#it’s!!! building up to Thirteen thematically!!!

[derrygirlstrash]

Skill issue.

I’d love to be allowed to be as flawed and clever and mad and wonderful and nuanced as a Moffat Woman. I’d love to reclaim my narrative against fate itself and find myself a happy ending even after death. I’d love to still be sexy when women are past the age of being allowed to be in media.

I’d love not having to be perfect to be a victim and be able to stick it to the people who made me one with their so-called “harmless” thoughts and actions. I’d love to be able to look a man who betrayed me in the face and tell him that he is the problem and his jokes aren’t harmless.

I’d love to find my fairytale. I’d love to be a sapphic given immortality to travel with my lover and I’d love to do all of this with insanely good banter and character moments.

This is a skill issue on your part, being a Moffat Woman would be fucking awesome.

If there’s one fictional thing I’d never want to be, it would be a Woman Written By Steven Moffat. I’m not sure what this guy’s deal is, but he has an awful habit of creating badass yet sexualised female characters and then killing them tragically before they can be properly developed, then having them mourned by a sopping wet cat of a man. Now, some of these characters are my absolute favourite parts of the show - Clara Oswald, River Song and Missy for example, and there are a few exceptions such as Bill Potts, but I just think it would be a terrifying fate. I mean, can you even imagine? You’re wandering around a very dodgy London/space location in a short skirt with a thousand witty quips on the tip of your tongue, being trailed by a skinny guy in an unusual outfit, then you get shot or something and it’s very sad and tragic. I would just hate it.

[visenyaism]

to what degree do you think jaehaerys is supposed to have a good or bad legacy from GRRM’s point of view? like the books paint him as having this legacy of being a wise pragmatist, and the perspectives in fire & blood back that up superficially even if it’s not hard to see how his decisions directly led to civil war and oppression. is that intentional or just an accident of asoiaf being a good critique of monarchy in general? is the text saying that monarchy is bad because not every king is jaehaerys, or is it bad because even its greatest mythologized figures worked towards its corruption?

genuinely no clue. to me it is one of the biggest points of dissonance both plot-wise and thematically in the whole series. If i want to be generous id say that it’s clear that Jaehaerys is remembered as a Good King, like the best possible ruler in the monarchical system, and this is BECAUSE he is unambiguously just a terrible person to his family because that’s what feudalism mandates and that familial destruction causes the civil war? To me this SHOULD be the point, but somehow it is NOT because fire and blood and the main series don’t really draw any particular conclusions about the ethics of Jaehaerys’ rule.

You get to fire and blood and he is just not singularly a standout politician despite everyone saying he is? as a ruler he is not fantastically distinct from maegor the cruel other than their relationship to the faith. He built a bunch of stuff, but most of the reforms were his wife or his septon’s idea and he doesn’t really get enough to demonstrate competence as a ruler. One standout is that he’s so inexplicably terrible at making marriage alliances like he somehow seems genuinely surprised any time one of his kids comes of age and needs a spouse and the only logical explanation for the bonkers matches he makes for his children seems to be active malice against them. His actions specifically his misogyny against Rhaenys literally caused the dynasty destroying civil war.

and if the similarities between the two were the point, the book was making, I would be pretty interested. like yeah they both build all these things but their entire legacy is built on reproductive coercion and violent misogyny. Jae and Maegor both got their start by usurping Rhaena. Jaehaerys is actually worse in terms of how he treats his mother. Maegor actually named a female heir at one point while Jaehaerys refused to do so at multiple points. Like his uncle Jae was also obsessed with making children and forced his wife to have THIRTEEN of them even though she begged him not to. Jaehaerys had someone hold his teenage daughter down and make her watch as he chopped her boyfriend into small pieces with a sword to punish her for having premarital sex.

all of this is just the plot- not atypical for ASOIAF which really focuses on gender violence as a theme and condemning its entrenchment in the setting. except it’s just depicting a lot of violent misogyny without the commentary or making a point about it because Jaehaerys is Good which is really weird unusually shallow writing.

TLDR: there’s so much dissonance in how he is written: he is described as this fantastic ruler, but doesn’t do a lot of big political moves that maegor didn’t, he’s a terrible person, but is never really called out for this by anyone in the text in ways kings like Baelor are. What’s the point? What IS the text trying to say about Jaehaerys? I would also like to know.

[anna-scribbles]

can you share some of your writing/planning process for thirteen? i adore the non-linear format - how do you decide what scenes to put where?

ahh thank you!! idk how much of a defined process I have, but there's definitely a lot of planning that goes into it and i can show you some of that.

i keep all the chapters in one doc organized by month, and then i plan everything out in bullet points in a timeline at the beginning. here i just have october and november as examples bc after december things started to get more detailed/messy

all of the scenes (especially at the beginning) set the stage for things i’ve planned to happen later, or establish something that feels relevant to adrien’s character by the time we meet him in canon. the task of condensing an entire month into about 2-3 scenes has been a bit difficult; i’ve found out that i’m a very present-moment kind of writer so it’s harder for me to describe the passage of, like, weeks of time. so i’ve been pinpointing specific threads of adrien’s story that i want to be sure to tell and choosing scenes from each month that build on that.

i’ve had the idea for this fic in the back of my mind since about 2021 so i’ve had several scenes cemented in my mind, ways i’ve decided things played out, etc. some of the writing process has been building the narrative around those things or figuring out how we get there. that’s what i love about prequels in general, honestly - it’s inevitable where we’re going to end up, but how do we get there?

adrien’s situation, at the moment we meet him in origins, is SO endlessly fascinating to me. he is in the process of doing something reckless and rebellious and bold - running away - against the will of his father, a man he spends the rest of the series struggling with his compulsion to submit to. we find out, via the rest of the show, exactly how difficult it is for adrien to stand up to his father. and yet, in his very first appearance, adrien is running away from him.

how did he get here? what, exactly, pushed him to this point? was this the final escalation of a steady build of rebellious behaviors, or an impulsive breakthrough after one awful day too many? what has this small boy been through in the last year, and why does public school seem to be his only fathomable escape?

and WHY, if his circumstances are so dire as to compell him to rebel so boldly in the first place, does he still throw it away to help the old man in the road? what makes him so kind, when he has everything to lose? what happened? how did he get here?

i’m interested, obviously, in the character of émilie. i think that the hole she leaves in the narrative is a compelling silhouette and i’ve been having a blast trying to pencil in its details. it’s obvious that adrien loved her deeply and had a stronger connection to her than with gabriel. but also, adrien was still shut off from the world while she was alive. he was still, presumably, an exploited child star while she was alive. she was an actress and a mother and died by broken magic and never told her son the truth about any of it. figuring out who i think she was and then how to show that through young adrien’s eyes has been a huge part of planning this story for me.

as far as the twenty three year old adrien sections, those have been less involved as far as planning goes. i only recently mapped out which areas of the house i want him to visit during the different months. i wanted his sections to line up at least thematically, if not physically, where thirteen year old adrien is at in his story. for example, in december twenty three year old adrien cleans out the dining room where thirteen year old adrien was having terrible christmas dinner. and in january they’re both in the garden, etc.

it’s a bit harder to map out twenty three adrien just because it has to also make sense geographically - i can’t have him running back and forth up and down the stairs, let’s be real he doesn’t have the energy for that. i’ve also opened up the agreste mansion page on the miraculous wiki so many times while trying to map this out 💔💔 did you know that apparently there’s a third floor we never see in the show. yeah i have to figure out what to do with that now

ANYWAY long story short: the planning process for thirteen is kind of a mess, but the whole story is built around some central plot points that i knew i wanted to hit from the beginning. the details change a lot (as you can see from the outline above - it’s not quite right) but i keep the end in mind. just have to figure out how we get there.

thank you for asking!! mwah<3

[tokiro07]

In a recent interview, Eiichiro Oda said that he probably won't do any more manga after One Piece (or at least nothing huge) because the world he constructed for One Piece inadvertently allowed him to explore pretty much every type of story he wanted to: Mock Town was a Western, Egghead is both a sci-fi and a murder mystery, Thriller Bark was a horror, etc. He never did it, but Oda probably could have found a way to work in a high school drama or romantic comedy if he'd really wanted to. I would argue that's how the Hungry Days promotion came about, he probably wanted to see it explored at least a little bit but couldn't quite find a good excuse for it

