#i think i went in expecting a more plot-driven scifi. and what i got was not even character-driven so much as 'mysticism spec fic'

[july-19th-club]

finished it and you know what? i actually have just as little patience for this sort of narrative as i did fifteen years ago. like. i spent months working my way through this and for what! dispersal?!? bullshit

the actual star and going bovine have more in common than i would at all have expected going into it but luckily at this point in my life i THINK im better equipped to handle this kind of book

[riceball1759]

A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) Review

I did not plan on reading this book. Hype books don’t really work for me, but I’ve started listening to the podcast, Those Forking Fangirls, and they have this segment called ‘Chapter Chat’. They decided to reread ACOTAR and have a 20-ish minute talk about the next chapter near the end of each episode. So, I’m listening to this for a few episodes and thinking, “ok this sounds at least somewhat interesting”. ADHD dopamine kick started: let’s read a sample on Libby and see if it’s worth it. Because this book is so dang long (my opinion), I was able to reach midway through chapter 4. So, I became intrigued enough and got a physical copy from the library (Libby’s wait was stupid long). Read it in a few sittings. I went in expecting nothing. Why? Years later, the fandom-fueled hype is still going strong and I like to make up my own mind instead of expecting it to go one way or the other from the start. Well, I definitely formed my own opinions.

Here we go! This was extremely easy to read (this is NOT a negative criticism). I’d been mulling over this for over a week since finishing so I could explain this as best I can. Maas -at least in this instance- writes in a style similar to James Patterson. DON’T GO IN AN UPROAR! Hear me out:

the language isn’t a complex prose that is what I consider “typical fantasy verbiage”;

she writes in first person POV (Feyre is talking to you as her best friend);

it’s plot-driven: no multitude of literary devices, timelines, and backstories to distract you from what’s really important;

the chapters are easy to read through (not too long, not too short) and end in a way that encourages you to keep going;

plenty of conflict and dialogue, but nothing over-the-top or unnecessary; and finally,

Maas definitely did her research when creating a world based on Anglo-Irish folk religion and she seamlessly created an easy-to-digest world that she owns.

If you don’t believe me, just google “James Patterson writing style”. I’m sure I can’t be the first reader to experience this, but I might be the first to quasi rabbit-hole like this. It makes so much sense, though! I was only 5 chapters in when I realized that I wasn’t having my typical waning interest (as I’m wont to have when I read high fantasy) and was actually engaged in the story. AND I was BLASTING through like a hurricane! This never happens when I read higher-than-middle-grade-level fantasy. Generally: I pause, take a break, pick it up later…or never. Fantasy and SciFi require a lot of active reading from me (looking for plot devices, etc.), but ACOTAR didn’t. It’s easily digestible in that it doesn’t require any more from me than to just sit back and enjoy the show. If that doesn’t fit your bill, then this book is not for you.

Continuing the review: I love me a good fairy tale retelling and ACOTAR is an interesting take on ‘Beauty and the Beast’ without it being too obvious at first look. Here are the elements (I’m going to try to keep my snark from taking over): girl gets taken ‘prisoner’ by beast, she gets the awkward “welcome to your new home” speech, she learns about a curse affecting the land and told not to ask too many questions, she finds out that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” and falls in love because you know why, he sends her back to keep her safe, she can’t stay away because she knows something’s wrong and returns to find him in danger. I think you know where I’m going with this. ANYWAY, that’s the skeleton outline. Everything else is completely made up by Maas and is brilliantly done. Do I want to get into more detail about the characters and other literary devices? Not really. There’s so much of that in other reviews that I think I’d be repetitive. In brief, I really liked the characters’ personalities and can see how they’ve endeared themselves to the ACOTAR fans. All the beauty/beast elements were woven into a unique story that I genuinely enjoyed. Will I read the next one? Most likely.

SIDE NOTE: this is technically New Adult: it features characters over 18 (consenting adults) and is considered a YA-Adult crossover. I’m not pro-censorship, but I do like giving honest feedback on what I think the true ‘age-audience’ is for books that have high crossover appeal. “Guided reading levels” just make for difficult and awkward conversations (remember, I’m a Teen Librarian). I prefer general age ratings similar to manga and video games: this would be 16+ (Older Teens).

