#nothing more powerful in the entire universe than an unhinged teenage girl

[thearchertheprey]

thank you all for the maplegreen love. im going to bed but here is a brief character study that was supposed to be part of a larger may project that ive been sitting on for a few months now. i only write things every 2 years when theres a super blood moon and the planets & the fates & all the stars align. hope you enjoy

[strivingscribe]

Salt of the Earth ~ Ch 008

Salt of the Earth by MsMoon

Chapter 8 ~ Dungeons & Disclaimers

Chapters: 8/?

Chapter Navigation: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,

Fandom: Young Justice

Rating: Explicit

Warnings: Angst, Feelings? Violence?

Relationships: Nope.

Summary: After responding to an incident, members of the team are saved by an unknown metahuman. But no protocols are in place to deal with the series of unfortunate events that assail Anitia Moore. What exactly should the team do when a someone with powers needs training but doesn’t want to be a member of the team?

Author’s Notes: Hey, guys. It's been forever. I'm just gonna leave this here. I hope you like it :)

Conner had to cross two streets before he finally got a signal on his comm. “Conner here. Robin? You there?”

“Reading you loud and clear. How is she?”

“Shaken and stirred, I bet.” Conner smirked at Artemis’s quip.

“She’s managing, but it isn’t easy.”

“I just got word that Superman is talking options with her mom.” Robin informs and Conner’s brow jumped up and he huffed out a self-depreciating laugh… what are the odds?

“Why’s your signal two streets over?” Artemis asked.

“Couldn’t raise you. Took a bit of a jog to get a signal through.”

The pause that followed gave the three of them a moment to think.

“Is that supposed to happen?” Artemis is always happy to point out the obvious.

“No.” Robin replies, and Conner can almost imagine the sound of the keyboard keys clacking.

“Could it be her?”

“How do you mean?” Artemis asked.

“She was in pain, something about the lead affecting her. She walked funny too, dragging her feet a bit. Nothing terribly out of the ordinary, but I got the impression there are physical side effects from her abilities.” His words hault, as he considers how much he should say.

He wasn’t just wasn’t sure how much she would want to keep confidential. But these were his observations, so that was safe… Still, should he divulge more? Would they need more to make a decision properly?

“The house has been quiet through the morning. The transcript is still running. I didn’t suspect anything, considering that it’s supposed to be quiet, but something’s jamming the signal.”

“Did she mention anything about it?” Artemis probed.

“Did she mention specifically being able to jam comms?” Robin clarified, choosing to focus on the more troubling matter at hand. “They were working properly up until a few minutes ago. Unless she managed to acquire new abilities this morning.”

“She’s...less than forthcoming.”

“Still?”

“Still.”

Conner looked back towards the Moore house. Everything seemed quiet.

“Maybe you should go and check it out, Conner.” Artemis suggested. “Just to be safe.” she waited, and her only response was silence. “Conner?” she ground her back teeth together. Slowly Artemis started nodding her head. “He’s already on his way, isn’t he?”

“His com just went offline again.” Tim informed as he watched the signal disappear from the map readout.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anita stares at Luthor and the woman just behind him in apathetic shock. There are so many emotions bottlenecked in her throat that she can’t process a single one of them… Her brain has become a chamber of echoes.

She’s used to peculiarity. When you have to deal with younger siblings and superpowers on a regular basis, the absurd happens often.

But she is a rational, orderly-type person. Everything has its place...every thing, every person, every practice, every thought. Everything in. its. place.

Home is safe (just like baseball). Safe and for safe things.

Her eyes drift to the far wall and her mother’s ancient bureau.

“And then God said, ‘Let’s cook this day fuck-side up’, and it was so.” she murmurs to herself before sloughing off her backpack. It isn’t supposed to go in the chair by the door, but today appears to be that sort of day.

A startled almost begrudging laugh echoed form Luthor. Vile intruder that he is. He would be amused at her suffering.

“Our conversation is not over.” he announced, as though his appearance were magnanimous and for her benefit. “And I will not be denied.” ah. There was the edge she expected from a rational sociopath.

Psychopath?

Sociopath?

...she could debate later.

Anita tugged off her shoes, because she was in her own goddamn house and she’d chew aluminum before any outsider told her she couldn’t do what she wanted in her house.

