#i love my nuanced problematic good-hearted queen so much

[stormbreaker101]

for the ask game!! 12 for Nora, 29 for Sarah :3

12: What kind of person can your character connect with?

Figuring out how to answer this question stumped me so hard. On the one hand, Nora in a vacuum is a rather social person. She enjoys reaching out to others, and will try to find some way to connect with anyone even if it's something as insignificant as sharing a single moment or listening to them speak or doing a favor. It's part of why Nora felt so at home in the Spiral at first, it was filled with people whom she felt she could connect with.

However nowadays,,, things are far more tense. First of all, Nora's reputation precedes her. Most people in the Spiral won't connect with her as Nora; they'll see her as the Wizard or any of her million other epithets or worse, as a villain who is supposed to be dead. Second, Nora has many traumas upon her shoulders that each contribute to her fear of reconnecting with folks in the Spiral outside of the Arcanum and some of her closest companions. She's used to the Spiral being dismissive of her (because of the whole reputation thing), she takes things too personally, she fucking DIED (basically) and had to claw her way out of the Abyss.

So in short... she can connect with anyone but it'll be FUCKING HARD.

She is working on it, though. Trying to reacclimate herself to being a person in the Spiral, trying to unlearn her hesitancies even though said trepidations protected her before. The Spiral is full of people, not prewritten NPCs anymore, which means there's hope for things to be better than they used to be.

29: Would your character ever drink pickle juice?

Sarah not only would, she regularly did before getting stuck in the Spiral. She acquired a taste for it in college. Though she doesn't drink it much nowadays in the Spiral, she does quite enjoy it still.

[synergysilhouette]

"Strange World" (2022) overhaul rewrite

I never expected to do a rewrite of this, despite my issues with it. But then I decided I should just do an overhaul of it. Be forewarned: I'm taking this in a VERY different direction--like, almost unrecognizeable; how do you feel about an Arthurian epic with aliens? As always, be kind--but if you have critiques/questions, I'd be happy to hear them!

Plot:

On a planet far away, there was once the mystical alien planet of Siyned. Twenty-five years ago, King Ursam of Lonava, a prosperous and mystical country on Siyned, disappeared without a trace, leaving his young son Taurus in charge of running a kingdom. For a time, all was prosperous, but now, a powerful sorceress named Niobe has come to battle for the throne, and threatens to engulf the kingdom in darkness and horrors unlike the world has ever seen. Together with his wife Iopeia, son Boralis and their band of allies, Taurus must navigate being a king as well as sorting out the secrets that come out with Niobe's arrival.

Important story/world details

As you may see, the storyline is inspired by the tale of King Arthur, inspired by the fact that Searcher Clade is from a land known as Avalonia, and my first thought was: "Man, a King Arthur-inspired story would've been so much better than what we got." This comes with certain important story/world details:

The cast is made up of aliens. Given the pulp magazine inspiration the original SW film takes from, I'd enjoy seeing a comicbook inspiration for the alien races here, as well as video game inspiration from the fantasy side of things. In the best case scenario, this would be a spiritual successor to "Atlantis." I'd enjoy seeing different races of aliens, though I personally do like the idea that Taurus looks human (though since his wife and son are POC in the OG story, making them appear inhuman might be a bad call if he still appears white). And excuse the use of AI art here; I just liked the video for it's use of 80s dark fantasy inspirations, which I'd also want to be the inspiration for the fantasy aspects of "Strange World."

2. The culture is more medieval/ancient--except for the technology (and maybe fashion). I like the idea that it takes inspiration from various world cultures similar to how "Atlantis" does.

3. The cast is obviously different.

King Taurus--A kind and intelligent king, albeit sensitive and sometimes overcome with his emotions due to unresolved feelings with his father (I thought that'd be a good thing to keep). He's a gifted mage, and I'm definitely getting Gale of Waterdeep vibes from him--albeit less problematic. He's also in his 30s, so slightly younger than Searcher Clade. Still, he's older than most Disney protagonists, which I think makes the film more accessible for an older crowd, and an established Disney romance between a husband and wife rather than two people about to get married or just getting to know each other carries nuances that you can't get with many "kid films."

Queen Iopeia--A scholar and trained warrior who managed to capture the king's heart, and they fell in love. While she doesn't have any magic per se, her physical abilities make her a threat to all who wish to harm her loved ones. She often serves as the emotional anchor when Taurus is frazzled, and on rare occasions, their roles are reversed.

Prince Boralis--The young man who dreams of adventure, a Hercules-type protagonist who has self-esteem issues given his family's legacy. Of course, his crush on Castelon, Niobe's lead soldier, weighs on his heart heavily, since they grew up together before he disappeared and decided to side with her, seemingly with no explanation a year ago. His conflicting feelings make it difficult for him to use his powers (either alien or magical) to full potential. Definitely think his style is more akin to Ekko's from "League of Legends."

Niobe--Vicious but sad, she is the powerful sorceress from the Lands Beyond, a realm of darkness that engulfed the lands west of Lonava. She is much more powerful than Taurus, but wants to destroy him emotionally before killing him, hoping to break him and make him give her the crown that is rightfully hers. She sees him as living the life she always wanted, and despises Taurus for "taking" it from him. She has an affinity for petrifying her enemies--and keeping their consciousness intact. It's later revealed that when Ursam discovered a prophecy that Niobe would bring about the kingdom's destruction, he left her in the Lands Beyond as a toddler. It's somewhat akin to how Cora abandoned Zelena in Once Upon a Time ("I have to leave you to give me MY best at life"). That said, given that many Disney fans want an unapologetic villain, I'd make her too bitter and angry to be swayed by Taurus' pleas, but at her defeat, it's brought to light that despite being a good king, Ursam was NOT a good person.

Serioph--A wise mage (our Merlin figure) who serves as a parental figure to Taurus and a mystical guide. He has the ability to change his form at will, and ocassionally takes on a female form following Taurus' mother's passing and seeing that he needed a mother figure as well as a father figure. However, despite his power, he is tied to the laws of neutrality: if he was to battle someone of great good or great evil, his magic would cease to exist--which includes his power of longevity, and he would cease to exist. He knows this, but uses his powers to harm Niobe and prevent her from killing Taurus, killing himself in the process.

Ienvy--Serioph's daughter, inheriting his magic by lineage, and thus not tied to the Laws of Neutrality like he is. Niobe is drawn to her and attempts to persuade her to join her side, but when Serioph is killed, Serioph curses Niobe to become undone, giving her a sense of insanity that makes it possible for Taurus and the group to defeat her. Despite her help, Ienvy feels guilt for what she's done after learning about Niobe's past, and imposes a self-exile upon herself after the battle is over.

Castelon--Boralis' crush and childhood best friend. He eventually left and joined Niobe due to being tricked into joining her service by failing to prove his selflessness (similar to the tale of Gawain and the Green Knight). As such, he has become warped, becoming a smug Namaari-type villain, so there's a lot of tension between him and Boralis. (Note: This goes without saying, but he'd get a major design overhaul. Some people say he looks like Frankie Grande, but he gives me Jay Manuel vibes from "America's Next Top Model" and I CAN'T STAND IT. I'd rather he looked akin to Lucio from "The Arcana.")

Different Design style FOR SURE

Part of me finds the looks to be too normal; the characters don't grab my attention because they look either too realistic or too cartoony. Even if they weren't aliens, I'd want new looks for their clothes, at the very least. And the non-human-looking aliens felt way too cartoony here, not really ethereal or interesting in the slightest. Honestly, THIS deserved to be a hybrid film, tbh; it'd help to sell the alien vibes, as well as the fantasy aspect. And in particular, if we're going for a more mature look.

Lemme know what you think! I may come back and tinker this a bit.

[nutterwithasolderingiron]

so. let’s talk about tramp stamps seriously.

this has been a topic on my mind since my friend first sent me one of their tiktok videos saying “lol, look at this cringe” and indeed, it was cringe. next i started seeing more and more videos about how bad they were and how much astroturfing they were doing on social media to get attention. when this level of astroturfing goes on, it’s most people’s first response to look into things deeper. and there we found problematic tweets, cringe lyrics, cousin loving cousin, dr. luke and much much more. during this time, i seen a few people saying “oh, you only hate these guys because your a sexist fuckhead” even when women and queer folk were criticizing them.  then they came to tumblr..... and left tumblr 5 hours later. then the stans started doing what they do best. seeing how some of the stans have responded to the release of the new record, this is going to be me “mansplaining” or whatever. this is me explaining what i see the 2 major problems people have with tramp stamps.  the woke aspect the most common complaint i seen with the tramp stamps was their politics and almost co-opting left wing talking points without any understanding or nuance on the situation at best. this is why people dislike the whole “girlboss” thing. not because they are sexist, but because it’s often invoked in “fuck everyone, i can do this because i’m a badass bitch” which is really just the middle class millenial version of a karen. at worst, some of their lyrics are problematic. need i bring up the lyric about her drunk boyfriend not getting it up? if you don’t know what’s problematic about that, think of her intent in the situation, now picture the genders reversed? yeah. 

the “authenticity” aspect. 

this is the one i feel more inclined to talk about. i’ve been a part of the punk/post-hardcore/emo scene since i was in my teens. i’ve played in a lot of local bands, ran shows, social media accounts, street teams, repaired guitars, pulled sound for 15+ years. now, in these scenes, there can be some gatekeeping BUT usually that attitude gets called out. i’ve had afab bandmates get heckled like crazy and in those situations, we’d pull a kathleen hanna and escort the fuckers out the venue. so what i say when i bring up this next part is not “gatekeeping” it’s just how the scene works and has always worked. 

these scenes foster a community based on authenticity and the attitude of having to grind to get results. most the all time great bands in the rock/punk/metal/hardcore/emo/post-hardcore had to grind but also come across as authentic, you gotta network, you gotta send out hundreds of demo’s. spend thousands on recording, touring, merch, promotion. you know what a 20 year old ford transit with 6 people in the back, all of which have not showered in 2 weeks? i do. most bands know it’s all about luck and connections and grinding, but they still do it. 99% of your favorite rock bands had to do it.  my chemical romance? yup, i remember them on their first uk tour.  green day? part of the gillman punk scene. fallout boy? pete wentz was in the vegan straight edge scene. 

what people are objecting to is the tramp stamps using their connections before they’ve even really played a gig or tried immersing themselves in the scene and tried making connections. the felt fake from the very beginning. “oh but marissa did grind at her publishing job” maybe, i dunno what her job really was. but the point is, it felt very fake, it felt like there was astroturfing. it didn’t feel like 3 girls who wanted to make this music they wanted, it felt like marketing folk at her publishing job said “hmmmmm, the whole e-girl/tiktok/pop-punk revival is going well, how do we jump on this band wagon?” and people seen it for what it was. 

so, tramp stanz or whatever your fanbase is called. before you call me a sexist asshole, i’m going to give you some homework. i’m going to list a few great bands with a strong female creative voice (even if they’re not the singer), my tastes tend to lean a bit weirder so i’m sorry in advance. listen to these, not all of them are all female bands since i often feel separating female/afab musicians from male/amab doesn’t create a good scene.  patti smith (often considered to be the godmother of punk) bikini kill (remember when tramp stamps would hashtag riotgrrl everything? bikini kill were the band that coined the term)  bratmobile (same vein as bikini kill)  jack off jill/scarling (if there’s such a thing as a musician i’d simp for, it would be jessicka addams)  babes in toyland (some super noisy girl grunge) l7 (heavy alt-rock/grunge with some super catchy hooks)  slant 6 (what kind of monster are you is a fucking freight train of a song) hole (as much as we make fun of courtney love’s shit stirring, she could write some of the best choruses ever)  unwound (my favorite band and their drummer sara is the fucking heart of the band)  rolo tomassi (eva spence’s voice will blow your socks clean off) distillers (brody dalle is a fucking queen and you can’t convince me otherwise) against me (transgender dysphoria blues is an album that makes me tear up everytime i hear it but in a good way)

[blackbyakko]

Cruella has potential

Okay, I just saw the Cruella trailer and .... well it's not great. However, I keep seeing people saying that Cruella is a poor choice of protagonist, and I actually high key disagree. I actually think that she'd make an amazing protagonist, all without comprosing the character that we all love to hate. Now before y'all take up your torches, hear me out here, because Disney's actually has made Cruella a protagonist before, and they did it well without making her redeemable.

Protagonist

First off, please repeat after me: a protagonist doesn't have to be a good person.

A protagonist is by definition, merely the central figure of a story. They don't have to be a hero or a villian, just the character at the heart of the story. A good example? Din Dijarin from the Mandolorian. He is not a hero (I will fight peeps on this with a foam sword), he is a protagonist. He does good things and is a good Papa, but he is a bounty hunter. He will and has done morally questionable and possibly disagreeable things for a paycheck. My DnD brain would call him something between a lawful and a true neutral but that's a WHOLE different essay.

If you want a more villanous example of a protagonist, I would like to direct the class to the Artemis Fowl novels. Artemis is a little d*ck. He openly kidnaps, extorts, and threatens the lives of multiple characters throughout the course of the first novel (I've only read the first book). He is not a good person, but he is an excellent character. He was a little shit and we loved to hate him. He had goals, obsticals to overcome, and actual character development. And no, I don't think character development has to be an upward development to be good. They character can be bad, and all that matters is that it's interesting. That's why so many of us love villain origin stories.

Now, what Disney did with the adaptation of Artemis was horrible. Like gag me with a spoon horrible. Like I'd rather sit through It's a Small World on loop for 8 hours straight horrible. And the reason? Artemis was stripped of all interesting characteristics in favor of being a more santized 'traditional' protagonist. They made the villain of a story a hero, without any preamble of how he got to this point. Now, how does this apply to Cruella you ask? Well, I'm more than happy to tell you!

A Cruella Adaptation that Worked

Now, this is NOT the first time Disney has made Cruella sympathetic, in a live action, or a protagonist.

Does anybody remember Once Upon a Time? Well I do and I will never forgive the fact that Swan Queen didn't become cannon. But that's not the point here. Once Upon a Time was a show dedicated to exploring the nuances of Disney's fairy tale characters as just that, characters. We get the stereotypical, "oh but there lives were so hard" sympathy bait, but here's the thing: when they do it, it works not because the charcter is misunderstood, but because they don't have the character turn away from what they have done. They own up to it and for better or worse, it pushes their character forward, and not always in a moral good direction. They literally had Snow f*cking White of all people murder a woman, for, by her own admittance, purely selfish reasons. She killed because she wanted to do it, the neccesity behind it merely a justification. And she actually owns up to it and it makes her a more compelling and interesting character. Now on to Cruella.

Cruella DeVil was the main (main not only) protagonist in the OUAT episode, Sympathy for the De Vil. We go into her backstory and basically learns what makes her tick.

Or rather, what we think makes her tick. This is Cruella. Looks like a nice gal right? Maybe a slight case of crazy eyes, but hey, I get the same look whenever I'm hangry. We are set up to believe that Cruella is simply a victim of circumstance, with an overprotective and abusive mother, a forcefully sheltered life, and the simple desire to see what lies beyond the walls of her suffocating cage. Pretty sympatheic backstory for a would be puppy killer right?

