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shimmershae · 3 years ago

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Some, okay a lot, of pre-mid season (tri? season) finale thoughts. As if you actually asked for them, lol.

And no, I haven’t actually watched the last episode yet. I’ve been putting it off all morning. For reasons. Reasons that I felt the inexplicable need to put on paper, er, screen.

If you care at all to read the purging of my fatigued TWD fangirl mind, please look beneath the cut. Fair warning. It’s long so pull up a chair maybe, lol.

I’ll admit it. The spoilers indicating a significant lack of Carol/Melissa content has dampened much of my enthusiasm and there wasn’t all that much to start with.

Let me tell you why--

The season, so far, has been woefully unbalanced in favor of the Reaper storyline and the Maggie/Negan conflict (which ties back to the Reaper storyline by the flimsiest of strings) and I’m just not invested.

Why?

Well, it’s multifold.

#1 reason why? Having a third of the last season ever of TWD devoted to going inside “the lions’ den” of villains I have no emotional connection to or curiosity about is a big fat fail.

You might say “but there’s the Daryl double agent” aspect and I say “so fucking what” because it was so poorly conceived and has felt like such a WTF set of fraying puppet strings for this plot Angela was apparently jonesing to tell from the GO, damn the torpedoes she had to know where inevitably coming her way.

Seriously. I had talked myself into accepting that which I could not change, citing Daryl’s emotional brokenness after Rick. Convincing myself he’d lost his anchor to goodness and hope and fulfillment in his years of self-imposed exile from Carol and what was left of his family and to a certain extent? I can still by that explanation. But really. It’s the Leah of it all.

Let me attempt to explain.

To do that, maybe I should detail how I’ve always perceived Daryl.

Daryl, IMHO, began this journey with us and the rest of Team Family with a figurative fortress erected around his true, core self.

He was prickly. Defensive to any overtures of kindness because he inherently did not trust them. Loathe to form any real connection to anyone other than Merle, his blood.

Daryl balked at the possibility of emotional connection and flinched in learned fear from physical touch.

He did not recognize or accept affection or respect at face value because it was something rarely shown to him before.

Anybody else remember that childhood abuse book from Consumed? You know. One of those first times the showrunners/writers dumped a character nugget in our laps and left it to us to do all the backstory in our own imaginations so they didn’t have to enrich their own characters beyond the scratch and sniff, wham bam this is who they are work?

Anyway. We were left to extrapolate from that what most of us h ad already suspected--that Daryl’s formative years were already a living hell before the ZA ever happened.

So he was standoffish. He didn’t form emotional connections lightly and physical intimacy was something light years out of his comfort zone.

Until Carol.

Daryl’s defenses started to crumble from the very start with Carol because she piqued his interest. He looked at her, watched her withstand Ed’s abuse, and recognized something of himself.

Against his will, Daryl started to care and when Carol lost the one good thing that had come out of her miserable life with Ed--Sophia--Daryl’s core identity started to be revealed to us and probably? To himself after burying it so deep for so long.

Long story short? Daryl connected with Carol pretty quickly on a base level through the trauma of Sophia’s loss.

The real connection, the emotional work it too to peel all those protective layers away took more like--like planting a flower from seed and tending it to help it survive and flourish.

Simply said? The work was put in and Daryl bloomed with Carol’s (and Team Family’s) care. They all put in varying degrees of work but Carol planted the seed of his “belonging.”

And the thing about Daryl? Once he bloomed? He grew strong. He stretched toward the sun.

He and Carol essentially bloomed and fought their way toward the sunlight together.

And little by little, Daryl learned to accept the kindness, trust, and love he always deserved.

From that newly confident man emerged a Daryl not so fearful of forming connections and none have ever been more powerful than his connection to Carol.

I’ll spare ya’ll the paragraphs of how Daryl and Carol gravitated toward each other like magnets no matter the means of separation.

I’ll just spell it out like this: their bond supersedes all others, even Daryl’s bond with Rick. And with Daryl only accepting affection from those he trusts implicitly, Carol and Daryl have been the only potential “romantic” pairing that has ever fully made sense for his established character.

At least the character before Angela launched the grenade of Leah into the mix.

Leah was a fail from the start.

And you know what? I’m thinking that was largely intended (for various reasons) but I still think they could have shown Daryl as receptive to having a “romantic” relationship to those willfully blind to the possibility that he’s actually been in a “romantic” relationship with Carol since Season 2. Never mind that Carol and Daryl haven’t (yet) crossed certain physical boundaries yet. Emotionally? They are already there even if neither is able to admit it out loud with the actual words yet. But I digress. The people that never wanted to “see” Carol and Daryl as “romantic” because they couldn’t fathom Daryl as seeing Carol in that light had already deemed that Daryl just didn’t feel that way about her, that maybe he didn’t feel that way about anybody (if they couldn’t have their way and have him feel that way about their preferred choice for him, they preferred him alone), and Angela wanted to show them differently. To show them the light.

That said, if Angela was so hellbent on doing Leah? There were a multitude of better ways.

Here. I’ll give you one of them.

Daryl isolates himself from his family after Rick’s “death” same as he did in Angela’s version.

Carol’s been being pulled more and more to the Kingdom because Henry’s needing a mother figure is like catnip to her hurting natural-born, hurting Mama’s heart. So Daryl’s anchor to the man he’d matured into, the one with all these earned emotional attachments, is reeled back in, little by little, leaving him unmoored.

Dog literally runs into him just as before. It hardly makes sense given how young and floppy and uncoordinated puppies are and thus vulnerable to danger, but this is the least of things we need to worry about suspending disbelief for right? ;)

Dog and Daryl continue to have these run ins until Daryl decides to retrace the puppy’s clumsy trail and viola! He finds Leah’s cabin and Leah inside. She levels the same shotgun at him, they have a standoff, until---

Leah suddenly lowers the gun and incredulously says Daryl’s name.

That’s right. One simple change and Daryl and Leah have an undefined past already.

Daryl doesn’t completely let his guard down because he’s Daryl, but he relaxes enough that we see he doesn’t immediately regard Leah as dangerious to his own well-being.

From that point on, instead of tying Daryl up and threatening him, we could have been told the story of how they knew each other from before.

My version goes a little something like this--

Daryl met Leah through Merle. Merle, in turn, met Leah through the military before he got discharged. He and Leah had an ongoing “I scratch your itch if you scratch mine” thing and Leah? Well, she always had a bit of a soft spot/interest in Daryl that Daryl never really returned.

The thing is, though? With losing the chosen brother that filled the hole left behind by his lost blood brother Merle and losing Carol to her chasing after a chance of a new family (because she feels Daryl’s out of her reach too, our too blind and stupidly, silently in love idiots)? Daryl finds himself embracing the shared memories however minimal of that brief past and his grief and loneliness leave him receptive to Leah’s eventual advances in ways he never was before.

We’re still given hints of their unfolding relationship and we still don’t like it, but it makes more sense for Daryl to cling to the past when he feels he’s lost his future.

Leah still gives her ultimatum (there’s a reason she gravitated toward Merle in perhaps his most toxic state, she’s more than a little fucked up too) and it’s not as much of a hard sell that Daryl might be pulled in Leah’s direction when he feels Carol is all but lost to him.

Hell. They could have even explicitly discussed Carol. But wait! Angela would have never allowed that because she doesn’t want to shatter all the crackship dreams in one fell swoop.

But the story from that point on could have continued just as it has and probably I still wouldn’t have liked it but I could have at least bought it somewhat and understood it.

Obviously, it didn’t.

I don’t buy the Leah of it all. Angela built that “relationship” with monopoly money and it shows.

Because I don’t buy Leah period. I don’t buy Daryl giving even giving a shit about trying to or feeling like there’s a snowball’s chance to redeem her so I’m not engaged whatsoever with this Daryl double agent story and him even givign her crumbs about his real family.

That part rings false.

So that’s a big problem right there and we haven’t even gotten to the other part I don’t buy.

You know what else I don’t buy?

#2?

Why the hell are the Reapers so bloodthirsty for Maggie’s departure from this mortal coil?

Without giving better reasoning than they’re just cray-cray, the entire faceplants and considering it’s taken up about 70% of 11A’s focus? I’m pissed.

Because, IMHO, they should go big or go home on this to give it any entertainment value because it’s all stale, recycled air if not.

Maggie’s been established as a much darker character this season. Which led me to believer the Reapers probably had a legit beef against her, but it seems Angela is reluctant to go all that way down the rabbit hole and doesn’t want to commit to what could be a more entertaining and potentially fascinating story than just Maggie’s in the right, the Reapers are just evil.

Maggie is right about Negan, IMHO, but she’s also wrong in not listening to him when what he’s saying reeks of simple common sense. Ignoring sage advice makes her seem more like an angry toddler stamping her feet in defiance than the leader they are so bound and determined to tell us she is.

You know what? The window for me to give more than the half a fuck I’m giving right now as they beat this dead horse to dust closed when Maggie decided letting Negan rot in the ASZ jail cell was enough and spared him when she finally had her best chance to end him once and for all.

Maybe if they stopped having the same damn conversation and they didn’t take up 20% of the screen time left after the boring Reapers/Leah shit, I would be less resentful but I’m not and again, I’ll tell you why.

BECAUSE. We are in the last season of the OG TWD ever and this show has chosen to waste screen time on stories nobody cares about to the exclusion of the ones we’re yearning for more of.

Like ASZ. We’ve barely seen more than an hour of the eight hours devoted to Carol, Aaron, Rosita, Lydia, Judith, Kelly, Jerry and Co. in total. Especially since they’ve been trying to establish the Commonwealth on the side, too.

I mean, I never really expected to dig the Commonwealth so my expectations for it were lower than low so they’ve been exceeded at a miniscule level. But I expected and hoped for ASZ and those characters we’ve cared the most about to receive much more emphasis and the fact that they haven’t in this last season so far has been the biggest FAIL.

And okay. Selfishly, I want more Carol. She’s like salt. She makes almost everything go down better.

But really. Give me more of all the characters we actually care about, please. The Reapers and the offshoots from that story wheel aren’t it. I love Daryl but I hate this retread story for him. Leah is a weak point that pressed upon? Makes this weak ass arc collapse. Maggie and Negan are giving us nothing new. They are the definition of the word STALEMATE and that’s not what you want or need on the finale season of a show.

Yes, I have enjoyed the majority of the episodes overall, but that was because the moments I loved I weighted more than the ones I didn’t and know they have the most impact on the show down the road.

Probably 11A will fare better when all is said and done and the show can be binged but standalone? It’s been an overall disappointment and that saddens me more than I can say.

Anyway. I’m going to stop rambling now and try to psyche myself up for episode 8. I’ll be back with thoughts on it later, maybe.

Sorry for the word vomit, but I felt maybe I could in someway give voice to some of the feelings floating around out there and let you know that you are not alone.

Until later, lovelies.

#The Walking Dead #Season 11 #TWD spoilers #Shae's thinky thoughts #things that make me smile and cry #for reasons

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tloujm · 4 years ago

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Part XI: Are We OK?

Author’s Notes: As mentioned in the first paragraph, this takes place a month after the last chapter. Speaking of the last chapter, this one was kind of difficult for me to write as well. Trying to tap into that vulnerable, emotional Joel, when we really didn’t see that until TLOU 2, wasn’t as easy as I thought. And Naughty Dog barely gave us that side of him before they killed him off so...I’m down for straying away from canon, but I wish there was more Joel material to go off of. Maybe if we cry loud enough, Naughty Dog will hear us and we’ll get a DLC with more flashbacks in like 7 years. I already got it planned out, the next chapter will have a new genre, HORROR, just in time for Halloween, then I’ll get back to the smoother-you-with-romance Joel x Reader.

Genre: An order of Joel Miller, heavy on the angst, with a side of fluff, hold the smut.

Summary: You and Joel find out if the two of you are expecting. Jackson is introduced to a strange newcomer

Ship: Joel x Reader

A month and some change had gone by which meant that you were late. Life had gotten particularly busy, so you didn’t notice how fast time was flying, but Joel did. He knew you were late, but he wanted to see if you would bring it up first.

“How you feelin’?” Joel asked, gently nudging your shoulder as the two of you walked together.

“I’m fine.” You answered. It was your default answer, but after realizing that he was still looking at you, reading your face, you understood what he meant. Throughout the month he would dote on you a little extra to make sure you weren’t feeling faint or nauseous. “I really am fine, Joel. I haven’t gotten my period yet, though.”

“Ok.” He said as he breathed out. He looked forward with those doe eyes.

“That doesn’t mean anything yet. My periods were never really consistent in the first place. Let’s just wait a little longer and see.” What you said was true, but you also weren’t sure if you were ready to admit to yourself the possibility of having a life inside you.

Joel took your hand in his and gave it a squeeze. “Ok.”

One day while out on patrol, Joel convinced his group to make a detour and check out a small plaza. It had a boutique, veterinary office, post office and, most importantly, a pharmacy. While the others started at the boutique to find new clothes, Joel snuck off to get a head start at the pharmacy. He secured the location before pacing up and down the aisles. His eyes bounced around the shelves as his hands randomly skimmed the items on them. They have to be here, he thought. It's not like they were in high demand during a pandemic. Soon enough, he’d found what he was looking for and stuffed his bag with a few boxes just as the group was catching up with him. Joel explained away his departure with ease and joined in scavenging for medical goods.

As soon as they’d passed through Jackson’s gates, Joel bee lined it to your house. He let himself in as he usually did and called out your name. He wasn’t sure if you were home but he was too anxious to try and track you down. Luckily, your footsteps were heard from the other room. He waited as patiently as he could for you to meet him in the living room.

“You’re back!” You exclaimed. “What happened out there? I thought you were going to be back in time for lunch.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. We stopped at some small plaza. It was off-map.”

“I hope you guys found some good stuff.” You commented while throwing on your jacket.

“Yeah, we did.” He quickly replied before furrowing his brows. “You going somewhere?”

You nodded. “I was gonna go help Wendy out again today. You can come too, but It’s ok if you’re too tired. I know you just got back.”

“(Y/N),” He began, leaving your name to hang in the air with suspense. He slid his backpack off of his shoulders and dug around for the contents that he found at the pharmacy.

“What’s wrong?” You noticed the strange look on Joel’s face. Mind racing, you grew afraid of what he was going to pull out. You watched as he placed three narrow boxes on your coffee table. You took a step closer to inspect them.

“There was a pharmacy there, so I figured why wait and see when we can know now.” His voice was as casual as ever, but he gazed at you with those pleading, doe eyes that you were still growing used to. Your own eyes bounced between him and the items on the table. You read the single word on the face of the boxes with its pretty, pink font, “Pregnancy”. By the picture of the stick, you already knew what it was, but the “P” word was unavoidable.

“Joel,” You started softly. “I started my period. I didn’t notice until after you left this morning for patrol.”

“Oh.” He looked between the tests and your shoes, avoiding eye contact.

“It probably just came late because of stress; you know living in this world ain’t a piece of cake.” You awkwardly chuckled to lighten the mood. “A cycle could be thrown off because of a change in diet. Different foods affect hormone balances. Or...or...um...when women spend time around each other, their cycles link up. I know it sounds weird, but it’s true because...um science.” You ramble on, trying to fill the silence.

He stopped you before you could speak again. “It’s ok, (Y/N). Guess we don’t need these.” He picked one of the tests up and inspected it before throwing it back in his bag.

Joel focused on his actions after you told him the news. He didn’t want to seem disappointed. He’d be lying to himself if he said that he wasn’t, though. It was probably for the best, he thought to himself. He couldn’t imagine outliving another child or losing his love during childbirth. He scoffed at his own thoughts as he wished that storks delivering babies on doorsteps were a real thing. Maybe the two of you could share a pet. Joel made a note to put effort in befriending a stray cat or dog the next time he came across one.

You were more worried about Joel’s feelings than your own when you saw the dark red stains on your panties that morning. Neither one of you were explicitly against having a baby together, but you were afraid that he would get too comfortable with the idea of you actually being pregnant. You offered to stay in with him, but he declined and insisted that you go. He left out the door behind you and walked silently by your side until it was time for him to turn down his street. His eyes were focused on his front door, wanting nothing more than to walk through it and sink into the couch. Suddenly, he heard a voice speak up on the walkie-talkie. He had forgotten to put it back after patrol because he was so anxious to see you. The voice belonged to Dean, a watchtower guard and he sounded frantic as he called for help at the gate. Always having a radio on him, Joel knew that Tommy would have heard the message as well. Joel quickly turned on his heels and jogged up to the main gate of Jackson just in time to meet the other people who heard. Dean explained from the tower that there was a little girl on the other side of the gate covered in blood. She was unresponsive when he questioned her. Dean didn’t know whether she was the bait in an ambush or just a lost little girl who needed help. Maria made the decision to open the gates. She stepped through first, followed by an armed Tommy and Joel. The two brothers kept their eyes peeled for signs of anything suspicious in the distance. Maria approached the child and tried to talk to her herself. She appeared to be in a catatonic state. Maria deduced that she had just experienced something extremely traumatic. Joel watched as Jackson’s leader gently reached out to check her body for any wounds, having been unsure if the blood was hers or not. The girl only looked past her, but didn’t flinch when touched. Joel holstered his gun before taking off his jacket to wrap it around her. Maria mouthed a thank you in his direction before ushering her into the settlement.

