#magical bureaucracy

[wondereads]

Personal Review (04/03/23)

Spell Bound by F. T. Lukens

Summary

Ever since his grandmother's death, Edison has been completely cut off from the magical community. With no magic of his own and no ability to sense ley lines, his only way in is through the Spell Binder, a device he built to map the ley lines. He manages to secure an apprenticeship with Antonia Hex, notoriously rebellious curse breaker, who gifts him the name Rook, but Rook's involvement in the magical world alone breaks tons of laws, and it's only a matter of time until the Consortium catches on.

Plot 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

Something about the pacing in this book felt off to me, but I think it's because the summary of this book kind of gives away the whole plot. The pitch of this book places a late, major plot development as the sort of initiating event, which isn't even slightly the case. A good half of this book is build-up to that moment, and it works just fine on its own! The tension between Antonia and Fable (and subsequent issues for Rook and Sun) is perfectly good at developing the plot on its own.

I've read Lukens' books before, namely So This Is Ever After, and they basically write romcoms that happen to benefit from the fantasy world they're set in. However, in Spell Bound, there is involvement with a bigger, more world-impacting plot, and I don't really like it that much. The conclusion feels very rushed, and Lukens' short-form and standalone style doesn't really have the space to properly address what this book is trying to do. Personally, I think this book should've been maybe a duology, even trilogy, that looks into the Consortium, its corruption, and more carefully deals with how Rook and the people around him would reform it. The ending is basically just Rook and Sun saying, "and now things are changing" which ultimately feels unsatisfying.

Characters 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

I think the characters are the strong point of this book, especially when it comes to the romance. Rook and Sun, our two protagonists, don't have a ton of development, but they're fun characters from the beginning, and their growing relationship with each other is adorable to watch. Like I said, Lukens' books are rom-coms set in fantasy worlds, and Rook and Sun have it all. A meet-cute, a coffee shop date, only one bed, on the run together after breaking tons of magical laws—ok, maybe that last one isn't a trope, but it creates a lot of great situations for them to work through together.

The most interesting character, point-blank, is Antonia. Antonia Hex is the city's premier curse breaker, but she's known for more than that. Her magical power is so extreme that she could easily take down the Consortium and even rule the world. She's also banned from taking an apprentice, for reasons Rook is set on figuring out. She's just so interesting and has this crazy backstory; I'd be content with reading a book just about her!

The other major side characters, mostly Fable and Mavis, are a little underdeveloped. They seem to have a couple personality traits and really nothing else, but there is one other thing I liked about the characters. Queerness is treated as just utterly normal in this book; Rook and Sun's relationship is only an issue because Antonia and Fable hate each other, and Sun mentions they prefer they/them pronouns in their first meeting with Rook and their gender is never brought up again.

Writing Style 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

I appreciate that Lukens decided to place this story in a modern equivalent fantasy world. One issue I had with So This Is Ever After was the extremely anachronistic language, and the modern setting pretty much solved that. It still wasn't amazing writing, but it kept that lighthearted tone going through the whole book. Rook and Sun are both very casual in their speech, which feels realistic, and this book successfully avoided the overused, annoying pop culture references that often inundate contemporary novels.

Overall 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

Overall, I just found this book good. It was a quick, light, easy read, and it's definitely a welcome reprieve from the intense fantasy I normally read. The magic is pretty fun, and I really liked the romance. The plot was a little too much for so quick a book, and some of the side characters aren't as fleshed out as I'd like, but this is definitely a great book to just relax and blow off some steam while reading. It isn't a masterpiece, but I'd still recommend it, especially if you're just looking for a little fun.

The Author

F. T. Lukens: American, also wrote In Deeper Waters and So This Is Ever After, seems to have a fondness for the number three; they have three kids, three dogs, and three cats

The Reviewer

My name is Wonderose; I try to post a review every week, and I do themed recommendations every once in a while. I take suggestions! Check out my about me post for more!

[novagale]

Angel of the Eastern Gate (and a certain snake)

[serendippertyy]

Can i ask for more mlp ineffable bureaucracy?

gabe uses his lil built in heat lamp to put beez to sleep 🤗🖤💜

[miumiumanzo]

The world too closes it eyes and conceal us

[grey-and-green]

Here lies the former shell of Beelzebub

Another Good Omens 2 Theory

(Fair warning: I am operating on the personal opinion that all theories here could be extremely on the money or extremely not and their ‘correctness’ is in no way correlated to how fun they are to read/write. So this is NOT a 500 point essay of all the evidence, just an intriguing thought I felt others might enjoy also thinking about)

Also: spoilers

Right. Ok. Yes. So:

I hadn’t really read too much into the fact that Beelzebub got a “new face” for Season 2.

