decided to go out with a bang (hee hee!) and get some fun-and-sexy fantasy fulfillment before she walks out of his life for good.  But nothing ever goes the way you plan, does it? https://archiveofourown.org/works/3606600/chapters/7957536

Compulsory Figures multi-chapter WIP by @machawicket -SUMMARY: A series of moments in Felicity Smoak and Oliver Queen's road to becoming partners on the ice -- and maybe off. Or: it's that figure skating AU no one asked for, because parlez-vous Olympics?? ;) https://archiveofourown.org/works/13731807/chapters/31549149

// @emmaamelia95 // @mel-loves-all // @oliverfel4 // @green-arrows-of-karamel // @coal000 // @miriam1779 // @memcjo// @captainolicitysbedroom // @tdgal1 // @spaztronautwriter // @lalawo1// @quiveringbunny // @wrongshipper // @thebookjumper // @vaelisamaza // @myhauntedblacksoul // @lovelycssefan // @laurabelle2930 //

[iwantasecretgarden]

Dear Misty,

@mercedeslackeyblog​ - please print this for her in the hospital! I want her to know we all love her and are rooting for her.

You have been one of the icons in my life for as long as I’ve been reading. Seriously. I picked up “Arrows of the Queen” when I was twelve and fell dizzyingly in love. So in love, in fact, that my father bought me the set of them leatherbound. It was one of the last things he ever bought me. They sit on my shelf with me wherever I move to (and I have moved a lot). They are the epitome of my childhood.

How do I even begin to explain what you have meant to me? I wrote you a fan letter in my teens, but I don’t think it ever reached you. Websites were less...polished then. I tried to find a copy to see what I had said, but I don’t have it anymore, so I’ll write this from scratch.

First off, for someone growing up in the 90s, sexuality was a difficult topic. My father was Catholic about it. My mother was liberal about acceptance, but not very liberal about giving us the tools to recognize it. I didn’t really accept the fact I was bi until I was 26 (last year). It was an embarrassing realization, because I had always been conditioned to already think women were interesting and cool and beautiful. But I honestly and truly believe one of the reasons I grew up being so tolerant of sexuality wasn’t my mother’s liberal attitude, but because of the fantasy I read, which didn’t use sexuality as a dramatic plot device. Your books, especially, in depicting queer relationships, poly relationships, and interracial relationships in such an ordinary light, in such a non-complaining, non special, non interesting way (as it should be!) that to me it became ordinary. I didn’t understand the big fuss when people started coming out in eighth and ninth grade. Well of course Brett could like boys. Silverfox did, and he’s one of my favorite characters, a fictional hero who I use to help combat my own anxiety and work through impossible situations. I didn’t understand why liking girls was so shocking. Keren was the impossibly cooler most perfect big sister/coach figure. I was into horse back riding until 16 (when, unfortunately, my horse died). Keren has a lot of the surly riding instructor in her, and it was a far more interesting aspect of her personality than her relationship with Sheri. Keren had even assured Sheri she would have been welcome as their third. As a kid, it hadn’t even occurred to me to make an argument against it. I - Talia’s age - agreed with her. When life gives you child brides and weird cult compounds, it’s better to find love where you can. Genuine love. Regardless of anything else.

Secondly, it was a book I needed when I didn’t know I would need it. A lot of fiction - especially geared at children - skates lightly over topics of depression, anxiety, and loss. Don’t get me wrong, I love Harry Potter with my soul. But even at the age I read it I felt the shallowness of their reactions when Sirius died. I felt my own reaction even crying while reading the book to be stronger. It would infuriate me that the next book they sort of conveniently forgot it had only been a few weeks/months. That Harry was “sad but manageable.” For context, my dad contracted Lou Gehrig’s disease at 44. They told him he had likely already had the disease 10 years. He lost everything; his temper, his dignity, bits of his mind at a time. Any filter between his brain and his mouth. His fine motor control, like holding a spoon. His major motor control, like being able to stand up. He was in a powerchair within the year. As the oldest daughter, it was expected that I would help turn him, change his catheter, and answer his shrill screams in the night. I was fourteen years old. 

Dad and I were inseparable. Father-daughter relationship compounded by the fact he had, in essence with a flexible work schedule, been a stay at home dad. He had been my primary caregiver, my confidante, my chef, my advisor, my everything. And now I was his punching bag as he lost a bit of himself at a time. “My friend, who’s a psychiatrist,” Mom always said it this way, to make sure we knew she wasn’t so weak as to need therapy. A challenge to dare us to say we did. “He says that he’s hardest on you, because he’s most assured of your love. That he can abuse you and scream at you and curse at you because he knows you’ll go back the next day. A moth to a flame.” And me staring blankly at her: “Of course I will.” Because even if it was my worst fear - it was, always had been - even if it hurt worse than I could have ever imagined - his death would have broken me, but only in half. His suffering crushed the pieces of me into dust and left me a gaping black thing sucking in the world - “I love him too much to miss a moment of this.” Even if every minute - every possible second - was me reminding myself I had to breathe and feeling my lungs on fire, my head was on the edge of a migraine, it was impossible to interact, but I had to. I had to smile. To go to high school. To turn in assignments on time regardless of the cost between going to bed at 2 and hearing him scream at 3. 

Your books, though, weren’t fake. I held onto them with the assurance of that one quote: life is the scream into the void; art is the answer you are not alone. I held onto the depression and grief and trauma of your characters and felt sane. If I hadn’t, I might have thought I was losing my mind. I was, of course. And I had been conditioned Catholically to think of mental health as a weakness, a secret shame. I had been told by my mother psychologists and medication were wonderful advancements for those people; sick people. Sick in their mind, she would say smugly. Her adamant assurance was: “We have to go on like usual. We can’t let people know we’re struggling.” And so we did. Social events. Big smiles. Sleepovers (somewhere else, my friends explained, your dad bums us out). People didn’t find out he was dying until prom of my senior year. I was on the receiving end of a lot of horror from teachers (why didn’t you tell us? Ask for an extension?) I had to be normal I wanted to tell them, but I didn’t even know how to begin to explain.

Once a pediatrician told my mom I was deeply angry and tired; I was losing my father. I was fifteen. I needed to see a counselor. My mom went ballistic in a public waiting room. She aggressively turned to me and asked if this was true? There was no chance, of course, for me to disagree. I didn’t even want to. My loyalty to my family was (is) so strong that seeing anyone upset her so badly had put my back against the wall and made me bare my teeth. I reflect a lot on it now; how poorly that doctor handled it, the way she would have bungled it much worse if it had been physical abuse. You never confront the person in front of the child. Never don’t have a safety plan in place. 

“She said you were so young,” my mother snarled on the way home. “When we both know you haven’t been young in years. I watched you. Watched you go from fifteen to twenty in months instead of years. Don’t you think?”

I could only nod, and when I covered my mouth, fingertips touched wet skin. I hadn’t been young in years. 

Darkwind was someone I identified heavily with. Someone who changed his name, cut his hair, let his grief consume him. Someone who shied away from Silverfox’s help. Someone who was glad when his father still got some. The day of my dad’s funeral, I cut off my hair. I was 19. The nightmare had lasted five years. I had stayed home to go to a local college so I could keep living at home, keep shielding my younger sisters, keep driving them to school and viola practice and karate. I had to give up my extracurriculars early on (and lie, of course, on my applications). It was actually a disaster at the hair cutting place (not important, but the lady called the police thinking I had stolen her cell phone which had fallen behind some tools). I went home. My mother took one look at my hair and told me it made my face look fat. “It’s for Dad,” I said steadily. In my mind, I was howling like Darkwind. I wondered if I could break my name into grief and sorrow, but it was too hard to think of the name I might have been, since the person I had been was as dead as dad was. 

On days where my two younger sisters were scared and confused (the youngest was 13 when he died), I read them The Fairy Godmother and One Good Knight. They liked that one especially well. I went on to absorb almost all of your works (I think it’s impossible though, to be honest. There are just so many that either you’re a witch or I keep reading the same ones again and thinking I’ve never read them. For instance, I have a Bard Song on my nightstand right now from a bargain bin. Never read it before. Recently read Four and Twenty Blackbirds). Of course, my favorite series was Valdemar. I know all those characters the best, having reread most of them over again several times. I liked Elemental Masters, 700 Kingdoms (some). I was sad that the Beauty & the Beast stories in both weren’t my favorites (The Fire Rose, Beauty and the Werewolf, since it’s my favorite Disney film (but as your stories follow the traditional fairytale a little closer, and that tale is a bit gross, I understand). I think my favorites were The Firebird, Phoenix and Ashes, Reserved from the Cat, The Wizard of London).

Honestly, I may be a tiny minority, but I ADORE Joust. I was sad there weren’t more of them. I spent much of the time I read them inventing my own dragon egg, my own falling through time and space. My own female girl rider takes on the Team without being just a sidekick who talked to animals. It is hard to recommend or talk about it without people laughing, and I appreciate it IS an incredibly hard-core nerd fantasy genre (ancient Egypt, jousting, dragons). It feels a lot like Anne McCaffery crossed with a Naomi Novik story (since Temeraire and Napoleonic Wars are equally hard-core nerd stories. I was lucky to stumble on that line recently - I feel like there’s not enough of the true blue 80s/90s fantasy voice anymore. Sometimes it feels all too dark and plot driven, lacking the characters and slice of life that your works have nestled in my heart, places like the Palace Compound that I know as well as I knew my middle and high schools. A place as real to me as they are, including my own room. My own Companion. My own Heraldic Whites when I turned 18 and took the leatherbound books from my father in an eyestinging rush of love. 

