#mortal engines shrike

[thetwiggiesttwig]

that one trend

[achildsfirstsorrow]

Thinking about Shrike from the Mortal Engines film.. he reminds me of Erik. A bit.

[thisblogcausespsychicdamage]

Oh hi there, I'm a human-like being with unusual eyes and an obsession with toys and dolls, who gets incredibly obsessed with a young girl I consider to be my daughter. I force a transformation on her that she rejects. This sends me into a downward spiral, to the point where I will do anything to force her to undergo this dehumanizing procedure.

[ask-shrike-mortalengines]

Who the hell are you

- @ask-glitchtrap-the-anomaly

I AM SHRIKE, A RESURRECTED MAN, AND THE LAST OF THE LAZARUS BRIGADE.

I HAVE HEARD OF A MAN CALLED "SPRINGTRAP". PERHAPS HE IS LIKE ME.

[alethianightsong]

Why it's called "Mortal Engines"

You know how the Snowpiercer has a perpetual motion machine powering its engine? The engines of the traction cities don't have that, so they must constantly burn something to fuel themselves, making them 'mortal engines.' To summarize, earth's crust is rendered unstable due to earthquakes brought on by war, so cities are put on wheels cuz that's cheaper than constantly rebuilding after weekly earthquakes(?). Roll with it. Thousands of years into the future, the earth's crust has stabilized but big cities still consume smaller cities for their resources in a process known as "municipal Darwinism" which was supposed to be a temporary solution but humans are stubborn and the traditionalists refuse to go back to stationary cities. The result is that the UK and Europe are treeless wastelands of churned dirt, the forests ran over and consumed by centuries of moving cities.

Spoilers beyond this point:

The last few pages of Book 4 are dedicated to Shrike's pov where he sits guard and watches Tom & Hester's bodies decay. When he awakes, a forest has grown around him, the first forest in millennia. None of our characters save Shrike get to live long enough to see this forest and while it is sad, it's beautiful and sweet and fitting.

[fandomsandhappiness]

Shrike, Gilgamesh, and the golem

“What are you for?” asked one boy at last, pushing to the front of the crowd. Shrike looked down at him. He pondered a while, thinking of something Dr Popjoy had told Anna. “I AM A REMEMBERING MACHINE,” he said. (ADP.532-533)

The machine is shaped and wrought to purpose, but Shrike’s determination of his own reason for being is very much a recurring theme throughout the quartet. Perhaps this is why his self-identification as such caught my eye. He has shucked off all other purpose but to remember, which he proceeds to do by telling a story that begins with the opening lines of Mortal Engines. He assumes the role of a framing device—another sort of remembering machine, perhaps?

Dredged out of the past and put to new purpose—rather like Shrike himself—this technique has been used before. I am thinking of the Epic of Gilgamesh, in which the eponymous hero gives up a life of adventuring, accepts the inevitability of his own death and, as I read it, goes on to write the tablets that almost make up the text. I don’t think it's a one-to-one equivalence in either case: neither Shrike nor Gilgamesh would tell the stories quite as we read them, but I think the texts can be read as echoes of the stories they claim have been told.

According to the text of Gilgamesh, the story can be found in the city of Uruk, written on lapis tablets, but the tablets on which this is written—the tablets we have today—are made of clay. What role does the tablet play for Gilgamesh? A framing device? A remembering machine?

Memory, history, archaeology; all these are central concerns of the quartet, driven home frequently by Tom Natsworthy, the would-be historian, and his fictionalising counterparts Valentine and Pennyroyal, each of whom attain a level of renown that Tom never does. Much of the series’ humour derives from pieces of more-or-less contemporary culture filtered through hundreds or thousands of years of post-apocalyptic life. What is the truth? What is history?

“For a somewhat sensationalized but passably accurate account of London’s momentous push east in 1007, see Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve.” So says The Traction Codex, listing Reeve’s work alongside those of Nimrod Pennyroyal (Predator’s Gold) and Sathya Kuranath (A True History of the Wind Flower, “generally regarded as unreliable”). The Codex formed the basis for The Illustrated World of Mortal Engines, for which this particular line was removed. Like the multiple recreations and translations of Gilgamesh, and the conflicting accounts of various histories given by different parties in the quartet and the prequel trilogy, the past is not straightforward. From Janis Dawson: “Reeve’s novels are an eclectic, sometimes bizarre, blend of genres and forms punctuated with scores of parodic references to classic texts, histories, popular literature, film, and advertising blurbs. They are, in effect, literary Jenny Hanivers”. (p. 143)

Clay constitutes the tablets of the Gilgamesh epic, but within the text, it is from clay that the goddess Aruru forms the wild man, Enkidu. Rival, companion, perhaps lover to Gilgamesh, Enkidu is a formidable warrior and loyal friend. The body of the wild man and the material on which the text survives; clay is the substrate of life and words. A parallel can be found in Jewish folklore: formed from clay, the golem was brought to life by writing one of the names of God on a piece of paper, which would be placed in the mouth or forehead. In various tales, the golem is both protector and threat. Terry Pratchett plays with this idea in Feet of Clay: the words in our head make us who we are. We are the material upon which history is written.