Thank you for reading^_^ Have a good one!

[travllingbunny]

The 100 6x08 The Old Man and the Anomaly

After Nevermind, which was character-driven, mind-bendy and almost fully focused on Clarke, this episode was very plot-driven and juggled a bunch of different characters and three separate storylines in three different locations, featuring most of the characters who are not still in cryo – but not Clarke, who is still locked in her mind space while Josephine controls her body.

In terms of the plot, this may be the turning point or one of the turning points of the season, There was one revelation that wasn’t really a surprise as it was a confirmation of a rather popular theory, and a few dramatic developments, including a very controversial development involving Kane and Abby – which, unlike many others fans, I find to be an interesting and tragic storyline that allows a look at the theme of bodysnatching from another angle. The best character moments belonged to Emori, an underrated character who’s always been my favorites.

But most of it this episode felt like the plot setup for the more interesting and emotional character exploration in the following episodes, which I’m more looking forward to.

Detailed thoughts under the cut, including my overall view on Memori and Kabby throughout the seasons.

Octavia, Diyoza, Old Man Gabriel and the Anomaly

I wasn’t ready to believe in the Xavier = Gabriel theory before, because Xavier’s snarky, fun personality didn’t seem to match what little we had seen of Gabriel’s personality in the flashback in 6x02 and the video in 6x05. But, in general, the show has made the continuity of personality and mannerisms obvious only with Josephine, while with the other Primes, we either never saw what their personality was like originally (Priya, Ryker, Kaylee) or it was consistent enough, but nothing too obvious (Russell and Simone). Which all may be because they wanted the reveal to be a surprise. But in other ways, it made sense – the way “Xavier” was the only one insisting on Gabriel’s principles among the Children of Gabriel, the mystery surrounding him, and this theory was becoming more and more likely to be true the more the season went on and we hadn’t seen any other signs of Gabriel or a new body in which he may be. In this episode, it became obvious the moment when he, Octavia and Diyoza found themselves in Gabriel’s cabin close to the Anomaly, and ‘Xavier’ started talking about the portrait of Josephine as someone who meant a lot to Gabriel, 3rd person. Diyoza’s comment that he must have really loved her, while she just wanted sex, seemed extremely random, since there was no way she would have known anything about Josephine’s feelings for Gabriel based on her portrait alone, but Diyoza was obviously taunting him to see if her suspicions about his real identity were correct – and his face said everything.

Gabriel is really a morally ambiguous character, since he is fighting to end the evil system the Primes have set up and is their main enemy, but he is also the person who started it all, by coming up with the way to transfer consciousness in hosts, and killing at least 46 people (including a six month old baby) that he himself has developed from embryos, in order to resurrect Josephine. He also went along with the new system for quite a while (for over a century) and had a few hosts, until his conscience finally started working, and made him decide to leave and start taking the rejected “null” children and forming a movement against the Primes. He did want to finally die, but it’s impossible to wipe one’s own mind drive. Gabriel’s loyal follower Eduardo didn’t want to let him die, so he put Gabriel in a new host, Xavier. (How did a Nightblood end up with CoG? He may have he kidnapped by them as a child so he couldn’t be a host, but ended with the same fate. There’s a parallel between what Eduardo did to Gabriel, resurrecting him against his will, what Gabriel did to Josephine, also out of love (however, in that case, Josephine was happy to be resurrected), and what Abby does to Kane in this episode. To say that Gabriel was not happy would be an understatement, since he killed Eduardo in a fit of rage. But then he decided to keep his new body, following the logic that there was no way to bring back either Xavier or Eduardo, and that he can at least use his new body to still lead CoG and continue to fight to destroy the system. Morally ambiguous character, indeed, but at least Gabriel is aware of his failings, as seen in the fact that he assumed Xavier’s identity out of shame.

