#the relationship between an avatar and their god is inherently abusive

[just-an-enby-lemon]

For me the reason Jonah body hops while Simon can simply live basically forever is because the Vast would involve the fear of immortality of how to keep meaning when everything becames big, insignifcant and meningless but the Eye is all about paranoia, about the fear someone will realise you're not the person you used to be.

[queeranesearch]

So recently people have been talking about a post that claims that Azula is a pacifist, which is certainly...a take, that I want to counter. 

[ID: A tumblr post reading “there’s a very compelling argument to be made that, after aang, azula is the most pacifistic/anti-violence character in the whole show. but no one wants to hear me back on my bullshit so i’m just gonna leave this here.]

Before we start, I would like to preface that this is not me attacking them, or wishing any hate towards them; I just think it’s important for this topic to be discussed, and for white atla fans to acknowledge how comparing Aang and Azula in this way is wrong.

First off, let’s start with the bold claim that Azula has a kill count of zero. Now, the show itself seems to tell us that Azula kills Aang when she shoots him with lightning; Katara was literally cradling his unresponsive body, and later in ‘The Awakening’, Aang says  “I didn’t just get hurt, did I? It was worse than that. I was gone.” So, it’s safe to say that Aang was dead, or at least the brink of death before Katara used the spirit water on him. Even if you wanted to argue that Aang didn’t die, but was just close to death, it’s very clear that Azula shot him with the intent to kill him. Not a very pacifistic move. 

Second off, the god awful take that the Ba Sing Se coup wasn’t violent. She colonized that city. Azula is actively upholds imperialistic views that are inherently violent; the entire Earth Kingdom was subjected to violence from the Fire Nation, and Azula perpetuated that by seizing Ba Sing Se in the name of her father, stating herself that she believes the Fire Nation has the “divine right to rule”, and that she was “born” with this right. In case you haven’t got the message: The idea that one group of people is superior to another, and has the right to rule over them, is violent and actively harms people.

Then there’s the argument that Azula’s non-violent because she didn’t order for Mai and Ty Lee to be executed for treason at Boiling Rock, but instead has them thrown in prison. Firstly, we can see that Azula was preparing to shoot Mai with lightning; even if not with intent to kill, definitely with the intent to harm. Secondly, having Mai and Ty Lee thrown into prison to- and I quote- “rot”, is again wishing harm on them.

Additionally, the “friendship” between the three is debatable. Perhaps when they were younger their relationship was different, but as we see them in the show, it’s certainly not a friendship; or at least, not a healthy one. Ty Lee didn’t want to join Azula, but was threatened into doing so; if Mai didn’t comply, she would have been threatened too. Both Mai and Azula state that their relationship is built off fear, not love. Although I think that Azula on some level would call Mai and Ty Lee friends, she clearly has a warped idea of what friendship should be like; even Azula’s hallucination of Ursa states that she “used fear to control people, like [her] friends Mai and Ty Lee”, showing again that Azula is conscious of her power over others. Even if she doesn’t “like” violence, she uses it to her advantage. 

Which leads me to my next counter argument; Azula is not conflict-avoidant. Quite the opposite, she uses it to her advantage; saying that Zuko killed the Avatar when it was her is not avoiding conflict; getting with a one on one fight with Zuko to capture Aang is not avoiding conflict. She had a hunch that Aang survived and therefore let Zuko take the ‘glory’ so she would be spared the punishment; she engaged in a fight with Zuko because she wanted Aang. She only fled when she was outnumbered. She doesn’t agree to have an agni kai with Zuko in Ba Sing Se because she gains nothing from doing so. Azula takes into account the pros and cons of engaging with others; just because she doesn’t mindlessly use violence doesn’t mean she’s somehow a pacifist. Really, Azula’s trauma response is to try and gain as much control as possible, because she was raised in an environment that encouraged power and punished ‘weakness’. (Side Note: it should also be mentioned that whilst she doesn’t always use physical violence, she most certainly uses emotional and mental violence, particularly against Zuko, Mai and Ty Lee.)

Thirdly, I want to address the franky horrible take that Aang’s pacifism is childish. Apparently since people need a reminder; Aang is a survivor of genocide. He’s not a pacifist because violence “makes him uncomfortable”, he’s a pacifist because pacifism is an integral part of his culture; the Air Nomads were deeply in touch with the spiritual world and so they saw all life as sacred. Aang carries the grief of a civilisation lost; he’s the only one left to carry on its culture; submitting to murder would literally mean abandoning the Air Nomad way of life and therefore, letting the Fire Nation complete that cultural genocide. It’s baffling and quite frankly abhorent to even try and compare Azula, the daughter of the imperialist, colonizing nation, to Aang, the sole surviver of genocide from the hands of said nation. ( @herglowinggirl​ has made a good post about this here)

The imperial system of the Fire Nation is what caused Azula’s trauma (Ozai instilled abusive behaviours in her, as he was by his father, etc etc). It is only when after achieving the goal she’s been groomed to achieve from the start, does she realise that she is left alone with nothing but these manipulative, violent behaviors. With quite literally nothing else to lose, no reason to be pragmatic, she engages in the final agni kai. 

Tl;dr: Azula is not pacificistic or anti-violence, she is smart about when she uses it, and repeatedly uses it against friends and family. It’s only when she has nothing else to lose does she get careless with it.

[sokkastyles]

So a while back I saw this pretty inaccurate and by inaccurate I mean mind-numbingly stupid take that’s been grinding at my gears ever since I saw it so I’m just going to rant about it and then ask you what you think.

So, you know when Toph first joins Team Avatar, she’s having a hard time fitting in with the group, and Katara tells her that they usually all set up camp together, and so Toph tells her that she “carries her own weight” and would prefer it if she could just do the work she needed to do for herself and everyone else also do all the work they needed to do for themselves instead of everyone doing all of it together? This is pretty understandable considering that she not only grew up an only child (and as an only child let me tell you that a lot of us do prefer to work by ourselves a lot of the time and can get stressed out doing group work) but was essentially locked away in her own home and never allowed to socialize with anyone, period, let alone make friends her own age and learn how to collaborate with others. The only thing experience she had talking to other people besides her parents would be from the Earth Rumble, and needless to say what’s essentially the Avatar equivalent of WWE isn’t the best place for a 12 year old to build her social skills. Then there’s her fierce independent streak and aversion to accepting help from and feeling dependent on others, something instilled in her due to how her parents treated her because she was blind.

So this person claimed that the reason why Toph did not want to help Katara and the others set up camp was not, in fact, due to these reasons but rather due to her “classist belief that she did not have to do any work and those of a lower socioeconomic background than her should be expected to serve her.” (And just you wait, this isn’t even the worst part of the post, there’s way more.) First of all, Toph was HAPPY to do work, she just wanted to do her OWN work and have everyone else do THEIR own work too. It’s not like she made everyone else set up camp for her. She set up her own camp and let the others set up theirs. She didn’t expect anybody to serve her, that’s just blatantly untrue. This person made it sound like she was bossing everyone around and calling them “peasants” or something. They claimed that there’s apparently “a lot of inherent classism in the way Toph interacts with the rest of Team Avatar.” No? There really isn’t? AND ALSO SHE LEARNT HER LESSON BY THE END OF THE EPISODE AND STARTED WORKING AS A TEAM WITH THEM!!