Well, in the same episode here's what we learn: she's locked away, not for her protection, but for others. Cruella has killed people on multiple occassions, with no rhyme or reason other that she could. She tricks the man who sought to save her from her 'horrible mother', steals his source of power, and uses it to kill her mother and skin her dogs, giving her her signature coat. In the present day, her whole goal was to actually regain her ability to directly commit murder (as the man she tricked used magic to rob her of that ability). She was not sympathetic. She is cruel for the heck of it, and loves every second.

And because she loves it, so do we. Or at the very least we're much more engaged. This is how you do a villanous protagonist right. They don't need to be sympatheic for us to like them. Honestly, they don't even need to be relatable. Hell, we don't even have to like them! They just needto be enjoyable, and able to provide us a connecting point to care about (or hate) them. Most people like to fantasize about indulging in our inner villian, so let us. It's okay to have problematic characters as our main characters as long as the rest of the story (through other character's reactions, setting, ect.) makes sure that we know that they're problematic.

Cruella De Vil is a horrid, reprehensible diva who we all love to hate. So let us hate her Disney! Cruella could be such a compelling movie is that's the direction they choose to take it. They have the potential with this character and as we've seen from the example above, they've done it before. So do I have a lot of hopes for this film? Eh...not really. But it does have potential, and I hope to god they take advantatge of it.

[lady-plantagenet]

Unsolicited Book Reviews (n1): Crown in the Candlelight

Rating:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Even before I had an account, I tended to go to tumblr to see people’s opinions before buying a histfic. Certain books are either severely underrepresented, where I feel like there needs to be something on them, whereas others, though talked about enough, something more can still be said about them. So for my quarantine fun, I have decided to start a series where I review every medieval historical fiction novel I read. Hopefully, it will either start interesting discussions or at least be some help for those browsing its tag when considering purchasing it.

TL;DR: A true historical fiction novel, written in the old tradition, where the essence of the time period is properly conveyed. Not entirely accurate plot-wise, yet still overall of historical and intellectual value. Characterisation unclichéd and profound. An absolute must-read. Will be reading more from this author. One of my all-time fav histfics.

Plot: It may seem like a historical romance about Catherine of Valois and Owen Tudor, but here the two do not meet until well into the second half. The story is divided likeso: Catherine’s childhood, Owen Tudor just pre-Agincourt, Henry V in Agincourt and up to his marriage, Catherine again and up to Henry’s death, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester during the regency and then it starts becoming dispersed.

Note also that it is written in third person omniscient, so the focus shifts loads even within one vantage point. Not an easy thing to achieve, but ideal when you can masterfully pull it off like Jarman did.

Having said that, a mutual has pointed out a lot of innacuracies e.g. the way Humphrey of Gloucester and Eleanor Cobham were portrayed (something even I later noticed when I got to them), Catherine being with Henry when he died, Charles of Orleans being aged up, Henry VI being present at Joan of Arc’s burning etc. So don’t use this book as a history one.

Characterisation: Incredible. This author wrote in a time when fakefeminism was not en vogue, so she doesn’t shrink away from portraying Catherine of Valois as a woman very dependent on affection from others. Although, at no point did I find her pathetic for it. She is strong in some ways but perhaps more by way of the inadvertent influence she has on others, rather than any internal fortitude, she may have. Her intelligence is often very clear as she can see through a lot of people’s facades e.g. Jacqueline of Hainault.

Owen Tudor is also another incredibly well-written one. His mastery at dance and music (unproven historically) is well jux-ta-posed with a lot of typically masculine traits that a man of that time and class would exhibit e.g. violent urges and heroism. Speaking of, the author did a brilliant job at differentiating him from Henry V, who could easily have been a clone voice-wise, as he also had (in historical canon) a love for music, chivalry and admiration for Catherine. Yet the two men are as different as night and day, with the prose being adapted to each and the dialogue too, as such: to reflect Henry V’s greater Englishness, conventional piety and rationalism and Owen’s more mystical Welsh nature and boyish views on chivalry. Yet they both have incredible depth and I appreciate the author not pitting one against the other (a cheap technique that loads of authors use to make their favourite figure seem great by creating a massive comparison gradient).

Having said that, Humphrey of Gloucester’s villainy sat strangely, but then again he is not the only one-sided character. Catherine’s mother Isabeau is also portrayed as rotten to the core whereas Isabelle, her sister, is all good (though it is made clear that this is owed massively to Catherine’s idealisation of her). Overall it did not bother me too much because...

The Prose: Jesus, where do I even start? I am a person who grew up with the classics, yet the writing here has left me in shock. To say that the prose is lyrical and poetic would be an understatement, it is truly a work of art. It flows incredibly well and her choice of words truly brings out the medieval essence - genuinely no other author has as successfully transported me back to the 15th century like this one. Examples of the most poignant scenes include Henry V’s death, Hywelis’ (an original character) aging as she talks with the spirits, Catherine going to Blois to find Isabelle had died... You may raise your eyebrows at that magic element and think it’s handled along the lines of The White Queen. Trust me it is not, on the face of it, this novel has many problematic aspects which may make one think hmm evil Humphrey and Eleanor.. Wales being made magical... Witchcraft... a quasi-rape scene... I’ll pass. Well somehow the quality of the writing redeems this completely, there is nuance in every sentence, hundreds of faces hidden behind every choice of words, beauty in every phrase and detail. However, that is not to say this novel has some deeper meaning eg ‘war is wrong’, it focuses entirely on the characters and the situations; the emotions behind. That is probably the one thing that stops it from ever becoming a classic, but I genuinely don’t think the author cared. It is somewhat humbling that the author never had great dreams for her writing and just wrote from the heart, trying to do some of our favourite historical figures justice.

[ladyherenya]

Books read in December

I set myself some reading goals for the end of the year -- finish any books I’d already started, read the books I'd already borrowed, and to read ebooks I’d bought before buying any more. But I guess most of those books just weren’t the right genre? A few exceptions aside, this month I read a bunch of other things instead.

Also read: The Frost Fair Affair and Holiday Brew by Tansy Rayner Roberts, and Sweetest in the Gale and 40-Love by Olivia Dade.

Reread: Love Lettering by Kate Clayborn and Bookish and the Beast by Ashley Poston.

Total: thirteen novels (including two audiobooks and two rereads), three novellas, and three story/novella collections.

Favourite cover: The cover was what caught my attention for Finding My Voice and Old Baggage.

Still reading: Between Silk and Cyanide by Leo Marks, Or What You Will by Jo Walton and The Disorderly Knights by Dorothy Dunnett.

Next up: A Most Improper Magick by Stephanie Burgis.

*

Queen’s Play by Dorothy Dunnett (narrated by David Monteath): In 1548, Francis Crawford of Lymond arrives in France, incognito in order to protect Scotland’s queen, seven-year-old Mary. I enjoyed this, even though I am not very interested in the antics of the French court and thought The Game of Kings benefitted from having more characters who I found wholly likeable and/or who matter, personally, to Lymond. Dunnett is an impressive storyteller -- vivid descriptions, lively dialogue, nuanced characters and twists that take me by surprise. Moreover, those satisfying puzzle pieces explain the plots and intrigue, give insight into personalities and develop the narrative’s themes (here, the consequences of power). 

The Kinship of Secrets by Eugenia Kim: In 1950, four year old Inja lives with her grandparents and uncle in Seoul, while her sister Miran is in America with their parents. War delays the family’s reunion. This is a fascinating portrayal of two sisters growing up in different countries, and an incredibly poignant story about a family separated. Compelling, and beautifully written, and despite moments of intense grief, hopeful. I liked how, in the end, Inja and Miran didn’t have all the answers.. But I wonder if I’d have found the ending more satisfying if I had a deeper understanding of who they both were as adults.

Teacup Magic series by Tansy Rayner Roberts:

Tea and Sympathetic Magic: Stephanie Burgis recommended this novella as something similar to her Harwood Spellbook series and it certainly has a similar appeal: romantic fantasy, bordering on comedy-of-manners territory. Like Georgette Heyer but with magic and diversity and an intention to challenge problematic and outdated attitudes. Charming and cosy, like a good cup of tea rather than a frothy hot chocolate. Miss Mnemosyne Seaborne, a reluctant guest at a houseparty. She joins forces with the other guests after an unexpected abduction occurs. Entertaining, and even though it was too short for me to really become invested, I immediately wanted to read the sequel.

The Frost Fair Affair: After her previous adventures, Mneme has new friends, a suitor and a campaign: overturning the social conventions which prevent women from travelling by portal. After someone in Town steals her political pamphlets, she gets caught up in a mystery. I enjoyed this oh so much! I found myself caring a lot more about Mneme and her relationships; I liked the mixture of intrigue and danger, and how in the cause of dealing with these, Mneme learns more about the man she hopes to marry; and the Frost Fair, on a frozen river, makes a delightful setting. I'd love to read more.

Belladonna U(niversity) series by Tansy Rayner Roberts:

Unreal Alchemy: Oh, this is my new favourite! Urban fantasy about Australian uni students who are connected to an indie rock band, Fake Geek Girl. These stories are funny, geeky and romantic, with great chapter titles and lots of fandom references. They employ different points of view and different narrative styles in a way that’s really effective. I love the characters and how important and intense their non-romantic relationships are. Between them they have a variety of romantic/sexual relationships and feelings, but friendships and familial relationships, like the one between twin sisters Hebe and Holly, also drive the narrative. The first collection contains four stories/novellas.

Fake Geek Girl -- Ferd moves into the Manic Pixie Dream House; Holly and Sage argue about the future of the band.

Unmagical Boy Story -- Viola has feelings about her best friend losing his magic, transferring colleges and making new friends.

The Bromancers --  The band and frriends spend a weekend at a magical music festival.

The Alchemy of Fine -- A prequel about the band’s origins.

Holiday Brew: This collection is more serious and less overtly fandom-y than the first, but arguably still very meta (especially if you consider Viola, Jules and Ferd as a response to the trio in Harry Potter). I sat down intending to read just one of these stories -- and ended up reading them all.

Halloween Is Not A Verb -- Holly invites various people to their mums’ place for Halloween.

Solstice on the Rocks -- A short story about university graduation.

Kissing Basilisks --  Begins on New Year’s Day, is compelling, and picks up the non-band-related narrative threads from Fake Geek Girl.

Missing Christmas by Kate Clayborn: This novella is loosely connected to Beginer's Luck but stands alone. It's sweet. Business partners and best friends Jasper and Kristen pay a last minute trip to a client and get trapped by a blizzard, which pushes them to reconsider the boundaries they’ve drawn in their relationship. I liked the moments which showed that they’re an effective team because they know each other so well and can communicate through subtle body language. 

Finding My Voice by Marie Myung-Ok Lee: Ellen is a Korean-American teenager in her final year of high school. Her story is about applying for college, gymnastics training, Ellen’s relationships with her best friend and her first boyfriend, dealing with racism at school and with her parents’ expectations that she will follow her sister to Harvard. It’s very short, first published in 1993. I was aware of all the places where a YA novel written today would be allowed to give more details and to expand the story, but it was still interesting.

The Magnolia Sword: A Ballad of Mulan by Sherry Thomas: I’ve borrowed this several times this year, only to return it unread each time, and I was starting to wonder if I really wanted to read it. But once I actually sat down and focused, I quickly realised that I definitely did! I became completely engrossed in this Mulan retelling. It’s a tense adventure. I enjoyed the characters and their interactions, particularly the elaborate courtesy of formal conversations, and the way Mulan and her companions value loyalty and camaraderie. I thought this was a very believable take on the whole girl-disguised-as-a-boy thing too.

Dear Mrs Bird by AJ Pearce: In 1940, Emmy wants a newspaper job but is instead typing up letters for a women’s magazine and discarding mail from readers whose problems are Unacceptable. Frustrated that Mrs Bird won’t offer advice to so many women in need, Emmy's tempted to take matters into her own hands. Her optimism means she makes some naive mistakes, some of which made me wince, but it’s also an incredible strength. She's delightful company. I really like how much of this story is about her friendship with Bunty and I enjoyed the insight into women's magazines and the Auxiliary Fire Service.

The Lonely Hearts Dog Walkers by Sheila Norton: Recently separated, Nicola moves back in with her mother, starts as a teaching assistant at her daughter’s new school, gets a puppy and joins a group of dog walkers, who embark upon a mission to save the local park. This was very low-angst and, once I realised the sort of story it was, kind of predictable. I can recognise the appeal of this brand of realism, but personally would have preferred more humour or more emotional complexity. Were Nicola a colleague, it’d be easy to find things in common to discuss, but her story wasn’t quite what I was looking for.

Chasing Lucky by Jenn Bennett: When Josie and her mother return to Beauty to look after the family bookshop, Josie has plans -- keep to herself, finish high school, secure a photography apprenticeship, move to LA. But after Josie accidentally breaks a store-front window and her childhood friend Lucky takes the blame, Josie’s priorities change. I enjoyed this more than I expected to. I particularly liked how Lucky subverts people’s expectations, and how Josie’s family works at communicating better with each other.

Old Baggage by Lissa Evans (narrated by Joanna Scanlan): It’s 1928 and Mattie Simpkin, a now-middle-aged militant suffragette, lives in Hampstead with her friend Florrie Lee (aka The Flea). Mattie gives lectures about the suffragettes but realises she’s not reaching the younger generation. So she starts a club for “healthy outdoor fun” for teenage girls. Mattie is wonderfully forthright -- amusing, engaging and informative when it comes to things she’s passionate about -- but she’s also fallible.  A really delightful yet bittersweet story about friendship and loss and the opportunities available for women. I liked its awareness that being able to loudly be yourself is a privilege not everyone has. 

There’s Something About Marysburg series by Olivia Dade:

Teach Me: Rose is unimpressed -- not only must she share her classroom with the new history teacher, he’s been given her Honors World History class. There’s something particularly satisfying about people who have been hurt and lonely finding support and love in each other. I like that they get to know each other over many months. I like Martin’s relationship with his teenage daughter and Rose’s relationship with her ex’s parents is so touching that one scene made me cry. And it was interesting seeing the US school system from the perspective of experienced teachers; I appreciated the details about their jobs.

Sweetest in the Gale: a Marysburg story collection contains three novellas about couples in their forties.

Sweetest in the Gale -- Griff is worried when Candy, a fellow English teacher, returns for the new school year uncharacteristically sombre and subdued. A really sweet romance about people who are navigating loss and grief.

Unraveled -- Maths teacher Simon is assigned to observe and mentor the new art teacher, Poppy. I enjoyed the threads of mystery.

Cover Me -- After a concerning mammogram result, Elizabeth marries an old friend so she’s covered by his health insurance. Predictable as anything, but that made it a safe position from which to explore serious and sobering topics.

40-Love: I’m not interested in tennis or holiday resorts; I was disappointed that this novel wouldn’t show Tess being an assistant principal; and even though some of my favourite fictional couples have a significant age-gap, I’m wary about age-gap romances (and socially-programmed to think it’s odd for a woman to date a much younger guy). But I liked the other stories in this series and I was curious. It’s Not really My Cup of Tea, but I was convinced that Tess and Lucas were both capable of making their (somewhat unconventional) relationship work. An interesting exercise in challenging my social-programming.

The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn: After watching Bridgerton (not always to my tastes but mostly fun), curiosity prompted me to read the opening of the second novel, and I was so entertained by Kate Sheffield verbally sparring with the viscount, whom Kate is determined to prevent from marrying her younger sister. I continued to be entertained up until the viscount acts a bit too entitled on his wedding night (that’s unattractive, if outrightly problematic). Which left me in rather an uncharitable mood for the final act, so I can’t identify if the drama of dealing with past traumas didn’t meet the standard of the earlier comedy or if I just hold such scenes to differing standards.