Joel and Tommy decided to stay with Dean at the watchtower as a precaution just in case anyone was following her. Maria immediately walked the girl to the daycare center. She wanted to try again, but if there was anyone who could connect with a child, it was Wendy.

You were bringing snacks into the play room for the kids when you heard faint voices coming from Wendy’s office. You slowed down as you passed in front of the cracked door. You recognized Maria’s voice. Wendy’s tone was soft and gentle which made you assume that a child was in there as well. What would Maria want with one of the kids? Did one of them get in trouble? You finished handing out the snacks when Maria entered the playroom.

“(Y/N).” Maria called out from the corner of the room. She gestured with her head for you to meet her. “We got a newcomer in today.” She began to slowly shake her head. “I don’t know what to make of her. She won’t talk to anybody. Wendy is in there currently trying. You’re trained in first aid right?” She asked.

“Yeah, but it’s not like I’m a nurse or anything.”

“Our only doctors are operating right now. You’re all we got.” She looked at you with pleading eyes. “I did a once over on her before bringing her in, but I’d appreciate it if you could look her over and make sure she’s alright.”

You looked back at the kids peacefully eating. “Let me get one of the older kids to look after them and I’ll go back there with you.” Maria nodded before watching you go outside to pull one of the big kids off the playground.

“This way.” Maria guided you back towards Wendy’s office. You grabbed the basket full of uneaten snacks since the office was on its way to the kitchen.

“I’m assuming she’s a child.” You stated to which Maria nodded. “She showed up by herself?”

“As far as we can tell. Joel and Tommy are currently on lookout to see if she was followed. Dean said he found her approaching the gate covered in blood.”

“Jesus.” You exclaimed in a whisper. “When was this?”

“I just brought her over here from the gate.” Maria said before opening the office door for you.

Wendy was crouched down in front of the little girl, speaking to her in her softest tone. She remained standing after ignoring the older woman’s offer of a chair. Wendy turned to the two of you when she heard the door open. She seemed at a loss after making no more progress than she did when Maria left. You recognized the jacket wrapped around the child’s small frame and you expressed a tiny smile at the thought of Joel’s generosity. His clean, warm jacket was a stark contrast to the blood and grime covering her body. You walked up to her and sat the basket of food down at her feet. Silently, you picked up half of a grilled cheese and held it out for her to take. For a few moments, she did nothing but stand there. Her eyes were glued to some object past your head. Finally, she glanced down at the still warm sandwich in your hand and weakly reached out for it. She brought it up to her mouth and took a little, mousy bite. To help support the sandwich, she brought up her other hand to hold it, revealing that she was missing the last two fingers on that hand. You could tell by the redness that they were severed fairly recently. You would need to take a closer look, but it didn’t seem infected so far. You watched her for a moment before stepping back, giving her space to eat in peace. When she finished, she wiped the crumbs with the back of her hand and reverted back to her prior stance. Tenderly, you removed the jacket and circled around her to get a better look at her body. She was really skinny; probably nearing malnutrition. It made it difficult for you to estimate an age. Especially during developmental years, the lack of proper nutrients could stunt the growth of a child. Seeing how docile she was with the others, you confidently picked her up and sat her on a table that brought her to your height. There you took off her exterior layers to get a better look at her skin for wounds. Like Maria, you guessed that she had been traumatized. Seeing a child that you could only assume was born after the outbreak be put through so much was heartbreaking. After a more thorough check, you determined that none of the blood was hers. You were relieved to see that, but at the same time wondered what situation she had to have been in to get all of that on her.

“You’re ok. You’re in a safe place, now.” You finally spoke to the girl. She made eye contact, but did not verbally acknowledge your words. “How would you like to get in a nice, warm bath and relax? I’m sure you came a long way to find yourself here. We can make you more grilled cheeses to eat when you get out.” You pleaded. Again, she was silent, but as if on cue, her stomach growled loud enough for everyone to hear. As if embarrassed, she looked down at her feet.

“I’ll get right on those grilled cheeses.” Wendy said, leaving her office. You took the girl’s hand and led her out as well. Maria followed you two to one of the bathrooms. You sat the girl on the toilet seat before Maria beckoned you to meet her at the doorway.

“I’m going to go check on the boys at the gate if you’re ok here.”

“Yeah, me and Wendy will be fine.” You glanced back at the little girl. To your surprise, she was watching you.

“Okay, good. Let me know if you need anything.” Maria said before stepping out.

The girl watched as you ran the water into the tub. Bubbles formed and steam floated off the surface of the water. It was enticing, even for you, especially since it was still winter. You helped her out of the rest of her clothes and walked her into the tub. You watched her face flinch as she adjusted to the temperature.

For the next half an hour, you gave her a sponge bath and washed her hair. She was good as new by the time you were done with her. Before you brought her back into the office, you cleaned and bandaged the stubs on her left hand. Wendy brought the grilled cheese and tomato soup in so the girl could eat in peace.

“It would be so much easier if we just knew what to call her.” Wendy spoke in an almost whisper as the two of you sat in the office with her.

“Yeah.” You sighed. “It’s getting late and she’s probably tired.”

“Oh, I bet she is. She probably walked very far to get here. I’ll take her home with me tonight. We have that extra bedroom now and I think she’ll get along nicely with Kevin and Marnie. They’re about her age.” Wendy spoke about her adopted children. “Maybe she’ll feel more comfortable with someone her own age and open up with them.”

“Yeah?” You genuinely questioned.

“Worth a try.” Wendy shrugged, not knowing what else to do. “She just needs some time is all. She’ll see we’re good people soon enough and she’ll be playin’ with the rest of ‘em.”

You took her plate when she was done and checked on the rest of the kids before calling it a night. Your feet were accustomed to the path that took you to your house, but you really wanted to see Joel. Walking up the driveway, you noticed that all of the lights in the house were off. Still, you entered the house and called his name. You followed his voice and orange glow to the living room where he was sitting by the fire. You sat next to him on the floor and leaned your head on his shoulder. It was a cozy feeling.

“I heard you were in the watchtower today.” You began.

He exhaled. “Yeah, me and Tommy and Dean. So you know about the girl?”

“I fed and bathed her. Maria brought her over to the daycare so I could take a look at her.”

“How was she, nurse (Y/L/N)?” He playfully asked.

“None of the blood was hers. No cuts. There were some bruises though. I hope she feels better now that she’s all cleaned up.” He grunted in approval before falling silent. “Are we okay?” You spoke up.

“’Course we are. Where is this coming from?” Joel asked.

“Well, when I told you I wasn’t pregnant---”

“It’s ok, (Y/N). I meant it when I said it wouldn’t change anything. I love you.”

You smiled. “I love you too and listen, I would be honored to have you as my baby daddy,” He chuckled. “But I don’t think I’m ready now. Are you?”

He gently nodded for a moment. “I think so, yeah.”

“You think you could wait for me? ‘Til I’m ready?”

“This is something I want only with you, so I’ll do whatever you want.”

“Oh is that so?” You teased. “I’ll be sure to remember that.

“Bet you will.”

#tlou fanfic #joel tlou #TLOU #TLOU 2 #the last of us #the last of us joel #joel/reader #joel x reader #joel miller fanfic #oneshot #fandom #fanfic #naughty dog #Troy baker #Joel Miller

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lobotomy-maybe-bestie · 3 years ago

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2, 4, and 15 for the rqg ask game?

2. man i love all of them. i also deeply wish we knew more about the ursans and their religion, it seems so interesting! and yet we know almost nothing about it. out of the known gods, i'd have to go with artemis just because... well, artemis. and also bc i admire the drive and sense of purpose they have? second choice would be poseidon bc the sea is Terrifying and if i lived in the rqg world i'd probably be drawn to a god i'd find terrifying. also i'd definitely be a cleric. 100%.

4. already answered with a very enthusiastic APOPHIS! i love them

15. i have way too many. here are some of the fic snippets bc i left my sketchbook at home:

The second time Saira approaches, she is even more nervous, but this time it's almost positive. Even though she received the news a week ago, the words are still clear in her head. She's read the letter so many times, copied it into letters for Aziza and Hamid to tell them that finally, finally she is also starting to live a life she wants.

Aziza was the first. She'll probably write back, saying how proud she is and that she hopes Saira will be happy. She can't help but smile a little despite her oncoming panic when she thinks of how dramatically Aziza would hug her. How much of a point she would make telling Saira that it was good that she made that decision by herself and for her own happiness. Aziza, who was almost disowned after all the fights, who left of her own account, being kicked out in anything but name, told with a sneer that she would come back begging for help, for credit, for work because her career would leave her broke and disillusioned. And then she became one of the best opera singers in the world and the only thing that changed was that she was invited to come back for family festivities again. Father never outright admits that he is wrong, but Mother bought a ticket for herself, Saleh and Saira when Aziza was performing nearby and he took the day off to look after the twins. Saira wishes she could hug Aziza before going in, but she's somewhere in Europe right now- Germany, she thinks unsurely- and now Saira is already in view of the guards. They regard her quizically and she waves slightly to signal that she wants to speak to them. Tells them she is the new apprentice and they tell her to go inside and wait in the entrance hall. (a snippet of a fic about saira's time working in the apophis office)

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There's something about her people often forget and not many know in the first place.

That before the glowing pink and the hospitals, a long, long time ago, Aphrodite was a war goddess.

There's something to be said about fighting for love. To protect your friends, those that have become family to you at this point. (about azu fighting because <3)

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"Ed, I think... you have the gift of prophecy."

"Yeah obviously. Like with my mace and stuff."

"...Ed, what do you think the word prophecy means?"

"It means like, being good with your weapons."

"...That's profiency." (a dialogue between ed and tjelvar, i just think it would be very funny if ed had the gift of prophecy)

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They don't know who he is at the temple. That's fine, they don't need to know. They have her laid out, waiting for her family to come and pick her up. He knows it will be a while before they will arrive. He tells them she was the love of his life, that he is the father of her children, children that will be so distressed when they hear about this. They frown at him or look confused but they let him pass.

He asks them to leave him alone and they do so. He kneels down next to her liveless body.

"So, wait, that's subclause B3? I thought this specific event was explicitly stated to be covered by paragraph nine!"

"Paragraph nine only applies if it takes no longer than two weeks."

Saira grumbles in frustration and crosses out her previous answers a bit too fervently. (about apophis and their relationships through the ages, have i mentioned that i love this dragon)

#rusty quill gaming #rqg #soo much apophis and saira content. so much.

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bouncyirwin · 3 years ago

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Bouncy! Dramatic irony is my absolute favorite and there's heaps of it in Tuesdays of Doom. I'm hoping you have the time to comment on these sections, specifically on how you decided to characterize Sasuke because it's just *chef's kiss* HILARIOUS:

He hadn't meant to snap at her, but Sasuke still felt personally victimised by her actions. And he couldn't silence the part of him that was angry at Sakura for going after his brother after having spent years pining after him. Was she upgrading? Downgrading? What did she make of her own predicament?

This paragraph is shortly followed by:

He'd debated confronting his brother or Shisui or even Sakura (although that last one wouldn't be wise at all), but ultimately Sasuke decided against it. He had no idea what to say, and despite how much it frustrated him, it wasn't his business. All he could do was hope it was a one-time thing.

(Kami, this was messing up all his preconceptions of his brother. It put Itachi in a completely different light outside the idealistic one Sasuke had placed him under. Just how much did Sasuke not know about his own older brother?)

He was glad to find Itachi absent when he arrived home; he didn't think he could face him then. (How much did Itachi dote on Sakura? Did he love her too? Had she become more important than Sasuke?)

Ahhhh okay! *cracks knuckles*

This is one of my personal favourites, I had HEAPS of fun writing it so prepare for an essay xD

Tuesday of Doom’s Sasuke was all about messing around with headcanons about a non-mass AU. Basically at the core he A) loves his brother unconditionally and idolises him B) is thirsty for his father’s approval and C) is trying to fill some uncomfortably big shoes!

I loveeeee tormenting this idiot. To put it bluntly, I wanted him to suffer in a funny way. He has so much respect for his older brother and a healthy dose of caution around Sakura (though there was a time he had no respect for her because she wasn’t strong enough and she was crushing on him like all the other silly girls) and I wanted to shake that a bit.

We have to understand first that Sasuke here views Itachi as his. His brother, his most important person. Sakura is merely the teammate who had a crush on him that he tolerates out of caution (much like he tolerates Naruto out of fondness/because it’s easier than pushing him away). And there she was! Making a move on Itachi! He feels personally victimised by all the actions she took to lead him to the point in time wherein he witnesses them together. With Shisui, this is the part that really fucks with Sasuke the most. This was not a secret love affair with his brother. This was raunchy threesomes, and sneaking around, and having fun and doing naughty things. Sasuke really hoped it was a ‘one-time’ thing. He figures he wouldn’t begrudge his brother that too much.

But this totally messes with the way he sees Itachi as the stoic, traditional role-model and future head of the Uchiha who never steps a toe out of line. He’s now becoming uncomfortably aware that there might be a lot of things he doesn’t know about his brother (and is now jealous Sakura gets to know these things; like what did she do to earn that privilege?).

As he ended up seeing more and more of them together, it occurs to Sasuke that perhaps this is neither a one-time thing nor a fling and starts to wonder just how important Sakura was to Itachi. This worries Sasuke, what if he likes her more than him? Sasuke feels very possessive when it comes to his brother but also feels slighted that his teammate would think to go after not just his brother, but also his cousin.

So basically the whole one-shot is Sasuke battling with his views about the people he thought he knew best. I wanted to explore the almost-naivety he had. I think Sasuke has a bit of an inflated sense of self, and seems to think all revolves around him or that he knows everything that’s going on in the dark. He really doesn’t! Tuesday of Doom is a wake up call for him; the silly fangirl is a grown up playing grown up games, the ideal older brother is really just human at the end of the day and definitely has other priorities and is most definitely putting up a front a lot of the time, and the silly cousin he sneered at is totally more wicked than he expected him to be.

Just goes to show him that one can never really be sure what goes on behind closed doors.

The truth is Sasuke here is the butt of an inside joke he isn’t even aware of. Because Itachi certainly wasn’t the first to sharingan him! 👀

Kakashi did it before too, on Sakura’s request, and Sasuke never thought to question it. This is not explicitly stated but it’s alluded to at the beginning and end of the chapter that something is amiss but oh well Kakashi has never lied to him before so whatever.

Okay I’m done rambling omg xD thanks for indulging me! 🥰

#writers ask writers #bouncyirwin answers #dvd commentary

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agentrouka-blog · 4 years ago

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Arya and Weasel - sending your inner child off into the woods

Weasel is an orphaned, traumatized girl of around two years of age whose story is absolutely heartbreaking. We meet her in A Clash of Kings and she accompanies us for the span of three Arya chapters, which takes place over just about a month, most of which takes place off page.

We meet her at the end of Arya III, she has her first interaction with Arya in Arya IV and then tags along with Arya, Lommy, Hot Pie and Gendry in the woods until she runs off into the unknown at the end of Arya V.

I’ll follow the story and try to give some sense of time and location to justify my time estimates, simply because GRRM chooses to be so vague.

Gods, Arya’s chapters in ACOK are among the very finest in the entire book series.

Warning: Long. As always, excessive use of quotes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ACOK, Arya III (chapter 9)

Yoren and his gang have been traveling the Kingsroad since King’s Landing. She beat Hot Pie bloody in Arya I and they had a tense encounter with goldcloaks looking for Gendry in Arya II. Now they change course westward of the Kingsroad close to the beginning of the chapter.

“We’re not far from Gods Eye,” the black brother said one morning. “The kingsroad won’t be safe till we’re across the Trident. So we’ll come up around the lake along the western shore, they’re not like to look for us there.” At the next spot where two ruts cut cross each other, he turned the wagons west.

Here farmland gave way to forest, the villages and holdfasts were smaller and farther apart, the hills higher and the valleys deeper. Food grew harder to come by.