Even now when I was looking up a list of your work, I’m amazed and appalled to see I haven’t caught any of your works since 2009 or so. HOW MANY ARE THERE 100? 200? I thought there were 70 something, but no, you’ve far outstripped yourself. I usually pick up the books in secondhand shops. I’ll go straight for “L” and then just tip all of them into my arms if I haven’t read them. It’s one of my favorite rainyday activities. I noticed you even have a book out this year! CRAP! It should not be POSSIBLE you can write faster than I can read! I’m 27 and I still read a lot of the books that came out when I was born or in diapers. Sometimes I wonder which books you’ve written are your favorites. If there are books you’ve written you skim through like “hmmm I don’t even remember this” and read it with the same laughing intensity as the rest of us, resting your thumb on “oh yes, this was when I was...”

Anyway. I know this letter is long. You’ve been a saint for even getting this far. So let me say this. When I think of the BEST writers of fantasy in the 20th and 21st centuries, your name is among the greats. I’ll say something like: Anne McCaffery’s Dragonriders of Pern; Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game; Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time; Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar...and EVERYTHING ELSE. A lot more people know the names of George R.R. Martin, of J.K. Rowling, of Neil Gaiman. But none of them have put out the solid, unending stream of work that literally POPULATES what most people consider “fantasy.” Your ideas, your work, your world-building influence television, influence Dungeons & Dragons, other works. You are a Giant in your field, and even if you don’t feel it, you have laid the groundwork for an entire generation to lay themselves reverently on the altar of your sacrifice, your reflection of relationships, and taught young girls like me what it was to embrace themselves, in all shapes - black tar and bi pride. 

I know you probably tire of hearing this, but I want to be an author. And I’m a good writer. I don’t say it boastfully. I say it as something I’ve always heard, from teachers and friends and magazines. But mom said being an author was like being an actor - a pipe dream, a thing to do “on the side” and “as a hobby.” And it is a hobby of mine, for now. I did the Responsible Thing and became a lawyer. It was quite horrible. But I did it. For Dad, you know. Legacy and all that. 

But don’t you DARE die before I’m published. I’m not talking about the hospital right now. I’m talking about choking on a banana; slipping on the sidewalk; getting mobbed by adoring fans. It is literally my bucketlist to publish a book, to meet you, to dedicate the book to a woman who I’ve never met, who I’ve never known, but who had influenced and impacted my life SO profoundly I consider her characters as pieces of myself. Her worlds as places of safety when I’m sad. The helping hand she held out to a twelve year old girl, and fifteen years later the one I’m still gripping tightly. 

YOU are one of the best women in my life, and one of the best role models I’ve ever known. Even if we’ve never met, knowing that you could be a deeply nerdy human who loves horses and magic and reading every day and still be “successful” when the world outside told me I dressed wrong and looked wrong and felt wrong. That I needed to pick up a magazine, or watch sitcoms, or generally stop making them feel pitying and uncomfortable because of the things I liked. You made me proud to be a feminist, an ally, a writer, a dreamer, a reader, and maybe only lately of my sexuality, but still growing and going forward. 

So, here’s lots of love and adoration and gratitude flooding your way from:

One herald (whose companion was someone she knew in real life reincarnated too early, obviously grove born, with mindspeech, with magic, of course and lifebonded with a Kestra'chern. Predictably, I fought the lifebonding every step of the way, and consider him a great nuisance).

One dragon rider in the jousting wars (with a dragon named Altaira (high flying) who is such a deep dark color she seems black but ripples cobalt and violet).

One grateful apprentice to the Fairy Godmother, who herself was saved from one of a great many plots by the impetus of her father’s illness/death.

And of course, from one persnickety lawyer in DC, drowning in student loan debt and of course too many books, one cat too pretty to be a boy named Gandalf, and his Greyhounds (yes, two, who are very lowkey and I think you would like. They’re like large sleeping cats more than dogs, but very friendly with horses). Of course I named the cat Gandalf simply for the introduction of “Gandalf, the Greyhounds.” Originally I wanted to name a dog “Gandalf...the Greyhound” but because of who I am I went to the shelter and asked for the dog least likely to get adopted and sort of came out with a bonded pair and then it seemed they needed twin names so they’re named Fred & George after Harry Potter. 

But rambling aside, I adore you. I adore your books. I adore the world you’ve given freely for us to play in. Get well soon, and lots, lots, and lots of love. I’ll be playing in my worlds today especially a lot, thinking of you.

All the best,

Kaylee

[ecritetmort]

About the Writer (mobile-friendly version)

To start, more specifics about me as a person is over here on my personal blog.

For eleven years, I’ve been terrorizing the world with stories of vampires, faeries, demons and angels, and anything else suiting my fashion. For context, I’m seventeen and a senior in high school, so you can do the math on when my fascination with storytelling began.

As of right now, I have five active projects:

[Karyn] | potential: All the Tears We Didn’t Cry YA Modern Fantasy | LGBT (wlw) Romance | Novel A teenage girl revives into a world of unconventional angels and demons in which she is the key to a political revolution heralded by a king of shadows and must find her own truth and life before the two gods who returned her to life pull her from it once again. Character tags: Karyn, Death, Triste, Diana, Life, Oscar, Universe Character tags (main blog): Karyn, Death, Triste, Diana, Life, Oscar Pinterest boards: Karyn, Death, Triste, Diana, Life, Oscar, Universe (you can also see my Pinterest boards for some of the reoccurring settings.)

[Rose-Colored Boy] | potential: Tapes for Icarus Urban Fantasy | LGBT (not focus) | Novella (probably) (plot in progress:) focussing on an oracle, Tijuana, their roommates Hester (Oracle-in-training) and André (herbologist), and their brother, [Icarus], who has been traveling around the world as Apollo’s lover. Character tags (currently empty): Tijuana, Hester, André Pinterest boards: multi: rose-colored boy

[Apprentices] | (no working title yet) YA Historical Fantasy | LBGT (not focus) | Novel (in progress:) Set in Karyn’s world almost a hundred years earlier, twin sisters Zeta and Delta are offered apprenticeships by the twin gods of their world, and in the process come to know the Earth they have only glimpsed through their fathers’ and mother’s stories. Character tags (currently empty): Delta, Zeta, Bella, Castor, Pollux, Death, Life, Betelgeuse, Anne, Rajani Pinterest boards: multi: apprentices, Death, Life, Anne

[Girl Gangs] | (no working title yet) NA Urban Fantasy | LGBT (wlw) Romance | Novella (or shorter) Vigilante Moryseis has always gone by the name the Black Adder, but not until she meets the tiefling Red Rose does she realize that there’s more to her scales than just a nickname, and it’s going to take both dealing with her raging crush on Akdai and the hunters flooding her city to protect her family. Character tags (empty): Moryseis, Akdai, PAM Pinterest boards: Moryseis, Akdai

[etc] | (no working title) Urban Fantasy | LGBT (non focus) | Slice-of-Life short story collection Set in a similar world to Mory and Akdai’s, it centers around a web of vampires, incubi and succubi, witches, and mages settled into a world where magic is common, but there’s always that one dude who just isn’t chill with vampires. Light-hearted without being all fluff. Character tags: Nathan (vampire), Mya (blood mage), Tanith (vampire), Alex (incubus), Ava (herbologist), Lydia (witch and elderly landlady), Kenneth (gorgon)

As you can see, I have a bit of an affinity for gay ladies, in part because I am a gay lady, and fantasy. Karyn and the others, as my oldest characters, have the most development, while Tijuana, Hester, and André are my newest (but I didn’t list these in any particular order outside of what came to mind first, so). PAM and Akdai were first developed by a friend and I for a D&D campaign, with Akdai being my own, which is why she is.. literally a tiefling. From D&D.

In addition to my own characters, my wonderful datemate @thegreatphantasm and I have a series of crossover universes between their future webcomic, Here Be Lions, and what I’ve affectionately nicknamed the Karynverse (I’ll give it a better name eventually, I swear). There are four as of now, in order:

Joint House AU | Pride has kids. Karyn needs a home. Why not? Crossover Ships: Salted Caramel (Pride/Death), the Edges  (Triste/Adikias), (Louise/Oscar) Crossover-specific Characters: Aneko, Blaise

College JH AU | Pride and Death are the graduate student saviors of the three disasters of undergraduate students in room 66. (Info on this AU) Crossover Ships: Salted Caramel, the Edges, Fleur-de-3  (Florence/Oscar/Louise) Crossover-specific Characters: Noah

Animalia AU (aka the Furry AU) | It’s the joint house AU, except in a science fiction world where all humans are genetically modified to be furries. (Look to the JH AU for details, or this post for info on the world.)

Just Your Average Canon Casual Crossover | As on the tin: the worlds are together, but outside of a few times, they don’t interact. Canon is canon. Crossover Ship: Salted Caramel

In the JH and college AUs, the results of some ships are children that don’t exist in either canon. You can read an explanation of Blaise (and Aneko, though she isn’t mentioned by name) here. (Spoilers: Adikias wanted to do some magical artificial insemination.) As for Noah, he’s Florence and Oscar’s son, the one and only child of our one and only truly conventional m/f couple. Also, in case you couldn’t tell, I have a soft spot in my heart for Salted Caramel, and it is the sole reason for the genesis for every single crossover AU you see here. Every. Single. One.

Otherwise, you might find some allusions to a scrapped Steven Universe-crossover canon AU called Children of War, but I hated it so much that in a burst of energy one fateful 2 AM I deleted just about every post dedicated to it. I also have a pet canon AU where Karyn doesn’t leave home, leading to she and Death having odd roommate status as her life continues despite the grander plot, almost all contained in a short series called Death & Co., centered around little clashes of Karyn’s average Asian-American teenage life with Overprotective Asshole™ Death.

[littleartistthoughts]

Romeo x Juliet

Sooo. Sometime during my middle school years, I was on the AMV side of YouTube. I stumbled across an AMV of the anime, Romeo x Juliet, to the background song: “Romeo and Juliet.” Out of curiosity, I searched up the anime, and I found it on YouTube. I think I watched the final scenes of the last episode first, without any context. I guess I was interested enough to start from the beginning. 

