#misc meta

[mzminola]

Ned was doomed before the beginning of the story; the direwolf has already choked on the stag antler in time to be found as an omen, Robert & Ned's fates are intertwined, Jon Arryn died from what he swallowed and Robert chose Ned to be Hand of the King, there is no way turning down a royal offer like that works out safely, and no way accepting it works out safely either. Ned was doomed, the gods just gave him a heads up.

But he became doomed in a particular way the moment he swung the sword down on Lady's neck.

The gods said hey, you're doomed, but here's the symbol of your house given mortal form to aid your children, and Ned killed one. His king gave a cruel, unfair order Ned disagreed with, that would hurt a child under his protection, his own daughter, to end the life of a creature that had done no harm, not for meat or furs to survive the winter but merely to satisfy the royal family's sense of offended dignity, and Ned carried that order out personally.

Ned killed Sansa's protector. He killed a gift from the gods.

Of course his own life ends on the royal executioner's block, a sword swinging down.

[renmorris]

Mrs. Lovett's refrain of “poor thing” is one of my favorite underrated details in the entire writing of the musical. What sounds at first like sympathy for other characters like Lucy reveals itself at the end to be a dehumanizing malice aimed at a suffering woman who's already been totally robbed of dignity by everyone around her.

“Could that THING have cared for you like me?”

[meta-squash]

A review of Querelle de Roberval by Kevin Lambert

I picked up Querelle de Roberval at work and decided to read it with absolutely zero expectations or knowledge of its contents, only a deep love for Genet’s work. It is, it seems, meant to be an homage or at least inspired by Genet’s novel Querelle de Brest. I spent the time it took me to read the book completely uncertain whether I liked it or not, and after having finished the novel and mulled it over for the rest of the day, I think I have to conclude that I didn’t like it.

It is well written; Lambert’s prose is stylish, sharp, and flows well. I am not Canadian and therefore don’t know the nuances of specifically Quebecois politics or social issues, but I really struggled to pin down the political message of this book, and it was clearly gunning for something. The ironic, fourth-wall breaking chapter at the latter half of the book set the stakes for the rest of the book too high; the scene in which the neighborhood Greek chorus mourns over Querelle’s body does not feel as heightened as it was obviously meant to feel, because the fourth wall chapter cuts down any faith the reader may have in its glory or passion.

Stylistically it felt like two separate novels that someone had attempted to twist together into one -- the realism of the strike, and the poetic fantasy of Querelle’s world and that of the other queer boys. Unfortunately, either the attempt at combining them was not strong enough, or the lyrical alienation of the queer world from the straight working class world was not deliberate enough.

Aside from the two main characters, Querelle and Jezabel, the rest of the cast felt undercooked; some were not fleshed out thoroughly enough, and some should have remained more like two-dimensional side characters but were given only a little bit extra characterization and therefore felt strange and incomplete.

And unfortunately I couldn’t help but compare Lambert’s work to Genet’s original, and it falls far short of the beauty of Querelle de Brest, or Genet’s work in general.

Part of the fascination of Genet’s work is how often violence or “perversion” (sexual or otherwise) is not an act of revenge or anger, but one of love or reverence, and more importantly one of transcendence. Aside from the descriptions of Querelle with his lovers and Jezabel’s final act in the pool, this symbolism and emotional transformation did not occur. The violence was just violence, something more akin to torture porn than something loving, transcendent, or symbolic. Murder itself - the actual taking of a life - as an extension of the self and therefore an act of complete liberation of the self is not the point of Lambert’s work like it is in Genet’s. Instead, it is the violence itself, the causing of pain that he seems to focus on. In Genet’s work (particularly Funeral Rites), consumption of another is not an act of revenge or hatred as it is in this work, but one of reverence and love. Acts of violence such as sacrifice, murder, and betrayal take on a transcendent, romantic symbolism because they are acts in which the self is destroyed and transformed into something else. Corruption, violation, violence, perversion, are rarely about the outside world directly. Rather, they are ways in which the self becomes something more, confirms itself to be a living thing or an empty thing or a thing which acts out of love, submission, or dominance. Rarely are acts of violence things Genet’s characters do solely for themselves; they are ways in which two characters are eternally entwined, which is what makes his violent or twisted characters so romantic.