I had some mildly annoyed feelings that maybe the show wanted them to be more conventionally attractive now that they’ve got their own love story, but not much beyond that.

But…whilst scanning the intro for Clues…and pondering many a theory on Aziraphale defecting back to heaven…and how Gabriel serendipitously left a vacancy….

MAYBE:

Maybe this tombstone is a Clue?

Maybe this ties in with some Meddling going on (see Magic Trick You Didn’t See from @ariaste)?

Maybe Beelzebub DIDN’T just get a new face?

Maybe that isn’t actually the same Beelzebub from last season???

(Ok and maybe this epitaph is just an homage to the actor from season 1, but it’s more fun if it’s a Clue)

Hear me out?

Gabriel’s whole on-screen bond with Beelzebub happens AFTER the new face. We get some flashbacks from his POV of the years post-Apocalypsn’t, but the chain of custody on these memories is spotty AT BEST. Last time he seemed vaguely himself, heaven was already actively trying to mess with his memory. The Metatron was there.

For one prince of Heaven to be cast out makes a good story.

But if I wanted to really do some deep psychological manipulation of Aziraphale… then maybe this new story for Gabriel (showing Aziraphale that Angels really are good at their cores and/or when not in positions of power; that the Metatron might not frown on romance as much as we thought [although this is a ruse and we do need Crowley out of the picture])…well maybe this new love story (that conveniently mirrors something our Main Characters might just relate to)(but reads like maybe it was written by someone less invested than Neil Gaiman) makes quite an appealing narrative that someone might have reason to construct.

What if the “obvious” answer - that we just had to recast an actor and thought it’d be fun to add a fan fave ship - is actually just sleight of hand distracting us from a Big Fucking Clue?

(I have other thoughts about why Aziraphale is being re-recruited, but this post is just about this one Theory)

[calamityandwoe]

God, David Tennant's acting in this scene BROKE me- the shaky voice, the trembling, the constant looking away, the panicked rushing through his speech before he looses his nerve, the choking up as Crowley is struggling to force out the most important thing he's said in 6000 years- FLAWLESS

[endreal]

Very well 🧐 I chose to place a small curse on someone. Should I think it as you place the curse?

OOOO can you place a small curse on multiples at once??

All I know is that the Sorcery Level Agreement required for a pre-graduation oracle to do fieldwork only permits curses to be granted to the asker, and the in-damn-ity clause means that I can't be held responsible for backfires as long as I follow professional standards. If you have further questions, I can give you the crystal ball frequency to summon the Esoteric Review Board!

~Send me anons and asks for TMI Tuesday fun and prophet or domestic curses and small damnations!~

[selfcontainedunivcrse]

ok I talk about Kieran a lot in the context of like, a little generic fantasy revolution plot but he is not in fact the lynchpin of this. this is his little cousin, Audrey. She's actually interested vaugely in politics + keeps up with Damian's (kieran's older brother) work, and the #state of things. Kieran is just very conductive to the vibe and does a lot of PR because he's kind of an extremist in his own right before the righteous cause, y'know. While things are kicking off for Audrey's little gang he's becoming well acquainted with violence and such because his friends are being personally tormented by A difficult to articulate embodiment of evil. (Just for fun and for easy targets, because a mildly descript embodiment of evil is about power. However you too can accumulate enough violence to fight back about it. But watch out!)

However a couple provinces over are some Good Kids (tm) at a little institution near Ottawa. Audrey considers herself not much special but wants to do magic sociology like Damian (he did not want to do magic sociology he wanted to practice magic law and somehow ended up being a combo magic social worker/cop), accompanied by her friends Charlie and Sam, interested in furthering magic research, and Gabriel, who is here to blow things up. But, TLDR, Sam furthers magic research a bit too much and gets into necromancy stuff and they've gotta put this guy down. Magic society is held together with paperclips n glitter glue and nobody's really been materially powerful enough to reanimate the dead proper, but they are not ? really cool with letting this guy continue to try ? People who properly practice magic are an open secret that's usually defended by cynicism because Who is going to believe you . CGI has gone too far etc etc. However properly fudging the line between dead and not is going to cause SO many problems that no one is ready to deal with yet.