Undead Unluck, as I think at least one of us has mentioned before, is very similar: it can be whatever it wants to be whenever it wants to be. A sci-fi horror against the emotion-eating aliens on the space station, a zombie apocalypse Western against Spoil, a wuxia against Feng, competitive gaming against Spring, sports against Void, and now of course the high school AU centered around Chikara; Undead Unluck can do it all! If we end up going into Lucy's mind and it becomes a swords and sorcery fantasy with Lucy captive in a castle by a dragonified Ruin, would any of you really be surprised? Would any of you even complain? I wouldn't, and in fact I hope it happens now. That'd be such a funny way to get both Ruin and Lucy back into the main story

I don't know if I've ever really talked about it before, but there are certain niches that Jump manga fill. I don't mean in the sense of genre like sports or gag manga, I mean more thematically. When My Hero Academia started, the consensus was that it was the "new Naruto," with its plucky underdog protagonist competing with a cruel and prodigious rival and a society that discredits him for the circumstances of his birth. Black Clover draws inspiration from a ton of big name manga, but Bleach is probably the one that it best resembles in the structure of its world (the Clover Kingdom resembles Soul Society, the Magic Knight squads resemble the Thirteen Court Squads, and the Grimoires are basically simplified Zanpakutou)

Over the years, I've seen many things take major inspiration from Naruto, Bleach, Dragon Ball, etc., but shockingly, there was a long stretch where I never saw anything try to emulate One Piece, at least not in a way that was particularly obvious. The closest was Toriko, creating wild and imaginative animals, plants, etc. the same way that One Piece creates its islands, but nothing had a cast that felt reminiscent to me

Interestingly, the first one that I noticed that felt like what I was looking for was Dr. Stone, and that only sunk in for me when Senku had his group build a boat and put up a sail with their own unique symbol. I realized in that moment that where Toriko had covered the spirit of adventure that One Piece had, Dr. Stone covered the spirit of friendship and togetherness: every time a dilemma came up, the solution was almost always finding a new ally and awakening their talents, applying them in a way that they'd never thought to before, or reconciling with an old enemy for the sake of progress. "My friends are here to do the things I can't, and I'm here to do what they can't." This is one of the core tenets of One Piece, and while it took me a while to notice, it was equally a part of Dr. Stone's core as well

Undead Unluck does something pretty similar, though not as overtly, since the cast don't really have neat roles like "navigator" or "doctor" or "chef;" instead, everyone has their areas of expertise that can be used in multiple situations, so the individuals best suited for each situation are carefully selected, and if none are available, the hunt begins for someone who is. I think this didn't sink in because it didn't become nearly as prevalent until after the timeloop, but in retrospect, the first half of the story was like the pre-timeskip Straw Hats', unprepared and unable to reach the world's ceiling when finally faced with it, only to come back stronger and wiser in their journey to come back together

Coupled with its ability to be (Chucky voice) genre-fluid, Undead Unluck has unexpectedly become in my opinion a more than worthy successor to One Piece's particular niche in Jump. I've had this thought for a while now, but I think that Undead Unluck might actually be a good glimpse into what One Piece would have been like if Oda had been able to stick to his original five-year plan. It isn't able to take nearly as much time to flesh out its world, but its streamlined approach elegantly allows us to get to know enough about the cast to be invested while still allowing attentive viewers to pick up on fine details. Where One Piece ballooned to be a 30-year venture because Oda kept having more ideas he wanted to share and angles he wanted to analyze, Undead Unluck seems to have a stronger clarity to its vision and commitment to ensuring that vision is realized ASAP without sacrificing any of the essentials. Neither approach is wrong, it's just good to see that there is in fact a world that exists where One Piece would have been able to be just as solidly executed even without entertaining every whim and flight of fancy that its author could dream of

Of course, One Piece is still going, and likely will be when Undead Unluck naturally concludes, so calling UU its successor is definitely a bit of an overstatement, but my main point is that I'm glad that we're starting to see authors who aren't afraid of sharing One Piece's niche, and more importantly are doing it in a way that's fairly subtle, but identifiable. It's an extremely comforting sign for the rapidly approaching post-One Piece world, and I can't wait to see what fills the coming power vacuum

[doctormastertardis]

Alas, I am giving Fifteen's first series a ****5/10 stars. Same rating I gave Thirteen's first series (which Chibnall luckily was able to fix by mid-series 12)... "Rogue" was as excellent as "The Demons of Punjab" (I dare say the latter is better).

Basically after seeing the finale, the entire "thematic" experience of Fifteen's first series totally flopped for me. My ratings for RTD, Chibnall, and Moffat series can be found HERE.

LAME ass finale. What a disappointing build-up. The entire series was a waste of my time, same way Thirteen's first series was a waste of my time. This is the first time RTD has ever disappointed me (if yall see my rating of his earlier runs, click here). The dude needs to stop pulling a Moffat now. We aint here for this shit RTD. Just because you have a Black Doctor doesn't mean you can slack off???? Wtf? Representation means nothing without the quality writing.

[cure-icy-writes]

It’s been two years and I am STILL mad at the ending of Wonder Egg Priority. Maybe enough to brainstorm a better ending for them.

-Starting with episode 10, Kaoru’s trauma is shown in much less graphic detail. Rather than outright assault, his trauma consisted of realizing that a trusted mentor just viewed him as Girl Lite after he made that person his only support system, and his mentor's romantic/sexual intentions towards him aren't made explicit. It tones down the graphic abuse, while also creating a character foil to Momoe, who feels like girls see her as Boy Lite and constrain her to their fantasies and gender roles. Momoe is more explicitly trans, and the episode makes a point that Acca and Ura-acca don’t actually know shit. Kaoru’s suicide wasn’t a “feminine” one, it just got lumped in with the rest because he wasn’t openly out and was buried under his deadname.

-the friends that frill created, rather than. You know. Brutally murdering and traumatizing anyone? They just show up as vaguely unsettling messengers who aren’t supposed to be there. And they start asking pointed questions. Why was Kaoru in the egg? Can the suicides of boys and girls really be separated so easily? Momoe is a gnc trans girl. She experiences gender differently than her cis friends. And the experience leaves her shaken in her faith of the Accas. She’s completed the game, but it’s bittersweet. She has closure, but the dead cannot truly be brought back to life. All that can be done is to create a parallel world, another chance for them to live in, and to say goodbye.

-Rika completes her game, and gets to say she’s sorry. She realizes that eating food in public without being mocked? That’s basically thin privilege. Her arc ends with her asking her mom to make her some comfort food. Frill’s friend asks why, exactly, Rika said what she did, abused her position of power. We see her manager, a grown ass adult man, and the silhouette of her father.

-Neiru isn’t a robot AI because that makes no fucking sense. Instead, she parallels Frill, as a “created girl” who was born to fulfill expectations. It’s revealed that her sister stabbed her and committed suicide because the expectations made her snap, because she wanted to destroy the image of the “perfect girl” as a final act of spite. She apologizes to Neiru, for not seeing her as a person but a tool.

-Ai completes her game, and gets closure with Koito— their friendship was kind of fucked up and gay in the way that repressed thirteen year old girls with codependence issues tend to be, and they actually talk about that. Koito reveals that their teacher strung her along, pushed them apart, and she committed suicide because of the guilt that she’d been complicit in Ai’s grooming.

-Ai tells her mom that she doesn’t feel safe around her teacher. Her mom believes her, and Momoe slowly comes to terms with the realization that she’s been putting her uncle on a pedestal because he was supportive of her transition, but she needs to believe her fellow women. The dude doesn’t go to jail but there’s a marked difference in how the girls talk about him.

-Frill and Himari get to take back their narratives. Frill is literally just a baby created by misogynists, and she decides to crawl out of the basement fridge and tell her dads “yeah I didn’t kill your daughter. She realized that she was just a replacement, that you people saw a daughter as a replaceable toy to make for fun, and she couldn’t take it. Anyways have a nice life lol” and chops off her hair, leaving it in a pile on their doorstep.

-The series ends with the girls taking control of the magical egg gacha— something thematic about girls supporting girls and taking back control from the institutions run by men who exploit their pain and grief for money. There’s a timeskip where Ai graduates school and starts working from home, Momoe gets gayer and starts building up a transgender support network, Rika moves away from home into her own apartment and starts rebuilding her fraught relationship with her mother, and Neiru is shown running the egg gacha for free, and with explicit warnings to the girls who come looking for closure.

-The temptation of death is posited as a human urge, something that exists at rock bottom, but one that teenage girls are especially vulnerable to in a society that will take advantage of them. And warriors of Eros? Those are the ones who choose love. Ai.

anyways. I think that ties up all the character arcs and plot threads? It would be nice if canon had given us this but ah well. I can dream

[twilightknight17]

This time on P3R: Get in the car. We’re going to war. Atlus is just personally attacking me now.

(I’m half-joking. Probably.)