And I became obsessed. By obsessed, I mean, seriously, seriously, obsessed. I fell in love with everything -- the main characters, the music, the world. The romance was touching, the story was impacting, and it was just perfect. I cried sooo hard. It became one of those things that touched me so much to the point I thought about it for weeks and weeks. I searched up AMV’s and fanart and scoured the Wikipedia page over and over, so eager to have more. 

I even tried to burn the entire series on DVD because I wanted to watch it whenever I wanted (so I had to learn how to burn a DVD, though I don’t think I ever actually succeeded). Eventually, though, by some luck, I found the DVD at Best Buy, and my dad bought it for me. 

I shared it with my friends. I sent them all home to watch it, and I felt overjoyed when they came back to school the next day saying they binged it and cried and loved it. We became something of a fan club. Lol. 

Then time went on and I thought of it less and less, though I was always fond of the memory of watching it. I remembered it as a sad, beautiful anime that I loved so much. Actually, it impacted me so much that I’m borrowing some elements of the story for my own works. To this day, I reference the show when I’m wondering about the design of my own fantasy universes. 

These days, I’m slowly molding my Sol Verynda universe. I’ve been doing that for about four years now. I keep changing things or developing them further. Sometimes, I run out of inspiration. I’m still dragging details out of the world where I can find them. Sometimes you just need a giant push. 

I don’t remember the reason, but sometime during this past week or the last, Romeo x Juliet popped into my mind. I think I was just reminiscing the story. And then I decided to just watch it. You know. For the heck of it. 

So for the first time in a very, very long time, I watched the series. 

I’m a lot older now and more mature than I was in middle school, which means there’s a lot more that I can understand now. That means I’m also a lot more cynical now. And critical. And the devil’s always on my shoulder. Plus this raging depression that just won’t go away is in my mind. So I re-watched the anime through a different lens. 

Still me, but a different version. 

I watched the series over the course of a few days (busy with school and work). I decided to watch it in Dub because that’s the original way I watched it, and I wanted to recapture that feeling I got when I watched before. Even though my sister gave me such a hard time about it. Like, seriously. She came into my room and slapped my phone out of my hands because she was so disgusted. I retaliated. 

I like the Dub also because the script is so lovely in English. They incorporate some Shakespearian speak (I learned later that it’s really called iambic pentameter). So the characters sometimes speak like it’s the 14th or something century, and it’s pleasant to hear. I also just really like hearing them speak poetically in an American accent. 

Buuuut, I caved out of curiosity. I searched the Subbed version on YouTube and watched a few minutes of the first episode, just to see the difference. And, well. I get it. The show was made specifically for Japanese, and so that version is actually very fitting. Buuut, I still continued on with the dub. I’m thinking now, though, that I’m going to rewatch the show in the Subbed version sometime soon. It’ll be like seeing the story again, but with a different feel. So, yeah. 

Anywayyyy, so the story. The show takes liberties with the adaptation. I’ve never read the original play, but we all know how it goes. And I think I watched Romeo + Juliet with Leonardo DiCaprio, so I had an idea. In the original, Romeo belongs to the Montague family and Juliet belongs to the Capulets. Their families hate each other, but they fall in love anyway. After a string of events, Romeo and Juliet die together, and the family conflict is resolved by this tragedy. 

In the anime, Romeo’s father, Leontes Montague, murders every member of the Capulet family so he can take over the city, Neo Verona, as ruler. Only Juliet, who was rescued by her family’s loyalists, escapes. She’s two years old. Fourteen years later, Montague is the tyrannical king of the city, and Juliet is forced into hiding. She disguises herself as a boy, named Odin, though she was never told the reason why she had to do so. 

Montague is on the hunt to find her. In his tyranny, he allows his guards to torment the citizens. And so Juliet, disguised as a man, takes on the persona of the Red Whirlwind to defend the people. 

Eventually, Juliet winds up at the palace, dressed as a girl, for the Rose Ball. And she and Romeo meet. And it’s a love at first sight moment. 

Later, Juliet finally learns of her heritage, and her world becomes chaotic. 

One thing I didn’t realize when I was younger was just how much of a sweetheart Romeo is. He lived a rough life in the palace. His father was emotionally and physically abusive. His mother left him to join a convent (though she deeply regretted leaving him). He was alone at the palace except for his best friend, Benvolio, and his Dragon Steed (basically, flying pegasus), Cielo. Despite that, he had a big heart. He was nothing like his father. He genuinely was a good person. 

And Juliet just deserved so much better. The girl could never catch a break. She and Romeo had similar temperaments. She was really sweet and considerate with a good, forgiving heart. But she was also this badass swordsman secret vigilante who was a fearless leader and fought for justice. We see her character develop over the course of the series. She slowly matures after all her mistakes. And in the end she’s the one to save the world. 

The love shared between these two is really the driving force of the story. It’s the reason the two fought so hard to create a world of love instead of hatred. Instead of revenge, Juliet’s focus was on freedom and happiness. Without Romeo, she might have actually killed Montague and gone with the route of hatred. 

The series did get a little cheesy and naive sometimes, I felt while watching. That’s the cynical adult in me. However, the show doesn’t hesitate to admit that. For example, when Romeo’s trying to motivate a group of exiles to cultivate a dead land, his words do seem childish and idealistic. And several inmates point that out. But they do eventually try. 

I don’t know. To me, it’s a reminder that the idealism of children is so powerful. Adults don’t have that same spirit. A lot of us are always worried about the bad outcomes of things. We’re always tired. We’re so used to seeing bad things that we become cynical. But kids aren’t so used to it yet, so they still have these grand hopes. 

It can be a disadvantage, of course, such as when Juliet jumped into an opportunity out of her naivety, just to see her loyalists fall. 

But, still. We get characters like William (a caricature of Shakespeare himself), who is so childish and idealistic and perpetually inspired. 

When I was in middle school, I hadn’t yet experienced a real relationship. So it was fun to imagine what it would be like. Watching Romeo and Juliet’s relationship blossom gave me such a warm, fluttery feeling. You know. I wanted a romance like that. 

Re-watching it, post-heartbreak from my FL and other “romantic” endeavors, I view love a lot differently now. Honestly, I haven’t felt fondly about it for a long time. I’ve come to a point where I almost detest it. I detest boys and the hurt they can cause me. It’s hard to imagine myself in a good, loving, idealistic relationship again after all the guys I’ve encountered. 

Well. My heart is still too broken for a new love, but I still felt my heartstrings pulled by the anime. Maybe it’s too soon to tell, but I think my opinion has shifted a bit. I forgot, really, how amazing romantic love can be. How consuming. Even when I’m not a part of it, just seeing it unfold is so precious. It makes me feel all warm and happy inside. And inspired to write. 

Anyway. 

One other thing that I’m really noticing now that I just didn’t before is the symbolism. That scene where Romeo asked Juliet (without knowing she was present) what flower she would prefer for a garden, she answered with a “rose.” I remember feeling confused. The entire series, the white iris was the symbol of their relationship. But why would she answer a rose?

Well. The iris is on the Capulet family crest, and the rose is on the Montague family crest. Juliet was saying she wanted him. 

Also, Leontes Montague entered the family by becoming a ward, and then poisoning his way to the top. Also, his father is a Capulet, meaning Romeo and Juliet are distant cousins. Oof. 

Also, I know more about art and architecture now thanks to Art History courses. So seeing all the reliefs and structures in the series was astounding. Seriously. Astounding. There’s this constant image of a goddess with angel’s wings in prayer. It appears in statues, reliefs, statuettes, paintings, etc. There was a goddess statue at the fountain where Romeo and Juliet first met. 

In the end, we learned this goddess is a symbol of Escalus, the grand tree that serves as a life force to the continent. 

If anything, I really really really wish there was a prequel or something that went into the history of the Capulet family and the tree of Escalus. There were so many unanswered questions. Like, why was Neo Verona floating over the sky the whole time? How? Why did Escalus keep it afloat? Why did the Capulet family have to be the one to make sacrifices? Why the girls? Who was Ophelia, really? What’s the history? When they fell from the sky, did they just rejoin the larger world? They mention Christian and Greek mythos, so how do they know about it? They say Escalus is the patron goddess of Neo Verona, so are there others? 

Sadly, we might never find out. But it’s all still very interesting. 

Neo Verona is a living, breathing world. It’s a fantasy world that we fall in love with. 

All the side characters make us care for saving the world, and Juliet mentions this, too. She decides her sacrifice would be worth it if it meant her loved ones would get to live. And we agree, too, because we come to love all the minor characters. Every single one. Even though we don’t want her to die. 

Watching it this time around, I also started to understand Montague, and admire him as a villain. He’s layered. He’s vicious. He’s ruthless. He’s a little insane. He was never loved (he says this in his final moments). His mother died when he was young. He told Romeo he deeply cared for him, which I kind of believe. In a twisted way, I believe he did love him. I believe he also loved Romeo’s mother, Portia. When he visited her, he started by saying she could have lived in luxury with him if she didn’t leave. 

Montague also seemed to genuinely care for Escalus. For some reason. Maybe he didn’t want to the world to end with him in it. He seemed to be searching for a genuine solution to the problem. 

Anytime Montague was on screen, he was riveting. Truly terrifying. Charming with some, like Hermoine and other lady nobility. But murderous. And a swordsman. Underneath it all, all his heinous acts, he just wanted love. In the end, he died in Juliet’s arms. 

The mythos of the world was incredible as well. I’m a sucker for fantasy, and the show really runs with all my favorite things. Prophecy. Ancient things. Sacrifice. Enhanced nature. 

I haven’t watched anime in a long time. Honestly, I sort of shunned it from my mind when “Asian things” became more and more shameful. Well, that thinking is shameful. Because anime is truly beautiful. It captures humans in a different way. Anime knows how to do romance. It knows how to build tension and longing, it knows how to invest the audience. Every anime I ever watched has hooked me to the romance (something American TV can’t ever do with me). 