[nickburn]

Art and the Artist in EDH

Most Commander players enjoy constraints in deck-building. Constraints give our decks creative and strategic focus while providing a lens for personal expression. One only needs to look at a chairs deck once to understand that constraints can be interesting problems to solve as well as fun talking points at the table. We’re already well-versed in navigating the 100-card singleton restriction and the nuances of color identity and multiplayer politics. How we navigate them is a series of personal choices we ultimately have to make for ourselves.

With Wizards of the Coast deciding not to work with Noah Bradley or Terese Nielsen anymore, Commander players now have an interesting new conundrum to think over: should I continue to run cards with art by these creators? For me, I think it’s worth the time to take these cards out of my decks and find replacements. In other mediums, it can be harder to separate art from the artist, and even worthwhile to explore how some innovative or groundbreaking works were created by problematic people. In magic, though, the art is not just what sits between the card name and the type line: it’s all the pieces of the card, from the frame, to the flavor text, to the mechanics, coming together to form a cohesive whole. Bradley’s and Nielsen’s art, while objectively beautiful, is also now a negative reminder of the people that made it, and that reminder is not entirely cohesive with the messages the rest of the game should strive to communicate. Recently, some cards with racist depictions have even been completely removed from the game, and I hope WotC continues this trend going forward.

So how do we go about finding alternatives for cards with Bradley’s and Nielsen’s art that we may be running already? Well, I’m going to tell you which offending cards I found in my own decks and the suitable replacements I’ve picked for them. Hopefully, you’ll have an idea of what you’d like to do with your own builds after you see what I’ve done here. 

I currently own six commander decks built around these commanders: Ayula, Queen Among Bears; Niv-Mizzet Reborn; Princess Twilight Sparkle; Grenzo, Dungeon Warden; Zedruu the Greathearted; and Gavi, Nest Warden. My first concern when examining the decks for Bradley or Nielsen art was the commanders themselves. Thankfully, none of my commanders were painted by them. A quick Scryfall search shows us that Nielsen has created art for seven legendary creatures, and Bradley does not have art on any commanders at present.

Thankfully, for the two Akroma’s, gorgeous alternate versions of the art do exist and are cheap to acquire in a variety of card frames (I think I personally prefer the Angel of Wrath art by Chippy anyway). For Hanna, Ship’s Navigator, we have to go all the way back to Invasion to find the original art. Basandra, Ertai, Sydri, and Thromok, though, do not have other versions yet. Hopefully, they will see reprints someday. For now, I wouldn’t begrudge anyone for running them, as they all have unique niches in their colors, and I’d never want to ask someone to give up their favorite commander. If you do run them, though, you may want to consider commissioning an alternate art version from an independent creator, if that makes you more comfortable with playing them.

So that leaves the other 99 for each of my decks. For Ayula, I found that I was running a basic Forest of Bradley’s and Hunter’s Insight by Nielsen. The Forest is trivial to replace, and I already have a Fifth Edition one by David O’Connor I want to use from a Starter Deck I recently picked up. Hunter’s Insight is a good draw spell for the deck, for sure, but there is no shortage of those in green now. I just happen to have a Heartwood Storyteller lying around (art by Anthony S. Waters), so I’m going to slot that in for the same draw function. It’s a creature to boot, so it can pick up the deck’s equipment, and it might even make me some friends around the table. Ayula’s not a particularly group hug-y deck, but it couldn’t hurt, since most of the deck is creatures anyway.

For my Niv-Mizzet Reborn/Maze’s End deck, I was happy to see that I don’t have to worry about replacing any of the Gates or Maze’s End itself. I did place an additional constraint on the deck of only including cards from Ravnica sets, so it already doesn’t have as much wiggle room. But the only card I found to take out was Transguild Promenade by Bradley. I do hope it gets a reprint someday, but it’s honestly not that good of a card. I was mostly running it for flavor anyway, so I don’t feel too bad about putting in a Novijen, Heart of Progress that I have instead (art by Martina Pilcerova). This card is not optimal for a five-color deck, but it is flavorful. And I can always find something else later.

Princess Twilight Sparkle was running Nielsen’s Swords to Plowshares and Bradley’s Winds of Abandon. I’m replacing Swords with the original Path to Exile, since it basically does the same thing and I’ve always loved Todd Lockwood’s art for it. It also helps my opponents find lands if they’re mana screwed, which feels a little better than just giving them some life. Winds of Abandon is a lot harder to replace, since it’s still a new card and I was really looking forward to playing it. I could definitely see it getting reprinted soon, though, so I’m sticking in a Kirtar’s Wrath (art by the prolific Kev Walker) as an alternative board wipe with some upside.

My Grenzo deck was running Bradley’s version of Forgotten Cave and Nielsen’s Darksteel Pendant. Luckily, I still have an original Forgotten Cave from Onslaught, so that was easy to replace. I have a soft spot for Darksteel Pendant since there aren’t that many Darksteel cards, so I do hope WotC reprints this obscure common someday. Scry is an all too common ability now, though, so there’s no shortage of options. I’m slotting in a Conjurer’s Bauble (art by Darrell Riche), since it’s cheap utility and getting things from the graveyard to the bottom of the library is actually super great for Grenzo.

I recently bought Approach of the Second Sun for my Zedruu build (my long-time favorite commander deck), so I’m the most sad to see this one go. The card has become a commander staple since it was printed, as it’s a great alternate win condition for white. It’s especially great in Zedruu, which doesn’t have many other ways to close out games. I’m replacing it with Sphinx’s Tutelage (art by Slawomir Maniak) as a way to mill someone out, although there’s really no replacement for Second Sun. I was going to take out Bradley’s Leyline of Anticipation in favor of another Fifth Edition card, Ray of Command, but then I realized Ray’s Fifth Ed. art was created by known neo-Nazi Harold McNeill, the artist behind the infamous Invoke Prejudice. So I’m going with Dack’s Duplicate instead (art by Karl Kopinski).

Finally, my newest deck is headed by Gavi, Nest Warden, which really likes to have Forgotten Cave and Lonely Sandbar to function. Since I don’t have another Forgotten Cave or Heather Hudson’s version of Lonely Sandbar at the moment, I’m just slotting in a Fifth Edition Mountain and Island (art by John Avon and J.W. Frost respectively). That just leaves Bradley’s Spirit Cairn to take out, which isn’t a particularly stellar card anyway. So another Fifth Edition card, Forget (art by Mike Kimble), is going in instead. It’s cool to have some targeted discard in blue, so it can either trigger Gavi or disrupt an opponent’s hand in a pinch.

And that’s all of my decks updated! Phew.

This is a game and a format I love and want to continue to share with others. I think that can only happen as long as the space we provide for new players is kind and inviting. Bigotry and harassment have no place in games or elsewhere. So by ditching some of these potentially-problematic symbols, my hope is that it makes Magic a little safer for everyone.

If you stuck with me this long, thank you for reading!

You can follow more of my thoughts on Twitter @NCBurnham.

Be kind and stay safe out there. <3

[erinptah]

Super Drags review (tl;dr Show Good)

The post where I do my best to spread the Good News, that there exists a saucy gay drag-queen magical-girl animated comedy and everyone should watch it.

Okay, not everyone -- I'll give some caveats at the end -- but definitely a heck of a lot more people than Netflix has bothered to advertise it to.

Look at this! Why did nobody tell me about this??

What is Super Drags?

Fast facts:

It's a 1-season, 5-episode adult animated comedy series, released in November 2018

Here's the official page, with a free-to-view trailer

It packs more explicit, unashamed queerness into those 5 episodes than any other cartoon I can think of

The only possible competitor would be if you took the whole 5000-episode run of Steven Universe and pared it down to a supercut of Just The Gay Parts

This in spite of being produced in Brazil, which (in my broad understanding, as a total non-authority on the subject) is more oppressively, dangerously homophobic than the US

The original is in Portuguese

There is an English dub, fabulously voiced by contestants from RuPaul's Drag Race

It's wrapped in "for adults only!" warnings, not because the content is any less child-friendly than (say) your Bojacks Horsemen or your Ricks and Mortys, but because Brazilian authorities tried to get it shut down on the grounds of this much gay being Harmful For Children

It was (heartbreakingly) not renewed for a second season

Here's a promo video, in which the main characters (Portuguese, with subtitles) play Drag Race judges for Shangela, who ends up voicing Scarlet in English.

And here's a beautiful flashy music video of the big musical number! (Also Portuguese, no subtitles, but the melody and the visuals stand on their own.)

Plot and worldbuilding stuff!

The elevator pitch is "What if Charlie's Angels, but also drag queens, with superpowers, because magical-girl transformations?"

In this universe, all LGBTQ people have magical energy. The Big Bad is an evil magical-drag-queen nemesis who tries to drain our energy for her own purposes. It's like if Ursula from The Little Mermaid was a first-season Sailor Moon villain.

...sidenote, in case you were worried, the representation isn't "cis gay men and nobody else." There's a butch lesbian in the recurring cast, a genderfluid person (in that specific word!) as a one-off love interest, and all the ensemble scenes are wonderful collages of different races, body types, and gender presentations.

Our heroes also fight non-magical everyday homophobes, who get written with scathing realism.

The moment I knew the show wasn't pulling any punches was in the first episode, where a newscaster complains about being Silenced by the Law of Political Correctness, then chirps "however, we have a special guest who is thankfully above the law!"

According to the reviews I've found from Brazilian viewers, it's also pitch-perfect when it comes to local queer culture, community dynamics, slang and speech patterns, even memes. All of which flies right over my head, so here's a post (with no-context spoilers) about one viewer's favorite details.

The handful of reaction posts on Tumblr have a dramatic split between "Brazilian viewers fiercely defending the show as culturally-accurate, uplifting, and brave in a terrifying political moment" and "American viewers complaining that the show is problematic because it's a comedy about drag queens with no perfect role models and lots of sex jokes."

As the Super Drags tell their nemesis (and this is also in the first episode): "How dare you try to turn the LGBTQXYZ community against each other? We do enough of that on our own!"

In between missions, our girls work sitcom retail jobs and deal with other everyday problems. All of which are written in amazingly nuanced and thoughtful ways for a show that also features "defeating an orgy monster with a lip-sync battle."

Detailed character stuff!

Our heroes are Color Coded For Your Convenience!

The Super Drags themselves go by "she" in-uniform, and a lot of the time when out of it. Like the Sailor Starlights, only more so. I'll roll with that.

In blue: Safira Cyan, or Ralph by day, an excitable college-age kid who's built like a football player and squees like a fangirl. (She's an anime fan in the original, and for some reason all the otaku references were replaced in the dub, but you can see them in the subtitles.)

Ralph lives with her younger sister (they play video games together!) and their dad, comes out to them mid-series, and is very shippable with another young guy who starts out reciting the homophobic beliefs he was raised with but whose heart clearly isn't in it.

Safira's weapon is a classic magical-girl wand that casts protective force-fields. Which are shaped like condoms. Because of course.

In yellow: Lemon Chiffon, aka Patrick, the oldest of the group and generally the smartest/most strategic. In most cases, the other two treat her as the de facto team leader -- unless she pushes it too far.

By day she's a single guy with thick thighs and thinning hair, who has some body-image insecurities on the dating scene. And this show has Things To Say about unrealistic beauty standards within the community...not to mention, about masc guys who look down on anyone too flaming or femme because straight people disapprove.

Lemon's weapon is a fluffy boa that can be used as a whip or a lasso, especially when there's a bondage joke to be made.

In red: Scarlet Carmesim, also Donizete, the loudest and most aggressive teammate with the most cutting insults, who refuses to suppress that attitude in an attempt to appease racists. (But will give it a shot when trying not to get fired.)

Donny still lives in her religious/homophobic mom's apartment, and I'm pretty sure it's because neither of them can afford to move out. Her rock-solid sense of fierce self-confidence is the reason it doesn't bring her down.

Scarlet's weapon is a fan that she uses to throw shade. Yeah, you knew that was coming.

The Charlie to these angels is Champagne, who runs operations from a cool magitech compound and breaks the fourth wall at the end to petition for viewers' support in getting a second season.

...we let her down, folks :(

So here's a thing. The show never draws a sharp line between "people who become drag queens because it's a way they're driven to express themselves as gay men" and "people who become drag queens because they were trans women all along." That's consistent with how South American LGBT+ culture works. (Again: best of my knowledge, not personally an authority on this, etc etc.)

Many of the characters, including Champagne, never describe themselves in ways that translate to one of our sharply-defined Anglo-USian identity categories. And I'm not going to try to impose any English labels on them here.

But I can say (in contrast to Safira, Lemon, and Scarlet), Champagne never switches out of her "drag" name/voice/presentation, not even in the most candid off-duty scenes, and still has the same bustline when naked in the tub. Make of that what you will.

You Should Watch This Show

If you have a Netflix subscription, watch Super Drags!

If you ever do a Netflix free trial month in the future, make a note to yourself to watch Super Drags!

It's one of their original productions, so there's no risk of missing your chance because the license expired. But it's absolutely not getting the promotion it deserves. Which means potentially interested viewers won't find it, which means Netflix will think there's no interest, which means they'll keep not promoting it...etc etc etc.

No idea if there's any chance of getting it un-canceled, but maybe we can at least convince them to release it on DVD.

And the sheer gutsiness it took for a group of Brazilian creators to produce this show in the first place -- that deserves to be rewarded with your attention.

In spite of various anti-discrimination laws that sound good on paper, the country has serious problems with homophobia, transphobia, and anti-LGBT violence (warning, article has a violent image which is only partly blurred).

Maybe the creators could've gotten a second season if they made this one softer, less sexually-explicit, more restrained...but honestly? I bet that wouldn't have helped.

Consider Danger & Eggs, an Amazon original cartoon. It was made in the US, thoroughly child-friendly, and restricts its LGBT+ representation to things like "characters go to a Pride celebration...where nobody ever names or describes the quality they're proud of."

And it didn't get renewed past the first season either.

(Note: it had a trans woman showrunner and a queer-heavy creative staff, so I blame all that restraint on executive meddling, not the creators themselves. The showrunner even liked the tweet of my review that complains about it.)

So there's something very satisfying about how Super Drags went all-out, balls-to-the-wall (sometimes literally), all the rep explicit and unapologetic, packing every 25-minute episode with all kinds of queer content that would be censored or muted elsewhere -- but here it's exaggerated and celebrated and just keeps coming.

(...as do jokes like that, and I'm not sorry.)

Okay, there are a few legitimate reasons to not watch this show

Some caveats.

None of these things are Objectively Bad Problems that the show itself should be shamed for...but maybe they're genuinely not your cup of tea.

It does have actual Adult Content beyond "the existence of gay people." This show loves to swing barely-clothed cartoon genitalia in your face. There is, as mentioned, an orgy monster. If that kind of humor is going to bother you too much to appreciate the rest of the show, give it a pass.

I wasn't kidding about how realistic the homophobes are. Opening of the first episode has a guy trying to murder a busload of people while shouting slurs at them. If that level of hatred on-screen is gonna crush your soul, even in a show about sparkly queens flying to the rescue with dick-shaped magical weapons, don't push yourself.