It’s the first day of December, and Ryoji was absent today. But I got a text from him after school asking me to meet him in the music room.

Specifically using the phrase “I need to see you right now.”

He’s sitting at the piano when we get there, by himself. Something is clearly wrong.

Don’t apologize. You’re important to me.

He’s not even sure what he wants to say. So he just thanks Minato for spending time with him, because he’s learned so many new things and got to experience so much, like the trip to Kyoto and just hanging out with everyone.

...oh. He learned to play the piano. For Minato.

Let’s do it let’s play together let’s play a duet asdfjkl;

We don’t have another time! T_T

He says that seeing the couples in Kyoto and spending time at the dorm has helped him understand what it means to build real connections with other people. They help each other overcome challenges and keep each other going. And they understand each other.

It’s… sweet, knowing what he is. He’s trying so hard to understand, and he likes people so much.

………

……Atlus. ATLUS. What is this? WHAT IS THIS? I’m not allowed to date this boy and you put THIS dialogue in this game how much more blatant can you GET OH MY GOD.

Hello, TVTropes editors, it’s not a crack ship or ships that pass in the night after a line like that.

...WHERE IS MY THIRD DIALOGUE OPTION. ATLUS. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

Yes, I want to be more than friends, I love you, please, please, please, if I love you enough I can save yo--

FUUKA NOT NOW WE’RE HAVING A MOMENT.

Fuuka comes in and says that she was passing through and heard someone playing a beautiful song, so she thought she’d come in and listen to the performance. Which. Did you just hover outside the door after he stopped playing so you could interrupt at the worst moment?

That was mean. I’m sorry, Fuuka. But seriously.

She asks who was playing. It was Ryoji. He’s right there, Fuuka, come on--

Did my boyfriend launch himself out that window to escape this interaction? Oh my god.

I never should have taken my eyes off him.

I didn’t even really get to answer him. Those weren’t definitive answers.

God. Fuck. Atlus, why. Why would you do this to me.

All I can do is go home, and spend my evening doing whatever.

Ryoji’s still absent from school, and now Aigis is gone, too.

But there’s literally nothing I can do.

I guess I’ll go to my student council meeting.

...Odagiri-kun, I know I’ve been neglecting your link. But – and I say this with as much respect as I can manage when I’m busy worrying about my boyfriend – it has been over six months. Just let this go, holy hell.

I’d rather not go home, but I guess I have to. After all, I need to get some sleep before the plot decides to go haywire.

You’ve never woken up at midnight even once this entire month? God, I should have woken you up in Kyoto.

Also the fact that Aigis went after him without telling anyone else what was going on… no. We’re a team for a reason, Aigis!

But no. He’s “dangerous”. He’s her enemy.

He also doesn’t know what’s going on at this point.

Shoutout to Atlus for the butterfly wings when she activates her powers. Thematically appropriate for the papillon heart. But look at his face! He doesn’t understand what’s happening, and you’re trying to kill him!

It triggers his memory, though.

Ryoji is the thirteenth Arcana Shadow: Death. And ten years ago, he was broken into thirteen pieces because of an incomplete awakening in the Kirijo labs. During a fight on the Moonlight Bridge against Aigis, a robot created specifically to destroy shadows, she couldn’t defeat or destroy him, so she sealed him into the only available vessel.

So, y’all killed his whole family in your fight. Oof.

Aigis says she had no other choice but to seal Death in this kid. I guess when you’re 100% focused on your goal, it certainly would seem like that.

I am curious what happened to Minato after that. I’m surprised any of the remaining scientists didn’t snatch him up. Did Aigis just never mention what happened to Death?

Apparently not, because this poor kid was left to grow up alone, until his inevitable return to Iwatodai.

...he looks like he’s in pain, now that he’s remembered.

Aigis comes at him, even though he tells her not to because he’s stronger than the first time they fought. He’s got all of his pieces now. He doesn’t want to hurt her. And he deflects her no problem with what I’m assuming is Moonless Gown. But she keeps trying, even activating Orgia Mode, until she can’t anymore.

Fuuka had been scanning for Aigis, and SEES took off immediately when she found her, so now we’re arriving two minutes too late. Aigis is down, entirely shut off, and Ryoji is not doing well.

You didn’t want any of this. It’s not your fault.

He tells SEES that the shadows exist to bring the rebirth of the “maternal being”, and that the Appriser exists to draw her to him and allow her to awaken.

Overwhelming?

Incomparable?

Inevitable?

OLCE?

He explains that he was born ten years ago and sealed inside Minato, and that Minato returning to Iwatodai set all of this in motion.

Junpei, he’s awake during the Dark Hour and won against Aigis. There’s clearly something going on here.

...plus, listen to how sad he sounds.

No wonder. An awakening will take it out of you, and he awakened to something stronger than most of us can comprehend. Minato also realizes that Ryoji was probably Pharos all along.

This would be a great opportunity to carry him home like a damsel, though. I’m gonna pretend that’s what happened, especially after the music room conversation. And I KNOW I’m gonna have to go to school tomorrow, but I’m also going to pretend I don’t have to.

But yeah. Seriously, Atlus? For real? All of that?

Just end me.

I need to go write fic or something.

They deserve to make out on a piano.

I’ll do the sad explanation next time.

(Also I’m gonna hit the image limit. X’D)

[jakesuit0]

Too Young Review

“Too Young” finally follows up on the newly deaged Princess Bubblegum, something fans were dying to see after no glimpses of her in the past four episodes. This would have been a more thematically appropriate season premiere, but I do like the building anticipation for the followup. The question of how this new dynamic would alter the status quo of the series going forward hung over our heads. Turns out: not at all. At least not in an obvious way.

Even putting aside the romance aspect, it’s just great to see Finn finally hanging out with someone his own age, something we never get enough of. He’s always hanging out with his older brother, and his other best friends are hundreds of years older than him. As Finn says at the beginning, he can just be himself. I like Finn stepping out to get moral support from Jake. His encouragement of Finn’s pursuit of Bubblegum is finally appropriate! Finn is a little nervous, this is probably his first ever date. But, he is overall pretty comfortable, as there’s still a strong familiarity between Finn and PB. There’s also no pussyfooting around between the two, they are very upfront with their feelings. PB already knows how Finn feels, and she basically tells Finn that he’s hot after he drinks her serum. He admits to not bathing, so it’s a good thing that BMO gets Finn on a bathing schedule by “Holly Jolly Secrets Part 1.” It’s interesting that Finn first asks if she’s trying to make herself 18 again. Part of him thinks this is all too good to be true.  

Not really sure how much I need to introduce him, but Lemongrab! He’s probably the tenth most prominent character in the series, and one of the most well known characters, period. He wasn’t given much of a personality in the outline. Tom Herpich and especially Jesse Monyihan, the storyboarders for this episode, really created Lemongrab. They succeeded in making such a distinct character, and with Justin Roiland bringing him to life with some of the best voice acting of the series so far, he was basically guaranteed to become a recurring character. (I know there’s a massive elephant in the room that I’m avoiding, but it’s just not pertinent to this review. It will be addressed when I get to “Prismo the Wishmaster” and morals will be condemned!) Lemongrab’s very screamy, but he does it in such an alien way that he’s not annoying. He’s introduced with his iconic “unacceptable” catchphrase, which is pretty great and has been memed to death. He was originally going to be PB’s uncle (I assume it would have straight up been Gumbald, albeit in a very different incarnation, since he was mentioned in “Susan Strong”). I’m very glad they didn’t go that direction. They were dangerously close to ruining much of the direction they’ll take PB’s character in. 

Lemongrab is now technically the rightful ruler due to PB’s deaging. I assume Bubblegum created Lemongrab with the intention of wanting an heir, and that stuck in Candy Kingdom law. Similarly to my take on “Hot Diggity Doom”, I don’t think Princess Bubblegum actually cares about the legal technicality, especially since she started creating the kingdom when she was a kid. She just wanted to delay the inevitable. She might also have more respect for the rules as a less jaded thirteen year old. 

