#like i love her but she’s weirdly defanged?

[greenconverses]

PJO 1x01 and 1x02 thoughts

The first chapter monologue in the perfect way to open the show and establish Percy's voice from the beginning. Walker immediately nailed both Percy's sarcasm, impertinence, and anger, which is so so so critical for anchoring the show.

how dare you waste megan mullally like this (she's coming back later according to previews BUT STILL)

direction in the first episode, especially with the action scenes, was a little lacking. percy killing mrs. dodds was weirdly anti-climatic. the car chase could've been a bit more exciting and the minotaur was okay

I LOVE YOU SALLY JACKSON, BEST MOM ON THE PLANET.

I have seen some posts about Gabe being defanged but he's clearly still an abusive waste of space. The dude is answering her phone, unemployed, gambling away her money, it's red flag city up in here. Curious how they're going to show him in later episodes and what they'll do with the Medusa plotline.

Grover is one of those characters that I have very little emotional attachment to. He's just sort of... there in the books for me. But Aryan's a little cutie and he does a great job of acting like he's just a little bit older/mature than Percy. Loved his little back and forth with Sally in the cabin. Deeply underutilized in the second episode, but obvs he'll get more time later on.

is the dryad his mom???

I adore the set design for camp, especially the Big House and all the stained glass motifs. But WTF is up with all the skeletons in Cabin 3? get a better interior designer poseidon you fucking weirdo

Jason Mantzoukas' energy for Mr. D was perfect, no notes. Did love his interactions with Percy and Grover.

Chiron is... there?

Clarisse is perfectly cast. Luke is underwhelming so far, but he really hasn't gotten to do anything real meaty yet.

I'm ready to see more of Annabeth in future episodes because she really didn't do much more than lurk and be cryptic since they gave her role as guide to camp to Luke. (I am not a fan of this decision, but whatever, gotta set Luke up for ~ultimate betrayal)

Her exasperated shove of Percy into the lake was A+ but why was the trident so damn big lmao

Loved loved loved Percy's burning anger at his dad and wanting to make him show up. Excellent characterization

"I am Sally Jackson's son!" dead dead dead tell 'em perce

curious as to why the episodes are limited to 45 minutes because i think another 5-10 minutes on the runtime would've helped with some of the pacing issues. but the show's clearly cut with commercial breaks in mind so i'm guessing this is eventually going to air on the Disney Channel or ABC.

[moistvonlipwig]

Books I Read in 2023

Okay, so I know from this list that it SEEMS like I only read 8 books this past year, just like I did in 2022, but I did a thorough re-read of 4 other books, so really I read 12 books. Hurrah! Progress! These books are listed in the order I finished them.

Babel by R. F. Kuang. Oh, Babel. I had such high hopes for you.

Honestly, for a more thorough and much funnier breakdown that aligns with my thoughts on this book, I would just recommend reading this review by a Redditor named Gwydden. But in short: the best parts of this book by far are the discussions around etymology, language, and translation. They feel a little awkward in context since they're usually just characters espousing points the author wants to make but I don't even care because the points she makes are interesting lol. If Kuang just straight-up wrote a nonfiction book on this subject I would eat it up. She clearly has done a lot of research and there's so much to say on the matter.

Unfortunately the subject of translation has weirdly little to do with the actual story. Honestly I think the translation-based magic system Kuang came up with impeded her ability to actually tell a story about how translation can serve the interests of empire, because it became all about how the translators are making magic for the empire and not about the other ways that translators can be complicit in colonialism. Aside from one passage in the very first chapter (the best part of the book), there are no dramatic moments where the characters must decide if or how to translate something, or grapple with the political implications of such an act. Translation is instead used as window-dressing for the magic that generates the actual dramatic moments. In a weird way, by literalizing the power of language into a magic system, Kuang actually defangs language and makes it seem less powerful because the power now seems to come from the magic itself.

Babel also very much reads like Baby's First Book About Colonialism. Its plot is ultimately a pretty simplistic power fantasy about sticking it to the British Empire, and its narrative voice seems intensely distrustful of the reader's ability to draw the correct conclusions about colonialism or, indeed, anything at all, as evinced by the footnotes that pop up whenever the main character experiences a racist microaggression helpfully letting you know that By The Way, That Was A Racist Microaggression. The characters, in turn, all feel less like people and more like mouthpieces for the author to express opinions that you are clearly either supposed to agree or disagree with. And if you're not sure which, don't worry, the narrative voice will tell you -- whether you want it to or not.

I do not think Babel is bad. It is, in all honesty, well and truly fine. But if you're touch-starved, you should give this book a try, because boy, does it ever want to hold your hand.

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas. I picked up this book on the recommendation of YouTuber mynameismarines, who had similar thoughts about Babel and opined in her video on the subject that Catherine House might be a good option for readers looking for a more complex story about the interplay between academia and other institutions of oppression. And I really liked it! It is definitely a weird book that leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but that's fine by me. Thomas does a great job making you both love and hate Catherine House, just like the main character does. The book's sociopolitical critique is also very metaphorical and layered -- you can read a lot of things into the various problems with Catherine House as well as the interpersonal dynamics between the characters. It's a book that makes you think, and I appreciate that.