The Anomaly is the most mysterious plot in the season full of weird SciFi concepts, and one that, I think, could continue to play a big role in season 7, after the bodysnatching storyline, most probably, gets resolved. Gabriel said that no one had ever returned from it, but he didn’t say how many people had gone in (the statistical sample may not have been big enough to draw the conclusion that no one returns from the Anomaly), and now we know that at least one person has returned – Octavia. I don’t think that the Anomaly kills people, and I certainly don’t believe Diyoza is dead. What the Anomaly actually does, is one of the most interesting questions of this season, and I expect to see the answer in the next episode. The fact that Octavia returned not just healed, but with longer hair and looking like she did before Blodreina, suggests that whatever happens inside has a lot to do with some sort of (limited) time travel, or temporal displacement (in any case, something wibbly wobbly timey wimey). XaviGabriel said previously that there is no cure for aging, but that may not be the case in the Anomaly. Don’t get me wrong - I don’t think there’s any time travel in the sense of characters going back to interact with people in the past and affect events, but merely that the Anomaly may be allowing people to go back and forward in their own timeline and experience their past and future in their own mind, which also affects their physical condition. This could have consequences on Diyoza’s pregnancy as well (read: it would be a convenient way for the show to have her give birth ahead of time and rapidly age up her daughter, so there wouldn’t be a baby on the show). In any case, I expect to see more of what happened to Octavia inside in the next episode (where we will probably see her “facing her demons”), and what happened to Diyoza.

What we saw of the Anomaly’s effects on people even just outside of it was very interesting: according to Gabriel, it shows people’s darkest fears or deepest desires, or both at once – which is the case with Gabriel, who keeps seeing Josephine. Even after all this time, he is still in love with her, but at the same time, she is the enemy that he is fighting for, she stands for everything he has abandoned and come to hate. I’m sure we’ll see more of that relationship, and finally find out more about how Josephine really feels about Gabriel. There’s a chance that she really did love him (possibly the only person she did love?), but there’s also a chance she never did. We still don’t know.

Diyoza saw her greatest desire, her child, but it was still weird that someone as rational as her straight up followed a vision into an unknown and dangerous place. (And so another terrible fan theory dies. Some people actually thought there would be a mid-season time jump because a 6-7 year old girl was cast as Hope.)

In one of my favorite scenes of this episode, Octavia saw a vision of Bellamy, tied up and on his knees, as he was at the end of 5x09, when she condemned him to the fighting pit. Her guilt, fear that her brother hates her and desire to have his love back, seem like the right incentives for her to finally deal with her demons and finally be able to change for the better, by herself.

Mayhem in Sanctum

War has finally broken out between Sanctum and the Earth people, thanks to Madi. The main conflict about Murphy, still aligned with Josephine and hoping for immortality for himself and Emori, while Bellamy and the rest (Echo, Miller, Jackson…) are focused on saving Clarke, but Madi and Jordan both turned out to be wild cards with their own opposite agendas.

I wonder why Sheidheda is the only one of the Commanders that Madi sees in her head. There’s so much the show has never explained about the Flame. Maybe he’s the only one who speaks to her (literally) because he is the only one who speaks to her (metaphorically)? Not in the sense that she’s consciously summoning him, but that he matches her emotional state? She is a pre-teen who watched her parents and everyone she knew die of radiation, and now has had her adoptive mother, who raised her for 6 years, taken from her. She wouldn’t even need more reason to start killing, but without Sheidheda’s influence, she may be prioritizing getting her mother back and be more willing to listen to Bellamy’s plan, rather than focus on killing the Primes. Not that most of the other Commanders are likely to be against revenge and violence as an answer (because “Blood must have blood”), but Sheidheda is so extreme that he can speak to Madi’s angriest impulses, and he’s certainly the only one who would advise her to get rid of her Flamekeeper instead of obeying her. (Where is Gaia? Madi “exiled” her, but what exactly does that mean under the circumstances? In any case, either she told Bellamy about Sheidheda before she left, or Madi herself did.)

Things got awkward when Bellamy didn’t accept Madi’s suggestion, and she pointed out that she was the Heda. Thing is, while Bellamy convinced Madi to take the Flame as a pragmatic move - because that was the only way he saw how to oppose Octavia and save Clarke and Spacekru (and Madi herself) and stop the war – he never genuinely cared about the institution (only about the fact that Grounders believe in it) and never meant to really give Madi the authority of a leader (as seen also in the fact that he and Clarke didn’t wake Madi up in 6x01). Because, duh, she’s a child. But Madi does take her role seriously – however, the reality is that the only people, other than Gaia, who care about her being a Heda and who would obey her, are all still in cryo. In Sanctum, Madi doesn’t have any kind of authority. But she also isn’t willing to listen to Bellamy or any other adult, who, in her mind, should be following her lead. This storyline is, finally, starting to address the whole issue that’s been plaguing the show since season 3, of the inherent problems of giving political authority to a child, and putting a chip with a bunch of dead leaders’ minds in a head of a child.