The flashback establishes that she created Lemongrab. It’s the first hint that PB created all the candy people, but it could still just be assumed that Lemongrab was an exception. The implications of PB creating life aren’t explored here, but this establishes a trait for her that will be explored a ton. We don’t know exactly when she created him, but it’s implied that it happened a long time ago, possibly hundreds of years ago. My theory is it happened before the flashbacks seen in “The Vault”. PB was used to making candy people dumb on purpose, probably straight up using dum dum juice. It’d make sense to not want her heir to be incompetent, so she’d need a different formula, especially since she isn’t using parts of the mother gum like she did with Gumbald, Lolly, and Chicle. This caused the experiment to “go wrong”. The reason I think it’s before “The Vault”, is because we see a young Peppermint Butler in it, who I don’t think was created with dum dum juice. She must have perfected the formula by then. Pep wasn’t intended to be an heir, as she’s still trying in “Goliad”, but she’ll eventually realize he fits the bill. Calling Lemongrab her “first” experiment to go wrong, is a straight up continuity error due to the Uncle Gumbald backstory. It’s also hard to believe that she didn’t have any other experiments go wrong. I think my theory could recontextualize the line to mean it’s the first one of her experiments with her new formula to go wrong, but it’s a little handwavey. As if this flashback didn’t already have enough interesting implications, we see that PB still has her memories. This raises the question of if she still has the same experiences, is her relationship with Finn still problematic? I argue that it isn’t. She behaves like a child in her new state. Her brain, just like the rest of her body, has less candy biomass, and is the brain of a child. She’s seeing her memories through the lens of a kid. 

Finn and Bonnie try to solve their problems like kids would for once, with pranks. Their relationship is so pure and adorable. Bonnie cuddling up to Finn on the castle roof is one of the most wholesome moments ever in Adventure Time and Finn looks so incredibly happy. It really captures the innocence of a young child’s first romance, and it stands apart from the awkwardness that defines his relationship with Flame Princess and the maturity that comes with his dynamic with Huntress Wizard. At the same time, Lemongrab gets more defined as he tries to laugh and have fun with the pranks after Peppermint Butler’s explanation. He wants to fit in with others, but he just doesn’t see the world in a neurotypical way, so it comes off as forced and awkward, like his bobbing head laughter.

Peppermint Butler tells Lemongrab that food comes from Mars. It’s a weird lore detail that isn’t ever explained, but is referenced again. It’d make sense for a world of talking animals and talking food to get food from an outside source, but there’s plenty of examples of them eating food from Ooo. I’ll assume that industrialized food comes from Mars, and this is considered more civilized. Lemongrab eating the spiced food is a great sequence, and causes him too much pain for him to just laugh off.

Princess Bubblegum finally decides it's time to stop delaying what she knows is inevitable: becoming 18 again. Finn’s upset, but has the ability to recognize the greater good enough to swallow those feelings. This whole experience was more of a well needed break for PB, than a true commitment to a new permanent identity, just like a later arc she’ll have. But unlike later, she doesn’t change the way she conducts her life through learning from this ordeal. Many fans don’t think this episode works with PB’s portrayal in the rest of the series, but I disagree. She sacrifices her happiness for her people, which will be explored as a character flaw later down the line that ends up backfiring for her kingdom anyway. She views having fun as something mainly for children, and work as something that must consume adults. There is no middle ground for her. The pain this causes PB just makes her double down on work as a distraction. Some of that analysis is based on future episodes, but a lot of it can be taken away from just “Too Young”. It’s great to finally get an episode that focuses on fleshing out Princess Bubblegum’s deeper feelings and motivations. It’s really the only episode in the first three seasons with that accomplishment. 

Princess Bubblegum says she needs her lab equipment to engineer more candy flesh, an even bigger hint that she created the candy people. I love the scene of her citizens giving PB parts of themselves. They recognize how selfless Bubblegum is, and sacrifice pieces of themselves like she does for them. Finn uses the power of love to catalyze the re-aging process. He gets to return Princess Bubblegum’s favor in “Mortal Folly” with the like-like sweater! It’s cheesy but it’s such a perfect resolution. Princess Bubblegum’s goodbye to Finn is heartbreaking, and it’s really tragic, especially after seeing how happy they were together. They hug and Finn has his first kiss. It’s a really special moment, and it really should be his only kiss with Princess Bubblegum. Fuck you “Wizard Battle” for taking away a little bit of what makes this moment so special and tragic. 

Bubblegum turns back and is pretty cold to Finn, but I love the contrast of her just saying “‘scuse me Finn” and how much taller she is than Finn. She’s also cold to Lemongrab, calling him a butt, which is even more problematic given the fact she’s responsible for him. The next moment is soooo important. Finn comes on to PB, which I can’t even condemn him for this time given the circumstances, and PB immediately shuts him down. She takes the crush slightly more seriously than just innocent puppy love. I love how awkward Finn asking if she wants to hug more is, really highlighting how this relationship does not work with this age difference. She responds by not humoring him finally, saying “that was like 5 years ago” and “you really gotta move on.” People have criticized Bubblegum for being too cold to Finn. I do understand calling those comments, and her joking about the situation, insensitive. It comes across to Finn like the relationship they had means nothing to her now. I really don’t think it meant nothing to her, as we’ll see by her subtle changes in behavior and a line she has in “Burning Low.”  But, I’m sure it was hurtful and confusing for Finn. I still can’t really blame PB for how she responded. She definitely could have been more sensitive about it, while still clearly turning him down. But, it’s an awkward situation. She was still trying to be kind about it, even if the joking manner came off as hurtful, and she’s very clear in her rejection which is good. She still doesn’t know the true extent of Finn’s feelings.

Season two’s cliffhanger being immediately reversed in one episode is a controversial decision. It’s the first example of one of the biggest criticisms leveled against the series, not committing to interesting status quo changes. Turning Bonnie back to 18 is a decision I 100% support. Yes, it’s sad how much of a more entertaining character young PB is compared to the regular state of her character so far. But, essentially replacing the most boring character of the main cast with an entirely different character would feel like such a lame solution to a problem the series has. Working on making her a more engaging character is the correct path. The path they take Bubblegum on is my favorite aspect of the series, so I’m glad this didn’t stick. It’s just unfortunate that it takes another season for that to happen. It makes reversing back to the status quo more questionable. Also, we can’t lose Hynden Walch! To be fair, restoring the status quo after only one episode is the aspect of this that’s more contentious. I wouldn’t have been opposed to seeing young PB in a few more episodes, but I don’t really see what more could have been done. I think “Too Young” fully explores everything interesting that can come out of this plotline: her relationship with Finn and how Princess Bubblegum acts differently at this age. This also isn’t entirely a reset. Not only does this episode color Princess Bubblegum’s character moving forward, it also sets a clear new dynamic for Finn and Bubblegum. She stops humoring his advancements (except for “Wizard Battle”, but again, fuck that episode). It’s the first of many times “everything stays, but it still changes” is applicable. We’ll see how long that ends up being a good excuse moving forward though. 

Finn calls Jake and he gives Finn some pretty bad advice if you take it as him still telling Finn to keep pursuing PB! To be fair, he doesn’t yet know that Bubblegum is an adult again. But Finn tells him that he got dumped. You could also interpret Jake’s advice as being persistent in finding love in general, not necessarily referring to Bubblegum specifically. His speech was intended to be important and to foreshadow the rest of the series, but I’m not sure if this really panned out. He does defeat a demon lord (whether it refers to Hunson, Ke-Oth, The Lich, or evil in general). Finn definitely warps through several worlds (“Puhoy”, “Crossover”, “Beyond the Grotto”, etc). Walking up the wizard steps could foreshadow Huntress Wizard, even though it’s unclear if they ever get in a committed relationship. The magic key and water world don’t really come to pass, unless you wanna say “President Porpoise is Missing!” I’m probably taking it too literally. I think it’s true meaning is to just be persistent in finding love despite all the obstacles. I think that’s what Jake’s means, so I like the speech. The episode ends with Finn looking at Bubblegum up above. It seems like Finn takes it as advice to keep pursuing PB specifically, as we see in upcoming episodes. A lot of fans took it this way, thinking Finn will just have to wait until he becomes 18 to get with PB. With him aging throughout the series, that does seem like a plausible endgame. But there’s obviously problematic implications with that. The series ends up going in a different direction and doesn’t make romance a central part of Finn’s final arc, so this speech really doesn’t end up feeling as important as it was set out to be. 

This is a really iconic episode with a super memorable story and introduction of a major character, and it’s one of my favorites so far. It’s essentially a what if scenario, the one time we see what Finn and PB could be like as a couple. The one time Finn gets to live out his greatest desire. I’m not a Fubblegum shipper, but I’m glad the shippers get this episode. Shipping them outside this episode is weird, but I’m fully on board with their relationship here. I guess I’ll end with some controversy. You can’t tell me Princess Bubblegum didn’t have real feelings for Finn in this one. I totally interpret her as bi just because of this episode. 

Grade: A

[ivorywreathablaze]

Hello, I'm Laurel!

Here resides the randomness of someone who is late for everything probably including my own funeral.

Welcome!

I am also on: DeviantArt, Fanfiction.net, and Instagram.