Ubik by Philip K. Dick. Speaking of weird books that leave a lot of questions unanswered... This is the first Philip K. Dick book I've read and I definitely had fun. It's a real mind-bender of a work, which I happen to like in my fiction. I loved the chapter intros about Ubik itself as well. It's interesting to me that this book has apparently never been adapted to the screen -- I think you could get a really great movie out of it.

Broken Stars: Contemporary Chinese Science Fiction in Translation, edited and translated by Ken Liu. This was such a great and varied collection of stories, and it really made me want to follow up with some of the included authors to see what other works they've published. I also want to check out Invisible Planets, the first collection of Chinese sci-fi that Ken Liu edited (Broken Stars being the second). My favorite story in the collection was definitely "The Robot Who Liked to Tell Tall Tales" by Fei Dao, which mixed sci-fi and fantasy in a most delightful way. I think my second favorite was probably "Under a Dangling Sky" by Cheng Jingbo.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. I'd read Maya Angelou's poetry before, but never any of her memoirs. Interestingly, this book felt to me more like a novel that happened to be true than it did a memoir. The story and writing style were so gripping and the people/'characters' were so well-drawn. I ended the book desperately wanting to know what happened next in Maya Angelou's life. Apparently she's written a ton of other memoirs, so, I'll have to go find out. (A side story: Maya Angelou is the only celebrity my grandmother, who knew many famous actors from her time at drama school, has ever been star-struck over. My grandmother ran into her in a bathroom once, fawned over her ("Oh, Ms. Angelou!!!"), and asked if she could shake her hand, which she generously did. She still retells that story with stars in her eyes.)

Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino. Qfwfq my best friend Qfwfq!!! This is such a fun and weird collection of stories that mix the fantastic, the scientific, and the mundane in unexpected ways. And Qfwfq is simply a great narrator across his many incarnations. My favorite stories were probably "The Dinosaurs" and "The Light-Years."

Return of the Thief by Megan Whalen Turner. I actually started this book last winter, then promptly realized I did not remember enough of the first four books to satisfyingly understand what was going on. So I re-read them. (You see how I paid off that bit of foreshadowing from earlier in the post about the four mysterious books I re-read, just like how MWT expertly pays off her admittedly much subtler hints of foreshadowing in the Queen's Thief novels?)

In doing so, I really rediscovered the joy I had for this series when my mom used to read them to me before bed. I wish so badly that she could've been around to read and discuss the fifth and sixth books in the series with me. Instead I find myself trawling through the archives of the Sounis LJ community looking for her old comments on the first four books. It is a one-sided conversation across decades, but a conversation nonetheless, and I haven't had a conversation with my mom in such a very long time.

Once I re-read the first four books, I came back to this one. (I read Thick as Thieves much more recently, so I remembered it far better; still, I might re-read it soon with this final installment in mind.) I really did enjoy it. I think I will have to sit with it for a bit before I have more coherent insights; the Queen's Thief novels are like that. They make you do some mental work, lol. But I am glad Gen got his elephants.

The Mysteries by Bill Watterson and John Kascht. This was such a delightful little book. I was so excited to hear that Bill Watterson was finally producing a new project and The Mysteries did not disappoint, although it's obviously very different from Calvin and Hobbes. I loved the eerie and fable-esque tone of the writing, and the illustrations were gorgeous and highly stylistically unique. Beautiful stuff.

[fluorescentbrains]

as much as i find camellia trying to corrupt a reformed succubus delightfully vile and creepy this kind of encapsulates my criticism of arueshalae as a character which is that she’s bizarrely naive and guileless for a demoness who claims to have murdered and tortured countless mortals

[biot08]

FFXIV Character Sheet

with love given to @bluespiritfire (original here!)

Name: Zoissette Vauban / Zo

Age: High 30s

Pronouns: She/her

Birthdate: I forget, but it’s on her in-game paper doll

~~PLACE OF ORIGIN~~ Race: Ishgardian Wildwood Elezen Hometown/city: Ishgard Current residence/popular haunt: Work for the Maelstrom, so has barracks space in Limsa Lominsa. Works for Gage Acquisitions, so sometimes crashes on the couch at their HQ in the Goblet. Her parents still live in Ishgard, and so she can also couch-crash there

~~APPEARANCE~~ Eyes: Brown Hair: Black with purple highlights Hair type: Straight and thinnish Hair style: Short undercut Body type: Athletic, the wiry kind; muscles of steel cable Height: Tall Skin: Light brown Facial features: Nothing notable Body features: Shortish ears for an Elezen

Favourite/commonly used clothes: That beautiful skirt and jacket combo that Tataru made for her when she is being casual. The heavier dark jacket and sabatons that Tataru made when she has serious business knight work to do.

~~SKILLS~~ DoL/DoH Dabbles in the entire list of DoL/DoH skills for self-sustainability purposes, but has no real talent for any of it

~~COMBAT~~ Main discipline Gladiator/Paladin (she will never refer to herself as a Paladin; her training is that of an Ishgardian knight); her other main discipline is arcanist/scholar

Secondary/Tertiary/Extra Classes Red mage and machinist (in-game, she also has NIN, but that’s more because I like the class and less because it’s appropriate for the character)

Fighting style She shifts between hard-and fast and defensive/protective as a knight. She appears reckless to the inexperienced, but she very much knows what she is doing. As a scholar, she is tactical, and very wait-watch-and-see.