They also claimed that the reason why Toph was initially annoyed by Katara was also due to her supposed “classism” as well as her “internalized misogyny.” First of all, the reason why Toph was initially annoyed by Katara was because she projected her strained relationship with her overbearing mother onto her due to the fact that Katara is the de facto caregiver of Team Avatar. That’s it. That’s the 100% canonical, undisputable, undebatable reason. They literally spell it out for you in the episode “The Runaway.” I’m not saying it’s okay for her to do that, but that is the reason why she was sometimes annoyed by Katara, not because she was “classist” or “misogynistic.” I also believe that her distaste for conventional femininity probably stems more from the way she associates it with the life she ran away from as well as the fact that it’s largely inaccessible to her due to her blindness. This person literally said, and I quote, “Toph is being classist, misogynistic, and homophobic here.” My god. I guess I can see where you get classist and misogynistic from even if I don’t quite agree with it, but homophobic? Come on. Homophobia is the hatred of gay people. Show me ONE instance where Toph expressed a hatred for gay people. Oh wait, you can’t, because that never happened. Stop throwing around buzzwords just because you can, it lessens their significance and seriousness. Also, KATARA AND TOPH ARE FRIENDS THEY’RE VERY CLOSE FRIENDS AND EVERY TIME THEY FOUGHT THEY MADE UP AND APOLOGIZED AND CHANGED THEIR BEHAVIOUR BECAUSE THEY’RE BOTH GOOD PEOPLE WHO CARE ABOUT EACHOTHER MY GOD DID YOU EVEN WATCH THE SHOW BECAUSE YOU ENJOY IT OR DID YOU JUST GO INTO IT PURPOSELY LOOKING FOR THINGS TO BE MAD ABOUT?

So yeah. I love Toph, I love Katara, and I love their friendship. They’re both huge comfort characters for me. That post was 100% grasping for straws and really rubbed me the wrong way because it almost felt like the OP was willfully misinterpreting Toph and Katara’s dynamic because they were looking for woke points and liked the rush they get out of going “popular thing bad, actually” and it felt very disrespectful to both of their characters and their friendship.

I absolutely agree with you about people being contradictory for woke points and I have seen these takes before. Tumblr social justice circles are also in general really bad at acknowledging ableism in general and misogyny against girls and women who don't perform traditional femininity and Toph lives at the intersection of both and is a wildly popular character. And as a disabled woman I find these takes to be really off base. As you said, Katara and Toph are friends and they worked it out in the end, and these issues canonically stem from both Toph's experiences of abuse because of being a disabled girl and Katara's need to mother other people because of her own trauma, and both of these perspectives are sympathetic and they both had to adjust their worldview a little bit. I identify a lot with Toph's desire to be taken seriously both as a person and as a woman, the latter you do see in "Tales of Ba Sing Se." Toph very clearly does not hate femininity, she wants to be seen as pretty and looks to Katara for validation because Katara is a feminine girl, but she also struggles with being able to perform femininity. She also is just not that comfortable with it, and that's okay. Like Toph, I can sometimes enjoy getting made up but it's not something I can do every day without help.

I love her and Katara's Ba Sing Se segment because it shows so well the kind of misogyny Toph experiences. The reason the other girls make fun of Toph is because she very obviously did not do her makeup herself, and this reflects on her performance of femininity. Women are supposed to perform femininity in a way that it is both perfect and appears effortless. When I go and get my eye makeup done because I can't see well enough and don't have a steady enough hand to do it myself, you can tell that I didn't do it myself. I look like Toph. I love that that episode affirms both that Toph is pretty AND that she doesn't have to be.

And Katara, the "Runaway" pretty clearly validates Katara and shows that Toph appreciates Katara's "mothering" and that she looks up to her. As younger girls are wont to do with older girls. And Katara is right about Toph missing her mom but she also realizes that Toph needs that older female figure in her life.

It also really bothers me when people pull the classism card to talk about disabled characters. I have seen it elsewhere and I have seen it in atla fandom with Toph and Zuko. Both also are fiercely independent because they struggle to be taken seriously by abusive families. To see that struggle reduced to "Oh, they just don't want to work/are ignorant because of classism" feels very ableist. People will belittle the accomplishments of these characters because they're privileged. Which, yes, they are, in some ways, but privilege is not a dirty word and you also have to recognize what privileges they lack. And in both cases, their class privilege was actually tied to the way they were abused. If Toph wasn't born into a wealthy family, she might have been subject to other forms of abuse. And Zuko...it's a miracle that Zuko survived to see his teen years considering the household he grew up in.

As for the issue between Katara and Toph, Katara has also made comments towards Toph that could be interpreted as ableism and misogyny, but like you said, at the end of the day, they are friends who deeply care about each other, so pitting them against each other like this over issues that are complex and also resolved within the series seems like just grasping for something to start discourse about.

[firelxdykatara]

As a zutara shipper myself. I'm really curious if zutara can be fairly criticized? But w/o people saying it's toxic/abusive,they bring out the worst in each other or that god awful colonizer take.

honestly? gods, this is gonna sound egotistical and biased as hell, but the reality is--no, it really can’t.

and before anyone tries to come at me, it isn’t because i think zutara is The Best Ship (i mean, i do and it is, but that’s another conversation and, there, i will fully admit to being completely biased), but because--at least as far as criticisms of their romantic relationship go--there’s nothing there to criticize.

much of a travesty as i think it is, at the end of the day, zutara isn’t canon. i never had to suffer through my otp being poorly written and both characters suffering for it, because their relationship wasn’t canonically romantic, and what they did have was an amazing relationship arc which ended in deep friendship, zuko sacrificing his life for katara and, after she saved his life, dedicating his reign to establishing a new era of peace and unity. i’ve never heard a valid argument criticizing zuko and katara’s relationship as it was actually written in canon.

let me be clear--i recognize that ‘i’ve never heard’ is not the same thing as ‘one doesn’t exist’, but it does mean that there are a lot of ‘criticisms’ out there which are either entirely fabricated (the ‘they hated each other until the last second!!!!’ take, for example), or based in a flawed (at my most charitable) understanding of both characters (the ‘they bring out the worst in each other/TSR was an example of zuko encouraging katara’s darkest impulses’ take), so chances are if someone comes at this post with ‘well actually!!! -insert bad take here-’ i will have little trouble refuting it and maintaining my bottom line, unless someone comes up with a take i haven’t heard before and which i can’t actually refute.

now, none of this is to say that the way zutara is portrayed in fan works can never be criticized. but at that point, what’s being talked about is the way they are written/drawn in that particular work by that particular fan--not anything that’s actually inherent to their relationship at any basic level. the ‘zuko is a colonizer and shipping him with anyone outside the fire nation’ take is not actually a valid criticism of the relationship itself, because while it’s perfectly reasonable not to be comfortable with the ship because of that dynamic (although, to be clear, the water tribes were never colonized, and zuko was not personally complicit in his nation’s expansion efforts--the sum total of his military contributions were the three years he spent banished on a naval vessel looking for the avatar), but the same could be said of any interracial relationship--in atla, or even in real life. potentially unbalanced power dynamics are not inherently harmful, in large part because it’s nearly impossible to wind up in a relationship where societal power is 100% equal.