I just love the tone of anime. The wittiness, the playful scenes, the heavy moods, the characters and their attitudes. It’s all entirely distinct. I don’t know why, but it really gets you wanting. Plus the expressiveness of 2D animation that can do absolute wonders. 

I’m a really big fan of Game of Thrones, don’t get me wrong, and maybe the show just butchered the story, but for a while I just wanted to make a story similar in spirit to Thrones. You know. The realism. The darkness. The unfairness. 

But I forgot that you can make your own worlds with fiction. And your own rules. Life is life. It’ll always be unfair and tragically beautiful, and there are lovely stories to capture that. But then there are those stories that are an abstraction of reality, like Romeo x Juliet. Not totally realistic, but spellbinding. You’re thrown into this world, and you just want to be a part of it. For a while, you can escape the real world and join this one. 

It gets one inspired about living in a different world. 

So while realism is great, fiction and world-building are just so much more fun. And impactful. And creative. And magical. And fan-service isn’t a bad thing. 

I cried during the final episode, once right after Romeo died, and again during the Epilogue. Everyone who lived got a happy ending, and I was so sad and happy seeing them all enjoying life. After all the darkness that they went through, they all ended up living in the bright, joyous world that Romeo and Juliet dreamed of. 

That’s fucking inspiring. To the max. A little cheesy, but in a way that feels so earned and so right. 

So anyway, I’m glad I decided to rewatch it. I was in my early teens when I last watched it, and now I’m 21. Oh, and the decade is ending. Seems fitting. Maybe it’ll help me set the tone for the next decade, which I hope will be one of creativity. And maybe some romance. Maybe. Maybe it’ll have that attitude. 

It’s still one of my favorite stories of all time, and I’m definitely going to rewatch it again in the future. Next time will probably be soon. I have to spend some time recovering from the emotional roller coaster that I went through. Maybe next month. I’ll watch it in Sub, the way it was meant to be, I guess. And I’ll see the difference. And I’ll probably write another post about how I felt about it. 

Until the next time. 

[poorquentyn]

Men’s Lives Have Meaning, Part 5: The Hour of Ghosts

Series so far here

“There’s a tipping point in every tragedy where inevitability locks the exit doors on free will and you know that after this, there is no turning back.”

-- @racefortheironthrone​

Hello everyone. My name is Emmett, and I could have been imagined, designed, constructed, and sold as a consumer for the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. I had just turned twelve when the first one came out at the end of 2001, I’d read the books that summer, and the infusion of swelling Hollywood orchestras and Peter Jackson’s beloved action schlock was perfectly calibrated to take my love for the material and shoot it into the stratosphere. I still look back on those movies with love...mostly. There are moments, especially in Return of the King, where the tone tips overboard: 

On one level, that’s what we want our heroes to say, right? We’re up against the odds, we might not be rewarded for our efforts, but let’s do it anyway; that’s the lesson a lot of great genre fiction is meant to leave us with, in one form or another. The problem with that clip is the knowing wink, the sly acknowledgement that after they’ve escaped so many other hair-raising disasters, this is just another day at work. I get the joke, but it would make more sense for (say) a Bond or Indy movie, where it really is just another day at work and part of the enjoyment comes from how what’s over-the-top for us is normal for them. In the context of LOTR, it’s tonally off, because this is not supposed to feel episodic. It’s supposed to feel climactic, like our heroes are genuinely in danger as everything comes to a head, and that’s marred when you expose the plot armor so blatantly. If this is just another day, why are we supposed to be invested in their risk? 

Of course, Peter Jackson didn’t invent that problem. It’s a storytelling problem. And that is why GRRM created Quentyn Martell. It’s why he tries to tame a dragon and why he fails: to reclaim the stakes and re-sensitize us to the risk. It’s not just that he dies, it’s how and why he dies. What does it mean to not have plot armor? What does it say about quest narratives that they can collapse so completely and yet the quester clings to tropes as if they’ll save him? How are we to live if Story fails as an organizing principle? “The Spurned Suitor” brings these questions to the forefront, right before “The Dragontamer” sets it all on fire. It’s the most reflective and dialogue-heavy of Quent’s chapters, the most thematically explicit; it’s the one that cuts through the hellish imagery dominating this storyline right to what it all means. In genre terms, where previous Quent chapters soaked the fantasy tropes in blood-red horror, this chapter has a distinctly noirish feel to it, in terms of both imagery and theme.

“The Merchant’s Man” introduced Quent reeling from his friends’ deaths; “The Windblown” caught up with him in the wake of the Sack of Astapor. In both chapters, as I said in the essays in question, GRRM’s focus is less the traumatic event itself than the psychological impact on Quent--both are about how one processes these existential challenges to the hero’s journey, and why one would keep going in the face of them. “The Spurned Suitor” pulls the same trick, but with a twist. In this case, the pre-chapter trauma that shapes the chapter isn’t an obstacle to the quest. It’s the outright failure of it. Quent reached the beautiful princess, proved himself willing (though not exactly eager) to transform from a frog back into a prince...but she said no. 

To be clear, chapter title aside, the horror here is not getting rejected by a pretty girl. (Like I said last time, Dany doesn’t reject Quent in favor of the dark dashing Daario and his lust for open war, but in favor of the dishwater-dull Hizdahr and the peace he ostensibly brings; as she tells herself upon agreeing to marry the latter, she’s trying to act on behalf of her people.) The horror here is getting rejected after losing your friends and killing screaming teenagers along the way; the horror is selling your soul to live a life you didn’t want to live, only to find you’re not even going to get that. The horror is that it wasn’t worth it. It all meant nothing. Story is a lie. Of course, if that’s all there was to Quent’s story, it would be tired and boring. What grounds it emotionally is that laserlike focus on the aftermath of that revelation, as it hits home harder with each step of the descent. What do you do when your easy narrative falls apart and you’re left with no good options?

In “The Merchant’s Man” and “The Windblown,” Quent’s reaction to this trauma and disillusionment was to repress what he’d gone through and done, soldiering on with the Windblown repeatedly intervening (as if sent by some sinister observing God-Author) to allow him to do so. Now that he’s faced with the failure of his quest, all the kid wants to do is to go home, but he can’t bring himself to face the shame of failure and (even more so) his survivor’s guilt...

“We should be heeding Selmy. When Barristan the Bold tells you to run, a wise man laces up his boots. We should find a ship for Volantis whilst the port is still open.”

Just the mention turned Ser Archibald’s cheeks green. “No more ships. I’d sooner hop back to Volantis on one foot.”

Volantis, Quentyn thought. Then Lys, then home. Back the way I came, empty-handed. Three brave men dead, for what?

It would be sweet to see the Greenblood again, to visit Sunspear and the Water Gardens and breathe the clean sweet mountain air of Yronwood in place of the hot, wet, filthy humors of Slaver’s Bay. His father would speak no word of rebuke, Quentyn knew, but the disappointment would be there in his eyes. His sister would be scornful, the Sand Snakes would mock him with smiles sharp as swords, and Lord Yronwood, his second father, who had sent his own son along to keep him safe…

“I will not keep you here,” Quentyn told his friends. “My father laid this task on me, not you. Go home, if that is what you want. By whatever means you like. I am staying.”

...and so instead, he reaches out to the Windblown in the hopes that they’ll once again keep his quest going, even as their actions and attitudes continue to undercut the ostensibly righteous and hopeful nature of said quest. We see that right from the beginning of Quent’s penultimate POV chapter:

The hour of ghosts was almost upon them when Ser Gerris Drinkwater returned to the pyramid to report that he had found Beans, Books, and Old Bill Bone in one of Meereen’s less savory cellars, drinking yellow wine and watching naked slaves kill one another with bare hands and filed teeth.

This fighting pit, an unofficial but not-so-secret alternative to Daznak’s, is a glimpse of the Meereen outside the rarified domain of the Masters. The black market sprang up as the sanctioned one shut down, and that the Windblown are taking part reminds us of the sellswords’ own analogous role in The System, straddling the line between a standard part of Essosi military coalitions and a wild card constantly in the position to upset the applecart. 

That backdrop provides the thematic and emotional context for the decision Quent makes in this chapter. The hour of ghosts, indeed; the shadow city of alleys and cellars into which Team Quentyn descends in “The Spurned Suitor” is haunted, not only by those already dead but also by the deaths to come. As has been the case throughout Quent’s storyline, his personal struggles dovetail with (and are influenced by) the big picture of the Meereenese Knot. Just as Dany’s refusal obliterated the remnants of the “tale to tell our grandchildren” veneer, leading to Quent betting his life on a wild roll of the dice, so has her departure at Daznak’s shattered the pretense of peace, leading to the whole pot boiling over as ADWD comes to a close. Indeed, I’d argue that Quent’s quest and Hizdahr’s peace are analogous. They sound good on the surface, appealing to values we instinctively support, but quickly prove rotten underneath the gild, enabling the worst actors in the Meereenese Knot instead of righteous causes, before they both finally come crashing down at the same place and time in the Kingbreaker/Dragontamer two-sided setpiece. It’s all approaching the tipping point, personally and politically. 

But as I said, what makes Quent’s chapters more than glum grim deconstruction is the extent to which the characters are aware of this tipping point, that the story is falling apart around them, and that’s made explicit in “The Spurned Suitor.” On their way to their fateful meeting with the Tattered Prince, Quent and Drink argue about the former’s plans, and IMO it’s one of the most important and profound passages in the series. Let’s break it down. 

“ ‘The dragon has three heads,’ she said to me. ‘My marriage need not be the end of all your hopes,’ she said. ‘I know why you are here. For fire and blood.’ I have Targaryen blood in me, you know that. I can trace my lineage back —”

“Fuck your lineage,” said Gerris. “The dragons won’t care about your blood, except maybe how it tastes. You cannot tame a dragon with a history lesson. They’re monsters, not maesters. Quent, is this truly what you want to do?”