Any fiction with this much crossdressing and gender-transgressing is going to hit some trans viewers in a bad way. Because trans people are such a broad group, with so many different experiences, that Every Possible Trope Involved pushes somebody's buttons. (See also: "some trans readers complain about a storyline that turns out to be drawn from a trans writer's actual life experience".) If this show goes does gender things that turn out to be personally distressing for you...or even just distressing for this specific time in your life...don't feel obligated to keep watching.

It has aggressively-sassy queer characters making jokes and calling each other things that are affectionate in-context, but would not be okay coming from straight/cis people. If you can't wrap your head around that, go watch something else.

Other Than That, Go Watch This Show

For all its big heart, big ambitions, and big gay energy, Super Drags is tiny enough that I've binged the whole show 2 times in the past 2 weeks. Thankfully, it's highly re-watchable -- lots of fun background gags and subtle foreshadowing that you don't catch on the first round.

(Pausing one last time to appreciate that a show with elements like "the high-tech robot assistant is called D.I.L.D.O." can be subtle at all, let alone be this good at it.)

I've also paged through all the fanart on Tumblr and Deviantart, looked up the single fanfic on the AO3, and started brainstorming plans to request it in Yuletide next year. Someone, please, come join me in (the English-language side of) the itty-bitty fandom for this ridiculous, glittery, over-the-top, fabulous series.

[aelinbitch-archive]

You've probably said this before but what's your favorite aspect of the TOG series? I've only read like ten pages of the first book lol

aaaaa thank u for asking!! this sort of leads into something i’ve been meaning to talk about for a while so i hope you’re prepared for An Essay No One Wanted By Me. anyway this is a two-part answer, read below:

1. Aelin. Celaena. The main bitch, whatever you wanna call her lol. Without her I probably wouldn’t have cared about the series at all and wouldn’t currently be trapped in ToG tumblr hell reluctantly stanning a racist and homophobic series, but unfortunately when I was like twelve years old or whatever and read the first book I literally imprinted on Celaena like a baby duckling. To the extent that she became, like, the default avatar for all my maladaptive daydreaming and If I Don’t Project On Her At All Times I Will Die. It’s not like she’s the only thing I like about the series (I loooove a lot of the other characters, especially the gals, and the writing can be really great and engaging and cinematic) but Aelin has always been the supermassive black hole at the center of it all for me. I wouldn’t know how to even begin untangling her character from my psyche at this point. It’s honestly a little disturbing. Anyway. 

2. Part two is a quality of the series that I feel was unprecedented in its strength in the first five books of the series (ToG-QoS plus the prequel novellas) and really really disappointingly weak in the last two books (EoS-KoA). Like I said above, Aelin has always been my main interest in tog so I read and enjoyed the last two anyway, but I definitely felt the loss of this - “this” being the detail and attention paid to all different types of relationships between characters, and how rich and unpredictable those relationships were as a result. 

That sounds like kind of a broad, vague thing, but what I mean is that (in my opinion) rarely are romances and friendships and rivalries explored with such nuance, complexity, drama, and realism in most YA as they are in ToG. I remember reading Cassandra Clare’s books (lmao.) as a pre teen and loving those as well, but totally being able to predict who was going to end up with who, and finding the character dynamics to be pretty cut and dry. 

In ToG that’s not the case at all. Like, you’ve got Celaena and Sam, a really complex example of enemies to lovers to….. Tragically Dead Boyfriend Whose Demise Fuels My Guilt and Self-Hatred For Seven More Books, Lysandra and Aelin, two girls pitted against each other by their abuser who team up a year later to unlearn their internalized misogyny and kill him, and Aelin and Chaol, who… how do I even describe the ups and downs (and downs. and more downs) of their relationship. 

And that’s just three pairs! Pull the names of two characters out of a hat and I can almost guarantee essays worth of material could be written about them. Arobynn and Aelin? Aelin and Nehemia? Chaol and Dorian, as much as I hate both of them and feel that their relationship as been widely mischaracterized? All fascinating!!! No two people in those first few books are just friends, or just lovers, or just enemies. It’s always more complex, there’s always a history or tension or competing agendas or viewpoints that Fuck Shit Up. 

And benefit of that is twofold: one, everything that happens between the characters just…. lands so well. The betrayals and triumphs and losses and victories of The Assassin’s Blade and Crown of Midnight and Queen of Shadows (especially TAB) are fucking heart-stopping. It’s great character-driven entertainment!! Gripping and engaging and vivid to the point of being painful. 

And two, there’s no way to predict where a relationship is going to go. Aelin and Lysandra teaming up in QoS instead of returning to their rivalry? Who would have thought! Ansel and Celaena’s summer fling (they were in love. fight me.) ending like That? Holy fuck. Nesryn and Chaol breaking up in ToD? Oh shit! I fell for it again! Rowan and Aelin ending up together after everyone swore they were brotp in HoF? Hell yeah! Chaolaena seeming like endgame and then ending forever, with Chaol and Aelin realizing that the rift between them that began in CoM was something that would never sufficiently heal? Unprecedented. Fucking badass for a YA book to curve everyone like that. Tween me was shook out of her mind. 

(Important to note, though, that the downside of this style was that SJM couldn’t tell where ~unpredictable relationships and characters~ ended and fridging began, and as a result, not one but two woc were killed off to make white characters sad and it sucked beyond belief). 

Aaaaaand then QoS, the peak of literature, turned into EoS, and SJM just… gave up on all of that. I remember the first time Dorian and Manon met, and I was like oh, okay. So they’re going to end up together. And I was right. I remember that on this site, before EoS came out, before Lorcan and Elide ever fucking MET, people predicted the existence of Elorcan!! And they were right!! Like how fucking boring? Everyone is just paired off into completely predictable heterosexual ships and those are now the only relationships we get to read about (with a few exceptions, like Aelin/Aedion, Aelin/Fenrys, etc.). 

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: my least favorite thing about Manorian is not that I find the relationship to be shitty (although I do, I really do). It’s that Dorian is suddenly the only character Manon gets to interact with in any meaningful way. 

Like, are you kidding?! I want to read about Manon and Elide, Manon and Asterin, Rowan and Lorcan, Aelin and Lysandra, Aelin and Nesyrn, even if it’s not romantically (although some of them, like Manon and Elide, absolutely should have been, and the fact that not only was that ship very thoroughly sunk, but also they didn’t even get to TALK after QoS, felt like a real slap in the face to gay fans, but I digress), because those pairings previously had hella complexity and drama. But we don’t get to. 

And this trend that’s so painfully present in the last two books Sucks for two reasons: one, every relationship that isn’t romantic (which were previously some of the most interesting ones) is abandoned so that more time can be made for The Hets™ and two, the relationships that are romantic, now the only ones left, are totally fucking boring and predictable!! If two characters are interacting at any point (if one is male and the other is female, of course) then you know for a fact that they’re not only love interests, but endgame. 

And that makes me not care even when there is drama between them. Elide giving Lorcan the cold-shoulder for three hundred pages, and Manon and Dorian arguing, and Aedion being cruel to Lysandra weren’t compelling narratives to me like they should have been, because the whole time I was just thinking “but it doesn’t matter. I know it’s still endgame. There are no stakes here whatsoever; it’s a done deal.” Whereas Chaol and Celaena’s devestating breakup in CoM felt like (and was) suuuuper Real. An all-in bet on the wrong person. Crazy shit. 

And not that I think two characters should never have a happy ending together (I really like rowaelin and nestaq and I would have loved malide!) but imagine how much cooler and subversive and entertaining it would have been if Elorcan, which seemed soooo totally cute and endgamey and borderline like fanfiction throughout all of EoS just ended forever right there and then on the beach, with Elide turning to Lorcan and saying “I hope you spend the rest of your miserable, immortal life suffering. I hope you spend it alone. I hope you live with regret and guilt in your heart and never find a way to endure it” - and BAM. She never speaks to him again. He’s dead to her. 

I mean, talk about shock value! (See, Sarah, you can have shock value without killing of a person of color to make a white character sad 🙃). And I totally get that relational twists like that alienate fans more than just going the expected route and having them kiss and make-up does (I mean, the ending of Chaolaena in QoS certainly did, Jesus Christ) but I, Bella aelinbitch, personally live for that shit, and isn’t it only fair that all media cater directly and specifically to me? Lmao. But seriously, I do think it’s objectively more interesting, and that it keeps readers on their toes (I was on my ASS in EoS and KoA. Like. I was flat on my back sinking into the Earth). 

And there are still sort of… glimmers of the old way she wrote in the first few books, but it just feels like a tease rather than something that’s really explored and indulged in the way it was before, and it just ends up being more frustrating (like what was the point of Manon and Dorian not getting married at the end of KoA if I would bet my life savings that in World of Tog it’ll be confirmed that they’re either married or still together) and sometimes downright problematic? Like to return to a previous example, I think all the drama between Aedion + Lysandra was a result of Sarah’s previous (good) instincts to shake stuff up and complicate the character dynamics, but it backfires because when they end up together, it’s not ever… worked out? Or addressed? If you create really intense drama between two people, then that needs to show up in their relationship, no matter how happy they end up together. It doesn’t just disappear.

And despite the fact that her understanding of that concept (that shit between two people doesn’t just disappear like magic) is one of my absolute favorite things about the first few books, Sarah even went as far as to use the last two books to retcon some of the original complexity away, which makes me want to rip out my hair!! Like Aelin at the end of KoA just going “Love you Chaol and Love you Dorian xoxoxoxoxox best friends forever!!!” instead of having, like, any type of mixed feelings about the way these boys treated her? I mean, come on! 100 pages earlier Chaol was openly saying she should die instead of Dorian! Why is everything just peachy-keen instead of fraught with tension!! (I know why. I know. It’s because she introduced way too many characters/POVs/storylines as the series went on and didn��t know what to do with them all besides sideline the nonromantic ones and pair off everyone else boy-girl boy-girl down the line). Or if it has to be peachy-keen, why is the peachy-keeness never critically examined as, perhaps, a repressive mechanism for Aelin to avoid dealing with painful truths from her past? Now that would be interesting. 

(My ideal World of ToG would be just a transcript of the characters’ therapy sessions where Aelin realizes that her insistence that “Chaol and Dorian Are Her Friends!” is actually a way to keep herself safe emotionally and that she has plenty of reasons to hate them, and Lysandra realizes she should divorce Aedion lmao).  

Anyway tldr: The variety, complexity, depth, and unpredictability of the relationships in Throne of Glass was simultaneously the most realistic (sometimes relationships of all kinds fall apart or veer off in unexpected directions and love is temporary and the boy you met in the first chapter isn’t actually your soulmate and it doesn’t mean he’s a villain) and the most gripping and dramatic (I would have been totally chill if maeve and erawan weren’t a thing and tog was just like a medieval soap opera, that’s how entertaining the character dynamics were) thing about the series, and to lose that in the last two books because of Heterosexuality (and introducing too many POVs and not knowing what to do with them all)…. kinda devastating. 

This ended up being waaaaaay more complaining than it was talking about what I loved, but the only reason it bothers me so much is because it used to be so good!!! So just imagine the inverse of all the frustration I just vomited into this ask and you’ll have a good idea of how much I loved the series when things weren’t this way.

[remainingso]

WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON KING OF SCARS???

HELLO FRIEND okay so uhhh i hope you wanted (-checks word count-) nearly 2.5k of meta. Because. That’s what I have. I clearly have so many thoughts on King of Scars. 

So without further ado, let’s dive in!!! (spoilers ABOUND like literally EVERYWHERE under the cut) 

To start: I wanted to love this book so, so badly. In fact, I find it basically unratable? I loved the first 50% with my entire heart and the latter 50% just felt like… the world’s longest disappointment. Ultimately I think this book could’ve been so much more, and the reason I’m kind of mad at it is that it promised me so many things that it never ended up delivering on.

So! Sections, because I’m articulating my salt, dammit.

on breaking open your world

One of the things I loved the most about the first part of this book was the sense of scale we were finally getting from the world. it made sense for Ravka to be isolated in the original trilogy—the whole plot was about getting rid of the Shadowfold to open it back up to the rest of the world. And we got glimpses of the wider Grishaverse politics in Crooked Kingdom especially. I thought King of Scars was going to finally be the book where we go GLOBAL in scope. I adored all the political talk early on—I genuinely thought we were building up to some sort of fantasy World War I! The Zemeni navy starting to challenge the Kerch hold on the seas! Messy alliances between the countries!

I wanted so much more of that—I wanted to know more about why there was war brewing. A lack of resources? The Zemeni new and hungry and eager for more? Fjerda wanting a holy war against the Ravkan Grisha presence? Kerch Greed? I wanted to see what Ravka looks like at war with something outside of itself. I wanted to see Nikolai struggle over how to protect his people and his land. I wanted to see him mess up. I wanted to see him make difficult decisions about how to govern.

Instead, I got half a book of…training montage.

And instead of widening the world globally, we got a lot of Lore.

(Just so much Lore. I really didn’t need to know the origins of why the Grisha are named after a diminutive of Grigori, man. That felt lame and kind of defensive after years of that criticism lol.)

Right off the bat: I didn’t like the revelation of the Saints being real. I didn’t like the weird in-between location Nikolai and Zoya spend literally half the book in. First of all, I never thought that Bardugo’s magic system was built on the most solid of foundations, and I think that this attempt to deepen the mythos, essentially, does more harm than good. I end up with more questions than answers: how does it count as mutual sacrifice when you make an amplifier if you don’t actually die and there’s one obvious dominant consciousness? How does it work that you can become one with an amplifier and then someone else can then become one with you+amplifier? Is there a limit to how many times you can do that? WHY were these particular Saints drawn to the shadowfold? And, beyond that, what are the Saints in service to? I think Bardugo tried to dig into the nature of her religion, but I don’t understand the fundamental Core to this belief system: who’s god? Without god, who are the Saints being martyred for? And when people pray to the Saints, what values are they purporting to uphold? I feel like these are all sort of central questions you need to make clear when you go deep into religious world building, and because she focused so much on the Saints without answering those questions for me, it ultimately felt kind of cheap and hollow.

And because Nikolai & Zoya are…basically stuck there for the whole second half of the book, we don’t get to see them actually interact with Ravka as it is? There’s a lot of narration about Nikolai thinking of what Ravka means to him, but that’s ultimately meaningless for me if I don’t see him make any decisions in service to her. He’s isolated and cut off from the government! This is a book about a King who never does any real King-ing.

the feminist aesthetic

This book has a very empowering aesthetic. And by that, I mean it claims to be empowering without actually supporting that with textual events. There are a lot of nice quotes about powerful women, but at almost every single turn, it undermines the power the women in the book have.

so Let’s Talk About Zoya

I love Zoya! I think YA needs more girls like Zoya, who are unapologetically mean, who gets to be ruthless and prickly and aren’t seen as wrong for it. I love that Nikolai clearly wants her to step on him. I love so much about her.

What I don’t love is how the narrative treats her.