Perhaps fittingly, no one conclusion jumps out at me. The histories we create, or remember, make us who we are? There is no escaping the past? What we choose to believe, about ourselves or about history, matters? Shrike is a futuristic take on the golem? The remembering machine, whether clay (juncture of life/writing and earth) or cyborg (juncture of human/data and machine), is a letter sent forward into the future, as deadly and implacable a technology as any Slow Bomb?

Variously, Mortal Engines is claimed as a 2001 fictional children's novel, as Shrike’s remembering, as Philip Reeve’s sensationalized but passably accurate account of events... Perhaps it is necessary for these histories to co-exist with each, not in spite of but because of their differences.

Note: The Traction Codex doesn’t have page numbers, but it’s ebook only, so it should be easy enough to track down any quotes. For Gilgamesh I’m referring to Benjamin Foster’s translation (Second Norton Critical Edition), and for golems I’m relying on Wikipedia. Let me know if you want a copy of the Dawson article, though I think the line I quoted is the only bit worth reading.

[lordofmusic78]

Shrike: …

Elster: …

We made a promise

[media-shitposts]

Just finished Infernal Devices and I’ve got the feral urge to learn how to draw a bunch of almost cartoon style (not super realistic) scenes from the first and third book to the backing of Hozier’s “Shrike” 😩

[cybertranny]

I LOVE FUCKED UP WOMEN <3333

[itsreaditandwow2]

Oh. S-sorry, they're shooting the "Fallout" movie next door.

Ross John Fearnley (The Unusual Suspect)

[cyberstrangerreview]

*trying not to rant about mortal engines*

a piece of media that is bad: mundane. effectless

a piece of media that is bad but had the potential to be so so good: unbearable. agonizing. soul crushing even

[bayou-lafontaine]

Are there any other Mortal Engines fans on here? If so, please speak up in the comments.

Im very surprised how little presence this fandom has online, the wiki is barebones, theres hardly any fanart and yet the books are popular enough.

Tbh i kinda want to make a CivilizationEx style Mortal Engines Lore YT channel.

Perhaps even foster some sort of community on Discord.

[merrilark]

I take everything bad I said about Tom Natsworthy's hair back. Should straightening Robert Sheehan's hair be a crime? Yes. But. The straight hair suits Tom. I love him a lot.

[morally-grey-girlbosses]

Propaganda under the cut.

Beatrice:

1. One of the best character of all times 2. Super hella charistmatic 3. To be more specific, she carries the story with Battler and their wit battle. 4. She murder the Ushiromiya family, several times (time loop yeaaaaaaaaah), and laughs at it. She enjoys watching the family's downfall and Battler's dismay.

Hester Shaw:

Okay first, her main motive in the book (I’m not using the movie as my reference here) is that she wants to get revenge on Valentine after killing her mom and scarring her (physically and mentally). And she shows no limits, her first introduction is her stabbing Valentine. But it goes much deeper when we learn her relationship with Shrike and how he was akin to a guardian to her. And I realized I such at explaining half of the propaganda i do. Anyway, in the second part of the first book, she tells Tom (the Mc) that she wants to become a stalker, dead people basically reanimated into machines, that lack memories from their past and emotions. Though she’s a character we never get to see her pov of in the first book. In fact you read it through Tom’s perspective who felt betrayed by Valentine. But it wasn’t the same as Hester. Which makes her come off as more mysterious and cold. However later on she turns out to be really kind to those she cares about. TLDR: steampunk badass

[secondbeatsongs]

since I just watched the movie, and because I adored Shrike and Anna and the visual effects but felt like the movie was missing something in a way I can't explain...

[domonicriley]

Mortal Engines (2018) Review

I watched this movie recently and have to say it exceeded my expectations. I knew it had done badly critically and commercially, and wasn't sure whether having Peter Jackson as producer would be a help or a hindrance, but I genuinely enjoyed watching it.

It's not the kind of film that does anything too new or adventurous, but it has an intriguing premise with the giant mobile cities that devour anything in their path. This was its strongest aspect. There's an interesting world there and it's well-realised on screen.

As for characters, the two leads are good enough. Pretty standard in some respects, with tragic backstories and revenge plots, but still relatable. The broader cast could do with more character moments, but Hugo Weaving is a dependable villain.

It's a shame it did so poorly, as there's a decent world here that could be explored in more depth, and so many interesting things, like Shrike, the undead soldier, that I'm sure there's a lot of unexplored potential which sadly we never got to see in a sequel.

Maybe it will be rebooted, like so many other fantasy franchises and end up as a dreaming show.

I can't comment on it as an adaptation because I've never read the books it's based on, but as a film it's a decent, entertaining fantasy adventure that deserved better.