All this is something that is consistent throughout Genet’s work and blatant in both his direct prose and his symbolism. Much of the violence in Lambert’s work lacks that philosophical thoughtfulness, and the political passion that would have smoothed that over does not seem fully thought out.

Unlike Genet, whose feelings towards authority have a conscious duality and whose works are unmistakably working-class, with the questionable morals of its characters being portrayed as a positive aspect, Lambert seems more intent on portraying the strikers as reprehensible in their actions, in that they are merely violent rather than transcendent in some way. This frames their actions then as either simply brutish or ultimately futile, rather than an act or event which either allows them to come alive for the first time or to change their self into something else. It also means that the characters whose morals are more “old-fashioned” like Fauteux or Bernard do not have the same dark, rounded-out intent and shadowy depths like that of Mario in Querelle de Brest, and instead are simply shallow and unlikable due to sexism etc.

In Genet’s works, violence always, always means something symbolically, and its meaning is usually expanded upon through descriptions of the character’s internal monologue or reaction or transformation. But much of the violence in this book was simply vengeful or retaliatory (the coffee, the molotov cocktails) and the moments during and after the fight with the baseball bats did not dig deep enough into any symbolism to make it feel like anything more than a violent, vengeful midnight rumble at a park. The closest thing was perhaps Jezabel’s vision in the grass of the little children healing her wounds and the neighborhood sleepwalkers singing a Greek chorus mourning for Querelle, but even that did not quite dig deep enough into the the tender, sensitive bits of Jezabel’s emotional transformation.

Querelle, in this case, was not a vehicle by which the novel’s characters as well as the reader are made to ponder relationships between people who mirror each other or expose hitherto unknown passions or weaknesses; instead, he was simply a vehicle for violence that is hardly thought out, and the brief paragraph referencing the sexual insecurities and incestuous perversions of the fathers was not enough to change that. Similarly, the sex scenes in the novel could have been the most Genet-esque thing about Lambert's text, but it supplants the transcendent and self-defining or self-immolating nature of strange or unsavoury sex in Genet's works with simple brutality. The "second" boy of the three unnamed teenagers nearly meets the brief, as he is described as having love within him that the other two must dig out, but Lambert only allows this theme a single sentence, then returns to grotesque and visceral sex without the layers of symbolism and subconscious conflict that gives Genet's views on sex that mystical, philosophical quality.

Within Genet’s work, his voice not as the narrator but as the literal writer Jean Genet is consistently inserted, so that throughout all of his novels he inserts himself and his own thoughts and experiences into the narrative, breaking the fourth wall to describe a memory or emotion of his past that connects through layers of symbolism and feeling to the narrative. The single chapter in which Lambert breaks the fourth wall and lets his voice through does no such thing, and is introduced so late in the novel that it simply pulls the reader out of the narrative entirely, and it is a struggle to get back into it.

No matter how meandering or erratic the narrative of Genet’s work, it always seems extremely self-contained, as though Genet has tight control over every piece of the story and his choices to digress to a personal memory or focus on a different character are deliberate. The self-contained nature of Genet gives the reader the sense that he is writing for himself first, and for an audience second. Lambert’s work, while interesting, can’t decide if it wants to be a kitchen sink drama or magical realist, and therefore its rambling nature seems less self-contained and less controlled.

I think the major issues I had with this book were its ambiguous political stance, its uncooked characters, and its rather bland use of violence. Compared to Genet’s deeply personal, extremely strong and passionate symbolism and emphasis on emotional and mental transformation, this novel felt shallow and disconnected, and without any firmly established positions, opinions, or symbols. I think if an author writes a novel and deliberately mimics the title and main character of a different, more famous novel, they should have a clear and solid reason why they have chosen to draw such a distinct and direct line, and some consciousness of how their work will be compared to the other by readers. This book seemed to lack that clear reason or that consciousness.