I don’t like that she lets herself be drowned over and over and over, all so Nikolai can level up—and she doesn’t even punch him in the face for it after? She just literally smiles and lets it happen. Why does she have to be reduced to the precious thing he’s fighting for? Why does she have to suffer to force him to action? I love that Nikolai thinks Zoya can be Queen—but, does he really? He says he does. But he literally doesn’t listen to her a single time in the book. And she has good suggestions! Killing his dad? Would’ve solved their problem at the end where he aligns himself with the Fjerdans. Not listening to Yuri? Would’ve solved their entire Darkling problem by the end. Pick a bride? Stay in Ravka? Kill the Darkling at the end? All really good ideas! The book tells us that Zoya can be queen, and then spends the entire run-through relegating her to support role. What does Zoya do for herself? I don’t like that in order to have her “level up” they took away her power, and then had a man give her his power in order for her to thrive.

Okay so this line: “Men looked at her and wanted to believe they saw goodness beneath her armor, a kind girl, a gentle girl who would emerge if only given the chance.” I LOVE this idea so much. I love the notion of like a girl who doesn’t need to be saved, because she isn’t soft underneath; she’s all steel. But I can’t help but feel like the scene where Zoya confesses how she got her amplifier in the first place basically entirely undermines this concept. I thought, going in, that we were going to get a story about baby Zoya who snuck out in the middle of the night to stake a kill for herself, a baby Zoya who stole the tiger out from under everyone’s nose because she was wanted to show them all she could do it, and she didn’t mind the blood on her hands. I don’t like that we got a story about how she wanted to protect the baby cubs instead! I don’t like that this bonding moment between Zoya and Nikolai is one where she…reveals the kind, gentle girl underneath her armour. I didn’t want the story of how she got her power to be rooted in her secret maternal compassion for baby cubs; I wanted her to be ruthless. I wanted her to have killed and regretted it, maybe. I wanted that moment between them to be one where she tells him about her raw ambition and bite, and he understood that about her.

I’m not super here for all the… women have to suffer in order to Overcome vibe either? I mean it’s Bardugo’s prerogative, and I’m not saying it’s problematic or anything, but just that she has a history of making female characters necessarily suffer for growth (see: Genya, Inej) and I don’t like how Zoya’s trauma backstory with being exploited by a shitty man falls into that pattern. Why can’t she have been just angry? Why does she need a reason?

the shu han problem

I’ve had a long-standing issue with the way the Shu have been depicted in the Grishaverse, and this book did nothing to alleviate that. To start off, the strange Mongolia-China mashup culture is problematic in and of itself. In the Original Trilogy, we get the sole asian martial artist teacher trope full blast; not good! I never talk about this, but I actually hated how the Shu were treated in Six of Crows. I really do love that duology, but I sure don’t like that the Shu are…basically one dimensional villains throughout. The committee gets called “greedy” explicitly out of all the other committees present at the auction in Crooked Kingdom? Kuwei doesn’t get to speak for himself, and his entire storyline is basically a proxy for Jesper and Wylan to get together. I still don’t even know what his personality is like.

So I went into King of Scars hoping for…something more. Something better. And I mostly came away cold.

I still feel like we don’t know anything about Shu Han. Sure we know they have poetry. And a single instrument. But the matriarchy thing is so often used as a lazy shorthand to make a foreign country seem interesting and more foreign that I feel like it doesn’t tell us anything. What’s their word for Grisha? What’s their relationship to the Grisha? Are they evil, like in Fjerda? Wanted, like in Ravka? What’s their religion? What do their people believe in? Why do they want to go to war with Ravka? We’ve seen nuance in how a country can be a beautiful place even if its government holds terrible tenants: look at Fjerda. Why don’t we have the same nuance here? Sure, Tolya and Tamar exist, but they’re framed as like traitors? And on the Good side because of that? I don’t like that their number one allegiance is to a white girl, in the end. I don’t like that we got almost nothing from either Ehri or Mayu about their relationship to their country. I don’t like that Mayu was basically forced into helping her country, so we still have this… villainous view of the government & everything it stands for. I don’t like that Ehri is literally still a disposable girl, DESPITE that we supposedly have this matriarchy happening. I don’t like that they’re literally forcing her to marry Nikolai. I don’t like that they framing is the benevolent (white) protagonists, swooping in to save this naive princess from her monstrous home country.

I think Isaak’s POV is ultimately kind of useless and only there so we feel sad about him dying at the end. Functionally, we don’t need Isaak’s POV to know that there’s a fake Nikolai, and not much actually happens that only he can know about. Why couldn’t we have gotten Mayu’s POV? We know Nikolai’s elsewhere; so as soon as “Nikolai” shows up we’ll know he’s a fake. Why don’t the Shu get a voice?

the man of the hour

hey if you’ve made it this far, I’m going to talk about the Darkling now! (…yay?)

So this book spends like 90% of its run subtly reinforcing that the Darkling was Wrong and his ideas were dangerous and that overall he was bad for Ravka. it’s hard not to see this in a sort of metatextual bent—a lot of what Yuri espouses is what the fandom reaction to the original trilogy was and continues to be: That he could’ve ruled Ravka and led them into glory. That he was misunderstood. That he deserves to be worshipped. And I thought the existence of the Cult of the Starless Saint was a clever nod, a sort of guiding hand for Bardugo to reinforce the message of the original trilogy. That message being that like, guys, he’s kind of a shitty dude. And would’ve been a bad leader. I thought there was something really interesting she was doing here about how people always will gravitate towards powerful demagogues. That powerful men often are heard above all.

But I thought she was going to like… refute that. Alina’s entire war was to get rid of this fucker. The original trilogy told us that powerful men can be defeated. That who we should want to emulate instead are the girls who fight against them.

And now he’s back.

I can’t help but feel betrayed. I can’t help but feel like bringing him back, especially as the culmination of the book, reinforces the idea instead that, actually, the whole goddamn grishaverse revolves around him. That Yuri was right. Because he was. He was right about the visions, he was right about the return of his saint, and so what does that mean this book is saying about the voice of this powerful men? That it deserves to be heard? The Darkling gets the very last word of the book—it’s hard not to think that this is what the whole thing has been building up towards, in the end.

I don’t actually think that Bardugo is trying to say that we should all worship the Darkling. But I do think that this was a clumsy move that inadvertently muddles so much of what came prior—and for what? A cheap twist?

on expectation and disappointment

again, at the end of all this, my point is that the core of my issues is that the book simply doesn’t deliver on a lot of what it set up. It feels like I read two different books. I don’t expect this book to be perfect, but I find it hard to forgive a lot of the faults I find when the feeling I came away from was ultimately…dissatisfaction. I felt empty, finishing. I feel empty thinking about it. I’m just really sad about all the things it could’ve been—because I think it could’ve been so great.

There’s so much I loved! Like I said, the entire first 50%? Gorgeous, magnificent, showstopping. I adored all of it. The underground bunker! The science and magic mingling! Nina and Matthias!!! And there’s stuff I don’t really want to get into because it gets nitpicky lol (some logistics stuff with Nina’s plotline near the end). But basically I likened reading this book to feeling like I was on a rollercoaster, and super enjoying the cranking climb upward for the first half, and then, instead of the swooping, exhilarating fall, the entire track just collapsed underneath me.

So that’s where I’m at. I’m happy to talk about it and I really enjoy discussing the parts I loved! And I’m happy to field anyone who wants to tell me why they loved it, because, again, I would love to love this book. Please. Convince me. But at the end of the day, I’m sad and I’m mad and I’m disappointed. What a bummer.

[dillydedalus]

what i read in july

THAT’S MORE LIKE IT aka i’m finally out of the (relative) reading slump for good & my bro james joyce was there

men explain things to me, rebecca solnit the original mansplaining essay is great, and still scarily relevant; the others in this collection (most on feminist issues) are also quite good; some aspects are a bit dated & problematic so be aware of that. 2.5/5

erschlagt die armen!, shumona sinha (tr. from french, not available in english) short but very impactful novella about a young french woman, originally from india, who works as an interpreter in the asylum system and becomes more & more broken by this system of inhumane bureaucracy and suffering, until she snaps and hits a migrant over the head with a wine bottle. full of alienation and misery and beautiful but disturbing language - the title translates to ‘beat the poor to death’ so like. yeah. 3.5/5

fire & blood: a history of the targaryen family I, george r r martin look, it’s a 700-page-long fake history book about a fictional ruling dynasty in a fictional world, and i’m just That Obsessed & Desperate about asoiaf (and i don’t even care about the targs That Much). anyway, now i know more about the targs than any ruling family from, you know, real history, which is like, whatever. this is pretty enjoyable if you are That Obsessed, although i will say that some bits are much better than others (there are some dry dull years even in everyone’s fav overly dramatic dragon-riding incest-loving family) and the misogyny really is. a lot. too much. way too much. BUT i did really like Good Best Queen Alysanne (her husband king joe harris is alright too i guess) and i found my new westerosi otp, cregan stark/aly blackwood, who both have Big Dick Energy off the fucking charts. 3.5/5 (+0.5 points for cregan and aly’s combined BDE)

the old drift, namwali serpell hugely ambitious sprawling postcolonial nation-building novel about zambia, told thru three generations of three families, as well as a chorus of mosquitoes (consistently the best & smartest parts). there is A LOT going on, in terms of characters, of plot points, of references to history (the zambian space programme) and literature (finally my knowledge of heart of darkness paid off) and thematically, and honestly it was a bit too much, a bit too tangled & fragmented & drifty, and in the end i probably admire this book more than i liked it, but serpell’s writing is incredibly smart and funny and full of electrical sparks 3.5/5

a severed head, iris murdoch the original love dodecahedron (not that i counted). iris murdoch is fucking WILD and i love her for it. this is a strange darkly funny little farce about some rich well-educated londoners and their bizarre & rather convoluted love lives. not as grandiosely wild as the sea the sea, but fun nevertheless. 3/5

midnight in chernobyl, adam higginbotham jumping on the hype bandwagon caused by the hbo series (very weird to call the current fascination with chernobyl a hype bandwagon but you know). interesting & well-written & accessible (tho the science is still totally beyond me) & gets you to care about the people involved. lots of human failure, lots of human greatness, set against the background of the almost eldritch threat of radioactivity (look up the elephant foot & see if you don’t get chills), and acute radiation syndrome which is THE MOST TERRIFYING THING ON EARTH . 3.5/5

normal people, sally rooney honestly this is incredibly engrossing & absorbing once you get used to how rooney completely ignores ‘show don’t tell’ (it works!), i pretty much read the whole thing in one slow workday (boss makes a dollar, i make a dime so i read books on my phone on company time, also i genuinely had nothing to do). i also think rooney is really good at precisely capturing the ~millenial experience in a way that feels very true, especially the transition from school to uni. BUT i really disliked the ending, the book never engages with the political themes it introduces (esp. class and gender) as deeply as it could and the bdsm stuff never really gets TIED UP LOL. so overall idk: 3.5/5

störfall: nachrichten eines tages, christa wolf quiet reflective undramatic little book narrated by a woman waiting to hear about the outcome of her brother’s brain surgery on the day of the catastrophe at chernobyl - throughout the day she puts down her thoughts about her brother and the events unfolding at chernobyl, as well as the double uncertainty she is trying to cope with. really interesting to read such an immediate reaction to chernobyl (the book came out less than a year after chernobyl). 2.5/5

the man in the high castle, philip k dick it was fine? quick & entertaining alternative history where the axis powers win the war, some interesting bits of worldbuilding (like the draining of the mediterranean which was apparently a real idea in the early 20th century?) but overall it’s just felt a bit disjointed & unsatisfying to me. 2.5/5

fugitive pieces, anne michaels very poetic & thoughtful novel about the holocaust, grief, remembrance & the difference between history and memory, intergenerational trauma, love, geology and the weather. i’m not sure how much this comes together as a novel, but it is absolutely beautifully written (the author is a poet as well) and very affective. 3.5/5

american innovations, rivka galchen short collection of bizarre & often funny short stories about neurotic women whose furniture flies away, or who grow an extra breast, or who are maybe too occupied with financial details. very vague & very precise at once, which seems to be the thing with these sort of collections. 3/5

fool’s assassin (fitz & the fool #1), robin hobb YAASS i’m back in the realm of the elderlings!!! i thought this was one of the weaker installments in the series - i still enjoyed it a lot, and Feelings were had, but it just doesn’t quite fit together pacing-wise & some of the characterisation struck me as off (can i get some nuance for shun & lant please?) and tbh fitz is at peak Selfcentred Dumbass Levels & it drove me up the fucking wall. molly, nettle & bee deserve better. still, completely HYPE for the rest of the trilogy. 3.5/5

JAMES JOYCE JULY

note: i decided not to read dubliners bc it’s my least fav of joyce’s major works & too bleak & repetitive for my mood right now AND while i planned not to reread finnegans wake bc……. it’s finnegans wake…. i kinda do want to read it now (but i also. really don’t.) so idk yet.

a portrait of the artist as a young man, james joyce y’all. i read this book at least once a year between the ages of 15 and 19, it’s beyond formative, it is burnt into my brain, and reading it now several years later it is still everything, soaring and searing (that searing clarity of truth, thanks burgess) and poetic and dirty, and stephen is baby, and a pretentious self-important little prick and i love him & i am him (or was him as only a pretentious self-important teenage girl reading joyce can be him - because this truly is a book that should be read in your late teens when you feel everything as intensely and world-endingly and severely as my boy stephen does and every new experience feels like the world changing). anyway i love this book & i love stephen dedalus, bird-like, hawk-like, knife-blade, aloof, alienated, severe and stern, a poet-priest-prophet if he could ever get over himself, baby baby baby. 5/5

exiles, james joyce well. there’s a reason joyce is known as a novelist. this is….. a failed experiment, maybe. a fairly boring play about an adulterous love-square and uh… love beyond morality and possession maybe??? about how much it would suck for joyce to return to ireland??? and tbh it’s not terribly interesting. 2/5

travesties, tom stoppard a wild funny irreverent & smart antic comedy inspired by the fact that during ww1, james joyce, lenin, and dadaist tristan tzara were all in neutral zurich, more or less simultaneously; they probably never met, but in this play they do, as dadaist poetry, socialist art critique, and a james joyce high on his own genius & in desperate need of some cash while writing ulysses, AND the importance of being earnest (joyce is putting on a production of it) all collide in the memories of henry carr, who played algernon & later sued joyce over money (tru facts). not my fav stoppard (that’s arcadia) but it’s funny & fizzy & smart & combines many many things that i love. 4/5 

ulysses, james joyce look i’m not really going to tell y’all anything new about ulysses, but it really has everything, it’s warm & human(e) & cerebral & difficult & funny & sad & healing & i always get a lot out of it even tho there’s bits (a lot of them) i’ll never wrap my head around. ultimate affirmation of humanity or whatever. also stephen dedalus is baby. 5/5

dedalus, chris mccabe the fact that this book (sequel to ulysses about what stephen dedalus might have done the next day) exists and was published ON MY BIRTHDAY is proof that the universe loves me. 

anyway this is very very good, very very clever, extremely good at stephen (less good at bloom but his parts are still good), engages w/ ulysses, portrait & hamlet (& others) very cleverly & does some cool meta and experimental shit. y’all it has stephen talking to a contemporary therapist about how he’s stuck in joyce’s text which is all about joyce & very little about whoever stephen is when he’s not joyce’s alter ego/affectionate but slightly amused look at younger self and ithaca is an interview w/ the author about how his relationship to his dad influenced his response to ulysses and I’M INTO IT. the oxen of the sun chapter replaces the whole ‘gestation of english prose’ w/ just slightly rewriting the first pages of about 10 novels published between ulysses and now & it does lolita w/ “bloom, thorn of stephen’s sleep, light in his eyes. his sire, his son’ and i lit. screamed. anyway i don’t want to give this 5 stars (yet) bc i think some of the experimental stuff ended up a bit gimmicky & didn’t add that much to the text but fuck. that’s my boy & i want to reread it right now. 4.5/5 ALSO it’s a crime no literary weirdo woman has written ‘a portrait of the artist’s sister’ about delia ‘dilly’ dedalus, shadow of stephen’s mind, quick far & daring, teaching herself french from a 3rd hand primer while her father drinks the nonexistent family fortune away and her older brother is getting drunk on a beach & starting fights w/ soldiers bc he’s a smartarse

[parisbian]

also not the ask meme but can u pls list your fave lgbt films/ novels? i have a while lgbt folder but I'm always looking to expand it

hey, i’m saving the french questions for tomorrow when i’m feeling more lively but thank you so much for asking! not all of these are super gay, so I’m gonna try give little descriptions so you know what you’re getting! (also I’m gonna explain how they’re all problematic cuz why not)

Films: 

❤Blue is the warmest colour (French)

I’m sure you know this one! A young french girl meets someone an older girl; they have this affair spanning several years and the story is just nuanced and detailed in a really lovely way, this was my Confused 13 Year Old movie. i don’t like that the movie could quite easily have been about a straight couple (and the actors STRESS that in interviews oml), and that Adele’s sexuality isn’t really explored?? 