“Suppose I should let you speak your piece.” she muttered. “You’ve made it clear that you have no intention of being discarded.”

He smiled. “At last we understand each other.”

She was so frustrated with this situation, but there was a strange… braking point. It wasn’t that she was unhinged, but she felt so detached from her own circumstances.

She knew she couldn’t fight her way away from Luthor. It would be foolish to try. This was a man of intelligence, at least that’s what he told himself. His ability to be prolific in his circle of influence was due largely to outplaying his adversaries. Even Superboy had said that he owned most of the city...and probably a lot of other places too. If Metropolis were a chess board, it would be hard to find a single square that Luthor couldn’t get to.

Her mind latched onto another thought. It was simple, even if utterly absurd. Bring him into an arena in which she isn’t powerless. There was a place in this very house where she was the master of the universe…. the table where she would play dungeon master for her brothers and their friends. If she could be that person, the one who created the world around him instead of allowing him to have his own control...maybe she could at least stall him.

...or maybe she was fooling herself, and this was nothing more than an elaborate comfort mechanism. Either way, it was something.

“We do not, sir. We do not at all.” Anita grumbled, walking to the center of the living room. “It isn’t uncommon for a man to chase after something he wants, but most of those wants are tied to reason. Only a madman chases things that are unequal to his efforts.….a madman or a fool, and you are not either.” she allowed her eyes to drift as she thought about this. “There can be no reason equal to these actions. There’s no need to waste water on tears while you’re in the desert.” his eyes narrowed as he surveyed her. “This is trespassing, breaking and entering, and harassment. Even if the charges wouldn’t ever see a courtroom... you can’t deny that it makes a man of your situation look bad.” She half scoffed, “Chasing a teenage girl this way.”

“I am not concerned with my appearance.”

“Oh, I think you are.”Anita countered, her eyes widening expressively. “These actions coil of ego. And I cannot fathom how I have any worth in comparison.” she plants her feet shoulder width apart, an easy act as her ankles still feel weighted. “It’s illogical. You are no small fish. Yet you remain. What could possibly be worth your time, crowding in my little pond?”

“I am flattered by your estimation of me.” he said. He seemed so at home in a space that wasn’t for him. It would be unsettling, but Anita forced herself still and chanted mentally to play to his ego as often as she could without it being too obvious. “This is my assistant. Mercy.” The woman stepped forward and nodded.

“How ironic.” Anita drawled with a smile of her own.

Again, Luthor chuckled. “I didn’t realize you were entertaining as well as intelligent.”

“You aren’t here to comment on things I already know.”

“I assure you, I am no adversary of yours.” his words sound so genial, and yet there is no assurance in his assurances. “Not yet.” And there he went, insinuating that edge into the conversation. “I have disabled the listening devices planted in your home so that we might speak privately. I’m sure it’s knocked out long-distance communications as well.”

Anita’s mind hummed as she processed this. Jamming frequency. Listening devices. Long-range communications. What for? Privacy? An attack of opportunity? He had to know she was being monitored….

Of course, now she realized how invasive that monitoring had been. The listening devices were in her home.

“No idea how long it’ll take them to realize.” she murmured. “You’d better say what you need to say.” she walked past him into the kitchen. “Coffee?” that’s something adults do, right?

“No, thank you.” he responded, eyeing her as she sat at the table. “As to my intent…. A recent associate of mine seems to consider you in high regard.”

“Associate.” She sat back in her chair, forcing her spine to relax against the chair back.

“I would be more forthcoming if I could.” Luthor admitted. “However, stipulations were made in our alliance, and they are centered on you. Of course, like any good businessman, I had to investigate this oddity. Know your enemy, know yourself; all that.”

“That’s reasonable.” she allowed. She’s honestly more concerned with the comment about knowing your enemy. “In this scenario, when you say ‘enemy’... are you referring to me, or…?” he laughed, interrupting her question, and she nodded feeling reassured. “This mysterious associate then.”

“After yesterday’s debacle, I think we can confirm that said attentions are not entirely unfounded.” Luthor said, meandering slowly back into the kitchen and sitting across from her. Mercy remained standing, just behind him and slightly in the doorway between rooms.

Anita’s eyes narrowed slightly.

So. He did know about the incident on the bridge… but how?

“I didn’t realize you had any hand in that Metro-Narrows fiasco.” she said, and he smirked.