[mzminola]

[image: tag reading "Schrokovam's gunblade" /end ID]

schrodinger's chekhov's gun. a detail in a story that looks like it should have some big payoff but it's too early to tell if that's relevant or if the author just has a passion for lovingly describing guns.

[mycroftrh]

Far worse, in my opinion, than the famous “he wouldn’t fucking say that” is “he WOULD fucking say that, as part of his facade, but you seem to think he would mean it genuinely”

[galedekarios]

the forgotten realms wiki released an interactive map of waterdeep, which includes over 1000 pinned locations, including 370 streets and 509 buildings:

[link to the interactive map]

clicking on locations will give you a little overview & the link to their wiki article:

you are also able to filter locations based on various categories.

[purble-gaymer]

i love summer time to go outside!

[mzminola]

[Image: three panels of Agatha ranting, starting out frustrated: "And I'm the evil madgirl with the death ray and the freakish ancestors- And the town full of minions- And the horde of Jägers- And the homicidal castle full of sycophantic evil geniuses and fun-sized hunter-killer monster clanks and goodness knows what else-

...

And you know what? I can work with that!" /end ID.]

It’s really fascinating to compare the way Agatha handles the Heterodyne Legacy compared to her father and uncle. Because these are the two known generations of ‘Heroic’ Heterodynes after a long, long legacy of the Heterodyne family being known primarily as Evil Bastards - but they have such a totally opposite relationship with that villainous legacy.

Bill and Barry grew up deep inside that Evil Heterodyne Legacy and know all about how truly rotten it really is. Their father was an Old Heterodyne to the bone and an Extremely Reprehensible Human Being. Like, not just Cartoon Evil Overlord stuff - according to the Novels, he forced Bill and Barry’s mom to marry him by threatening her family. And he tried to kill them because they weren’t evil enough to his tastes. 

And when their mom killed him to protect her sons, the Castle killed her in retaliation. The very manifestation of the Heterodyne Legacy has cost them their beloved mother who just saved their life. And all of this in addition to the fact a non-evil Heterodyne was really an unthinkable concept when the Boys started - meaning they had to work extra hard to distance themselves from their family if they wanted anyone outside of Mechanicsburg to trust them.

And Heterodyne Boys worked very very hard to prove to the world that they’re not monsters. Both to fight off against the constant suspicions that they were monsters, and because they most likely wanted as little to do with their father’s legacy as Spark-ly possible. For them the Heterodyne Legacy was mostly kind of a Curse, the thing that tormented their mother and killed her and almost killed them, the thing that makes people wary of them.

And as such, they distanced themselves from anything that’s even remotely to do with that old legacy of monsters, from anything evil or scary or messy or ugly. Much to the chagrin of the Castle, the House of Heterodyne’s many other monsters, the Jager Horde Mechanicsburg’s proud Evil Minion population and many others who felt abandoned by them for the sake of PR.

Then there’s Agatha Heterodyne. And it’s not just that Agatha grew up in a post-Heterodyne-Boys world where the general populace associates the family name less with evil barbarous mad kings and more with good-natured heroism. Where even those who remember the Old Heterodynes are at least willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Where even those who would like her to be like the Old Heterodynes are at least willing to give her some wiggle room to express herself....

It is all of that, but more importantly Agatha didn’t grow up as a Heterodyne at all.

She grew up as Agatha Clay, with the Spark-Suppressing Locket that dulled her mind and made her a miserable klutzy mess who couldn’t do anything right. She grew up hating the constant feeling of being powerless.

And discovering that she’s a Heterodyne came up… pretty close to realizing she’s a Spark, and both of these revelations gave her a certain kind of Power that she never got to have before. She is now both a powerful Spark and a powerful political player in this grand Europa political chess board. 

And as much as she has the same heroic values and upbringing as the Boys did (courtesy of Barry and the Construct Duo), not growing up so up-close-and-personal with the worst consequences of the Old Heterodyne’s evil means she’s not as immediately repulsed by it like the Boys were. 