I'm one of the artists for JohnPeacekeeper’s Itadaki no Hecate! Technically. I'm still working on it lol. (I'm currently going to basics I never did before and working on character sheets.)

If you have a story on with Khamsin x Kazumi in it, please message me so I can add it to the Khami community! If it's elsewhere, I can still post it to the list, which is on DeviantArt! I also have anonymous messages are turned on, so if you’re shy you can contact me there.

P.S. My username was previously ‘Qiana King’ and ‘Laurel Gwen King.’ Why change? Because a pen name looks weird on fandom stuff. Also, this is thematic!

Current Status of the fics I’m working on is on my Fanfic profile, until I figure out how to make it into cool bars on a page on my tumblr lol

Shakugan OTPs:

Khamsin x Kazumi (Khami)

I will never be able to explain exactly why I ship them, because I've had them as an OTP for so long that they’re just stuck in my brain. I probably wouldn't ship them if I hadn't started when I was thirteen and looking to ship Kazumi with someone—but then again, they work to understand each other better, she’s the only one who makes him smile, she’s implied to be his motivation to keep fighting for a better world, she surprises him, he is the only character in the series who gets her, she’s the only one he opens up to at all, he dies protecting her, they get a significant goodbye scene, he’s looking at her instead of anyone else present as he dies, she’s the main character with the saddest ending but keeps going strong just like he said she would . . . so like, maybe I would.

Yuji x Shana(Shanji)

They’re the main ship in the series, so if you like the series I probably don’t have to explain it. But Yuji gives Shana her humanity back, helps her access her emotions, and gives her companionship. Meanwhile, he falls in love with her so deeply that he becomes a strong fighter, turns the entire world upside-down for her, and decides to wander eternally without her just trying to atone for betraying her trust. Then Shana refuses to let him be alone, and they get their happy ending!

Keisaku Satou x Margery Daw (Keigery)

They have this slow-build dynamic, which eventually grows into romantic dedication. It starts when he’s one her lackeys who have a crush on her, and ends with them being emotional equals. He becomes dedicated to helping her, and she manages to hang on to life past her life purpose falling apart explicitly because of her feelings for him. It’s SO CUTE!

SouthValley x WestShore

I have . . . NO explanation. Just vibes.

Posting Standards:

I will never post something that is MA/Explicit. Because of my personal clothing choices, I rarely post drawings of girls in clothes that show their shoulders, never post them in something low-cut, and they always have clothes that go to their knees. Same kind of rules apply to drawing guys. I am Christian, which means I try not to make light of/glamorize violence, addiction, prejudice, or other like topics, (though it can be difficult given the genes I write so please do message me/review if you think the balance is off in one of my fics). I also believe that online activism is most often actively harmful, especially from people who don't know what they're talking about (me) so I intentionally don’t post about politics. My personal beliefs will show up in my stories despite my efforts, but when I catch it then I do try to show other perspectives as well.

Thanks for reading through that whole boring wall of text lol, and I hope you enjoy my upcoming work!

[isagrimorie]

Hi! For the fandom asks, 5, 8, and 17 please for Doctor Who!

Ask Game

Fandom ask: Doctor Who

5. the scene from it that lives in my head rent free.

I think it is a toss-up between the image of the Doctor and the Doctor sitting together in a Volkswagen, talking to each other, not knowing they're both the Doctor in the Fugitive of the Judoon. The refrain of: "I know my own life." And finding out -- they didn't at all.

And with Twelve in Heaven Sent as he continues to punch his way out of a diamond wall falling the story of the bird.

Or the moment with Twelve as he confronted his upcoming death. "Without witness, without hope, without reward."

Or the moment with Thirteen in War of Sontarans, when she's alone and has no TARDIS and only has herself. And I was just like -- yes, yes she's the Doctor. She's my Doctor.

The one with Nine going: "Coward any day!"

8. ...a quote from it that means a lot to me.

Doctor Who has many but River's tearful declaration about her love for the Doctor.

"When you love the Doctor, it's like loving the stars themselves. You don't expect a sunset to admire you back. And if I happen to find myself in danger, let me tell you, the Doctor is not stupid enough, or sentimental enough, and he is certainly not in love enough to find himself standing in it with me!"

And then her sudden realization that the Doctor was standing in it with her and his glorious, glorious sweet smile, "Hello, Sweetie."

17....the world-building aspect of the story I have the greatest admiration for.

Regeneration. That was the best innovation.

The way thematically in Chibnall era, he called out the Imperialism and Colonialism of the Time Lords. And Thirteen's very, very complicated feelings about them, and her hissing disdain of monarchy.

[jcmarchi]

Vertebrate 3D scan project opens collections to all - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/vertebrate-3d-scan-project-opens-collections-to-all-technology-org/

Vertebrate 3D scan project opens collections to all - Technology Org

A venture to digitize vertebrate collections in museums and make them freely available online for anyone to access has reached a milestone. The project has created 3D CT scans of some 13,000 specimens, representing more than half the genera of birds, amphibians, reptiles, fishes and mammals.

Lateral view of piranha (Serrasalmus iridopsis); collected in South America, by C. F. Hartt who died in 1878. The exact year of collection is not known, but was likely in the latter half of the 19th century.

The project, the oVert (openVertebrate) Thematic Collection Network, has just wrapped up a four-year, $2.5 million National Science Foundation grant, with the efforts to date described in a paper published in BioScience.

The Cornell Museum of Vertebrates, one of 18 institutions taking part in oVert, has uploaded roughly 500 CT scans of specimens from its collections. The museum holds approximately 1.3 million fish specimens, 27,000 reptiles and amphibians (collectively called herps), 57,000 birds and 23,000 mammal specimens.

“Not everyone is interested in making a trip to a museum, so by digitizing specimens, placing everything up on a website and making it free, anyone who wants to access it can without having to leave the house, which allows for much more equitable access,” said Casey Dillman, curator of fishes and herps at the Cornell Museum of Vertebrates in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and a co-author of the Bioscience paper.

So far, users have included artists, high school and college students, educators and scientists.

oVert allows the natural history collections that are represented to be used in collaborative ways, such as in classrooms. The format has made it simpler to compare anatomies of different species.

“You can do so many things,” Dillman said. “You can compare specimens and look at the evolution of limbs, or wings in birds and bats, or gills in fishes.”

Views of a juvenile pied-billed grebe (Podilymbus podiceps) that perished swallowing a fish.

One limitation of the platform is that each specimen dataset can be 2 to 3 gigabytes in size, requiring users to have access to a computer with an expensive graphics processor to visualize the data. “Not everyone’s laptop can do that,” Dillman said.

Dorsal view of a shovelnose sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus platorynchus); one of the three species of shovelnose sturgeon in the U.S. The other two species are federally endangered. This specimen was collected in 1909 in Emanuel Creek at Springfield, South Dakota. Image credit: Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates

The idea behind the grant was to CT scan one species of every genus of vertebrate, thereby building an online digital library of each organism’s appearance – its phenotype, or observable characteristics – with respect to the skeletal anatomy. While most of the images are skeletons, some were stained with a special solution to provide better contrast and visualize soft tissues, such as skin and muscles. The scanners use X-rays, which can be set as weak as a medical X-ray for soft tissue, or strong enough to view through rocks and fossils.

Museum catalog numbers included with each image link to the institutional database where the specimen originated. Database entries include when, where and by whom a specimen was collected.

Lateral view of a sargassum fish (Histrio histrio); collected from the south shore of Boca Chica Bay in Monroe County, Florida, in 1979. Image credit: Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates

In many ways, the oVert project is just getting started, Dillman said. “Thirteen thousand species isn’t even scratching the surface of vertebrate diversity,” he said.

For example, there are more than 36,000 species of fishes alone; one species per genus is a good start, he said, but it will take time and additional funds to represent the great depth of diversity.

“If you think about some of the fish lineages in North America, there might be 200 species within a genus,” he said.

Each round of funding will allow the teams to continue representing more genera and adding more species from each genus.

The grant’s principal investigator was David Blackburn, curator of herpetology at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville, Florida.

Source: Cornell University

You can offer your link to a page which is relevant to the topic of this post.

[paulrobinsonshotel]

I can imagine Capaldi going "I'm callin' you Yaz, cos we're friends now (SHIT EATING GRIN)".

But beyond that I 100% agree. TWWFTE is completely thematically linked to TUAT. Everything from Jodie's mannerisms (deliberately mirroring/mimicking Peter), Yaz going "I know, SHUT UP!" to Ryan when moving the crane (Moffat AF), that first four notes of the "A Good Man?" theme when Thirteen starts building her new sonic (which then GLORIOUSLY transitions into Thirteen's theme). Twelve going from "I can't keep on being somebody else" to Thirteen's "We can honour who we've been and choose who we want to be next".