On the other hand, Jordan was focused on saving Delilah – especially since it seemed to him that no one else was interested in it. He accused Bellamy of caring only about Clarke, which he denied. Now, of course Bellamy – and all of them other than Jordan – care more about Clarke than about Delilah, which is only natural, because Delilah is just someone from Sanctum they met a few days ago – not a lover or a friend, just like it’s natural for Jordan to care a lot about Delilah, because she was his lover and he’s in love with her. That doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t also try to save Delilah, but the fact is, while they know for sure that Clarke is alive, they don’t actually know if Delilah is. But no one wanted to tell Jordan “For all we know, maybe she is really dead and gone”. I would really love for Delilah to be still alive, but at the moment, that doesn’t seem too likely. But it’s easy to see why Jordan can’t allow Priya to be killed, as long as there’s a chance that Delilah is still in there. (Not to mention, Madi’s plan is not good, as she only killed Miranda Prime in her current body – but her mind drive can still be transferred into another host, so it’s only the host’s body that is definitely dead, and the only person she’s definitely killed for good is Miranda’s non-Prime lover.) At least his saving Priya has helped get some goodwill towards the Earth group, who are currently in a very bad situation. Maybe Madi will take a step back and rethink things now that she accidentally wounded Jordan, and that her actions have caused trouble for her people.

Russell is still the same hypocrite, which didn’t surprise me at all. He may be all sad for the bad things he does, but he continues doing them anyway. One moment he was planning to take the mind drive from Clarke, to right the wrong of his attempted murder of her/ taking over her body against her will, and put his daughter into another, willing host (presumably another desperate “null” who gets the Nightblood treatment). The next, he was placing all in the guilt for the recent deaths of the Primes on the Earth people – even though his daughter was the one who killed Kaylee (which he is, of course, keeping a secret) and his daughter and his wife then went on to kill four of the Primes permanently). He wouldn’t even admit the truth about Clarke, if Ryker hadn’t called him out. Ryker is the only one of the Primes in Sanctum who has potential to be a good guy and be a real ally against the other Primes. While he called out Russell on murdering Clarke, Priya was only upset over Russell jumping the line for Josephine, which says a lot.

I don’t find Murphy’s behavior as surprising as some fans do. It is all in character for him. Yes, he does care about his friends, but he has never been an incredibly ethical person, and is still likely to be selfishly driven – and the only person you can be sure he would sacrifice for is Emori. But apart from that, it’s never easy to tell if he is going to remain loyal to his friends or act selfishly – and he’s torn about it. I do think that one of his motives in 6x06 was to make sure Bellamy and the rest of them don’t die, but his main motivation is eternal life for himself and Emori. Before season 6, he may not have been ready to go this far, but we know that he has a really strong fear of going to hell after death. Either way, the fact is that, even after learning Clarke was alive, he was still willing to go along with Josephine’s plan and let Clarke die for real to get what he wants. Even though he knew it was a shitty thing to do, and felt guilty – asking Josephine if Clarke can see him. But one moment when I really found him annoying was when he was trying to justify his BS to Emori and change her decision by pulling the “she wanted to put you in the oven”. What’s up with the selective memory, Murphy? Yes, Clarke and Abby, Jackson, Miller and Roan all planned to put Emori in the oven in 4x08, Raven complained but didn’t do anything to stop it (and all of those people other than Roan are alive and right there), but Clarke was also the only one who volunteered to go into the oven, instead of Emori. And the one who gave Emori her suit, risking her life again, and the one who stayed behind to die while helping Murphy and Emori, among others, go to space and stay alive.

In the end, he did do the right thing and help, but it was only after Emori had definitely chosen her side and wasn’t going to back down.