However now a pack of plot-armoured kids are like HEY ? THERE IS A MAGIC SHADOW GOVERNMENT WHO IS SUPPRESSING INFORMATION BY ASSASSINATING KIDS? and such is the plot, in loose terms. and against his better judgement, Seth is there

[my-misericordia]

sigh Japan is really out here just Japaning ISTG this country just loves to get in it's own way!!

For those who are blaming GMMTV, let me tell you, as a fan of Jmedia I'm pretty confident that this is definitely Japans fault lol The country is run by old people who prop up equally as antiquated copyright/distribution laws. Seriously some are either too scared to try and modernize while others feel like they make enough profit and are therefore not interested in spreading their media further. Like for as popular as anime is it is in spite of its country because not until very recently has it actually finally become easy to access. This is why I was supperrr excited about Cherry Magic! I partly saw this as a sign that Japan was finally moving forward but also partly just happy that JBL really was just in this special space where it could get away with more than other media. Unfortunately I ended up being wrong on both fronts lol it's so sad too because there are many creators, like Yuu Toyota, that also want their work to be distributed internationally! So while one could be mad at GMMTV for not getting everything right on their end….Like how do you as the Owner of this "property" not know that this is who you're selling to? How did you not know this is how they distribute their media? How do you not find out until after 2 weeks after the show airs?!!! Are you so out of touch you couldn't google this company and see that most everything they have is on Youtube? Specifically BL?? The thing you are selling them?!!!

Whatever people's feelings about the company you could tell it was really really trying with this show. While Korea is definitely having a moment right now, Japan is still seen in high regard by many Asian countries and here they are acknowledging a Thai media company enough to share so many IPs. I admit I'm a fangirl, but I knew they did not want to fuck it up when they gave it to TayNew and not younger actors. While I'm sure to a lot of people see the way it was filmed to be like a sort of "homage" of the show, and it might have been, I saw it as like a show of respect to Jdramas in general. I mean I love Cherry Magic jp but the way it was directed wasn't really revolutionary as far as Jmedia goes. The company in the show has such good relations with it's Japanese branch, a good amount of people know some Japanese, the boss is presented very favorably etc etc…. Hopefully things work out because it's clear they had a lot riding on this shows success

[ministry-of-acid]

We have been having a terrible horrible no good very bad day today but thank god our dear darling lover is coming in clutch with the borderlands infodumping it's fixing us :,)

[novagale]

And how I wonder how they got here

[serendippertyy]

super duper quick doodle before bed heehee I realized I had never drawn post S2 gabe and bee as horses soo here they are yaYY 🪰🕊️

also I figured if they're gonna hang out on earth they need to use fake cutie marks which is neat cause they can customize it, so they picked marks that signified their 'rebirths'! gabriel's being a mug of cocoa, a lil affectionate nod to aziraphale and the safety he provided, and bee's just bein some simple buggy friends, as they are no longer ashamed of their demonic powers and they like being buggy proudly ☺️☺️

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Elizabeth Weiss

Published: Dec 7, 2023

The American Museum of Natural History’s newest “revitalized” hall—the Northwest Coast Hall, which reopened in 2022 after five years and $19 million spent—includes a case with a warning label:

CAUTION: This display case contains items used in the practices of traditional Tlingit doctors. Some people may wish to avoid this area, as Tlingit tradition holds that such belongings contain powerful spirits.

Even if you disregard this caution, you’ll have difficulty seeing the items since “the case lighting has been darkened at the request of Tlingit advisors to reflect the cultural sensitivity of these items.” And just to be sure, the case bears a “no photography” sticker.

The case contains masks used by traditional Tlingit shamans, once referred to as witchdoctors; that term is no longer considered appropriate at the American Museum of Natural History, so they are now called simply “doctors.” According to the somewhat confusing text on the case, “By wearing masks that contained the spirits, doctors tapped into their power,” and presumably this power was what they believed helped heal people of diseases—both physical pathologies and spiritual ailments.        

Though some questioned whether the items should be displayed at all—the official story holds that these materials were stolen from graves—Tlingit advisors wished to keep the display. The “American Museum of Natural History staff, with support from Tlingit experts, concluded that displaying the materials honored Tlingit cultural history—but that it was crucial to acknowledge the sensitivity and ongoing power of these objects.”