❤All about them (french)

a woman has an affair with her friend, and then the boyfriend of her friend at the same time! which sounds despicable but this movie is honestly delightful i can’t even express it. good exploration of polyamory too (SO rare) 

❤J'ai tué ma mère (french)

you seen this angst ridden masterpiece? edgy gay teen has a bizarre relationship with his mum; it’s beautifully shot. the main character is played by a really good looking actor (what? I’m gay not dead) and i often think the movie would be really different and less sympathetic if he wasn’t? which makes you think! 

❤the way he looks (brazilian, i believe) 

this is a lovely movie about a blind boy who has feelings for his friend and the subsequent shenanigans. i cannot fault this movie it is lovely and i think the only movie I’ve ever seen about an lgbt boy with a disability. 

❤la nouvelle amie (french) 

this is a movie about a transgender woman who explores her identity following the death of her wife. the main character is the best friend of the deceased woman, and she grows closer to her best friends spouse following her death. i think there’s a lot of outdated notions about transgender women (but obvs I’m cis so it’s like?? is this okay?? idk??) but at the same time i think the film is ultimately positive and worth watching. 

Books! 

(we’re gonna be here all night holy shit) 

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray (YA)

this is a weird book? and once the pirates get involved it kinda goes downhill. BUT it’s interesting! a group of teenage beauty queens are stranded on a desert island, sort of a play on lord of the flies. it’s set in this ultra-capitalist imagined future, it’s very satirical and very good. the gay element is actually very smal (a lesbian and a bi character have a brief dalliance) but it just has some good views on sex and sexuality, i really think this book is worth reading despite it’s ridiculous elements. 

Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman 

a 17 year old and a 24 year old (two guys) fall in love (kinda..) in the picturesque summer of 1980s italy. the prose: gorgeous. the characters: VERY well written. some of the sex? just fuckin weird and uncalled for PUT THE PEACH DOWN ELIO. i did relate to angsty confused elio tho!! lots of americans start screaming at the age gap but i think being 17 and british means it never bothered me?? but obviously something to be aware of! also people criticise it for being pretentious and flowery but i love that in books! if they talk like real people then.. what’s the point? i want BEAUTY and PROFUNDITY! 

Darshana Suresh is a poet on tumblr @lavnderlesbian, she’s published several books and they are absolutely BEAUTIFUL and make me cry, so if you like poetry I’d definitely recommend! (also read the works of sappho while you’re at it, thanks for inventing lesbians babe i love you) 

Sugar Rush by Lili Wilkinson 

the most problematic book ever in how it deals with a lesbian relationship tbh?? but it was the first gay book i ever read when i was like 9 or 10 and i loved this book (in a curious hetero way ofc) so it holds a special place in my heart. also, it reminds me of the beauty of weird homoerotic adolescent friendships so i like it! but yeah this book is not good on a lot of levels, so don’t rush and buy it or anything. 

Gypsy Boy by Mikey Walsh 

this is an autobiographical book written by a man who is a Romany Gypsy and it’s a great book, seriously. the book is very sad, there’s some awful child abuse and sexual assault so please don’t read if it will be distressing. also, the gay mentions are only at the end; throughout the book it’s really only shown to make his life hell. the book covers important topics like the persecution of the group, and when i first read it (i was about 12) it was such an eye opener. i live like 10 metres from a campsite and there’s a lot of prejudice in my town about it, so I’m glad i got to read this book. 

i’ll tell you if anything else springs to mind, and i’d love to hear your faves! 💖💞 (and let me know if you have questions about anything I've listed!) 

[leah-jeffries]

Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday! Founded through The Broke and the Bookish, Top Ten is about showcasing a list of some of our favorite things. For July 25, 2017, we’ll talk about our Top Ten YA Fantasies. 

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo I remember SoC being one of the biggest anticipated releases the year that it came out. And it lived up to all the hype that was created around it. Leigh Bardugo practically destroyed me with her amazing Grishaverse that has turned into its own empire and how can you not support a band of misfits, all incredibly unique, banded together by the seduction of kruge and the greater good of their greed? I mean, granted they all had really tragic pasts and all of my problematic faves deserved happiness. They are so unique and Leigh Bardugo is no stranger to having her female characters outnumbered by the boys, but tower over them in terms of their own prowess and heroism (can it be called heroism?). 

An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir I have no idea how to form into words my love for AEITA. I remember reading it and not really having it sink in until it did and then I fell madly in love. Maybe it was because I was in love with Elias. Or maybe because of the slow burn that was about to happen between Elias and Laia. I could have survived on a story completely Laia's own, but having the core three and the antagonists, the Nightbringer and the Commandant just gave me so much to look forward to in the rest of the Ember Quartet. I think for a debut from Sabaa Tahir, she shattered the expectations of the young adult and fantasy genres. 

The Young Elites by Marie Lu TYE was the first series I read from Marie Lu. I don't know I never really got into her LEGEND series, but I just didn't and I don't know if I can go back and read anything before TYE. Her writing is wonderfully dark and calculated in the way that Adelina is in the books. How can anyone not be interested in a story where the main character who is usually the good guy, the antihero? Adelina is definitely a harrowing villain in her own right, but when you get past the superficial villainy, how can you not appreciate and resonate with her beyond the exterior? She has so many complexities and I loved the ending for her - it was so perfect and unimaginably like anything else.

Flame in the Mist by Renee Ahdieh SOLD ME WHEN IT WAS MARKETING AS A MULAN-RETELLING. Now, it's not really a Mulan-retelling, but it definitely nods to the best Disney movie in all the land. I feel like it did have a sense of magical realism to it and I loved how the fantasy elements didn't overwhelm the story. Those elements made for such a good story, but having Mariko be the main thing to pull it all together was kind of awesome. Give me a cross-dressing heroine any day and totally give me scenes of needing to distract handsome boys with kisses. I go for that all the way. 

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas I was really struggling to put down ACOMAF instead of ACOTAR because I am such a fangirl for ACOMAF and Rhysand. Hah. But I just decided to stick to the first books rather than just go about being confused and conflicted. Sarah J. Maas has a knack for destroying my expectations in men. But what makes the ACOTAR series so great is the beauty in her writing when it comes to both the worlds she builds and the romances that bud with steam and magic. I am always captivated by how she words things and how she can immerse her readers in a fey/human world without completely forcing one or the other to disintegrate. I know that Maas is not everyone's cup of tea, but I love her leaves. :D 

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo I'm pretty sure it was this series that got me hooked into fantasy. I think that if if she had written some wild contemporary, I would have fallen in love with that and gotten myself insanely hooked into that genre first. It took me a long time to get into contemporary since I was/am wild about fantasy stories. I certainly loved reading about Alina's journey to discovering herself as an ordinary girl, a legendary Sun Summoner, and then an ordinary girl once more. I think a lot of readers expect the glory of that sort of character to stick with the Sun Summoner, but I found that Alina's character was far more developed and explored because of her connecting to ordinary. 

A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab I have a real sweet soft spot for books that are able to transport me beyond its pages. And I am such a fan of Schwab's work in all of her writings, but ADSOM has a special place in my heart. It is so imaginative and nuanced - people always talk about how worlds would be different through different dimensions and Schwab just takes it to that level where I am completely immersed in the four Londons and the characters that exist in them. I think Kell is the most excellent character to bridge through those settings and provide such strong characterization when it comes to the overall plot. There is just so much awesome magical realism that it's making me rather happy to think about while I write this.

The Pledge by Kimberly Derting THE PLEDGE was one of the earliest works of fantasy that I remember reading. When I first started blogging on Tumblr, I made a bunch of edits for it because I really liked the idea behind the world that Derting built. Having something so universal as language as the base of what surrounds THE PLEDGE's conflict is what really drew me in (besides the romance, haha). For using something so basic, it's something that really carries weight in the book and ties together the characters of the book. Plus, I love a historical setting with some magical elements attached. 

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard I'm so angry with the RED QUEEN series because there's still so many unanswered questions and STILL ONE MORE BOOK TO GO. On one layer, there's the age old story about feuding high and low classes. On another layer, you've got these cool X-Men-esque abilities forcing the separation of classes even farther. And then you whip out Mare who's both low and got powers - so where does that leave you? RED QUEEN! Behind this really cool historical setting fantasy, there's a crazy awesome heroine who is a heroine that many can aspire to. And then there's Maven and Cal who just devastate so much - not just because they're princes and handsome, but because their relationships and sorrow just WOUND ME. You should pick up this book if you want your soul ripped in two and then crushed. 

Caraval by Stephanie Garber TALK ABOUT TRANSPORTING. CARAVAL just came out this year and already it's become one of my favorite fantasy reads of all time. You've got Scarlett writing to the legendary...Legend about wanting to bring her sister, Tella, to the also legendary Caraval where everything is claimed to be just a big elaborate performance. But upon arriving at Caraval, led by a mysterious and handsome sailor, Scarlett realizes that there is more to Caraval than just illusions and tricks. This story made me feel like magic really exists - that despite the skepticism surrounding it that it is something that takes me out of a reality that sometimes I want to escape (much like Scarlett/Tella and their father). And beyond the fantasy and magic, there's definitely some meaningful exploration of relationships between lovers and family. This story is just wildly creative and imaginative.

[writsgrimmyblog]

I’ve been thinking a lot about Harry related discourse lately, including some suggestions that the way his statements get scrutinised is unbalanced in comparison to the way the other 1D boys are treated when it comes to song lyrics, statements they make in interviews and the general bar we set for them.

I get that it’s annoying that Harry appears to meet more political challenges in relation to the stuff he puts out there, but I’m going to put a positive flip side to that observation. I think Harry attracts particular scrutiny because he’s been more vocal and nuanced about issues which have a social justice lean, such as women’s rights and LGBT activism and that he’s even thinking about this stuff is a very good thing. I know that’s one of the reasons why, as a solo artist, he’s held particular appeal for me and I’ve been so excited to hear more from him as an individual. I think the reason he attracts more extensive critique is because he has consciously positioned himself as someone who gives thought to these issues, as someone who cares about, as he puts it himself, fundamental equality. He comes across in his marketing as someone who thinks about things like gender, women’s rights and LGBT identity and that’s a very, very inspiring thing to see in a 20-something popstar who could frankly choose to be a ‘rich kid of instagram’ and enjoy wealth and privilege without giving a fuck about anything or anyone.

If I’m right in my read of Harry, then surely there’s no harm in engaging with thoughtful critique about why this idea of ‘good girls’ allowed to meet mum and women wearing short skirts play into a narrative which isn’t particularly empowering? I come at this from the perspective of someone who LOVES the album and has had SOTT on repeat pretty much from the get go. This isn’t bashing, or character assassination. I actually think nuanced discussion about portrayal of women in pop culture (and entirely removing ship related motivations and emotions from the debate) very much get to the heart of the things Harry himself has gone on record to advocate for. The powerful voice of the young, female consumer. The resistance against buying into narratives we’re fed blindly, the empowering way we can interrogate and engage with things we see going on in the world around us.

I get the sense Harry WANTS to empower his fanbase and he wants to be a vocal supporter of women’s equality. However, Harry is a dude. A lot of micro-aggressions we experience are so insidious and systemic we don’t even notice them ourselves until we start piecing together all of those moments that begin to paint a pretty unhappy picture of binary constructions of gender and the deep, insidious inequality in supposedly ‘equal’ post-feminist societies. This gender imbalance is something he will never have experienced first-hand. That's why I’m behind elements of thoughtful analysis from articles like the Pitchfork piece and why I feel uncomfortable with critique of certain lyrics being read simply as buzz kill or, worse, condemnation of someone I actually have an enormous amount of time for.

Societal problems do not rest on the shoulders of Harry Styles and perhaps some will say it’s unfair to scrutinise what he’s doing in the manner I’m suggesting, but part of me can’t help but think he’d welcome it. There’s a difference between piling on and labelling someone a misogynist and using aggressive language to make a point and just making an observation about things not sitting quite right. I’m going to say the ‘good girl’ thing bugs me because it’s a puritanical kind of narrative which advocates for women being something respectable in the public sphere and a little bit freaky in the bedroom. To not question any of this at all particularly jars with me in a culture which is so ready dogpile female stars for bullshit co-opting of neoliberal feminist ideology, for being ‘too political’ (Queen B, Little Mix daring to comment on Syria) or the endless scrutiny and recrimination of stars like Miley Cyrus who had to grow up and find herself in the public eye or Katy Perry for her not sure quite where she’s coming from stance on LGBT related issues.

The thing is, I like the fact people question Harry’s lyric choices, because they should. It happens to female stars all the time. Interrogating every single word of the songs or the ship driven discussions of lyrics, although diversionary, are not what I’m talking about here. I do think that thoughtful critique can work alongside absolutely loving and supporting someone. I want it to be okay to acknowledge not everything a person I stan does is unequivocally cool. It doesn’t mean we have to start throwing slurs around and hating on someone.

One of the reasons I’m so here for Harry is because of the way he’s engaged with various issues which mean a great deal to me. Without bashing the other boys, he’s distinguished himself on social justice related issues through his own actions. The gender neutral pronouns. The unflinching support of the fangirl. The eagerness to challenge the idea that he somehow has to distance himself from a boyband past or the notion that there’s anything remotely shameful about that musical legacy. Precisely because Harry himself appears to be someone who wants to be an advocate, an ally, a person who positions himself as a supporter on these matters is the very reason why I think engaging with the content he produces in a critical way shouldn’t be such a problem. The fantastic stuff his sister does must be influential to his own approach, and Gemma does not hold back any punches with the issues she writes and blogs about with such eloquence.

My thoughts on this have been prompted predominantly by a handful of lyrics in a couple of songs on Harry’s album which jar with me. I think Harry’s focused a lot more on the way he deals with his frankly fairly crazy life than he has on the perspective of the women in his songs and for me, that comes across. I don’t think we have to beat him over the head with a big stick and call him a terrible person because of that, but I also don’t think we have to feel forced to celebrate the way women are written in all of the songs. Harry is going to grow and change musically and I hope he’ll pick up one of the more persistently negative points about his solo material, which tend to hone in on somewhat trite depictions of the sexually charged woman versus the ‘good girl.’