“This is what I have to do. For Dorne. For my father. For Cletus and Will and Maester Kedry.”

“They’re dead,” said Gerris. “They won’t care.”

“All dead,” Quentyn agreed. “For what? To bring me here, so I might wed the dragon queen. A grand adventure, Cletus called it. Demon roads and stormy seas, and at the end of it the most beautiful woman in the world. A tale to tell our grandchildren. But Cletus will never father a child, unless he left a bastard in the belly of that tavern wench he liked. Will will never have his wedding. Their deaths should have some meaning.”

Gerris pointed to where a corpse slumped against a brick wall, attended by a cloud of glistening green flies. “Did his death have meaning?”

Quentyn looked at the body with distaste. “He died of the flux. Stay well away from him.” The pale mare was inside the city walls. Small wonder that the streets seemed so empty. “The Unsullied will send a corpse cart for him.”

“No doubt. But that was not my question. Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths. I loved Will and Cletus too, but this will not bring them back to us. This is a mistake, Quent. You cannot trust in sellswords.”

“They are men like any other men. They want gold, glory, power. That’s all I am trusting in.” That, and my own destiny. I am a prince of Dorne, and the blood of dragons is in my veins.

We see here that Quent’s sunk cost fallacy has completely taken over his decision-making process. Because his quest has already gotten people killed, it must continue, or in his mind, they died for nothing. This is, of course, extremely relatable. We’ve all made decisions like this, albeit usually on a much smaller scale. No one likes to admit failure, everyone wants to attach some meaning to their losses, and we’re meant to understand why Quent is so helplessly mired in panicked desperation. I can fix this, I will fix this, oh gods please I have to fix this...

GRRM makes this decision easy to empathize with in order to sucker punch us with the larger revelation: the basic mechanics of the genre are designed to create precisely such a sunk cost fallacy. You are supposed to lose companions--that raises the stakes, heightens our emotional involvement, and challenges the protagonist both externally (how do I logistically complete the quest without that companion?) and internally (how do I soldier on in the face of that loss?) You are supposed to have a low point where you question everything that’s led you to this moment. You are supposed to take an enormous risk. You are supposed to, literally or metaphorically, tame a dragon.

In Quent’s case, however, we’re dealing with a Last Hero who never finds the Children of the Forest--or perhaps, a Last Hero whom the Children pitilessly watch die. As such, when looking at his arc as a whole, those losses and low points don’t serve to allow our hero to prove himself and us to revel in victory snatched from the jaws of defeat. Instead, they are warning signs that our hero ignores. Quentyn’s story interrogates reader assumptions about quest narratives: why do we embrace such a narrative? What are we overlooking when we do so? What if the quest in question rips those assumptions limb from limb and leaves them to bleed out on the deck of the Meadowlark, in the ashes of Astapor, in that hellish pit beneath the Great Pyramid? 

As far as what all this looks like to Quent himself, it’s made clear that what he’s relying on to save his quest (and his soul) isn’t anything intrinsic to his actions. He’s not counting on courage or ingenuity. He’s not even counting, first and foremost, on the Windblown. He’s counting on the story itself to save him, the elements of his narrative that would seem to demand he succeed: his princely heritage, his lost companions, the fact that he’s taking a big foolish romantic risk. 

But as I said a few essays back, the story is in fact out to kill Quentyn Martell, and so Drink does what good friends have to do sometimes: tell you that you’re spouting BS. “Fuck your lineage” is GRRM speaking through Drink, launching a deconstructive nuke at the idea that your bloodline is what makes you The Hero. That holds true with the *actual* heroes as well, of course--one of the major themes of Jon’s story is that everything he’s learned and struggled with is what makes him a worthy savior figure, not R+L=J in and of itself. But it’s different with Quent because he doesn’t have a grand destiny, earned or otherwise. As such, he’s left alone in an existentialist void, trying to create meaning out of what’s befallen his quest. 

And just as I wrote my series on Davos’s ADWD arc in order to talk about his letter to Marya, I wrote this series in order to talk about Drink’s response to Quent’s desperate plea to the gods that “their deaths should have some meaning.” This is a bold statement, I know, but: “Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths” is the closest we’ve gotten to an overarching thesis statement for ASOIAF. It reaches all the way back to the first book, to Ned (who, like Quent, turns out to not be the protagonist after all) and his shocking demise. So many readers have interpreted that moment, as well as the Red Wedding two books later, as being indicative of nihilism on GRRM’s part. Everything is chaos, honor gets you killed and is therefore worthless, “power is power.” But this is not so. Ned’s legacy is not his death, it is his life. The children determined to find each other again because Dad taught them to stick together and be brave, the vassals who have set out to rescue and restore those children in his name, the memory both in-universe and IRL of a decent man who treated his servants like human beings worth listening to and who was determined to protect the young and innocent...all of this is the meaning of Ned Stark, not that he ended up as a head on a spike. By the same token, the meaning of Tywin Lannister isn’t that he died on the can. It’s why he died on the can, and that is because he lived a terrible life. His legacy is his family tearing itself apart, his hoped-for Lannister regime falling to pieces across Westeros, and his oh-so-symbolic reeking corpse. One of these men, for all his mistakes, found and spread a worthy meaning in his brief time on Terros, and the other, for all his triumphs, did not. We are all mortal; all of us, “from the highest lord to the lowest gutter rat,” are ultimately helpless before the abyss that Quent leaps into in his final chapter. No one (not even Euron, try as he might) can change that. What matters, what makes us who are, what means something, is how we live our lives knowing that in the end, the house always wins.

“Men’s lives have meaning, not their deaths” is also the first arrow in my quiver when it comes to defending the worth of the new characters and storylines in the Feastdance. Why should we care about the Martells or the “Griffs” if they’re just showing up now and will probably die before endgame? Because moving the plot along to book seven is not actually what makes a story meaningful. Lives lived make stories meaningful:

The door to the roof of the tower was stuck so fast that it was plain no one had opened it in years. He had to put his shoulder to it to force it open. But when Jon Connington stepped out onto the high battlements, the view was just as intoxicating as he remembered: the crag with its wind-carved rocks and jagged spires, the sea below growling and worrying at the foot of the castle like some restless beast, endless leagues of sky and cloud, the wood with its autumnal colors. “Your father’s lands are beautiful,” Prince Rhaegar had said, standing right where Jon was standing now. And the boy he’d been had replied, “One day they will all be mine.” As if that could impress a prince who was heir to the entire realm, from the Arbor to the Wall.

Griffin’s Roost had been his, eventually, if only for a few short years. From here, Jon Connington had ruled broad lands extending many leagues to the west, north, and south, just as his father and his father’s father had before him. But his father and his father’s father had never lost their lands. He had. I rose too high, loved too hard, dared too much. I tried to grasp a star, overreached, and fell.

And of course, Drink’s powerful words are GRRM’s message to us about how to think about Quent. Do not think that he meant nothing because he failed and died or because he was never going to be the protagonist, the author is saying. What matters is his life, the POV we have experienced and come to understand. He lived, he tried, he died. It is for us to remember him. I only wish he had heeded the lesson Drink was trying to teach him, before it was far too late. 

Only with that why firmly established does GRRM move onto the what, knowing that the former will lend resonance to the latter. The plot of “The Spurned Suitor” concerns Quent turning in desperation to the Tattered Prince and his Windblown for help taming one of Dany’s captive children, despite having betrayed them. As the city simmers and seethes around them, the princes meet in secret.

The sun had sunk below the city wall by the time they found the purple lotus, painted on the weathered wooden door of a low brick hovel squatting amidst a row of similar hovels in the shadow of the great yellow-and-green pyramid of Rhazdar. Quentyn knocked twice, as instructed. A gruff voice answered through the door, growling something unintelligible in the mongrel tongue of Slaver’s Bay, an ugly blend of Old Ghiscari and High Valyrian. The prince answered in the same tongue. “Freedom.”

The door opened. Gerris entered first, for caution’s sake, with Quentyn close behind him and the big man bringing up the rear. Within, the air was hazy with bluish smoke, whose sweet smell could not quite cover up the deeper stinks of piss and sour wine and rotting meat. The space was much larger than it had seemed from without, stretching off to right and left into the adjoining hovels. What had appeared to be a dozen structures from the street turned into one long hall inside.

At this hour the house was less than half full. A few of the patrons favored the Dornishmen with looks bored or hostile or curious. The rest were crowded around the pit at the far end of the room, where a pair of naked men were slashing at each other with knives whilst the watchers cheered them on.

Quentyn saw no sign of the men they had come to meet. Then a door he had not seen before swung open, and an old woman emerged, a shriveled thing in a dark red tokar fringed with tiny golden skulls. Her skin was white as mare’s milk, her hair so thin that he could see the scalp beneath.

“Dorne,” she said, “I be Zahrina. Purple Lotus. Go down here, you find them.” She held the door and gestured them through.