Any difficulties with magical/physical disciplines? Red mage is the only magical discipline she is extremely good at, because it relies heavily on her physicality (channeling with precise rapier work) and on her personal mana pool. She is awful at drawing in external aether. Her magics as a scholar also lean heavily on her ability to work with the summoned fairy construct to do the bulk of the aether work while she performs the necessary manipulations and calculations. As a result, she was merely a middling arcanist, but is a very good scholar.

~~PERSONALITY TRAITS~~ Analytical, cunning, curious. She can be impulsive, but it is not because she is not considering the consequences, but often because she is very interested in what they will actually be. She is very self-assured in general.

~~LIKES~~ Environment: A warm home with a warm fire. She does find Ul’dah’s dry environment endearing after the snowscapes of Coerthas post-calamity. She tolerates Limsa. Weather: Warm days Flavours: Nuts greens meats and fruits Textures: Cotton or wool Favourite Dish: Meat pot pies of any sort. They can be well made, and that’s great. Or the can be mediocre, but easily portable and reheatable on the front lines, and that’s also great. Favourite Colour: Purple Favourite Sound: The utter silence of the soundscape during a lull on the front of the dragonsong war provides her with strong mixed feelings that have turned nostalgic. The way snow dampens sound and makes for a particular kind of quiet night is eerie, but dragons tend to be very loud; as a result, the eerieness was overridden by the knowledge of a promise of a good night’s rest Favourite Smell: Hot meat pie straight out of the hearth Favourite Place: The little fort outpost she was ‘in charge’ of and responsible for for a great deal of her adult life. She can’t go back, but she has fond memories of the place Favourite Holiday: The new ones they’re inventing celebrating the  end of the dragonsong war and the beginning of a new promise of peace

~~DISLIKES~~ Environment: Snowy environs. She’s had enough of that for several lifetimes. Weather: Snoooooow Flavours: Gamey. You get a lot of gamey meat on the front. Textures: Weirdly, finds silk to be entirely too slippery Least Favourite Dish: Ishgardian knight hardtack. It’ll feed you, but you’ll regret it the entire time. Least Favourite Colour: White, though she has no strong opinion here Least Favourite Sound: Bells. Too many alarm bells in her life. Least Favourite Smell: No strong opinions here Least Favourite Place: Coerthas. Even though her most favourite place is there Least Favourite Holiday: Doesn’t really have one, though she ignores several; this is less dislike and more apathy

~~HOBBIES~~ Reads voraciously, both for research and as a hobby. Finds working out invigorating. Does not skip leg day. Never saw a mountain that didn’t need someone to at least attempt to scale it. Pretty fond of fucking around (and often finds out, which is also fun)

~~RELATIONSHIPS~~ Parents/Legal Guardian/Parental Figure: Mother and father. While no longer Ishgardian nobility, the Inquisition merely stripped them of house titles and colours, but did not excommunicate them. They live in the repaired parts of Ishgard now, as commoners Siblings: Second oldest of seven Children: Nope Romantic: Single, about to be complicated (for tax and guild fee purposes) Friends: Picks up acquaintances easily enough, thanks to an easy going personality and willingness to just generally roll with things. Has few truly close friends, though, due to having a tendency to keep a bit of a distance. Loyal for life once past that point, though. Rivals/Enemies: No rivals, but there are definitely people among the noble families of Ishgard who she would count as enemies. Not enough to truly go after or do anything about, but people who she is, at best, cold towards if she ever has to interact with them. She gets on well with Alphinaud, as the two complement each other, his diplomacy making up for her lack of it, and her foresight making up for his frequent naivete. She snarks with Y’shtola and the two often banter like old maids. She merely has a working relationship with Thancred, but it’s not cold; it’s just not a close friendship, either. Tataru finds her vexing. Estinien and her have a deeply shared understanding that comes from both being front line participants in the dragonsong war. Krile and her do not understand one another, and tend to settle for just being cordial. She finds Urianger likeable, and gently needles him at times, and doesn’t always realise when he’s doing it back.

Any special gestures of affection they have with people in their life? She will, without fail, ask Lennier if he’s been working out, and will swoon when he performs physical feats (squats, pushups, etcetera) nearby.

~~HAVE DEALT WITH/IS DEALING WITH~~ Definitely has some PTSD. Also, her entire family has gone from lesser nobility to commoners with a status that, until recently, left a bad mark on their name (their status as a minor house was lost when the inquisition found evidence that some members of the family, cousins in relation to Zoissette, were hertetics). She keenly feels the disruption of life in Ishgard due to the end of the dragonsong war, but does not quite know how or what to feel about it.

How are they dealing with the most prominent of the above? How does it affect their in day-to-day life, if at all? She sleeps lightly and poorly and generally pretends she doesn’t have a problem

~~ODDS AND ENDS~~ Notable Weapons Not really. Any sword is still a chunk of metal made with lethal intent

Notable Mounts An Ishgardian raised Chocobo, of course, for the most part. If she is travelling into danger, the Magitek armor, while defanged, is still a walking tank. If she has to fly somewhere, the manacutter from the Ironworks is just plain fun to fly

Notable Minion/s She has come to value Midgardsomr’s council and will travel with him as he is willing

Keepsakes/Mementos ... the Fortemps Shield.