They spend an unspecified amount of time, likely about two weeks, traveling and living off the land. Enough for two days delay to still matter but long enough to form habits, see landscapes change, have hunting adventures.

Outside a holdfast called Briarwhite, some fieldhands surrounded them in a cornfield, demanding coin for the ears they’d taken. (…)

The next day Koss came racing back to warn Yoren of a camp ahead. (…) “Might be one side, might be t’other. If they’re hurt that bad, likely they’d take our mounts no matter who they are. Might be they’d take more than that. I believe we’ll go wide around them.” It took them miles out of their way, and cost them two days at the least, but the old man said it was cheap at the price. (…)

Arya saw men guarding the fields more and more when they turned north again. (…) At one place, she spotted a man perched up in a dead tree, with a bow in his hand and a quiver hanging from the branch beside him. (…)

A day later Dobber spied a red glow against the evening sky. “Either this road went and turned again, or that sun’s setting in the north.”

Weasel’s tragedy begins when her village is put to the torch. The blaze is enough to light up the night sky from half a day’s travel away. Judging from what we see in Arya IV, the violence was likely unspeakable.

By dawn the fire had burned itself out, but none of them slept very well that night. It was midday when they arrived at the place where the village had been.

It’s butchery and desolation. Yoren goes to investigate the destroyed holdfast.

When they finally returned, Yoren had a little girl in his arms, and Murch and Cutjack were carrying a woman in a sling made of an old torn quilt. The girl was no older than two and she cried all the time, a whimpery sound, like something was caught in her throat. Either she couldn’t talk yet or she had forgotten how. The woman’s right arm ended in a bloody stump at her elbow, and her eyes didn’t seem to see anything, even when she was looking right at it.

I knee-jerk assumed the woman to be Weasel’s mother, but that is never explicitly stated in the text. For all we know, they aren’t related at all. They are not shown to interact, and even if the woman was Weasel’s mother, she is too far gone from her severe injury to be coherent, let alone care for the child.

She talked, but she only said one thing. “Please,” she cried, over and over. “Please. Please.” Rorge thought that was funny. He laughed through the hole in his face where his nose had been, and Biter started laughing too, until Murch cursed them and told them to shut up. Yoren had them fix the woman a place in the back of a wagon. “And be quick about it,” he said. “Come dark, there’ll be wolves here, and worse.” “I’m scared,” Hot Pie murmured when he saw the one-armed woman thrashing in the wagon. “Me too,” Arya confessed. He squeezed her shoulder. “I never truly kicked no boy to death, Arry. I just sold my mommy’s pies, is all.” Arya rode as far ahead of the wagons as she dared, so she wouldn’t have to hear the little girl crying or listen to the woman whisper, “Please.” She remembered a story Old Nan had told once, about a man imprisoned in a dark castle by evil giants. He was very brave and smart and he tricked the giants and escaped . . . but no sooner was he outside the castle than the Others took him, and drank his hot red blood. Now she knew how he must have felt. The one-armed woman died at evenfall. Gendry and Cutjack dug her grave on a hillside beneath a weeping willow. When the wind blew, Arya thought she could hear the long trailing branches whispering, “Please. Please. Please.” The little hairs on the back of her neck rose, and she almost ran from the graveside.

I almost inserted a long paragraph about the textual parallels to Lyanna and Sansa here. But I refrained because this is merely meant to document Weasel.

The woman and the child (and the murdered men I didn’t include in my quotes) are Arya’s first direct confrontation with the vicious of this war. She and Hot Pie are so humbled in the face of it, they forget their original enmity, their posturing. They become children again. They admit their bone-deep fear.

The human suffering is an unbearable horror and Arya, understandably, tries to block it out and get away from it.

So this tiny little girl Weasel has just watched every person she has ever known being murdered by scary, angry strangers and then spent that night and half a day among the charred ruins and the bodies. Hungry, thirsty, scared. No one shows up to comfort her until another stranger picks her up and carries her away.

It goes on:

“No fire tonight,” Yoren told them. Supper was a handful of wild radishes Koss found, a cup of dry beans, water from a nearby brook. The water had a funny taste to it, and Lommy told them it was the taste of bodies, rotting someplace upstream. Hot Pie would have hit him if old Reysen hadn’t pulled them apart.

We’ll return to this lovely image.

Arya encounters wolves as she relieves herself in the woods at night. They do not harm her, but she is clearly shaken by everything that has happened.

The crying girl travelling alonside her and the wolves prowling the woods. Two sides of Arya.

She tells Yoren she doesn’t care. She just wants to go home. The chapter ends on:

“Go to sleep, boy. Hear me?”

She did try. Yet as she lay under her thin blanket, she could hear the wolves howling . . . and another sound, fainter, no more than a whisper on the wind, that might have been screams.

Followed by a lovely thematic transition at the beginning of Davos I.

The morning air was dark with the smoke of burning gods. They were all afire now, Maid and Mother, Warrior and Smith, the Crone with her Pearl eyes and the Father with his gilded beard; even the Stranger, carved to look more animal than human. The old dry wood and countless layers of paint and varnish blazed with a fierce hungry light. Heat rose shimmering through the chill air; behind, the gargoyles and stone dragons on the castle walls seemed blurred, as if Davos were seeing them through a veil of tears. Or as if the beasts were trembling, stirring . . .

Arya is about to enter the warzone for real.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ACOK, Arya IV (chapter 14)

We open not too far from where we left Yoren’s merry band. They have reached the river flowing straight south from the Gods Eye.

It seemed a peaceful place . . . until Koss spotted the dead man. “There, in the reeds.” He pointed, and Arya saw it. The body of a soldier, shapeless and swollen. His sodden green cloak had hung up on a rotted log, and a school of tiny silver fishes were nibbling at his face. “I told you there was bodies,” Lommy announced. “I could taste them in that water.”

He tasted them in the brook, this is a river. Usually brooks flow into rivers, not the other way around. But not too much travel time can have passed for Lommy to make that remark. A day? Two days?

We get a location.

It was midday when the others returned. Woth reported a wooden bridge half a mile downstream, but someone had burned it up. Yoren peeled a sourleaf off the bale. “Might be we could swim the horses over, maybe the donkeys, but there’s no way we’ll get those wagons across. And there’s smoke to the north and west, more fires, could be this side o’ the river’s the place we want to be.” He picked up a long stick and drew a circle in the mud, a line trailing down from it. “That’s Gods Eye, with the river flowing south. We’re here.” He poked a hole beside the line of the river, under the circle. “We can’t go round west of the lake, like I thought. East takes us back to the kingsroad.” He moved the stick up to where the line and circle met. “Near as I recall, there’s a town here. The holdfast’s stone, and there’s a lordling got his seat there too, just a towerhouse, but he’ll have a guard, might be a knight or two. We follow the river north, should be there before dark. They’ll have boats, so I mean to sell all we got and hire us one.” He drew the stick up through the circle of the lake, from bottom to top. “Gods be good, we’ll find a wind and sail across the Gods Eye to Harrentown.”

We don’t know what hour the sun sets but it’s early autumn in Westeros and I’m guessing they’re about 7 to 8 hours from the south shore of the God’s Eye, at wagon and donkey travel-speed.

We have our first mention of Weasel among a heartbreaking instance of Arya’s remaining faith in humanity.

Hot Pie was being silly; it wouldn’t be ghosts at Harrenhal, it would be knights. Arya could reveal herself to Lady Whent, and the knights would escort her home and keep her safe. That was what knights did; they kept you safe, especially women. Maybe Lady Whent would even help the crying girl.

Sadly, we don’t hear who has been taking care of the little girl since her mother died. Arya makes no mention of it.

They reach the deserted town.

The black brother left ten to guard the wagons and the whimpery little girl, and split the rest of them into four groups of five to search the town.

There are no boats, they decide to spend the night at the holdfast. Lots of descriptions of the holdfast and the town. No mention of the little girl. Seriously, who is minding this little toddler?

When the food was ready, Arya ate a chicken leg and a bit of onion. No one talked much, not even Lommy. Gendry went off by himself afterward, polishing his helm with a look on his face like he wasn’t even there. The crying girl whimpered and wept, but when Hot Pie offered her a bit of goose she gobbled it down and looked for more.

Ah, at least someone is feeding her. Thank you, Hot Pie. Weasel is hungry, she wants to live.

Hot Pie went off and let her alone and Arya curled up on her pallet. She could hear the crying girl from the far side of the haven. I wish she’d just be quiet. Why does she have to cry all the time?

Getting some sister parallels in here.

Jeyne Poole had been confined with her, but Jeyne was useless. Her face was puffy from all her crying, and she could not seem to stop sobbing about her father.

"I'm certain your father is well," Sansa told her when she had finally gotten the dress buttoned right. "I'll ask the queen to let you see him." She thought that kindness might lift Jeyne's spirits, but the other girl just looked at her with red, swollen eyes and began to cry all the harder. She was such a child. (AGOT, Sansa IV)

Don’t like others crying around you when you’re scared, Stark Sisters, do you? There’s a Robb parallel, too.

"Rickon needs you," Robb said sharply. "He's only three, he doesn't understand what's happening. He thinks everyone has deserted him, so he follows me around all day, clutching my leg and crying. I don't know what to do with him." He paused a moment, chewing on his lower lip the way he'd done when he was little. "Mother, I need you too. I'm trying but I can't … I can't do it all by myself." His voice broke with sudden emotion, and Catelyn remembered that he was only fourteen. She wanted to get up and go to him, but Bran was still holding her hand and she could not move. (AGOT, Catelyn III)

They tend to have other characters reflect their inner emotions. That crying, overwhelmed child that they are trying to ingore: themselves.

Arya, likely through warg power, wakes up to warn the others of the imminent attack. Amory Lorch’s riders are putting the town to the torch. Arya is watching from the holdfast parapets.

Something bumped against her leg, and she glanced down to discover the crying girl clutching her. “Get away!” She wrenched her leg free. “What are you doing up here? Run and hide someplace, you stupid.” She shoved the girl away.

No room for soft feelings when you have to function to survive.

Lorch is not inclined to spare Yoren on account of being with the NW. They attack and throw torches, the barn has a secret tunnel and Yoren orders them to escape. But the barn is already on fire.

As they were running toward the barn, Arya spied the crying girl sitting in the middle of the chaos, surrounded by smoke and slaughter. She grabbed her by the hand and pulled her to her feet as the others raced ahead. The girl wouldn’t walk, even when slapped. Arya dragged her with her right hand while she held Needle in the left. Ahead, the night was a sullen red. The barn’s on fire, she thought. Flames were licking up its sides from where a torch had fallen on straw, and she could hear the screaming of the animals trapped within. Hot Pie stepped out of the barn. “Arry, come on! Lommy’s gone, leave her if she won’t come!” Stubbornly, Arya dragged all the harder, pulling the crying girl along. Hot Pie scuttled back inside, abandoning them . . . but Gendry came back, the fire shining so bright on his polished helm that the horns seemed to glow orange. He ran to them, and hoisted the crying girl up over his shoulder. “Run!”

In this moment of absolute mortal danger, Arya decides to take charge of the traumatized toddler to ensure her survival, stubbornly, violently even. Just like Yoren did with her. Hot Pie would have left her. Ouch. Gendry soon takes over, luckily.

The open trap was only a few feet ahead, but the fire was spreading fast, consuming the old wood and dry straw faster than she would have believed. Arya remembered the Hound’s horrible burned face. “Tunnel’s narrow,” Gendry shouted. “How do we get her through?” “Pull her,” Arya said. “Push her.” “Good boys, kind boys,” called Jaqen H’ghar, coughing. “Get these fucking chains off!” Rorge screamed. Gendry ignored them. “You go first, then her, then me. Hurry, it’s a long way.” “When you split the firewood,” Arya remembered, “where did you leave the axe?” “Out by the haven.” He spared a glance for the chained men. “I’d save the donkeys first. There’s no time.” “You take her!” she yelled. “You get her out! You do it!” The fire beat at her back with hot red wings as she fled the burning barn.

Even having grabbed the little girl and knowing there is a path to escaping, Arya cannot simply flee. She hands over the charge of Weasel to Gendry and proceeds to save the lives of the three captives from the black cells. Because Arya doesn’t just let people die. Not unless she wants them dead herself. A force of nature.

She gets the axe from outside in the battlezone, walks back into the blazing barn, throws the axe into the wagon and dives down to safety. The chapter ends thus:

Arya rolled headfirst into the tunnel and dropped five feet. She got dirt in her mouth but she didn’t care, the taste was fine, the taste was mud and water and worms and life. Under the earth the air was cool and dark. Above was nothing but blood and roaring red and choking smoke and the screams of dying horses. She moved her belt around so Needle would not be in her way, and began to crawl. A dozen feet down the tunnel she heard the sound, like the roar of some monstrous beast, and a cloud of hot smoke and black dust came billowing up behind her, smelling of hell. Arya held her breath and kissed the mud on the floor of the tunnel and cried. For whom, she could not say.

So that went from dire to catastrophic.

I love how this chapter was structured. It starts out quiet, the unease builds in the empty town, they create a moment of respite eating dinner in the perceived safety of the holdfast, but even there they have doomed themselves by lighting the cookfire. Then it escalates, the howling of the wolves, the phony negotiations, the blaze they saw in the distance the chapter before now comes to them, and everything sinks into cacophony, until the last second of dubious escape. Arya’s helpless tears are such a well-earned release of panic and tension. There is no safety, only momentary escape, only confusion. It’s monstrous.

She cries, like Weasel cried.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ACOK, Arya V (chapter 19)

We open to Arya high up on a tree observing a village on the Western lakeshore.

Someone’s there. Arya chewed her lip. All the other places they’d come upon had been empty and desolate. Farms, villages, castles, septs, barns, it made no matter. If it could burn, the Lannisters had burned it; if it could die, they’d killed it.

They have been traveling in the woods a while since the night of the blaze. Arya remembers them returning the next night, burying Yoren and joining up with three survivors. The route is North along the Western lakeshore.

Cutjack opened the door at Gendry’s shout, and when Kurz said they’d be better pressing on north than going back, Arya had clung to the hope that she still might reach Winterfell. (…)

To the east, Gods Eye was a sheet of sunhammered blue that filled half the world. Some days, as they made their slow way up the muddy shore (Gendry wanted no part of any roads, and even Hot Pie and Lommy saw the sense in that), Arya felt as though the lake were calling her. (…)

North along the shore, past a number of deserted rural settlings.

At the end of the day she would often sit on a rock and dangle her feet in the cool water. She had finally thrown away her cracked and rotted shoes. Walking barefoot was hard at first, but the blisters had finally broken, the cuts had healed, and her soles had turned to leather. The mud was nice between her toes, and she liked to feel the earth underfoot when she walked.

This process will have taken some time. A few weeks.

From up here, she could see a small wooded island off to the northeast.

While the Isle of Faces is not truly small, there is no mention of other wooded islands on the lake. This would place Arya less than halfway up the western shore of the lake. This would match the wagon travel speed of a few weeks from the kingsroad to the holdfast on the south shore. They are slow because they avoid roads, trudge through vegetation and mud, and because they are encumbered by injury and a toddler.

The food situation is not great.

She had broken her fast on some acorn paste and a handful of bugs. Bugs weren’t so bad when you got used to them. Worms were worse, but still not as bad as the pain in your belly after days without food. Finding bugs was easy, all you had to do was kick over a rock. Arya had eaten a bug once when she was little, just to make Sansa screech, so she hadn’t been afraid to eat another. Weasel wasn’t either, but Hot Pie retched up the beetle he tried to swallow, and Lommy and Gendry wouldn’t even try. Yesterday Gendry had caught a frog and shared it with Lommy, and, a few days before, Hot Pie had found blackberries and stripped the bush bare, but mostly they had been living on water and acorns.

The kids are on their own. Kurz the poacher was kind to them and gave them some survival training. But he died four days after they set off from an infected wound. The other two adults abandoned them directly after. Echoes of Dany with Drogo and the khalasar. Up and gone when he died, leaving behind the weak and the slaves.

Maybe Tarber and Cutjack figured they would stand a better chance without a gaggle of orphan boys to herd along. They probably would too, but that didn’t stop her hating them for leaving.

This is horrific. Four children between 14 and 9 years old, plus a little toddler. Sneakily abandoned by the two remaining adults. The Hansel and Gretel vibes are strong. Like Hansel and Gretel, they will be captured looking for food. Like Gretel, Arya will free them using cooking as a weapon, eventually. But that’s for later.

Very much of Arya’s chapters echoes Dany, actually. All from opposite sides. The violence, the abandonment, the eventual enslavement, the starving. The comparison to sheep. It all shows the bottom side of Dany’s war at Drogo’s side, and her travels through the desert with the baby dragons. Even Vaes Tolorro mirrors the Gods Eye town. Food and rest, and visitors that will lead them to another large settlement, eventually. But back to the kids in the woods.