Team Quent is going underground and behind the curtain in “The Spurned Suitor.” In terms of the big picture, we’re seeing a Meereen that Dany never even glimpsed from atop the pyramid. On a more intimate scale, this imagery reflects the scales falling from Quent’s eyes about how the world works. He never thought his quest would involve cutting ethically murky deals in back-alley parlors (again, it’s suddenly a noir story), but if he wants to keep going for his fallen friends’ sake, it’s the only avenue he has left. It’s worth noting here how Quent contrasts with his fellow Questers for Dany. Where Quent wonders why Dany would ever choose him “among all the princes of the world,” Aegon has never even considered that she would reject him, because he was raised in a Perfect Prince bubble while Quent was told out of nowhere to Go West East, Young Man at age 18. Tyrion, too, wanders the shifting political sands of Essos in the wake of Dany’s crusade, but at this point in his storyline, he finds it hard to care about most of it, so his bitter detached cynicism makes for another illuminating contrast with Quent’s grief and desperation. And Victarion...well, as I’ve argued before, his story is the black comedy to Quent’s tragedy. Vic’s doom is presented as a huge joke on him by his puppetmasters: Euron, Moqorro, and George R.R. Martin. There’s no tragedy there because Vic keeps rejecting the possibility for growth or change. He’s there to be laughed at, by us as well as the monkeys. But with Quent, there really was a worthy life he could’ve lived (as I’ll get into next time). It’s just not this one, this one-way ride into fiery oblivion, escorted and enabled by the Satan of Slaver’s Bay and his motley crew. Speaking of which:

An undercellar. It was a long way down, and so dark that Quentyn had to feel his way to keep from slipping. Near the bottom Ser Archibald pulled his dagger.

They emerged in a brick vault thrice the size of the winesink above. Huge wooden vats lined the walls as far as the prince could see. A red lantern hung on a hook just inside the door, and a greasy black candle flickered on an overturned barrel serving as a table. That was the only light.

Caggo Corpsekiller was pacing by the wine vats, his black arakh hanging at his hip. Pretty Meris stood cradling a crossbow, her eyes as cold and dead as two grey stones. Denzo D’han barred the door once the Dornishmen were inside, then took up a position in front of it, arms crossed against his chest.

One too many, Quentyn thought.

The Tattered Prince himself was seated at the table, nursing a cup of wine. In the yellow candlelight his silver-grey hair seemed almost golden, though the pouches underneath his eyes were etched as large as saddlebags. He wore a brown wool traveler’s cloak, with silvery chain mail glimmering underneath. Did that betoken treachery or simple prudence? An old sellsword is a cautious sellsword. Quentyn approached his table. “My lord. You look different without your cloak.”

“My ragged raiment?” The Pentoshi gave a shrug. “A poor thing…yet those tatters fill my foes with fear, and on the battlefield the sight of my rags blowing in the wind emboldens my men more than any banner. And if I want to move unseen, I need only slip it off to become plain and unremarkable.” He gestured at the bench across from him. “Sit. I understand you are a prince. Would that I had known. Will you drink? Zahrina offers food as well. Her bread is stale and her stew is unspeakable. Grease and salt, with a morsel or two of meat. Dog, she says, but I think rat is more likely. It will not kill you, though. I have found that it is only when the food is tempting that one must beware. Poisoners invariably choose the choicest dishes.”

“You brought three men,” Ser Gerris pointed out, with an edge in his voice. “We agreed on two apiece.”

“Meris is no man. Meris, sweet, undo your shirt, show him.”

“That will not be necessary,” said Quentyn. If the talk he had heard was true, beneath that shirt Pretty Meris had only the scars left by the men who’d cut her breasts off. “Meris is a woman, I agree. You’ve still twisted the terms.”

“Tattered and twisty, what a rogue I am. Three to two is not much of an advantage, it must be admitted, but it counts for something. In this world, a man must learn to seize whatever gifts the gods chose to send him. That was a lesson I learned at some cost. I offer it to you as a sign of my good faith.” 

We’ve got a literal descent matching the emotional/thematic one, to make a foolish risky deal that will end up claiming our protagonist body and soul, with someone who’s lying and spinning right off the bat, his deceptively simple appearance hiding a cruel sardonic heart...so yeah, like I said, the Tattered Prince is the devil of the Meereenese Knot, the tempter-corrupter figure luring Quent into hell. “Tattered and twisty, what a rogue I am” is precisely the sort of way Satan and characters similar to him talk; they lie to you, and then they make fun of you for believing them. After all, Quent, you only got into Meereen in the first place because of the Tattered Prince’s deceitfulness...and because of your own. 

The Pentoshi gave a shrug. “One thing I am certain of. Someone will have need of our swords.”

“I have need of those swords. Dorne will hire you.”

The Tattered Prince glanced at Pretty Meris. “He does not lack for gall, this Frog. Must I remind him? My dear prince, the last contract we signed you used to wipe your pretty pink bottom.”

“I will double whatever the Yunkishmen are paying you.”

“And pay in gold upon the signing of our contract, yes?”

“I will pay you part when we reach Volantis, the rest when I am back in Sunspear. We brought gold with us when we set sail, but it would have been hard to conceal once we joined the company, so we gave it over to the banks. I can show you papers.”

“Ah. Papers. But we will be paid double.”

“Twice as many papers,” said Pretty Meris.

“The rest you’ll have in Dorne,” Quentyn insisted. “My father is a man of honor. If I put my seal to an agreement, he will fulfill its terms. You have my word on that.”

The Tattered Prince finished his wine, turned the cup over, and set it down between them. “So. Let me see if I understand. A proven liar and oathbreaker wishes to contract with us and pay in promises. And for what services? I wonder. Are my Windblown to smash the Yunkai’i and sack the Yellow City? Defeat a Dothraki khalasar in the field? Escort you home to your father? Or will you be content if we deliver Queen Daenerys to your bed wet and willing? Tell me true, Prince Frog. What would you have of me and mine?”

You’ve been lying this whole way, to the world and yourself. What’s one more piece of wood on that fire? Again, though, it’s precisely that sunk-cost fallacy, the panicked certainty that it’s too late to turn back, that gets Quent killed. In so much of genre fiction, that “I started this, I have to finish it” drive is celebrated, even cast as the thing that makes you the hero. Here, it is revealed as a sad self-delusion that only serves to throw another body on the pile of the dead. Quent needs so badly to make his friends’ sacrifice worth it that he’s willing to sell out an *entire city* (namely, Pentos) to make it happen. The cynical world-weary Windblown are here to cut through that fragile narrative, telling Quent that neither he nor his story is special:

“I ask your pardon for our deception. The only ships sailing for Slaver’s Bay were those that had been hired to bring you to the wars.”

The Tattered Prince gave a shrug. “Every turncloak has his tale. You are not the first to swear me your swords, take my coin, and run. All of them have reasons. ‘My little son is sick,’ or ‘My wife is putting horns on me,’ or ‘The other men all make me suck their cocks.’ Such a charming boy, the last, but I did not excuse his desertion. Another fellow told me our food was so wretched that he had to flee before it made him sick, so I had his foot cut off, roasted it up, and fed it to him. Then I made him our camp cook. Our meals improved markedly, and when his contract was fulfilled he signed another. You, though…several of my best are locked up in the queen’s dungeons thanks to that lying tongue of yours, and I doubt that you can even cook.”

“I am a prince of Dorne,” said Quentyn. “I had a duty to my father and my people. There was a secret marriage pact.”

“So I heard. And when the silver queen saw your scrap of parchment she fell into your arms, yes?”

“No,” said Pretty Meris.

“No? Oh, I recall. Your bride flew off on a dragon. Well, when she returns, do be sure to invite us to your nuptials. The men of the company would love to drink to your happiness, and I do love a Westerosi wedding. The bedding part especially, only…oh, wait…” He turned to Denzo D’han. “Denzo, I thought you told me that the dragon queen had married some Ghiscari.”

“A Meereenese nobleman. Rich.”

The Tattered Prince turned back to Quentyn. “Could that be true? Surely not. What of your marriage pact?”

“She laughed at him,” said Pretty Meris.

Daenerys never laughed. The rest of Meereen might see him as an amusing curiosity, like the exiled Summer Islander King Robert used to keep at King’s Landing, but the queen had always spoken to him gently. “We came too late,” said Quentyn.

Interesting to note that Quent is pulling an UnKiss here, convincing himself that Dany did not laugh upon him revealing his identity and mission, when in truth, she did. That just goes to show how thoroughly he’s backed himself into a corner. “We came too late,” and so again, we have a Quent chapter ending with the Windblown enabling our hero’s descent. Of course, Quent is responsible for this decision--he came to them, not the other way around. I’m not trying to strip him of agency, as that would be a much less engaging story. But what I’m interested in here is how the failure of the quest, the shattering of the ideal, has led to Quent making this terrible decision. Here’s where GRRM’s existentialist-romantic take on the genre comes into play: Quent was taught to uphold and believe in certain norms because an ordered universe will reward him for it, not because following the rules is the right thing to do in itself. As such, when Quent’s quest proves over and over again that there is no inherent order to the universe, and as such no automatic reward, Quent loses all moorings; he doesn’t have that Davos/Brienne “no chance and no choice” ethos to keep him going in the face of the abyss. 

And that’s why he makes a deal with the devil: it seems like his best option. 

“I need you to help me steal a dragon.”

Caggo Corpsekiller chuckled. Pretty Meris curled her lip in a half-smile. Denzo D’han whistled.

The Tattered Prince only leaned back on his stool and said, “Double does not pay for dragons, princeling. Even a frog should know that much. Dragons come dear. And men who pay in promises should have at least the sense to promise more.”

“If you want me to triple—”

“What I want,” said the Tattered Prince, “is Pentos.”

And as always, making a deal with the devil lands our protagonist in fiery torment, condemned by his own folly. After Quent’s death, Barristan takes responsibility for delivering Pentos to Tatters, and come TWOW, I think Dany will fulfill the bargain after confronting Illyrio RE Aegon. Because a deal with the devil can’t be undone--it just transfers from person to person. 

Indeed, it’s tonally appropriate that Quent’s quest climaxes not with him becoming the hero, but with him letting the devil back into paradise. One thing I noticed in this reread is how closely the form of “The Spurned Suitor” matches that of “The Dragontamer.” In both chapters, Quent trembles on the edge of the Void, wondering am I really going to go through with this, decides that he is, and this descent is promptly made literal. In his third chapter, he descends to the cellar to face the Tattered Prince and his cronies, sealing the doom that unfolds in his fourth chapter, in which he descends into the dank dark hell beneath the Great Pyramid to face Rhaegal and Viserion. One inextricably leads to the other; symbolically, the Tattered Prince is the dragonfire, the epitome of how Quent trying to “fix” his own story only serves to keep revealing how it cannot be fixed. This is your life, Quentyn Martell. You are not the hero. And just as with my second favorite character in ASOIAF, Stannis Baratheon, this revelation will be rendered in fire and blood. 