The presentation and treatment of this display case epitomizes what has gone wrong in the remodeling of the Northwest Coast Hall: museum staff are allowing creation myths and other religious and supernatural beliefs to be depicted as historical facts and scientific truths.

Another example of the Northwest Coast Hall’s blurring of fact and fiction can be found in the text on the origin of the Northwest Indian tribes, provided by Iris (Nunanta) Siwallace, a cultural researcher for the Nuxalk Nation in Bella Coola, British Columbia. “Our first Ancestors who descended from the heavens down to Earth either came in the form of animals or on the eyelashes of the Sun,” she writes. This may be a beautiful creation myth, but exhibit designers should distinguish the tale from the factual story of human origins. Exhibit halls created earlier, such as the 1970 Hall of Mexico and Central America and the 1989 Hall of South American Peoples, do a far better job of telling visitors when something is believed, when something is true, and when something is unknown. By depicting these stories as factual, the museum is no different than a creationist museum portraying an Adam and Eve biblical story as empirical fact.

In some cases, the lines between fact and fiction seemed to be even more deliberately blurred, as in the case showing painted panels of the Nuu-chah-nulth, formerly referred to as the Nootka, which states:

The painted panel displayed above commemorates events experienced by Sin-Set, a Nuu-chah-nulth Chief of the Huupa’Chesat-h Nation, around 1850. While taking salmon from a trap on the cascading Sproat River, the Chief lost his balance and fell in a deep pool. Two supernatural Whales called out to him and took him on a journey. In the course of his travels, he entered the lake above the river, met a Thunderbird and a Lightning Serpent, and visited the House of Wolves.

This text depicts a supernatural event as a real occurrence, even providing a date. This is not the only example of such deceptive practices. In reference to a panel by the ‘Namgis of British Columbia, the accompanying text informs us:

According to ‘Namgis history, the supernatural Kulus, a down-covered Thunderbird, lived above the Sun. One such bird named Tlalamin came down to the human world and built a house near Nimpkish Lake decorated with clouds, stars, and the Sun. Then Tlamamin took off his Kulus clothing and became a man.

This is not history. It is mythology.

And the use of such folklore is not limited to the past; upon entrance to the exhibit, visitors are greeted with quotes from indigenous collaborators appealing to the supernatural to argue for repatriation of artifacts. For instance, Judith Dax̱ootsú Ramos, a professor at University of Alaska Southeast who is also Tlingit, states:

What we have in the Museum are not just works of art—they’re spiritual beings. And, when we see them, we know they’re calling to us, “We want to come home.” I’ll always remember an Elder who went to a museum, and she could see the mist of an object coming out of the drawer where it was contained. She said, “We’ll bring you back home.”

More simply, Morgan (Secəlenəxʷ) Guerin, a member of the Musqueam First Nation, noted that “There’s a lot of Ancestors’ souls within these pieces.”

When fact and fiction are blurred as in the Northwest Coast Hall, the museum fails at its stated mission: “To discover, interpret, and disseminate—through scientific research and education—knowledge about human cultures, the natural world, and the universe.” By allowing indigenous collaborators to set the terms, the museum fails to educate the public—both indigenous and non-indigenous. Five million people, including “hundreds of thousands of K-12 students and teachers,” visit the museum annually; they are being misinformed by arguably one of the nation’s finest public institutes of science.

Throughout the museum, one sees signs that New York State is making changes that will “address aspects of our history, colonialism, and the broader legacy of museum collecting.” These changes, we’re told, will “increase diversity of voices and perspectives” with the “goals to offer history and context and to enhance cultural understanding.” In short, the changes are motivated by a desire to atone for past wrongs and erase the racism experienced by indigenous people. A far better way to compensate for past mistakes is to educate people with historical and scientific information, rather than patronizing them with mythology masquerading as fact.

==

"Other ways of knowing" is what happens when your scientific institution succumbs to DEI activists.

Creation myths are not science. It shouldn't be necessary to explain that.

[curiosity-killed]

This book! Is so good!!

[sindirimba]

chapter 7 of No one does anything alone is up 🚗

She was having a blast, and she was eager to get on the road, to get to Skagway, Alaska and maybe track down this mysterious Yitzhak. Because that was the whole point of their trip, after all.

the saga continues~

[burblespewstales]

Long time no tome entry, worry not, your favorite New Jersey based wizard is still up and casting. Here’s a pic of the maintenance crew cleaning out a kobold’s den and trying to avoid thinking about the paperwork involved in such a horde