She encountered all of these old monstrous pieces of the Heterodyne Legacy - the Jagers, the Castle, Mechanicsburg, even just the fear her name can put into people’s hearts - not as the Evil Legacy Forced Upon Her. But stuff that was taken away from her, and she had to earn back. And in a world stacked so heavily against her, so determined to rob her of her agency and newfound sense of power, these things represent the assertion and security of her power.

For the Heterodyne Boys, the worst thing they could ever imagine being was monsters - like their father and the rest of their family was. For Agatha Heterodyne, the worst thing she could imagine is being powerless again. She would take being seen as a monster a thousand times over being condescended and ignored ever again. 

Being seen as a monster isn’t actually all that bad at all, she discovered. 

All of these things together make Agatha not quite the second generation of Actually Heroic Heterodyne or just another link in the Old Heterodyne Legacy - but another new kind of Heterodyne altogether. One that can both retain a moral code and embrace the family’s monstreness at the same time. 

[lostyesterday]

I was curious about which Star Trek shows had the most human vs non-human characters, so I made this graph. I counted all major characters plus characters who were in at least 10 episodes of each respective show (with a few exceptions for incredibly minor characters who are technically in more than ten episodes but have barely any/no lines). A full list of characters included is below the cut.

TOS:

Part/Non-Human: Spock

Human: Kirk, Mccoy, Scotty, Uhura, Sulu, Chekov, Chapel

TNG:

Part/Non-Human: Data, Troi, Worf, Guinan

Human: Picard, Riker, La Forge, Crusher, Wesley, Yar, Pulaski, O’Brien, Ogawa

DS9:

Part/Non-Human: Kira, Odo, Quark, Jadzia, Rom, Nog, Garak, Dukat, Worf, Weyoun, Martok, Leeta, Ezri, Damar, Female Changeling, Winn

Human: Sisko, Bashir, Jake, O’Brien, Keiko, Kasidy, Ross

VOY:

Part/Non-Human: Torres, Neelix, EMH, Tuvok, Kes, Seven (part Borg counts as not entirely human to me), Seska, Naomi, Icheb

Human: Janeway, Chakotay, Paris, Kim

ENT:

Part/Non-Human: T’Pol, Phlox, Soval, Shran

Human: Archer, Reed, Tucker, Sato, Mayweather, Forrest

DIS:

Part/Non-Human: Saru, Tyler (debatable but I’m counting him as partly non-human), L’Rell, Book, T’Rina, Nhan, Rillak, Linus, Zora, Adira (again, debatable, but they’ve got a symbiont so they’re not entirely human to me), Gray

Human: Burnham, Stamets (complicated case but I counted him as still human), Tilly, Culber, Lorca (mirror universe characters are still human, I think), Georgiou, Detmer, Owosekun, Rhys, Bryce, Cornwell, Airiam (she’s still human), Pike, Jett, Nilsson, Pollard, Vance

PIC:

Part/Non-Human: Picard (for part of the show at least), Elnor, Soji, Narek, Seven, Laris/Talinn (I am just pretending they’re the same character for simplicity), Jack (I guess???)

Human: Musiker, Jurati, Rios, Adam, Riker, Crusher, Shaw, Sidney

LWD:

Part/Non-Human: Tendi, Shaxs, T’Ana, Barnes, Kayshon

Human: Mariner, Boimler, Rutherford, Freeman, Ransom, Billups

PRO:

Part/Non-Human: Dal, Gwyn, Zero, Rok-Tahk, Jankom, Murf, Hologram Janeway, Diviner, Drednok

SNW:

Part/Non-Human: Spock, Una, Hemmer

Human: Pike, La’an, Uhura, Chapel, M’Benga, Ortegas

[mswyrr]

The "golden child" in a "black sheep"/"golden child" abuse dynamic *is also being abused*. Always. Children don't have any culpability in a parent or authority figure pitting them against each other like that. They're children.