And most notably, the fact that unlike most post-regeneration Doctors, Thirteen doesn't discard Twelve's outfit at the first opportunity, and actually keeps putting his coat back on. She is still wearing Twelve's outfit after what must have been at least several days, until Yaz demands she changes. It's probably the most respect any new incarnation has shown to the previous Doctor's outfit (and a far cry from a certain more recent regeneration I could mention).

TWWFTE is basically Chibnall's big love letter to Moffat and Capaldi.

watched the woman who fell to earth right after twice upon a time last night and let me tell ya that was an experience.

First of all i did it so the Doctor would smoothly become one person in my perception (it worked). i do this with all doctors (another reason i hate bigeneration)

And i noticed something: 13 is so 12-coded. i could imagine capaldi saying all her lines, and vice versa.

also the Doctor saying “im so sick of losing people” and then watching yaz graham and ryan standing over graces body- you could see it in her eyes. the pain that they felt that she knew all too well.

[brightbeautifulthings]

Warcross by Marie Lu

"Every locked door has a key. Every problem has a solution."

Year Read: 2022

Rating: 4/5

About: Emika Chen has thirteen dollars left in her bank account, and when the bounty she's been chasing goes to another hunter, she's facing down imminent homelessness. The one bright side is Warcross, the most popular virtual reality game in the world. When one of Emi's untested hacks lands her directly in the middle of a championship game, she's launched into the spotlight. She's expecting to be arrested, but the inventor of Warcross, Hideo Tanaka, offers her a job instead. He needs a player on the inside of the championship games to uncover a security problem, but what Emi finds may pose a threat to the entire world, both virtual and real. Trigger warnings: parent/child death, cancer, explosions, fire, guns, abandonment, homelessness, gambling/debt, bullying, grief, guilt.

Thoughts: This is a fun and imaginative YA sci-fi novel that takes a nice swerve away from dystopia. I really enjoyed the video gaming/virtual reality aspects. It has things in common with Ready Player One in premise and world-building, but the novels take an almost entirely different approach to those things, so liking or hating one won't necessarily indicate the same for the other. Lu's prose is easy and streamlined, and the plot is relatively fast-paced. That's not to say that it's an action-packed book, since most of the major events take place in the virtual world, but my attention never flagged. She doesn’t linger too long on the video games scenes (in case you're like me and find it utterly boring to watch other people play), and they’re typically laced with real-world consequences. The reality scenes are more relaxed and give the novel a chance to breathe.

Emi is clever, resourceful, quick-thinking, and just reckless enough to get herself in trouble. (I'm super jealous of her rainbow hair, and making the paperback cover in grayscale was a crime.) Most of her development takes place with Hideo, and I found him fascinating as well, reserved and thoughtful but with darkness of his own. While their relationship and its progression are well done, I wish that Emi had spent more time with her team. They're little more than side characters in this book, but in those rare times they were all working together, I found them very compelling. I hope to see more of that in Wildcard. (Also, Asher and Daniel Wing? As in Daniel 'Day' Wing? Implying Legend takes place in the same universe in some distant timeline?)

The plot twists are fairly predictable, but in at least one case, I think that's just because it's well-established and follows to a logical conclusion. I always prefer logic to shock value. This is one of those novels that has more thematic closure than plot closure, and it leaves just about every plot open for the next book. I wasn't bothered, since I was satisfied with Emi's development up to that point, but if you're the kind of reader who needs answers, be prepared to have the next book queued up because nothing is resolved here. I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

[fatalism-and-villainy]

MDZS!Wangxian has been growing on me so much and one thing I really appreciate about that relationship (that doesn’t really come through in CQL!Wangxian, as much as I love it) is this repeated sense of nostalgia, or regret, for their lost childhood/youth, or the ghosts of their former selves that they never got to inhabit at the time. @coldwind-shiningstars and I have been talking about it and agree that a lot of the ways their relationship is presented recall accounts of that very queer experience of “missing out” on large chunks of one’s adolescence, or being “behind,” emotionally, in relationships, due to spending years not being your authentic self. And the relationship that they form is very much built on this negative space in their past, and the feelings and selves they couldn’t properly express.

Like, there’s certainly an interesting difference in degree in this regard between them as characters, what with Lan Wangji having to grow up very quickly and be a model disciple and missing out on having fun and being carefree, versus teenage Wei Wuxian being in a state of almost arrested development and not having to mature and prepare for sect leadership the way Jiang Cheng does, and thus spending so much time horsing around and causing problems on purpose. But Wei Wuxian’s nostalgia for that time in his life, as he expresses it in Chapter 126, is so wrapped up in the friendship and closeness he didn’t get to have with Lan Wangji at the time. He talks about how he wanted Lan Wangji to to come to Yunmeng and go rabble-rousing with him, and jokes that he wanted to see Lan Wangji get in trouble for once, but then adds sincerely, “really I just wanted to play with you” - which is very sweet, and gets at the underlying depth of feeling he had towards Lan Wangji at the time that he wasn’t fully aware of. Teenage Wei Wuxian’s perspective in the previous chapter is full of him pining for Lan Wangji without being aware of it, and here, when they’re both in Yunmeng together, there’s a sense of wanting to make up for that lost time and childish fun they never had together, and also, I think, some regret at not realizing his feelings sooner. 

(Wei Wuxian is also interesting given how ambiguous his “actual” age is post-resurrection, and how young he comes across sometimes. And i feel like you can definitely read a thematic link between him returning to life after thirteen years have passed, when all his peers have aged and gone through internal experiences and development he’s missed out on, and the fact that he’s so late in realizing he’s queer.)

And the incense burner chapters - the crux of those chapters, to me, is reclaiming their adolescent sexuality, the attraction to each other that they never got to express or experiment with at the time. For both of them, but especially for Lan Wangji, whose sexual identity development was pretty painful and confusing and traumatic, and who struggled so much with consent due to his parents’ history and his internalized homophobia. And the reason behind his adolescent fantasies that he feels so guilty and ashamed of is that he didn’t have any avenue for expression his feelings, and didn’t feel there was a way he could that wouldn’t be inherently predatory or coercive. And they’re both still feeling their way through a sexual relationship - there are several instances one trying something that the other decides they’re not into - because they didn’t get to experiment with what they liked earlier on in their lives. So I think there is a genuine catharsis for them to revisit a scenario in which they could have explored their feelings sooner, and weren’t held back by their internalized homophobia - and using that to build their current relationship on.  

[a-secret-bolton-vampire]

Daenerys Stormborn, Part 2: Wake the Dragon

Oh hey, I have part 2 already! Guess my brain is really focused on Dany now. In part 1, I talked about Dany's arcs from AGOT to ASOS, exploring the narrative and thematic purpose of her journey. However, the most important part of her journey occurs in ADWD, and sets the stage for some incredibly exciting developments to come in TWOW. For part 2, I'll be talking about the gradual transformation of Daenerys into a slightly different, darker character for the future.

Breaker of Chains & Mhysa

Slavery has been an important background element throughout Dany's time in Essos, even in AGOT, but it becomes front and centre in ASOS. She accepted the Dothraki, a society that uses slaves for many things, and wasn't too perturbed at the use of slaves in Qarth. However, it is in Astapor where she finally realizes just how bad the institution is, as she tells Xaro:

"Whence came this madness? Should I count myself fortunate that you did not free my own slaves when you were my guest in Qarth?" I was a beggar queen and you were Xaro of the Thirteen, Dany thought, and all you wanted were my dragons. "Your slaves seemed well treated and content. It was not till Astapor that my eyes were opened."

As mentioned last time, ASOS is when she begins to take control of her destiny, and she does so by beginning a revolution to free the slaves of Slaver's Bay. She believe she has a greater destiny lying ahead of her, that there is a reason for her dragons, the red comet. She also has great empathy for people and sees this disturbing injustice being played out with nobody to stop it. But she has the power to do so, and thus she begins by going fire and blood at Astapor, killing the Good Masters and freeing all the slaves. Afterwards, she leaves the city with a ruling council of a priest, a scholar, and a healer and moves to Yunkai.

She does a different approach with Yunkai, negotiating with the Wise Masters to surrender their slaves and to leave them in peace. And then when she arrives at Meereen, she decides to stay and rule as its queen. This is where things begin to get difficult for Daenerys. The ruling council of Astapor is overthrown by a butcher named Cleon, who said the council was conspiring to bring back slavery, who declares himself King of Astapor, enslaves the children of the former Good Masters to make new Unsullied, and tries to ally with Daenerys against Yunkai, who has resumed slavery.