(any interracial relationship involving a white person will have some degree of imbalance. any m/f relationship, ditto. any relationship between a trans person and a cis person. etc. and there can be multiple levels to this, depending on the people involved in the relationship and where their privilege and oppression intersect.)

the key is respect between all parties in the relationship, and that usually comes through in zutara works and meta, at least that i’ve seen.

so yeah, at the end of the day, i really don’t think there are any fair criticisms to be made of zutara as a ship at its core. because zuko’s redemption and his relationship arc with katara were both masterfully done, and they never got together romantically in canon, so there’s nothing to criticize wrt canon’s handling of their romantic relationship like there is with maiko and kataang.

[secretlyatargaryen]

Tyrion and Zuko: Puppets Dancing on Strings

This is part two of a series comparing these characters. Click here to read part one.

"The seven-faced god has cheated me," he said. "My noble sire he made of purest gold, and gold he made my siblings, boy and girl. But I am formed of darker stuff, of bones and blood and clay, twisted into this rude shape you see before you."

The above quote is from one of the most meta-textual moments in the ASOIAF series. In Essos, Arya witnesses a play portraying the events of the series from a very skewed viewpoint. It’s Lannister propaganda, and Tyrion is portrayed as a Richard III-esque villain in contrast to his father and siblings of “purest gold.”

Similarly, ATLA also shows its awareness of its own narrative in the episode “The Ember Island Players,” in which the gaang witnesses a play of the events of their adventures. This play is Fire Nation propaganda, and portrays Zuko in the most negative light, as incompetent and then eventually killed as the villain of the story.

What these two moments in each narrative show us is not only both series’ meta-textual awareness, but also serves as a commentary on the story and characters from within. By the time we see this episode in ATLA, Zuko has joined the gaang and so we are inclined to sympathize with him and see the portrayal as skewed. In ASOIAF, the last time we have seen Tyrion is after he has been exiled from King’s Landing, and we know that the propaganda put forth is specifically meant to villainize him and portray him in the most inaccurate way possible, as we also know that he was not guilty of the crime of which he was accused.

What’s also interesting about the play, though, is that the words said by the Tyrion character mirror the fascist ideology of House Lannister and identify what marks Tyrion as separate from them. This fascist ideology is also present in the Fire Nation and is the reason for Zuko’s conflict with his family.

This article discusses the “fascist aesthetic” and how it often appears in science fiction and fantasy narratives, as well as its use in ASOIAF/GOT. It’s common with villains, who usually also represent a fascist ideology, but, as the article points out, it can also crop up with heroic narratives in some insidious ways.

Fascist art depicts, in Sontag’s words, “unlimited aspiration toward the high mystic goal, both beautiful and terrifying.”  It “celebrate[s] the rebirth of the body and of community, mediated through the worship of an irresistible leader.” It focuses on “the contrast between the clean and the impure, the incorruptible and the defiled, the physical and the mental, the joyful and the critical.”  It fetishizes “the holding in or confining of force; military precision.” Its characteristic subject matter is “vivid encounters of beautiful male bodies and death.”  In short, fascist art depicts the perfected, disciplined body in service of the perfected, disciplined state.  Its aesthetic principles are, in visual terms, clean geometric lines, chiseled physiques, and slow motion; and in musical terms, brass fanfares, pounding drumbeats, and pipe organs.  Its moral principles are strength, skill, obedience, order, joyful submission, and apocalyptic dissolution… and it’s this last that really set it apart from other aesthetics that glorify strength (of which, to be sure, there are plenty to go around).

Both the Fire Nation and the Lannisters embody these fascist aesthetics, as well as fascist ideologies. To understand what I mean by fascist ideologies, and how that ties into fascist aesthetics, look here:

Common themes among fascist movements include; nationalism (including racial nationalism), hierarchy and elitism, militarism, quasi-religion, masculinity and philosophy. Other aspects of fascism such as its "myth of decadence", anti‐egalitarianism and totalitarianism can be seen to originate from these ideas. These fundamental aspects however, can be attributed to a concept known as "Palingenetic ultranationalism", a theory proposed by Roger Griffin, that fascism is a synthesis of totalitarianism and ultranationalism sacralized through myth of national rebirth and regeneration. (source)

A lot of fantasy fiction uses these ideas as shorthand for villainy, even just using the aesthetic without a particular ideology behind it, but in both ASOIAF and ATLA we see both fascist aesthetics and fascist ideologies. Both House Lannister and the Fire Nation royal family have an obsession with national honor, pride, and debt. Both are capable of unspeakable cruelty in the name of superiority. Both also follow this narrative of rebirth which is upheld by Tywin when he restores House Lannister to a terrifying state of glory after his father’s disgrace, and Ozai when he tries to become the phoenix king. Both also have a frightening obsession with perfection, which is the heart of Tyrion and Zuko’s traumatic relationships with their families.

The above linked article on fascist aesthetics discusses Tyrion as a character who challenges fascist aesthetics, not just due to the fact that he has a congenital disability but because of the traits that make up his character.

The real challenge to fascist aesthetics comes from the series’ unperfected bodies. Some bodily abnormalities can be reconciled with fascist narratives — Jaime pretty clearly loses his hand just so that he can, through agonized struggle, climb the mountain, touch the peak, and reclaim his status as a perfected instrument of death.  Brienne’s harped-on ugliness is there so that we can focus on her bodily perfection in terms of skill and strength.  Varys’ castration is tied in with his utter dedication to serving the realm — the fascist body needs to be disciplined and perfect, but in all three of these cases bodily imperfections are just opportunities for more and further discipline.  But the same can’t be said of Tyrion.  He is quite precisely undisciplined. He drinks to excess.  He likes his food.  He has sex — he doesn’t make love, he has sex, and often, and never in idealized terms.  He pisses.  I don’t remember whether he shits or not, but others shit in his presence.  He cracks jokes.  He loses his temper and alienates his friends. All of this brings in the spirit of the carnival and the grotesque, which is the mortal enemy of fascist self-seriousness.

Here I discuss Zuko’s attempt to fit into a fascist aesthetic which is introduced only to be undercut in the narrative pretty early on - Zuko, despite the appearance he wants to project, is decidedly undisciplined - and then slowly eroded as his character undergoes a change. Tyrion undergoes some similar costume changes, going from proudly wearing his Lannister colors to wearing clothes that are not his own while in exile and having a crisis of identity. Tyrion’s dwarfism, like Zuko’s scar, is something that marks him as the unperfected, as it is something that he cannot change about himself even if he changes his appearance.

Both House Lannister and the Fire Nation royal family also embody fascist ideologies on a personal level within their own family structure.

Warning for in-depth discussion of abuse below.