It disturbs me that, with both Adora and Catra on She-ra and Zuko and Azula on ATLA, grown adults will refuse to acknowledge this basic fact.

[mzminola]

Dragonflight was published in 1968.

The Environmental Protection Agency, tasked with such things as making rivers in the US stop catching on fire, clearing up smog, and so on, was not formed until 1970, and they had a lot of work ahead of them.

The Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which finally let women open lines of credit in their own name, was passed in 1974.

Roe v. Wade was 1973.

Pern is a fascinating look at how speculative fiction is shaped, both in the constraints and rebellions, of the time it's written.

[mzminola]

Image: tags which read "mmmm I get it BUT, but, can we remember that this is Elizabeth's pov and not the ultimate morality, i mean, we can recognize the injustice of women's situation in this era, and also recognize that Darcy doesn't know the Bennets from a bar of soap and loves Bingley who is his bestest stupidest baby bro, and it's legitimately horrifying to go well he should have just let Bingley take on six dependents for a woman who is maybe only into him, for his money, and who Bingley is maybe only temporarily infatuated with, that is actually a horrifying concept, can we see both sides here please" /end ID

You know what I realize that people underestimate with Pride & Prejudice is the strategic importance of Jane.

Because like, I recently saw Charlotte and Elizabeth contrasted as the former being pragmatic and the latter holding out for a love match, because she's younger and prettier and thinks she can afford it, and that is very much not what's happening.

The Charlotte take is correct, but the Elizabeth is all wrong. Lizzie doesn't insist on a love match. That's serendipitous and rather unexpected. She wants, exactly as Mr. Bennet says, someone she can respect. Contempt won't do. Mr. Bennet puts it in weirdly sexist terms like he's trying to avoid acknowledging what he did to himself by marrying a self-absorbed idiot, but it's still true. That's what Elizabeth is shooting for: a marriage that won't make her unhappy.

She's grown up watching how miserable her parents make one another; she's not willing to sign up for a lifetime of being bitter and lonely in her own home.

I think she is very aware, in refusing Mr. Collins, that it's reasonably unlikely that anyone she actually respects is going to want her, with her few accomplishments and her lack of property. That she is turning down security and the chance keep the house she grew up in, and all she gets in return may be spinsterhood.

But, crucially, she has absolute faith in Jane.

The bit about teaching Jane's daughters to embroider badly? That's a joke, but it's also a serious potential life plan. Jane is the best creature in the world, and a beauty; there's no chance at all she won't get married to someone worthwhile.

(Bingley mucks this up by breaking Jane's heart, but her prospects remain reasonable if their mother would lay off!)

And if Elizabeth can't replicate that feat, then there's also no doubt in her mind that Jane will let her live in her house as a dependent as long as she likes, and never let it be made shameful or awful to be that impoverished spinster aunt. It will be okay never to be married at all, because she has her sister, whom she trusts absolutely to succeed and to protect her.

And if something eventually happens to Jane's family and they can't keep her anymore, she can throw herself upon the mercy of the Gardeners, who have money and like her very much, and are likewise good people. She has a support network--not a perfect or impregnable one, but it exists. It gives her realistic options.

Spinsterhood was a very dangerous choice; there are reasons you would go to considerable lengths not to risk it.

But Elizabeth has Jane, and her pride, and an understanding of what marrying someone who will make you miserable costs.

That's part of the thesis of the book, I would say! Recurring Austen thought. How important it is not to marry someone who will make you, specifically, unhappy.

She would rather be a dependent of people she likes and trusts than of someone she doesn't, even if the latter is formally considered more secure; she would rather live in a happy, reasonable household as an extra than be the mistress of her own home, but that home is full of Mr. Collins and her mother.

This is a calculation she's making consciously! She's not counting on a better marriage coming along. She just feels the most likely bad outcome from refusing Mr. Collins is still much better than the certain outcome of accepting him. Which is being stuck with Mr. Collins forever.

Elizabeth is also being pragmatic. Austen also endorses her choice, for the person she is and the concerns she has. She's just picking different trade-offs than Charlotte.