[givencontext]

My Favorite Fantasy

This month for book club, I read two fantasy books. Is it right and proper for someone with a degree in English literature to admit that they prefer fantasy books above all others? That’s not going to surprise anyone, is it? It is a close call between fantasy, horror, and sci-fi when trying to pinpoint my favorite genre. Yes, I love the classics and have even been known to argue in favor of a literary canon – everyone should read Shakespeare, even in high school – but fantasy is the genre I return to when I want to lose myself in a book. Keep reading for a brief history of my favorite fantasy.

Fantastic Beginnings

Some of the first books I considered favorites were fantasy. A Wrinkle in Time and The Phantom Tollbooth come to mind. Granted, those are very science and math heavy for fantasy, and a recent re-read of Wrinkle was disappointing. Nevertheless, these books made me a fan of books. I also loved The Chronicles of Narnia at a young age and, thanks to my sister, read a lot of Roger Zelazny. I remember a set of Oz books, but I can’t remember if I read them or just looked at them. Credit also goes to my Granny for reading me fantastic poems like The Owl and the Pussycat and Jabberwocky. If it wasn’t for fantasy, who knows if I would have grown up to be someone who reads. It was stories like these that sparked my interest early and kept me coming back for more.

Teenage Fantasy

There’s this funny story about when I was a teenager and my mom’s church had told her that kids should not be allowed to play Dungeons & Dragons or else those kids would go to the devil. They also told her not to let me watch Smurfs, which might have been the first documented occurrence of me taking a stand for what I believe in, because I believed in my Smurfs. Maybe I also never played D&D because I didn’t understand how it worked and it seemed to take longer than Monopoly, which my kids will tell you, I try to avoid like the plague. So here’s the funny part…. my mom was dead set against me playing it, but when I asked her for a Dragonlance novel at the mall book store, she didn’t think twice about buying it. Games are apparently harmful, but books are just fantasy, I guess. On subsequent trips to the mall, my mom proceeded to buy me the whole Dragonlance Legends series, and more. I was obsessed with finding out what happened to those twins. And if Tasslehoff Burrfoot isn’t the best character name ever, well, I don’t know what is. (Feel free to suggest your favorites in the comments.)

Later Daze

I did go through a phase in my early adulthood when I was not reading much. I was a single mom with two little kids, so mostly I was reading to them. At some point, I made some grown up friends, and we started going to dinner and movies. We would pop into the book store to kill time in between. I think this is where I learned that the secret to overcoming a reading slump is to dig into a good series. “Good” could be a relative term here, but it just has to be something that keeps you reading once you start. I discovered a renewed love for reading, and for fantasy in particular, when I picked up Shadow of a Dark Queen by Raymond E. Fiest. I devoured the Serpentwar Saga and moved on to a few of his related series. This is what really got me reading again.

Recent Reads

As I said, this month I read two fantasy books for book club. I read these simultaneously, as one was A Darker Shade of Magic via Audible and the other was Throne of Glass via Kindle. Each of them is the first book in a series. I honestly have read so many Book Ones that I could spend the rest of my life just finishing a variety of series. I am not sure if I will carry on with the subsequent books in either of these. There were things I liked and disliked about both of these. I felt like ADSOM moved a little slowly. There were points where it was sluggish. I liked the idea of different Londons, and it does end with a bit of a cliffhanger that made me curious about what happens next. TOG on the other hand kept me on the edge of my seat better, but some of the language in this book was excruciating, and the lead character is a bit of an OP complainer. Imagine that you were just liberated from slave labor and you instantly go into whiny diva mode. It made me disconnect from the character, but I still liked the story and the beginnings of the mythology. My chief complaint with TOG was that all of the melodrama made it sound like it was written by a teenager. I garnered some forgiveness for it after I discovered that it was, in fact, written by a teenager. Rumor has it that the writing gets better. There are also rumors that this series gets very steamy later, and is not appropriate for the young audience for whom it was intended…. Now you know that increased my curiosity on this one! I have also been instructed to direct prospective readers to the prequel novellas first for some context that I was missing. In short, the most likely way for either of these Book Twos to get on my TBR is to get themselves elected by one of my book clubs.

Fantastic Futures

Despite loving and reading a lot of fantasy, there are some glaring omissions from my “already read that” list. I have never read The Lord of the Rings. I have slept through the audiobook of The Hobbit, and I have seen all of the movies, but I haven’t read the books. Maybe someday. I have also only read one book by Ursula K. Le Guin. That feels a little like sacrilege. I would like to read more of hers and explore lots of other female writers of fantasy. Except maybe not Octavia Butler. Kindred scarred me for life. That book is intense! I’m afraid to even attempt any of her others. I haven’t read Robert Jordan either. I would love to get suggestions of other fantasy I should be reading. Obviously, the books mentioned here are not an exhaustive list. I have read the Game of Thrones series and Harry Potter. I’m not a total heathen.

What are your favorite fantasy titles or authors? Leave a comment to let me know!

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[republicstandard]

SJWs: New Harry Potter Movie for Kids Is not Gay Enough

L.Siren

It has emerged that some people are still obsessed with sexuality, rather than enjoying a good story about magic.

Despite more than a decade passing since the revelation that a fictional wizard took a bludger from his own team, social justice warriors are up in arms that The Crimes of Grindelwald will focus on grown men fighting with magic wands rather than homosexuality.

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I am a major Potter Head. I have the tattoos to prove it; (although they are a work in progress that I plan to finish- I’m Slytherin and proud!) Now a positively ancient 23 years old, I started reading these books when I was 12- the same year that Dumbledore was outed, in fact. The Potter series were the first books I ever read cover to cover, start to finish, and just like many other Potter fans I was lost when I thought the series was over. What fictional world could compare to that of Harry Potter?

As it transpired it was naive to imagine that a cash-cow would remain unmilked for long. The Potterverse keeps expanding, with stage shows and fantastic beasts and so on. So far, so money. But wait, what hue and cry? There’s a new movie called The Crimes of Grindelwald and it won’t be two hours of Johnny Depp kissing Jude Law on the mouth?

To those who say: "wait for it, it's a long saga": No. 10 movies (8HP, 2 Fantastic Beasts) and they failed to include any clear signs of Dumbledore being gay. His love with Grindelwald is literally THE point of the whole drama & they decide to exclude it. Screw them.

— Dana. 🌈🌍 (@Dana_Lurchliebe) February 1, 2018

Here we go again. There is no appeasing the SJW’s even when they are getting fan service movies made explicitly for them.

It would suck if there was just no lgbtq rep in the books and that was the end of it. But her saying Hogwarts Gandalf was absolutely gay, then dodging it deliberately, that is a different level of stink.

— GAIL SIMONE (@GailSimone) February 1, 2018

In an interview, Director David Yates stated Dumbledore’s sexuality would not be handled explicitly.

“But I think all the fans are aware of that. He had a very intense relationship with Grindelwald when they were young men. They fell in love with each other’s ideas, and ideology and each other.”

Oh David. That was a mistake. Of course this has many Potter fans outraged- many claiming the film is about ‘Dumbledore and his boyfriend who turned evil’ and therefore should be gayer.

In the book, Albus and Grindelwald became best friends as teenagers. Together they made plans to locate and secure all three Deathly Hallows and lead a wizard revolution to bring about the end of the international statute of secrecy- which, as of course you know, was the magic law that hides wizards from us muggles and our world. Alas, their friendship came to a tragic end after the two were involved in a three-way wand-fight with Albus’s Brother, Aberforth, that resulted in the death of their younger sister, Arianna. After the duel, Gellert left Britain. This is what we know from the Harry Potter novels, at least.

Rowling never mentioned them being in a relationship at all. You don’t have to be gay to be gay. It's fine to be a normal person that doesn't define your entire identity around what arouses you sexually. Even if the homosexual relationship was explicit, you can never be gay enough for some people.

So, Dumbledore's still only Hays-code gay and the abuser Johnny Depp is still Grindelwald. That's a hard pass from this Harry Potter fan on Fantastic Beasts 2 or whatever it's called.

— molly tanzer (@molly_the_tanz) February 1, 2018

In her novels, Rowling never mentioned Dumbledore’s sexuality. Never.

Rowling announced that Dumbledore was gay after a fan asked her if he “had ever loved anyone” at a Q&A in Carnegie Hall, 3 months after the final book had been published. She then continued to answer the fan’s question and said he had love Gellert Grindelwald, his childhood friend.

After the announcement, many fans were shocked, claiming they couldn’t see him that way. How did Rowling respond?

For once, flawlessly. Rowling was put on the spot in a Q&A session about Dumbledore’s sexuality. Whether it was her intention to still be talking about the wandcraft of gay warlocks over a decade later, only she can say. It takes all sorts. Once the wizard was out of the closet, there was no going back- but his sexuality is fundamentally unimportant to any story he appears in. As mentioned before, his sexuality was never explicit in the novels. Does that mean he’s not gay? No. No it does not. Perhaps Mundungus Fletcher had a penchant for buggery, maybe Mr. Weasley is hung like a mouse’s ear. None of this matters to the tale in the slightest.

In Kevin Smith’s 1995 movie Mallrats the central character, Brodie, is obsessed with superhero genitalia.

“It's impossible. Lois could never have Superman's baby. Do you think her fallopian tubes could handle his sperm? I guarantee he blows a load like a shotgun right through her back.”

In the 22 years since that movie was released, society has come around to be as fixated with what fictional characters do with their sex organs. It is behavior worthy of the Catholic church, as the permanent Social Justice present is similarly devoid of comedy. Or nuance, for that matter.