At the beginning of ASOIAF we get the sense of Tyrion as someone who was fairly directionless. This post speculates about what Tyrion’s life may have been like pre-series. He’s the son of a wealthy lord and technically the heir, although the unspoken truth - until Tyrion’s conversation with his father in ASOS - is that Tywin will never let him inherit Casterly Rock, and indeed Tyrion was never treated as the heir, which is why Tyrion realizes during that conversation that it was something he “must have always known.” Tywin sees Tyrion as unsuitable to inherit because of his dwarfism, but cites other traits - real and imagined - as reasons why he will never let his son inherit. But the kicker here is that a lot of this is stuff that Tywin created and nurtured. Tywin creates Tyrion’s complex with regard to sex workers and then treats it as a sign of inherent weakness. He dismisses Tyrion’s intelligence as “low cunning.” He humiliates and belittles his son in private and in public, and then treats Tyrion’s justified frustration and anger as if it is a natural state that reinforces his unworthiness. Tywin’s abuse of Tyrion is systematic, punctuated by brutal violence but also infused with subtle gaslighting, to the point where Tyrion internalizes this belief.

This is strikingly similar to what Ozai does to Zuko, who is similarly directionless at the beginning of his story, removed from succession, and on an impossible mission to chase the Avatar, who hasn’t been seen in a hundred years. There are many points in the series, in the flashbacks to his childhood, in how Zuko thinks about his father, and in his relationship with Azula, that tell me that Zuko’s banishment was not just the result of one incident of defiance (and I will talk more on the actual incident of Zuko’s banishment later). It was the result of years of failing to live up to his father’s impossible standards of perfection. There is something in Zuko from even his earliest childhood that is abhorrent to Ozai’s fascistic worldview. Zuko’s inability to be as good at bending as his sister - and what’s worse, his younger sister - his emotional nature, displayed both positively (shown in his love for his mother and his tendency towards nonviolence in the flashbacks), and negatively (displays of frustration and anger which show a lack of control), and his inability to control himself when he speaks out in the war council, all of these things mark him as imperfect and therefore weak. And Ozai’s response to this is to put everything into his other child, grooming her as his true heir, while treating Zuko in a way that only reinforces the perception that Zuko is unworthy. Zuko absolutely believes this about himself at the beginning of the series.

Zuko: You're like my sister. Everything always came easy to her. She's a firebending prodigy, and everyone adores her. My father says she was born lucky; he says I was lucky to be born.

The way that Ozai scars Zuko during the agni kai that results in his banishment is an outward physical manifestation of Zuko’s (perceived) imperfection. The difference is that while Tyrion’s physical imperfection - his dwarfism - was something he was born with that caused Tywin to perceive it as a symbol of all that was inherently wrong with Tyrion’s character, Ozai scars Zuko to make what he sees as Zuko’s flawed character appear outward for all to see. Both these things stem from the same source, or rather, the same two things, inextricably linked: pride and shame.

Iroh: Pride is not the antidote to shame, but its source.

I’ve written a lot about how Lannisters are obsessed with shame, because Lannisters are obsessed with pride. This is shown symbolically in their association with Lions (”Hear Me Roar”) and the colors red and gold. The Fire Nation colors are also red and gold, evoking royalty and strength, plus the added symbology of fire, which actually is also associated with the Lannisters. Game of Thrones made good use of this imagery as well to show the Lannisters’ power in King’s Landing:

Compare to the Fire Lord throne in ATLA:

This is all part of the fascist aesthetic, of course. Both ATLA and ASOIAF acknowledge that fire can have other, less destructive meanings as well. More on that later.

Aside from the history of constant emotional abuse, Tyrion and Zuko also have a striking parallel in what is the most traumatic moment of either of their lives. For Zuko, it’s when his father burns and scars him during the agni kai. For Tyrion, this is when his father forces him to participate in Tysha’s abuse. These two acts are horrifically similar in their motive, the way they are carried out by the abuser, and what they were designed to do to the victim. They also both happen when the victim is thirteen years old, an age when children start to begin their long journey to adulthood, but still have far to go before they can be considered separate from their parents.

Upon first viewing the scene where Zuko's father challenges him to an agni kai, it's framed as being about honor, and Zuko refuses to fight his father on the grounds that it would be dishonorable, but that's exactly why Ozai challenges him in the first place. Because Zuko has already challenged his father by speaking out against him in the war council, and this is the point of Ozai's lesson. He is saying to his son, you have no honor and no right to challenge me, in any and all ways. I control you. And when you look at it after viewing the entirety of the history of abuse in that family, it becomes something deeper than just being about honor and it's not even about what Zuko did. Because the constant dynamic in that family was one in which Zuko was repeatedly dominated and taught that he was inferior. And the way it's framed by Ozai, as being about regaining lost honor, is a lie. Because in Ozai's eyes, Zuko never had any honor to begin with, and that's what he shows him by burning him and scarring him. In that context, Zuko was never going to be able to stand up to Ozai, and it becomes less about a child refusing to fight his father and more about a child too terrified and downtrodden to even know how to stand up to his father while his father mutilated him. Ozai knows this and does it deliberately, which makes the whole thing even more horrifying. And at face value, it initially appears that Ozai's burning of Zuko is much more violent and motivated by anger than Tywin's abuse of Tyrion, but realizing the dynamics at play here and realizing that Zuko would have never been able to fight back and that Ozai deliberately intended it that way, this makes it a much more cold, calculating attack on his son in the context of a lifetime of convincing his son not only of his own inherent unworthiness, but that Zuko was actually to blame for it. Which makes Ozai very like Tywin in his calculated cruelty, his ability to convince his victims that he is right and all-powerful, and his campaign of dehumanization against his own son.

Similarly, when Tywin forces Tyrion to watch and participate in the gang rape of Tysha, his first love - raping Tyrion as well in the process - he frames it in the context of honor/shame/pride. He tells Tyrion that this is a lesson about marrying below his station, and manipulates Tyrion into believing it. I’ve written a lot about Tyrion and Tysha on my blog so I’m not going to rehash all that. What I am going to say is that these two incidents, both violations of their victims’ bodily autonomy, are horrifically similar in their ability to convince their victims that they were the cause of the abuse, and unfortunately in the ASOIAF fandom there are a lot of people who seem to believe that Tyrion is at fault. The difference, I suppose, is that Tysha was also abused, whereas Zuko’s action of defiance hurt no one but himself, but I would argue similarly that Tyrion had no possible way to stand up to Tywin; that, similarly to the impossible situation of the agni kai that Ozai puts Zuko in, it would not have mattered whether he had fought back or cowered in fear. The purpose is to ensure that the victim believes that the abuser is the one in control. The effect is an inability for the victim to trust their own judgments and perceptions, thus keeping them dependent upon the abuser. We see this in the way that both Zuko and Tyrion have internalized the guilt of what was done to them. Both of their narratives hinge on unlearning what their fathers have taught them in the most violent way possible.

And all this creates a never-ending cycle of shame. Tywin and Ozai attacked their sons because of perceived weakness which was seen as a shameful reflection of their own self image, because of the intolerance of any sort of imperfection in both men’s worldview.

We don't actually get a whole lot of characterization of Ozai as a person. What we get is mostly through others, how he treats his son, how he treats his daughter. But another way that we can understand Ozai and learn more about the dynamic in that family is through Iroh.