Elizabeth's flaw is not in her own priorities; she doesn't make a reckless choice and get lucky. But in being unable to accept that Charlotte's are different, and it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with Charlotte.

Because realistically, when your marriage is your whole family and career forever, and you only get to pick the ones that offer themselves to you, when you are legally bound to the status of dependent, you're always going to be making some trade-offs.

😂 Even the unrealistically ideal dream scenario of wealthy handsome clever ethical Mr. Darcy still asks you to undergo personal growth, accommodate someone else's communication style, and eat a little crow.

[renmorris]

SOMA as a disability narrative is so under examined. Simon is there because he has a traumatic brain injury, an injury to the brain is already an identity splitting event. A brain injury changes you forever. You will never be who you were before you had a brain injury.

Simon is also a lab rat, a dying man who had one option left- which didn’t even save his life- and captured his consciousness without his full consent. Catherine is autistic coded, someone who finds herself more comfortable outside of her body.

How Simon and Catherine navigate questions of personhood is deeply entwined with their disabilities. And I don’t think it’s possible to truly have discussions about SOMA's philosophy without acknowledging that. Especially Simon's place in it. I see so much harsh judgement of Simon not being able to keep up with the events of the game as sheer stupidity/ignorance

and to that I’d remind you that brain injuries aren’t known for making the people who receive them more calm, rational, and able to adjust to abrupt changes.

[calder]

For we can always see and feel much that the people in old photos and newsreels could not: that their clothing and automobiles were old-fashioned, that their landscape lacked skyscrapers and other contemporary buildings, that their world was black ... and white ... and haunting ... and gone. --Learning History in America by Lloyd S. Kramer, Donald Reid, William L. Barney

[batfleckgifs]

Detective Comics #1083 / Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice

[mzminola]

5. A man from a patriarchal society with strict hierarchies growing up in, from that society's perspective, a slow apocalypse. A man who stumbled into the upper levels of that hierarchy as a tween, coming of age with expectations of power over nearly everyone else in his life, and the weight of responsibility for holding fast to the brakes of that apocalypse, with no true hope for reversing it.

Some of his peers had hope, but it was entirely filtered through conviction that a fast apocalypse was coming, and they had a duty to avert it. They had a purpose. Visions of glory. Their enemy was apathy and a natural disaster. Diplomacy? What's that? We'll be heroes!

R'gul understood that without support of the Holds & Craft Halls the Weyr would starve, and saw his peers' actions as fuel poured on the slow apocalypse. Yet he was too burdened by ideas of tradition, his own narrow-mindedness, and disdain for other people, to look for other solutions. To accept help, especially help that involves major change or respect for those lower on the hierarchy.

This man is terrified.

Terrified of the power the outside world holds over the Weyr, terrified of being the one holding the reins when dragonkind dies out, terrified of letting anyone else hold the reins because he's sure they'll make it worse (F'lon was assassinated publicly, and who cared but the Weyr and the Harpers?), terrified of change.

Within the Weyr, he's had very few people above him in the strict hierarchy since his childhood, and by the time Dragonflight starts, no one who will hold him accountable for anything he does within the Weyr. His bronzerider peers enable his worst choices, expecting reciprocity if they're ever in charge.

R'gul is constantly being judged, too. He has near-absolute power, but can lose it easily (thought not at any time; there needs to be a queenflight, which in this era are always several years apart).

He's terrified all the time, and can hurt everyone around him with impunity. So he does. He lashes out both to vent his own temper, and at any sign something may be happening outside his control.

That's R'gul's damage.

i'm bored and want to start a discourse with people who know the canon better than me

what are the duties and responsibilities of a weyrwoman?

are these duties consistent with the expressed attitudes of characters in the text about the powers and abilities of weyrwomen?

are these duties portrayed consistently, in a meta sense, throughout the series? to what extent do primary or secondary character weyrwomen (and goldriders generally) do their duties "on screen"?

how have the duties of weyrwomen changed over the in-universe chronology of the series?

what the fuck was r'gul's damage????