Arya rejoins the others and we see Weasel again.

At the sound of her voice, Weasel came creeping out from the bushes. Lommy had named her that. He said she looked like a weasel, which wasn’t true, but they couldn’t keep on calling her the crying girl after she finally stopped crying. Her mouth was filthy. Arya hoped she hadn’t been eating mud again.

“Did you see people?” asked Gendry. “Mostly just roofs,” Arya admitted, “but some chimneys were smoking, and I heard a horse.” The Weasel put her arms around her leg, clutching tight. Sometimes she did that now.

So Weasel is all cried out. It’s been a month or so since she lost her family after her village was set ablaze, followed soon after by another such violent, fiery attack. She went from a stationary life in a vilage with her family, meal time, bed time, cuddles and playing, to a life of being scared, confused, hungry, dirty and constantly on the move.

Like Arya, Weasel stopped crying, like Arya, Weasel doesn’t mind mud in her mouth.

“If it’s a fishing village, they’d sell us fish, I bet,” said Hot Pie. The lake teemed with fresh fish, but they had nothing to catch them with. Arya had tried to use her hands, the way she’d seen Koss do, but fish were quicker than pigeons and the water played tricks on her eyes. “I don’t know about fish.” Arya tugged at the Weasel’s matted hair, thinking it might be best to hack it off. “There’s crows down by the water. Something’s dead there.” “Fish, washed up on shore,” Hot Pie said. “If the crows eat it, I bet we could.” “We should catch some crows, we could eat them,” said Lommy. “We could make a fire and roast them like chickens.”

I love these kids. They are hungry and grumpy and irritated and listless, in their way. They have no clue what to do and injured Lommy is the most anxious of them all. His leg was wounded and infection is setting in. He is the most helpless, and it makes him the most annoying of them. Yield, he says. Yield.

Like Yoren did to her, Arya contemplates hacking off Weasel’s hair. Matted, tangled. Like a bird’s nest, perchance?

A lovely parallel highlighting the role of privilege, with another taumatized orphan cared for by a Stark daughter:

Alayne smoothed his hair. Lady Lysa had never let the servants touch it, and after she had died Robert had suffered terrible shaking fits whenever anyone came near him with a blade, so it had been allowed to grow until it tumbled over his round shoulders and halfway down his flabby white chest. He does have pretty hair. If the gods are good and he lives long enough to wed, his wife will admire his hair, surely. That much she will love about him. (TWOW, Alayne I)

Arya is trying to care for this child, for her inner child, but she does it listlessly, no practice, no plan. She doesn’t talk to Weasel, at all. Numb.

“Whoever it is, you should yield to them,” Lommy whined. “I need some potion for my leg, it hurts bad.” “If we see any leg potion, we’ll bring it,” Gendry said. “Arry, let’s go, I want to get near before the sun is down. Hot Pie, you keep Weasel here, I don’t want her following.” “Last time she kicked me.” “I’ll kick you if you don’t keep her here.” Without waiting for an answer, Gendry donned his steel helm and walked off. Arya had to scamper to keep up. Gendry was five years older and a foot taller than she was, and long of leg as well. For a while he said nothing, just plowed on through the trees with an angry look on his face, making too much noise. But finally he stopped and said, “I think Lommy’s going to die.”

Ah.

Gendry is the “adult” in the group and he’s definitely going through his own “Rickon in tugging on my leg” phase, and presenting Arya with a variant of an offer Dany gets from Xaro in Meereen later: Abandon this doomed, starving lot and take your chances elsewhere. Unlike Dany, Arya is not actually responsible for any of these children, not even little Weasel. Unlike Dany, she is not even close to tempted.

“I’m sick of carrying him, and I’m sick of all his talk about yielding too. If he could stand up, I’d knock his teeth in. Lommy’s no use to anyone. That crying girl’s no use either.” “You leave Weasel alone, she’s just scared and hungry is all.” Arya glanced back, but the girl was not following for once. Hot Pie must have grabbed her, like Gendry had told him. “She’s no use,” Gendry repeated stubbornly. “Her and Hot Pie and Lommy, they’re slowing us down, and they’re going to get us killed. You’re the only one of the bunch who’s good for anything. Even if you are a girl.”

I am cutting out the following super hilarious exchange around revealing her identity, along with the horrible description of the village with the gibbet and the “SS rounds up the villagers for questioning and deportation” imagery.

Gendry gets himself captured and hauled into the warehouse with the other prisoners. Arya will leave no one behind. Arya will defend her pack.

Lommy and Hot Pie almost shit themselves when she stepped out of the trees behind them. “Quiet,” she told them, putting an arm around Weasel when the little girl came running up.

Hot Pie stared at her with big eyes. “We thought you left us.” He had his shortsword in hand, the one Yoren had taken off the gold cloak. “I was scared you was a wolf.”

She has her arms around Weasel, trying to comfort the child, keeping in touch with the last of her innocence. It’s her final interaction with Weasel. They thought she was a wolf. She will be.

Hot Pie glanced at Lommy, at Arya, at Lommy again. “I’ll come,” he said reluctantly. “Lommy, you keep Weasel here.” He grabbed the little girl by the hand and pulled her close. “What if the wolves come?” “Yield,” Arya suggested.

Iconic, badass quote. Heartbreaking context. Their rescue mission is unsurprisingly doomed before it truly gets going. Hot Pie “yields” at the first instance and Arya receives a terrible blow to the head. They take Needle. They are made to lead guards to Lommy and Weasel.

The man with the torch searched around under the trees. “Are you the last? Baker Boy said there was a girl.” “She ran off when she heard you coming,” Lommy said. “You made a lot of noise.” And Arya thought, Run, Weasel, run as far as you can, run and hide and never come back.

Hide, inner child. Run and hide, like Nymeria. Like the wolf.

So that is the last we see of little Weasel.

Realistically, she will be dead within days. Exposure, poisoning, injury, starvation unless she has absorbed enough from the others to gather enough bugs for herself. Or eaten by wolves. Plus the fear, the feeling of abandonment. It’s a grim picture. It becomes unbearable when you try and picture any toddler you know in the place of Weasel.

I am going to headcanon hardcore that Baby Weasel is going to be found by loving people and taken away to safety, wrapped up warm and fed and gently raised. Alternatively, she is kindly raised by the giant wolf pack. And somehow not freezing to death. *hands over ears* Lalalalaalalalalaalalala!

We end the chapter with one more death, one that we will see avenged four books later:

“Can you walk?” He sounded concerned. “No,” said Lommy. “You got to carry me.” “Think so?” The man lifted his spear casually and drove the point through the boy’s soft throat. Lommy never even had time to yield again. He jerked once, and that was all. When the man pulled his spear loose, blood sprayed out in a dark fountain. “Carry him, he says,” he muttered, chuckling.

The echoes are beautifully done.

"Well," she said, "I don't know how you'll get there, then." "You'll need to carry me." See? thought Mercy. You know your line, and so do I. "Think so?" asked Arya, sweetly. Raff the Sweetling looked up sharply as the long thin blade came sliding from her sleeve. She slipped it through his throat beneath the chin, twisted, and ripped it back out sideways with a single smooth slash. A fine red rain followed, and in his eyes the light went out. "Valar morghulis," Arya whispered, but Raff was dead and did not hear.

(TWOW, Mercy)

On the one hand, it’s poetic justice. On the other, it screams out that Arya is basically a child concentration camp survivor but the war is not over. She has had no peace, only ever more hiding, no play, only ever more working, no recovery, only ever more killing. She is in exile, still. But she will return home. And she will one day recover. But she will never ever forget.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In Arya VI, she chooses a new name herself for the first time. The concentration camp vibes are strong. Just read the chapter.

“Some farmer’s whelp, are you? Well, never you mind, girl, you have a chance to win a higher place in this world if you work hard. If you won’t work hard, you’ll be beaten. And what do they call you?” Arya dared not say her true name, but Arry was no good either, it was a boy’s name and they could see she was no boy. “Weasel,” she said, naming the first girl she could think of. “Lommy called me Weasel.”

Lommy and Weasel. Injured and young. No use. Dead and gone but not forgotten.

Ramsey names his dogs for the girls he killed. Sansa and Jon each want to name her future children for the family they lost. Arya names herself for the women and girls she cared about. Weasel. Cat. Nymeria, Nan. Even little Beth Cassel. Her kill list is one part of her. But the list of names that truly matters is another. She takes up their cause not in a hope for a peaceful future with personal happiness like Jon and Sansa but in the here and now, within the broiling whirlwind of injustices. But the very first name is for the little girl, for herself, essentially.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In conclusion:

Little Weasel is, to me, a personification of Arya’s inner child, as she struggles with her loss of innocence and the abandonment by adults. Because she shows up when they encounter their first hardcore warcrime scene. Arya tries to ignore her wailing and pays little attention to her, but attaches her to her hopes for help from Lady Whent and her Knights. She doesn’t take charge of Weasel until their adult caretakers, such as they are, become unavailable by way of being horribly murdered in battle. She is not really equipped to care for her, but she tries and she is determined not to abandon her. When she has disappeared, Arya doesn’t despair, she wishes her well, she has some remnant of faith and she attaches it to Weasel. Off into the wild, to escape certain death, perchance to survive, like she sent off Nymeria.

It is no accident that Arya names herself Weasel when she enters the concentration camp hell that is Harrenhal, and it is a truly briliant stroke that her only direct memory of Weasel after that is when Arya enters service in the House of Black and White in AFFC, Arya II, which seems more empowering but draws up many comparisons in her mind to Harrenhal. The inner child has run off, but her spirit remains hovering over Arya, never quite fading.

#asoiaf #arya stark #weasel #war crimes #inner child #gendry waters #hot pie #lommy greenhands #yoren #ACOK

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brave-braveman · 4 years ago

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PS chp 2: The Vanishing Glass

So, a quick heads up. Upon rereading I realised there is really only one point to the whole chapter and that is to firmly establish how badly the Dursleys treat Harry and how lonely and miserable Harry is. That’s it. Because of that this post is going to be very focused on my critiques of the Dursleys and their treatment of Harry.

- The first sign that things are amiss occurs within the first paragraph. ‘The room held no sign at all that another boy lived in the house, too.’ The Dursleys are immediately shown to be neglectful of Harry - maybe this isn’t considered to be that bad when compared with what we learn later but imagine living in a house for ten years where your presence is not only ignored but outright denied in terms of personal items. There are no photos but ‘no sign’ means no drawings on the fridge, no shoes by the door, no school notices with Harry’s name on them. That alone is damaging to a child as it conditions them to think they have no place in their home with their family which is likely to translate into a lack of self-worth in other areas of life.

- Next up, the cupboard. As a child it never clicked for me just how awful this was. I was young when I read this book and while I hated the Dursleys, I never once made the connection to abuse. In fact, no one ever pointed it out to me, no teachers or parents, which is in itself shocking. Now though, it is heartbreaking. And yet I have actually seen people trying to defend the Dursleys actions, saying it wasn’t their fault. This is something I want to address but I’ll do that at the end. The cupboard itself goes to show how little Harry is accepted into his family. He is shoved away, out of sight, in a place normally reserved for storing things one doesn’t want out on display. No wonder he is so small and skinny.

- ‘And don’t ask questions’. What an awful rule to live by. But I do have to say it does explain certain things Harry does later in the series. This is a child who is very curious, who has all these questions about things he sees but is unable to ask them as he is expressly forbidden by his aunt and uncle. No wonder Harry doesn’t go to adults for help. It is literally ingrained in him to not ask questions. This also extends to Harry’s academic curiosity, or rather the lack thereof. he never raises his hand in class despite the fact that we are shown that Harry is actually smart ad can develop a decent interest in his studies once he is encouraged to (PoA ad HBP come to mind). Something else the Dursleys took away from him.

- So Harry is woken and put to work on cooking breakfast while Dudley is opening his many birthday parents. I mentioned in my notes for chapter one that the Dursleys were already setting out to be terrible parents before Harry arrived one the scene but this moment honestly highlights how they have gone the easiest route in earning their childs affection - by buying him. They want Dudley to feel like he is number one - which is a problem in and of itself - but the way they go about it is damaging to both boys.

- Harry being able to remember so much about his very early life is... kind of scary. Yes, the flying motorbike dream is sweet because its a tie to both Hagrid and Sirius but then we see Harry remembers the light of the killing curse which is heartbreaking. Of course, knowing the whole story, this ability to remember something from when he was so young does raise some interesting questions on just how he remembers so much. This is something that will come up again in PoA.

- Harry’s childish enjoyment of the zoo is so sad. He gets the cheapest ice lolly and views it as the greatest gift and later even admonishes himself for not realising things were going too well. This is a child who is not used to things going his way and so when he has an enjoyable afternoon he actually tells himself off for basically letting his guard down.

- The conversation with the snake is amusing, sweet, concerning and so, so in character for Harry. He connects to a creature locked away all alone which is probably the most telling part of Harry’s view on his childhood so far. He comforts himself with the fact that at least he can leave his cupboard but that doesn’t take away from the fact that Harry is painfully lonely. He has a family that looks down on him and treats him like a freak and has no friends at school. The fact that Harry decides to keep this snake company and then, subconsciously, frees the snake from its enclosure really paints this scene as an attempt by Harry to comfort himself. The chapter ends with Harry being locked up once more which highlights that, unlike the snake, Harry isn’t free from his captivity. How fitting is it that it is a man who loves all animals that does rescue Harry?

- And so we end the chapter with Harry locked up in his cupboard and thinking back on how he came to be with the Dursleys. He admits that he has no idea what his parents look like and though it’s not something that is explicitly stated, it is hinted at that Harry didn’t know his parents names either. He thinks on how he used to think that someone might come and take him away and honestly, this is probably the line that hurts me the most. The fact that when he was little Harry held onto the hope that someone out there must care about him and want him and the truly sad thing is that there was someone out there. I can’t help but wonder if young Harry had some residual memory of Sirius, maybe not a clear memory but just a feeling that someone is missing. The other things about this line that hurts me is the fact that is says when Harry ‘was younger’ he used to think this. That means that Harry lost hope that anyone would come take him away. He has resigned himself to being stuck with the Dursleys until he was 18. He truly thinks that no one in the world could possibly want him.

- The very last paragraph is a great way to end the chapter. By stating that at school Harry has no one is such a good point to make here as we know, this isn’t going to last. In fact, it’s going to be at a school that Harry will make his greatest friends.

Other Observations:

- Mrs Figg has many, many cats and many photo albums of her cats - The first mention of Marge and its to say she hates Harry - Piers Polkiss is described as looking like a rat :/ - Harry may have apparated onto his schools roof. That or he flew which, as we learn later, is something his mother did - Mrs Figg’s living room smells of cabbages (whhhyyyy???)

Favourite Quote: When he had been younger, Harry had dreamed and dreamed of some unknown relation coming to take him away.

#reading harry potter #my hp read #harry potter #the dursley family #arabella figg #ps

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writing-prompts-for-friends · 5 years ago

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Notes from Robert McKee’s “Story” 13: Premise, Theme, and How to Discover Both

Heads up: we’re in for a long but absolutely essential post for any writer or creator anywhere. This post summarizes a section of Robert McKee’s book Story, specifically the section that tells you how to determine the core message of your story. Not the plot, but what you want the plot to mean to your audience.

All stories need a premise and a controlling idea to guide them. Without one or the other, you will have a meandering mess that will leave readers asking themselves afterwards, “What did I just read and why did I bother to read it?”

Premise

Simply put, “premise” is whatever inspired you to create your story.

Quite often we start writing a story based on a “what if...?” premise. When I was in junior high, my parents went to a Marilyn Manson concert (Why are they cooler than me?) and I thought to myself, “What if they never came back? How would my life change?” Not that I wanted them not to come back lol. But that was the impetus for the first novel I ever wrote and finished.

Premise doesn’t only have to come from “What if” questions. It can come from anything. An intriguing commercial, a daydream, a nightmare, something that happened to you or a friend, a line in a poem. Doesn’t matter. Whatever creates that initial spark--that’s your Premise.

Once you have your Premise, you can begin writing. But realize that whatever inspired you to write in the first place does not have to be kept in the final product. A Premise is not precious. It is the kindling that starts the fire, and if the path of the story veers away from the Premise, then so be it.

“The problem is not to start writing, but to keep writing and renewing inspiration. We rarely know where were going; writing is discovery.”

☝ Probably one of my favorite quotes from this book so far.