“I...can neither confirm nor deny—”

“It’s a little late for disclaimers.” Anita grumbled. “Besides, with the communications disabled, it’s not like you’ll have to worry about incriminating evidence.”

“True, but you could tell anyone you liked.” she watched his throat flex in a very firm swallow. “Perhaps someone who regularly sports an over-embellished S on his chest.”

Anita snorted. “The likelihood of me remaining on close terms with people I regularly push away hardly seems a decent fear. Not to mention, their knowing one way or the other wouldn’t be of any inconvenience to someone like yourself.” That’s it. Play to that ego. She eyed the tablecloth, absently wondering why gingham was a pattern her mother loved so much. “That asshole in the masks was with you?”

Now his smirk unfurled into a full grin.

“Yes. The ‘asshole in the masks’ is ‘with me’.” he says... Something about him seems more relaxed now. “At least, I am aware of his activities via….” he paused, taking and releasing a breath as he searched for the right word.

“Associates?”

He smirks again. “Yes. Associates.”

“Hm.” she murmurs, still staring at the tablecloth. “Tangled web.” her absent words aren’t really meant for anyone. Her eyes snap up, fixating on his tie. “So you’re here…. to see me with your own eyes?”

“It’s best we meet now, before you’re steeped in whatever dogma the League will stew you in.” he countered, leaning his elbows forward and folding his hands under his chin.

So.. He isn’t just here to see her, see who she is… He’s also here to find out if she’s a threat, and see if he can secure an in.

Her eyebrows tick up, there’s a level of annoyance and suspicion evoked from those words. For both of them, it seems. She reminds herself to remain calm.

Well. First, she needs to keep herself safe.

“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I have no desire to festoon myself in spandex and “fight” crime.” she announced, using air brackets for added emphasis on the word ‘fight’. “All I want is peace.”

“You wanted more than peace yesterday.” He reminds.

“I suppose allowing Superboy to die would have been giving him a type of peace, but… the way of the grave is less than satisfying.” Again, his eyes narrow at her words.

“Well.” Luthor sat back in his chair, eyeing her. “What I want you to consider then, is this. Do you honestly think the Justice League will allow you the peace you so crave?”

“Why should they not?”

“I believe my presence alone will prompt immediate action on their part.” He announces.

Now it’s Anita’s turn to regard him with narrowed eyes. They wandered to the far wall.

“Sir.” Mercy interrupts. “Superboy appears to be circling the house.”

“How wide a radius?”

“He’s observing from other yards.”

“Hm.” Luthor smirked. “It won’t take him long to close in. My boy is not the brightest, but he learned caution well enough.” Anita blinks, her eyebrows lift and her eyes dart back to Luthor in surprise. “Ah, I imagine he prefers not to discuss his parentage with errant damsels.” Lex said, in a way that’s so patronizing and yet fond...he almost seems like an indulgent parent.

It’s bothersome because she isn’t certain where those feelings are truly aimed. It seems… just… there. But for all Anita knows, he could feel them for her or Superboy… what a psycho.

“I’m a millennial, Mr. Luthor.” Anita reminded. “If there’s one creed we adhere to, it’s not judging someone for their circumstances.” Lex huffed out another laugh. “Everyone has their own sword of Damocles….” Anita admitted, almost an aside to herself. “..and genetics don’t matter until they do.”

“And who decides when genetics matter?” Luthor asked, his words as sharp as his focus.

“That’s a philosophical question I haven't the time for. I imagine you don’t have the time for it either.” she muttered with a shrug. “It’s enough to know that everyone decides when and how much genetics matter to them as it suits them. Do they matter to you?”

Lex pondered this for a second before a smile curls at his lips. “Are you...stalling me?”

“I confess, we’ve had quite the conversation, but I still don’t know what you want.” she says, crossing her arms. “I suggest you make your closing statements simple. It would be a shame to be….” she pauses, huffing out a tiny laugh. “...interrupted.”

Lex actually laughed again. “Then I suppose it is lucky that my message is relatively basic. I only want to convey that you have options that don’t begin and end with the League. Their pomp and circumstance are hardly the ways of peace you seem so eager to embrace.”