I’m really happy that Emori finally got the spotlight and got to really shine in this episode. She’s always been one of my favorite characters, and she has had an amazing development throughout the seasons. But up till this episode in season 6, she seemed to just be there as Murphy’s girlfriend. Memori is one of the best developed and most compelling romantic relationships on the show, but that’s in large part because Emori is a person of her own, not just Murphy’s attachment. Even the other characters in the story assumed she would take her boyfriend’s side and agree with all his plans. And at first, she did, after Murphy’s sort-of-proposal to her – which was, at the same time, really romantic and touching, and really creepy. He was asking her to have eternal life with him, but instead of an engagement ring, he was offering her mind drives. The Emori he first met in season 2 would have definitely agreed to that. She was even more ruthless in some ways than Murphy, and was the survivor that he believed himself to be – because she was a true outcast from birth due to the prejudice over her disability (while Murphy also had a tragic backstory, like many on the Ark, but after landing on Earth, he largely caused his outcast status by his own negativity, dickish behavior and vengefulness). In a subversion of the trope of bad boy redeemed through love of a good woman, he changed for the better through the love of a roguish antihero of her own. But, things changed when Emori found a new family and felt like she belonged, for the first time. She was already worrying about Clarke and wanted her saved in the season 4 finale – maybe she appreciated the fact Clarke risked her life for her, twice. And if any character makes Spacekru feel like a real ‘family’, it’s Emori. This was the source of conflict between her and Murphy in season 5 – she changed, found friends, so it wasn’t “the two of us against the world” anymore, and Murphy didn’t know how to deal with it, or how to function as a part of a group in times of peace. It caused a break-up, but at the end of the season, Emori was determined to save him even if it meant risking death. And this time, she chose loyalty to her “family”, telling Bellamy about the limited period when they can still save Clarke and being instrumental in helping save her – but she also did not give up on Murphy, and stayed with him in Sanctum after he was wounded, even though it meant they both get captured and probably tortured.

Her line “I will love you forever, even if we die today” is my favorite line of this episode.

Josephine is a really love-to-hate villain, and I was really enjoying watching Eliza Taylor play her in this episode, even while I really want her first out of Clarke’s body, and then DEAD permanently. But I’m looking forward to, hopefully, seeing more of Josephine and Clarke fighting over dominance. The next episode promises to be very interesting, as Bellamy just dragged Josephine from Sanctum and will take her to the woods to Gabriel – which means an interesting day trip (!) that will end in the area where people see their darkest fears and deepest desires… not to mention that detail that we learned, that the Anomaly also has the ability to interfere with/collect radio calls? Hm.

(There have been some comments about how Bellamy prioritized Clarke over the rest of the group, who need leadership/protection - but I don’t see any room for criticism there. Even if we ignored what she means to him, the fact is that Clarke is about to die permanently very soon and required immediate help. The rest of the group is in a bad situation, but not like that, and Echo is supposed to be capable enough as a fighter and a spy to deal with things.)

Speaking of which, the goodbye between Echo and Bellamy was very short and consisted of a simple exchange “Stay safe” and “Save Clarke”. I don’t know if it makes sense to talk about the writers’ weird tweet about this scene that a lot of people have been commenting on – because BTS statements, interviews, tweets etc. are irrelevant to canon. But I’ll just say this: if they wanted to make this moment a big, emotional one for Echo, they could have done it, very easily. Just write a few more lines, do a close-up, play some emotional music. It wouldn’t take more than 10-20 seconds. But they didn’t. They gave Memori and even Mackson (a pairing that similarly got developed off-screen, like Becho, and has even less screentime) dramatic, emotional “I can’t leave you” moments. Becho, on the other hand, just seemed like two comrades-in-arms, rather than a romantic couple. And after 5x06, that’s what they have come across most of the time (if it weren’t for one kiss per season or the sex scene from 5x06, these generally accepted markers of Canon Pairing, no one would even notice they’re a couple 95% of the time). Everything emotional about this pairing has been very low-key, in contrast to other pairings, and in sharp contrast to the Bellamy/Clarke relationship in particular.  So I’m not sure what the point of such tweet was.  (Or what it even meant. It’s not like Bellamy was waiting for Echo’s approval to take Josephine to Gabriel to save Clarke – he was already doing it anyway; and if it was difficult for Echo to let Bellamy go because it was risky for him – as the  tweet suggested – agreeing to let him leave on a risky mission doesn’t make her a hero. People separate and let their SO go on missions all the time. No one said Bellamy was a ‘true hero’ for letting Echo go on a risky mission in season 5. If they meant that it was big of her to be OK with her boyfriend prioritizing saving another woman, who he obviously has strong feelings for, that would make some sense. It’s possible to read Echo’s “Save Clarke” as a parallel to Clarke’s “Save him” in 5x12, as a “letting my beloved be happy” kind of thing, but that kind of feels like reading too much into it, because whatever emotional weight that tweet was trying to give that moment, wasn’t there on screen. )