Iroh is a character who we are introduced to as something of a mirror to what Zuko could be. While Zuko is indoctrinated into the Fire Nation ideology, Iroh has already undergone his transformation from star general to the wise mentor and guiding light that he tries to be for Zuko by the time the story begins. And Iroh's story is one that is firmly opposed to the fascist belief in superiority and particularly, military greatness. Iroh is another example of the unperfected, both physically and mentally, although it might be more accurate to say he is the once-perfected. Iroh's biggest tragedy is his military disgrace following the death of his son, who he loved deeply. Even before this occurrence, though, Iroh is identified as weak by both Ozai and Azula, and this is used by Ozai to usurp him in the line of inheritance. But it's his emotional breakdown after his son's death that really cements him as a character opposed to the fascist ideology, because it's a firmly anti-war, anti-imperialist message. An acknowledgment that you can have all the power in the world and still lose what is most valuable to you. By the time we see him in the series, he is fat and elderly, kind to even his enemies, makes clear both his love for his son and his love for his nephew, and indulges in simple pleasures, like tea and pai sho. He's a pretty identifiable "good" character, although he does sometimes enable and justify Zuko's bad actions, particularly in the first season.

There are several characters who I see as parallel to Iroh in Tyrion’s narrative. One is Tytos, the father that Tywin despised and sought to distance himself from due to his weakness, who dies fat and old and disgraced and informs much of Tywin’s ruthlessness, and whom Tywin projects onto his son. Another is Gerion, laughing, kind, something of a mentor to Tyrion before his disappearance. The third is Jaime, who, like Iroh, is an older figure who tries to protect Tyrion but who can’t protect him entirely, partially due to a certain aloofness of personality. Tyrion also has the moment in ASOS where he rejects Jaime’s apology with the Tysha revelation and by the end of that chapter identifies himself as Tywin “writ small,” while Zuko has the moment under Ba Sing Se where he rejects Iroh’s advice and chooses to side with Azula instead. Both are morally gray actions tied to the abuse and gaslighting the characters have experienced. Tyrion feels betrayed by Jaime because of Jaime’s role in what happened with Tysha, while Zuko is pretty clearly manipulated by Azula.

Another similar familial relationship is Zuko and Azula and Tyrion and Cersei. Both Tyrion and Zuko are abused by their sisters, who are cruel, ambitious, and totally subsumed by the fascist ideology of their fathers, and who abuse their brothers out of a sense of identifying with their abuser.

One of the main differences between Tyrion and Cersei’s relationship and Zuko and Azula’s relationship is that Tyrion is MUCH more capable of seeing through Cersei’s manipulations than Zuko is, and I feel like that has to do with the gap between their ages. Although Zuko is the older sibling, Azula is much more dominant than him and the closeness in their ages makes that much more personal.

I’ve talked before about Cersei’s abuse of Tyrion and why it’s important to recognize that she is abusive to him and his negative actions towards her are not equal to her abuse of him, and one of the things that highlights that is that there is such a wide age gap between them. I’m looking at this partially from the perspective of someone with an older brother and sister with a similar age gap (and a younger brother who is much more closer to my age). And when I was a kid I tended to see my older siblings as other adults that lived in my house. I am close to my siblings and we never had a hostile relationship - although I did feel somewhat jealous of my sister growing up - but I am much closer to my sister now as an adult than I was when I was younger, and we have a much more equal relationship. But given Tyrion’s lack of non-abusive adult authority figures in his life, Cersei’s treatment of him becomes a reinforcement of Tywin’s abuse, and that’s why his hostility to her is not equal to her hostility towards him.

Zuko and Azula’s relationship is different. He is an older sibling but because of their closeness in age, they experienced abuse in the form of Ozai pitting them against each other. Tyrion and Cersei have a similar intense rivalry but it’s much less personal and much less tied to shared childhood trauma. And it’s the fact that for Zuko and Azula, that trauma is shared and experienced together, that makes it easier for Azula to manipulate Zuko and play on his inability to trust his own perceptions even though he definitely doesn’t trust her.

I also think it’s a difference in personality. Tyrion’s much more extroverted and analytical which makes him much more able to question Tywin and his sister despite Tywin’s repeated gaslighting and despite the fact that it does often work. One of the things that Tyrion and Zuko have in common is that they simultaneously realize that their family’s beliefs and especially the way their family has treated them is wrong, yet they also consistently internalize those beliefs. Yet Tyrion never feels inferior to his sister the way Zuko feels inferior to Azula, and I feel like that has to do with Zuko’s tendency to internalize more and withdraw inward.

Another difference would be that whereas Azula is the star sibling to Zuko’s disappointing sibling, Jaime plays that role for both Tyrion and Cersei.

Finally, both Tyrion and Zuko have moments of calling out their abusive fathers on their bullshit. Zuko has the one central moment of speaking out against his father’s ruthless military strategy with disastrous results when he is thirteen. Similarly, there are several moments in ASOIAF where Tyrion calls his father out on his ruthlessness and Tywin rebuffs him with gaslighting and plausible deniability. Both Ozai and Tywin are masters at gaslighting, and it takes a long time for both Tyrion and Zuko to be able to resist. However, both Tyrion and Zuko have similar moments of declaring independence from their fathers. 

And I’ll talk about that in part three, which will focus on recovery, resolution, and redemption.

[theorynexus]

Retrospective Analysis of Dirk:

After the initial thoughts I had this morning, following some light (re-)reading, I have come to various conclusions: The role that Dave Strider played in the Meat Epilogue was nearly identical to that that Dirk’s Bro (Alpha Dave Strider) played in the story---   DOOMed rebel fighting against the rise of another dictatorial Crocker.   I am sure that Dirk realized this, both considering the fact that this was an echo of Dave’s soul across the multiple instances of himself, and because he partially engineered this eventuality. Intriguingly enough, this might imply that Rose likely would have sided against Crocker (Jane) if her ascension had not incapacitated her and Dirk hadn’t been puppeteer-distracting her at the time (for reasons beyond her connection to Kanaya). More importantly, it helps establish an important further parallel:  Dirk acted as the puppetmaster in the shadows, essentially controlling the election and determining its outcome from the beginning.   Lord English remained the most important force in the Alpha Kids’ world and session in much the same manner, despite )(er Imperious Condescension’s attempted Rebellion. Both individuals were playing broader and longer games than the women they were manipulating to suit their purposes.  Though Dirk’s purposes have not yet been revealed to the fullest extent, Jane Crocker had a narrower perspective that failed to grasp the true nature of the battles going on and underestimated her “supporter” ‘s power and intentions. This relates to another way in which Dirk Strider and Caliborn/Lord English:  Both of them represent iterations/avatars/fulfillments of the idea of Calmasis---   both tricked a Calliope into losing a major confrontation by making her confuse an attack on one piece with that of another (a major short term/immediate objective--- an attack on a queen [in Dirk’s case, Jake English/the election] ---with an attack on the king [Alt!Calliope, who acted as essentially the commander of the forces opposed to him]); furthermore, and more importantly, both act as protagonists and antagonists to the story at the same time (villain and anti-hero).   Dirk presumably sees himself as working towards the perpetuation of reality by forcing more conflict into an otherwise ended story; or alternatively, sees himself striving for freedom in opposition to causality and enslavement to cosmic will (which would jive well with his Kamina-esque aesthetic).  Meanwhile, Caliborn/Lord English obviously served as the main villain of Homestuck, but were also the protagonists of their little side adventure and was trying to develop himself and expand his horizons despite his severe disadvantages, much the way the Kids and Trolls did. Dirk’s fulfillment of that role may have actually been why he downplayed the importance of Complacency of the Learned in his conversation with Rose just before he began to subsume her will in earnest. Of course, that is somewhat speculative, and hard to prove, one way or the other. ... Regardless, upon making these sorts of connections, I began to think about whether Dirk was intended to become a villain from the moment he was introduced, and/or relatively early on.  Andrew Hussie seems to have a habit of working out many plot details a great deal in advance (see the Alpha Kids being hinted at as early as Act 4 with Jake’s letter to John, Doc Scratch probably being intended to have been/contained at least an iteration of Dirk from the beginning [as shown via his comment to Rose that she ought to think of him as a kindly human uncle figure-- shoved in our face via a certain Truthsplosion]), so the idea didn’t seem all that farfetched. After all, as referenced in the above parenthetical reference, Doc Scratch shows that Dirk always had at least the potential for villainy in him, under the right circumstances. The first thing that jumped into my mind (other than the fact that Bro is a bit of a dick, I guess, and the early narrative of Act 6 emphasizes the fact that this is in fact the kid version of Bro quite a bit) was the fact that Dirk’s introductory period created clear parallels with two trolls of a highly corrupt moral character---  Vriska and Equius:   Beyond the obvious tendencies to manipul8 others and his willingness to “cheat” in certain ways (defeating Squarewave in a rap battle bit exploiting his weakness to liquid shorting him out, teleporting his head to Jake for the revive+kiss with the intent of forcing a start to their relationship that way, et cetera) Dirk is also pining for a Page who he attempts to force a redrom with (more effectively, in his case, at least in the short term), and whom he attempts to “groom” by pushing challenges that the Page is clearly not prepared to face his way (Brobot’s awkward difficulty settings parallel the FLARP encounters  Vriska gave Tavros).    That Vriska and Dirk’s first on-screen kills were both decapitations is probably a coincidence. As for Equius:  There is the wife beater that Dirk sometimes wears, the similarities between horses and musclebeasts, the fact that both build robots whom they then face off against in lethal combat, the fact that both wear shades and are initially blacked out upon introduction (though this latter matter is of less significance) the fact that both have dominating personalities and a secret kinky submissive side (albeit these play out in different ways for the two), the fact that Brobot and Aradiabot both take out their “hearts” and POUND POUND POUND them up dramatically (note: though this is a bit of a stretch, the parallel makes the affinity’s intention obvious), their willingness to lie and take extreme measures (Equius considers lying and double-crossing to be in a blue blood’s nature and/or their “superior” culture; Dirk outright tells Jane that one of three statements he is making is a lie, and the only one it could possibly be is that he believes that Roxy’s decision to blow up Jane’s computer as a way to scare Jane away from playing was too extreme [meaning that, since this was a lie, he is absolutely willing to go to such extremes to get the job done--- as shown later with his willingness to decapitate himself, publicly display the fact that he’d killed Hegemonic Brute, et cetera])... and most obviously+ominously, his declaration to Jane that while she was going to remain the group’s leader as far as everyone else was concerned, he was going to be the person controlling things from the shadows (which is a reversal of Equius’ demand that Aradia be the shadow leader for the Blue Team, but obviously calls him to mind via allusion/reference). Now, while a case can be made for either of these characters not being that bad, and I am personally someone who likes and feels for Vriska quite a lot, I will be the first to admit that she is the closest thing the trolls have to Caliborn or Dirk (Gamzee doesn’t count: he’s has a mental breakdown and is basically brainwashed by LE via Lil Cal; he’s not a planner or someone who went out of his way to embrace his “turn to the dark side” of his own volition--- if you can call it that, for Caliborn; you know what I mean).   As for Equius: he was highly violent and could have been quite the menace, if it weren’t for his moirail. He had a generally demented mentality.           Neither of these are the sorts of comparisons you want to be made with a character being painted as particularly heroic and good.  Next comes the fact that, as I have discussed previously, Dirk Strider and Caliborn/Lord English have been deeply entangled with one another’s fates.   Caliborn liked Dirk the best out of all of the Alpha Kids, it was ironically Dirk who ended up defeating him in the end (in both the form of soul trapping and via ARquius). However, it was also Dirk who provided Caliborn with the mechanical leg that allowed him to escape (and presumably have confidence in the idea of escape) from his SAW Room Death Trap binding with Calliope.  Presumably, either Dirk or AR must have figured that that was the intention behind the request/present, at some point. (I rather doubt it was something that Dirk knew the implications of at the time, but I wouldn’t necessarily rule out that possibility. He might not have cared, especially since that was years before the Alpha Kids began their session, and he/they might not have had much of a bond with Calliope, at that point. Not that he ever got all that close to her, generally.)  Note:  Caliborn’s favor toward Dirk does not necessarily suggest anything inherently wrong with Dirk, but it helps set him apart from the others. This is just another warning sign suggesting something ��off” about him.      Dirk’s “I have failed,” before he went wandering off into the glitches and self-destructed in the [S] Game Over. version of the Alpha similarly can be interpreted as hinting at his God Complex/Megalomaniac tendencies.      It seems a logical extension of his general personality that he wouldn’t be able to settle down and enjoy a peaceful life in a “perfect” paradise planet (which is probably one of the reasons he decided to leave it). I suppose this is just another thing that wasn’t generally thought about as the community was so focused on the actual process of getting to the victory point, and what that would mean?   At the very least, I don’t remember any such considerations.  There were certainly warning signs. The biggest factor that convinces me that Dirk’s villainy was planned quite early on (and which thus supports to some extent the idea that Jake is meant to be his eventual foil) is that Dave, after seeing his Bro’s corpse, said, “I’m not a hero, my bro was.”   This was almost certainly made at a point where Dirk Strider was conceptually developed/invented already, definitely was at a point where Dave’s baggage surrounding heroism and its connection with how he felt toward his brother was in play, and most certainly was well after the audience could have seen that Bro was abusive and sortof a dirtbag. Thus, there was already some irony, there.  However, he also called John a hero in that same statement, so it clearly was not totally derogatory, and so the irony could be increased. It was, as shown by the fact that the Alpha Kids were not “Heroes” of their session, but Nobles. This was not enough.  Dirk has eventually turned into the anti-hero and villain of his own story.   Perhaps this might be enough; however, it wouldn’t quite feel fully “right” if he hadn’t been intended to have been so from the beginning-- and perhaps that’s actually why their group were called Nobles in the first place, not only because of the fact that they couldn’t complete their session without the others, but because not all of them were heroic at heart.  [Non-sequitur: I wonder if LE would have been anywhere near as dangerous, if not for Lil Hal’s capacity to make incredibly complicated calculations {needed for Furthest Ring travel, among other things, presumably}, and his capacity as Doc Scratch to pave the way for LE’s arrival. This would seem a very similar relationship to how Dirk facilitated Caliborn’s entry via the leg, in retrospect.] ... While the section immediately above isn’t as well-developed as I’d like-- mostly because I’m tired, distracted, and it’s been at least 3 hours since I started this post in the first place, and I want to at least get the last part that I thought of in before it leaves my memory.    I may add to/edit in more for this post, or post follow-up material later, when I remember more that might have slipped my mind on this subject/I think of more. Anyway!---    as I was considering all of this, a very intriguing thought popped into my head:    While I had initially assumed that it was simply to not rehash old material and/or that it was to keep us with John for the sake of narrative consistency, since I now know that it was Dirk who was narrating this segment of the story, and thus it was a narrator with bias and interest in the facts being related, it has occurred to me that it is actually quite odd for Dirk to omit some relation of the actual facts of the Caliborn’s Masterpiece encounter.   We are placed by his hand at a place even further removed from the reality of the battle than the clearly biased and somewhat embellished account that the Cherub gave of his own rise to power.        This strikes me as odd particularly given the fact that it is Dirk’s great moment of heroism, which might serve as a sort of counter-balance to much of his otherwise morally questionable deeds.         Given his egotism (and the fact that there would seem to be no OOC reason strong enough to justify such an omission on the author’s part, since this means that there is no faithful depiction of the battle shown to us in the story), this makes it seem as if Dirk chooses to not show the conclusion of this battle for some specific and tangible reason.  I would not suspect it to be out of embarrassment, a desire to conceal his identity longer, or plain trollishness (though the last of these strikes me as almost being fitting).  Rather, I wonder if there is something worth concealing in the end of this encounter.  Maybe the Alpha Kids actually lost, and Dirk’s placement of Cal into Lil Cal was an act of capitulation. Maybe Dirk otherwise willingly and knowingly created Lord English via the soul trap at the behest of ARquiusprite, or said sprite tricked him into doing so, claiming it was the only way to defeat their opponent (which it was) and omitting the consequences.     I do not know which of these, if any, is the correct answer, but Dirk being the one to choose to omit the details does, I shall repeat, seem extremely fishy to me, all things considered. ~~~ While I will not put a summary here, I would just like to say:   In retrospect, the Meat Epilogue has done more than the requisite “adding on to the story in appreciable ways and tying up loose ends,” but has served to add depth to an already incredibly deep story and caused me to reconsider and better understand characters and themes which I had not previously delved into so deeply before.    I wonder, now, if Dirk Strider and Lord English shall prove to have been even more deeply connected than it has seemed up to this point, once I have reached the end of the Candy Epilogue and thus will be allowed to properly investigate what’s going on at the beginning of Homestuck^2. Final thought:  Hmm. So much of his imagery speaks to him being a sort of twisted version of Kamina (embodiment of masculinity, warrior spirit, noble sacrifice, heroism [not being able to live up to those last two, and lampshading to some extent his frustration at that, in Epilogue Part 7]), but it also vaguely seems to me that he at least sees himself as being like Simon--- this is to say, leading the charge for freedom against the forces of determinism and the chains of repression that would hold back humanity (and/or himself). It’s a very striking thing, especially considering the fact that it is only Simon who takes the fight to space in a fancy ship, once what seems to have been the final villain was defeated and the real threat began to loom on the horizon.  I wonder how this contrast will develop in the future, and how noble his true ideals may in fact be. ~~~ Major Edit:  