Three knocks at the front door, hard, heavy, and unrelenting. “Anita?” Superboy, his voice as urgent as the knocks on the door. It is so strange to hear him call her name…

“Back door’s open.” Anita’s tone doesn’t slip any higher than a typical conversational tone, but she knows he can hear her. “This ‘associate’ of yours. You never mentioned exactly what ‘they’ wanted.”

“Unfortunate then, that our time is up.” Luthor murmured.

“Well played, or it would be if that were enough to tempt me to initiate or maintain contact.”

Luthor takes merely a second to weigh his options. “My associate wants ….anonymity.” his eyebrows jump and his eyes roll. “There’s a question as to how effective that demand will be, considering the absurdity of it.”

The back door swung open, and Superboy stopped only to glare at Luthor. Mercy’s posture became tense, as she stepped into the kitchen.

“Luthor.” Superboy growled. Anita was momentarily distracted by the change in his posture. This is the boy who’d ambled beside her down the street, slouching with his hands in his pockets? Now… His shoulders seem… loaded. Not hunched, but more imposing. His neck was almost bent forward, almost as if in preparation for a luge.

“Hello, son.”

Superboy actually bared his teeth. “I don’t care what you’re doing here. Get out.”  

Luthor’s eyes almost softened, though only by a fraction. Then he looks back to Anita. “Is that what you would prefer?”

Anita takes a deep breath through her nose, somewhat surprised that she was being consulted… The man with the devil’s smile was most concerned with being courteous now? After insinuating himself into her safe space….. the cheek.

“As fascinating as this conversation has been—and trust me, it truly has been—I would prefer my mother’s house to remain unscathed.” she said.

Luthor nods, rising slowly. “Please, consider our conversation carefully.” he advised in closing.

“Thank you for your time.” she responded, and it felt almost cordial, if not for how automated it sounded. He gave her one last smirk, and she hoped that means he found her curious or amusing.

He strolled to the front door, Mercy hovering just behind(again, the most ironic name. It’s almost poetic ‘Mercy strolls in Luthor’s Shadow’, or something like that). She eyed Superboy as the front door was opened, only returning to Luthor’s side once he’d passed through the portal.  

Superboy relaxed when the door was shut, only to start in surprise when Anita’s chair scraped out a foghorn sound as she pushed it away from the table. She half collapsed onto her knees, slithering into a heap beneath the table.

“Anita.” he murmured, crouching down to check on her.

“We have to stop meeting like this.” she whispered, but her breathing was off. She drew air in and held it for what felt like long seconds at a time.

He realized that she was counting out how long the process takes for each part. The taking of breath, the holding, and the releasing. A simple coping mechanism, not a health hazard.

“Superboy, come in.” The comm was loud in the stillness. Even Anita could hear it.

“Superboy here.”

“Finally.” Robin’s voice was a breath of relief. “We’re closing in on your location.”

“We?”

“Impul—uh..Kid Flash, Artemis, and I.” after a second he half muttered. “The computers run themselves, after all.”

“Status report?” this came from Artemis.

“Luthor was here, but he’s gone.”

“Damn. What did he do?”

“Other than knocking out the comms and having a chat?” Anita muttered, massaging her temples. “You put bugs in my house?”

“Listening devices.” Superboy admitted. “And just two of them, to keep an eye on things.”

“To keep an ear on things.” Anita corrected, her shoulder leaning heavily against the table leg as she pitched forward. “And not very well, it seems.”

“Is she really mad that we spied on her?” Artemis grumbled over the comms.

“Am I angry that you violated my civil liberties?” Anita clarified, and Superboy had to wonder how keen her hearing was. “No. I’m angry that you did so, and it didn’t do a goddamn bit of good.”

“Here.” Conner offered her a hand, and she stared at it and then at him. He watched as she contemplated this, her hands coming up to grip the table leg and not his offer of help.

“Could you just… turn around?” she asked, and he complied because… well.

Many people could lecture her on relying on the help of others, but he had been in that place. The spot where you’re confused and you feel shaky, and you just want to find your footing all on your own… and you don’t want anyone to see the struggle. He’d definitely been there.

“I’ll open the front door.”

He doesn’t see her nod, because he knows better than to watch her as she processes and recovers.

“I’m sending Kid Flash to deliver a message to the mother.” Robin announced over the comm. “It’s as good as alerting the League, since Superman is there.”