Chronic Illnesses or Disabilities None

Education Level The same schooling most Ishgaridan noble family knights get to enjoy. She did a lot of self-study, because she found it interesting, but it was also part of a continuous bid to try to be accepted in the astrologian guild; however, due to House politics, she was never accepted. Fortunately, when she left home due to the situation after the inquisition investigation, the Limsa Lominsan arcanists were more than happy to take her on and guide her studies further. Generally her studies started with things she thought would be helpful for the war effort; history, strategy, logistics, and tactics. Since then she has dabbled in any of  dozen different subjects, learning few of them deeply, but being at least conversational in a great many of them

Habits I should probably come up with some!

[anacaoris]

For all the talk about fanon!Percy,I find his characterization in particularly well written fics and some headcanons(including yours,lol) more interesting than canon(even PJO canon). He seems more nuanced and humanized,while still being a powerful demigod(while canon Percy's self-esteem issues go nowhere). Fanon!Luke,on the other hand,is often vastly inferior to his canon characterization. Either he gets defanged,dehumanizing, and both in worst case scenario(petty villain for Percabeth)

Ahsjdlfl thanks for liking my headcanons! I don't post that many about Percy but that's about to change soon.

See the thing is Riordan isn't good at going deeper into nuanced portrayals of his characters. But he did a good job in placing the seeds for fandom to later extrapolate from which is why we have so many analyses about Percy's character and motivations (and so many that conflict with each other but not necessarily with canon, which says a lot about how while Percy is still your typical white boy YA protag, he's got much more depth than others).

With canon the issue I'd say depends on which series you're reading: PJatO did a good job in showing Percy's mental state at the time, the growing pressure he felt, his expectations, and even though some things are left to be desired from the writing (some characters are still flat or received characterization too late, others got off-screen growth that leaves you wanting more, some storylines don't make sense when really thought out) it's still a really good example.

With Heroes of Olympus? I'd say Rick committed two big issues: he realized that Percy's perception of himself and how others see him don't exactly line up, and he delved too deeply into what fandom liked seeing... in fandom.

Now when it comes to fanon!Luke the issue is that he's being seen through the eyes of people who weirdly protect Annabeth like she's a real person and not a fictional character, combined with Rick doing a poor job in showing how neglectful and bad the gods can really be (tho the fact that they have clear favorites should say something). And those that defang him go through the route of "he's just a poor uwu baby who did nothing wrong". Both viewings of him are incorrect. Luke is neither this 25/8 manipulative character who was preying on Annabeth and spends his days plotting to murder innocents, but he's also not a poor misunderstood soul. He's a largely traumatized young man who spent his formative years watching tragedy after tragedy, and he also took the worst possible route in order to get back at the gods both of out of selfless and selfish reasons.

But like I said above the negative view of him in fandom largely ties back to a lot of the side characters and subplots in the books not getting the necessary depth they deserve AND fandom having a very black and white approach to villains. Luke primarily attacks Percabeth (and oof do we have to talk about this weird thing with making Percy and Annabeth a single unit), ofc by virtue of then being protagonists and him being a main antagonist. So of course he's Satan itself. Hera gets this treatment too combined with the whole thing about her being evil for not perfectly and happily accepting every one of her husband's and siblings' bastard children as if that isn't a spit in the face of her and her domain, haha we love portrayals of women as majorly mothers or lovers and villanizing those who are neither.

Does this also tie into the whole "white male villains are the devil" and the weird near fetishization with making Percy (and in occasions even Annabeth) non white? Yes.

[gideongrace]

heartbroken and human

//This is a scene from my fic "as certain dark things are to be loved" and I love it so much I wanted to also put it here. But! BIG WARNING LABEL - this scene involves Neil and Max and Billy and Max seeing Neil hit Billy for the first time so, ABUSE AHEAD. It also involves siblings figuring their shit out, but you know. Be warned and all that.//

It's dark out by the time Max and Billy get home and again, Max has a bad feeling. She looks over at Billy and she knows he feels it too. It's like there's something in the air, something sharp and spiky, foul and acrid. 

Something dangerous.

Billy turns the headlights off, then cuts the engine and for a moment they both just sit there in the silence and the darkness, not speaking, not moving, barely even breathing. 

This is big, what they've done, it's big and now there are gonna be consequences.

The porch lights turn on and Max gets hit with a wave of nausea so violent it makes her dizzy. 

"Let's get this over with," Billy says as he steps out of the car. He's got this wary, resigned look on his face that Max realizes she's seen before. This time she feels bad for him for it and that… feeling bad for Billy? That's definitely going to take some getting used to.

They walk inside and there's Neil and her Mom, waiting for them right by the door, like guard dogs. They don't even get to taking their shoes off before Neil is screaming, "Where the hell have you been? What the hell did you do?" at Billy. 

Billy shakes his head and averts his eyes and doesn't say anything. It's the second time Max has ever seen him speechless and it freaks her out, seing him defanged like this. 

Neil charges forward and shoves Billy up against the door with a bang and Billy lets him. "Look at me when I'm talking to you!" Neil snarls, hands gripping so tight to Billy's shirt it has to hurt. 

Billy slowly raises his eyes to meet Neil's and for this obedience, Neil slaps him. "What the hell did you do? Do you have any idea how worried we were? We've been out all night looking for the both of you! We almost called the police to report Max as missing!" 

Max hears her Mom sob loudly; she imagines there are probably tears flowing down her face unchecked but she can't take her eyes off Neil and Billy. 