If you’re still reading (sorry, omg it got so long) I agonized over whether or not to post this. I have been thinking really carefully about how to frame my thoughts, because when it comes down to it, Harry is, I believe, a very good egg. A positive ally. Someone who has a voice which resonates and one I hope he uses more and more, because he’s incredibly influential and has real potential to go far in the music industry.

I think the fact we interrogate Harry more than the other 1D boys is perhaps has more to do with the fact he consciously wants to support exactly this kind of thinking. He has said so himself. That’s not hammering him and calling him names, it’s just a debate, a discussion, a way of processing feelings in a fandom space which is largely female centric but driven by the music, lyrics, interviews and narratives put out there by men. Although I’ve been lurking in the fandom for years, I’m relatively new to speaking out here and I have a small number of followers who I would hate to lose by not putting forward an unequivocally positive perspective. However, I also hate the feeling of not being able to say anything at all and I wanted to set out my stall.

I firmly believe that we can be critical without being damning, supportive without wilfully ignoring anything that might feel problematic. I also think the fact we hold Harry to a particularly high standard is not a bad thing. It’s a very, very good thing. It’s a testament to the fact he’s been pretty much saying the right things to date, and long may that continue. 

[tediousoscars]

2018

Predict-o-meter: This year: 8/12; Total: 99/119 (83%)

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and friends beyond the binary: It is time once again to set aside our daily woes and discuss all things Oscar.

This year’s class of 8 Best Picture nominees is extremely solid. There are no real clunkers, but, in my mind there are 4 soaringly great films, 3 solidly good films, and one … problematic film that is both great and not so great. We’ll get to that.

But keep in mind that even though I am using my traditional Contenders/Pretenders bifurcation there are no films below that I would recommend you avoid. They are all very good.

- THE CONTENDERS -

Black Panther. The beauty of this film is that it works so well on so many different levels. If you are simply looking for a blockbuster spectacle to munch popcorn to, you will not be disappointed; it totally works on that level. And even though it is the 18th(!) installment in Marvel Studios’ Cinematic Universe of inter-related films, “Black Panther” may be enjoyed on its own in isolation; if you have never seen another Marvel movie (Really? What is WRONG with you?) you won’t feel at all lost. And that is all well and good; I love a good blockbuster as much as the next guy. But that won’t get you Oscar Nominations. For that, we need to dig a little deeper. On the next level down, it’s just a really good movie. Great characters who are well-developed and three-dimensional, a compelling story told with humor and drama in equal measures, gorgeous cinematography and costumes that bring an imagined world to life, and an all-star cast of talented actors who are clearly giving it their all. The heart and soul of “Black Panther” is the fictional land of Wakanda: a central African nation hit with a meteor in the distant past that provided ancient Wakandans with access to vibranium, a near-magical metal that allowed them to develop advanced technology well before the rest of the world. Technology that they used to hide themselves away while developing ever more advanced weapons and transportation, including the technology that turns their tribal King into the titular super-powered protector. And herein lies the central conflict of the film: A Wakandan spy on assignment in Oakland in the 90s becomes disillusioned by the disparity between the safety and comfort that Wakandans enjoy and the degradation and oppression faced by members of the African Diaspora across the globe. When he is taken out by Wakandan authorities he leaves behind a young son who grows up hell-bent on avenging his father, but also determined to complete his father’s mission of using Wakandan technology to uplift all those of African descent. This isn't the standard “Good vs. Evil” we’ve come to expect from superhero movies. It’s a more nuanced “Isolation vs. Engagement” discussion of the best way to allocate scarce resources for the greater good. At its greatest depth “Black Panther” is a thoughtful exploration of themes of racism and oppression, violence and statecraft, retribution and forgiveness that stands up to critical analysis. In interviews with the cast and crew it is obvious that they were very cognizant of the fact that with Wakanda they were essentially creating from whole cloth an African mythology that could play a role comparable to that of Camelot in the Anglo-Saxon imagination. They took this responsibility very seriously and were determined that everything associated with “Black Panther” be of the highest quality. They succeeded spectacularly. No matter how deeply you choose to look at this film you will not be disappointed. It succeeds on every level.

Bohemian Rhapsody. This story of iconic stadium anthem band Queen and their mercurial frontman, Freddy Mercury, was told with the full cooperation of the surviving band members, and one of their conditions was that it not have an R rating. This has led to some consternation and gnashing of teeth over Mercury’s legendary excesses being watered down. But I thought that the device they used was effective: Rather than show the actual debauchery the film focuses on the morning-after detritus. Mercury staggers blinking through a maze of prone bodies and over-turned furniture, empty glasses and bottles scattered hither and yon, cocaine residue coating every horizontal surface. But the film isn’t primarily about Mercury’s rock star life; it’s about the band and how they worked together and became a worldwide sensation despite significant headwinds - watching the label guys turn up their noses at the eponymous song (soon to become one of the most beloved rock songs of all time) is choice. Everything here is well done. The story unfolds naturally, the performances are all solid, and the insight into the inner workings of the band are illuminating. Yes, they have the unavoidable family squabbles, but for the most part it isn’t about ego, it’s about the music. They fight for their own individual interpretations and priorities, but they all share a common vision of what Queen should be, and that is the organizing principle for their conflicts, at least during the band’s formative period. It’s all entertaining and engaging and good, maybe even very good, but it’s just not great. Until, at the very end, a choice is made by the filmmakers that turns on the after-burners and vaults the film into the stratosphere. After an ill-fated attempt at a solo album, a chastened Mercury beseeches the band to get back together for Live Aid, the bi-continental music festival for African famine relief that was the biggest music event of its era. A typical movie would handle this either with a quick montage of the various songs played in the set, or perhaps, one single entire song. But for this film they recreated Queen’s 20-minute Live Aid set in its entirety; note for note, move for move. And they imbue the performance with the knowledge - not known to the general public at the time - that Freddy Mercury had been diagnosed with AIDS (at a time when this was a death sentence). It is breathtaking. Rami Malek is favored to win Best Actor for his turn as Mercury, and this climatic, thrilling set is a big part of the reason why.

The Favourite. This is not your typical costume period piece about palace intrigue. We are used to tropes in which strong, formidable women connive behind the scenes to manipulate the men in power to do what they want. But this is the court of Queen Anne of England (Olivia Colman), so a woman is already in charge. Or she would be if failing health and mental instabilities didn’t prevent her from being effective. Enter Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (Rachel Weisz), childhood friend and sometime lover to the Queen, Sarah rules the roost on behalf of the Queen and does her best to steer the ship of state in the direction that she, and her stalwart Duke of a husband, sees as best. And it is all going swimmingly until Sarah’s cousin Abigail (Emma Stone) arrives impoverished and disgraced by some disastrous antics of her father's. Sarah graciously takes Abigail under her wing out of familial loyalty, but is soon out-maneuvered and her young cousin takes her place at the Queen’s side and in her bed. This is all entertaining enough, but there is a fascinating subtext. Though Sarah does love the Queen, it is her over-arching love of Britain that drives her to seek and wield power. By contrast, Abigail has been rich and she has been poor and she has decided that being rich is better. So all of her machinations are aimed solely at personal gain. The interplay between these three characters - Anne, Sarah, and Abigail - is so intricate and expertly portrayed that all three of the female leads have been nominated for their roles. And it’s not just a question of great acting; the film is visually interesting as well. Typical depictions of royal courts in film are brightly lit to highlight the garish colors of the clothes and tapestries that abound. Here, though, the film is shot using mostly natural light. The relatively muted tones and deep shadows serve to augment the feeling of stealth and intrigue that often accompanies a simple passage through a hallway. Great performances, compelling art direction, and a (nominated) screenplay that crackles with snark, “The Favourite” is an enjoyable romp that manages to provoke a few thoughts along the way.

Green Book. At it’s core “Green Book” is a road movie with a well-trodden premiss: Two characters with nothing in common and a healthy disdain for one another are forced by circumstances to drive across the country, mayhem ensues, and they become fast friends. We’ve seen it a hundred times, but I’m not sure we’ve ever seen it done this well. Dr. Don Shirley was fastidious, refined, educated (the “Dr.” comes from multiple Ph.D.s), erudite, and a virtuoso pianist with unique style and flair. Frank Anthony Vallelonga Sr., better known as Tony Lip, was a guido street-brawler from the Bronx with a strong moral code that didn’t always align perfectly with a strict interpretation of the law. He wasn't in the Mob, but he was certainly Mob-adjacent, and could have been made at the drop of a fedora if he’d chosen to. And they were real people. In the film Tony is hired to be driver/fixer to Dr. Shirley on a 2-month concert tour. And right there you have the makings of a perfectly serviceable buddy road trip movie. But wait, there’s more. Dr. Shirley happens to be Black. And gay. And the tour is through the Deep South. And it’s 1962. This is fraught territory, and there is great potential for the film to slip into awful stereotype or maudlin sentimentality. But the screenplay - written in part by Tony’s son Nick - navigates this minefield with deft courage. Tony evolves from a casual, thoughtless racism to a deep respect for Dr. Shirley, both as a man and as an artist. For his part, Dr. Shirley moves from disdain for Tony’s uncouth nature to grudging respect for his tenacity, loyalty, and unique ability to see through a problem to a solution. And eventually respect turns to affection, which is all very predictable, but as with any good road picture it’s about the journey, not the destination. And this journey is laid out in a thoroughly entertaining, natural, and believable fashion (Nick swears that every event depicted in the film actually happened). This is movie-making at its finest.

- THE MISFIT -

Roma. The problem with this film is that from a technical perspective it is a mind-blowing masterpiece, but from a narrative perspective it’s a little slow and sparse, if I’m feeling generous, and downright boring if I’m not. Director Alfonso Cuarón is a shoo-in to win Best Director for his brilliant technical work here. Shot in large-format digital black and white the film looks crisp and clean throughout. But what is more astonishing is the rich, vibrant world that Cuarón uses as a backdrop for his story, which would otherwise be small and fairly claustrophobic. Brass bands randomly march down side strides, people are shot from cannons, and lavish weddings take place in the background of what would otherwise be simple scenes with a few lines of dialog. This takes a 30-second scene of dialog - for which 6 takes could probably be done in an hour - and turns it potentially into a 3-day budget-busting ordeal because of the logistics of getting 150 people in place and properly lit. And he does this over and over again. It must have directors, cinematographers, and producers dropping their jaws, but none of this effort and virtuosity drives the plot forward one millimeter. The largely autobiographical narrative (one of the young boys presumably represents Cuarón as a child) centers around Cleo, an indigenous domestic working and living in the home of a well-off doctor in the Roma neighborhood of Mexico City circa 1970. There is drama as Cleo deals with an unexpected pregnancy and the doctor abandons the family in favor of a young mistress, but the action plays out languidly through a series of “slice of life” vignettes. You learn a lot about the daily routine within the household - putting children to sleep, cleaning up dog poop - but precious little about the inner lives of the characters portrayed. Each year movies are nominated for Best Picture that are not nominated for Best Director. I think a strong case can be made that “Roma” should have reversed this trend. Cuarón’s Best Director nomination is richly deserved, but overall this film is not Best Picture material. It is a movie made for people who make movies. If you are a film student or an aspiring director it is a must-see. But casual movie-goers looking for entertainment should probably look elsewhere.

- THE PRETENDERS -

BlacKkKlansman. “BlacKkKlansman,” like “Green Book,” takes on themes of racism through the recounting of an incredible real-life story. In this case our hero is Ron Stallworth, a young, ambitious detective with the Colorado Springs Police Department. As the Department’s first Black officer, Stallworth is given an assignment to go undercover and attend a campus rally by Kwame Ture, a firebrand leader of the Black Power movement. Finding that he likes undercover work, Stallworth impulsively reaches out to the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan with an eye towards infiltrating the group. Over the phone he plays the part of white supremacist to a tee, but when he finagles a face-to-face meeting he quickly realizes that maybe he hasn’t thought this thing through. With the help of fellow detective Phil “Flip” Zimmerman (Adam Driver in a nominated role), Stallworth embarks on a Cyrano de Bergerac-esque escapade in which he talks to the Klan - including Grand Wizard David Duke - over the phone while Flip meets them in person. Director Spike Lee (nominated) has been known for his fireworks around issues of race in the past, but here he adopts an almost journalistic tone, presenting the story without hyperbole and letting the facts speak for themselves. This sounds laudable, but it actually serves to make the film feel a little … bland. Especially when combined with a very muted performance by John David Washington whose Stallworth always feels like he’s just trying to get through this scene before someone realizes he’s not supposed to be on set. Neither of these issues is enough to tilt the picture over into “bad” territory - it’s definitely interesting and entertaining - but they are enough to kick it out of Best Picture territory.

A Star is Born. There seems to have been a pact made with the Old Gods that in each generation the greatest female performer of her time must remake a version of the 1937 film “A Star is Born” starring Janet Gaynor. In 1954 it was Judy Garland, in 1976 it was Barbra Streisand’s turn, now, in 2018, the mantle falls to Lady Gaga, who was nominated for her efforts. By now the story is familiar: established star at the peak of his fame takes a talented ingénue under his wing only to watch her career take off while his crumbles. Bradley Cooper stars, directs, and worked on the screenplay; he was nominated for his portrayal of the gravel-voiced Jackson Maine, and for the screenplay, but not for his direction. Cooper’s Jack is an alcoholic with a troubled past, but is also a talented singer-songwriter and modern-day troubadour. When Gaga’s Ally - whom he plucked from obscurity singing torch songs in a New York City drag bar - starts to achieve success as his wanes, it is not simple jealousy that drives him off the deep end. He objects to the WAY she achieves success. In one of their first conversations Jack tells Ally, “There are lots of people with talent. But having something to say and being able to say it in a way that makes people listen? THAT’s special.” So when Ally starts writing catchy pop songs and performing on stage with backup dancers (à la Lady Gaga) Jack is perturbed, but is characteristically incapable of expressing his concerns without sounding unsupportive. So he bottles up his feelings and turns to the bottle. Both Cooper and Gaga give fantastic performances and there are several numbers that Gaga performs that are transcendent (I see big things for that girl). It’s definitely a solid film, and Gaga’s songs are worth the price of admission, but it just didn’t rise to the level of greatness in my mind.

Vice. There has been a bit of a hot streak of transformative performances portraying real-life political figures. I’m thinking particularly of Daniel Day-Lewis’ Lincoln and Gary Oldman’s Churchill. But in both of those cases the figure in question had pretty much faded from living memory. Not so with Dick Cheney, George W. Bush’s “Vice” President. Christian Bale (nominated) IS Dick Cheney to such an extent that if it weren’t for scenes depicting a young Cheney early in the film I don’t think I would have been able to identify the performer as Bale. It’s astonishing. And Amy Adams (nominated) is nearly as good as wife Lynne Cheney. But there is more to this film than just an epic performance by the leads. Director Adam McKay made his name with screwball comedies like “Anchorman” and “Step Brothers,” which most decidedly did not garner him Oscar nominations. But he turned a corner with 2015’s “The Big Short,” which did. Now he’s back and nominated again with “Vice” and, as with “The Big Short,” though he is swimming through serious waters he has not forgotten his comedic roots. “Vice” is by turns hilarious and infuriating, sometimes both at once. Given the current state of our politics the W era has taken on a warm glow of nostalgia for a time when, even if we didn’t agree with our leaders, we could sleep safe and secure in the knowledge that at least they weren’t actually agents of a foreign government. But “Vice” dredges up some of the seedier behind-the-scenes aspects to remind us that using Executive Privilege to undermine democracy is sadly nothing new. I probably should have liked “Vice” more than I did - Sam Rockwell’s (nominated) turn as W is not to be missed - but for some reason attempts to use the power of the presidency to  subvert the intentions of the Founders just doesn’t seem as quaint and jovial as it once did.