What. The heck. How did I not remember this blatant nonsense?    Fricking... darn it.

[doubled-helix]

book thoughts: the hearts we sold (spoilers)

the hearts we sold, emily lloyd-jones

(disclaimer: all of this is my opinion because i decided it’s better for my own writing to reflect upon books i read (thanks college profs). in fact, i’m not even putting it in the main tags so no one should be reading this except future me anyways)

overarching conflict: all books should have one of these. usually it’s to defeat the big bad, which doesn’t quite fit this novel since there wasn’t one defined big bad. i mean, there were the burrowers, which were pretty creepy, but i’m personally fond of the classic puppetmaster villain, who pulls the strings and monologues and bemoans the state of the world or whatnot. think the mage in carry on or luke/kronos in the pjo series. call me old-fashioned. 

my prof told us that books, especially sci-fi/fantasy ones, should have a looming threat that’s constantly hanging over the heroes even as they defeat or are defeated by many smaller threats. like harry facing quirrel, tom riddle/the basilisk, the dementors/sirius black/peter pettigrew (the “one true baddie” was a bit more vague in thisone) - all the while knowing that voldemort’s the final boss. 

in this book, i guess you could say the final big void was the ultimate baddie, but considering neither our main gal nor us knew about this until three quarters of the way through the book, it wasn’t exactly a looming threat, even as the characters did close many smaller voids (the in-between threats books have - the ones between the exposition and climax). i say a bit more about this later, but i think the lack of a dominant big bad may be one of the reasons the book felt stagnant for a good portion of the first half. this, combined with the lack of strong motive dee had - well. it certainly slowed things down. 

things that didn’t work: 1. the “team”: i’m a sucker for a tight-knit group of people who’d kill to protect each other, who poke fun and laugh and joke around à la avatar the last airbender. i’m even more of a sucker for found families, also like avatar the last airbender. but this book’s “team” absolutely did not work for me, and the most probable cause i can think of is that the author just didn’t let us spend enough time with them. 

the main dude james had been with cal and cora for almost two years, and i got none of that from the way he talked about them. in fact, main gal dee actually says that she’s glad james and her have a closer bond than the other two - which, sure, romance, i get it, but if you want to make a dream team you can’t throw half of its members into the wind. 

when cal died, that evoked nothing in me as a reader because i cared about him as much as dee did, and she maybe shared 20 lines total with the guy. similarly, she barely interacted with cora, who was supposed to be the leader, but other than the author telling us that she was the “leader,” there was nothing showing her fulfilling that role. i absolutely hate saying this because it’s the most cliche advice one can offer but “show not tell.” if you want to show a fall from grace, from cool and collected cora to frantic and panicking cora, you gotta show us the grace first. 

riley: don’t get me wrong, i fucking love riley, but she didn’t show up until 70% of the way through the book. and there was a sort of insta-friendship between her, james, and dee. at one point towards the end, she says something like “if we die tonight, i’m glad i met you two” which would be very nice if they hadn’t met 20 pages ago. (i feel like i should note, a few weeks did pass world-wise, but that really doesn’t do much for the reader, who didn’t get to feel any of that time)

it would have been fantastic to have riley with us from the very beginning. her relationship with james and dee felt like it actually had the potential to blossom into that dream team/found family thing. cal and cora felt like they had their own separate lives, which is fantastic in reality because no one should spend all their time with a single group of people, but the thing about stories in my experience is that to be effective, everything - every interaction or desire or situation - should be Too Much. 

also, riley seemed a little too cool with everything that was happening. it took dee at least a few weeks to accept the whole voids and homunculus and world-ending thing, but riley was like “fantastic, let’s do this, i can blow things up” which was a bit sudden. 

cora: i mentioned already how she was the “leader” but didn’t really do anything to show that, but also - i felt like we were supposed to feel sorry for her, or at least understand her motives, but i got absolutely none of that. she killed cal, who i didn’t feel much for, but it was still fairly unforgivable, and she never had an act of redemption. i’ll talk about this later, but i feel like james’s sacrifice at the end should have been hers. she wanted “everyone to live,” that was her motive. sacrificing herself would have been the loop to close her character arc, instead of her just dropping out of the story completely. and speaking of motive...