Anita heard that, and something about it gave her pause. She was suspended in a strange headspace, anxiety hovering there with her. She took a breath, and reminded herself that she couldn’t remain idle. Things needed to be done. She walked through the kitchen doorway and into the living room.

“How much time do we have?” she asked, and Superboy finally turned to look back at her.

“Not much.”

She nodded but was avoiding direct eye contact.

Her eyes landed on the chair near the door. Her hand shot out, snatching her backpack up onto her shoulder. As she was trotting up the stairs to her room, he heard her mutter, “Come at me.”

...it didn’t sound confrontational, so much as motivational.

Well, I feel better :)

[thesffcorner]

Split

Split is a horror/thriller written and directed by M Night Shyamalan. It takes place in the same universe as Unbreakable, and follows Casey (Anya Taylor Joy), a teenage girl who gets kidnapped along with two other classmates. She wakes up in a room, and soon the girls find out that their captor might be even more dangerous and crazy than he first appeared.

I’m in a precarious position with this film; I hadn’t seen it when it came out, and now, years later, knowing what the main twist is, and having seen the trailer for the sequel Glass, many of the things in this film fell flat for me. Twists and turns that should’ve been shocking left no impact because I already knew exactly what was happening. This isn’t to say that I didn’t like anything about this film, or that my problems with it were only because I knew the premise and outcome, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that it significantly diminished my enjoyment.

So seeing as I’m about to see Glass in a few days, let’s go over some of the things that worked and didn’t about Split; warning, there will be SPOILERS.

Kevin (and the other 23):

The main drive to see this film from the very first trailers and marketing was James McAvoy, who plays Kevin, and 23 other personalities all trapped in his body. Now, what this film does, is it takes the idea of multiple personality disorder, and takes to a whole new level, where not only are all these different personalities completely unrelated to Kevin, but they are entirely different people. When someone ‘takes the light’ (controls Kevin’s body) their appearance doesn’t change, but their physical abilities do; some of them have diabetes, some have OCD, some are female, some are physically very strong, and some have the strength of a child.

This is all explained to us through the character of Dr Fletcher, Kevin’s psychiatrist who specializes in treating patients who have this disorder called DID.

Now, for the film, this is both a virtue, and a flaw. Because this McAvoy was the focus of the marketing, the scene where the girls realize Patricia and Dennis are not two different people, is meant to be terrifying and confusing; it’s shot and presented like a revelation, a shocking twist. But it isn’t; we already know Kevin has multiple personalities because the trailer and the marketing told us so!

Additionally, why does Kevin have 23 personalities? We never see more than 5 max, and even still we only really follow 4: Dennis, Patricia, Hedwig and the Beast. We get a glimpse here and there of  4 other personalities, but that’s about it. The film could have easily been about 5 personalities instead of 23, but I guess 23 sounds more impressive even if we never see the majority of them.

The 4 characters we do see were all interesting and engaging. I give major props to McAvoy; he nails this part. They all have distinct personalities, mannerisms patterns of speech and even move differently based on the character. I was afraid he would overreact a lot of the scenes, but he is surprisingly subdued, and is a major factor into the film’s creepiness and atmosphere.

Dennis is the ring leader and he has OCD, and is a germaphobe. It’s also implied that he may have pedophilic tendencies, though I wasn’t clear on whether those were his or Barry’s or even Kevin’s. He was by far the most proactive of the personalities and the creepiest; I liked that his germophobia and OCD were products of Kevin’s childhood trauma (since his mother used to beat him if he’d make a mess), and I really enjoyed his increasingly unhinged attempts to convince Dr Fletcher that he was Barry.

His interactions with the girls were also creepy, and there was a prevailing sexual threat in all of his scenes with them which was incredibly unsettling.

Patricia was who the film builds as the ringleader of the Horde, while Dennis was the muscle. She reigns Dennis in, and seems to be the one who came up with the story of the Beast. It’s difficult to tell if the Beast’s sick moral code and dogma come from her and Dennis twisting Dr Fletcher’s speeches on DID patients, or if she accepted them from the Beast himself. She too gets a standout scene where she makes sandwiches and it’s pretty effective. 

Hedwig was the character I liked most, and I can’t believe I’m saying that watching James McAvoy pretend he’s a 9 year old with a lisp was the best part of this film. Gain, McAvoy is rather convincing in the part of a 9 year old boy trapped in a grown adult’s body, coloring all the scenes between him and Cassey in a layer of yikes, especially the scene where he asks to kiss her. But he’s also genuinely funny and gets the best dialogue and scenes in the film, and I enjoyed every time he was on screen.