"I'm sorry, Sir," Billy says quietly. He has to fight to keep his eyes on Neil and Neil slams him against the door again. Billy's head hits the glass panel in the middle of the door almost hard enough to break it, the sound is near deafening and for the first time, Max looks over at her mother and wonders why she isn't doing anything to stop this, but Susan is just standing there, wringing her hands and bawling like a child.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Neil roars. "I've tried so hard to make you into a man worth knowing but then you go and you pull a stunt like this and you make it clearer to me than ever that you're never going to be deserving of my respect, of anyone's respect. You're just a waste of time and you'll only ever be a waste of time!" He drops one hand from Billy's shirt, drawing it back almost in slow motion and Max knows Billy sees it coming but he doesn't even flinch, he doesn't even flinch and that, that is what finally has Max shouting, "It was for me!" 

Neil's fist re-directs last second, going from aiming for Billy's face to his collarbone, landing with a crack sounding so solid it leaves Max imagining deep, dark purple bruises and has her flinching and fighting not to throw up. And Billy? Billy just takes the hit, his only reaction to the pain being that he swallows roughly and dips his head for half a second. 

That's it, half a second and he's back to looking straight at Neil.

"It was for me!" Max shouts again. "He's covering for me! Me and Jane took the bus to her new house and didn't have enough money to get tickets back. Billy came and got us."

The lie flows more smoothly off her tongue than anything else ever has but Neil doesn't quite look like he believes it, looks pissed he's lost an excuse to punch his own son some more. Max's Mom hiccup-sobs and for the first time instead of making Max want to comfort her, it twists something in her gut, makes her angry. 

Neil's face twists and he looks from Billy to Max and back to Billy. "Is this true?" he asks Billy, a fist still gripping tightly to Billy's shirt, still pressing him up against the door.

Without so much as looking at Max or even blinking, Billy says, "It is." 

Neil drops his hand from Billy and turns to Max and as he does it's like a light switch is flipped, the expression on his face going from one of pure rage to one of soft understanding so, so fast it makes Max's skin crawl. 

"Max," Neil sighs gently. "If you wanted to go, you should have just asked us. We would have taken you." 

Max shrugs and does her best to look repentant like a normal kid getting a normal lecture from her normal parents and not like she's just had her whole worldview violently shattered. "I didn't know if you'd let me and I wanted to see it before she left," she says. 

"And it's better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?" Neil says, smiling. There are even tears shining softly in his eyes, like he's a normal parent and this is a normal lecture and it makes Max want to scream. It makes her want to find Steve's old nail bat and threaten Neil with it. 

Instead she nods and says, "Yeah. I'm sorry," all the while knowing that this is going to be added to the rotation of her nightmares and that she's going to be spending a lot of time picturing hitting Neil with that nail bat and anything else she can imagine from here on out.

"Well, next time ask, okay?" Neil says softly, so softly and Max can't believe she ever bought into any of his crap. Like she knew he and Billy didn't have a good relationship, she wasn't dumb, she'd noticed, but this is the first time it's been like this, this is the first time Neil's hit Billy in front of her, this is the first time he's done that and then done this, turned and looked at her like he loves her, like he's a concerned parent, like he's a normal person right after saying such mean and awful things to his own kid. 

Because Billy, she realizes, is like her, is still just a kid, no matter how much older he looks or what kind of car he drives. He's still just a kid. Tears spring to her eyes at the thought and Neil rushes forward to hug her, clearly thinking she's crying for entirely different reasons and it makes her feel like she's never going to be clean ever again, no matter how many showers or baths she takes.

"We were so worried about you," Neil says as he strokes her hair. Max looks up at Billy and sees the rage building up inside of him, she can see it in his eyes and in the stiff way he's holding himself.

"You terrified us half to death!" Susan wails, rushing forward to get in on the hug. After a moment she holds her arm out to Billy to include him but it's clearly an afterthought. 

Billy doesn't move a muscle, just stays right where he is, feet planted like he's bracing for another hit. But no other hits come. Instead, Neil just ruffles Max's hair, ends the hug and drags her Mom off to their bedroom. 

Max waits until she hears their door click closed and their tv turn on before she looks over at Billy. He looks like he's halfway between rage and tears and one hundred percent looks like he's going to shatter, either way. 

There are so many questions she wants to ask, so much she wants to say, so much she wants to do, starting with stealing his car keys, shoving him into the car and driving him to the hospital to get his collarbone looked at but…

She can't. She knows she can't. She knows that just because she has a better understanding of the way things are now doesn't mean he does. Just because he hasn't forced her away after what just happened, that doesn't actually mean anything.

It might actually be a bad thing, honestly, with the way he's staring blankly ahead like he is. So she does the one thing she's actually brave enough to do and grabs him by the hand and drags him outside. 

He lets her and it makes something inside her twitch; Billy is not supposed to be this quiet, not ever. He's all rage, all fire, all…

Isn't he?

She can feel tears starting to well up again and if Billy notices, he doesn't say anything. She puts it off like she's just cold, even shivers and rubs at her nose like it's running - because it is - and even stomps her feet a couple of times to add to the act. 

They stand there in the not-quite silence for a few minutes, the laugh track from whatever show Neil and Susan are watching echoing through the walls and making Max actually shiver. Because how can they…

How can they just…

Settle in and watch a sitcom like nothing happened? How can they…

The tears start encroaching again and this time, finally, Billy notices.