In the example of that horrid novel I wrote in junior high, the story started out with the protagonist’s parents going out for dinner and passing away in an accident on the way home. But upon their death she learned that she was actually a government experiment and there’s a big magical phenomenon her secret government agent parents were trying to solve and now the task has fallen to her.... Ugh I was 13 and at the height of my 3edgy5me phase so please don’t judge me lol. What I’m trying to say is that the premise of “What would happen if my parents never came home?” quickly evolved into something else, and that was okay.

Structure as Rhetoric

“Make no mistake: While a story’s inspiration may be a dream and its final effect aesthetic emotion, a work moves from an open premise to a fulfilling climax only when the writer is possessed by serious thought. For an artist must have not only ideas to express, but ideas to prove. Expressing an idea, in the sense of exposing it, is never enough. The audience must not just understand; it must believe.

Storytelling is the creative demonstration of truth. A story is the living proof of an idea, the conversion of idea to action. A story’s event structure is the means by which you first express, then prove your idea...without explanation.”

Honestly, McKee says things so well sometimes I feel that i have no choice but to simply quote him. My apologies.

McKee believes that master storytellers never rely on cheap exposition or dialogue that explicitly explains their idea. If you need to have a paragraph of prose explaining how good always triumphs over evil, or if you need to bad guy to say, “And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren’t for you nosy kids!” then you need to refine your storytelling.

The reader should be able to feel your idea being built brick by brick, act by act, until it all becomes crystallized in the emotional climax.

Controlling Idea (a.k.a. “Theme”)

McKee dislikes the word “theme,” as the so-called themes of “war,” “love,” “poverty,” etc. are too vague. Instead he likes to use the term “controlling idea,” and defines it thus:

“ A Controlling Idea may be expressed in a single sentence describing how and why life undergoes change from one condition of existence at the beginning to another at the end.

A true theme is not a word but a sentence--one clear, coherent sentence that expresses a story’s irreducible meaning. The Controlling Idea shapes the writer’s strategic choices. It will serve as a tool to guide your aesthetic choices toward what is appropriate or inappropriate in your story, toward what is expressive of your Controlling Idea and may be kept versus what is irrelevant to it and must be cut.

The more beautifully you shape your work around one clear idea, the more meanings audiences will discover in your film as they take your idea and follow its implications into every aspect of their lives. Conversely, the more ideas you try to pack into a story, the more they implode upon themselves, until the work collapses into a rubble of tangential notions, saying nothing.”

So what is the “equation” of the Controlling Idea?

Value + Cause

To recap, values are the universal qualities of human experience that may shift from positive to negative, or negative to positive, from one moment to the next. Some examples of values are justice/injustice, alive/dead, happy/sad, courage/cowardice, etc.

Cause is what makes that value shift from one pole to the other. It is the primary reason that the life or world of the protagonist has changed to its positive or negative value.

McKee shows the Controlling Idea for various famous films and I will write them out here.

IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (an up-ending Crime Story) Value: Justice is restored... Cause: ...because a perceptive black outsider sees the truth of white perversion.

MISSING (a down-ending Political Thriller) Value: Tyranny prevails... Cause: ...because it’s supported by a corrupt CIA.

GROUNDHOG DAY (a positive-ending Education Plot) Value: Happiness fills our lives... Cause: ...when we learn to love unconditionally.

DANGEROUS LIAISONS (a negative-ending Love Story) Value: Hatred destroys... Cause: ...us when we fear the opposite sex.

How to Find Your Work’s Controlling Idea

I’m going to preface this by saying that i have some personal misgivings on McKee’s statements, but I’ll voice my opinion after I’ve summarized his.

McKee tells us that we find the controlling idea by doing the following:

“Looking at your ending, ask: As a result of this climatic action, what value, positively or negatively charged, is brought into the world of my protagonist?

Next, tracing backward from this climax, digging to the bedrock, ask: What is the chief cause, force, or means by which this value is brought into his world?

The sentence you compose from the answers to those two questions becomes your Controlling Idea.

In other words, the story tells you its meaning; you do not dictate meaning to the story. You do not draw action from idea, rather idea from action. For no matter your inspiration, ultimately the story embeds its Controlling Idea within the final climax, and when this event speaks its meaning, you will experience one of the most powerful moments in the writing life--Self-Recognition: The Story Climax mirrors your inner self, and if your story is from the very best sources within you, more often than not you’ll be shocked by what you see reflected in it.”

I have mixed feelings about McKee’s opinion here. It feels like he’s telling us to leave the Controlling Idea up to our subconscious, that it is wrong to start out knowing the Controlling Idea and plotting out a story that aligns with it. But is it bad to do so?

For example, Neil Gaiman has stated that when he set out to write Coraline, he did so with the specific intention to tell children that “When you’re scared but you still do it anyways, that’s brave.” In other words, he had the Controlling Idea in place from the start. And it’s a great work.

On the other hand, a couple years ago I wrote a fanfiction on a whim. It was something that came into my head and I churned out all 200,000 words in about two months with no particular Controlling Idea. But later on, when I re-read it, I realized that the whole thing had been me working through the duality I feel as a white foreigner living in Japan who is fluent in Japanese and has adopted Japanese culture, as well as the frustration and isolation at the xenophobia/othering I encounter on a daily basis. Judging by the climax of the story, the Controlling Idea was, “You will be accepted...when you learn to show each persona (Japanese and American) at the right time every time.”

This Controlling Idea does match my true feelings on the matter. However, I really wrote this story with absolutely zero direction, and i feel that perhaps I could have turned this story into something better if I had had an awareness of the Controlling Idea as I wrote it.

McKee adds one more important note to discovering the Controlling Idea:

“If a plot works out exactly as you first planned, you’re not working loosely enough to give room to your imagination and instincts. Your story should surprise you again and again. Beautiful story design is a combination of the subject found, the imagination at work, and the mind loosely but wisely executing the craft.”

So, in other words...

Your Controlling Idea is like the Pirate Code. It exists and it is honored, but not always in the ways that you expect/intend.

Source: McKee, Robert. Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting. York: Methuen, 1998. Print

#creative writing #writeblr #writing #write #writing inspriation #writing inspo #creative writing methodology #creative writing theory #writing resources #writing reference #robert mckee #writing novels #writing fiction #writing fantasy #writing theme #determining theme #writing prompts for friends notes on story #long post

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coffereadsasoiaf · 5 years ago

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Thoughts on ACoK Dany II and III

ACoK Dany III actually reminded me about the passage in ACoK Dany II that I wanted to talk about ages ago. So, she has just arrived to Qarth and while taking a bath, she has the following thoughts:

“The thought of home disquieted her. If her sun-and-stars had lived, he would have led his khalasar across the poison water and swept away her enemies, but his strength had left the world. Her bloodriders remained, sworn to her for life and skilled in slaughter, but only in the ways of the horselords. The Dothraki sacked cities and plundered kingdoms, they did not rule them. Dany had no wish to reduce King’s Landing to a blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts. She had supped enough on tears. I want to make my kingdom beautiful, to fill it with fat men and pretty maids and laughing children. I want my people to smile when they see me ride by, the way Viserys said they smiled for my father. But before she could do that she must conquer. (…)

How could she hope to overthrow such men? When Khal Drogo had lived, men trembled and made him gifts to stay his wrath. If they did not, he took their cities, wealth and wives and all. But his khalasar had been vast, while hers was meager. Her people had followed her across the red waste as she chased her comet, and would follow her across the poison water too, but they would not be enough. Even her dragons might not be enough. Viserys had believed that the realm would rise for its rightful king… but Viserys had been a fool, and fools believe in foolish things.

Her doubts made her shiver. (…) As the handmaids toweled her dry and wrapped her in a sandsilk robe, Dany’s thoughts went to the three who had sought her out in the City of Bones. The Bleeding Star led me to Qarth for a purpose. Here I will find what I need, if I have the strength to take what is offered, and the wisdom to avoid the traps and snares. If the gods mean for me to conquer, they will provide, they will send me a sign, and if not… if not…”

A Clash of Kings, Daenerys II

When I first read this I was intrigued because (as far as I remembered on the spot) this is one of the first time Dany explicitly:

states her goal as the future ruler of the Seven Kingdoms (which no other contender to the throne has done yet - of course the thing is we have a pov for her and not for the others but still)

acknowledges what getting to the Iron Throne could (and, as a consequence, what she is willing to do to get there)

gives her reasoning as to why she thinks she should sit on it in the first place

I had some things I wanted to make note of about these three points, I’ll put them under a read more because I tend to ramble a lot. (Please keep in mind that I have not read further than ACoK Dany III so everything I’ll say is strictly based on what I’ve read so far).

So as to point 1, she says she wants her kingdom to be beautiful (since she’s clearly fascinated with Qarth I think she means for it to be prosperous and thriving), with fat men = people who are not starving (might be cause she just risked that in her last chapter), pretty maids (??? she has an aesthetic I guess) and laughing children = kids who are raised happily (unlike herself) and in good conditions. And she wants to be loved by her people, like she thinks her father was (probably not true, but Viserys wasn’t the most trustworthy guy around). So: a flourishing kingdom where the people have enough to eat and the innocents are safe and happy. Which is great on paper but also a pretty idealistic and somewhat childish vision, and I think it comes across especially because of the terms she uses to describe it (fat, pretty, beautiful); this makes a lot of sense to me since she is fourteen and (despite some very adult-like experience she had to endure) very much still a kid.

The most interesting though is point 2: she seems aware that the Dothraki way of raising funds is based on “sacking cities and plundering kingdoms” and she says she doesn’t want to reduce the Seven Kingdoms to a “blackened ruin full of unquiet ghosts”. But a couple of lines later, after thinking of how she would want a beautiful and peaceful kingdom where people loved her, she thinks: “But before she could do that she must conquer.” Then, in the next paragraph, she thinks of how Drogo’s support would help her in defeating her political enemies now (she mentions Robert, Ned, Tywin and Jaime): “When Khal Drogo had lived, men trembled and made him gifts to stay his wrath. If they did not, he took their cities, wealth and wives and all. But his khalasar had been vast, while hers was meager”.

So when I first read it I was like: this is the most Machiavellian* thing I’ve ever read, meaning that it’s a very “the end justify the means” type of mindset (*not using the term in a negative way btw). And she seems to lament not having Drogo to help her (which, in her own words, would mean conquering cities, stealing wealth, abusing women). But I was also a little confused because back in AGoT, even though she clearly accepted the support of the Dothraki and the idea of what they would do to help her cause (pillaging and raping and so on), when she was actually confronted with the reality of it she actually acted to stop it, putting herself in somewhat of a politically dangerous position, because she was defying the “rights” of the Dothraki warriors. So she actively used her influence over Drogo to save the girls from raping, despite being told by Ser Jorah (who can choke), her servants and bodyguards that she was offending Drogo’s men, going against their culture, dishonoring them and so on. Now, she was clearly too late and she doesn’t realize that before she stepped in to defend these women, they had already been raped multiple time and lost their families and homes because of a Dothraki attack that was initiated to help her get to the Iron Throne (which is what Mirri Maz Duur then tells her, but Dany doesn’t register because she is traumatized by the miscarriage and Drogo’s state and she quickly focuses on Mirri Maz Duur “betrayal”, by default refusing to properly listen to her point). She then burns Mirri alive and never (as far as I remember) reconsiders her opinion on her, maintaining that she was a traitor who killed Drogo and her child even though Dany tried to help her escape rape. Dany is very much in the wrong here, but I do think this is heavily influenced by 1) the trauma she has just gone through and also 2) her young age. The fact that when faced with the consequences of the attack on innocents she would act to protect them, but then she would fail to see that that is very much the type of support she had accepted from Drogo, reminds me of how some kids don’t have a proper grasp on real life consequences, so they end up doing stupid stuff because they can’t see the problematic aspect in the abstract concept but then when faced with the reality of their behaviour they might actually correct their actions (of course, in this world “stupid stuff” is like “allowing people to get murdered or assaulted” but we gotta work with what we’ve got I guess). In Dany’s case (until now at least) I see it as a sign of immaturity rather than straight up ruthlessness, as it is for Tywin or Bailon (adults who clearly know exactly what they are allowing, but accept it without blinking an eye) or even (big sigh) Theon who in this moment in the story is leading a type of attack on the Stony Shore which is comparable to a Dothraki one, and while Theon is also very young and does indulge in a lot fo self-denial, he doesn’t really do anything to help or stop people being murdered or women being raped (sigh again). Anyway, I’m intrigued to see if/how she will develop her thoughts on this issue.

So about point 3, I read that quote and immediately thought about Dany and Stannis being the only two IT contenders who ground their claim on both birth right (they descend from the only two dynasties that sat on the Iron Throne, although to be fair the Baratheon one was pretty short in comparison) and religion, with the significant difference that while Stannis seems to be strategically using the religion of R’hllor as a political mean to strengthen his claim (without really believing in any of it), Dany actually believes she has been sent on a mission by the gods:

The Bleeding Star led me to Qarth for a purpose. Here I will find what I need, if I have the strength to take what is offered, and the wisdom to avoid the traps and snares. If the gods mean for me to conquer, they will provide, they will send me a sign, and if not... if not...”

This probably comes from what she has experienced so far: on one hand, she believes Targaryens are the rightful rulers of Westeros (something Viserys drilled into her brain since she was a toddler) and, on the other, she has done the impossible and given birth to dragons, magical creatures who were believed to be long dead. What is also really interesting, though, is that she is not entirely sure of it, she has doubts and even admits the possibility of being wrong (if not... if not...). And furthermore, in ACoK Dany III we actually get another little bit:

“Yet even crowned, I am a beggar still, Dany thought. I have become the most splendid beggar in the world, but a beggar all the same. She hated it, as her brother must have. All those years of running from city to city one step ahead of the Usurper’s knives, pleading for help from archons and princes and magisters, buying our food with flattery. He must have known how they mocked him. Small wonder he turned so angry and bitter. In the end it had driven him mad. It will do the same to me if I let it. Part of her would have liked nothing more than to lead her people back to Vaes Tolorro, and make the dead city bloom. No, that is defeat. I have something Viserys never had. I have the dragons. The dragons are all the difference.”

A Clash of Kings, Daenerys III

I was surprised to read that she actually seems to prefer the idea of getting back to Vaes Tolorro, with her little following, and abandon the IT quest for good. But then she gets “back on track” thinking “no that is defeat” and that her dragons are gonna make possible for her something that was never possible for Viserys, of whom she has at this point a pretty realistic idea (btw, she calls him mad!!! I feel it’s pretty relevant). This almost feels like she feels obligated to set forth for Westeros because it’s her duty to do so as the last Targaryen who was gifted with real dragons by the gods (which also makes sense with the fact that in the previous paragraph she thinks that the weight of the crown she was gifted made her neck ache), as if she wouldn’t necessarily want it herself and would be content to keep living with her khalasar in a place she could make flourish. Don’t know if that’s like a thing, but it’s a vibe that I never got from the show, so I thought I would make a note of it for the future cause I tend to forget stuff a lot.

In conclusion, the good thing is that even if the Qarth plot is still kinda boring, at least it’s giving me some food for thought lol.

#oh god i had to check this for grammar and orthography like a thousand times i feel like i'm giving birth #the silver lining is that now i'm 80% sure of how necessarily is spelled #catch this being totally refuted in the next dany chapter #daenerys targaryen #acok daenerys iii #acok daenerys ii

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reading-while-queer · 5 years ago

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Red, White, and Royal Blue, Casey McQuiston

Rating: Great Read Genre: Romance, Coming Out Representation: -Bi main character -Gay love interest -Mexican American/Mixed race main character -Other LGBTQ side characters Note: Characters have explicit sex; this is not YA and definitely not appropriate for younger teens Trigger warnings: Sex under the influence of alcohol (not in a predatory context, but still), forced outing, attempted rape (talked about, not in scene), drug abuse (not in scene), parent death, rare instances of homophobia, racism, xenophobia.

Red, White, and Royal Blue is the story of Alex Claremont-Diaz, a 21 year old student with political dreams: to climb the rungs as intern, staffer, and finally Senator by 30. And his mother just happens to be the President of the United States. Alex likes politics, but he can’t stand the fakeness of it all - and his frustrations come to be centralized around one man, Prince Henry of Wales. Henry is only two years older than Alex, but while they play similar roles in life, and occasionally collide at international events, Henry is cold and aloof, never stooping to befriend his American counterpart.

This is where the novel begins: a rivalry come to a head at the royal wedding of Henry’s older brother, Phillip. After a PR nightmare, Alex and Henry are forced by their respective handlers to play nice, or else. And so a romance begins.