2. the motive: oh boy, i don’t even think i have authority to talk about this because “motive” is a biggie. they have entire writing courses dedicated to character motives. i read a post a while back that said something to the like of “every character should want something and should want it to the point of obsession.” 

going on my avatar the last airbender comparison (that show’s story is literally my baseline for everything else i read or watch), every character in that show wants something desperately. aang’s is easy - he wants to learn the other three elements and save the world. katara, at least in the first season, is completely focused on mastering waterbending. zuko - capture the avatar, regain his honor (and this one’s definitely an obsession). my point is, if your characters don’t want something desperately, there is no story.

now applying that to this story is a bit tricky because the premise is that these people did want something strongly, strong enough to sell their hearts for it. dee wanted money for boarding school, wanted to get out of her awful home situation. and the daemon gives it to her - the first thing, at least. and then for at least 100 pages, it was like she was just being pulled along with anything that happened, without any intense desire of her own. i felt this most strongly when she was out collecting rocks with james. i understand it was a bonding scene, etc. but goddamn. rocks? it just felt a bit shoehorned in, like there needed to be a good reason for the two to start hanging out that was at least semi-work related.

for a moment, i thought dee’s motive would become trying to break out of the deal, to join cora and end it all - it certainly seemed like she was freaked out enough to do it. but something magical healing romance-esque happened and afterwards, she seemed cool with accepting that she had no other choice. i understand she wasn’t a voluntary hero, but it still feels a bit stale when the savior of humankind is doing it not even to save her own skin or that of her friends, but out of sheer obligation. (however, i will give it to her, there was a nice little scene on the bus towards the end where dee was people-watching, and the part at the very end where she said that she did believe that people were inherently good, what a great development from beginning of the book dee)

things that kinda worked 1. the romance: okay, i understand that “kinda worked” doesn’t sound like the most glowing review for a romance, but from me, it’s practically a declaration of adoration. more often than not, romance in young adult novels just do not work for me, whether because it’s instalove or some love triangle’s at play or the  premise is just problematic. but this one? ehhh, i can’t say i hate it.

james, thank god, is not the dark, angsty, “why are you even speaking to me” male love interest (four, i’m describing four from divergent) that i feel like i see too much. he’s funny, a bit dorky, super big on consent, and basically a sweetheart. the author obviously took some care in building up their relationship a bit before taking it to a romance - though in the process, i think she had to give up a lot of development dee could have had with cora and cal. 

their little fairy tale research road trip was actually one of my favorite parts of the book (i’ll talk about this more later). i did, however, groan every time dee became hyperfocused about the oh-so-scandalous fact of being in a car with a boy, sleeping in the same hotel room as a boy, blah blah with a boy. and i facepalmed quite a bit at the extended hesitancy dee had about calling james her boyfriend. i understand why she hesitated (trust issues, negative body image), but it doesn’t mean i have to like it. which leads me to this next thing.

2. character’s response to abuse: let me preface this by saying that i absolutely despise child abuse as a plot device. this is a personal opinion,  i’m not going to get on any high horse and preach about moral quandaries. 90% of the time, i just don’t like it. a lot of this is because i feel most of the time, the character never gets to confront their abuse - never gets the chance to recognize “oh, what happened to me wasn’t right, and a lot of the negative thoughts i have about myself stem from this abuse, and i should not let it define me.” and more often than i like in ya novels, especially for female victims of child abuse, it’s their male love interest who runs in and beats up their abuser/yells at them about how they were a horrible person, which really doesn’t grant the victim any catharsis at all, and i hate how often that is portrayed as “romantic” or a good way to deal with abusers. 

this book, well. let me just say that dee finally standing up to her father about his alcoholism and telling her parents that when THEY finally decided to change, they knew where to find her - that was some good shit. there was a bit when james came running in that i covered my face and went “oh no, here it goes” but to my pleasant surprise, all he did was support dee and didn’t try to insert himself into the situation at all, which was, you know, fantastic. and gremma casually pulling a fire ax out of her purse in front of dee’s parents? lesbian solidarity.

the thing i disliked the most would have to be dee’s image of herself due to the abuse. i understand you don’t need to overcome trauma solo, but i do wish that she could have realized that she didn’t need to be thin or that she wasn’t broken without james telling her so. also, there was that one line where she tried to minimize her abuse - which i know is a common thing for victims of abuse but once again, i don’t have to like it - and james had to talk her out of it that made me groan. i just generally dont think dealing with the effects of abuse should be anywhere near romance, let alone hand in hand like so many books like to treat it. 

3. the sacrifice: i pride myself on not being easily surprised by books anymore, but i did not expect james to die. and i definitely felt something when that package of harry potter books and dee’s picture and the ct scan of the brain tumor arrived in the penultimate chapter. and i hate to be that person, but...

james got his heart back before the final void opened. he could have not been there, like cora. which means the daemon would have still needed him. why didn’t he just sell his heart once more in exchange for the daemon removing his tumor? sure, this way, i have no idea how they would have gotten out of the manual timer thing - then again, who knows if they would have been so targeted if james had not been carrying the heart into the void in the first place, but i still think the sacrifice should have belonged to cora, who definitely required some sort of redemption act if we wanted her to matter to the story in any way. it could’ve been a nice scene -  a “i couldn’t save cal but hell if i’m going to let you two die” act of closure. really, i keep going back to my grievance over how utterly insignifigant cal and cora felt to the story, especially compared to riley, who only jumped in near the end. 

things that worked 1. diversity: can i get a fucking hell yeah?? i’m so goddamn happy that more and more ya novels are recognizing that the world isn’t full of beautiful white straight people. our main gal dee is half-latino, we have a badass lesbian lady who carries axes in her purse, a fucking awesome trans girl who blows shit up (the fact that she doesn’t show up until near the end is a travesty), and our latter two ladies have a cute as hell romance that i wish we saw more of. side character romance is always more awesome because it doesn’t have the kind of baggage that really kills the vibe of main character romances. 

just - diversity.

2. the research road trip scenes: okay, this is very specific. but i’ve watched far too much supernatural for it to be healthy, and james and dee’s little road trip where they ate bad diner food and spent time at the library reading about old fairy tales and old gods and speculated about angels - i just got such a strong supernatural feeling from it. more specifically, the parts where they have no idea what monster they’re hunting and are flipping through old books to figure it out. it had some really calming good vibes, i loved all the speculation and discussion of how people in the past processed magic. no fancy analysis here, it just really resonated with me. 

final rating: 3 out of 5 stars 

note: it would have been 2.5, but the ending surprising me and making me Feel Things really bumped it up. also, writing this ridiculously long review made me feel more invested and charitable.