The Beast:

Now, the Beast is somewhat of a twist in the film, in that he’s not one of the 23 personalities, and many of them (including Dr Fletcher) don’t even believe he exists. Turns out he does exist and he was born on the train on which Kevin’s father escaped from Kevin. I found him being an amalgamation of a bunch of the animals from the zoo where Dennis works clever, like his powers being having skin like a rhino’s hide, strength of a lion, and the agility of a monkey. I liked that he goes after the two girls specifically because of an incident that happened to Dennis, where two teenage girls pranked him. I even liked again, how his philosophy about taking over the world and getting it rid of weak people, people who are not ‘broken’ was really a twisted version of Dr Fletcher’s speech about how through trauma DID patients become more than human.

What I didn’t like was, well… look his powers are fucking stupid alright? He eats people. He is a human man who eats raw flesh and hasn’t died yet. Like… maybe I can suspend my disbelief that one of the personalities has diabetes, and maybe even that the Beast can somehow survive getting shot point blank in the chest, but this whole eating people thing was just so dumb! And the whole debate of who is broken and worthy and who is weak and unworthy was also so dumb. He also doesn’t have any character arc or even a conclusion. It’s just the Beast wants to eat people, and in the end he eats people. The end. There is no climax to his story, no revelation or realization, it’s just he can eat more people now. Great.

Useless Characters With 0 Agency:

I will own up to the fact that I’m not a huge fan of kidnapping plots, and 90% of that is because I hate that no matter how many times the person who gets kidnapped tries to escape, they inevitably must fail, so that whoever does the rescuing can save them at the end. I thought this case might be different, since Casey is, at first, presented like a fairly competent character, and I thought, maybe, she could escape. But boy oh boy was Casey a plank of wood.

First, I understand why she would be having trouble at school and connecting to other peers because of he backstory, but why she was so needlessly rude, mean and uncooperative with the other two girls that are captured was beyond me. The girls are perfectly nice and kind to her, they want her to escape with them, and in a way they are right; three of them, vs one of Dennis is still better odds, no matter how ‘strong’ Dennis might be.

Then there is the fact that she does nothing for over 90% of the film. She attempts to escape once, and even then she doesn’t really; she steals Hedwig’s walkie talkie, and I can’t tell if it’s Joy’s acting or Shyamalan's direction, but he reaction at having her last hope of escape snatched away from her was nowhere near appropriate enough. She spends most of the film being extremely subdued and confused, and even in the very last section, where she does actually take the shotgun, nothing she does is even remotely effective against the Beast.

Also who TF decides running into a cage and locking themselves in, with only 2 rounds of a shotgun is A SMART IDEA? ESPECIALLY SOMEONE WHO’S BEEN HUNTING HER WHOLE LIFE?

Her backstory was genuinely upsetting and creepy and I hated all of those scenes, but they were effective and achieved exactly what they needed to to set up her character. What I didn’t like or get, was Cassey’s ending. She never confronts her uncle; we never even see him after the last flashback and I guess maybe you could argue that it’s implied that Cassey would tell the police officer what he’s been doing to her, but that’s such a stretch and unnecessarily vague ending that I don’t know why it was there.

Like Kevin and the Beast, Cassey has no character arc. She wasn’t vain or shallow or ‘had felt no pain’ like the other 2 girls; there was no character flaw she needed to overcome. If anything, her character flaw seemed to be that she was passive, but she doesn’t learn not to be by the end; she is exactly the same at the end as she was at the start, except slightly more traumatized.

The other two girls are non-entities. I don’t understand why the film bothers to introduce them only to have them disappear a third way in, I didn’t like that the film punished their attempts to escape and be proactive for no reason and I didn’t like the message. Neither one of those girls were mean or catty or vain; they were regular teenagers. Claire invites Cassey to the birthday party even though she shows no interest to be there, she tries to get her to join them against Dennis, they are never rude to her? If you wanted the audience to hate them, you need to actually give us reasons to hate them; like this it just seems like the film agrees with the Beast that teenage girls are really horrible, just for existing!