I really enjoyed Red, White, and Royal Blue. Underneath its fun trope-y beginning, it becomes a drama that addresses queer sexuality on a more thoughtful level. It deals with coming out in an interesting way, since the stakes are global. If Alex comes out, what does that mean for his mom’s bid for re-election? And for Henry, who doesn’t have the luxury of disappearing from the public eye after another four years, is coming out too costly? This isn’t your average coming out story, but one of celebrity (especially unasked-for celebrity). And, in fact, it isn’t entirely a coming out story at all. “Coming out” is hardly the most pressing issue when Alex and Henry struggle to have a private relationship in the first place, both of them plagued by paparazzi and all their movements tracked. Henry needs a political excuse to be in the same country as Alex at all, and vice versa. This was such an interesting, high stakes spin, that Red, White, and Royal Blue really felt like a new, fresh story.

McQuiston’s writing definitely does her story justice - the characters feel like real 20-somethings, despite the display of artifice they give the cameras. The writing is timely, too - Alex’s speech patterns are very 2019 Gen Z. This book will age well, not because it could be imagined as taking place at some future point (the 2020 presidential campaign features strongly, after all), but because it is so unapologetically of its time. McQuiston may be writing an alternate reality where Alex’s mom, Ellen Claremont (not Hilary Clinton), made the bid for president in 2016 - and won - but McQuiston still addresses the issues we are dealing with today, just in different ways. A Trump-like character is Claremont’s challenger for 2020, for example, and an email leak winkingly brings to mind the nightmare of 2016. But apart from these nods to root us in a familiar world, this is an alternate presidency where nothing seems to be happening at all - perhaps the greatest fantasy of LGBTQ readers today. No war, no oil pipelines, no mention of policy whatsoever.

That isn’t to say that McQuiston entirely turns a blind eye. As a fuck-you to current administration, McQuiston has Alex notice, almost with wonder, how he, a Mexican-American, can put his feet up on a White House railing where racist presidents have stood. He’s aware of how plenty of White Americans today would be frothing at the mouth at the thought. In this great escapist fantasy, all is calm, though the tempest is beating at the door.

I thought that Alex’s Mexican identity was handled gracefully in the novel - he’s half White, parents divorced, with his White mother the President, his Mexican American father a Senator. His race isn’t something that’s mentioned once and never again, or worse, a “romantic” descriptor to sexualize and exotify. It’s something Alex has to think about and mediate as a public figure - he has learned that he doesn’t necessarily poll well with White “family values” America. His White mom being divorced, having non-White children living in the White House, this is all part of her “image.” Alex has worked overtime to become popular anyway - he charms the camera as easily as he charms congressional representatives. He manipulates his image purposefully, playing up his friendship with his ex-girlfriend Nora in order to tease the press that they might be back together. America eats it up.

But McQuiston makes sure that being Mexican-American isn’t something that Alex is working past, or overcoming. While racism is something he thinks about and must navigate, Alex loves himself. He loves getting together with “Los Bastardos,” his dad and family friend/congressman Rafael Luna, to have a couple beers and talk shit in Spanish and English. He loves making Mexican food with his dad. He is especially passionate about Texas, his home state, and fixing harmful policy there.

This is only the stage on which the romance stands, but suffice it to say that McQuiston has spared no detail to make Alex’s life real outside of his relationship with Prince Henry. When the reader is so invested in the reality of the characters’s lives, it only makes the romance more cutting, more true. The emotional climax of their relationship was so heartbreaking I cried through a good ten pages. McQuiston knows how to write emotion with lightning strike power and accuracy (which serves her well when writing sex scenes, too), and it is through emotion that McQuiston accomplishes her most crucial goal as a novelist: Red, White, and Royal Blue is a page-turner, at once cathartic, steamy, star-crossed, honest, and dramatic. Reading this novel just feels good. Red, White, and Royal Blue is a step above the rest, and should be a staple for LGBTQ romance fans.

Despite McQuiston’s resounding success with this novel, the arc of Alex and Henry’s romance did ring a little odd. Not bad, just odd. McQuiston starts off holding the railing, so to speak. The romance begins with Alex hating Henry, so much so that he tells him to his face, despite being charged, as the President’s son, with grace and diplomacy. The characters themselves compare their dynamic to Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter, a comparison that was perhaps more a window into the author’s taste than strictly in-character. Then, after a brief weekend of faking being friends for the camera… they become friends for real, texting each other about their lives. Their supposed “hatred” becomes teasing ribbing and name-calling, which you can’t read as anything else but flirting. This is a 400 page book, and already in the first 70 pages the blurb is out of date. Red, White, and Royal Blue isn’t really about a couple who start out hating each other and gradually come to realize each other’s qualities, though it starts off on that path. McQuiston could have packed a lot more character development into that “fake friends” weekend and a lot less in the texts and emails that came later, for a smoother transition from the narrative as advertised to the story she ends up telling - an even better romance, in my mind.

The better romance happens after the rather rushed arc of the first romance - McQuiston lets go of the railing, so to speak. And though I won’t spoil it, this later arc deals with themes of sex versus love, the unique quandary of the forbiddenness of their relationship, and the fact that neither Henry nor Alex want to be in love with each other, because the consequences of taking their relationship seriously are global, public, and terrifying. Where McQuiston starts in slapstick, trope-y romance, she ends up in something heart-wrenching and real. The tonal dissonance between the two is a little awkward, and the former is less developed than the latter, leading to an imbalanced feeling to the novel as a whole. However, where the novel ends up going is such good writing that I can’t fault the book - I think it’s an excellent read, beginning to end, its imbalances only visible once you reach the other side and look back.

There is so much to talk about in this 400-page book, a book I stayed up until 3 in the morning to finish, that it won’t all fit into one review. It’s tempting to derail for another three paragraphs so I can talk about the explicit discussion of colonialism, a powerful metaphor behind both Alex and Henry’s identities. I could go on about how Alex’s safe place is his father’s lake house, where he can be explicitly Mexican and connected to culture, food, and family. In contrast, Henry’s safe place is a British museum of stolen statues, cold and nonliving, but still the only tie between himself, a royal descended from the royals who stole them, and the distant artists and ancient cultural figures depicted, whom Henry identifies as explicitly gay, even if that knowledge is purposefully forgotten. It is a biting comment on the cultural black holes that are White imperialist nations, attempting to fill the emptiness themselves with culture pillaged elsewhere. Henry is aware of it, and critical of it, but he is still a descendant of it.

Red, White, and Royal Blue will leave you with a lot to pick apart. It earns some criticism, perhaps, from its overly sunny faith in definitely-not-Hilary President Claremont. And, if you care about such things, there is the occasional moment of tonal dissonance where McQuiston’s realistic style butts heads with cartoon tropes (characters throwing food at one another to punctuate a point, for example) versus styles of speech recognizable from The West Wing (which come off as rather uncalled for and startling when no one else in the room is threatening over the top bodily harm). But as much as one with an overactive mind might give pause over just how realistic it is for the sheltered Prince of Wales to have leftist ideas about dismantling British imperialism (now THAT is a dreamy fantasy), McQuiston also delivers a depth and breadth of material that is resoundingly good, and will have you walking away not only feeling good, but recommending Red, White, and Royal Blue to anyone who will listen. This is a book to take a chance on.

For more from Casey McQuiston, check out her website here.

#red white and royal blue #casey mcquiston #bi #great read #romance #coming out #protagonist of color #reviews only #not ya

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yasuda-yoshiya · 6 years ago

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Hey there. Sorry to bother you. I read your write up on The House in Fata Morgana and I really love how you go into such detail on the second half, especially with The Maid. I agree with her being wasted potential, especially when Michel’s love is enough to erase centuries of psychological and emotional trauma and amnesia in the span of one minute. My question is, how would you handle the Maid’s arc while keeping the setup the same? This got long, sorry. But I have a lot of thoughts about her.

Aaahhh, it’s absolutely no bother at all; thank you for getting in touch! It’s great to hear from you, and I’m very grateful for the kind words about my incoherent babbling. Giselle/the Maid is honestly one of my absolute favourite fictional characters and it’s really hard to find any real discussion or meta around her within Fata’s tiny English-speaking fandom, so I’m always super excited to hear from other people who feel the same way about her!

Okay, this got really long so I’ll stick it under a cut:

I have actually put a lot of thought into how the Maid’s story could have been handled and resolved better (and even drafted elaborate AU fanfic about it, for that matter), so I’ll try and put some of that into words here. Prior to door 8, I honestly feel like the broad structure of the Maid’s arc as it exists ingame does actually hit most of the major emotional notes that it needs to; it just rushes through each of them so fast and gives them so little narrative weight that they’re not really able to have the impact that they should, especially when door 8 then goes on to completely ignore the whole thing. So for the most part, I’d lean more towards heavily fleshing out the existing content rather than making any real changes to the structure of the plot overall. Door 8 is the point where I feel that her writing completely falls apart and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.

As for how exactly I’d want to flesh things out, the main thing I’d want to do is to heavily extend door 6 - both the backstory itself and the conflict between Michel and Giselle in the aftermath. As I think I said in that big old write-up, to me the whole door felt more like a quick checklist of events more than a real fleshed out narrative.The way I see it, Giselle’s character arc is fundamentally about her relentlessly trying to hold on to her optimism and the core of her “self” in the face of traumatic experiences - to not let her suffering take away her smile, her energy and positivity and upbeat personality, the things she saw as defining who she was before all of this happened to her. This is portrayed very well throughout door 5, where we see Giselle very consciously deciding multiple times to try and put her suffering behind her and start over from a clean slate with positive expectations - first when she’s sent to the mansion with Michel, then at the village with Amedee, and then again when she reunites with Michel - and it’s also very effectively conveyed that the effort of constantly keeping up that positive attitude and trying to block out the scars of her trauma puts a significant strain on her (one that Michel tries to ease by explicitly accepting her scars as a part of her and telling her that she doesn’t need to hide them from him).

What ends up breaking Giselle and forcing her to detach from herself entirely and become the Maid, then, is the feeling that she’s finally collapsed under that strain and “lost herself” to the point of being unrecognisable as Giselle, of having lost everything she used to define herself by. The fact that even “Michel” doesn’t recognise her any more, the fact that she herself is barely able to keep a hold on her memories of the past and who she used to be, her body becoming cold and lifeless and losing its old warmth and energy, and the weight of the years slowly wearing down her ability to stay positive and keep believing in a happy ending - all of those pressures end up breaking her self-confidence down to the point that she can’t manage to see herself as “Giselle” any more, and the burden of even trying to keep being “Giselle” becomes too much.

In that state of mind, it’s no surprise that the alternate story that Morgana tells her - that the Maid was always just a lonely witch haunting the mansion, an impostor who became fascinated by the real Giselle and Michel, and deluded herself into believing that their story was hers - becomes so much easier to believe in. Of course she’s failing so hard at being “Giselle”, because she never was Giselle to begin with. Accepting this narrative allows her to detach herself from the weight of having to try to be Giselle, and to project those feelings and ideals from a distance on to the White-Haired Girl instead, who is everything the Maid thinks “Giselle” should be. Note the Maid’s fixation throughout the stories on the WHG’s “purity” and her unchanging nature that stays constant across all times - the qualities that she feels she herself has lost. Of course, Giselle is also very much still subconsciously projecting her own lingering feelings for Michel on to the WHG as well, as she assigns WHG the role of her “master” and “the person she waits for” - but in a context that allows her to safely detach herself as a guide, watching over the real Giselle and feeling pity for her suffering. It puts her in a position where she can be the one to reassure someone else that it’s okay for them to give up, to forget about waiting for Michel and find whatever happiness they can for themselves - without having to shoulder the shame of making that decision herself. The things she can’t accept about herself as “Giselle” become acceptable if she takes the outside role of a witch. As Fata repeatedly puts forth, tragedy becomes a lot more bearable if you think of it as “someone else’s”.

Okay, I basically just wrote three paragraphs of meta here and I’m still not much closer to actually answering your question, so it’s about time I looped back to the point. Everything I’ve outlined above is the basic outline of what I feel is intended to come across through the Maid’s arc. Now let’s talk about where I feel that door 6 fails at actually making that arc really hit home as strongly as it could have. I think the essence of the problem, at least to me, is that door 6 does a perfectly good job of laying out a very believable sequence of events that lead Giselle to become the Maid, but it doesn’t really do such a great job at portraying Giselle’s reactions in any real depth. The narration doesn’t really bring to life the feeling of someone fiercely struggling with themselves to stay positive in the same way that door 5 does, and the process of Giselle’s desperate attempts to keep hold of herself being slowly being worn down over the years gets skipped through so quickly that it’s hard to really feel the weight of it from her perspective. Just going more into depth with Giselle’s internal thought processes here, showing more of her individual reactions to the events of the first three doors and things like her frantic attempts to rationalise it as maybe being okay that the WHG doesn’t recognise her, showing the strain it puts on her to have to keep trying to find ways to frame her story in a more hopeful and positive way until she finally just can’t do it any more, would really help make the door feel like more of a complete experience.

Again, though, as I said in my old write-up, I do think a lot of what is there in door 6 is really strong and effective - a lot of the individual scenes do genuinely feel really powerful in their own right - but there’s just not quite enough there to make the whole thing really hold together as a fully realised narrative. (To put it another way, when you have even a weird side character like Yukimasa getting such a slow, thorough and nuanced exploration of his gradual descent into madness, but your main heroine’s central identity conflict and breakdown of her sense of self is rushed through in about half an hour, something has gone terribly wrong.)

The other problem that I have with door 6 - and this might be more of a personal thing - is the point it chooses to end at. The pivotal moment where Giselle actually finally chooses to disown her old identity and accept Morgana’s story as the truth goes by so quickly that you could almost miss it, and then after that the door is pretty much over, short timeskip to the end of Jacopo’s era aside. Considering how much emphasis the earlygame puts on the Maid’s preoccupation with stories, and how important the story of door 4 is to her in particular, I always felt more than a little disappointed by how little time is given to Giselle’s internal reaction to Morgana’s story when she hears it, or to how she processes it and sorts out her feelings about it afterwards; how she uses it as a way to reframe her own story in a way that’s more manageable to her, and how it hurts to let go of it. Even the most basic point of the Maid passing her old identity on to the WHG isn’t actually touched on by the text of door 6 at all. It just really feels like a lot of wasted potential, since the Maid’s relationship with the narrative of door 4 is probably the single most interesting part of the character to me, and I think it could easily have been elaborated on a lot more here in a way that would make the arc as a whole much stronger. (Although now that I think about it, I think I might have pretty much made a lot these points already in my old write-up, so I might just be repeating myself now? Whoops? It’s been a while, sorry!)

So that pretty much covers my feelings on what I would have liked to see from the Maid’s backstory. Now I can move on to talk about how I’d want to handle the resolution, which was probably the main point of your question to begin with! I think the biggest problem with the Maid’s turnaround as it stands is that it feels so easy, with very little real struggle or conflict - as you said, it really does feel like all of Giselle’s issues as the Maid are just flat-out “erased” in a matter of minutes, and she just reverts back to her old self entirely. And that feels incredibly wrong to me, because it seems to basically uncritically validate Giselle’s ideal of herself as someone who can hold on to her cheerful attitude and just block out her suffering entirely as if it never happened - which feels totally at odds with the the rest of her narrative up to that point stressing how much of a burden she placed on herself with that unrealistic expectation and how trying to live up to that impossible ideal ended up tearing her apart completely.

I think it would have worked a lot better to instead put the focus on Giselle’s resolution on challenging that ideal for herself, and letting her realise that she doesn’t have to be that ideal unchanging person she wants “Giselle” to be - that even if she has changed, she’s still Giselle, and still the same person Michel loved (Requiem’s epilogue briefly touches on this idea too). To accept the Maid as something that came from her, that’s a part of her, and that she doesn’t have to be ashamed of or make into an entirely different person to accept. The Maid believed that she’d lost her humanity entirely and become unrecognisable as herself, but when it came down to it, Michel did still recognise her, and still sees the person he loved in her. And some part of Giselle evidently still recognised and reached out to Michel as the person she had really been waiting for, too, even after she’d supposedly rewritten her story entirely to put the WHG in that role. The way her suffering ended up shaping her into someone like the Maid doesn’t make her inhuman; the ways she’s reacted to her suffering by trying to change into someone else are themselves human and relatable, they’re understandable and okay reactions for Giselle to have had in her situation, and the Maid is still someone Michel is perfectly capable of deeply empathising with and feeling love for.