"Don't," he says, voice all sharp and weirdly brittle. "Don't be crying over me. It's weird."

She sniffles and decides fuck it, if she's gonna cry, she's gonna cry and yeah, it's over him and his stupid fucking boyfriend and this stupid fucking day and their shitty fucking parents and her shattered fucking worldview. 

"Fuck," she curses. She wipes at her nose openly. "I…" She doesn't know what to say. 

"That about covers it," Billy says. He pulls out another cigarette and this time the flame from the lighter as he flicks it on illuminates his face rather than casting it in shadow; it's oddly fitting for the day they've had and it makes her skin itch with the need to ask, to know more, to see if maybe she can get more illuminated than just his face, makes her want to see all of him lit up like that. 

She wants to ask about Neil so badly and someday she will but for now the scariest thing she can think of is for Billy to get that blank stare on his face again and for him to stop talking, so she goes with something else. Something she hopes is easier. Something good.

 "It's not just-" She swallows. 

"You really miss Steve, don't you?" 

Billy looks over at her, face unreadable in a way that has nothing to do with the dim lighting on the porch and for a moment Max thinks he might just up and walk away without answering. 

"Don't tell anyone," he says, finally, words coming out as sharp as knives, like he thinks she's trying to attack him. Which, considering everything both tonight and in general, makes sense.

"I won't," she says, solemn but loud. 

It takes a long moment, long enough for Max to start holding her breath before he says, "Okay."

"Do you…" Max whispers, watching as he blows out a long plume of smoke. "Do you love him?"

He turns to her and again he looks so heartbroken and human and sad it breaks her heart. This time it breaks her heart. "I drove all the way to Nashville and gave a crazy man all of my money on the word of a fourteen year old girl that it would bring him back. What do you think?"

She nods and shoves her hands in her pockets. "I think I hope this works." 

He nods and they stay out on the porch together until they're both shaking with the cold and have no choice but to head back inside. 

[fairestmusesismoving]

Rumple

Welcome to my second TED Talk….hahaha sure to get me in trouble with so many people. This is even more loaded than Ruby.How I feel about this character?I mourn Rumple and all his potential because there was so much there. So many things that could have been done. All of it was wasted for what felt like a whispy teenager soap opera that had no real merit or consequence. Because deep down…I did like Rumplestiltskin. I hated his fans with a deep passion because they wanted to turn this interesting character into a defanged whimpering whisper of what Robert Carlyle actually gave us. Rumplestiltskin was this interesting “universal glue” who kept popping up everywhere to make everything work as the strangest deus ex machina storytelling device that worked… And he worked very well because he was established early on, established to have a certain set of powers, motive, and even a few limits. This was really great! We had some rules so we couldn’t go into the realm of the over powered mary sue! That was fantastic! Rumple was realistic as a powerful character and the fact his interests were aligning with certain groups at the time? Hey, we had a real neutral character!And then by S3 we had to jam on the breaks cause “Wow what do we do when we remove all drive for Rumplestiltskin since he has Belle and we killed Neal?””I dunno! No idea!”It was infuriating because had all of this been drawn out and everyone focused on different aspects of Rumplestiltskin rather than mashing him and Belle together like that scene in Space Balls , we could have had something that was worthwhile and not like some drastic whiplash from S1 that really doesn’t make sense considering the trauma of Neverland and Oz then….pretty much everything else. There’s trauma and then just using a character because you’re bound to pay that person since they’re still under contract and “well the viewers love them and we want money”.Rumplestiltskin is a victim of “too much, too soon”, and fans who tried to demand too much and realized way too late that maybe Rumple needed slower reveals.All the people I ship romantically with this character:By default I have to say Belle, even though I hated what Rumbelle became in the final seasons. It needed work. Both Rumple and Belle felt like they were hurting each other in ways that made no sense given the previous seasons. I’d detail in depth, but that’s not the point of these little evaluations, is it? Also I’d need to make an entire blog to contain every single moment evaluated to show each action and which character does what. It’s a lot.In the end I still have to give it to Rumbelle even though I wanted a lot more for it.I ship no one else romantically with this character. I especially do not ship Milah with Rumple. Sorry if that rustles jimmies. I am disabled. The behavior Milah displays around Rumple is abusive. Despite what some people may tell you on tumblr, ableism is offensive and acting in this way towards a person is abusive.You really can’t escape abuse in OUAT which boggles the hell out of me. When Milah engages in her acts of spousal abuse and ableism, it’s enough to make me go grab my inhaler because it really is how disturbing just how close and realistic her microaggressions are and how much they build up. There’s another scene in OUAT that sends me into this state, but Milah is in the second place position. Bolded because if you’re angry about my thoughts on Milah, maybe go read up on disability, ableism, and how couples treat disabled spouses after they’ve become disabled. It’s a huge topic and one that people don’t talk about. Considering I’m most likely to be abused by a loved one and that person will always be my spouse, it’s a healthy fear to have. Milah is that walking boogeyman.My non-romantic OTP for this character:I love Archie’s interactions with Gold. I love Henry’s interactions with Gold, especially in the “deleted” scene where Henry seeks Gold out to talk about Regina’s isolating him after Robin’s death. Honestly, Rumple needed to have more casual scenes with other characters because Robert Carlyle plays very well with other actors.Shots fired? Because Robert Carlyle acts in circles around Lana Parrilla, it often left her scenes seeming very childish and immature. It made the forced romance (it was Regina sexually assaulting Gold because he didn’t consent unless he was trying to get something form her but okay) even more uncomfortable due to her inability to stop yelling in an uncontrolled manner. Where Carlyle can channel and keep himself calm (or hell, any of the cast because I’d be redundant), it made pairing him with Lana a very poor choice very often.Why wasn’t Gold/Rumple utilized with other characters more? He was paired with the one-offs or guest characters fairly often, but never with anyone but Regina. This really did make the scenes look awkward. I’m saying that as an actor who has been trained to know what to look for. I noticed. It looks bad on the writer and director.My unpopular opinion about this character:I hate this strange Rumplestiltskin that people try to promote that’s weirdly romantic and mushy. I remember when there was an app on Facebook for Once Upon a Time and the Dearies RIOTED because Rumple wrote a letter to Belle shortly after the flashback events of Skin Deep. it was raw and very in character. He hated her but he loved her and knew that if he lost his powers, he couldn’t protect people he cared about. It was a good letter.The “Dearies” rioted until Adam and Eddy apologized and changed the app to have a letter that included instructions on “How to Use a Toaster”.Toaster Rumple is a Rumple I don’t want to exist and anyone who prefers Toaster Rumple? Butter my toast.One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon:I want to fix everything about Rumple. From S2 and onward. Finding Neal so soon/intertwining Baelfire’s plot with Emma’s/giving Regina a happy ending ruined Rumplestiltskin as a character. That’s VERY shots fired. I’m going to get unfollowed immediately for that and I don’t know if I should be happy about that or what…Baelfire needed to remain independent. The key to Emma and the Charmings was how Rumple manipulated the curse caster to get to A Land Without Magic and was counting on Emma to break the curse. That’s where it stops for the big involvement. Baelfire should have remained as Rumple’s own plot and for something to keep driving himself that he could eventually invite people into as he slowly became comfortable with others.But the worst of it truly is Regina. Rumple often warned Regina about her own morality and while that seemed hypocritical of her, he wasn’t wrong. As the series went along, she never actually changed her ways and we were introduced to a growing body count to her name that complimented S1′s rape, child abuse, various instances of inflicting bodily harm (some with the intent to murder), and so much I’ve lost track of. Having this person being handed a crown while Rumple gets a death so he can be “united with Belle” but he gets a kiss from the woman he was never interested in but continued her incredibly predatory advances?Yeah no. But Regina can’t have that ending unless you get rid of the one reminding her “All Magic Comes with a Price.” I guess that price was getting rid of the person saying that magic might cost your morality. A Mary Sue Palooza!