Dr Abby FrankenGriffin and Marcus Kane II

In the most controversial storyline of this season, Abby actually went through with it, putting Kane in a body of a host from Sanctum, a “null” called Gavin, who was the first to get the Nightblood treatment. As per their deal, she gave the Nightblood to Simone to take back to Sanctum and make more hosts. (I don’t if the Primes will have the time to create more hosts and put Miranda and her family members, Caleb and Jasmine, considering the chaos in Sanctum right now.) Contrary to some fan theories, Abby has not realized JoClarke is not really her daughter – which is not a surprise: if she had known, she would have told it to Bellamy, Madi and the others and agreed on a plan with them, before going to the ship to wake everyone up. She was on the verge of realizing the truth, but her bad emotional state, lack of sleep, and the fact that she is still recovering from addiction, all contributed to her being successfully manipulated by the villain pretending to be her daughter. In 6x06, JC used all the weapons, as Murphy had taught her: Abby’s guilt over Jake, guilt over the Dark Year and shame over addiction, guilt over Kane, love for him and her idealization of him and obsession with saving him, and even her love for her daughter, by making it seem like it’s Clarke who wants her to use a mind drive to resurrect Kane, because she wants her mother to be happy.

And the show made sure we and Abby fully understood what was being done, by showing that Gavin was a person who had someone he loved in his life, but still believed that his life as worthless, because he had no prospects as a “null” – because, like most of the people in Sanctum, he was oppressed and brainwashed to think giving up his body to be possessed by someone else would be a great honor.

It is so sad now to remember the last happy moments for Kabby in 6x01, when they were looking at the new planet, full of hope. This a tragic storyline, and one we're obviously supposed to find creepy, just as we do. Kane himself certainly does. After waking up in the new, healthy and young body, and seeing his original body dead on the table, he had an expression of complete shock on his face. I can't imagine him being OK with profiting from murder and bodysnatching and being treated like a 'god' at the expense of someone else’s life. Someone else could be against it, but still rationalize coming to terms with it, as Gabriel did, thinking that he can't bring back the host, so why waste a new life - but Kane has never been pragmatic, he insists on morality and ideals. If I’m sure about anything that will happen, I’m now sure that he will die for real before the end of the season – both because Kane would never agree to live like that, and because the show would never continue with Kane played by someone else, and because I believe that all the Primes, including Gabriel, will die, and all the mind drives will be destroyed. I can see Kane dying out of his own choice, while telling Abby she must let him go, and getting a promise from Raven to wipe him for good. And I think Henry Ian Cusick may return at least once more before the end of S6, as Kane in a vision (the same way Sara Thompson plays Josephine in visions and mind space).

And Abby has to learn to let him go. She's been a downward spiral since season 4. She and Kane have had the opposite character developments. He started off doing bad things in the name of survival, then felt guilty and decided to redeem himself by doing better. Abby started off believing in ethics and ideals, and then when she disappointed herself and started hating herself for the things she had done, it broke her. She got addicted to dull the pain, then she felt guilty over betraying Kane by prioritizing her addiction and indulging Vinson, who injured/nearly killed Kane, so she became determined to save Kane. Now she's really exchanged one addiction for another, like Jackson said. But she's really crossed all ethical lines now. She is not the only character who has had negative character development, a fall from grace. I think she will probably get a redemptive storyline and help defeat the Primes when she learns the truth about Clarke, but I have no idea if the show will give her a story of recovery from addiction, or if she will have a redemptive death, or it will be a full tragedy of someone who stays broken, as with Jasper.