Because in the end, the heart of Michel’s love for Giselle wasn’t ever really dependent on her always staying a bright and cheerful person who never stops smiling and always stays positive and never gives into despair; it was a relationship between two deeply wounded people who connected with each other through their shared experience of suffering. In blocking out and trying to forget the painful aspects of her past, in replacing them with a gently beautiful fairytale of a tragic love between two totally pure and selfless people, Giselle ended up losing what was really important about their relationship - that neither of them had ever been perfect, that they’d both been irreparably hurt by their trauma, but they still loved and understood and accepted each other, scars and all. Her remembering Michel as such a perfectly pure and flawless person is very sweet in its way, but it actually ended up turning her memory of him into someone so perfect that she couldn’t possibly live up to him or keep believing that he’d love someone like her - as is a running theme in Fata, blocking out the pain of their past ended up also blocking out the real significance of the connection they’d managed to make with each other through that pain.

So, approaching the end of door 6 and the Maid’s final resolution through that lens, I think I would put a lot more emphasis on Michel getting through to Giselle by his understanding and acceptance of what she’s been through and how it’s changed her, and by his own simple empathy with her and love for her as a fellow flawed and scarred human being. I think I’d also want to make that process of him getting through to her and coming to understand her a lot more difficult and painful than it came across in canon - I think a lot of things about the Maid’s attitude should have been difficult for him to understand and come to terms with for a while, especially when it comes to her wanting to cling on to her own story and push a false identity on to him instead of confronting the truth, which would hit a particularly bad spot for Michel at first. For example, with those small breakpoint scenes midway through door 5 where Michel and the Maid are reacting to the retelling of their memories, I’d want to have the Maid be a lot more fierce and persistent at first about denying that these really are her true memories, and denying the idea that the Giselle she sees in door 5 could ever possibly have been her - I’d want to see her trying a bit harder to defend the protective narrative she’s built up for herself in the face of Michel’s brutal attacks on it, and Michel maybe initially lashing out in frustration at that, until he slowly comes to recognise the basic emotions behind her actions as essentially sympathetic and familiar from his own experience of severe isolation, recalling how it had made him want to shut his heart off in much the same way.

Michel having to accept his own responsibility in leaving Giselle alone to deal with all this in the first place - for underestimating just how much she needed him - is also something that’s going to be difficult for both of them to deal with, but it’s something that I think they needed to more explicitly acknowledge and work through with each other because it’s important in the sense of Giselle being able to remember that Michel is a flawed and imperfect person too. (The Michel in door 4 explicitly did make the choice to die together with Giselle instead of leaving her alone, again reinforcing Giselle’s inaccurate memory of him as someone pure and perfect.) The Maid’s issues with her repressed resentment for Michel and with her own self-image are obviously very deep-seated to an extent that actually fully “resolving” them in just one conversation with Michel isn’t at all realistic, but I do feel that the process of actually having to talk things through with the real Michel would start to remind her of what their connection actually felt like after all those years of turning it into an abstract archetypal love story, and of how Michel was always someone she loved for being an approachably flawed and awkward person rather than any kind of perfect ideal - and to start to believe that maybe it’s okay for her to be flawed too, that her flaws could still be a part of her humanity and part of “Giselle” rather than something that makes her inhuman. As has always been the case with these two, humanising each other helps them to humanise themselves. Dealing with everything that’s happened is inevitably still going to be a difficult process for both of them, but I think Fata could have believably gotten them to a point where they’re at least starting down the right path without just lazily erasing Giselle’s issues and brushing the whole thing off. It’s a difficult balance to strike, but I do feel that Fata manages that delicate balance in other places and could have done so here, if a bit more care had been put into the writing.

From there, I’d keep the flow of the story as it stands - Michel and Giselle try to leave the mansion, Morgana stops them, and Salvage and Door 7 proceed as before. So the next thing to talk about here is Door 8. As it stands, the portrayal of Michel and Giselle’s relationship in door 8 is basically all about Michel gradually breaking out of his shell with Giselle’s support; as I think I said in that old write-up, I think it would have been much more effective if the focus was instead on the two of them supporting each other to start to break out of their respective periods of isolation and reclaim themselves as human beings who are still capable of living in the world and connecting with other people. Rather than Michel and Giselle’s dynamic just reverting to how it was in door 5, I would have liked door 8 to have them starting to develop a new dynamic to reflect how Giselle has changed, and to present her having to learn how to act like a “real person” again as more of a difficult and gradual process. Giselle really has irreversibly changed in many ways, but she’s also far from actually being unrecognisable, and I think the basic idea of her starting to naturally take on some of her old mannerisms again as she talks to Michel could have been genuinely sweet and touching if it felt a bit morenuanced and earned in its execution - starting to reclaim her identity as a human rather than a witch, as someone who’s still capable of feeling human emotions and having human connections, in the same way that Michel is gradually brought out of his shell by the events of door 8 and starts to be able to believe in himself once again as a person who’s capable of living in the world without being rejected or treated as an outcast. I think my ideal version of door 8 would focus a lot more on Michel and Giselle helping each other through that process.

Well, if I permit myself to indulge in full-on wish fulfillment here, my real ideal scenario would honestly be for Giselle to actually be physically there in door 8 and have her and Michel working together to save Morgana, with both of them getting to interact with the other characters and play an equal part as co-protagonists in the truest sense - but honestly, even without radically revising the structure and just keeping Giselle as a voice in Michel’s head, I think she could still have easily been given much more of her own personal arc within door 8 rather than just serving as an extension of Michel’s. One thing that’s really potentially interesting to me about door 8 is Giselle having to come face-to-face once again with the people from doors 1-3 who she had so strongly detached herself from and treated as supporting characters in the WHG’s story, to be picked apart from a distance as tragically flawed protagonists. I feel like the Maid was pretty clearly projecting a lot of her own feelings on to these people’s stories, using them to explore her own issues in a way that felt safer by framing them as “someone else’s problem” - so how does she feel seeing these people again, now that she’s self-aware enough to realise what she was doing? I think there’s a lot of interesting material to explore there.

With Yukimasa’s story, for example - before, as the Maid, she wouldn’t have been capable of articulating that her complex feelings about Yukimasa’s narrative and her wish for him to find happiness as Bestia were projections of the way she felt about herself and the way she also tried to find comfort in her own dehumanisation through a false narrative, because owning those feelings for herself would have meant acknowledging the fragility of her own coping mechanisms. But now that she’s started to come to terms with who she really is, I could see her having a lot of difficult and insecure reactions to seeing Yukimasa again, and having his story bring back Giselle’s own deep-seated fears that she’s fundamentally “not human” and deluding herself about her humanity in the same way that Bestia was. Of course, Michel would be there to help her talk through those feelings and remind her why that isn’t true - even as the Maid, she was still very recognisably human at heart - but I think that Giselle actually getting to talk those things out with Michel would go a long way toward giving proper narrative weight to her struggles and making it clear that the deep fears and insecurities she felt as the Maid aren’t just going to magically go away, the way they pretty much seemed to in canon. In the same vein, there’s plenty to explore with things like the Maid’s fixation on the theme of childhood innocence being inevitably lost with Mell and Nellie’s story, and her identification with Jacopo as someone who also tried to kill off his old self completely.

I think it would have helped tie the game together a lot better to have Giselle’s own resolution running parallel with that of the three men in this way, that seeing them being able to reach a more positive conclusion would help her to feel a bit less hopeless about her own story as well - as well as to start to see herself as her own person again, whose story doesn’t have to mirror theirs in the first place. In my ideal version of door 8, I kind of see working through their resolutions as a process of letting Giselle free herself from defining herself by these stories and from the story of the mansion’s curse as a whole, to be able to start to see herself and those around her as real people with real agency rather than as actors in a doomed, unavoidable tragedy.

But I also feel like this scenario has all kinds of potential in terms of allowing Giselle to maybe be able to reframe some aspects of “how she’s changed” in a more positive way, and to see some of the Maid’s characteristics as genuine strengths that she can draw on as well - the ability to emotionally detach from a situation and critically evaluate people and their relationships from afar can be legitimately useful in some situations too, you know? So I’d really like to have seen the Maid’s worldweary cynicism and piercing insight into people’s flaws get to be played as a strength at times, as an important complement to Michel’s lack of experience and knowledge about the world and people, rather than just a shameful phase that she has to move on from. (I think I’d definitely have liked that dynamic a lot more than the “Aww, Mell is like our best friend! We can definitelytrust him!” nonsense that canon pulled, which was just ridiculous. The Maid was absolutely brutal about Mell! Who is this person?!)

One part I really liked from the actual door 8 (and wished had been given more weight and expanded on a lot more) was Giselle saying after Mell and Nellie’s resolution that she felt bad for how she’d treated them as the Maid, sneering condescendingly at their flaws - but Michel responds that her story cutting right to the heart of their problems in that way actually helped him to fully understand them as people and how to help them, and that he couldn’t have done it without her. Making that into more of a fleshed-out arc about helping Giselle to reclaim some of the Maid’s attributes as something positive, not something she has to run away from, would have been a really satisfying resolution to me - there are absolutely real problems with dehumanising people and arranging people’s lives into a neat narrative, but there are also times that being able to detach and get that kind of overarching perspective can actually really help, if it’s done in a more balanced and self-aware way. I think going deeper into exploring this would have really done a lot to integrate Giselle and the Maid, and to tie together Fata’s whole themes as a story about people’s relationships with narrative in general.

Also, I would have really liked to see Giselle involved with the WHG’s resolution too! She spent 400 years obsessing over the WHG and defining herself in terms of the WHG’s story, after all, so I think it only seems fair to give her some closure on that and to let her play her own part in putting her to rest. Michel, Giselle and Morgana’s narratives are all connected together by each of their relationships with the WHG and their respective struggles with the pressure of the ideals she represents, so I think it would bring the whole game together nicely for the three of them to get to let go of her together.

So, I think that’s pretty much the outline of what I would have liked to see from Giselle’s arc in Fata! I hope this all made sense since I am kind of half braindead at the moment, ahaha. I would really love to hear your own thoughts about her too, though, so please don’t hesitate to share them if you can! I’d be super interested to hear your take on the character!

#the house in fata morgana

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ngame989 · 6 years ago

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S3E10 - Sweet Dreams/Lava Lake Beach

Sweet Dreams

Standout Moments –

Vore fetish monsters.

What is it with Mewberty and dragging vehicles into the sky?

Sup bruh.

Music in this scene is so alien, I love it.

The dance craze that’s sweeping the nation.

Criticism – N/A

New thing I caught – Interesting that this episode ends on a pretty uncharacteristic “Star refuses Marco’s advice” note. This does pay off soon after, but still, Seasons 1 and 2 were heavily populated with “Star and Marco learn a valuable lesson from each other” segments which aren’t as common here.

Starco commentary –

Star runs into a serious issue that she needs help with, and she’s already turning to Marco for assistance. She said previously that she only wanted him around for fun, but clearly he’s still her go-to for help as always. The words she uses are bossy, kinda, but no more so than pleading with Marco to make more food for Baby.

And telling him not to tell Tom – she’s aware of the fact that she probably shouldn’t be doing this type of thing with someone who isn’t her boyfriend, but does it anyway! Almost as if she doesn’t have a close, trusting connection with him.

Star’s the dishonest one this time.

Kinky. But, also, Star saying he’s the only one she can trust. Like I said, they might not be spending every waking moment as happy-go-lucky besties anymore (as a lingering result of tension and later as an explicitly intentional thing on Marco’s end) but the importance in each other’s lives is as much or more than it’s ever been, even now.

And even when they don’t see eye to eye, Marco’s still dedicating himself to looking out for Star. Which is, in large part, where he starts to find that meaning he’s been searching for in life. And where his feelings for Star come from.

Overall – Solid episode, some adventure and action and Starco moments.

Lava Lake Beach

The OOF begins.

Standout Moments –

It’s not the hugest most important character moment here, but there’s a definite indication that Star and Tom don’t bring out their best in each other. They have some similar traits (hotheadedness, mainly) and just bring more of those out in each other.

”EVERYONE’S IN A CONSTANT STATE OF FALLING APART!” Same, Jorby, same.

“Crushing pizzas.” Sure, Tad. Pizzas.

More of that good ole’ Marco “clothing as a symbol of his emotional security” symbolism.

The Soulrise is pretty fucking sweet. Also, I should note here – “they haven’t earned it” isn’t necessarily a direct jab at Tomstar. I think Kelly’s stating that it’s more important for her and Marco to take some time to themselves and enjoy this since they’re going through some rough stuff.

Criticism – Tad’s a little shit.

New thing I caught – N/A

Starco commentary –

This episode does have a strong emotional message where Just Friends doesn’t, but there’s still a lot of emotional blunt trauma for Marco here. Star and Tom being all “twinsies”, Star giving Tom one of his hoodies, it being Marco’s birthday… none of this is meant to say that Star replaced factually replaced Marco with Tom (she didn’t, obviously, look up like 4 paragraphs to Sweet Dreams) but it is meant to drive home that there is an aspect of Star’s life that Marco can only realize he wants to be in by seeing someone else in it. They didn’t turn Star into an out-of-character thot just to hurt Marco or anything, but this is definitely a very pointed manner of showing all the highs of Tomstar “fluff” in one segment to slap Marco with.

The fall of dumbass Marco.

The reign of emotionally crushed Marco begins.

Overall – A really nice, emotional episode with a solid message to boot. As unfortunate as it is that Star and Marco spend most of the season being emotionally distant, it is nice to see this type of genuine connection between people, even if it’s not those two. No Kellco is not romantic in any way.

#rewatchening

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gogoakechi · 5 years ago

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13 19 25 40 ? :^)

13: Biggest turn ons

ill tell you this privately if you want!! but not on my Public Blog because recently ive been trying to cut out explicitly sexual shit, including jokes, as best i can stand. DM Me If You So Desire.

19: A fact about your personality

i think im like. mentally engineered to sidekick. my entire childhood it was my older sister, aleca, where shed always be the leader and make decisions and id really just do what she said no questions asked?? nothing malicious, just like “can you get me x??” or “hey lets play this game!!”. we did everything together and when wed leave the house we were always paired together and id follow her. just doing whatever she wanted.

it tapered off in that time i kinda stopped letting myself be close to her, but in the last year weve gotten close again and hang out a lot more and i still find myself kind of like. subordinating myself to her. i dont do anything i dont want to, of course, its more like i just like doing it?? and doing things for my sister??? one time her friend, who we hung out with a shit ton, literally just asked me “why do you always do everything she asks you to do??” and i think at that moment i kinda started to realize that Wow. I Kinda Fucking Do. it just comes to natural to me.

and now i see myself doing the same thing with a couple other people, mainly my best friend, and frankly feel most comfortable taking a supporting role in any relationship. family, job, or friends. im usually only the decision maker or leader if no one else wants to be or im in Big Brother Mode.

25: My idea of a perfect date

i honestly dont understand the concepts of dates so im not really interested in them at all. or romance in general, ive started to realize recently. HOWEVER. i will entertain this theoretically. first you come over to my house and fight me in pokemon puzzle league. i refuse to even Associate with, let alone date, someone whos better than me. i am the Puzzle Master. not you.

and then i cant think of anything else thats basically it. my only demand. you swear on the horns of Satan to try your damnedest and if you win i kick you out of my home and my life and if you lose we kiss. its that easy.

isnt that what a date is right. finding out if someones good for you?? it counts.

40: Who I wish I could be

okay imagine raymond boxman but with the sleazy mob boss attitude of frank fontaine and the looks of the werewolf detective himself, bigby wolf. and all tinted with the Gentle But Could Kill You In An Instant If I Felt Like It chill clown priesthood of chahut maenad. because i do feel a calling to be a priest or something similar when i finally fucking figure out what/who i wanna be a priest OF and if i dont Radiate the Ominous Presence of a Hidden Divine Force then whats the fucking point.

i think i can guarantee you ill fit into someone better for me than what was stated above, though, and thats okay!! really all i can say for certain is that ill still have a forest of teddy bears no matter how ill end up. i think that part of mes here to stay and practically my single most Defining Characteristic. im a teddy bear boy.

if this question actually refers to personal heros, though, i think i can safely say id like to be characters like Master Tigress, Chaplin Sukegawa, and Naoto Shirogane. i wont do into detail because itll just be another six paragraphs but i really look up to these three!! two of them are trans!!!! i love them immensely.

send me questions!!