Daenerys is not interested in any war with Yunkai. The reason she stays in Meereen is exactly because she learned what happened when she left Astapor. The fire and blood approach didn't work. You can't just dismantle such a deeply engrained system so easily. So instead she opts to rule, and protect the people she can. While a lot of readers view Dany's actions in Meereen as pointless, the whims of a naive girl, and poor leadership, I actually think it's the opposite.

For starters, Dany realized that she can't simply burn the slavers to end slavery, but she needs to stay and instill changes. While King Cleon repeatedly begs for Daenerys to join the war against Yunkai, she refuses, and warns Cleon to not do such a thing. She turns out to be horribly right, as Cleon is killed, Astapor is sieged, before being slaughtered, burned, and sacked, to be reinstated as a slave city once more. Likewise, the Yunkish siege Meereen, first by creating a blockade in the bay with ships, and then by having armies amassed outside the city walls.

In addition, refugees from Astapor begin to pile up outside the city, and a deadly plague called the pale mare (for the horse from Astapor that arrives at Meereen) begins to sweep the starving Astapori freedmen, who begin to resort to cannibalism to survive. Dany blames herself for leaving Astapor a mess, but does not wish to have the same thing happen in Meereen. She wants to protect the people she's freed, not just from the Yunkish, but herself as well.

When a sheepherder brings the burned bones of his daughter, Hazzea, who was killed by her dragons, Dany has Rhaegal and Viserion chained in the dungeons below the Great Pyramid to prevent them from causing any more harm. However, Drogon is still loose, unable to be found. In addition, when the sons of the harpy, a terrorist group opposed to the emancipation of Meereen, begin massacring freedmen, Dany decides to raise a tax on the Great Masters and have all families of suspect loyalty send a child to serve as a hostage and cupbearers. Yet, as the killings continue, she has grown close to the children and decides not to have them killed.

Now, some of you may notice that I am taking a lot from the Meereenese Blot essays written by Adam Feldman. That's not only because they are really well written essays, but ones that GRRM himself has approved of.

"I read those when someone pointed them out to me, and I was really pleased with them, because at least one guy got it. He got it completely, he knew exactly what I was trying to do there, and evidently I did it well enough for people who were paying attention."

So I am retreading some of the ground Feldman has laid, but it's important to do so if I am to build up to what I think is going to happen in the future of Dany's story.

As Feldman notes, Dany's own actions (or in the case of the cupbearers, inaction) actually made a peace possible, because the Yunkish saw that she was someone who is capable of mercy and not a (in their eye) violent mass murderer. Knowing what happened with Astapor, and seeing what happens when her dragons are unleashed with Hazzea, Dany decides to make peace with the Yunkish and marry Hizdahr.

Under the peace, Meereen itself would remain a free city, but the Yunkish would continue to sell slaves. They even sell them in markets outside the walls of Meereen, which displeases Daenerys extremely. In addition, slaveowners could bring their slaves into Meereen without fear of them being freed, and the Yunkish promised to respect the rights of the freedmen in Meereen. Yet, despite the peace and the progress made, she feels as though this is a defeat.

This is peace, she told herself. This is what I wanted, what I worked for, this is why I married Hizdahr. So why does it taste so much like defeat?

The thing is, Daenerys has had to sacrifice so much of herself and her morals to get to this point. Yes there is peace, even if it is tentative, Meereen would not be sacked by the Yunkish, but slavery is still going on, and she thinks that she has let herself and other people down by agreeing to peace and allowing the Yunkish to continue slavery. She has agreed to peace to people she loathes and thinks are despicable, she has married a man she does not love and does not love her, she has chained her dragons in the pit below, she has allowed the fighting pits to reopen. This comes to ahead at Daznak's Pit when she is at the height of her discomfort.

The boar buried his snout in Barsena's belly and began rooting out her entrails. The smell was more than the queen could stand. The heat, the flies, the shouts from the crowd … I cannot breathe. She lifted her veil and let it flutter away. She took her tokar off as well. The pearls rattled softly against one another as she unwound the silk.

And then Drogon arrives, and in the chaos of him attacking the boar and being attacked by the soldiers in the pit, Dany tries to calm him, but he spits fire at her, and she tries to tame him by whipping him into submission. Here, Dany is quite literally fighting herself. She herself in this moment represents the Queen of Meereen, someone who desires for peace. Meanwhile, Drogon represents the dragon inside her, who wants to unleash blood and fire on her enemies. In the end, Dany climbs onto Drogon and they fly away together, which foreshadows and symbolizes Dany's later decision to choose being the dragon.

Despite her frustrations in Meereen, the peace was a good first step. Not to say that it solved every issue, it didn't, but that doesn't need to be the end of it. Daenerys could forge new peaces, new agreements, and if she stayed in Meereen, she could implement great changes throughout Slaver's Bay. But what is done is done, and cannot be undone. The peace that was forged is now gone. Next comes war.

The House with the Red Door

Before we move on to Dany's final chapter and what that means for the future, we must take a look at a very important part of her backstory which is one of the main elements of her own story. Sure, destiny, greatness, prophecy, power, and identity are themes with Daenerys, but at the center of it all is the desire for home. Dany was born on Dragonstone, but was whisked away to Braavos, and there she lived in the house with the red door, with Viserys, Ser Willem Darry, and their servants.

To Dany, the house with the red door was the only place in her life she called home, and she has very fond memories of it, of Willem, or the lemon tree. But after Willem died, they were kicked out and forced to become beggars on the streets, selling off their possessions and travelling the Free Cities. The red door was closed and gone forever after, but the dream of having a home hasn't.

Daenerys has a desire for home, for love, for family. Throughout her childhood, Viserys would tell Dany all about Westeros, how they need to take back the Iron Throne, that the Seven Kingdoms were the most beautiful lands in the world. And sure enough, soon, Westeros represents the idea for home and belonging to Dany.

"I pray for home too," she told him, believing it. Ser Jorah laughed. "Look around you then, Khaleesi." But it was not the plains Dany saw then. It was King's Landing and the great Red Keep that Aegon the Conqueror had built. It was Dragonstone where she had been born. In her mind's eye they burned with a thousand lights, a fire blazing in every window. In her mind's eye, all the doors were red.

Although she takes on the mantle as the new head of House Targaryen and carries on Viserys's dream of taking back the Iron Throne out of a sense of duty, she also does so for desire to belong in a place she can call home. It's a nostalgic feeling she gets of the old days, that she wants to relive again.

But then other ambitions get in her way. She frees the slaves of Slaver's Bay, and decides to stay in Meereen to try to ensure that her revolution succeeds. Thus, her quest for home is put on hold. Throughout ADWD, she gives up parts of herself, to try to become one with the Meereenese; marrying Hizdahr, reopening the fighting pits, chaining her dragons, dressing in the Ghiscari fashion, and making peace. But in the Dothraki sea, hundreds of miles outside Meereen, she finds that she wasn't being her true self, that she can never be the Queen of Meereen, or become a true Meereenese.

I must keep walking. Water flows downhill. The stream will take me to the river, and the river will take me home. Except it wouldn't, not truly. Meereen was not her home, and never would be. It was a city of strange men with strange gods and stranger hair, of slavers wrapped in fringed tokars, where grace was earned through whoring, butchery was art, and dog was a delicacy. Meereen would always be the Harpy's city, and Daenerys could not be a harpy.

The series is all about the human heart in conflict with itself, and Daenerys in ADWD is one of the best examples of that. She was struggling with her two competing titles of Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons, but in the end she was not comfortable with being the Breaker of Chains. This final transformation she undergoes in the Dothraki sea really sets the tone for what she will do in the future, and how she will change as a person and character.

Mother of Dragons

Daenerys X is one of the more bizarre chapters in the series, since it follows only one character alone with her thoughts, but it works extremely well as a character study, and the development over the course of the chapter is one of my favourites in the whole series. Through all the hallucinations and visions and dreams Daenerys has during this chapter, it's important to remember that they all (apart from possibly Quaithe) are her, so the discussions she has are with her own internal thoughts directly.

The topic of Targaryen madness reoccurs throughout the series, but it's ADWD where it is brought up the most. Now, the topic of Targaryen madness will be another post i will do in the far future and won't discuss in depth today, but the matter is that Dany is aware of some of it, even if she hasn't fully accepted the truth of her father. She fears that she is succumbing to the madness at points.