[thesinglesjukebox]

SIGRID - HIGH FIVE

[6.50]

More like a high [6]...

Julian Axelrod: At its core, pop is just ecstasy or agony writ large, and few do maximalist misery better than Sigrid. While "Strangers" was a desperate grasp for connection in the face of isolation, "High Five" is a bleary dance atop the wreckage left in the wake of fake friends. They're two sides of the same coin, deeply felt declarations of loneliness in an era where you're never truly alone. But like its predecessor, "High Five" hitches its ennui to a humongous hook that sounds like a confetti cannon shot into the sun. It's a joyous ode to the liberating act of screaming into the void -- think "It's My Party" for the millennial age. [8]

Alfred Soto: Predictable developments and a voice that sounds unconvincingly self-regarding do not solid dance pop make. [4]

Ian Mathers: I slightly underrated her "Strangers" at the time, but between that and "High Five" it's clear that Sigrid is good enough at weaving humane yet unflinching rebukes into total bangers that she will hopefully one day write her generation's "You're So Vain" (with more synthesizers). Also, the "ooh, everybody loves a show" bit makes me think of this as the equally dark inverse of Lorde's "Liability" (Tove Styrke's version too), especially since Sigrid has described "High Five" as self-critical as much as anything else. [9]

Scott Mildenhall: It follows that Sigrid says this is somewhat self-directed, a warning to oneself of roads to not go down, because that accounts for its tough love approach. It's obscured, but there is sympathy: sick of angst-screen sycophancy, she sees the fragility it belies, quietening down temporarily to attend to it, before reaffirming belief that the plaster is best ripped off. Those in the business of doing so could easily take it as a Searing Critique Of Celebrity, but its applicability seems so much wider than that. The person being addressed doesn't sound all that powerful when the room goes quiet, and all that comes to mind is that they probably get their high fives not from apparent achievement, but through knocking others down. Perhaps for everyone touched or even bound up in the invasive and all-pervasive kind of bland judgmentalness that seems borne of a fear of being judged, this is a cue to relax. [8]

Will Adams: An admittedly familiar concept -- anti-bullying message that drifts dangerously close to piety -- elevated to glorious heights by a bracing chorus and a bridge that unexpectedly divulges a Regina Spektor influence. [8]

Katherine St Asaph: The most expensive atrium-fountain drops and inventive machine whirrs money can buy, but the defanged lyric, weirdly young for a 21-year-old, and epic-shaped but empty song that the production encloses renders it all unimpressive. The piano breakdown could be interesting if it A) weren't another "see, she can do real music" acoustic redux most pop artists employ, just this time plopped into the actual song, and B) didn't remind me of why those Lorde-Kate Bush comparisons never quite worked for me. Bush's strengths don't lie in being arch and precocious -- few female singer-songwriters' do -- and if you're making pop-pop music, arch and precocious will kill. [3]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Several amusing and quirky ideas that are rendered meaningless by a standard stadium-ready chorus. [4]