The weakest part of this season has been Raven’s characterization and storyline, or the lack of it. In this episode, she finally got to do something. Although she (rightfully) thought that what Abby was doing was terrible and wrong, and initially refused to do a spacewalk to help synthesize Nigthblood, she eventually agreed to it, so she wouldn’t risk Abby’s death, too. Which was a reasonable choice, as she couldn’t do anything at this point to bring Gavin back, so, as she pointed out as a reason for her decision, why risk losing another life. She didn’t mention the fact that Abby is very important to her, but I hope this is a start of Raven and Abby starting to heal their relationship, and of Raven getting the same “face your demons” treatment as other characters. Maybe she will start being more honest about her own moral compromises, which have been many in the past, rather than just keep going around telling people they suck but insisting that she, herself, has never done anything wrong.

Rating: 8/10

[monsterfucker-lisa-swallows]

Why Mika’s Death was Not Okay

It is a rule with fandom that the longer you stay with a series, the more it’ll disappoint you. A series will inevitably fail you, but the rule never will. Whether or not, as a viewer, we allow these sins committed by our favorite shows to turn us off til we turn it off for good is our own personal choice. Blind love can only carry us so far.

 It turns out that even though I feel the atrocities committed in the second episode of season 5 of Orphan Black are narratively unforgivable, I’m in too deep to turn off the tv now. I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t see how the final trip ends when with only 8 episodes left. But I can’t forgive the writers for killing off Veera Suominen.

 Now I get it; I’m a writer, and I feel that while storytellers have a responsibility to care for our audience and to understand the broader impact of our art we also have a deeper responsibility to ourselves. Most storytellers would agree that their best stories were passion projects that felt as if they were just burning to get out of them. The finished product should always be something that, when looked at later, the author can look back on and be proud that they really put all of themselves into. Can Graeme Manson and John Fawcett honestly say that this is the best, most shining example of their work? Is the way they tossed aside such a valuable character really what they had in mind from the beginning?

 For the uninitiated, Veera Suominen (hereafter referred to by her preferred nicknames of M.K. or Mika) is one of the latest female clones to pop up on the scifi television show Orphan Black. She was a valuable new addition to the team last season, as she was a connection to a previously hinted at massacre of clones in Europe: the infamous Helsinki event where a group of clones became self aware and were killed to protect the interests of their creators. Mika was the only clone to escape alive, and was so traumatized by what had happened that she basically became a hermit. She was smart enough to know that it wasn’t safe to be seen out in the open, and she used her considerable skills as a hacker to keep an eye on what was going on in the world around her.

 I think what made Mika so appealing to me is my own history of psychological trauma, plus a history of medical problems that keep me pretty regularly sick. Without going into too much detail, I can safely say that maybe my thinking on the matter is entirely biased and clouded by emotion. M.K. was a person I could see myself in, and when it was first made clear that she was starting to get sick with the same autoimmune condition the other clones were experiencing my heart broke. I don’t know if I fully expected her to succumb to her illness when progress was being made towards a cure, but I expected pain and heartache at least. If she was to die, it would be a dignified death befitting someone who fought in her own way to stay alive and under the radar. She was living outside the control of the ones who created her, but was still living under psychological duress after what had happened to her. It was most definitely a relatable story, as it is one that I live every day (under less dire and conspiratorial circumstances). I wanted so much for her to get closure and freedom in her life.

 With all that being said, this death scene was not okay. That’s what I keep repeating to myself now. It’s the biggest impression I got from the episode. This show advertises as one that respects its characters, but respect is the farthest thing from what she got. There was no respect for Mika’s journey, and there was no dignity in this death. The writers took a Ferdinand, a sad, sexually dysfunctional little man who was responsible for the Helsinki event and had him kill Mika because he was angry with a different clone. It’s a death that strips her of her right as an individual (which is a major theme of the show) and has her die as a stand in for someone else. And she didn’t even struggle. She immediately gave herself up because she was tired of running, and didn’t even try to take him with her. This is such a far cry from the M.K. who almost killed Ferdinand last season, and really begs the question: What could Ferdinand possibly have to offer the show that M.K. couldn’t? Ferdinand didn’t have half of the useful skills that Mika had and any proficiency with murder or intimate knowledge of the conspiracy could be achieved by Helena or Rachel. But M.K. was useful as a hacker, and even beyond having a usefulness to the plot there are those of us with traumatic pasts who really could’ve stood to see her get resolution before her death.