"Your Grace?" Missandei stood in the door of the queen's bedchamber, a lantern in her hand. "Who are you talking to?" Dany glanced back toward the persimmon tree. There was no woman there. No hooded robe, no lacquer mask, no Quaithe. A shadow. A memory. No one. She was the blood of the dragon, but Ser Barristan had warned her that in that blood there was a taint. Could I be going mad? They had called her father mad, once.

Later, she implies this fear again to Barristan.

I lived in fear for fourteen years, my lord. I woke afraid each morning and went to sleep afraid each night … but my fears were burned away the day I came forth from the fire. Only one thing frightens me now." "And what is it that you fear, sweet queen?" "I am only a foolish young girl." Dany rose on her toes and kissed his cheek. "But not so foolish as to tell you that. My men shall look at these ships. Then you shall have my answer."

But in an early version of Daenerys III, the answer Daenerys gave was "myself". She fears what would happen if she "woke the dragon", as Viserys put it. She's afraid of succumbing to the madness that consumed her father and probably was consuming Viserys. She's afraid of what would happen if she unleashed her dragons, how many innocents they would kill. But in the Dothraki sea, she begins to question her decisions, starting when she woke up after finding blood between her thighs:

"I am the blood of the dragon," she told the grass, aloud. Once, the grass whispered back, until you chained your dragons in the dark. "Drogon killed a little girl. Her name was … her name …" Dany could not recall the child's name. That made her so sad that she would have cried if all her tears had not been burned away. "I will never have a little girl. I was the Mother of Dragons." Aye, the grass said, but you turned against your children.

The importance of this quote cannot go unnoticed. She thinks about Hazzea all the time throughout the book, feeling deeply guilty about what Drogon did to her. But here, at the end, she cannot remember her name. The in world explanation is that, of course, she is delirious from being in the wilderness eating berries and being sick, but thematically this is her slowly turning away from the people she freed. Next comes a dream with Viserys (long quote incoming):

She dreamt of her dead brother. Viserys looked just as he had the last time she'd seen him. His mouth was twisted in anguish, his hair was burnt, and his face was black and smoking where the molten gold had run down across his brow and cheeks and into his eyes. "You are dead," Dany said. Murdered. Though his lips never moved, somehow she could hear his voice, whispering in her ear. You never mourned me, sister. It is hard to die unmourned. "I loved you once." Once, he said, so bitterly it made her shudder. You were supposed to be my wife, to bear me children with silver hair and purple eyes, to keep the blood of the dragon pure. I took care of you. I taught you who you were. I fed you. I sold our mother's crown to keep you fed. "You hurt me. You frightened me." Only when you woke the dragon. I loved you. "You sold me. You betrayed me." No. You were the betrayer. You turned against me, against your own blood. They cheated me. Your horsey husband and his stinking savages. They were cheats and liars. They promised me a golden crown and gave me this. He touched the molten gold that was creeping down his face, and smoke rose from his finger. "You could have had your crown," Dany told him. "My sun-and-stars would have won it for you if only you had waited." I waited long enough. I waited my whole life. I was their king, their rightful king. They laughed at me. "You should have stayed in Pentos with Magister Illyrio. Khal Drogo had to present me to the dosh khaleen, but you did not have to ride with us. That was your choice. Your mistake." Do you want to wake the dragon, you stupid little whore? Drogo's khalasar was mine. I bought them from him, a hundred thousand screamers. I paid for them with your maidenhead. "You never understood. Dothraki do not buy and sell. They give gifts and receive them. If you had waited …" I did wait. For my crown, for my throne, for you. All those years, and all I ever got was a pot of molten gold. Why did they give the dragon's eggs to you? They should have been mine. If I'd had a dragon, I would have taught the world the meaning of our words. Viserys began to laugh, until his jaw fell away from his face, smoking, and blood and molten gold ran from his mouth.

The dream terrifies Daenerys, but once again, Viserys (really herself here) is telling her she is stalling in a place she doesn't belong, that she needs to go home, that she should embrace being a dragon. The climax of this comes right after she realizes Meereen would never be her home, where she argues with Jorah (again, herself):

Meereen would always be the Harpy's city, and Daenerys could not be a harpy. Never, said the grass, in the gruff tones of Jorah Mormont. You were warned, Your Grace. Let this city be, I said. Your war is in Westeros, I told you. The voice was no more than a whisper, yet somehow Dany felt that he was walking just behind her. My bear, she thought, my old sweet bear, who loved me and betrayed me. She had missed him so. She wanted to see his ugly face, to wrap her arms around him and press herself against his chest, but she knew that if she turned around Ser Jorah would be gone. "I am dreaming," she said. "A waking dream, a walking dream. I am alone and lost." Lost, because you lingered, in a place that you were never meant to be, murmured Ser Jorah, as softly as the wind. Alone, because you sent me from your side. "You betrayed me. You informed on me, for gold." For home. Home was all I ever wanted. "And me. You wanted me." Dany had seen it in his eyes. I did, the grass whispered, sadly. "You kissed me. I never said you could, but you did. You sold me to my enemies, but you meant it when you kissed me." I gave you good counsel. Save your spears and swords for the Seven Kingdoms, I told you. Leave Meereen to the Meereenese and go west, I said. You would not listen. "I had to take Meereen or see my children starve along the march." Dany could still see the trail of corpses she had left behind her crossing the Red Waste. It was not a sight she wished to see again. "I had to take Meereen to feed my people." You took Meereen, he told her, yet still you lingered. "To be a queen." You are a queen, her bear said. In Westeros. "It is such a long way," she complained. "I was tired, Jorah. I was weary of war. I wanted to rest, to laugh, to plant trees and see them grow. I am only a young girl." No. You are the blood of the dragon. The whispering was growing fainter, as if Ser Jorah were falling farther behind. Dragons plant no trees. Remember that. Remember who you are, what you were made to be. Remember your words. "Fire and Blood," Daenerys told the swaying grass.

And here is where everything changes. She has spent time trying to protect innocent lives, to make peace, not war, to be loved and accepted by Meereen. But here, she decides that it is time to do away with that. Meereen is not her home, Westeros is, and it's time to wake the dragon and burn Yunkai. No longer will she be burdened by the idea of a cost of innocent lives, no longer will she fear herself, and no longer will she linger. When the time comes, she will burn her enemies and leave for Westeros.

I need to make a few things clear here, however. For one, I don't think she's mad now, this is just her resolving her internal conflict. For another, I don't care what she does to the slavers. They deserve what's coming for them. She will still care about the innocent, but she's now going to go full-blooded Targaryen and burn cities to the ground, and this will mean massive collateral damage she will try to rationalize away.

Daenerys has now transformed into a different, much darker character, which I feel will continue to define her for the rest of the series. She is now the Mother of Dragons, in her entirety, and Essos is about to bleed and burn. I really appreciate how GRRM put this together, and that she didn't stay fire and blood after Astapor. His character development is realistic, and sometimes the development is not linear. In part 3, I will be discussing predictions about Daenerys's arc and story in TWOW, more specifically what she will do in Essos.

[lady-harrowhark]

12 & 24 for the books end of year!

12. Any books that disappointed you?

Oh, several! But also I have to say that a lot of them were ones I went into with really high expectations, so it's not that they were bad necessarily. Summer Sons was one (same editor as tlt); I think there were some great thematic nuggets buried in it that ought to have been explored more. Also, the plot centers on grad students who attend the same university I did my first master's at, so it was sometimes hard for me to suspend my disbelief about the way that academia (and specifically academia at that university) was depicted. On a super nitpicky level - and this I'm not even really bothered by so much as I think it's funny - there were times where locations and such were described in such detail that if you know the campus/area, it's super obvious that they're made up or possibly that the author hadn't physically been there (like working off a map). Off the top of my head I think they describe the house as being, if I recall correctly, six blocks from campus and on Capitol Street or something, which doesn't exist. At one point someone walks down a specific street that unfortunately, I know is basically alley access for deliveries to one of the med center buildings... because I used to work there and passed it every day on my walk from the employee parking garage lol. It made me laugh, but I feel like it would have been easier all around to just be less specific. I did like the overall atmosphere, and I'll probably check out the author's next book!

24. Did you DNF anything? Why?

I've paused a few things, but I don't tend to concretely DNF. Right now I have Battle of the Linguist Mages on pause (I think I'm close to where things are going to pick up, but I haven't been in a patient mood and wanting more instant gratification lol), and I'm a few chapters into both The Book Eaters and Thirteen Storeys and might be setting them aside for a bit until I can work up a little more reading momentum. Neither have anything wrong with them, I've just lost a little steam and need something I can easily tear through for that quick fix, and those books aren't that lol.

From this ask meme