I also really hated the wasted time of showing Marcia trying to open the locker with the hanger. Why linger on that scene for so long if you won’t even show us the outcome? We just see she’s dead in the next scene and that’s it. That part genuinely made me angry, because the film had been so good at representing women up until that point, and it was such a disappointment.

Dr Fletcher was probably the worst part. She spends the movie telling us about Kevin’s condition, and talking to Dennis. She realizes quickly something is wrong, realizes that there is something dangerous about Dennis and the fact that he won’t let her talk to any of the other characters, realizes that the Beast is likewise a dangerous thought and does have the good sense to go to the Zoo and seek Dennis out. BUT she’s also dumb enough not to let anyone know she’s going, she doesn’t immediately call the police after Dennis gives her a speech every serial killer would think is a bit much, and doesn’t take any precautions to make sure she’s not followed when she finds Cassey and STILL TRIES TO REASON WITH DENNIS EVEN AFTER SHE SEES WHAT IS HAPPENING! She was a completely useless character; she’s only there for exposition and that’s entirely it.

Pacing:

The very last thing I want to touch on is the pacing. Shyamalan is known for very slow films; he likes lots of slow tracking shots, he lets the camera linger on scenes that could easily be cut, he likes his long establishing shot, awkward pauses in dialogue, etc. These are all stylistic choices; you can argue about their merit, but at the end of the day, if you’ve seen one of his films and didn’t like how slow it is, you won’t like any of them. My issue is that a lot of this film could have used some editing. I already mentioned how the entire subplot with Marcia and Claire is at once superfluous and doesn’t need to take up that much time considering its conclusion, as well ass Dr Fletcher having a lot of circular dialogue scenes in which she just explains DID over and over again. The pacing was glacial; I genuinely think that some quicker cuts and scenes would have benefited it so much, and maybe another draft of the screenplay, tightening up the story and giving the characters actual arcs and conclusions.

Conclusion:

It’s fine. Honestly, I didn’t care much for it, but it wasn't a bad film. There is a lot good in it, but the some of its parts isn’t stronger than some individual scenes and James McAvoy’s acting. I will still watch Glass and I do think you should check it out if it sounds at all interesting; just don’t expect a masterpiece.

[jessicakehoe]

The Best (and Angriest) Books of the Moment

We’re living through a critical moment in history where women’s anger is simultaneously being challenged and used as a revolutionary force. The expression of women’s ire through the #MeToo movement and women’s marches is heartening. But a quick look at the gendered bias we see towards anger in the public sphere tells us they’ve by no means stopped the inertia of patriarchal status quo.

Non-fiction authors like Rebecca Traister and Soraya Chemali have tackled the delegitimization of women’s anger in their books Good and Mad and Rage Becomes Her, respectively, tracing the issue back in time through the suffragist movement up until the present day. Traister begins her book with a galvanizing call to arms: “We must come to recognize our own rage as valid, as rational, and not as what we’re told it is: ugly, hysterical, marginal, laughable.”

When it comes to sexual harassment, assault, or infringement on our reproductive rights, the only rational response is anger. But as Traister outlines in her book, we’ve been schooled to believe that anger is unladylike and unattractive and this has been reinforced through our punishment in the professional and political spheres when we do express it. In a study published by the American Psychological Association, when women and men were depicted with the same expressions of fury, people tended to view the women as more livid than the men, perhaps because of the socially-contrived incongruency between women and anger. If a woman looks angry, she must be really angry, the thinking goes, because isn’t smiling the default expression for women? Similarly, in a 2018 study by Arizona State University, both men and women viewing staged, impassioned closing arguments by lawyers found the angry male attorneys to be commanding, powerful, and competent, opposed to the female attorneys who were perceived as shrill, hysterical, and ineffective.

It’s not just non-fiction that’s taking up these issues. A new wave of feminist fiction is challenging and subverting the way women relate to their anger and the inextricably linked systems of power that shape our society. Later in the summer, English author Rosie Price will drop her debut novel, What Red Was about sexual violence among the upper class. In The Water Cure, three sisters live in a dystopic world where men are quite literally toxic and their parents, Mother and King, keep the women “protected” through water therapies (reminiscent of those used on ‘hysterical’ women throughout history), and other forms of self-harm meant to abate their emotions. When three men wash up on the shores of the sisters’ home, their carefully-contained world quickly crumbles under the force of the women’s desire and rage, which shifts the power paradigm in dark and unexpected ways. “I felt angry writing the novel, I felt powerless,” says Mackintosh. “I was conscious of the fact that women are so often disregarded, belittled, or written off as overreacting when it comes to anger and pain.”