 The funny part of all of this is that now we’re being told that the point of the death is to prove that “nobody is safe” at this point. But we kind of already knew that, didn’t we? This was pure shock value, and shock value has no place in a series that purportedly respects its characters. If writers want to go in the direction of shock value, write slasher films. I promise that a good slasher film requires just as much attention to detail and can be just as much fun. That way, you don’t have to invest any time in characters because we all know they’re not safe and we know the majority of them are going to die horribly - like little humanoid Happy Tree Friends. All I’m saying, really, is that, as Cosima would say, the writers need to admit what this is really about. This was never about proving that nobody is safe. This is because the writers were just...done with her. So they just killed her. In the least respectful manner possible. It tied up no loose ends, it served no real consequence to the plot. Her death wasn’t an immediate call to action nor did it seem to have any effect on the characters beyond proving Kira’s psychic ability (which we’ve all known was a thing) and pushing her towards DYAD for testing (which would have happened anyway). It was just...nothing.

 It could be argued that M.K. giving herself up in Sarah’s place was brave in itself, but it wasn’t brave in a manner that was conducive to her character arc. In fact, this entire episode was antithetical to her character arc. Like I’ve already mentioned, clone disease is treatable. We’ve spent all this time seeing the sisters struggle with it, but there was no time dedicated to Mika’s personal struggle. Even Jennifer had more time post mortem to show us her coming to terms with her mortality. This just felt like one more thing to do to make her suffer, because what other way could they make Mika into a martyr for the cause than to make her too weak to fight? Which, in case you’re wondering, is what she should have done. Accepting her death immediately, before it even came to blows...lifting not a finger or a word in her own defense...It was deeply upsetting. Narratively, extremely sloppy, but personally very unsatisfying. It seemed like something I would do on my worst days. I went through a horrible trauma as a child and also suffer from an immune disorder that frequently makes me very sick. Being mentally and physically sick all the time is exhausting and I could understand why she would end it that way. But I turn to fiction a great deal of the time to see people who are in similar situations do things better than I would have, so that on the days when I want to give up I can point to them and say, ‘Well they didn’t, so I won’t either.’ She should have at least taken him with her. Then Helsinki would have at least been finished, and in death we could have wrapped this up quite neatly. Killing a major player in the event that created her mental trauma would have been a fantastic resolution to her character arc.

 I’m not saying, exactly, that death of a main character isn’t permissible in character-driven stories. When a series handles death well, it can be fantastic. True, in real life death doesn’t always have some kind of grand purpose and is always meaningless. But this is a story, and stories are supposed to have a grander purpose. I understand that we needed to raise the stakes, since this show has almost as many main character resurrections as Buffy (I exaggerate, but you get my point that this is the show where our characters never die). But it could’ve been handled with more respect to the character involved. I also think it was weird timing to kill off a Leda girl this early in the season. Big character deaths normally should be reserved, if not for the finale itself, than for the episodes directly leading up to it. That kind of death puts a show on a more clear narrative trajectory. One of the greatest character deaths in recent history happened on the CW show Nikita when Ryan Fletcher was killed off before the finale. Not only was that a death fitting of his character, but we know things just got real and there is a definite tipping point from which there is no return. I don’t have the same feeling after Mika’s death. I feel like she’s just gone and there’s no real reason for it. But I could be being unfair since there are still 8 episodes to go until the conclusion.

 I’m going to keep watching this show til the end, even after all this. Tatiana Maslany’s performance continues to be that which I aspire to as an actor, and I still feel a deep connection to the characters and an insatiable need to know where it all goes. But this was deeply upsetting, and cannot be forgiven. Please, just, fellow writers, I beg you...Retire the shock value deaths. Put actual thought into your characters and don’t just throw them away like this. Rest in peace, Veera Suominen (AKA M.K., AKA Mika). You didn’t deserve to be reduced to a stand-in for Ferdinand’s frustration with Rachel. You didn’t deserve to die as a representation of someone else. You deserved so much better.