Hogwarts isn’t home, that Wizarding World world isn’t home if you’re going to erase the expression of HOMOSEXUALITY. DUMBLEDORE IS GAY AND WAS IN LOVE WITH GRINDELWALD. HAVE SOME CREDIBILITY @FANTASTICBEASTS!

— Francis Dominic (@frncissdominc) January 31, 2018

There are plenty of Movies and stories where the romance is a subtext. After all, people pay money to watch things blow up with a side order of smooching. The original Star Wars trilogy, The original Ghostbusters, even Pixar’s Anastasia complies with this basic storytelling format. All these movies have romance but love is not the main focus of the story, in some of them it is barely even shown at all. A New Hope has a love triangle played out with a kiss on the cheek, a jealous glance and Han Solo being a jerk. It is perfect. If The Crimes of Grindelwald uses this storytelling technique, deploying something subtle showing what they had- if anything other than friendship- I would be completely fine with that. The storyline would work with a nod to a gay history, and just as easily without- because the story isn't about Wizard Gay Pride 1922, it's about two of the toughest wizards of all time going tête-à-tête. Even with this blatantly obvious fact spelled out, you can guarantee though that Yates, Rowling, and the stars Jude Law and Johnny Depp are walking into a social justice sh*tstorm.

and on top of that now Dumbledore won't be "explicitly gay" and Rowling is mocking queer people who just wanted a bit of representation. yikes. it's like they want us to despise Fantastic Beasts 🚮 pic.twitter.com/cUO99SSTyN

— Riley J. Dennis (@RileyJayDennis) February 1, 2018

Need we be reminded that this is still a movie for kids? While a lot of people my age and older will gladly enjoy it without the company of our little ones, a lot of young kids will still watch it. Perhaps I am a relic of the past, but is it not the case that parents decide when and how to educate their children about love and sex and the different forms it takes- not Hollywood?

Although this whole affair is the fault of Rowling for chumming the waters with the gay wizards revelation in the first place, she has at least handled the resulting mess in the correct manner. It doesn’t matter about Dumbledore’s sexuality in the context of a movie about fighting with magic. Fantasy stories fare very poorly with the addition of moralizing messages of leftist politics. As we saw with the Last Jedi, pandering to Social Justice instead of making a good movie never works. Ever.

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I’m as much as a Potter fan as any- all I want is a solid movie that tells the story with the minimum of pandering fan-service. They have already changed so much. All I want is to see this part of wizarding history accurately portrayed. This is the story leading up to one of the greatest fights in the Potterverse.

It’s simply not a love story. Please, for the sake of movies, stop shoe-horning socio-political agendas into them- and that goes to both movie makers and goers alike. If nothing else let this be a lesson in speaking carefully. Rowling had an off-the-cuff remark that she thought would gain her a few wokeness points in 2007, and here we are today- still picking up the pieces, and still watching the identity politics chimera run amok.

Can't we just hope the movie doesn't suck?

from Republic Standard | Conservative Thought & Culture Magazine http://ift.tt/2BQ2DQm via IFTTT

[hope-for-olicity]

Fabulous Olicity Fanfic Friday - February 9th, 2018

I think that’s an American thing but I’ll take it, says the Canadian ;)

Happy Friday! So this is my attempt to both thank awesome fanfic writers for their amazing work and offer my recommendations to anyone who is interested. Here are the fantastic fanfic stories I read this week! They are posted in the order I read them.

Flashfics in the Forever is Composed of Now 'verse by @so-caffeinated - Series of mostly lighter, prompt-driven flashfics set in the FiCoN 'verse. Topics vary by prompt (see individual chapters for warnings). Unbetaed and not edited prior to posting. Some chapters may be used in Pieces of Always if they are useful. http://archiveofourown.org/works/10624977/chapters/23501379

My Favorite Fade Fantasy multi-chapter by @smoaking-greenarrow - A retelling of Olicity through smut; each chapter uses a canon moment and changes their story. http://archiveofourown.org/works/11358729/chapters/25424232

Technical Assistance multi-chapter by @thatmasquedgirl - Felicity Smoak swore she'd provide technical assistance to all who need it.   She's just not prepared for her newest client. A story that shows another way Felicity and Oliver could have met.  Each chapter contains a bonus scene at the end.  Olicity undertones, with a definite slow burn.  Originally started as a one-shot of the same name. Complete. http://archiveofourown.org/works/1359190/chapters/2838451

Another Chance On Love multi-chapter by @smkkbert - It's been almost two years since Oliver lost his fiancée Detective McKenna Hall when she died in the line of duty. He closed his heart to love ever since, unable or unwilling to give love another chance. That changes when he meets Felicity Smoak at the annual gala of the Starling City Police Foundation. Is he ready to give love another chance, though? http://archiveofourown.org/works/13561101/chapters/31119801

Untitled by @smoaking-greenarrow - Arrow Out of Context Prompt: “Yes. Or as I like to call her, your psycho ex-girlfriend.” http://smoaking-greenarrow.tumblr.com/post/170473412994/10

Time for a Story multi-chapter by @smkkbert - This fic shows Olicity and their life as a (married) couple with family. Although Olicity (and their kids) are the protagonists, other characters of Arrow and Flash make appearances. YOU NEED THIS STORY IN YOUR LIFE. http://archiveofourown.org/works/3912157/chapters/8757172

Emotion multi- chapter by LittleMissMint - Felicity always knew she didn’t want kids so she should have been fine when the doctor told her she was infertile... right? http://archiveofourown.org/works/13571454

Tempest multi-chapter by @so-caffeinated and @dust2dust34 - Three years ago, tragedy struck Julianna Queen's life. Now, she wears a mask and fights at her father's side, looking for closure and justice as she tries to find a path to move forward with her life while holding on to her past. But that may a bit more complicated than she thinks... http://archiveofourown.org/works/13309731/chapters/30461850

Be My Escape multi-chapter by @smoaking-greenarrow - Felicity meets an attractive bartender one night after a failure of a date, but their pasts are more connected than either of them realize. https://archiveofourown.org/works/13301325/chapters/30441990

Untitled by @smoaking-greenarrow - Arrow Out of Context Prompt: Guess I'll be watching you pee http://smoaking-greenarrow.tumblr.com/post/170540519974/please-do-1-and-7

A Helping Hand by @felicityollies - Oliver needs to relax and Felicity lends a helping hand. http://archiveofourown.org/works/13485504/chapters/31167372

Untitled by @smoaking-greenarrow - Arrow Out of Context Prompts: “Seriously? I’ve been working on this for two hours!” and “I know, I was watching you. Thank you…for the entertainment.”  http://smoaking-greenarrow.tumblr.com/post/170557994464/hi-there-i-choose-quote-7-its-so-funny-and

Within These Gifs by @cruzrogue - Saw Oliver in a gif taking off his jacket and just being tired I wrote a little something about it. http://archiveofourown.org/works/13584309

As Easy As Falling multi-chapter by @charlinert - Felicity has just received tragic news when she meets Oliver, I believe there is hope, highly recommend but you will cry but not every chapter! http://archiveofourown.org/works/8035363/chapters/2254234

Will You Remember Me multi-chapter by @jesileighs - After being attacked by a metahuman with the power to steal memories, Felicity learns that a lot can happen in six years. Even things that she once believed to be unthinkable. SO AWESOME! http://archiveofourown.org/works/13436049/chapters/30793386

Good Morning (Season 6B) by @dust2dust34 - Prompt: Anonymous - "If you are taking prompts right now, can I prompt for some smutty fun and facesitting?" http://archiveofourown.org/works/11888871/chapters/31213677

Untitled by @smoaking-greenarrow - Arrow Out of Context Prompts: “And here I thought you didn’t care much about me.” and “Still don’t.” http://smoaking-greenarrow.tumblr.com/post/170590728064/for-your-prompts-if-youll-let-me-request-another

Aruba by @some1foundme - It’s their last day here, the last day that they can surround themselves with nothing but each other.  The blissful bubble that they’ve lived in for these last few days is getting ready to burst but not just yet.  Not now.  They have a few hours before they have to start packing.  A few hours before they have to head into town towards the airport.  So, for now, she focuses all of her energy on her husband.            http://archiveofourown.org/works/13603581

Looking Through Your Eyes multi-chapter by @felicityollies - Felicity Smoak has had her world turned upside down. After an accident she’s moved to another city for rehabilitation. By chance she runs into the one and only Oliver Queen. Both of them are surprised when they find that neither is all that they seem. http://archiveofourown.org/works/8343334/chapters/19113514

Real Love (Is Never a Waste of Time) multi-chapter by @callistawolf - Oliver and Felicity are CEOs who are more partners than they are rivals, but they still bicker whenever they meet up. Constantly pestered by their families and board members, they turn to each other for a simple solution. But marriage is never simple, especially when these two are involved. When Oliver's younger sister decides to hold her much-anticipated wedding on a tropical island and insists her brother and his wife attend, will the island paradise prove to be the tipping point in their carefully balanced relationship? https://archiveofourown.org/works/13604955/chapters/31233603

Untitled by @smoaking-greenarrow - Arrow Out of Context Prompts: “Why do you have a gun?” and “Because I’m not good with knives.” http://smoaking-greenarrow.tumblr.com/post/170635014054/12-or-14-for-the-prompts

Untitled by @smoaking-greenarrow - Arrow Out of Context Prompt: “There was probably a better time to tell you that.” and “Probably not.” http://smoaking-greenarrow.tumblr.com/post/170658444979/how-about-13-and-15-for-the-out-of-context

These Arms Were Made for Loving You by @muslimsmoak - Based on the tweet “Oliver’s the kind of husband that would go to Sephora with Felicity and let her swatch lipsticks on his hand. He’s that soft.” http://archiveofourown.org/works/13618965

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