The use of water therapy — or as it’s referred to in the book ‘the drowning game’ — to supress the sister’s feelings, be it desire, anger, or sadness, mirrors the rhetoric we’ve been seeing in the public sphere that reinforces angry women as hysterical or unhinged. Think of the deeply engrained gender stereotypes we witnessed in action during the fiery, emotive testimony of Brett Kavanaugh compared to Christine Blasley-Ford’s polite, palatable anger during the Kavanaugh hearings. Amazon’s documentary Lorena takes up this issue by highlighting how Lorena Bobbitt’s justified act of violence against her abusive husband in 1993 — she famously cut off his penis after he raped her — was reduced to nothing more than a punchline by the media. Even her plea of temporary insanity during the trial works to undermine and negate what is in fact a rational response to rape.

The sisters’ violence in The Water Cure acts as a cathartic reclaiming of their strength and agency. It’s a theme echoed in Naomi Alderman’s work of speculative fiction. The Power imagines a world much like our own, only teenage girls and women are suddenly gifted with an unbridled physical power. With the point of an index finger, women are able to inflict severe pain on anyone who crosses them. In Alderman’s world, women wield the power in terrifying ways, offering a chilling analysis of how power structures are established and maintained. And isn’t this why women’s angry voices are so scary to so many? An angry majority would pose a real threat to the dominant systems of power in our world, systems that predominantly favour a white male minority.

It’s no coincidence that many of these works of feminist fiction take place in a dystopic setting. “Speculative fiction offers an opportunity for imagining the world otherwise and so it can be radically subversive,” says Hannah McGregor, professor of publishing at Simon Fraser University and host of the podcast Secret Feminist Agenda. “The fantastic offers space for a different way of seeing the world, sometimes framing the world within an explicitly feminist or non-patriarchal worldview.” It’s not the first time female authors have turned to fiction to express discontent with the status quo. McGregor points to the wave of suffragist fiction that appeared at the turn of the 20th century, such as Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman which takes places in an isolated society composed entirely of women.

Although heavy-handed in its message, Christine Dalcher’s novel Vox continues this tradition by begging the question, what would happen if the last vestiges of women’s rights were actually stripped away? Dalcher distills the current anxieties around women’s freedom down into a dystopic narrative reminiscent of The Handmaid’s Tale in which women are literally prevented from speaking, allotted an oppressive 100-word-per-day limit. Should they transgress, they’ll receive an electric shock, or worse.

The decision to work with the limitations placed on women’s voices in a literal sense finds a stark parallel in the silencing of senators — and now presidential candidates — Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren who have both been told quite literally to shut up by male colleagues. In her feminist manifesto Women & Power, Mary Beard traces this systemic silencing of women in the public sphere back to Roman antiquity to show how deeply entrenched these beliefs are. “Public speaking and oratory were not merely things that ancient women didn’t do, they were exclusive practices and skills that defined masculinity as a gender,” writes Beard.

The cathartic rage that is central to these dystopic works of fiction also plays out in more realistic recent fiction such as Laura Sims’ Looker and The Perfect Nanny by Leila Slimani, although in ultimately less empowering ways. In both novels, the author subverts the notion of all women as good, kind, and maternal by placing violent anti-heroines at the centre of the narratives. While it’s refreshing to see women cast in these roles, it also capitalizes on the Fatal Attraction trope of angry, violent, unnatural women. The insidious warnings to female readers is clear: This is what could happen if you end up single and alone, in the case of Looker or to working mothers in The Perfect Nanny: If you go back to work your children might meet a grisly end.

For their faults, any book that provides an alternative narrative to the one we’ve read throughout history, that of women as angelic, quiet, and acquiescent, should be celebrated. At this pivotal moment when regressive politics and gendered violence poses a mounting threat to women, we need these empowering stories more than ever. Anger can be divisive but it can also be a powerful unifier. Rage stokes the flames of injustice in a way that creates action, protest, and change. The delegitimization of women’s anger stems from the fearful recognition of the most dangerous tool we have at our disposal: white hot fury.

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