Stephen Eisermann: When pop artists are willing to get experimental with production, singing styles, atmosphere, and song structure, it always makes for a more enjoyable listen -- even if the song doesn't always stick its landing. The piano breakdown during the bridge came out of left field, but it made an already interesting song about the yes-men in your life even better. To me, it was a metaphor for those times when you want to be honest with yourself and go against the grain and against what will get you the most attention. It's probably way simpler than that, but that's the fun of weird songs -- you can read way too much into them while you listen to them on repeat for hours before finally giving up and enjoying the song for what it is: good pop music. [7]

Juan F. Carruyo: This song is the aural equivalent of dropping Mentos in Coke: appropriately epic. [7]

Katie Gill: The way this song builds is downright beautiful -- I didn't expect it to just LAUNCH right into that chorus of sound, but man, am I glad that Sigrid chose to do it this way. This clocks in at less than three minutes, but it's so tightly edited and pieced together that it makes the most out of each beat. It's a damn good and damn fun pop song for a time when we reeeally need a few more damn fun pop songs. [7]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox]

[neuxue]

Hi, longtime reader of your WoT Liveblog here. Recently you made a post about your favourite female characters and you included Delilah Bard from Shades of Magic. I wanted to ask what you thought about the series in general. I finished Book 1 a few days ago and I found it to be rather unremarkable, indeed I'd forgotten half of it by the next day. (also definitely read the Riyria Revelations and The First Empire by Michael J. Sullivan if you haven't already, both have awesome female characters)

Thanks for the recommendations! 

As for Shades of Magic, I definitely liked Lila as a character far more than I liked the series as a whole. For me, the books were enjoyable enough to read, but I found the plotlines and execution thereof to be a bit flimsy and overly reliant on ‘find the thing’ with a side of deus ex machina and tacked-on consequences. Enjoyable, but as you say, somewhat unremarkable. It’s a shame in a way, because I think between the general premise (which I loved) and the characters (several of whom I also loved), there could have been a truly excellent story, but it just didn’t quite get there.

There were some excellent moments, though. Some of it will definitely depend on taste; put four characters together, all of whom have definitely given genuine consideration to murdering every single one of the other three, and there’s almost no way I’m not going to enjoy it. So there are moments I would say are worth reading for, and I found a lot of the character work, independent of plot, to be very compelling. Schwab has a way of writing darkness within a character in a way that feels a bit more true than your standard teenage edgelord but more -the ‘image’ that comes to mind is the pure tone of a perfectly shaped glass set to ringing, if that helps - than grimdark.

Delilah Bard, though. Lila…surprised me, and also made me pause and think for a moment about my own subconscious assumptions and biases. I found her intriguing but not outstanding in the first book, and then the second book happened, and I had to go back to the first and really look at her character. Because Delilah Bard is very close to everything I want and never get in female characters. I just didn’t recognise it at first, because I automatically pegged her as a particular type/archetype/trope and didn’t look past that until book 2. 

What did I think she was? Something along the lines of urchin-turned-love-interest badass-fighter-chick whose badassery and fighting always feel…performative, somehow, rather than real. Or perhaps the ‘ice queen’, another common trope in female characters with knives, but another one that so often comes across like a performance, or like a slightly more murderous version of the manic-pixie-dream-girl, waiting for a hero to come along and melt her or for a plot to come along and depower her. How many times have I been promised a female character with teeth, only to see her defanged?

So many times, that I simply took it for granted that Lila would fall into some version of this. And then…she didn’t. The situations presented themselves, and nothing seemed radically different from all those other women in all those other stories, except it was a little bit like watching The Force Awakens for the first time, constantly expecting the plot to discard Rey or subordinate her to one of the others, and then having that continually…not happen. It was weirdly unnerving, because in so many small ways it just wasn’t quite what I was expecting. 

And then at one point I thought ‘why don’t I love Lila more? She’s ticking virtually all the boxes of my Type, so why do I still feel a bit unsure about her?’ And I thought about it, and I tried mentally altering the genders so that Lila was a male character and…well, there was my answer, much to my introspective discomfort. 

Lila has a combination of character traits - not to mention a degree of true agency and freedom and desire to act upon these - that are sometimes ‘given’ to female characters but are so rarely actually given to those characters that it made her feel ‘off’. If Lila had been a male character, I wouldn’t have thought twice. I would have loved him instantly and never questioned it, and gone on sighing wistfully that ‘it’s a shame there aren’t any female characters like this’. Because I was subconsciously and incorrectly filling in certain blanks with what I expected from a female character, when what I was given was just a character. 

Which, of course, is exactly what I want, so it was frustrating to discover that on some level I still had certain biases preventing me from fully realising and appreciating it, but on the other hand it was good in that it forced me to recognise those. And once I did realise what was happening…ah, Lila.

Lila can and will steal anything and kill without hesitation, and her sharp edges are not just decorative. Her ruthlessness is not surface-level ornamentation, and her ability to walk away from everything she has known is entirely genuine. She isn’t a girl pretending at being a monster. She’s a violent storm pretending with moderate success at being a girl.