#thank you jay!! i love you!!#ive been playing pokemon puzzle league a lot this past week #and i finally made it to the puzzle elite on super hard!! so im fighting ritchie now #also sorry this is real long i spent all night talking to someone and forgot to go to sleep so here i am now #personal #asks #snupp-snoel

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dinamirecs · 4 years ago

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hey guyi! this was such a fun read!!! i am forever in awe of your ability to articulate literally everything so well. i do not have the patience to write out my thoughts in somewhat-coherent paragraphs but i DO have my live reactions that i’ll put under the cut :)) thanks again for sharing your talent with us, and i hope your hiatus is treating you well! 💞

can i just say from a writing standpoint….these discussion board posts are perfect prefaces to the entire story. like they’re just enough to give us an idea of how jungkook thinks versus what oc thinks. and because they’re discussion boards you can literally just explicitly state their views without it being a drag. i feel like i am spending too much time on this point but i think that’s so interesting

the first scene is gold oh my god please i love their dynamic already 😭

NO REALLY THIS FIRST SCENE IS LITERALLY EVERYTHING!!! BEFORE I WAS JUST REFERRING TO THE WALKING IN AND THE PROF’S VIBE BUT THIS WHOLE THING IS SO PERFECT!!!! THE PROF BEING A MATCHMAKER PLEASEEEEE AND JUNGKOOK BEING SO EXCITED TO GET ON OC’S NERVES

i can just imagine oc going on a rampage through the hallway after this class and it’s....so good lol

“and when you’re done jerking yourself off...text me” ICONISM ME THINKS

prof is an e2l warrior confirmed

the way jungkook is like “i am so confident that we will fall in love” and oc is just like “let’s just get this over with 🙄” is so funny to me

“I hope that by the end of this Y/N will have opened her eyes to the beauty of love, and will find joy in the feeling as something that makes her feel happy and warm. I’m going to do everything I can to make sure the things we do together are meaningful. And even if we don’t last, I hope that her memories of us together will be ones she can look back upon fondly and be grateful for.” I AM SOBBING JUNGKOOK JUST WANTS OC TO BE HAPPY AND ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT LOVE IS GOD

TAE TAKINGF NUDES HDKSJXOSHA

the serenade really brought the whole rom-com thing home <333 so cute

the first date 🥺🥺🥺🥺

the subtle hints at oc’s past…...i am scared

secret one-on-one interview w tae 👁👁

oc going to jungkook’s hip-hop performance means so much to him i think i will cry

“I JUST THINK I’D LIKE TO KEEP THIS MOMENT TO OURSELVES” FOR PERSONAL REASONS I WILL BE PASSING AWAY

drunk confession of oc’s past…..i am even more scared but i also sympathize 🥺

the casual hand holding 🤲🏼🤲🏼🤲🏼

I HAVE NOT SAID ANYTHING SINCE THEIR KISS BC I THOUGHT IT WAS LEADING TO THE HAPPY ENDING BUT OFC THERE HAS TO BE ANOTHER CONFLICT 😭 BUT ALL'S FAIR IN LOVE AND GOOD WRITING

ANOTHER SERENADE!!! SEND HELP I AM TRULY NOT WELL

“and so, they lived happily ever after” this is truly. a masterpiece. like this actually felt like watching a movie. you’ve done it again ma’am!!!

the art of the rom-com | jjk

summary: FILM395, the art of the rom-com, was supposed to be an easy a with one of your favorite professors, but it’s not. it’s actually a sisyphean torture that comes in the form of fellow film student jeon jungkook, who has no problem responding to every one of your discussion posts about the consumerist ideals underlying every romance movie with his own paragraphs on the beauty of love like the hopeless romantic he is. and when the two of you find yourselves partnered up for your final project, which is to create a short film on rom-coms, jungkook decides to take it upon himself to show you what love is really like.

{enemies to lovers!au, college!au}

pairing: film major!jungkook x film major!reader (female) genre: fluff, comedy, slight angst, this is literally a rom-com in fic form word count: 33k warnings: college alcohol consumption, discussion board posts, emotionally constipated characters, film major shenanigans, blonde jungkook who’s also in a hip hop dance troupe, miscommunication, if you hate rom-coms do not read this fic

a/n: i am so so so excited to share this monster of a jungkook fic (tho let’s be real, 30k is pretty standard for me now ;-;) with you all! this is basically rom-com trash, but it’s my rom-com trash, and i hope you all enjoy!

on a sadder, less exciting note: after this fic i will be taking an extended writing hiatus until at least the beginning of may. my semester is picking up and i unfortunately just don’t currently have any upcoming fics planned for you guys. i hope you understand!! maybe i’ll do a couple of ask games here and there to see if anything piques my interest, but other than that please do not expect major works of writing for a while. love you all!

Keep reading

#jungkook #fluff #jungkook fluff #by gukyi

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ubehmonster · 7 years ago

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The Last Time I Read “The Last Time I Saw Mother”.

The Last Time I Read “The Last Time I Saw Mother”

A Novel by Arlene J. Chai

Among all the locally set literature that I’ve read for the past years, there’s only one that has really captured my heart and adulation. It’s no other than The Last Time I Saw Mother. It is an intricate novel that tells the story of Caridad, an aging woman, who is revisiting her past and uncovering her real origins that have far been buried for nearly a lifetime. I’ve always wanted to pay tribute to this work of art and I’m finally going to do it in critical form.

In order to systematically and most meaningfully achieve this book review, I’m going to use some types of literary criticisms that would best explain the author’s process, writing style, and story essence. It makes the judgment and inspection more effective and a whole lot easier.

Objectively speaking, Arlene’s work is quite different from ordinary novels since it’s not exactly focused on a single person. The book has four main narrators: Caridad, Thelma which she considers her mother, her Tia Emma, and her cousin Ligaya. Each narrator has a different vantage point, experience, and part of the story to tell. They all hold a key to Caridad’s elusive past. Add them all together and Caridad’s origin is complete.

Thelma is not Caridad’s real mother. It’s Emma. Emma gave her youngest child to Thelma and Raoul because she could no longer feed or support her after her husband died of stroke. The way they gradually exposed this was successfully nailed. It was subtle and it wasn’t too abrupt. Although the pacing of the story was a little bit too dispersed in the beginning, it was surely a preparation for the revelations because the incoming stories of Emma, Ligaya, and Raoul are incredibly a lot to take in. Their story is tightly knitted together and like Thelma said when she was about to confess, it’s as if pulling a thread then seeing the entire tapestry cracking loose. I really like this concept. It is unique and interactive, a really great instrument in the storytelling. Seeing through different eyes really allows you to see the bigger picture and create connections between events from previous chapters. Each character’s motivations, hopes, fears, and ambitions fill your mind as you flip through the pages. It’s as if you get reincarnated every time you move through another chapter.

I did find some few aspects that I didn’t like in her writing. Some ideas in nearby paragraphs weren’t exactly coherent. Each character has a lot to say. I get that. But I feel like some parts of the story still need proper transition. The minor flashbacks were another challenge. They would sometimes be quite longer than expected that I would forget where I really picked off. It may have been done on purpose but I honestly think the flashbacks need more organization in terms of timing and distribution throughout the narrative because it turns the present into tiny little fragments and the real, major flashbacks pushed out further than necessary. They essentially stall too much. Everything else was pretty much well laid out and beautifully described.

It’s also quite reasonable to note one of the literary piece’s major vehicles: history. Most of the novel is actually a revelation of the past if the title and synopsis haven’t already given you a clue. What’s even more impressive is that the main character’s past perfectly coincides with the history of the Philippines. Yes, every single event in each part of the story is influenced by the country’s most memorable wars and regimes. The Marcos dictatorship was a significant topic Caridad enthusiastically reopened when she finally went home to talk to her mother. The lavishness of the family was exquisitely described in some of the pages and it’s really evident that the author really did her research.

The stories of Thelma, Emma, and Ligaya were all set during the hard times of the Japanese Occupation here in the Philippines. Their experiences strategically coincided with the war. Every last detail dotted the pages, ranging from how they escaped Manila when the Japanese started to invade, to how Emma and her family survived living in the hills until Bataan and Corregidor finally fell. Glittering names such as Manuel Quezon, General McArthur, Jose Abad Santos, and Jose Laurel were scattered in the narrative. The novel can be called a chronological compendium hidden in a family drama if one really aspires to.

The inclusion of historical elements added a boost to the imagery and really helped the reader connect with the characters. It even made it seem that they were actually real. The aesthetic that I conjured in my mind reading the narrative made it somewhat familiar and almost “at home”. For this reason, Filipinos of all ages and sizes would love to read this book.

The relationships of the characters and the issues within and outside their social circle are also worth mentioning and perhaps the most notable feature of these social aspects of the novel is the family culture of the characters involved. Extended families are the norm in Filipino culture and it was explicitly shown in the narratives. Caridad’s family is a big one and it becomes even bigger as you meet more of her relatives as the story progresses. The ending even showcased more relatives she barely knows about. They were revealed to be descendants of her true siblings and cousins.

Other traditions that were highlighted included having children immediately after marriage because they are valuable assets as the couple grows old. It is one of the main factors that contribute to extended families. The traditional roles each gender plays in the household were also featured in the novel. Filipina women were the focus here and their experiences give the viewers a blunt view on how they really feel about the struggles of raising a family.

The novel also incorporated other cultures as well. From numerous occupations of the Spaniards and Americans to the Japanese, as well as consecutive migrations of Chinese, the Filipino identity was continuously redefined, challenged, and influenced by these powerful foreign forces. Arlene wanted to add conflict in all this diversity so she also smoothly inserted the attitudes of Filipinos towards these foreign elements. The hatred of Filipinos towards the Chinese because of economic competition was given light as well as the ever so present fear of the remaining power of the Spaniards in the country. These subtle details were literally the cherry on top in this dark debut of Filipino drama.

To sum it all up, the novel is a brilliant aggregation of Filipina family conflict, local and world history, and multicultural heritage. It offers valuable insight to the bleak state of the country’s basic unit during the 1940’s and it could still have implications to this very day. Although some parts of the writing are a bit uneven, the writing in general is sensual and clear and really heightens the quality of the narratives of each character. Each change in pace fits well with the personality and motivation of the characters and this gives their identity a lot more depth. I highly recommend this to everyone. You won’t get tired of reading it.

#book criticism #filipinoliterature #filipinadrama #arlene chai #thelasttimeisawmother

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morganhazelwood · 7 years ago

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#7 Query Corner: ‘Phoenix Falling’

Welcome to:

Morgan's Query Corner:

Answering Your Query Quandaries

NOTE: If you submit your query to me ([email protected]), and you are selected for inclusion, I will give you a high-level review, in-line feedback, and my own draft of your query. If this is your query, feel free to use or ignore as much of the advice and suggestions as you wish.

[Disclaimer: Any query selected for the page will be posted on this website for perpetuity. I am an amateur with no actual accepted queries and a good number of form rejections. This does not guarantee an agent or even an amazing query, just a new take by someone who's read The Query Shark archives twice and enjoys playing with queries.]

"PHOENIX FALLING" is a YA contemporary romance featuring an Internet Famous fashion influencing teen returning to her hometown and a student-photographer who despises social-media.

Overall Impression:

Solid query. Spot on novel length for YA Contemp and timely themes!

The only things I would change are:

The language feels a little formal or stiff at times. I know this is a business letter, but you want to use a little voice in your query, to set the tone of the book.

Are you sure this is YA? The character seems maybe a little older? If she's under 20, list that. If not, this might be a good fit for New Adult?

The bully isn't mentioned again. Same with the crush. Unless either of them has something to do with the compromising pics (and I'd imagine it's someone back in London?), I'd delete that.

Fun fact: mixed-media novels are often called 'epistolary novels'. If you want, you can call it that in your stats paragraph. And I'd recommend searching mswl.com for "epistolary" because some agents explicitly are looking for them.

The Original:

[my comments are in blue/italics/brackets]

I am seeking representation for PHOENIX FALLING, a YA contemporary romance at 80,000 words. I thought you may enjoy it because _______________________. [I often put this paragraph at the end, with the comps and break out the bio paragraph. Some agents have a stated preference, but otherwise, it's your call.]

When Phoenix, a former nerd turned Instafamous fashion influencer, leaves London for her hometown in Colorado, she’s ready to show everyone how much she’s changed, especially her middle-school bully. [How old is she? YA typically has teen main characters.] She’s ready to see if her new fame is enough to capture the interest of her old crush. She’s ready to reach her goal of 250,000 followers.[a little repetitive... maybe a stronger verb?] But she’s not ready to share the reason she left London in the first place.[Oh! Now I see the pattern! :-)]

Damien hates social media and everything Phoenix represents [Whoops! I wasn't paying attention to your main character's name and thought he hated the city of phoenix! And was maybe moving to CO for a change...]. He’d rather spend his time studying constellations and developing film, but he agrees to take Phoenix’s pictures to earn money for college. He never imagined his focus would shift from capturing Phoenix’s image to capturing Phoenix’s heart. Unless Damien can convince Phoenix to trust him, perhaps even with her shameful secret, he’ll lose his income and any chance at a connection with her. [The last 2 sentences seem a little stilted and cliche. I think we can do better.]

When someone posts compromising photos of Phoenix online, both her reputation and her burgeoning relationship with Damien are threatened. Phoenix races to undo the damage before she loses everything: her lifesavings, her followers, even the people she loves the most. If Phoenix and Damien cannot put the pieces back together, they may be left paying the true price of fame. [This seems a little disjointed. I wanna rearrange it.]

PHOENIX FALLING is a mixed-media novel that includes texts, Instagram posts, emails, newspaper articles, maps, etc. It would appeal to fans of When Dimple Met Rishi and Donna Cooner’s novels. I currently live in California with my family. When I’m not reading, writing, or wrangling three children, you may[very formal] find me mapping out my next trip.

Per your submission guidelines, I have included ____________. [not needed] Thank you for your time and consideration.

FIRST LASTNAME

The Revised Query:

Dear [Agent Name],

When nineteen(?)-year-old Phoenix leaves London for her hometown in Colorado, she’s ready to impress everyone as the Instafamous fashion influencer she becomes, rather than the nerd they all remember. She's ready to see if her new fame is enough to dazzle her old crush. She's ready to reach her goal of 250,000 followers. The one thing Phoenix isn't ready for? Sharing the shameful reason she left London in the first place.

Damien hates social media and everything Phoenix represents, but the photographer can't turn down her job offer that could pay for his college. As Damien spends more time with Phoenix, his focus begins to shift from capturing her image to capturing her heart.

When compromising photos of Phoenix surface online, both her reputation and her burgeoning relationship with Damien are threatened. Phoenix races to undo the damage before she loses everything: her life savings, her followers, and the respect of the people she loves the most. If Phoenix doesn't open up and share the truth about what happened to her in London, she's going to lose Damien--both as the photographer that could make her scandal blow over and as the man who almost loved her, despite her fame.

PHOENIX FALLING is a YA contemporary romance, complete at 80,000 words. I thought you may enjoy it because _______________________. This modern epistolary is told using texts, Instagram posts, emails, and newspaper articles, and should appeal to fans of When Dimple Met Rishi and the Donna Cooner’s novels.

I write from my home in California. When I’m not reading, writing, or wrangling three children, you can find me mapping out my next trip.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

[email]

[Twitter]

[phone]

With some back and forth, the queryist let me know the story takes place senior year, is more narrative than epistolary, and that the bully and crush are both involved in the compromising pictures. This was Q7's revision with my suggestions.

Dear ---------,

When seventeen-year-old Phoenix leaves London for her hometown in Colorado, she’s ready to impress everyone as the Instafamous fashion influencer she’s become, rather than the nerd they all remember. With her newfound fame, everyone from her middle-school tormentor to her old crush will finally notice her. Her return will be glorious, as long as no one finds out the real reason she left London.

Damien hates social media and everything Phoenix represents. He’d rather spend his time studying constellations and developing film, but he agrees to take Phoenix’s pictures to earn money for college. As Damien spends more time with Phoenix, his focus begins to shift from capturing her image to capturing her heart. Unless Damien can convince Phoenix to trust him, he’ll lose his income and any chance at a connection with her.

When someone posts a video of Phoenix criticizing a popular product, her sponsors start canceling their contracts. With Damien by her side, Phoenix races to undo the damage. If she can’t maintain her standing in the fashion world, Phoenix could lose everything: her life savings, her followers, and even her best friend.

PHOENIX FALLING is a YA contemporary romance, complete at 80,000 words. This mixed-media novel includes texts, Instagram posts, emails, newspaper articles, and maps. It should appeal to fans of Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor & Park and Sandhya Menon’s When Dimple Met Rishi.

I currently live in California with my family. When I’m not reading, writing, or wrangling three children, you can find me mapping out my next trip.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely, Q7

[email]

[Twitter]

[phone]

As always with editing suggestions, remember that we're just pointing out spots where things aren't working. You don't have to follow our suggestions, but you should consider fixing it your own way. I think Q7 did a great job of taking my feedback and making it their own. Best of luck to Q7!

And for the rest of you out there? Best of luck in the query trenches!

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