So which SHOULD win?

For me it comes down to “Black Panther” and “Green Book.” Out of a top-to-bottom very strong class these two stand out in my mind as the ones that are really hitting on all cylinders. From direction and cinematography, to acting and art direction, to just straight up story telling, these are the most well-rounded of the bunch. And while I do love me some “Black Panther” (Wakanda forever!) I have to go with “Green Book” for its added layers of emotional resonance.

But which WILL win?

I said above that “Roma” is a movie made for people who make movies. Well … guess who votes for the Oscars? People who make movies. “Green Book” is actually in the running, but appears to be a distant second. I’m going with “Roma,” which would be the first foreign language film in history to win Best Picture.

Best Actress - This appears to be a two-way race between Glenn Close for “The Wife” and Olivia Colman for “The Favourite.” I’m going with Close.

Best Supporting Actress - It appears as though my favorites from “The Favourite” will be shut out, as this seems to be between Regina King for “If Beale Street Could Talk,” and Amy Adams for “Vice.” I’ll take Regina King.

Best Actor - When I saw “Vice” on 12/27/18 I walked out of the theater and tweeted: ‘Bale’s gonna win Best Actor. You heard it here first.’ And I still believe that’s what should happen. And it just might, but now it seems that Rami Malek has the buzz for “Bohemian Rhapsody.” (Did I mention that they shot the epic Live Aid set on THE FIRST DAY OF SHOOTING?) I can’t quibble too much; he was great too. I’m jumping on the Rami Malek bandwagon.

Best Supporting Actor - Mahershala Ali (“Green Book”) will need to clear off some more space on the mantle.

Best Director - Alfonso Cuarón in a runaway. I have no quarrel with this, just with Best Picture.

Best Cinematography - Alfonso Cuarón for “Roma.” See above.

Best Foreign Language Film - This hardly seems fair with “Roma” poised to become the first foreign-language film to actually win Best Picture, but … “Roma.”

Best Animated Feature - “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” Seriously, if you haven’t seen this do yourself a huge favor and check it out.

Best Original Song - “Shallow” from “A Star is Born.” As an added bonus the song actually plays a key role in the plot and is performed in its entirety in the film.

Best Original Screenplay - I am really pulling for “Green Book,” because it’s a great story, but also a great story-behind-the-story, with Tony Lip’s son penning the screenplay. But it looks like “The Favourite” will win.

Best Visual Effects - “Black Panther” is unlikely to win Best Picture, but Marvel should take home an Oscar here for “Avengers: Infinity War.” (Actual winner: “First Man”)

That does it for this year. Until next year keep your popcorn warm and your soda cold.

[kashuan]

In which I finally write a long ass post about all my grievances with the never ending shenanigans I see in the Iliad tag because I can’t take it anymore and needed to get it out tbh

Things y’all really need to stop doing, in no particular order: • Treating Clytemnestra like a Bad Bitch Feminist Icon #goals because she killed a character you don’t like. Know what she also was? Pretty hypocritical. Half her motive for killing Agamemnon is the mistreatment of their daughter, but guess what, Clytemnestra then goes on to treat 2/3 of her remaining children pretty much like shit. I suppose you could consider Electra to be an unreliable narrator in terms of her relating how coldly she was treated at home, but the facts don’t lie in that Cly let her new hubby Aegisthus pass Electra off to be married to some peasant so that she and her children would die without any power and wouldn’t be able to take revenge. It’s pretty indisputable though that her treatment of her son Orestes was flat out terrible. As a child, Orestes has to go into exile, as it’s implied Aegisthus would have had him killed otherwise. Cly just Lets This Happen. When Orestes returns to murder both her and Aegisthus as instructed by Apollo, Clytemnestra entreats him with a set of pretty flimsy excuses. Here’s a part from The Libation Bearers:

CLYTAEMESTRA Have you no regard for a parent's curse, my son?

ORESTES You brought me to birth and yet you cast me out to misery.

CLYTAEMESTRA No, surely I did not cast you out in sending you to the house of an ally.

ORESTES I was sold in disgrace, though I was born of a free father. CLYTAEMESTRA Then where is the price I got for you? ORESTES I am ashamed to reproach you with that outright.

Furthermore, she attempts to manipulate Orestes by entreating him to spare her because she is his mother, the one who nursed him, yet we know that this wasn’t actually done by her, and since a young age she has been completely absent in his life otherwise. When Orestes finally does kill her, this girl cannot even let it go at that but essentially makes sure he’s haunted by demons for the rest of his life. Talk about #petty, not even Agamemnon took it that far. So this character who's set up as like Badass Mama Bear is actually….not. Post Iphigenia at Aulis Clytemnestra is actually pretty self-serving, but not in the sort of way that should be admired. I think Clytemnestra is a great flawed character. Please no more ‘my perfect queen deserved better’ posts. I’m beggin’ ya. Read more than a summary of like 1/4th of her history and then let’s talk. • So I’m gonna follow this up with my long stewing Agamemnon Apologist rant (you: yikes me: Buckle Up). I’d like to begin this by saying we can all definitely agree that this man is a garbageboy stinkman. No arguing that. I love a good ‘Agamemnon is an asshole’ joke as much as the next guy. HOWEVER, when, when will I be free from posts that act like this character is honestly so completely one dimensional, that jokes about it comprise literally 98% of the tag. Where are the actually interesting meta posts that consider things about him beyond JUST being a dumpster of a man. For example, we know he was at least a half-decent bro. In book 4 of the Iliad, Menelaus basically scrapes his knee and Agamemnon essentially calls a T.O. on the entire war because HIS BROTHER, OK!!! Like yeah, he also includes a hilariously selfish line in that part that Menelaus can’t bite it because then he will be disgraced when he goes home, but the point stands. Further evidence of these having a tight relationship can be found in the Iphigenia at Aulis play. After the two of them have had a savage as hell argument about whether or not to sacrifice Iphigenia, taking some serious pot shots at each other, they have this exchange

MENELAUS I’ve changed, and I’ve changed because I love you, brother. I’ve changed because of my love for my mother’s son.  It’s a natural thing for men with decent hearts to do the decent thing. AGAMEMNON I praise you, Menelaus for these unexpected words, proper words, words truly worthy of you.  Brothers fight because of lust and because of greed in their inheritance. I hate such relationships; they bring bitter pain to all.

 I think Agamemnon’s relationship with Menelaus is actually one of the more interesting ones among the cast because he is both in a way protective yet also very controlling of his brother. Here and Here are a couple of fantastic essays on their dynamic and the way it differs from source to source. While on the subject of the play Iphigenia at Aulis and my favorite problematic fav getting the short end of the stick from fandom, can I just say that the majority of retellings, posts, and so on about this particular event ARE TERRIBLE? I’m so tired of seeing it depicted as though Agamemnon just killed his daughter like some afterthought, possibly while twirling his mustache like a cartoon villain. There is so, SO much more nuance to that scene and it kills the man when I see how no one ever discusses it in favor of just saying lol Agamemnon’s a dick, so anyway. Iphigenia herself is actually one of the best sources we have for the fact Agamemnon probably had more than a grand total of zero good traits. The relationship between the two is obviously a very close one and on the whole we get the sense that, aside from the whole killing his daughter thing (ya) he was actually a good dad. Like an inverse Clytemnestra :,). The scene where Iphigenia first speaks with Agamemnon is particularly telling of what was probably their normal relationship. IPHIGENIA What’s wrong, daddy?  You say you’re happy to see me but your face looks worried! AGAMEMNON A king, darling, a General is always worried. IPHIGENIA Make your worries go away, daddy. From now on, think only of me. AGAMEMNON Yes, my darling. I shall think of nothing else but you from now on IPHIGENIA Well then, get rid of this ugly frown from the face that I love so much! AGAMEMNON There! Oh, what a joy it is to see you, Iphigeneia! IPHIGENIA But… but look at you, father! Full of joy and yet tears flow from your eyes…AGAMEMNON Yes, dear… because our separation will be a long one.

Is he still a completly awful man for having sacrificed her? Yes. Completely. But here’s a few factors that play into this decision that I never see anyone, ever, mention: -It is Agamemnon’s intention to send Iphigenia away, to save herself, at the last minute, but Menelaus intercepts the letter meant to warn her of her fate. -Charismatic Odysseus has a good deal of control over the soldiers at this point and was probably looking to further increase his popularity among them (a consistent theme-- see: when he’s ready to shank his bff Diomedes just to be the only one to bring home a trophy from Troy instead of both of them). One can imply that if Agamemnon didn’t go through it, he would have done it himself -- and Agamemnon knew that (he mentions as much). -Gods are terrifying, my dudes. Treating it as though he could have just said ‘naw’ to Artemis’ order for Iphigenia’s death and gone home expresses a pretty fundamental lack of understanding how the Greeks feared the gods and just what the stakes likely already were by that point. Artemis was already pissed that he killed one of her sacred deer so it wasn’t as though she was just like ‘you can either sacrifice your daughter or go home unscathed’. I’ve only seen one other retelling accurately capture what very likely would have happened if Agamemnon didn’t go through with it: Artemis likely would have retaliated at the disrespect against the men and probably his family. Furthermore, the soldiers had already been stranded at Aulis for months on end-- a mutiny was exceedingly likely if they found out what was going on, one in which where they probably would have harmed not only him but also Clytemnestra and baby Orestes who came with Iphigenia. These two facts are more conjecture, but it’s a pretty plausible estimate and I’ve seen several scholarly essays arrive at the same conclusion.  If you’d actually like to see a depiction of Agamemnon that is both incredibly sympathetic yet does not shy away either from showing how terrible what he did was, please watch the 1977 Iphigenia movie. One of my favorite movies in general. Honestly I feel I could make a giant essay out of My Feelings on this particular subject alone so I’ll wrap it now because I have a lot of other stuff I want to get to, though I’ll include one final pet peeve: the amount of people who call Agamemnon trash because he was Sexist. You know who else was a Meninist? Every single goddamn man in ancient Greece. Okay, I’ll give a pass to characters like Patroclus and Hector when it comes to the women front because all we see is them being pretty decent. But like. Otherwise??? Sure, just because everyone is that way doesn’t make it any less shitty-- I’m not arguing that. But it’s also like reading a novel focused on an entire group of mobsters, but calling out only one of them as Problematic for being a criminal. Like, my dudes...  TL;DR: Agamemnon is a dick jokes are funny and completely deserved but throw in a few posts here and there that actually suggest you might have read more than just Book 1 of the Iliad and nothing else. Character depth is your friend. • That said, for the love of god, stop writing Menelaus like he’s just Agamemnon 2.0. A lot of adaptions do this because they don’t seem to know what to do with his character (I’m lookin’ @ u most of all Troy though he suffers some form of this in almost all film adaptions...) Which is a shame because Menelaus as a character is a lot more (and better) than that. From what we do know, Menelaus was actually (relatively speaking) a pretty chill guy and one of the least problematic out of these assholes (y’know, minus that scene I mentioned above with Iphigenia, but hey...at least he admits he fucked up?). We know that Helen voluntarily chose him to be her husband. We know that Helen wanted to return home to him by the time the Iliad takes place. We know they got back together after the war and more or less lived happily ever after. So why do I keep seein’ all these posts about Helen hating him or about him being another warmonger like Agamemnon. Menelaus was a Decent Dude. Leave him alone :,| • Speaking of Helen, how many times am I going to read “feminist” retellings where she either is totally indifferent to or even wanted the war to happen, where she enjoys watching men die, where she ~reclaims~ her demigoddess power and is A Figure To Be Feared. What Helen is this??? Because in the Iliad, Helen is remorseful af about all the people she’s indirectly responsible for the deaths of. There are more ways to build up and strengthen female characters than to make them just like the men they despise. Just. Saying. I get that people want to free her from the damsel in distress role she’s essentially relegated to, me too, but that is NOT the way to do it. Girl can be strong willed but still have a great amount of empathy. As with essentially every other bullet point above, please just give these characters more than one dimension. • Also, how many times am I gonna have to read about The One Fellow Female (Helen or Clytemnestra usually) who believes Cassandra’s prophecies in order to emphasize like, girl power, or that the author feels sorry for Cass and want to project that onto some other character or something. Dude, she was cursed not to be believed. PERIOD. BY ANYONE. There was no clause in the curse for like “except someone who really thinks you’re swell”. It’s tragic because there are no exceptions. No one believes her. NO ONE. THE END. • Achilles was bi. Bi af (by modern standards, of course). See: Iphigenia, Deidamia, Briseis, Polyxena, Penthesilea… I totally get this movement of wanting to call Achilles gay because for so long he and Patroclus have gotten the ‘just guys bein’ dudes’ treatment from scholars. I think it’s absolutely fantastic that potential element of his character is more widely recognized and accepted now. However, I can’t help but get these really uncomfy biphobia feels when I read all the posts about how gay he is, as if liking women makes his relationship with Patroclus less legitimate. That was one thing about TSOA which also really disappointed me-- it had to pull that yaoi fanfic trope of ‘girls are so icky and gross’ in order to further sell how convinced you should be of the same sex relationship. It’s just, Bad And Not Good. Finally, I feel like y’all are so busy hating Agamemnon and shoving off every single bad character trait into existence onto him, that Achilles is always ultimately depicted as this #relatable teen who did nothing wrong except get a little too upset when his bf died. May I remind you of just a few things Achilles also did: -Indirectly got a lot of men killed by refusing to fight during his quarrel with Agamemnon -Had 12 innocent children killed when Patroclus died -Basically everything involving Troilus. From wikipedia: [Achilles] is struck by the beauty of both [Polyxena and Troilus] and is filled with lust. It is the fleeing Troilus whom swift-footed Achilles catches, dragging him by the hair from his horse. The young prince refuses to yield to Achilles' sexual attentions and somehow escapes, taking refuge in the nearby temple. But the warrior follows him in, and beheads him at the altar before help can arrive. The murderer then mutilates the boy's body. Some pottery shows Achilles, already having killed Troilus, using his victim's severed head as a weapon as Hector and his companions arrive too late to save him. The mourning of the Trojans at Troilus' death is great. -Just straight up fucking murders a guy for making fun of him after he just murdered someone else. "Achilles, who fell in love with the Amazon [Penthesilea] after her death, slew Thersites for jeering at him" I’m sure there’s more receipts like this. So like. Can we throw in a couple posts now and then among the Agamemnon ones about Achilles, who was Problematic for far more reasons than just sulking in his tent :,) ...Okay. I think that’s it. FOR NOW. I guess I’ll end this by saying half of this is just my own opinion and I recognize that people can interpret and retell these stories and characters however they want to. It’s when it becomes so consistent however that people treat it like it is The One True Canon when it’s actually not that my jimmies get a bit rustled. [/END RANT]